Penguin enclosure or soap opera?
What is really going on in the National Aquarium?
Kia ora and welcome to The Weekend brought to you by Coffee Supreme. Since the special votes were announced yesterday, I think we can officially declare the election over (though there’s no new government yet). The Spinoff will keep having lots of politics, don’t worry, but I for one am welcoming the opportunity to write long, thinky articles about the internet and contemplate why Swamp Ophelia is such a great album. This week we also have hot, hot penguin gossip and a question about why one of New Zealand’s most popular game exports has been ignored by locals.
-Shanti Mathias, staff writer
The penguin paparazzi
Have you seen the viral antics of the National Aquarium’s penguins? Alex Casey catches us up on the drama. “If you live for gossip and intrigue, all you need in this life is Penguin Cove in Napier’s National Aquarium of New Zealand,” she says. “I’ve adored the naughty little penguins since I visited in 2019, slightly buzzed after a Chardonnay tasting, but I am far from the only one. They’ve been beloved by millions of people all over the world since their ‘Naughty’ and ‘Good’ penguin awards first went viral in 2017, so it was an absolute delight to escape the current horrors of humanity and do this deep dive into their history of poolside antics. Spoiler alert: one of the penguins even gained such a cult following that a woman in Cyprus got a tattoo of him on her ankle.”
More celebrities: Ashley Bloomfield on his life in TV
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Path of Exile is enormously popular – but ignored in New Zealand
“The bleak thing that Chris Murphy told me after our interview was that I was the only NZ journalist to have ever contacted him to talk about Path of Exile, a New Zealand-made game that is played by over a million people every day,” says Sam Brooks, who has written a feature about the game’s enduring popularity. “It just highlighted to me how thin on the ground games coverage is here – there’s more coverage of film, visual arts, theatre and literature than there is gaming, arguably a bigger sector than either of those. Journalists usually love an exclusive story, but this kind of exclusivity is pretty grim.”
Number of the week: (too many) suburbs
What is a suburb, really? This is a question that has probably tied geographers up in knots but Tommy de Silva didn’t let that stop him; he has done a whistle stop tour through Auckland and declared that many so-called suburbs are in fact fake. Tommy has received lots of emails about this piece since it was published, he says, with people passionately making the case for their own suburb’s reality, but he won’t be moved. Here’s a rare moment of gentleness from Tommy, regarding Newton. “Newton is the only fake suburb I feel sympathy for because it was legit before being obliterated by the construction of the motorway spaghetti junction. It’s hard for anywhere decimated in a mid-20th-century wet dream to maintain its official suburb status – but Newton tried (kind of).”
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“When you love a book as a child, you eat it whole”
“The line between possible and impossible in the natural world is so very thin: there are so many things which seem like they should be glorious myths – giraffes, hedgehogs, swifts – which are true,” says children books writer Katherine Rundell, in an interview with books editor Claire Mabey. I read her incredible biography of poet John Donne a few months ago, and can see how her playful sentences would work perfectly for children’s writing. A poem by Donne helped inspire her new book, about a world where the creatures of myth are real. Rundell says her new book “is about the iron-willed cherishing that we owe the world. And the idea that, although the world is often harsh and cruel, it is infinitely worth our love.” That’s a beautiful, compelling idea no matter how old you are.
A history of 7pm shows in Aotearoa
“It may seem like a modern idea, but we’ve been craving a delicious chaser to follow the shot that is the daily news bulletin before a man even walked on the moon,” writes Alex Casey in this whistle-stop history tour of Aotearoa’s 7pm shows, following the announcement that The Project is ending. She remembers some of the most outrageous interview segments on Holmes and the short-lived Story. In the last decade and a half, there have been three separate versions of Seven Sharp and John Campbell got and lost his own show. The fine line between news and entertainment makes these shows chaotic at times — but also very fun.
Remember when a death metal band played on kids programme The Erin Simpson Show?
Everything else
Some of the buzziest bits of trivia from the special votes being released
Labour needs to find its policy again, and Dylan Jones finds where the campaign hoardings go
Speaking of policy — what happens to the push for free dental now?
How did Tom Sainsbury go from making comedy skits to creating horror movie?
Glacial lakes bursting their banks is a huge risk to thousands of towns and cities around the world
From last weekend but an excellent, bonkers investigation from Stuff into drama over Noel Edmonds property holdings in Aotearoa
“I’m an Israeli Jew. This is why I support Palestine.” Also, Tusiata Avia’s poem “I cannot write a poem about Gaza” is essential reading.
Incredibly beautiful imagery in this story about the competitive ploughing scene in New Zealand!
Tara Ward watches the Wiggles documentary, a “hot potato” of nostalgia
Why is Spike Milligan’s Badjelly the Witch a beloved picture book in New Zealand and almost nowhere else?
New science has found the real reason why cats purr
Some very enjoyable spicy takes in Don MacGlashan’s Books Confessional
Rachel Judkins ranks the Wordle spinoffs
Come for the adorable photos of native bats, stay for the outrage about why we let artificial light damage their habits
