The Last Call of the Sea

The Last Call

Crazy Crime Story

Writing for a newspaper in Johannesburg you digest many weird crime stories. After a while, you think you've seen it all - kids with Samurai swords, mining tycoons full of bullets, serial killers, etc.
But this story (post below) had me grinning with glee as I typed it up yesterday morning. I'd love to hear your comments on it. If you can't open it, click here. My favourite is the detective saying that a hit man worth his salt would have charged more than R2000...

MidSandton Murders (Almost)

Murder Plot

Hollywood or Bust

My closest brush with Hollywood was when a major US film studio called me up to explore turning a story I was covering into a movie. That was a few years ago and, so far, I have not received any invitations to to the land of palm trees, beaches and beautiful Rollerblade girls.
But today I discovered my second - if somewhat more indirect - link to Los Angeles. Their local, and much respected newspaper, LA Times, covered last week's release of the South African crime statistics. To avoid regurgitating old news, they tried to spice up their report with an interview with our new police chief. The interesting part, however, is that right at the top of their article, they quote a "South African newspaper"... the newspaper I happen to write for. And the quote they pulled out, was none other than the intro I crafted thick in the chaos of the statistics swirling around us in the newsroom. Check out the LA Times article here.

Tall People Conspiracy and Cats

There are a lot of tall people in Johannesburg. And last night, I'm convinced, a good number of them conspired to gather in row "i" of Monte Casino's grand theatre.
I know this because I sat in row "j" of the same theatre, attending the glittering opening night of the Cats musical and shifting from butt cheek to butt cheek trying to see the stage.
I'm not sure why tall people would want to hold a secret conspiracy meeting in a theatre, where talking to each other would clearly be difficult. Between the flashing lights, awkward seating arrangement, short interval and the goose-bump-inducing voices of the actors belting out classics like "memories", what possible plotting could take place? But there they were anyway, whispering in each other's ears and chuckling silently at the suckers behind them.
On a serious note, Cats was sensational. The theatre was transformed into a shadowy rubbish dump with cats crawling from under every crack. Returning from the interval, the cats started from the back of the audience and climbed over the rows to make their way on stage. They stopped to purr up against people, claw at their bags or steal a sip from the drinks. I managed to pat one on the head, and feel the bristle-like wig. It's an amazing experience to see the costumes so close up.
What struck me the most was how beautifully and flawlessly the cats moved. They were like one organism but with so many individual personalities, like Rum Tum Tugger - the feline version of Mick Jagger meets Michael Jackson.
Sure some of the music was a little dated and sounded like that horrible jingle you hear as the credits roll on Bold and the Beautiful or Sunset Beach. And yes, one dance routine seemed to last longer than nine lives. And if you really pick at it, you can't but assume that old Lloyd Webber must have been on some serious Acid to conjure up that Mongolian / pirate scene...
But overall, if you throw in a dinner, you can't go wrong for a fantastic evening.

Pigeon VS Telkom

News just in: Winston the pigeon has just won a race to deliver 4GB of data - beating a painfully slow download on a Telkom line.
Winston, an 11-month-old bird, set out from Howick to Hillcrest (both in Kwazulu-Natal) with a memory stick containing 4GB of data. At the same time, the company organizing the race began downloading 4GB of information on an ADSL Telkom line.
When our feathery friend landed at his destination, the download was under 4% complete.
Winston Tweeted during his flight, chirping: "Flying weather cloudy and cool... feeling good... no major problems to report..."
Telkom has, so far, refused to comment.
It's unclear whether Winston will undergo gender testing after his lightning-fast finish of the 70km race.
Check out Winston's website here. Or see full story here.

The Chakra Challenge

Before I start, let the record show that I despise reality television. I think Big Brother was the first symptom of a terminal disease that threatens to kill global intellect. But if I were to flush my morals down the drain, and produce a reality show, I know exactly what it would be...
This morning I read a fascinating article in the LA Times about a group of Buddhists planning to live in the Arizona dessert for three years, three months and three days. The catch is: they will observe absolute silence for the entire 1190 days.
The group - most of whom gave up fancy jobs and six-figure salaries - will communicate through gestures and facial expressions. Even a pair of newly weds will have to abstain from any physical intimacy so as not to mess up their prana (inner energy).
Like in a Kibbutz, these enlightenment-seekers will grow veggies, meditate and do Yoga stretches. For three years.
Anyway, my idea is to do a reality show on this dessert retreat. Picture it: We have those well-edited inserts on their lives and what they are giving up. The parents sobbing, their poodles panting and their bosses wishing them well. Then they enter the new world - their wooden huts and wind-swept cacti.
Then... silence.
"Day 129... We are live now to the Buddhist retreat and things are exactly the way they were four months ago..."
"Day 473... the house mates are still meditating..."
"Day 864... was that a smile? No. No. That was just gas..."
"Day 990... Ooh... a new yoga position by Dreyfus..."
And so on.
Sad thing is, the world would probably lap it up.

A Maths Equation on a Zombie Outbreak

Four crazy Canadians have used complex mathematical equations (real Beautiful Mind stuff) to calculate just how screwed the world would be if an outbreak of the undead occurred.
Simpler put, how quickly would an army of zombies munch their way through the entire human population?
The equations look like that cheesy cyberspace screen from the movie Hackers, where a whole bunch of figures and "@" signs float around in a hypnotic whirlwind while the kids "hack the planet".
But the conclusion of the zombie study, done by university students, is fairly straight forward: unless we hit them, and hit them hard, we're toast. Check it out here and download their report.
No surprise then that:
"In summary, a zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly. While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble."

Police Sell Weapons to Criminals

police scandal

Eight Winters (The Star: Aug 5, 2009)

8 Winters

Dead Man On The Highway

I was driving to cover a court case in Germiston this morning when I spotted a dead man lying in a flowerbed next to the M2 highway.
There were a few police vans around the body but nobody had put that tinfoil stuff over it to prevent motorists from seeing his pale stomach and rigid neck.
The photographer I was with pulled the car over (cnr M2 and Refinery Road) and we went to investigate - like the curious journalists we are.
The first man I spoke to was from the Albany factory across the road. He had been called to the scene, searched through the man's pockets and found a piece of paper with telephone numbers on it. He dialled some of the numbers and reached the man's son.
As we stood chatting there, the son arrived with a work colleague and was asked to identify the body. As a uniformed cop lifted the white material that had - in the meantime - been placed over the old man, he recognized his father. It took a spit second for his head to collapse into his hands. And there we stood, caught in this surreal moment that we now shared.
A maintenance worker at the scene told us the old man - "madala" as he called him - had been wandering the scene since yesterday, searching for water. The garden worker shared his bread with him and said he had a crazed, stressed look in his eyes. He didn't know where he was going or what happened to his car. The last thing he remembers was the old man sitting by a statue. This morning, he was dead.
I tried all day to speak to the family, hoping for them to shine some light on the mystery, but got nowhere.
What a crazy town we live in.

The House of Flu

When I was a kid, and watched ninja movies, I usually raided my mother's kitchen for jam tin tops to transform into ninja stars, which I flung (with great enthusiasm) at cardboard boxes. Later in life, when I watched movies with car chases, I couldn't help drive a little faster. So it was of little surprise that after reading way too much about the fabulous Drum magazine era, I got inspired to name our apartment and give it some arty, hippie, super-cool name. It was going to be the House of (whatever name I came up with). Like Can Themba's House of Truth.
My girlfriend didn't quite see the appeal. Neither did my friends, who were very firmly in the 21st century. But I kept the dream alive, the cinders flickering weakly in the back of my mind.
If I was to give our flat a name this weekend, I would call it: The House of Bronchial Infection, Inner-Ear Inflammation, Antibiotics and Endless TV Watching that Results in Frightening Mess of Tea Cups. The House of Flu, in other words.
It's been one of those weekends... We've been passing the infection around, snapping at each other through our headaches and trying to get better while being forced to leave the warmth and happiness of the home. Yesterday, to complete the picture of the miserable weekend, it hailed.
So forgive me if I have little to write about. But as I return to work tomorrow, I'm sure things will pick up again...

Flu and False Predictions

Yesterday, I boldly announced that the flu had released me. I spent the day covering a court case in Alexandra, hunting for a semi-decent restaurant in Germiston CBD (which, believe me, is not as easy as it sounds), sitting in the public gallery of a long council meeting and finishing the day at the Civic Theatre, sniffling my way through the Cheap Show.
This morning I am in bed, swimming in a small ocean of soggy tissues and getting ready to go to good old Dr Shein - my family's GP. I should have known better than to speak on flu's behalf - damn hearsay evidence.
The good news is I managed to finish a book I'm reviewing: Happy Chappie. It's written by a man called Tony Katzew, who is dying of Motor Neuron Disease (MND). MND has got to be one of the cruellest diseases in the world - over several years it basically shuts down your entire body, muscle by muscle. Tony, who lives in Hospice, has been completely paralyzed for over six years but is one of the most inspirational people I have ever met. I interviewed him for my newspaper and later spent two days with him to put together a short story called Eight Winters (still to be published).
In his book, which he dictated to a friend and launched last weekend, he had a beautiful message inscribed to me and signed it with a fingerprint. I'll post the review soon.

From Dusk Till Dumb

Life is a never-ending lesson. Early on, we learn not to run into busy roads and are taught that heroin is not a sustainable hobby. Later we feel our way through love, sex, heartbreak and, ultimately, death. But at what point do we learn that just because a movie touches that special place in your soul - as movies do - doesn't mean you should tattoo its name (along with the names of the two lead actors) across your back. (Yes, it's real).
I write about this because, quite coincidentally, my girlfriend and I watched Twilight for the first time this weekend. We finally gave in. All our friends had read the books, seen the movie and bought the special 2-disk DVD sets. While it was beautifully filmed, and was very romantic (in the traditional forbidden-love way), it hardly pushed me to add to my tattoo collection. With the craze around it, it just feels too much like the vampire version of Hanna Montana (for teenagers as opposed to children and without the singing).
But, in my eternal quest to be an objective journalist, I am open to arguments against these sentiments and in defence of the "film name" tattoo. I am still deeply haunted by the movie Blindness - but that wouldn't make a great tattoo, now would it?
Here's a photograph I took a few weeks ago. Believe it or not, there were two fighters with the identical tattoo. Bad Boy must love them.


Moving on... check out this link. It's a brilliant story that appeared in the news today and is about how Mugabe's government got conned by a woman claiming she could magically extract diesel from a rock. Bob's ministers jumped at the opportunity, claiming the country's woes were over and paid her a hefty 500 billion Zim dollars (which, come to think of it, is probably a box of smokes in SA). But the con was priceless.

Caught red-feathered

Here he is. The culprit. The nemesis. The pigeon that keeps setting off the sensors on my balcony at 6 or 7am every Sunday morning.
Look closely at him. Or her. Perhaps you have seen this evil beak before. Those slimy feathers. Those cunning little eyes.
With this footage I can start investigating. Has this bird of doom been sent to haunt us by our neighbours as punishment for letting our plant water dribble down on their patio? Or is he (or she) a guardian from all the birds I rescued at work? Only time will tell...
In other news...
My video clip from Tokoza (below) was published on IOL (one of SA's biggest news website). My first little bit of multimedia journalism. Check it out.
And if you need something weird to celebrate... try Maybe Day.
Now, I am off to enjoy a free Friday.

Squatter camp or proud piece of history?

Well, I finally know what a true dilemma feels like: the university professor who holds the key to a BA degree you've slaved away at for two years insults your newspaper and calls its legendary Sauer Street offices a "squatter camp".
Talk about being caught in the middle.
Somewhere in my subconscious is buried a very vivid memory of traveling past 47 Sauer Street as a child and looking up at "The Star" sign on the wall - it's letters faded and proud. Something about that building always made me think of the romantic side of journalism: the smoke-filled offices, typewriters, giant presses and journalists in hats and rimmed glasses sneaking sips of whiskey between deadlines. When I joined The Star in 2005, I loved the old marble staircases, heavy iron furnishings in the toilets and the relics of an era vanishing into the quicksand of time. It was history - and it was beautiful.
But all indications are that by today, Independent News and Media (The Star's parent company in Ireland) will file for bankruptcy - like many proud newspapers have already done in the US. The future of the local operation - with its 14 titles - is uncertain, with questions over who will buy it.
In a column this week Wits professor Anton Harber, who heads up the journalism school in which I'm enrolled, wrote about the collapse of the Independent group and called it "the best news of the week". It's owner, Tony O'Reilly, has always been accused of using his friendship with Nelson Mandela to set up the media juggernaut and milk it to fund the overseas business. Last year, our hard work gave O'Reilly 26-million Euros but he has, Harber argues, failed to put money back into his most profitable operation.
"In this time, very little has been invested in infrastructure, with the result that the printing presses are decrepit and the Sauer Street headquarters are like an office squatter camp," Harber wrote.
47 Sauer Street is not a squatter camp. Yes it needs modernising. Yes the canteen may be a heath hazard. But a part of me cries out to defend some of the building's magical history. To blend the old with the new. To find a way to fight off the death of the newspaper. To slow the advance of the very technology that makes this blog possible...

Trouble in Tokoza

I spent today running around the Tokoza township, covering a violent service delivery protest.
It was a rush to be back in the thick of things after the two weeks we spent reporting on the xenophobic mayhem last year.
It was also a poignant assignment because Tokoza was where Ken Oosterbroek (the Bang Bang club) was slain in the 1990s and Khumalo Street (where we were today) was where a lot of our history was recorded by Oosterbroek and his friends. Greg Marinovich (who was wounded in Tokoza) was there today, shooting video footage. I wondered how it felt for him to walk those streets again and see the community swell in anger, threatening to explode.
It seems like we are in for a wave of these protests and I will bring you more on this as they develop. But in the meantime, I wanted to share something a little more light-hearted. China had their "tank man": the brave (unidentified) man who stood alone in front of a row of tanks during the protests. The Gaza strip had that incredible woman who pushed back a row of soldiers demolishing houses. Throughout history there have been images capturing incredible resistance to military and police force. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is South Africa's very own:

A Year of Driving Dangerously

In the end, we went with "Top 10 Excuses". We had to, we're a family newspaper. But if I had my way, I would have called them the: "What the hell were you thinking Awards"... or something a little punchier: "The McBride Awards", "for the policeman who really, really shouldn't be behind the wheel of a car".
But let me start at the beginning...
Sunday shifts are tedious. All your friends are picnicking, watching movies, eating long lunches and, well, not working. You, on the other hand, are stuck writing about traffic accidents, following up stories published in the weeklies and attending press conferences that are so insignificant the organisers were too embarrassed to schedule them on a real day.
Add a migraine "aura" (blind spots followed by nausea and a pounding headache), plus a looming university deadline on the effects of new media on journalism, and you'll understand how I felt this Sunday morning.
There was, however, one silver lining: a great story I was working on about how many cars the Ekurhuleni Metro Police officers (Robert McBride's former minions) have wrecked in a year. A source of mine had slipped me a list of each accident - all 225 of them - and a detailed breakdown of what happened. And, I should add, this was during a year when taxpayers dished out R88-million for a new fleet of 500 cars for the EMPD. The excuses and explanations are priceless. Here are the top 10 as recorded in the EMPD books:
1. “Officer shot himself accidentally and the projectile entered the fuel tank of the vehicle”
2. “Officer not on duty, misuse council vehicle, officer under the influence, transported civilians in vehicle”
3. “Officer (from the K9 dog unit) collided with a dog and failed to stop after accident, action caused extra damage to vehicle”
4. “Umbrella came loose of pole in windstorm and landed on windscreen and bonnet – loose object (nature)”
5. “Officer ignored red robot and collided with lamp pole – had no permission to use patrol vehicle”
6. “Officer start vehicle in gear and drove into wall at house”
7. “Vehicle parts of new car was removed (and replaced) with old parts – undisclosed damage on vehicle
8. “Officer responded to assist his pregnant wife who went into labour and drove into pillar at his gate”
9. “Officer drove into tree and left vehicle on the scene”
10. “Bird flew into vehicle damaging the light of the vehicle”
You can't make this stuff up.
What I want to know is: how much this costs council in civil claims, how Joburg's metro cops compare (or are they too busy trapping motorists to do any actual driving) and why, oh why, were these guys ever allowed to get into a car?
You can read the full story here. I'd love to hear your metro police story / story suggestions.
p.s: Out of 184 officers involved in accidents, 110 were at fault. They have just made the "I Suck" list.

The Curious Incident of Two Funerals on One Day

We were having breakfast at this little bistro under the escalators at Cresta when my friend Kenneth asked us whether we knew where the Fourways Memorial Park is. His grandmother (96) died recently and the funeral is due to take place on Monday.
"That's strange, I've also got a funeral there on Monday," my girlfriend said, rather surprised.
The father of one of her best friends died recently after loosing his battle against lung cancer. His funeral is due to take place at the same place, but a little later in the day.
I took a break from my scrambled eggs (perched on a warm croissant) to ponder the unusual coincidence.
Going down on holiday to the same spot, watching the same movie, buying the same T-shirt, phoning a friend at the exact moment they phone you... the world is full of weird coincidences and serendipitous surprises. But two funerals, on the same day, at the same place?
It made me think about death and how even a funeral - such a personal and emotional affair - is placed on a conveyor belt and ushered through our busy world.
And speaking of funerals, I learned today that Walter Cronkite has died. Cronkite was the super-anchorman, the Voice of America, the legend who narrated everything from the Kennedy assassination to the Vietnam War. And each time he finished a broadcast, he gave us the beautiful benediction: "And that's the way it is".
There is a great piece on Cronkite on the NY Times website. The video is worth watching - it's like a mini (5-minute) documentary. Click here to check it out.
And finally, I was having a haircut on Friday when I caught a contagious question. Some kid had asked my hairdresser why sideburns are called sideburns. Sure they are on the side, but they don't burn, he reasoned. She didn't know and, in telling me the story, passed the question onto me. I had to research it and discovered that the answer is nothing like I expected...

Thank you (muchas gracias)

Like an army of cyberspace Zorros - without the Antonio Banderas accent or cheesy one-liners - you have come to my rescue. Thank you. An Unquiet Day is now the proud home of 55 members. I'm not sure how I can repay you, but if you have any questions about the media world or story ideas, I will be glad to try and help.
Oh, I know. Perhaps I should share out the 1 316 463, 00 UK Pounds I won today. That's... let me do the calculation... R18-something million... divided by 55... R335 000 each... not bad... and who says the Internet is only for porn.
Of course, we have to verify the winnings. I have my suspicions... and they all lead to Nigeria. You see, I received an email today that announced:
"Dear winner
Please find the attachment and send your information to your claims agent immediately
Thank you,
Uk NATIONAL LOTTERT"
Attached was a fairly nice looking Word document with a fancy background. Apparently all valid email addresses in the world were chosen for the draw and I was the lucky winner. "Congratulations! Congratulations!" the letter shouted.
There were a whole bunch of codes, to make it look official, and some telephone numbers to call to claim your prize. I wondered how many poor old people across the world were busy dialling...
"LOTTERT"? Seriously? Can't they at least get 4 lines right? Can they spell "419 scam"? Do they know how Caps Lock works?
Anyway, it's not like we don't have stupid fraudsters in SA. I am busy investigating a KZN businessman on trial for defrauding the Department of Education of R200-million. He allegedly had an insider, got a huge tender and was hired to buy textbooks and stationery for distribution to schools. He promptly opened another company and used one business to sell to the other business and sent the invoices to the government. What was he thinking? That no one would make the connection? Eish.