[General] About Us

Welcome friends of the Monkey and other web travellers.

Please come in, have a look around, make yourself at home. This might be a good time in the life of my blog to go over the team here at “the Hammer” (as we call it) and explain the context in which we sit.

I’m Hadyn (AKA Big H AKA Ed AKA Lord Throatpunch). I’m based in the capital city of New Zealand, Wellington. If you saw the Lord of the Rings movies then you have seen a lot of Wellington.

I started this blog as a means of reporting on American sports (mainly American Football) because we get pretty much no coverage here in the South Pacific. But then it grew and now we (I’ll get to the others in little bit) write about a whole bunch of stuff. There’s still a lot of sport coverage, because we still like sport, but we also talk politics, world events, philosophy and, recently, writing.

I have always dug writing and now I get to write short-film scripts for a friend of mine. He works for a company down here that is currently finishing off a film about a giant monkey and wants to be a director himself. So Mike and I are writing stuff for him to film. A lot of it involves the words “splat” and “blood”. You get the idea.

Dom (AKA Gibbs AKA Mandrill AKA Con-Dom) is the other main “sportswriter” at the Hammer. His shtick is baseball mainly. He is also the only other Hammer correspondent to be based in Wellington. Unlike me, Dom is native to the capital city and is used to the blasts of super-chilled Antarctic winds. He is a Yankees Mariners fan, which says a lot about him as a person.

José (AKA Bloke AKA Tango Man AKA T-Bone) is our most cultured Hammer correspondent and the only one to have written a book (that I know of). Of both Portuguese and Te Puke origins, José is a worldly character and is also on the cutting edge of current affairs with his new role as morning-news-bitch on Auckland’s 95-bFM. Also check out his interview with John Safran in the latest Real Groove magazine (the lovely Alison Goldfrapp is on the cover). José likes long walks along the beach…by himself.

Dave (AKA Bill Huggins AKA Big Daddy Dave AKA St4r_W4rs_Fan006) is based in the river city of Wanganui. Like the rest of us he has a day-job, unlike the rest of us he takes his day-job seriously. This may be because he has an honest-to-god family, making him unique and possibly the most grown-up of the crew. Dave is also our resident basketball expert. Dave is an environmental engineer and so is the head of Grabthar’s Hammer Joke Recycling Department.

Scott (AKA Scottrod AKA The Waiu-King AKA Awesome Scott) is, as noted yesterday, our newest member. He is a resident and defender of Hamilton (AKA Hamil-tron AKA Hama-hole AKA the Fountain City). He is generally the smartest and most insightful of all of us, although he does follow Rugby League, so go-figure. Scott recently joined the Ian Wishart fan club.

Well, that’s all of us. I hope we can be entertaining.