JayWontdart's podcast

Episode 32 Freezing Works

Episode 32 Freezing Works This episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast, I talk about Freezing Works, a New Zealand occupation, basically an abattoir or slaughterhouse where the meat is frozen at the end and exported overseas. Download Episode directly here My intro was from No Agenda episode 104. I'll start with a quote. The meat processing industry is in a constant state of change. These changes will continue to meet the requirements of the 21st Century. The meat plant of 100 years hence will probably feature a high degree of automation. But this will be beyond our lifetime. If we focus upon the immediate future the meat plant of the 21st Century will probably incorporate many of the current trends or developments. Operating margins will remain small with the emphasis upon high productivity and enhanced revenue. We may see the rise of the mega-plant linked with a national or international network of specialised added value operations. The international demand for meat and proteins is expected to grow. The challenge of the meat plant will be to meet this demand and produce a range of products to the exact requirements of the customer. 'In the public eye, the Freezing Worker is one of the lowest status individuals in our society. A rough, irresponsible layabout who jeopardises the economy for sheer greed and goes on strike at the drop of a hat. He earns high wages for very simple work. He's at a key point in the economy, responsible for processing one or our biggest export commodities. He can hold the country to ransom. So runs the popular myth. No-one who has not seen what a freezing works is like, and the kind of jobs freezing workers do is in a position to criticise. The industry carries mass production to its extreme. A freezing works is a giant dis-assembly line along which carcasses and organs roll with a deadening inevitability while the men scuttle to keep up. The machine is truly king. A butcher on the chain must carry out the same operation over and over again, day after day until the season ends. Not for him the carpenter's pride in his skill, the watersiders variety of tasks, the shearers' sense of completing a meaningful job. Instead endless, mindless, meaningless work, often standing in the same place all day using a dangerously sharp knife, surrounded by hundreds of other men doing the same thing, and by the unedifying sights and smells of freshly dismembered animals.' Kerr Inkson of Otago University, 1977 I had to look up the term Watersider, it means a person who loads and unloads ships, a dock worker. In Southland , there are a few different Freezing Works, or "The Works", as they are known colloquially. Freezing Works are common in New Zealand rural areas, farmers grow animals like cows, sheep and pigs, and they are sent off to The Works to be killed. When you go past a Freezing Works, they are quite large factory buildings, normally white, and with lots of metal frames outside, where the animals were kept. Trains or trucks will bring the animals in, they will go through pens, to be stunned and then murdered, or in Freezing Works terms, Slaughtered, inside. Their skin is removed for leather, bones are cut and pulled out, heads cut off, tongues cut out, their muscles sold as meat. Their organs are snatched out and thrown in stainless steel trays for inspection, if they are fit for sale, then they are sold for people to eat. Intestines are used as the casings for sausages, the intestines are like socks that get stuffed with low grade meat, to make sausages. I've read that glands are sold, some powdered up and sold overseas as a health thing, some such as testicles, are probably bought in an attempt to spice up the bedroom. In old photos I've seen, you know from the 80's, hairy old men, without gloves on , are wringing out the intestines to make sausage casings, I assume that nowadays they have to wear gloves at least. The intestines go through a wringer, and get washed. A little about the history of meat exported from New Zealand. Canning of meat was started in 1869 in New Zealand, only the best meat was canned. In 1874, american cooled meat was sent to Britain, natural ice kept the meat cold. The first ship to carry frozen meat from New Zealand to the United Kingdom was The Dunedin. The Dunedin used 3 tonnes of coal a day, through a steam powered refrigeration machine, to cool The Dunedins hold, down to 4 degrees celsius. The ship was rigged up for refrigeration in 1881, and its first journey, from Oamaru New Zealand, thats in Otago just north of Southland, left for London on the 15th of February, 1882. It took The Dunedin 98 days to arrive, on the 24th of May. "It is difficult to realise that only about thirty-five years have elapsed since one of the most important of the world's industries was inaugurated, resulting in the enormous and increasing trade of the present day. And yet the whole of this great industry, and to a very great extent the general prosperity and advancement of New Zealand, hangs on the slender piston rod of a refrigerating machine". M A Elliot The Frozen Meat Industry of New Zealand - NZ Journal of Science and Technology, May 1918. How the Freezing Works, work. The animals are brought in, they are To do this episode, I read a book about the Alliance Freezing Works here in Southland, the books name is A Cut Above, the book came out in 1985, two years before I were born. A Cut Above was pretty difficult to read in parts, I read it every day at work while the other people around me ate meat, and I had my normal sandwiches. I'd ask questions to my dad, since he worked at Alliance, and he would casually explain things. Theres lots of disgusting sounding jobs, and sections of the Freezing works. Places like " the fellmongery" , which sounds like something from The Lord of the Rings, its where the wool is taken off sheep. I'll read a few passages that stood out to me. Just to explain this first quote, from the 1950s until the mid-1970s New Zealand was a highly protected economy Ok, hearing that nowadays, with our Free Trade Agreements and all, the idea that the government can deny the right of a company to import a crucial device from overseas, it sounds nuts to me! I asked some older friends, and they could agree that it was the right thing to do, "new zealand jobs" and all, but I dont think its a good plan to just ban imported goods, and instead churn out inferior, and more expensive local versions. Imagine if we could only have New Zealand made computers, that had to have every part made in this country, we'd have to spend billions to reinvent every component, and then still be behind! I dont think I'd want to swap my Apple iPhone for a Kiwifruit brand, Choice-as phone, would you? This part of A Cut Above is about one of many strikes and protests. I couldnt believe that happened when I read the book, the farmers were angry that the freezing works were overloaded, they couldnt deal with extra sheep at the time, so the farmers were being forced to hold onto their animals for longer than they wanted. The farmers went crazy, in my opinion, and brought the animals right into Invercargill city, from their farms, and set them free in the main streets, I cant imagine what that must have been like to see. Scared sheep were running about on busy roads, I guess the farmers would have been having a great time, laughing as police struggled to control the animals that must have been running in front of cars, and in every direction. The farmers managed to get the sheep under control, they took them somewhere close to the Invercargill prison, they dug ruts in the ground for blood to flow through, and started killing sheep in public, out in front of tv crews. Thats horrible, the animals were made about as scared as possible, running free on city roads having lived on farms all their lives, the police couldnt deal with it, it would be scary for drivers not wanting to hit an animal, all while the farmers would have been enjoying themselves. Then, to start killing the animals in public, they show no respect at all for the lives of the sheep, they wanted to protest by driving into Invercargill, setting them off on the streets, so they did it. They want to kill the sheep, so they get them back ,take them to another public place and kill them out in the open, on camera, just to get attention. What was their complaint? That they had to wait for the freezing works to kill their animals, and they couldnt be bothered having these poor sheep kept alive that long. One more section from A Cut Above. "Continued industrial stoppages in the freezing industry had not escaped the notice of the new National Government which had been elected to office on promises of being tough with irresponsible unions. Late in 1976, it was to demonstrate some theoretical muscle when it introduced the Industrial Relations Amendment (No. 3) Act. The act obliged those in the industry to give three days notice of industrial action, and they faced fines of up to $150 if they did not kill out sock either in a works or in transit before going on strike. The legislation was an abysmal failure. From one end of the country to the other, the provisions of the act were ignored. A chorus of farmer protest grew. The Alliance company did not escape and February, 1977, saw a foolish stoppage that made a mockery of the law and industrial relations in general. On 8 February, slaughtermen demanded that security in their dining room be improved, so a door leading from their amenities was locked. During the night, the lock was removed and when some workers other than butchers were found in the dining room the next day, the butchers had a meeting and went home. A meeting was held the next day with union officials and an agreement was drawn up about steps to be taken to prevent non-butchers using their dining room, which included re-locking the offending door. That upset the freezer workers who decided to go on strike until the door was unlocked. There was no discussion with either the company or the union on the matter. Having made their decision, they simply walked out. Later, Jim Barnes learned that freezer workers were in the habit of using the butchers' dining room as an accessway to their own facilities. The company had, of course, provided an alternative entrance but that was marginally further walking distance. A shed meeting of all workers the next day supported the stand taken by the freezer workers and over the weekend, a series of meetings resulted in the disputes committee chairman, Aubrey Begg, being asked to make a decision. He, in turn, upheld the authority of the union officials to make agreements with the company, thereby deciding in favour of the slaughtermen. Work started on Monday, 14 February, with six chains in full production, but ended at 3 PM when freezer workers went home saying they would not return until the door was unlocked. The following day, another shed meeting was held and in a secret ballot, the men decided to uphold Begg's decision and work resumed at 2 pm that day. In the meantime, the company had lost 80,000 head of stock and workers about $150,000 in wages over one door. To cap it all off, no sooner had work started than there was a telephone call to say there was a bomb on the slaughterboard. This meant evacuating the works while management, including Bill Pottinger, Ray Dunn and supervisors fruitlessly searched for any bomb-like object or container. " And you're back to me talking again, all that talking is making me tempted to rely on Alex again! To translate that into modern english, Butchers were annoyed that other people, who worked in the freezer section, used their dining room. The Butchers said that their things were being stolen by the freezing guys walking through their area, and they demanded the door to the room be kept locked. They said they would go on strike if the door was NOT locked. The Freezer workers said they would go on strike if the door WAS locked, they walked through that room to get to where they wanted to go. One side would strike no matter what happened with the door. The door ended up being locked, and the freezer workers went on strike. As A Cut Above says, the Freezer workers had another way to get to where they wanted to go, without going through the locked door, but they said it was longer that way, they wouldnt do it. The whole Freezing Works couldnt work properly without all workers, and in the end they "lost 80,000 head of stock", I think that means those animals would be sent out of Southland to another place to be killed, so the Alliance Freezing works didnt get paid for killing those animals since they didnt do it, someone else would have, and all the workers were not working, so they would have lost about $150,000 1977 NZ dollars in lost wages. I dont know what that would be in todays money, but I've been told around that time you could buy a house for 20,000 or so, 20 grand bought a house, and 150,000 didnt get paid out to the workers because they didnt do their work. All over one door! I have a special invited guest on this episode, my dad, who worked for a long time at a local Freezing works, slaughtering lambs, his job was to open up the sheep around the back legs. I'm pretty happy he decided to come on my podcast and talk about working in a slaughter house. “Thine is the task of blood. Discharge thy task with mercy. Let thy victim feel no pain. Let sudden blow bring death; Such death as thou thyself would ask for.” The Slaughterman’s Creed I've prepared a clip from a BBC documentary, Slaughterhouse, a task of blood to play. I found Slaughterhouse on Veg TV, which you can find at veg hyphen tv.info, you can probably find it by searching for veg tv. its in my notes also. I downloaded the 500MB clip, which put me over my bandwidth cap for this month, but its worth it. Slaughterhouse is a very personal documentary, it has actual characters in the different slaughtermen, most are 20 something year old guys with awful English smiles, the crooked and broken off teeth were what upset me the most in this documentary. If you have the time, I highly recommend downloading Slaughterhouse, A Task of Blood. About the pig mentioned in the last part, if I were cruel, I'd leave what what happening to her to your imagination. But, Im a nice guy, so I'll explain it, the pig had escaped from the pens that the animals are kept in, she was running about the parking lot of the abattoir, and she ran out onto the road. I guess in the end they will have gotten her back inside, but its nice to think that she could have been left alone to run off down the road to freedom. I liked hearing what the workers think, even if I dont agree with how the animals are treated by slaughtermen. It was interesting to hear one of the jewish slaughterers being concerned about the animals wellbeing, and that he even considered himself an animal lover! I dont know how he can say that, and work in a slaughtherhouse, remember, he said that humans are a higher order, we are above animals, so we have the right to kill them, according to him. I dont agree with that at all, I guess its a matter of perception, that a slaughterer could think animals were great, but that we had to eat them and because we are smarter when it comes to making iPods, we have the right to kill cows. I liked the vegetarian message at the start and finish of Slaughterhouse, A Task of Blood too, I think it makes a compelling point, who would want to eat meat after seeing inside an abattoir? Not me, thats for sure. However, this clip is a little disheartening if you read into it like I did, I get the point of "ok, im going to leave off the meat" but its not like you have to eat less if you are vegetarian or vegan, taking off a huge steak and being left with just the steamed carrots and mashed potato on the side, now your main course. Have THREE vegetables on your plate! For the price of the corpse, you could buy a much larger amount of vegan food, you could have chocolate for desert afterwards, being vegan has nothing to do with suffering through mealtimes. I think its reasonable to think that people who eat meat dont want to see how its made so to speak, how the animals are kept, treated, hacked to bits. I like bringing that up anytime someone says something like "you're less of a man now you're vegan", I can pull out my iPhone and show them Earthlings on it, Im quite used to gory slaughterhouse footage now, I'd be willing to beat that the average meat eating person would be more upset to see how meat is made than I am. Theres a good vegetarian message to be learnt when you've seen inside of an abattoir. You see the truth, how things really are. I'd like to play a clip from Compassionate Cooks, I love Colleens podcast where she talks about being vegan and cooking. If you search iTunes for " compassionate cooks" it will show up, I'll have a link to her website compassionate cooks .com in my notes as well. Thank you very much for the work you do Colleen, I've donated some money towards the running costs of your podcast. My friend Sam is a young New Zealand vegan, its always good to find other vegans in New Zealand, especially guys, it breaks down any perceptions that only women are vegan. I'd like to mention Sam's new podcast, NZ Vegan Teen, you can find it on iTunes by searching NZ Vegan Teen. Sam has many websites up, I first came across his anti Dairy site, here is a clip Sam sent me to play on this episode. You can find Sam on iTunes by searching for NZ Vegan Teen, also http://nzveganteen.blogspot.com/ is one of Sams pages, nz vegan teen . blogspot . com. Howard Lyman is a former American Cattle Rancher, a cow farmer in New Zealand terms, who decided to be vegan. Howard used modern chemicals on his farm, in 1979 he was diagnosed with a tumor on his spine. He was told he could be paralysed from the tumor, he vowed to switch to non chemical methods of farming if he beat the cancer. He survived the operation to remove the tumor, and changed his farm into an organic operation. Around 1990, Howard Lyman faced health problems, he became vegetarian and found his health improved. He started looking into Mad Cow Disease, which was affecting Great Britain. In 1996 Howard Lyman appeared on Oprah Winfrey's show, he made comments that offended the National Cattlemens Beef Association, he basically said "meat is bad for you, bad things are fed to cows, ground up roadkill, pets who have been put to sleep etc, cows dont naturally eat meat, its wrong." Oprah agreed , shocked by what she heard she said she wouldnt eat hamburgers again. The Beef Association was very mad about that, it was a bit like the recent New Zealand Pork scandal, my term for it, with the Pork Board denying that New Zealand pigs are badly treated in factory farming conditions. The Beef association were hurt by the drop in sales, when people find out how meat is brought to their supermarket, they often buy less, at least temporarily. Both Lyman and Oprah were sued, they eventually won the trial. In time Howard became Vegan. I have a clip of Howard Lyman, from one of his speeches, Im near the end of this episode, so I'd like to thank you for listening now. If you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it. My outro will be the song Meat is Murder, sung live by The Smiths, I heard it and rushed off to buy it on iTunes. I've noticed that iTunes doesnt show my earlier podcast episodes, I have the full set of links to each and every episode on my blog page, jaywontdart.blogspot.com , so you can download every one of my episodes. I'd like to put forth a message to anyone who eats meat and who has listened to this episode, go and see what the inside of a "meat factory" looks like, no matter what its called, an abattoir, a slaughterhouse, or The Freezing Works. Its as simple as typing in " slaughterhouse" or something similar into Google Images, theres no cost or inconvenience to you. Have a look, and ask yourself, "could I work here? Could I cut these animals throats, watching litres of blood come out while they are hung upside down? Could I stand the smell of blood, guts, animal waste?" If you think these places are awful to see, well, why would you pay money for them to stay in business? Why would you want to touch what comes from them, if even the sight is upsetting, the thought is upsetting, the sounds are upsetting, the smell is upsetting, why would you want to eat it? This beautiful creature must die A death for no reason And death for no reason is murder And the flesh you so fancifully fry Is not succulent, tasty or kind Its death for no reason And death for no reason is murder Kitchen aromas arent very homely Its not comforting, cheery or kind Its sizzling blood and the unholy stench Of murder Its not natural, normal or kind The flesh you so fancifully fry The meat in your mouth As you savour the flavour Of murder Have a super happy day, bye. Sources ========= http://www.techhistory.co.nz/19thcentury/Meat.htm meat history www.meatupdate.csiro.au/data/Meat_95_14.pdf intro quote about freezing works A Cut Above book, 1985 My father, who worked at Alliance Freezing Works! http://veg-tv.info/ Slaughterhouse, a task of blood documentary http://www.compassionatecooks.com/ outro song, Meat is Murder by The Smiths, awesome song, go and buy it to support musicians!

Episode 49 This Is It (Final Episode)

Episode 49, This Is It (Final Episode)To start with , here are my favourite vegetarian or vegan related clips from the No Agenda Podcast with John C Dvorak and Adam Curry.Dvorak made a few mistakes with my message, I do NOT own NZ Vegan Podcast, I just asked for it to be mentioned, and Im not the only vegan who listens to No Agenda, I've met a few now.Welcome to Episode 49 of Jay Wont dart's podcast. This Is It, both the Michael Jackson movie, and my final episode.Thank you to everyone who has ever listened to my podcast. I'm no longer going to update this, Im focusing on my Animal Rights show, Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals. You can find that at coexisting with nonhuman animals . blogspot.com. I'd love to hear from anyone who has listened to this podcast, my email is jaywontdart @gmail.com.If you would like to remove this podcast from your iTunes podcast section, you can just select it and hit delete. Or, if you'd like to keep the episodes for some reason, to make fun of me when I run for Prime Minister of New Zealand, you can select all the episodes, and "convert ID3 tags". That removes the bit that says "this is a podcast, keep it separate from normal music files". Right click on all the selected episodes and you will see "convert ID3 tags". Select "1.0" ok that. When you do that, you will lose the artwork for the episodes, you could always copy the picture from one of the episodes and then paste it back for all tracks after deleting the tags. You can then drag the tracks out of iTunes to your desktop, and then back to iTunes, they should just show up as usual music, not in the podcast section any more. This way, you dont have a dead podcast in your podcast section, looking for updates that will never come. I have little space left on screen, even with a 23 inch screen, because I have so many podcast subscriptions, so I remove any that are not updated and save the files the way I just described.A few weeks back, I went to the movies. It was the first time in years, Probably the last movie I had went to would have been Lord Of The Rings, Return Of The King. I didnt think much of the movie theatre, in fact, it SUCKED! I had to wait for the ticketing clerk to get off the telephone, while another one sat there doing NOTHING at a closed till. After a minute or two of awkward standing and looking around at movie posters, I finally got to pay. The manager was further along, on another telephone, yakking it up about how great his theatre is. Something about digital projection equipment. Yet, our local theatre cannot afford to get 3D projectors. 3D movies are cited to be the new breakthrough in reversing movie theatre losses, because at home, you just cant get 3D, its going to be THE reason to go to a theatre. And, we just wont have it, because it costs so much. So, Invercargills local movie theatre is pretty much screwed. Like I said, it had been YEARS since I had last gone, and I really dont see myself EVER going to a movie theatre again. I normally just wait until things are out on DVD, and buy them, although I have friends who download movies from bit torrent, and its pretty impressive what you can get for FREE, BEFORE the movie is even OUT in THEATRES, let alone waiting months for the dvd version. I dont like stealing movies though, so I dont do it, although I think Digital Distribution is the way to go. I buy all my music through iTunes, and hope one day I'll be able to get movies the same way. I imagine someday you will be able to just get new movies on your computer, by download, at the same time they are released in theatres, because all the theatres will be long gone.Before I tell you about what I thought of This Is It, I'd also like to mention, I wanted to own it on DVD straight after the movie ended, I wanted to be able to rewind certain bits and watch them again and again. Turns out, Sony was willing to have the DVD and Blu Ray versions out BEFORE christmas, makes sense right? So then everyone would be buying copies for christmas, thats the best time of year for sales, "for christs sake". But, oh, the movie theatres bitched and moaned, "oooh, you cant do that to us", and so Sony had to postpone the home release until almost FEBRUARY. Ok, so I could have this dvd in my hands in a few weeks, OR, I could wait MONTHS. Guess what I have to do! All because I want to legally buy the damn thing, I could have just grabbed a pirated copy of the movie from online, probably before it was even showing in theatres. The people who play by the rules always get screwed over.So, it seems to be a long wait until I can own This Is It. Im not happy about it.So, what did I think about This Is It? Heres the trailer.As you probably know, This Is It were a series of concerts that were cancelled after Michael Jackson died, a very short time before the concerts were to begin. This Is It, the movie thats been released, is from footage filmed privately for Michael himself, it was never meant to be seen by the public. Some fans have thought it shouldnt be released, since its practice footage, and not finished. Im personally glad I got to see it. Lots of interesting set designs were used, and actual computer graphics for the concerts are shown during the movie. One has a spider scurrying about, and then an actual giant spider comes out on stage, with its legs stomping about, and it opens up to reveal Michael inside. Theres been all kinds of rumours about the movie too, some of them bizarre. I mean, the whole thing is a cash grab by the producers, trying to get as much money as possible of course, and they've succeeded doing that. The rumoured price for the raw concert footage was 60 million us dollars, and to date, the movie has taken in over 200 million dollars. It will probably do something similar to that again in merchandise and sales of the home media versions. Then, rumours that body doubles were used, that not all of the dancing is done by the actual Michael Jackson, its someone who looks just like him doing it, because Michael was too sick to dance. Who knows if thats true or not. Even Joe Jackson, Michaels Father has said that its "mostly body doubles". I dont know, Joe Jackson says all kinds of things. Sony released a statement denying rumors that the film had rehearsal footage of Jackson body doubles. "This story is pure garbage and there are no body doubles. [...] Audiences will begin to see the film tomorrow [October 28, 2009] and every time they see The King of Pop they will know that every frame is unquestionably Michael [Jackson] as he rehearses and prepares for the London concerts that were to have begun this past summer." I dont know, thats a bit mean, to say "oh, the true fans will recognise its Michael", its a bit like the story of the Emperors New Clothes, we all want to believe its Michael Jackson, and so will just assume it is him. From what I saw, it seemed like him, sure. Then, there are rumours of the actual singing too. For most of the movie, you dont hear Michael singing at full strength, he doesnt sing properly, apparently to save his voice for the concerts, this was just practise remember. So, he skips huge portions of songs, and what he does sing tends to be rather quietly, and he sounds out of breath, like hes forgotten parts, or is generally stressed. There were rumours that Michael was close to death as he performed, and that he could never have actually fulfilled all the concert dates. These rumours say they people around him were giving him drugs to keep him going, never caring about his health, and that they just needed him to perform. At least parts of the sound have been confirmed as being the original master recordings, with Sony confirming that some of the practise recordings were just not strong enough. Again, I dont know, maybe we will never know the truth.From what I saw from the movie, Michael looked rather freaky, every time you see him, he looks like a different person, his whole face again looks different from just a few years ago. Now he looked "smaller" and even thinner, with large cheeks but nothing else to his face. He wears sunglasses for most of the movie, and some rather crazy looking suits. I didnt like the costumes very much, they are just bizarre. I'll read from some reviews of This Is It."More important, however, is that we rarely witness Jackson giving 100%: He frequently comments that he is saving his voice and body for the actual performances. Jackson certainly can’t be faulted for this, but it’s questionable whether he would really want his fans to see him thus. Don’t get me wrong: 60% of Michael Jackson is still a pretty good thing [...] [Jackson] the noted perfectionist, at work, correcting others’ dance moves without missing a beat himself and giving notes, sometimes revelatory and other times inscrutable, to his music director and others"—Marjorie Baumgarten of Austin Chronicle[ "We see Jackson as a perfectionist, a generous boss, a tough taskmaster and a playful child. Off guard and probably unaware that it would ever be seen by the public, we find Jackson pushing his band and production team to the limit with demands to "let it sizzle" and "make the music simmer". Obsessive Jacko fans may be shocked by his Diva-ish behaviour as he complains about ear-pieces, but it's heartening to finally view the late singer as a rounded human with regular failings and imperfections. Similarly a scene featuring Jackson screaming "weeeee!" with childish glee as he moves around the stage on a giant cherry-picker, will surely bring a smile to even the most cynical viewer"—Alex Fletcher of Digital Spy[I guess you just have to go and see the movie for yourself, if its still available where you are, if not, we have to wait until its released for home media. Im not enjoying this wait, theres so many scenes I want to watch again, to see if I can spot any signs of body doubles, or other unusual things. Overall, Im really glad I saw This Is It, although it is rather weird to watch. You know Michael is dead, it briefly mentions that at the very start, before going through the process of auditions for the supporting cast. Who knows if Michael Jackson had the strength left to do all those live performances. Honestly, the majority of the movie has him "practise singing", not singing properly at full strength. It comes across as if hes forgetful or tired, although it could really be that he was just doing that because it is a practise, and he needed his strength for the real performances.I really liked a lot of things about the movie, I hope you can see it. Im going to end with the main song of the movie, that was released with the movie. This Is It was recorded many years ago, and just recently worked into a full song. Its always exciting to find "unreleased" songs of your favourite artist, especially after they have died, although the studios ALWAYS let them trickle out, to maximise their profits. Its going to be years before all Michaels best songs have been released, if they ever are.Thank you for listening. Its been fun doing these podcasts. Im going to continue doing my animal rights podcast, Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals. You can find that a coexisting with nonhuman animals . blogspot.com I'd love it if you would listen to that. You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.comIf you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it. I really, really would. For the last time ever on this podcast,Have a super happy day, bye.Sources=======http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson%27s_This_Is_It

Episode 48 Always Blow On The Pie!

Episode 48 Always Blow On The Pie!thats right girls, dont work hard at school, you're just going to end up at home cooking and cleaning for your husband! That was a 1960's commercial for Suzy Homemaker, a bunch of fake household items, ovens, blenders, irons etc. How could these have been the good old days, when girls were molded into housewives! I'd much rather todays commercials, for videogames where you kill prostitutes!Anyway, welcome to episode 48 of Jay Wont dart's podcast, Always blow on the pie!Im having fun having two podcasts, although Im not sure how often each will get updated, perhaps I'll get stuck in one or the other for a few episodes in a row.This episode, a New Zealand pop culture moment thats exploded online. Always Blow On The Pie!It came from the New Zealand police show called Police ten 7In the famous clip, a police officer finds a suspicious looking man, and gives him some rather odd, rather New Zealand advice. Heres the full version of the clip. Safer Communities together is a New Zealand police slogan. I love it, so far the most popular youtube clip has had about 100,000 views, thats a lot for a New Zealand clip. Mr Vintage, a New Zealand online t shirt store has made a "Always Blow on the pie" t shirt. Remix songs have been made, and even mainstream media have covered the event. Once more, heres the main part of the clip,And here are some of the best remixes, taken from youtube. I've linked to these in the shownotes which you can see on my blog or in the lyrics section of this episode.First, Blow on the Pie, the musical,and my favourite of the remixes, the rap version.I love the rap version best.I just felt like I had to cover Always Blow on the Pie, its sure to become part of New Zealands pop culture alongside heavyweight boxer David Tua saying "o for oresome" on a gameshow The policeman in the clip was found, and recently on tv, heres a clip from the Breakfast show.Thank you for listening.You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.comIf you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.Have a super happy day, bye.sources========intro Suzy Homemaker video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rAiii4LA3klonger versionhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2oVTULyWZkthe musicalhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvs8PNbGVdgthe raphttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F7Gucl_FqIsafer communities remixhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8PiVPRjujEMr Vintage T http://www.mrvintage.co.nz/shop/Gender/View+All+Mens/SAFER+COMMUNITIES+MENS+T-SHIRT.htmlbreakfast show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cRkrF5dGyQO for awesomehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaIZF8uUTtk

Episode 47 My New Animal Rights Podcast

Episode 47 My New Animal Rights PodcastWelcome to an extra short episode of Jay Wont dart's podcast. My intro was my latest mention on No Agenda, although Dvorak got my podcast wrong, I DO NOT own the NZ Vegan podcast :) I do enjoy telling people to search for "NZ Vegan" when they look for my podcast on iTunes, because searching for "NZ Vegan" shows up all the New Zealand Animal Rights podcasts. I almost uniformly love each and every one of the results.I just wanted to let everyone know, I've decided to do all future animal rights, and Vegan related episodes under a separate designation. This will make it easier to just listen to the episodes you are actually interested in, if you want to only hear me talk about NZ news or movies, or if you want to only hear vegan topics. Or, ideally you could subscribe to both!The name of my new podcast, chosen by my friend Sam Tucker, is Coexisting with Nonhuman Animals. I asked for help on Veganzchat, an email group, with a starting point of " living with animals ", asking for it to be improved upon. Sam kindly came up with Coexisting with Nonhuman Animals. I like it very much, although it is a long name. You can find that blog at Coexisting With Nonhuman Animals.blogspot.com. I'm not sure how often I'll update each podcast, just when I feel like it most likely. To make up for this being a short episode, Im going to include some of my favourite outro clips. I have the autotuned Glorious Dawn, using clips of Carl Sagan, a famous astronomer, an american church which has banned Pepsi, and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, on the iPhone before it were released.Just to make it clear, you can find Coexisting with Nonhuman Animals on iTunes, by searching for it by name, although it shows up just fine if you search for " jay wont dart ", both my podcasts will show. You can also find the blog at coexisting with nonhuman animals . blogspot.com.Thank you for listening.You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.comIf you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.I hope you check out Coexisting with Nonhuman Animals.Have a super happy day, bye.

Episode 46 Stand By Me, Contact, American Beauty

Episode 46Stand By Me, Contact, American BeautyHi, welcome to episode 46 of Jay Wont darts podcast. My intro was from episode 132 of No Agenda.This episode, I'll talk about three of my favourite movies. Stand by Me, a coming of age flick, Contact, starring Jodie Foster and centred around aliens, and American Beauty, which is like a grown up Ferris Buellers Day Off. First, Stand By Me.Heres the trailer,Stand By Me is a movie a lot of people will have seen before, and forgotten about. Its truly a classic. The movie, based on a Steven King book, came out in 1986. It has a lot of fairly well known scenes, the young boys walking along train tracks for most of the movie is quite memorable.I'll read from the Wikipedia summary.The film is narrated by an adult Gordie LaChance, known as "The Writer" (Richard Dreyfuss), writing the memoir about his youth. Set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Oregon, over Labor Day weekend in September 1959, Gordie (Wil Wheaton), and his friends Chris Chambers (River Phoenix) and Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman) learn from their friend Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell) that the dead body of a boy named Ray Brower, who was struck by a train while picking blueberries in the woods, has not been found. While under his porch looking for his buried jar of pennies, Vern overheard his older brother talking about finding the body while in the woods with a friend. The boys then embark upon a two-day journey across the woodlands near Castle Rock to see and find the body in hopes that the discovery will make them all famous.Each boy has a physical and/or emotional burden. Gordie is a quiet, bookish boy with a penchant for telling stories and writing, rejected by his father following the death of his football-star older brother Denny (John Cusack) in a Jeep accident. Chris is from a family of criminals and alcoholics and, despite his intelligence and desire to break the generational curse, he is usually stereotyped accordingly. Teddy is an eccentric and physically deformed after his mentally-unstable father (whom Teddy sees as a war hero who "stormed the beach at Normandy") held his ear to a stove and nearly burned it off, thus forcing him to wear a hearing aid. Vern, overweight and timid, is easily scared, and thus often picked on.Through the boys' misadventures and conversations, the viewer learns about each character's personality. Each of the boys, for varying reasons, lives in the shadow of their fathers and older brothers. Gordie's talent for storytelling pegs him as the most likely of the four to have a promising future.Heres a clip of Gordie telling a story.Stand By Me is a great movie, its been mentioned in pop culture a few times, such as the scenes of the adult writer reminiscing about his childhood friends. By the end of the movie, we hear him mention how he moved away from his friends, and the terrible fates that awaited each of them. Its terribly sad, to hear how they all end up.The next movie is Contact, about finding a radio signal from outer space. Contact came out in 1997. Jodie Foster's character has been into radio all her life, and now she works with radio telescopes listening to signals from space. Eventually, she and her team manage to decode one such signal, and find out it has information inside, instructing them to build a machine.Here is the trailer for contact.I forget the total cost of the machines, but its actually quite low by todays standards, less than the US auto bail outs for example. A machine, or two, to teleport us through space, to meet aliens, and they cost less than keeping American cars around.This is unrelated to the cost of the machine, but here is a clip of Jodie Foster asking for more funding.Contact has a really interesting character, a ultra rich man near the end of his life, he shows up in a lot of interesting scenes, such as one as he floats inside a space station to prolong his life. Near the very end of the movie, as a question about him is brought up, we see his fellow space station friends put him in a body bag.An interesting thing about Contact, the signal, and aliens, are from Vega, a star. When you mention this star , people from Vega are called "vay-guns". So, in the movie there are some GREAT clips to be made, as it sounds like they are saying Vegans! Observe.Arnt they great?The last movie is American Beauty. I love this movie, it features Kevin Spacey as the main character. American Beauty came out in 1999.Reading from Wikipedia,Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, a middle-aged office worker who has a midlife crisis after becoming infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend.After watching a high school basketball game at which Jane is a cheerleader, Lester develops an infatuation with Jane's sexually precocious friend and classmate, Angela . His fantasies entail a sexually aggressive Angela among red rose petals. Lester is informed he is to be laid off, but blackmails his boss, quits his job and takes up low-pressure employment at a fast food chain. He buys his dream car, starts lifting weights and begins running to "look good naked"—to impress Angela, whom he overheard telling Jane that she would find him sexually attractive if he had muscle. He also takes up smoking cannabis, which he buys from Ricky. Lester continues to fantasize about Angela and flirts with her whenever she visits Jane. The pair's friendship wanes and Jane becomes romantically involved with Ricky; the lovers bond over Ricky's camcorder footage of what he considers the most beautiful imagery he has filmed: a plastic bag blowing in the windIts a very odd movie, but definitely one of my favourite movies of all time. Heres the trailer for American Beauty. here are some other clips, the main character Lester explaining his job That job scene actually is reminding me of Fight Club, American Beauty is like Ferris Beuller meets Fight Club, but without the violence. Its emotional, but not a chick flick.a tense dinner sceneand the most beautiful thing Ricky has ever filmed, a plastic bagI highly recommend all three of these movies, Stand By Me, Contact, and American Beauty.Thank you for listening. My outro is the New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, on the Letterman show.You can find the script for this episode, as well as downloads for every episode of Jay Wont darts podcast at jaywontdart.blogspot.comIf you want to contact me, even just to say you listened, send an email to jaywontdart@gmail.com, j a y w o n t d a r t @ gmail.com, I'd appreciate it.Have a super happy day, bye.sources=======stand by me lardass http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG2gjL-KUqwcontacttrailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF3IZzXZ6Igfunding http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sds7hTlaNaMamerican beauty most beautiful thinghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yk7b2uo0u8my jobhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqJ8zxV7Cjwdinner scenehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRfZQN9cMfo