Bloody Michael Bevan.

I was attempting to add a link which fully illustrated the scariness of Sarah Jessica Parker's boobs at the Golden Globes, when I came across the hilarious Underwired, which bitchily discusses many unfortunately shaped and accessorised celebrity bosoms in its Boob of the Week section, complete with pictures. If you were ever photographed while saggy-titted or nipple-flashing, beware!

Eeeeeeeeeeeheeeeeeeee!!! Eeeeeeeeeheeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

That's the noise I make when New Zealand beats Australia in a one-day international for the *third* straight time, *in* Australia, on *Australia Day*. (It is thus highly unlikely that I will ever make that noise again.) I read a headline on a webpage at home which said 'the fairy tale continues', and I rather feel that way myself. We haven't had a glorious run like this for yonks - almost since I was a kid, it seems.

Of course, as Brent says, we may have peaked too soon. The finals are when it really counts...

Sometimes, I go to Dadadie Brucke's website and gaze longingly at her entire women's line. If I were rich enough to get every article of clothing, I would.

Additional hate I just thought of: Bill Maher. The guy's attitude to women makes Hef look progressive. I'll occasionally watch Politically Incorrect, but I get embarrassed for him: he reduces nearly every single issue to 'women suck! All they're interested in is money and monogamy and fucking us over! They're stupid and evil!' Well, yeah, Bill, if you only date strippers and porn stars, you're going to end up with a rather limited understanding of the opposite sex. He seems to have no conception that his own attitudes end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. And his issues are *hugely* transparent: dude obviously couldn't get a blowjob in high school or college and spent his young adulthood incredibly insecure, obsessively jacking off to Swank (he apparently still has the porn collection of the gods), and resenting women enormously for the power they held over him. With his rise to relative fame, the poontang embarrassment of the riches set in, and he couldn't get through all the groupies fast enough. Now he wants to be The Studmeister, but all the women he seeks out as trophies to prove how great he is are (surprise surprise) only into him for his fame and money. *Then* he resents them even more for not fulfilling all the ridiculous teen fantasies he had, and extrapolates that all women are like his groupies and that all men subscribe to his ridiculous philosophies; this attitude consumes him to the extent that his show is quite often painful to watch. He's in a viciously immature cycle and won't break out of it. What I can't understand is the way no one on the show (with a few exceptions - the lead singer of Better Than Ezra, oddly) calls him on this shit. I'd *eat him for breakfast*. (I sound more and more like my mother every day.)

This has been irritating me for months or years. I'm so glad I finally got it out of my system. :)

Some hate and some love:

I hate Mandy Moore. I hate her little, precocious, smirking, calculatedly jailbait ass. I hate MTV for bringing her into my life, and I hate the uber-corporation which cross-promotes her. I don't just hate her as I hate all crappy artists, for letting the side down. I have a personal animosity towards her which can't be logically explained.

On the other hand, I love Aisha Tyler. She's really funny, she's really clever, she's on the ball in live situations, and she is, additionally, a sight for sore eyes. I hope earnestly for her meteoric rise to mega-fame! (Talk Soup and The Fifth Wheel, much as I love them, frankly don't count.)

Steve Johnson's article in Salon about Gosford Park is fab.

More Memphis: I have to give props to Tad at American Dream Safari - he not only takes you around Memphis in a '55 Caddy (autographed on the inside by various music legends!), he's also an amazingly informed and thoughtful guide who really tailored the tour to our particular obsessions. Not just a great idea, but also fantastic execution.

Brent and I had two minor musical arguments tonight, inspired by Spin's lame-arsed list of the greatest 50 bands of all time (notable: Korn makes the list while the Pixies don't. Jesus). Argument 1) Who's better/will be more influential in the long run, Massive Attack or the Chems (I incline towards the former, he the latter)? and Argument 2) Did the Jesus and Mary Chain influence Sonic Youth? (I maintained that since SY formed before tJandMC, his argument had no merit; he insisted that SY changed their sound significantly in the late eighties to incorporate other influences, so my chronology was irrelevant. Then he got annoyed about Sonic Youth generally and called them 'massively overrated', pretentious arthousers who released too much pointless noodling. There was also some scorn over Thurston namedropping Tom Ze et al in interviews, as I recall. But I'm *still* not sure what I think about Sonic Youth and it's been over 10 years since I started listening to them. So the discussion ended with no definite conclusions. Hrm.)

All of this proves that we are incapable of being without each other because no one else could stand to think about this stuff for longer than two seconds. ;)

Another thing that bemused and frustrated me about the Golden Globes (part 84 in an indefinite series): what is *up* with Sarah Jessica Parker's boobs? Is she *aiming* for flattened and saggy? I desperately want to get her to an old-fashioned corsetier, stat.

OK, I've had an extraordinarily eventful few days, so forgive me as I catch up rather slowly. Brent and Gary and I went on a road trip to Memphis. As befits pop culture junkies, we concentrated on music, music, music. Elvis of course (the Guralnick biographies whetted my appetite for this trip in the first place) but also, thrillingly, Stax and Hi records, were our main priorities.

One magnificent moment of many: at the Rock and Soul Museum, seeing the drums, bass, and piano used on all the Stax recording sessions. *Wow*. And thanks to Shangri-La Records, I now own a 'certified by a brickologist' brick from the Stax building, which Brent and I will take back to New Zealand and place somewhere significant in our home. Yay!


Additionally, and irrelevantly, the Golden Globes pissed me off (and it took a lot to piss me off that evening, since I was very very stoned). Rachel Griffiths and her 'yew ah the sauce of the reevah' speech was the final fucking straw. It's a *cable TV show*, people. Bloody hell. I thought Australians were supposed to be refreshingly unpretentious! And Baz Luhrman, yeesh. Dude has made three movies with the exact same plot - starcrossed lovers try to overcome obstacles, wow, that's original - and thinks he's reinvented the wheel. Yurgh.

Perhaps paradoxically, I was also very peeved that Peter Jackson got snubbed for best picture. Jingoism is fun! :)

Raiford's. The greatest goddamn club I've ever been to. 'Pussy Controooool!'

What the above page doesn't mention is the lighted red and yellow floors and the chandeliers and the lasers and the way *every kind of person* was in the place. Black, white, old, young, Abercrombie and Fitch-wearers next to bikers, all drinking 40s and dancing madly to a ridiculous mixture of music. Trust me, the place is a wonderland of fun and delight! I think one of the proudest moments of my life was Hollywood himself, in his sequinned suit and jeri-curl, responding directly to my cry of 'you the man!' with over-the-sunglasses point and a 'you know it!'

The obnoxious, malicious glee with which I greeted our recent cricketing success over the Aussies is probably very small-minded and mean-spirited. But I don't care. Even slightly. Serves you right, you skitey buggers, as my Grandad might say.

Other discovery of the day: an Italian version of Gene Pitney's 'A Town Without Pity'! I downloaded it all unawares and was quite enchanted. There's something about other-language versions of well-known songs which is really fascinating.

I read in a newsgroup recently that Australia was the only country which found The Goodies amusing enough to show in repeats. Actually I think New Zealand probably did too, as I have very fond childhood memories of Bill, Tim, and Graeme. The episode in which England is overrun by a plague of Rolf Harrises is actually funnier now than it was to me then.

This BBC title sequences page really is a treasure. How about Grange Hill? And am I the only person who loves the theme (not the show, mind you) to Are You Being Served? enough to download it?

Probably yes.

I have always found that archivists, as a rule, are very very very dull. I have just spent three hours nodding politely at the lecture material of a - gulp - Hilton hotel and restaurant management archivist. My theory has not been disproved. It's not that the history of Hilton hotels is necessarily dull. 'According to Gabor, Hilton chose his butler over her. "He hired the butler five weeks before we were married. The butler was very fresh. He wouldn’t take my orders. I complained to my husband and asked that the man be dismissed, but he said "if you don’t like it, you can go."'

I mean, that's great stuff! The depressing part is that I can't think of one professional archivist who would care. Actually working with all these boring bastards might kill me.

This can be blamed on Alex. Not entirely, but almost. Let's see how it works... although I don't hold out particularly high hopes for myself...