(Image via Guardian.co.uk)

Before Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom was arrested last month, he was living in $18 million mansion in New Zealand, which he was renting.

He had purchased $8 million in New Zealand government bonds in an attempt to get the nonresident permission he needed to buy the place but he failed the country's "good character" test, according to a profile of Mr. Dotcom in  Businessweek today.

In addition to the garden labyrinth, giraffe sculptures, and $5 million worth of cars with vanity plates that said, GUILTY, HACKER, MAFIA, and GOD, the house had a real panic room, just like in the movies

Local police bearing rifles, pistols, sledgehammers, and saws were only able to arrest Mr. Dotcom after breaking into his lair, where he was reportedly sitting cross-legged near a safe.

What else does a multimillionaire hacker and Gumball rally winner keep in his panic room?

• A loaded pistol-grip shotgun
• Three passports under different names
• 25 credit cards
• A bulletproof wristwatch
• An actual-size statue of the creature from the Predator movies

Sounds about right.

A few days ago, production company Ish Entertainment quietly posted a "sizzle reel" online. Meanwhile, Ish founder Michael Hirschorn has been squiring Mr. Henry to meetings with agents and network brass in hopes of putting together a deal. 

Mr. Henry has long been prone to overstepping the line, at least when it comes to the standards of morning TV (see, for example, "Moustache Gate"). But he always seemed to get away with it due to a certain lovable impishness. In fact, he won a (Kiwi version of the) People's Choice Award in 2009, then delivered an R-rated acceptance speech that racked up hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube.

Mr. Henry's luck ran out on October 10, 2010, after his mirthful exegesis on the name of Indian minister Sheila Dikshit led to an international incident, accusations of racism and some hasty diplomatic mopping-up by the New Zealand government. It didn't help that NZTV is a state-owned network.

Then again, what better resumé for a career in world's biggest market? (We hear Regis's job is open!)

If anyone can provide Mr. Henry a successful second act, it would seem to Mr. Hirschorn, the Atlantic Monthly columnist and former chief of programming at VH1. "The unacknowledged master" of "the high-low thing," as David Carr put it in a 2007 Observer profile, Mr. Hirschorn gave the world I Love the '80s, The Surreal Life and Rock of Love. And just look what he did with Flava Flav.

In a call with The Observer, Mr. Hirschorn, who's latest effort, a Bravo special based on New York's "Approval Matrix," airs on Wednesday at 11pm, talked up his new discovery. "He's a little bit unique, in the sense that he comes from halfway around the world, and essentially nobody's heard of him before," he said. But CAA has been circling, he added, and reactions from TV executives have been enthusiastic. "It's 'We love this guy. What can we do with him?'" Mr. Hirschorn said, while allowing that "in some cases there's also a certain level of fear." 

About that fear factor: Mr. Hirschorn expressed confidence that Mr. Henry would be able to rein it in when necessary. "He was for ages New Zealand's top presenter," he pointed out, floating a theory that Mr. Henry's implosion may not have been altogether unplanned. "My suspicion is he was eager to get himself fired and probably bored out of his skull," he said.

Mr. Henry's plans are at the moment open-ended. "We're working with him on several fronts—the reality side, the talk-show side and the scripted side," Mr. Hirschorn said, citing The Larry Sanders Show and I'm Alan Partridge as models for a scripted Paul Henry series. 

But the most likely scenario seems to be a talk show of some kind. "Paul intuitively understands what TV is and needs to be in 2011," Mr. Hirschorn said, "i.e., not the Today show circa 1992."

agell [at] observer.com | @aarongell

The last thing Elton John needs is another bespoke bird-feather cape, but that’s exactly what he got last night in New Zealand. The “rare” gift, a Korowai cloak, was given to the 60-year-old singer-spectaculare by the island nation’s Maori communities. No longer simply a knight of Britain, Mr. John can now claim honorary membership in the Ngati Te Whiti sub-tribe. According to a statement released today by Peter Love, an official for the communities, the cloak is “the Maori equivalent to an Academy Award.” Mr. Love added that the Tiny Dancer was chosen in “recognition of the enjoyment Sir Elton John’s music has given to Maori over the years and his loyal continuance to return to Aotearoa [New Zealand] to entertain.” And entertain he does. Last night, Mr. John performed in front of 15,000 people in the city of New Plymouth.

I recognize that I’m obsessed, recognize too that at 46, my obsession is somewhat unseemly. People say that obsession is not a good thing, that it is about dead feelings, or nostalgia, or hang-ups, that it is passion curled back on itself. So I’m trying to remember how this started.

Alanis Morissette was never my cup of tea. I can say honestly that I didn’t like her. Her early work (what I heard of it) struck me as mannered and self-conscious. Her regard for her own originality seemed egotistical; she could not murder her darlings, as the saying goes.

Then in January, I was driving around New Zealand’s north island (on the same Pacific project I’m at work on now) when her label released “Hands Clean,” the first single off the new album. I recognized her voice instantly, and with a wave of irritation. My finger shot out to flip the radio to another station—in fact, I was viciously excited to do so, to blank her out of the conscious universe again and forever—when something held me: The material was completely psychological, the mood was soulful.

The next time the song came on, I cranked it up.

“Hands Clean” is about an illicit relationship between a man and a young woman. It is told chiefly from the man’s point of view, as he offers his rationalizations: “I know that you sexualize me, as a young thing would, and I think I like it …. ”

But the refrain is from the girl’s perspective. At these times, Alanis’ voice surges powerfully:

And I have honored your request for silence

And you washed your hands clean of this.

It may seem like an angry song, but it isn’t. The girl’s anger feels historical. She seems to see the relationship in its entirety, to recognize her own hunger for experience. There are tender and thoughtful moments (“What part of our history’s reinvented and under rug swept?”), and her statement “I have honored your request for silence” is stately and even loving.

But it wasn’t just the words. Alanis’ voice had grown out of its youthful quaver into a strong, womanly instrument. She had emotional clarity and generosity, qualities that had me enthralled.

At that time my travels took me on to Australia and England, and notwithstanding my urgent business, I found myself driving around Fremantle or Hull waiting for them to play that song again.

Then the new CD came out at the end of February, and I bought it on lower Broadway, just before starting another trip. My first stop was Albuquerque, and I upgraded to a midsize car so that I could listen to her on the CD player. Very soon it was clear that the same spirit of ampleness and emotional clarity that animates “Hands Clean” pours off the album.

Alanis had become one of my guides. I was interested in anything she had to say.

Or in point of fact, I was stuck. I rented seven more oversized cars in California and down through the Pacific, just to have a CD player and be able to hear her. (Not only was she now costing me hundreds of dollars, but in a couple of cases it meant renting S.U.V.’s, which violates every principle I believe in.)

In Hilo I put only 11 miles on the car (my interviewee drove me around), but sat in the rain at 5 in the morning at the airport for 20 minutes because I’d finally gotten the hang of the album. Then later in Waikiki, I went into a kind of fugue on Ala Moana Boulevard and Kapuhulu Road, with the windows rolled up and the air conditioning on high, because by then I’d identified the master cuts and was playing them over and over.

Come Australia and New Zealand, I put on another 700 Alanis-ridden miles.

By then, I confess even I was getting sick of Alanis, and so I tried to break the spell by loading other CD’s: Dylan, John Lee Hooker, the O Brother soundtrack, Beth Orton and Mick Jagger’s new solo album.

I listened to them all, too, but the truth is that I only played these albums so as to give myself a break from Alanis, so that I could return to life with Alanis. They were a kind of palate cleanser. Or in the case of Dylan and Jagger, comfort food, the macaroni and cheese that they first began serving me in the high-school cafeteria. I would calm myself down and give myself a break, and then play Alanis again, driving through priggish sleepy New Zealand villages like Clarence and Warkworth with Alanis on way too loud, upsetting the sheep and the Kiwis in their walking shorts.

Because Alanis is never calming. Alanis is highly psychically disturbing. Alanis plunges me into a raw and almost bleedingly reflective mood.

If you say “What is the album about?,” it is about Alanis’ search for a genuine relationship, for engagement that is respectful and intense and alive, at this moment.

Right now my favorite song is Track 4. It is about obsession, about Alanis being hung up on a guy she went out with over 10 years ago. It has the feel of a Poe story, as Alanis tries to understand the dead hand of these old feelings. The writing is touched, very nearly mad:

What are you, my blood?

You touch me like you are my blood.

What are you, my dad?

You affect me like you are my dad.

(And when Alanis sings “affect,” it sounds like “fucked.”)

I find this song, called “Flinch,” almost too intense to listen to. It is really about consciousness. When a man at a party tells her that the object of her affection is in the next room, Alanis sings—clunkily and divinely:

This man knows not of how this information has affected me

But he knows the color of the car I just drove away in.

Recognizing the color of a car but not a powerful feeling is false consciousness. Alanis’ goal is to tear away those beliefs, to determine what she really wants, now. And she is always running down men who rely on their intelligence, defensively, when her only real aim in relationship is emotional readiness and fearlessness.

I try and think when I have been obsessed with an album before. Rubber Soul when I was a teen; the Wailers’ Catch a Fire when I was in college; Otis Redding Live when I moved to the Midwest; Joy Division when I met my wife. And in all those cases, the experience was eroticized—first crush, first love. The song was intertwined with passion that folded over on itself.

Now I would like to know what this middle-aged obsession is about. I suppose I’m vulnerable; I’ve been traveling on my own for most of the last year, and the historical material that I am exploring is often painful. It seems to me that I need Alanis’ innocence and exaltation in my life right now (there is not one clever, arch or coy statement on this record).

The album winds up with two visionary songs, Track 9, “You Owe Me Nothing in Return,” and Track 11, “Utopia.” “You Owe Me Nothing” is about Alanis’ ideal relationship, and it is naïve, romantic, stunning and confident:

You can ask for space for yourself and only yourself and I’ll grant it

You can ask for freedom as well or time to travel and you’ll have it

You can ask to live by yourself or love someone else and I’ll support it ….

You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give

You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have ….

Needing to hear it again, I borrowed a Toshiba computer with a CD player last night from a French anthropologist across the courtyard from me. (Who’s studying volcano-dwellers in Tonga.) She lent me her earphones, too. Still, I felt constrained. This guesthouse is crowded with Pacific islanders and others who might think I am crazy if they got a whiff of what I’m up to.

Tonight, I have a better plan. I will go to the men’s club that is cater-corner to the Royal Palace and find the D.J. Kitione (or Gideon) Mokofisi at his usual spot on the bar. Gideon has a CD player; we listened to it in his van at the beach in January. And Gideon understands musical obsession—he’s a D.J. I won’t let Gideon buy a drink, and then I’ll borrow his van and get lost.

The room is an annex hidden behind the hostess desk at Public Restaurant in Nolita. Stepping through its door—which is unmarked—you feel as though you’ve entered a gentlemen’s club in the 19th century. There’s a faded Oriental carpet on the polished wood floor, and the walls are covered with wooden panels, giant mirrors and tiles. Instead of leather-bound books, rows of wine glasses and bottles of water (from the oldest spring in Alsace) fill the shelves. Cracked orange glass globes hang from the ceiling. Tubs of silver birch and palm fronds decorate the corners behind the sofas. Small wooden tables, topped with dark red Formica, are set with votive candles. A stern-looking bust of a former Mayor, John Hyland, surveys the room from a high pedestal. As I sank down in one of the padded black leather armchairs, I thought of Oscar Wilde: “I am due at the Athenaeum. It is the hour when we sleep there.”

But we were here to eat food and taste wine. Chef Brad Farmerie, who is from Pittsburgh, spent seven years in England, where he worked in such restaurants as Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Chez Nico, the Sugar Club, and the Providores and Tapa Room. His global cuisine reflects influences from Australia and New Zealand as well as Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

You can choose from a selection of around a dozen small plates and order flights of wines to go with them. Or you can have the tasting menu—a red rag to a bull for me. Readers of my last column may remember the tasting-menu dinner for two I had at Joël Robuchon a couple of weeks ago that cost me $813.60. This time, I put on my glasses to double-check the price before ordering. Five courses for $75, including wine. Sounded reasonable.

The wines are chosen by Rubén Sanz Ramiro (who worked at molecular gastronomist Heston Blumenthal’s the Fat Duck in England) and include many New Zealand, Australian and Spanish vintages. (The selection was far more interesting than those served at Robuchon for an extra $125.) A manager, Jesse, who is from New Zealand, dressed in a black suit and matching shirt, was in charge of the room. It was a bit like having a personal sommelier to run the show. He crouched down in front of a small refrigerator by the door and began searching through the bottles inside. “I think you’ll like this with your first course, eel,” he said eventually, and brought over an Oregon pinot gris (2004) from the Four Graces.

The eel, served in a curved amuse-bouche spoon, was coated with a spicy glaze and topped with pickled bean sprouts and half a soft-boiled quail’s egg. The different layers of texture and taste were remarkable, and the fragrant, flinty taste of the wine complemented this mouthful perfectly.

Mr. Farmerie tops thin, pink strips of raw Tasmanian sea trout with shichimi (a Japanese blend of chilies and spices) and a crunchy English piccalilli made from diced cauliflower, cucumber, onions and vinegar, and seasoned with chili, ginger and turmeric. With this, he serves what he calls “a three-slice pile-up”: hot grilled bread spread with melting brown butter flavored with lemon. It was terrific, served with a lovely vin de Savoie, chenin veilles vignes Raymond Quénard 2005.

A white Château Musar 1998, a Lebanese wine from the Bekaa Valley, was paired with a rich salad made of roasted squash chunks topped with pecans and thin triangles of cotija (a Mexican cheese, a bit like a cross between aged Feta and Parmesan). Pernand-Vergelesses Domaine Rollin 2001, a white Burgundy, accompanied a smoky dashi custard laced with lobster and lime, topped with American caviar.

“It’s food that makes you think, but not think too much,” my companion commented. It was very good. We also loved the paper-thin slices of smoked New Zealand venison carpaccio sprinkled with licorice-pickled onions and served with a Martinborough pinot noir, Ata Rangi 2003.

Another night, I tried some dishes not on the tasting menu. The duck confit and foie gras ballotine was gray and stringy; chorizo, in long, lightly charred grilled slices, was delicious, but it came on room-temperature black beans subtly flavored with chocolate and sprinkled with popcorn that didn’t do much for the dish.

The dessert on the tasting menu was a creamy chocolate espresso panna cotta with kalamansi lime jelly and Kahlua cream in a small glass. The East India Solera Emilio Lustan sherry that Jesse brought with this was splendid but lethal. You can also finish up with a selection of cheeses served with biscuits (we tasted four blue cheeses one night when Jesse said they were the only ones that would hold up against a robust Penfolds).

The Monday Room is designed by the cutting-edge firm AvroKo, who did Public next-door and the restaurants Quality Meats, the Stanton Social, Sapa and the European Union. The name of the restaurant, said Jesse, comes from a friend of the designers, a New Zealander who kept a special room in his offices where he’d go to relax and drink wines on Monday.

Why just on Monday? I could happily come here every night. Luckily, the Monday Room is open throughout the week (except for Sundays), but it’s small, so make a reservation. I wish I could keep it a secret.

"Thank God it's Friday," said our hostess cheerfully as she showed us to a candlelit table in the upstairs dining room.

Indeed. The place was packed, and judging from the sound of laughter and clinking glasses, the people here-most of them young and stylish-were having a rollicking good time. With the exception of a couple in the corner, they were all Japanese.

My companion wanted something to snack on with his cocktail. "How about cheese sticks?" suggested the waitress. An odd choice, but why not? They turned out to be a kind of deep-fried spring roll, made with a thin wonton-like skin wrapped around melting mozzarella cheese. They were cut in two-inch pieces and served not with a dipping sauce, but with a wedge of lemon.

"A great snack for a guy watching football on TV," said my friend as he took the last one.

Butai is a two-tier restaurant offering two different experiences depending upon where you sit. On the ground floor, the music is quite loud and people mill around the bar or sit at the counter, where they can watch the chefs making sashimi and cooking on a robata grill. A long, high communal table set with stools takes up the center of the room. The main dining room is upstairs. It is spacious and comfortable, with high ceilings and large windows, hung with swagged, metallic-looking silk taffeta curtains, that look out over the street below. The walls are covered with dark brown velour that absorbs noise, and the polished dark wood tables, placed far apart, are set with votive candles.

The restaurant has a very, very long menu: several well-thumbed pages presented on a clipboard, with over 150 items, under no less than 19 headings. It's as confusing as a menu in a Chinatown restaurant; there are so many dishes that you feel you may as well simply order at random and see what you get. Which is exactly what I did.

Chef Seiji Hanahashi's assorted "inspirational" sushi platters are priced at $40, $60 and $80. The $40 platter was plenty for two, with very fresh sushi that included uni and yellowtail. The choice of sushi, sashimi and "special" rolls is vast, and it includes a "live shell" selection with Japanese conch in soy sake glaze and orange clams. The "special" rolls are particularly good. Crunchy dragon roll is made with eel, cucumber, tempura flake and avocado topped with tobiko (flying fish roe); a spider roll is filled with fried soft-shell crabs; and whitefish tempura is wrapped in a bean sheet with asparagus, tomato and jalapeño.

The most expensive dish on the menu by far is the aburi toro, which costs $30. This is bluefin tuna, cut from the richest, fattiest part of the fish, a connoisseur's delight. We were served five pieces, and they had been briefly seared to give them a subtle, slightly charcoal taste, but I found them greasy. I would have preferred the toro raw.

Under the section headed "kushi yaki" (grilled chicken), the menu reads like a found poem:

Momo thigh 3.00

Mune breast 3.00

Kawa skin 2.50

Teba wing 2.75

Tsukuno meatball 4.00

Whatever you order-main course or appetizer, thigh, meatball or skin-all the food comes at once. Homemade tofu (a luscious, creamy custard in a bowl) and squares of pork belly threaded on skewers with charred scallions appeared alongside grilled, salted whole chicken breast cut in chunks under a crackling golden skin. "Today's Zensai," an appetizer, showed up at the same time, too- a platter of five small bites: meaty pieces of seared, marinated duck, peppered tuna, a squared-off nob of Japanese yam, eel sushi and asparagus with sesame sauce. It came with a glass of plum wine on the side.

There are over two dozen items cooked on the robata grill, from flame-broiled lamb chops to "striped arabesque greenling." The latter name sounds like a badly translated line from a poem by Baudelaire ("striped arabesque greenlings greet the yellow dawn … "). Our waitress, a beautiful young woman from Senegal, struggled to explain exactly what it was. All I can tell you is that it's a whitefish, called "hokke" in Japanese, and it arrived at our table as a perfectly grilled fillet, with a sweet flesh. Another fish from the grill, sanma (helpfully translated for English readers as "saury"), looks like a cross between a mackerel and a huge sardine. It's related to the needlefish and has a long, sharply pointed nose. The saury is served whole; those who can successfully fillet it with their chopsticks should be entitled to a free dinner.

To go with this food, there's a selection of chilled sake; if you prefer wine, the gavi and pinot grigio are good white choices. A New Zealand sparkling wine, the spumante Lindauer Brut, is surprisingly agreeable and nice on a hot day. Whatever you do, don't order the house cosmopolitan. It's made with Midori and peach schnapps and is so sickeningly sweet that I found it undrinkable.

I've eaten in a great many Japanese restaurants in the past year, from Lower East Side noodle bars, midtown sushi counters to mega-celebrity hot spots like Megu, Matsuri and Ono. Butai is not cutting-edge; the food's not innovative, nor is it served on fancy pottery in Zen-like or lavishly decorated surroundings complete with pools and Buddhas. But I was won over by this restaurant (even though I only made a dent in the menu). It's a lively, modest, unassuming place. The service couldn't be friendlier, and the food is not only good, it's inexpensive. I didn't go home feeling as I did a few months ago after an $800 dinner for two at Masa in the Time Warner Center: that if they brought back the guillotine and set it up in the square outside the restaurant, I shouldn't be surprised.

Heady comparisons have been made between Sight Unseen and Death of a Salesman (and-because, I guess, the artist-hero is a guilty Jew-the novels of Philip Roth). But those are wild claims. My problem-if it is mine-is that I don't feel a thing for its superficial, empty hero, the artist Jonathan Waxman, who's in search of his lost innocence and promise.

Where others see a tortured or subtly fascinating man, I'm afraid I see someone who's only shallow and presumptuous. It is Mr. Margulies' purpose, I assume, to show us the kind of facile success story that's typical of the 80's arts scene, and Waxman-a man of wax-is smug enough to convince us at least that an artist's talent has little or nothing to do with his personality. But what of the rocky emotional landscape of the play?

Look at what essentially takes place as the action moves forward and backward in time (a trick in itself that's meant to intrigue us. But there's no reason why the narrative shouldn't be linear). Waxman, whose father has just died, goes to meet his former muse and lover, Patricia, who's living in England. It's the first time he's seen her since cruelly jilting her 15 years ago. (She describes herself as his "sacrificial shiksa".) The needy boy wonder, who's a media darling, is in London for a big retrospective of his work. Patricia, in self-imposed exile from America and herself, lives in Norfolk in a sterile marriage to a bitter Englishman, Nick, an archaeologist. It's soon clear that Patricia never got over her passionate, two-year affair with Waxman from the time they were both students.

It takes a Turgenev to explore the romantic obsession of first love, but Mr. Margulies allegorizes blatantly. Waxman's nude painting of Patricia, painted when she first modeled for him, is portentously entitled The Beginning . It represents the lost purity and inspiration the successful Waxman wants to rekindle in himself, and it's hanging ominously over the fireplace in Norfolk. Small wonder that Nick-the archaeologist digging for meaning in the debris of lost civilizations-seethes with dissatisfaction. Then there's Waxman's scandalously famous painting of a black man and a white woman nakedly fucking in a desecrated Jewish cemetery. Are they making love, or is it rape? It's another allegory. "It's all about what you make of it," Waxman explains glibly.

But the discussions about art and Jewish identity during Waxman's interview with a probing German reporter are just as glib. They're as contrived as the implied anti-Semitism of the curiously threatening German. Waxman's ideas-or Mr. Margulies'-fail to challenge us as a drama of significant ideas. It's a safe play, though it appears to exist on the dangerous edge of life and art.

"Hell, some art lovers were in a hurry to get to the postcards and prints and souvenir placemats and skipped the show entirely!" Waxman announces with the air of revelation about the big Van Gogh exhibition at the Met. " … The art was just a backdrop for the real show that was happening. In the gift shop!"

"Hm," the interviewer responds, unimpressed.

Mr. Margulies thus has it both ways. If you find Waxman an empty vessel, you're supposed to. If you find him a fascinating shit who's worthy of our sympathy because he's lost his way, that's O.K., too. (It's all about what you make of it.) But was this celebrated son of Brooklyn ever innocent in the first place? Does he have any integrity to rekindle?

Oh, to be sure, there's the precious, climatic scene that goes back 15 years in time to show the start of his love affair with Patricia. But it's a schematic, sentimental device. Everything we otherwise know about Waxman is self-serving and unpleasant-including the way he dumped his lovely "shiksa" after two years when his dominating, suburban, Jewish mom died. He's now meeting up with his ex-lover again after his father dies ….

Which leaves an ultimate mystery (without which there wouldn't be a play): Why does Patricia-the former boundless "student of the world"-abdicate from life, as if she's in mourning for the memory of a phony like Waxman? It's difficult to see what she saw in him in the first place.

That's particularly true when she's played with such authentic, blazing intelligence by Laura Linney. This utterly natural actress can convey a bruised, damaged life as well as a much younger, infatuated self when the future brimmed with magical possibility. Ms. Linney is so fine as Patricia that she almost convinces us that Waxman was worth it. But Ben Shenkman, a good actor in the wrong role, isn't electric-or dangerous-enough as Waxman. The role needs far more vitality and subtext than Mr. Shenkman brings to it, though my feelings about the transparently spineless Waxman remained unchanged when I subsequently read the play.

The production, directed by Daniel Sullivan, came to the boil for me on English soil-in the drab, cold Norfolk cottage, where the excellent Byron Jennings as Nick spits out the bile of damp defeat. A typical Brit in his way, Nick announces admiringly, "Picasso-now there was an energetic little bloke."

Nick is the kind of Englishman who knows best how to settle for second-best. "I take what I can get. I'm English," he says in a memorable line about his dry marriage. He's the envious, furious, middle-aged traditionalist resenting Waxman on every battlefront. "Oh, yes," he seethes. "You shit on canvas and dazzle the rich. They ooh and aah and shower you with coins, lay gifts at your feet. The world has gone insane. It's the emperor's new clothes."

Perhaps; but if you find yourself agreeing with the bilious Nick as much as I did, Mr. Margulies' drama about art and the need for uncorrupted innocence has lost its way.

Absolutely British

Sight Unseen 's Nick gives us an insight into an English type doting on defeat. The three British girls of a certain age who are the comedy trio known as Fascinating Aïda are finishing their successful run at the new 59E59 Theaters on Sunday. They're legendary in England, and they tell you all you need to know-all you may wish to know-about English womanhood.

They, firstly, do not give a toss (as the English like to say). Age holds no fears for them. They're proudly politically incorrect, but not too cutting edge. They loathe President Bush, but really hate Prime Minister Blair-pronounced "Bleeah" , as if throwing up. They're vulgar in the bawdy English way. They're also likable . You could imagine yourself enjoying a drink or two with them after the show. The bruiser named Dillie might drink you under the table, or so I imagine.

As entertainers, they reveal-as English women often do-absolutely no dress sense. They pretend to be making it all up as they go along (English cult of the amateur). But of course they know exactly what they're doing after 20 glorious years. They're risqué, cozy, pubby, clever, highly verbal, Gilbert and Sullivan witty, Sondheim wistful, sometimes old-fashioned and mad.

I'm uncertain about their dated little ditties-on the joys of Viagra, pretentious modern art (cf. Sight Unseen! ) and hot flashes ("Is It Me, or Is It Hot in Here?") Their stiff-upper-lip tribute to our Botox era is more my cup of tea. ("Our skin is stapled to our skulls with metal clips / And our legs look much improved / Since our knee-caps were removed / And recycled in our artificial hips …. ") So, too, their unusual "Song of Genetic Mutation," with its touchingly romantic ballad sung to "that two-headed baby of mine."

Pleasure in silliness-an English specialty, thank heavens-shines with their rousing anthem for troubled times, "Stick Your Head Between Your Legs and Kiss Your Ass Goodbye." Act I was a bit shaky, but the highest moment of lunacy came in the superior second act with their tribute to New Zealand, "Suddenly New Zealand."

When all seems lost in these difficult times-

Suddenly New Zealand doesn't

seem so dreary,

Suddenly New Zealand seems to

suit us rather well;

Lots of hills and dales and hills

and dales

And hills and dales and hills and

dales

And hills and dales and hills and

dales

And hills and dales

And the occasional dell.

And lots of sheep and lambs, too, and lambs and sheep, and lots of plots and homesteads, and plots and homesteads, and springs and geysers, and a lot of hot mud, and nice farms.

When are we going?

My wife tooted a couple of times, and we were about to give up when a 60-ish man in green sweatpants came running through the open pilings of the house from the back, as if from out of the forest.

"Oh, you're Americans!" he said, when we said what we were after. "But I've just given the Tipper Gore Suite to a young Dutch couple."

"Tipper Gore!" my wife and I said in unison.

"I prayed that I could rename it the First Lady Suite, but of course that didn't happen," Ray said. "And Sarah wrote me a note on Air Force Two stationery-that's the Vice President's plane-saying it was the best vacation her mother had ever had."

"Sarah?"

"Sarah Sedona. That was her alias when she came-Sarah Gore. She's lovely. She said it was the best vacation her mother had ever had, which I'm afraid doesn't say a lot for Al."

Ray was a bit of the forest creature. He had a musical voice and light blue eyes and expressive gray eyebrows.

"But, look, I can put you up in the bodyguards' cottage-$90."

We walked up a hill through thick foliage to a house with pine siding. It had a sun deck with a stunning view of the Coromandel harbor and bay.

"Please Remove Your Shoes," a sign said. Ray slipped out of his big rubber boots, and I undid my own.

"Did the bodyguards take off their shoes?" my wife said.

"Oh, yes," Ray said. "They weren't heavies. They were cultivated and well-spoken-especially Doug, whom I dealt with. They told me they were teachers who had attended a conference in Australia and just wanted to have a look around while they were in the Southern Hemisphere. And of course I fell for it, I'm so naïve."

The place was cold. It's winter in New Zealand, and it felt like an October day in New England. Ray turned on the space heater and showed us the neatly equipped kitchen.

By now, my wife and I wanted to know how Ray had gotten past the aliases. He stood in the middle of the room telling the story with fresh amazement.

"Well. I drove into town, and Sarah happened to drive in front of me. And as we came by this driveway, the teachers' van was just sitting there, waiting, and it pulled in behind me, so I went into town in a sandwich. That seemed a little odd; still, the penny didn't drop. Till later-"

"Then?"

"I had made a reservation for the teachers at a restaurant, and the restaurant called back to say they didn't have a booking. So I came up this hill to find Doug to tell him, and who should he be talking to but Sarah! And I just thought, 'O.K., they're Americans, so that's why they had met.' Still-"

Just then the phone rang, and Ray pulled a white handset out of his sweatpants.

"I'll tell you the rest later," he said, and shot out the door.

I moved the bags into the Bodyguards' Suite, and we drove into the nearby town for dinner. Ray had recommended the Success Café, as he had to the Gores. The food was a disappointment. The fish was smothered in Parmesan and tomato sauce, and I wondered how Tipper and Sarah and Kristin-she had stolen along, Ray said-had dealt with the cuisine in Coromandel. They had come during New Zealand's winter, early August 2000, just before the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.

I imagined the Gore women were just trying to do what we were doing, getting away to a place that seems simpler and more honest than the States. Kiwis care about food and land. The cities are connected by highways that would be back roads in our country, and cars stop to make way for herds of sheep. No one is particularly consumerist. Yet the culture is sophisticated. The hillsides are filled with eccentrics replanting the ancient kauri forest and selling jugs of plant food made from seaweed.

When we got back, Celadon was absolutely still, with just a plume of smoke rising up from the cottage Ray told us was occupied by a computer worker on a Buddhist retreat. We took off our shoes and dragged the space heater into the bedroom. "Did you notice that the handles on the water faucets work backwards?" my wife said.

The next morning I had to go back into town to get cash and run an errand for my wife, and by then it was getting time for us to get to a bush railway we were hoping to ride. It looked like we weren't going to learn the end of Ray's story, especially when I stopped at the office to leave our money. The place was empty. A tui bird drinking from the flowering coral tree made an odd clucking noise just over our heads. I slipped the cash under a strangely beautiful lantern of incised black ceramic and had started writing a note to Ray when he materialized again, from the woods.

We didn't have much time. We pressed him to find out how things had come out.

"Well. As I said, I went up the hill to the teachers' cottage to tell Doug about the reservation when who should I see but Sarah, and she was talking to Doug! So I said, 'Sarah, you've met Doug!' And Sarah said yes, she had met him. And then she stepped forward and said"-a dramatic pause-"'Ray, we won't insult you any longer. These are our bodyguards.'

"'That's great,' I said. 'You must be someone very special to have a bodyguard.'

"'I'm not Sarah Sedona, I'm Sarah Gore, and that's my mother, Tipper Gore.' You see, she had said that her mother was Mary, and that's her name, Mary, so she hadn't really lied about that.

"But she said, 'Now, Ray, you mustn't say anything, because if you do the paparazzi will be here in 10 minutes from Auckland.'

"And I said, 'Of course I won't.' And that night my daughter called from Auckland and I said, 'You won't believe who's staying here-someone very special, but I can't tell you now.' Then an hour or so later, my partner called-she teaches in Auckland- and she had talked to our daughter and she said, 'Ray, what is happening?' And I said I couldn't say anything about it, not for a long time, and she said"-Ray's voice grew accusing-"'Who is she?'

"But still I didn't say. And"-Ray's voice became serious-"she said, 'Ray, you can't do this to us. We're family. You must tell us.'"

"I think I would have caved," I said.

"I did not. Not till Tipper was safely out of the country. It was more than a month."

Then things got out of Ray's control. Someone staying in the Tipper Gore Suite read the name Tipper Gore-which is how she signed the register-and tipped off an Auckland newspaper, which called Ray in November 2000. Ray tried to hold out, but the reporter played hardball: "Listen, if you tell us, we'll run a whole other story about your cottages after the election, if the Gores win." So, feeling that he had satisfied his obligation to the Gores, Ray Morley went public.

There were big headlines in the Auckland papers about the Gores' incognito visit. Sarah, then a student at Harvard, had been working on a Let's Go guide. Her mother had come to visit her.

"And we prayed and prayed for Al Gore. But, of course, it didn't come to pass," Ray said. "Which is Al's own fault, you know. Because he chained up Bill Clinton."

"He did?" I said, racking my brains to remember the election.

"Oh, yes. Because if he hadn't chained up Clinton, he wouldn't have lost Tennessee and Arkansas. Their home states! Which would have easily provided the margin of victory. Easily."

We shook hands with Ray and, rushing past the clucking tui bird, went up the road and further into the bush, determined to have a vacation.

I recognize that I'm obsessed, recognize too that at 46, my obsession is somewhat unseemly. People say that obsession is not a good thing, that it is about dead feelings, or nostalgia, or hang-ups, that it is passion curled back on itself. So I'm trying to remember how this started.

Alanis Morissette was never my cup of tea. I can say honestly that I didn't like her. Her early work (what I heard of it) struck me as mannered and self-conscious. Her regard for her own originality seemed egotistical; she could not murder her darlings, as the saying goes.

Then in January, I was driving around New Zealand's north island (on the same Pacific project I'm at work on now) when her label released "Hands Clean," the first single off the new album. I recognized her voice instantly, and with a wave of irritation. My finger shot out to flip the radio to another station-in fact, I was viciously excited to do so, to blank her out of the conscious universe again and forever-when something held me: The material was completely psychological, the mood was soulful.

The next time the song came on, I cranked it up.

"Hands Clean" is about an illicit relationship between a man and a young woman. It is told chiefly from the man's point of view, as he offers his rationalizations: "I know that you sexualize me, as a young thing would, and I think I like it …. "

But the refrain is from the girl's perspective. At these times, Alanis' voice surges powerfully:

And I have honored your request for silence And you washed your hands clean of this.

It may seem like an angry song, but it isn't. The girl's anger feels historical. She seems to see the relationship in its entirety, to recognize her own hunger for experience. There are tender and thoughtful moments ("What part of our history's reinvented and under rug swept?"), and her statement "I have honored your request for silence" is stately and even loving.

But it wasn't just the words. Alanis' voice had grown out of its youthful quaver into a strong, womanly instrument. She had emotional clarity and generosity, qualities that had me enthralled.

At that time my travels took me on to Australia and England, and notwithstanding my urgent business, I found myself driving around Fremantle or Hull waiting for them to play that song again.

Then the new CD came out at the end of February, and I bought it on Lower Broadway, just before starting another trip. My first stop was Albuquerque, and I upgraded to a midsize car so that I could listen to her on the CD player. Very soon it was clear that the same spirit of ampleness and emotional clarity that animates "Hands Clean" pours off the album.

Alanis had become one of my guides. I was interested in anything she had to say.

Or in point of fact, I was stuck. I rented seven more oversized cars in California and down through the Pacific, just to have a CD player and be able to hear her. (Not only was she now costing me hundreds of dollars, but in a couple of cases it meant renting S.U.V.'s, which violates every principle I believe in.)

In Hilo I put only 11 miles on the car (my interviewee drove me around), but sat in the rain at 5 in the morning at the airport for 20 minutes because I'd finally gotten the hang of the album. Then later in Waikiki, I went into a kind of fugue on Ala Moana Boulevard and Kapuhulu Road, with the windows rolled up and the air conditioning on high, because by then I'd identified the master cuts and was playing them over and over.

Come Australia and New Zealand, I put on another 700 Alanis-ridden miles.

By then, I confess even I was getting sick of Alanis, and so I tried to break the spell by loading other CD's: Dylan, John Lee Hooker, the O Brother soundtrack, Beth Orton and Mick Jagger's new solo album.

I listened to them all, too, but the truth is that I only played these albums so as to give myself a break from Alanis, so that I could return to life with Alanis. They were a kind of palate cleanser. Or in the case of Dylan and Jagger, comfort food, the macaroni and cheese that they first began serving me in the high-school cafeteria. I would calm myself down and give myself a break, and then play Alanis again, driving through priggish sleepy New Zealand villages like Clarence and Warkworth with Alanis on way too loud, upsetting the sheep and the Kiwis in their walking shorts.

Because Alanis is never calming. Alanis is highly psychically disturbing. Alanis plunges me into a raw and almost bleedingly reflective mood.

If you say "What is the album about?," it is about Alanis' search for a genuine relationship, for engagement that is respectful and intense and alive, at this moment.

Right now my favorite song is Track 4. It is about obsession, about Alanis being hung up on a guy she went out with over 10 years ago. It has the feel of a Poe story, as Alanis tries to understand the dead hand of these old feelings. The writing is touched, very nearly mad:

What are you, my blood? You touch me like you are my blood. What are you my dad? You affect me like you are my dad.

(And when Alanis sings "affect," it sounds like "fucked.")

I find this song, called "Flinch," almost too intense to listen to. It is really about consciousness. When a man at a party tells her that the object of her affection is in the next room, Alanis sings-clunkily and divinely:

This man knows not of how this information has affected me But he knows the colour of the car I just drove away in.

Recognizing the color of a car but not a powerful feeling is false consciousness. Alanis' goal is to tear away those beliefs, to determine what she really wants, now. And she is always running down men who rely on their intelligence, defensively, when her only real aim in relationship is emotional readiness and fearlessness.

I try and think when I have been obsessed with an album before. Rubber Soul when I was a teen; the Wailers' Catch a Fire when I was in college; Otis Redding Live when I moved to the Midwest; Joy Division when I met my wife. And in all those cases, the experience was eroticized-first crush, first love. The song was intertwined with passion that folded over on itself.

Now I would like to know what this middle-aged obsession is about. I suppose I'm vulnerable; I've been traveling on my own for most of the last year, and the historical material that I am exploring is often painful. It seems to me that I need Alanis' innocence and exaltation in my life right now (there is not one clever, arch or coy statement on this record).

The album winds up with two visionary songs, Track 9, "You Owe Me Nothing in Return," and Track 11, "Utopia." "You Owe Me Nothing" is about Alanis' ideal relationship, and it is naïve, romantic, stunning and confident:

You can ask for space for yourself and only yourself and I'll grant it You can ask for freedom as well or time to travel and you'll have it You can ask to live by yourself or love someone else and I'll support it …. You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have ….

Needing to hear it again, I borrowed a Toshiba computer with a CD player last night from a French anthropologist across the courtyard from me. (Who's studying volcano-dwellers in Tonga). She lent me her earphones, too. Still, I felt constrained. This guest house is crowded with Pacific islanders and others who might think I am crazy if they got a whiff of what I'm up to.

Tonight, I have a better plan. I will go to the men's club that is cater-corner to the Royal Palace and find the D.J. Kitione (or Gideon) Mokofisi at his usual spot on the bar. Gideon has a CD player; we listened to it in his van at the beach in January. And Gideon understands musical obsession-he's a D.J. I won't let Gideon buy a drink, and then I'll borrow his van and get lost.

Stella is owned by Anna Weinberg and Paul Masters, a husband-and-wife team from New Zealand who run the front of the house, along with chef Melissa O'Donnell. They've kept the small room simple: The tables are of different sizes-long enough to hold 10, or small enough for two-set with candles in crystal ball–shaped marble holders. Their spacing is perfect for casual eavesdropping. Seated by the window, which was open to the street one warm night, a woman in a black T-shirt and matching Capri pants was gazing at her companion with an incredulous expression, as if he'd just told her he was not the humble N.Y.U. student she had thought him to be, but a highly placed agent on some secret mission. "You mean ... you smoke?"

He grinned sheepishly. "Yes!"

She beamed. "Cool!"

Stella's customers are mostly young. In the middle of the room, a group of French people were sounding off like intellectuals on the weekly show Bouillon de Culture . And next to me, a fresh-faced man in a camouflage shirt was losing patience with his date (in faux Pucci), who quietly demolished a hefty piece of steak as he talked. "No offense, but what you say is not exactly rocket science," he finally said. "Step out of your own proclivity for a moment. He's got a personality issue."

Alas, I never had the chance to learn what her proclivity was, because our food arrived. Ms. O'Donnell formerly cooked at Le Zoo in the Village, and before that at La Cigale in Nolita. Her cooking is unpretentious and appealing, and it's geared toward Stella's excellent list of around 50 New World wines, most of which are from California, New Zealand and Australia. (On Monday nights, in addition to the regular menu, there is a special three-course dinner matched with wines for $45; once a month, there's a six- or seven-course meal with wines from a selected vineyard for between $65 and $75.)

You can start with a deep bowl of thick cauliflower soup topped with a spoonful of sautéed wild mushrooms, the unmistakable scent of truffle oil wafting toward you as the waiter sets it down. Truffle essence perks up a classic, buttery puff-pastry vol au vent filled with scallops and snails tossed in a creamy leek broth. A red-wine risotto, laced with caramelized pearl onions, is properly cooked but bland. Slow-roasted eggplant could use a bit more seasoning too. It comes with a pleasant tartare of roasted beets and a blue-cheese fondue with rosemary. A sprightly salad of crunchy, emerald-green haricots verts is garnished with a disk of tangy goat cheese, prosciutto and pine nuts. The sardines at Stella are wonderful-one of those simple, unfussy dishes that are a high point of a summer by the Mediterranean. You get three of them, plump and charred on the grill, and they are allowed to speak for themselves, served plain with a wedge of lemon.

There is a choice of three crostini on the menu, which are good with a cocktail or as a late-night snack. On our visit, they were topped with tuna tartare, chicken-liver mousse and blue cheese. But if the venison tartare is offered as a special, don't miss it. Served with croutons, plus the usual garnishes of capers, onion and mustard, it has much more flavor than beef. It's terrific.

The chef likes to use fruit with meat and fish, and the results aren't the least bit cloying. A juicy Cornish hen is marinated in red wine, red-wine vinegar and brown sugar, then braised with prunes, Spanish olives and capers for a rich sauce that strikes a nice balance between sweet and tart. Maple-glazed salmon is good, too, with braised endive, figs, pecans and an apple-balsamic sauce that cuts the fattiness of the fish. Grilled rare tuna in pink, meaty slices comes on a bed of braised fennel with horseradish crème fraîche and an orange butter sauce that adds zing. An excellent rack of lamb is served with spinach sautéed with artichokes and seasoned with fresh mint and lemon.

My son was working his way through a rabbit pot pie, made with tender chunks of rabbit and undercooked vegetables, when he began to assume a glazed expression, staring out into the street. Our neighbors, it seemed, had now moved on to a heated debate about Palestine. All of a sudden, his expression changed. Across the way, the owner of a red brick town house had opened the front door and let out the cat. It made no attempt to explore beyond the top step, where it remained motionless under a full moon.

We turned our attention to Stella's desserts, which include a plum frangipane tart (on a chewy pastry shell), a delicate panna cotta paired with strawberries cooked in balsamic vinegar and a great pumpkin flan, served with pecan brittle. Steamed puddings remind me of my childhood, which is perhaps why I found the two on the menu-one made with walnuts and the other a chocolate bread pudding-so comforting.

My son, however, could not take his eyes off the cat. As we were getting up to leave, it rose too and went back inside, the door closing after him as if by an invisible hand. The sight was as reassuring as the dinner we'd had, and we returned home feeling a great deal better about everything.

Restaurant Notes

Eat out Oct. 11 and you will help the families of food workers who died in the World Trade Center attack. On Thursday, restaurants all over town will donate at least 10 percent of their profits to the Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund. Windows on the World and other food-service outlets in the towers lost over 200 people, who left behind over 600 children-many of them uninsured. The fund has been organized by David Emil, owner of Windows on the World and Beacon restaurant, with Windows chef Michael Lomonaco, Geofrrey Zakarian from Town, Tom Valenti from Ouest and Waldy Malouf from Beacon. Over 4,000 restaurants around the world are participating, including ones in Canada, Britain and Taiwan. You can see the list at www.windowsofhope.org. You may also send contributions to the Windows of Hope Family Relief Fund, c/o David Berdon & Co., 415 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017.

STELLA *1/2 58 MacDougal Street

674-4968

Dress: Casual Noise Level: Fine Wine List: Interesting New World vintages, moderate prices Credit Cards: American Express only Price Range: Dinner, main courses, $14.50 to $25.50; prix-fixe wine dinner Monday Dinner: Sunday through Thursday 6 to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday to midnight

Brunch: Sunday, noon to 4:30 p.m.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor