The Chickening

Orange Is The New Black* is a fun new comedy/drama from Netflix, the American ... setup? Distributor? Production house?

*(From here on, for brevity's sake, I'll call this show OITNB).

I'm not sure what to actually call Netflix, exactly. Because it's all of the above. And more.

In the recent past it's just existed as a subscription service, where you 'streamed' TV shows to watch at your convenience, for a modest fee. These TV series' had all come from other sources/production companies/networks – until really fairly recently.

Now, Netflix is actually producing some shows of its own. But not in a conventional sense ... no, these TV series are being released all at once. Yes, all the episodes in the entire first season are instantly being made available for subscribers at the same time. No more waiting a week between eps!

Welcome to the new world of: 'Everything is on demand'. You've been able to do it with music for some time now, thanks to iTunes, iPods, and most recently, online and on-demand streaming software like Spotify and Rdio. Now we've got it with TV series. Who wants to waste time waiting for 13 weeks to see 13 eps of a great show, when you can see 'em all at once, at your leisure?

What a concept! Not only do fortunate North Americans have the freedom to watch an episode at their leisure, on any device that connects to the internet ... you can amass the entire series at once, and watch it at will.  Put it on pause when it's time to get another beer, eat, take a leak, or maybe even take a shower and change clothes, you stinking couch slug!

This allows for 'marathon' viewing (watching a whole series or more, at once) ... which is a great way to kill a rainy day. Or to wallow in a session of being confined to the couch or your bed, due to hangovers, sloth, or amputation recovery periods.  I am quite familiar with all three of these scenarios.

But wait ... it gets even better! Not only is Netflix  offering up this great subscription service, all at once for entire series' of shows ... these shows are actually EXCELLENT QUALITY. They aren't just any run-of-the-mill, reality-show crap you see endlessly on the 'regular' (no sex, no nudity, no ultra-violence, no swearing, no FUN) boring networks.

No! Netflix has chosen – and chosen wisely – to opt for quality material. A while ago, there was a superb miniseries starring Kevin Spacey called 'House Of Cards'  – an American re-tooling of a UK series – featuring Spacey as an evil and conniving US Congressman with evil power on his evil mind.  And he gets it, evilly.

Then the much-vaunted and long-awaited fourth season of Arrested Development was out of the Netflix gates. And most recently comes OITNB – a superb comedy/drama set in a US women's medium-security prison. Yep, you can get laughs out of a prison show, and, keep it real!

Beware mysterious chicken!

Here's the chicken rumpus.

All 13 episodes of OITNB are excellent. But the one that had me on the floor laughing was the one titled 'The Chickening'. In a nutshell, the show is about a WASPy, entitled, somewhat clueless main character named Chapman She is incarcerated following a rebellious, adventurous departure from her boring, WASPy, mainstream, mayonaisse-like life. She falls in with a lesbian international drug-runner. I say lesbian not for lurid shock value (but ooo, there's a shower scene ....), but because it's an important plot element – Chapman hadn't dabbled in same-sex activities up to this point. So this plunge into the deep end of non-characteristic behaviour for Chapman is the main point here – international drug running is extremely illegal, and having sex with a woman who's her new drug-running partner is really new to her routine.

In this eponymous (chicken) episode, Chapman notices a chicken casually pecking and scratching around the jail-yard. She's alone when she sees it. Later, she casually mentions it to her (sorry, can't resist) jail-bird pals ... only to discover this chicken is legendary. It's Moby Dick to a certain con (an older, crazy Russian woman) who's in charge of the prison's kitchen. And, no one else has ever seen the chicken. It's a legend, not unlike Bigfoot, or Nessie.

The new poultry sighting has the chef, and every other con, perked up and back on serious point: the chef immediately offers a valued prize to anyone who can bring her this chicken. She intends to "eat it and absorb the chicken's warrior spirit" – as it was apparently the sole surviving fowl from a fire that killed all the other chooks in a coop years before. And it now can apparently scale extremely tall prison fences to get inside the yard and scratch around.

The antics snowball from there, as every con in the joint decide they're going to capture this elusive (and mostly invisible) chook, win the prize, and gain the adoration and trust of the crazy Russian chef. Then the rumours start flying (rumours can fly; chooks cannot) among the various racial cliques in the joint ... why is this chicken so special?

Well, the rumour mill spreads and mutates, of course. It HAS to be because there's something INSIDE the chicken.

Is it drugs? Money? A gun? A cell phone? Precious jewels? (That's one voluminous-on-the-inside chook!)

Everyone has a theory ... and the merry chase begins.

Here's where I admit something about chickens. I really enjoy seeing them in TV shows and movies. I'm not sure why. They are amusing creatures ... most times when a chicken appears in a show or

The notorious plot accelerant.

movie, there's other mayhem, or serious plot developments, going on around it. And unless someone takes a swipe at, or makes a move toward said chicken(s), they usually just blithely carry on pecking and scratching for food. They're insidiously distracting because of this very reason. How can the creatures remain calm when all this OTHER shit is going on?!

So 'The Chickening' episode was hilarious. Plot points and scenarios built up around the chicken, to the dénouement where Chapman decides to abandon a crucially important phone call to rush outside – when she spies the chicken again –  and attempt to capture the feathered beastie one more time. (Spoiler alert: she fails).

It's funny how we can get distracted by little things, if they're unusual enough. There's a chicken or two near where I live – which, if I lived on a farm, would not be unusual at all. But I live (technically) in the city centre of Wellington. I'm in a jpart of the city that's mostly jungle (Aro Valley) – up near the top of said valley. I look down on quite a few valley-floor houses. One of them has a few chooks running around (and at least one rooster). The rooster crows most mornings. This is not a sound you'd usually hear in a 1st-world city. (It is unknown at this writing if said chooks are packing any valuable items within their body cavities).

Distractions come in larger sizes too. Like say, earthquakes. Wellington is perched on or near three major tectonic plates/fault lines. This past weekend, we had a ding-dang-doozy of a quake, a 6.8, on Sunday, at around 5 pm. This was preceded by an impressive 5.9 on Friday morning, around 9:15 am.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a Rhode Island Red.

I was at work for this Friday morning one. I'd just arrived. And let me tell you: when you're sitting at your desk on the 14th floor of a downtown office tower next to to the ocean, gazing out the window, hoovering coffee and munching a muffin ... and suddenly you're watching the horizon bob, weave, duck and rope-a-dope better than Muhammed Ali ever did in his prime ... that gets your attention. So much so that a chicken could have walked across my desk and I would not have noticed it.

Adding to the fun for this past weekend, my new mate Rob Martin was down from the Rotorua vicinity with two other friends – Alina from the Bremen region of Germany [where Becks is produced], and Kayleigh from the USA's Carolinas area. They were all down for a beer festival (and other weekend shenanigans) on Saturday. They arrived Friday about 5:30 pm by bus, after having travelled all day since about 9.30 am ... and when told they missed a good jolting quake that morning, they were a tad crestfallen. They are all new to New Zealand, had never been to Welly, and were really keen to feel a quake.

Given the now-well-known history of this past weekend, we can safely say here: There has never been a time when the phrase: Careful what you wish for!  has been more poignant. Ha ha. (Hint: we had some kickass quakes on Sunday).

Friday night saw us wobble about (due to ale ingestion, not seismic activity) to a couple of excellent

One of the many fine Kiwi craft beers we regularly drink here. 

 craft beer bars – once we stowed everyone's luggage at my place. The first bar was, of course, my place. We relaxed for an hour taste-testing some fine craft beers that I'd stashed in the fridge, as Rob – being a Canadian from Ontario – has had precious little opportunity to experience proper beer ... and he's really keen to try as many of the myriad New Zealand craft beers as he can. He of course had come to the right spot, and was with the right guy to show him the hoppy ropes (that would be me, if you're having trouble keeping up). The girls weren't too fussed about hoppy craft beer, but politely tried the ones I offered up as samples, and proclaimed them to be "quite nice".  Hop Zombie was the clear favourite. And rightfully so. It's most excellent.

Adam Page is a musical wizard and all-round fun guy.

The night was loads of fun, of course, as we pretty much drank the entire tap menu at Little Beer Quarter, then witnessed the awesomely talented Adam Page perform at Meow. Then at about 7:15 Sunday morning, an even larger quake than Friday's one woke us up. My houseguests were quite impressed that I'd arranged for them to be there for this one! And as nothing broke or fell down, it was agreed all 'round that it was fun and a memorable experience.

Then came the big one ... The Chickening ... at 5 pm Sunday. The 6.8 one that really rattled things around and knocked shit off shelves. The one that kept on going (the first detectable wave of it) for well over a minute ... the one that

The pesky things just kept coming.

forced me to clumsily lunge from my chair to grab my monstrous 55" TV, to keep it from crashing forward onto the floor, as it was bobbing and weaving and rope-a-doping like crazy too!

This 'Chickening' had EVERYONE'S attention now ... mostly because ... it wasn't stopping. Later on the news called the event "multiple swarms of quakes and aftershocks". But we knew better. It was one ... long ... quake, that went on for many hours. I likened it to being at a rave, with loud pounding house/trance music that assaults you ceaselessly – where you cannot tell where one song ends and the next begins. Yeah. It was like that.

As the news of the Big Quake spread, the 'net was suddenly as alive and vibrant as the prisoners in the show OITNB were, looking for a magical, mythical, possibly treasure-laden chicken.

And just like with the now-famous Zimmerman acquittal in the US the previous week (wherein a man on "neighbourhood watch" shot and killed an unarmed 17-year-old kid, because he thought the kid might be up to something nefarious ... and the man was found not guilty of murder) – the net was suddenly rife with heretofore unknown lawyers and legal scholars expounding on the tricky ins and outs of Florida law.

Now, Wellington workplaces abounded with folks who'd been hiding a wealth of expertise, qualifications and knowledge about being secret seismologists and engineers! Why so shy, folks? Show us all your mad skillz!

I myself elected to hunker down at home for a few days, after the quake started and kept going – upon advice from work and actual professional engineers, who said "don't come into the city just yet" ... and I did the only thing that made sense to me.

I took total defensive precautions. I grabbed all the couch cushions I could find, and built myself an impenetrable fort on my bed! With ultra deluxe double-duvet shields!

And I named it:

It was an unparalleled success! I could hunker down, eat pizzas, drink wine and beer, and watch the mayhem from total, secure safety.

Not to mention, it was a fun thing for the cats to play hide n' seek in.

But like all good things, the quake subsided, and the (now) 4-day weekend was fast coming to a close. (There were two extra days tacked on as both the city and my office management deemed it wise that we stay home until things were sussed out and cleaned up a bit).

I eventually had to put the cushions back, hide the sign in the e-closet, and prepare my lazy ass for a couple of days actually working ... as the office officially re-opened on Wednesday just past.

I'm not sure where that chicken is now, though.

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Anarchy – and no porn – in the UK
As a final footnote, I saw British PM Cameron in the news the other day, proclaiming his mighty government is going to kibosh – by way of law – access to porn on the internet in the UK.

Once again, a monumentally bad idea leading to a completely unenforceable new law, enacted by barely-sentient, completely clueless jackwagons was about to make for some fun news reports.

Clearly unbowed and unphased by (or more likely, having NO idea about) the myriad recent attempts by the US government to "do stuff" with the net and how US citizens can access it – and more specifically, the immediate and totally effective response of renowned  Net Ninjas "Anonymous", who took down and monkeyed with every website in the US government – these UK governmental bozos are actually going to try and do this.

Can't wait to see what levels of complete humiliation Anonymous will heap on these ass-clowns.

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More summer reading ideas for my northern hemisphere homies
Keep track of all things cool and interesting in the Oshawa region of Ontario, by reading Glenn Hendry's 'Shwa Stories!
And pull up a stool and have a beer and lots o' laughs with Don Redmond over at Brew-Ha-Ha!

And so onwards into that good night we go, ever vigilant with eyes peeled for more absurdities.

Until then, I'm

... and you're not.