Joe Bennett
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Articles by Joe Bennett
A tale of fails on the snail trail
He chose Tahiti because it’s in the middle of the Pacific, and also because its various islands are lined with steep-sided valleys. Partula snails occupied the moist depths of each valley and did not venture over the ridges. Thus every snail colony was doubly isolated, once by the ocean and once by local geography, which made them ideal subjects of study. It was gruelling work. The snails were small, the climate tropical, the jungle thick.
As happy as a 9-year-old in mud
Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright. He is a regular contributor. With rod in hand and setting sun, what could be better? A fish on the line might help.Marion van Dijk OPINION: The tide went out and I went worming. Years ago the low-tide estuary would be dotted with men in gumboots digging for worms. But on this late afternoon last week I was all alone. When I turned over a forkful of mud it made a belching noise and released a fetid smell of decomposition.
Common Side Effects Creators on Working With Mike Judge and Season 2 Hopes
It’s funny how 2019 seems like eons ago. All the more reason to be impressed that Emmy-nominated comedy writer Steve Hely and animator Joe Bennett knew one hot-button topic for a potential TV series would boast timeless appeal: Big Pharma. "From the very first origins, we were talking about wellness and health and pharmaceuticals," Hely says. "Why do we spend all this money on it? Why is everybody unhappy about it in this rich country? Why does everybody seem to be self-medicating?
Doing the hard yards for the good of the great game
An ancient retainer led me down corridors lined with trophies and memorabilia – the thigh bone of a 1921 Invincible, a plaster-cast of Buck Shelford's scrotum, a springbok head, still with shreds of jersey attached. The architect's brief had been to design a building that reflected the laws of the game. Rooms led off corridors that circled back on themselves to form a bewildering maze. I was about to pronounce myself lost when the retainer opened the door on a room in total darkness.
Is he naked or is he nude? A lesson in art and attitude
The nude as an artist may see it. Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright. OPINION: Have you ever been nude? No, neither have I. Naked, yes, from day one, but never nude. I'm not sufficiently artistic.
Joe Bennett: Taking our familiar flaws to the final frontier Original
One of the 12 white, male Americans to have walked on the dusty desert we know as the Moon. NASA / Getty Images Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright. OPINION: Today's subject is the prescience of Gene Roddenberry. But let's begin with the Moon. Twelve people have walked on the Moon. The last one to do so, in 1972, was white, male and American. So were the other 11.
Joe Bennett: Striking a blow for man the breaker
Woodwork has been on the school curriculum since the Stone Age. Joe Bennett never excelled at it. (File photo) DAVID UNWIN / FAIRFAX NZ. / DAVID UNWIN / FAIRFAX NZ. Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright. OPINION: I’ve just demolished a woodworking bench. Woodwork has been on the school curriculum since the Stone Age. I was no good at it. In the fourth form my mate Dave made a miniature chest of drawers with dovetail joints.
Joe Bennett: The heart-warming hope for humanity Original
What If You Ate the Spiciest Pepper in the World? Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright. OPINION: I am forever hearing that the planet is under threat, but I have also just read that in 250 million years its entire land mass will have come together into a single continent. In other words the threat to the planet is of change rather than extinction. But the same cannot be said for us, unfortunately, because the new super-continent will be uninhabitable.
Joe Bennett: A toast to the treat of a tool Original
The sort of problem that well-designed toaster tongs could avoid. 123rf Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright. OPINION: We’d gone away for the weekend because we could. We’d gone to the west coast because we live on the east coast. We’d each ordered a full English breakfast because we’d been for a walk in the bush. I was happy because of all the above.
Joe Bennett: Taking a hospital pass on gift-giving
The hospital with its warren of corridors, and glimpses of wardsful of misfortune. Kelly Hodel / WAIKATO TIMES Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright. OPINION: I was visiting a friend in hospital and wanted to take a gift. A gift’s a token of affection. You hope it will cheer the patient up. It tells them that, though they’ve been plucked out of daily life, they’re not forgotten. More subtly, a gift is representative of words that don’t get said.
Anchored to the actual Original
“...thrushes kill to live, as do we all, but one can take this sort of thing too far. And [Ted] Hughes did,” writes Joe Bennett. Marion Van Dijk / The Nelson Mail Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright OPINION: In this game you never know. Some weeks I write what seems to me a little bomb of truthfulness and I send it in with fingers all atremble and await the detonation. But then, on day of publication, nothing. Not a hint of a shockwave.
A bird for the ages should be a bird of the year
Turdus philomelos, lover of songs and sweller of hearts. John Bisset / The Timaru Herald Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright. OPINION: Charity muggers were lurking at the supermarket door, one male, one female, both young and aggressively cheerful. The female accosted me. “Have you got a moment for Forest and Bird?” “Forest and Bird?” I said. “Yes, I have. I’m appalled by your treatment of turdus philomelos.” “I’m sorry,“ she said.
Joe Bennett: Taking the fun out of fungi
Toadstools: the name tells you all you need to know. LIAM CAVANAGH / Timaru Herald Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright. OPINION: I have just looked up recipes for beef wellington. The first I found calls for 250g of chestnut mushrooms, then adds “include some wild ones if you like”. Last week beef wellington was served at a lunch gathering near Melbourne. Three of the four guests died. The fourth is in hospital needing a liver transplant.
Kein Plagiat: Ed Sheeran gewinnt wegweisenden Prozess
Doch nicht bei Marvin Gaye abgekupfert: Ed Sheeran wurde vom Vorwurf des Plagiats freigesprochen. Das Urteil könnte weitreichende Auswirkungen auf die Musikbranche haben. Der britische Popstar Ed Sheeran hat einen Prozess wegen Plagiatsvorwürfen in New York gewonnen.
The Future With Hannah Fry
The elixir of life has been sought for thousands of years. Today a scientific revolution has begun. Hannah joins bio-hackers in California, and a neuroscientist along the streets of Tokyo to experience the latest age-defying techniques and examines what it means to live to a healthy, happy old age. What will extended lifespans mean for society, and will the effort all be worthwhile in the end? (Source: Bloomberg)
A reflection on war that somehow conjures beauty
“Quite how the wisteria does it, I have no idea, how it puts out literally thousands of faultless, semi-translucent blueish purple shells, each with a white and yellow heart, but it delights me that it does,” Joe Bennett writes of the sight that greets him when he steps through his front door. OPINION: Every time I walk out of my front door right now a well-known poem from the last world war comes to mind. (Of course, when I say it is well-known, I mean only that I know it.
O Imortal Hulk Vol. 5
Nesse volume, o Golias Esmeralda enfrentará o mais novo Abominável criado pela Base Sombra. Além disso, conheceremos um pouco mais do passado de Reginald Fortean. A edição nº 25 aborda uma história que se passa bilhões de anos no futuro, e explica o tÃtulo desse volume. A arte do Joe Bennet continua sobrenatural, o brasileiro vem arrasando. Porém, a trama perdeu um pouco do ritmo e daquele impacto do começo. Contudo, ainda acho essa fase acima da média e seguirei comprando.
Are we all like this deep down?
Pressure mounts on Minsk as more carriers suspend flights while journalist’s father says Protasevich has likely been beaten. OPINION: A guide to bastards – who they are, what they are, what they want and whether they’re born or bred. We all look out for number one, but to bastards there is no number other than one. So they don’t care who they tread on in pursuit of what they want. Trump is an obvious example. There is nothing he won’t do or say to further his own ends. Nothing.
My next speeding ticket probably won't happen
If Joe Bennett lives until he is 84, he expects to have a self-driving car to transport him, avoiding speeding fines. OPINION: I’ve received the third and final speeding ticket of my life. The first was roughly 40 years ago, the second 20 and the most recent yesterday. It follows that if there is to be a fourth it will be 20 years from now, by which time I’ll be dead or 84.
If Trump isn't charged, then that's that
There are several grounds on which former US President Donald Trump could be charged, Joe Bennett says. OPINION: Why isn’t Trump in jail? It’s only fair that he should be. Fairness is hard to define and even harder to achieve, but the sense of it is instinctive. Children know exactly what’s fair and what isn’t. Fairness put into legal effect is justice, and justice is famously blind because it treats all people impartially, regardless of status. The USA has a Department of Justice.
The universe is yelling at me right now
The universe seems to Joe Bennett to be bellowing at him right now about the wisdom of drinking. OPINION: I am not one of those who believes that the universe speaks in a small voice and that in order to hear it we have to sit still and be mindful. I am one of those who believes the universe shouts. And some days it bellows. Yesterday was such a day. It began with an email from a friend who'd heard I was on a diet.
Joe Bennett: Origami swan on the windowsill speaks of a rare specialisation
NATANEAL MELCHOR/UNSPLASH There are obvious upsides to neurosurgery and heart surgery, Joe Bennett writes, but not so much where colorectal surgery is concerned. OPINION: I taught several of her sons, but it was a long time ago. They are now all middle-aged men with careers and kids and bellies. “The youngest one,” she said – and when she spoke his name I saw him, aged 15, blond-haired and grinning – “is now a surgeon.” “Gosh, and good on him,” I said.
The man whose invention pioneered the personal soundscape
Philips Company Archives/AP Structural engineer Lou Ottens, the Dutch inventor of the cassette tape, seen with his invention in 1988. OPINION: Lou Ottens has died. He was the Dutch engineer who invented the cassette tape. He did more than most to defy time, but time, as Auden noted, tires of everyone. He was 94 years old. Before Mr Ottens there were only cumbersome reel-to-reel tape recorders.
Lording it over their one-time overlords
India's Rishabh Pant celebrates scoring a swashbuckling century, brought up with a six, on the second day of the fourth cricket test match against England last Friday. OPINION: It was a thing of beauty and if you missed it or if you could not see the beauty then I am sorry for you. It was the test match series between England and India. India won.
The most terrifying words a man can read
Joe Bennett (not pictured here) survived the process of putting a flat pack desk together, but not without a degree of terror. OPINION: Some phrases strike fear in men’s hearts – “Caution: Tarantulas!” say, or “Can I offer you a sherry?” But the worst by far, the phrase at which grown men falter and their spines buckle, is “some assembly required”. Needing a desk for my study I took myself off to a showroom where I discovered one called Hamilton.
A fascinating life that could be yours or mine
Though we may see our own lives as uninteresting, “Every life, when viewed through others’ eyes, is quite extraordinary”, Joe Bennett writes. OPINION: There is a god. He oversees our adult life and directs everything we do, and his name – a mouthful, I’ll admit, but when you’re god, who cares – is Workloveluck. And my evidence for saying so is the life of David. Though your life or mine would do as well. David's Canadian.
The coming day of my horror
A reasonable representation of Joe Bennett's current home set-up, minus 20 years of dust. OPINION: The plague is knocking on the door again and Trump's been let off by a jury of despicables, but my thoughts are elsewhere. It was Emerson who observed that a man is what he thinks about all day. Right now I'm seven plugs. The plugs are attached to the end wall of my study, the wall in front of me now as I type, hung with photographs of dogs and other lovers. The wall is due for demolition.
Going extra-terrestrial to feed a habit
Joe Bennett cheered when Elon Musk, right, had a rocket crash-land. Musk and Jeff Bezons, left, have both gone extra-terrestrial because power is an addictive drug, Joe Bennett writes. OPINION: Today's subject of philosophical enquiry is rich bastards. The subject came to mind when Elon Musk's rocket crash-landed and burst in flames. Hands up if you cheered. Yes, same here. I do not want Elon Musk shoving stuff into space to fly above your head and mine.
The sheer sense of entitlement of some people
Joe Bennett’s play The Die, at the Lyttelton Arts Factory, has been drawing full houses. OPINION: What a week. Our show at the Lyttelton Arts Factory has been selling out night after night, but do you think people will accept that a House Full sign means that the house is full? It is hard to credit the sense of entitlement of some people, though it does help you understand how Trump secured a foothold in a national psyche.
A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing But Using the Bathroom as an Escape by Joe Pera - Macmillan
The cozy comedy of Joe Pera meets the darkly playful illustrations of Joe Bennett in A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing but Using the Bathroom as an Escape, a funny, warm, and sincere guide to regaining calm and confidence when you’re hiding in the bathroom. “Nothing says ‘class’ to your dinner guests more than a Joe Pera book next to the can.” —Seth Meyers Joe Pera goes to the bathroom a lot. And his friend, Joe Bennett, does too.
Two vexing questions for the ages
A touch of karma. Tim Paine, Australia’s captain, reacts after dropping India’s Hanuma Vihari, who made a match-saving partnership with Ravichandran Ashwin, in the third test in Sydney last week, shortly after Paine had sledged Ashwin. OPINION: Like dear little Dostoevsky I am fascinated by crime and punishment, and in particular the two great questions that have vexed penologists down the ages: are the spots on a leopard born or bred, and can that leopard ever change them?
It's not over. Trump's psyche can't accept defeat
Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post The scene outside the Capitol after a mob of Trump supporters breached the building on January 6. Despite his apparent subsequent acceptance of his election loss, Joe Bennett says Trump’s psyche can’t accept defeat. OPINION: It ain't over yet. Trump's not finished. He's like the nightmare of folk stories, the revenant, the vampire, that isn't done with until a stake's been driven through its heart. It isn't that Trump has superhuman qualities.
Leave Tarras alone, it's a rare gem
The Tarras Country Store. The village is home to a few shops, the legend of Shrek the sheep, and about 200 residents. OPINION: Oh for crying out loud, how hard can it be? Of course we shouldn't build a bloody great airport at Tarras. There are limitless reasons but the simplest and most obvious is that New Zealand is defined by Tarrasness. And not by having bloody great airports. Who is the bloody great airport for? It isn't for the eight citizens of Tarras. It isn't for you and it isn't for me.
A good road for ambling
Holding a baby is not Joe Bennett’s idea of a pleasurable time, but he recognised the ‘soft pleasure’ that filled an acquaintance as she spoke of her new granddaughter. OPINION: We think we know people by their faces, but we know them every bit as well by their backs. Once from Waterloo Bridge in London I scanned a crowd of thousands on the embankment in search of a friend and picked him out, even though he was walking away from me.
What are the things worth doing in life
Not a picture of Joe Bennett. But Joe did have an epiphany of sorts during a fly-fishing outing this week. (File photo) OPINION: Now is the time of the year when I usually write a versified survey of global affairs, a survey so shallow you'd be happy to let a toddler stomp in it. But I'm not going to do so this year because everyone knows what's happened and is sick of it. And besides I've just been on a fishing trip and the sun beat down as it should and, well, let me introduce you to Mr Andrews.
Two ordinary people victimised by their fame
The hearse carrying the coffin of Diego Maradona leaves the government house in Buenos Aires last Thursday. OPINION: They sang. They wept. They climbed walls. They queued for hours on a hot day. They wanted to see the coffin in which Diego Maradona lay dead. When thwarted they got angry. They threw bottles, bricks and bits of fencing. The riot police were called in. Tear gas, batons, arrests. At the funeral parlour employees took selfies with the corpse.
Sex thrusts Spike into the headlines
An exuberant Spike Lee (right), celebrates a point for Serena Williams during her 2019 women’s singles final encounter with Bianca Andreescu at the US Open tennis tournament. Now Lee is set to direct an unusual musical. OPINION: My subject today is Spike Lee, the man who sounds like an adverb. If you’re surprised that I’m writing about him, join the club, because I know next to nothing about him. I don’t know what he looks like or if Spike’s his real name.
Fantastic Five: Week of November 18, 2020
Comic Books The best reviewed comic books of the week on AIPT. By JJ Travers, David Brooke, Sam Rutzick and Justin Harrison on November 20, 2020 Every week, comic fandom is gifted with a slew of fantastic stories from a slew of fantastic creators. These days there’s just so much good stuff out there that it can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you’re new to comics.
Saving the planet, or endangering it further?
“The problem isn’t meat, it’s maths. There are too many of us,” Joe Bennett argues. OPINION: “Would you,” asked the doctor as I hovered over my T-bone steak and assorted sides, “stop eating meat to save the planet?” “It depends,” I said, “on what you mean by those difficult words.” “What difficult words?” “Let’s start with eat. Everything eats.
Overcoming the awkwardness of the first meeting
Do men and women now shake hands on being introduced, as men have always done with men? Joe Bennett asks. OPINION: So finally, by an act of electoral peristalsis, Trump is gone. To complete the humiliation everyone should now ignore him. Except, that is, for the public prosecutors. I hope they pay him very close attention. The rest of us are all now free to think of other things and my own concern today is sexual etiquette.
A meeting of my two selves
Even though we feel it in whichever part of the body we’ve injured, it’s the brain that generates pain, Joe Bennett writes. OPINION: We like to think we think. And the things we like to think we think about are the big things: love and death and All Black selection. But we have another self that concerns itself with little things, things like splinters. And in the battle of the selves it tends to win. On the hierarchy of disasters the splinter ranks low.
The thing I can never forgive the Russians for
Joseph Stalin, seen here in Moscow in 1937, “butchered his way to becoming the new, and worse, tsar” after the Russian revolution in 1917, Joe Bennett writes. OPINION: Churchill called Russia a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. As usual, he oversimplified. Russia isn’t European but it’s Europe’s flank. It isn’t Asian but it’s half of Asia. It emphatically isn’t American but it’s just a snowball’s toss from Alaska.
You doubt my goldfish. I'm here to carp
Goldfish are carp, which are famously long-lived, Joe Bennett tells those who doubt his pets’ longevity. OPINION: Several of you have doubted my goldfish. You have put it about that fish do not live that long. You are wrong. Goldfish are carp and carp are famously long-lived. The oldest recorded carp reached 48, so my three 12-year-olds are not even middle-aged. But what hurts is the doubting, the suggestion that either I am a liar or the fish are impostors. I will admit that it has upset me.
Fantastic Five: Week of October 14, 2020
Comic Books The best reviewed comic books of the week on AIPT. By JJ Travers, Sam Rutzick, David Brooke, Arbaz M. Khan and Christopher Franey on October 16, 2020 Every week, comic fandom is gifted with a slew of fantastic stories from a slew of fantastic creators. These days there’s just so much good stuff out there that it can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you’re new to comics.
Swimming on oblivious to electoral vagaries
Joe Bennett’s rescue goldfish have seen a change for the better in their living conditions, but they still swim on regardless of events in the outside world. OPINION: Their names are Unanimous, Hippolyta and Taylor and this is their fourth general election, but they have never voted because they are goldfish. To be precise they are rescue goldfish, left over from a function at which they were put out in bowls as table decorations, but with no thought given to their fate thereafter.
Technological progress is a hit-and-miss affair
The blackboard – even when it’s been turned green – hasn’t been improved on as a means of instruction and crowd control, Joe Bennett writes. OPINION: The phone rang. Would I care to teach a writing class? I said I'd be delighted, and we agreed a fee. Would I need anything else? Only a blackboard, I said. The telephone's a sensitive instrument. Even if someone covers the receiver you can always tell that they are laughing. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I realise the blackboard’s as dead as the pony and trap.
No surprise the animals are fighting back
An orca and her calf swim into the Port Taranaki marina in March, one of several New Zealand orca sightings this year. Off the coast of Spain, orca have been attacking boats, Joe Bennett writes. OPINION: Did you see the whale story?
A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing But Using the Bathroom as an Escape
The cozy comedy of Joe Pera meets the darkly playful illustrations of Joe Bennett in A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing But Using the Bathroom as an Escape, a funny, warm, and sincere guide to regaining calm and confidence when you're hiding in the bathroom. Joe Pera goes to the bathroom a lot. And his friend, Joe Bennett, does too.
My seal of disapproval
“ I did not foresee a global pandemic that would lay waste to tourism and make it every citizen's patriotic duty to rent a campervan and go see some scenery,” writes Joe Bennett. (Stock photo) OPINION: I rented a campervan and sought the romance of the road. Now, I'm well aware that I've been rude about campervans in the past and even ruder about the people driving them. In my defence I will say only that I was young at the time and youth can be intemperate.
Borne away on the familiar wind of home
Riders in the 2014 Tour of Britain ride up Ditchling Beacon during a stage from Camberely to Brighton. Even in her 80s, Joe Bennett’s mother liked to drive to the top of the hill and “look down over the landscape she'd lived in all her life”. OPINION: My mother died. Peacefully and without pain, said the rest home, though how they know that I don't know. Perhaps it is just a comforting formula. She died late at night but there was a carer with her, someone to hold her hand.
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