Cintra Wilson's Oscar roundup made me laugh out loud. Although she's wrong about a) Gosford Park, which was much more than a retread; and b) Jon Voight. It's not the plastic surgery. It's that he looks like he ate Christopher Walken.

I hereby start the unofficial Academy Awards:

Best Boobs: Uma Thurman. GodDAMN!

Worst Boobs: Tie, Jennifer Connolly (the saggy-titted virus caught from Sarah Jessica Parker at the Emmys) and Gwyneth Paltrow (and may I just say in reference to that dress: what the flying buggery bollocks was *that*?)

Most endearing: Jim Broadbent and all my NZ peeps. Awwwwwwwwwww.

Most annoying: Halle, I empathise. Really. It's historical and significant and fabulous and all that. But get some fucking perspective (remember that Ethel Waters and Lena Horne could *sing* and act), and *do not thank your team of lawyers*, you idiot.

Most freakish person there who wasn't a member of Cirque du Soleil: the subject of the winning documentary short. I thought someone had put acid in my fajitas!

Gah!!! Gah gah gah!!! And also, wow. Is this photo more horrifying or more funny? My mind can't decide. Or compute.

Everyone who knows me knows that I love musicals. This is a nice informative site; I, for one, didn't know that Brief Encounter was based on a Noel Coward play! Although it's a bit mean to Broadway Melody: "The talking stinks, the singing hurts and the dancing is unspeakable." Piffle I say!

In the 'barbeque pit' flaming area of the Straight Dope message boards, one lone Australian cried succinctly into the musical wilderness:

"dear creed, train, p.o.d, linkin park and all you nu-metal losers: give it up! you suck, so, so hard.

why do you hate your parents?
why can't you stop bitching?
why do you think you can rap?
why can't you write lyrics?"

Word up, my Aussie compatriot. Word up.

Ben, I love you for proving that 'Deny, Deny, Deny' Stephen from Real World Seattle is not only gay, but a miserable failure as a prostitute!!!

This is the funniest skewering of three major American political philosophies I've ever read. Thank you, Alex, and your other sidebar linky-links.

I have always been a relatively dutiful university student. I managed to make it into a Ph.D. programme without doing anything *too* terrible. But the Unbelievably Awful Archives Class (tm) has caused me to crack. I and another desperate graduate colleague have taken to doing shots before Wednesday's class at the downstairs restaurant's happy hour, which fortuitously has a full bar. If it's particularly dire we'll have another drink in the coffee break. Vague mental and physical numbness is the only thing which can make this crap bearable. Am I evil and scummy?

Some recent howlers from the pens of my students:

A guy called 'Hemmingway' apparently wrote 'The Great Gatsby'; the changing values of the *1920s* were inspired by new technology like the birth control pill, the bikini, and television; the Great Depression lasted for thirty years; and (more disturbingly) the '100% American' KKK banded together to fight against the new immigrants who were 'causing chaos' in urban areas. Sometimes I wonder if they're listening to the lectures at all.

I think the latest Garbage album is patchy. There are a few songs that should have been bsides (Butch, that little industrial drum and bass excursion was both tired and overlong), and some of the lyrics are cringeworthy. But I have to say that 'Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go!)' is one of the most glorious little pop songs of the decade so far. Squelchy noises! Handclaps! And just when you think they can't amp up the hooks any more, the bridge has *chiming bells* in it, like Phil Spector ran in and briefly went nuts. Yay!

The Bad Sex in Fiction Award! How fun!

In the spirit of St. Patrick's Day, let's have a wander through the twenty-six glorious episodes of Father Ted. 'My lovely lovely lovely lovely horse....'

Dorky Jay-Z reference ahead: I am grading the middle part of the alphabet for my history survey class. The H-to-the-Izzos. :)

Another of Danielle's Boring Obsessive Rants About Cricket, part 498: in what other sport could you lose by 98 runs and still have salvaged your team's pride with an almost unbelievable record-breaking batting performance? I am driven to keeping up with this via written web updates and teeny-tiny highlights packages on Sky Sports News, but this is still pretty miraculous.

Clearly given the green light with only one wicket remaining, Nathan Astle completely demolished the English attack and broke every record possible in the process. He moved from 100 to 150 in 20 deliveries, and completed the fastest double century of all time off only 153 balls, surpassing Adam Gilchrist's recent effort by a mere 60 balls. Only the late Sir Donald Bradman scored a double hundred in fewer minutes.... Perhaps the most staggering statistic was a six-over period by Hoggard and Caddick when Astle, with a little help from the runner-assisted Cairns, hit 96 runs.

Oh, and here's another of Danielle's Boring Obsessive Rants About New Zealand, part 1,300,387 in an ongoing series: Auckland is apparently the sixth-best city to live in, quality of life-wise, in the whole world. And I will be there in less than three months, touch wood. I won't have a *job* or any prospects or any money or anything, but I'll be there! In the bosom of my mad family! Joy!

I'm a sucker for tshirts that say cute things. Today, I'm wearing one that has a mermaid getting 'hooked' by a diamond ring lowered from above; it says 'Female of the Species'. In that spirit, here's a shop from home which sells an array of irreverent tshirt designs. 'Fluffer' is a good one. Or 'Wage Slave'. :)

Brent linked to this as well, but our friend Anna the Artist deserves both a) wealth and b) props, so I am spreading the word. Yay Anna!

Just discussing a few things with another TA - he noted during the course of the conversation that Germans are really good at swearing. If you aren't faint of heart, have a look at this list of German swear words, complete with colourful phrases and soundfiles. Who knew 'Puff' means 'whorehouse'?

Oh, and here's a link to UH's only communist history professor - check out 'Buzzclips' for an amusing range of visual representations of his delusions of grandeur. Fight the power, Bob!

Here's another vow: within the next few years, I want to become a hemi-semi-demi Bollywood expert. It all started with that scene in Ghost World, and now the buzz about Monsoon Wedding... even a cursory web search brings up some pretty amazing facts and figures. 948 films produced in 1990 alone? Yikes.

I am about to make my dear friend Siobhan, A Kiwi She-Wolf in London, semi-famous (ha!). She made me laugh until I cried this morning with this wee missive:

i saw some shocking ballet last night. greg and carol got cheap tickets to the final dress rehearsal of romeo and juliet. unbeknownst to us it were not the play it were the ballet! i am not a big ballet fan at the best of times but this was shocking beyond belief. the tights were just too much for me to cope with, especially from the front row. at one point i had a severe giggle attack and had to stare intently at the triangle player in the orchestra in an attempt to quell my mirth. surely they could equip them with some sort of modesty frill??? left at half time to avoid disgracing myself. it all looks to me suspiciously like mime on tippy-toe as well. and juliet had huge bendy banana-like feet! enormous they were! madness.

I'm so inutterably glad that last night's documentary on 9/11 was brought to us by *Nextel*. Make sure you have the right *brand* of mobile phone to ring your loved ones and inform them of your impending death! *Hurl*. I hate people.

The blogging virus is slowly, inexorably spreading. The latest to join us is Husband Brent, bless his heart! (Problematically, many of my pop-cultural theories are shamelessly stolen from him. Uh-oh, this is going to be an Empress' New Clothes situation, I can feel it in my bones...)

Hey! I rediscovered something last night! Reading for *pleasure*! You know, J.D. Salinger is good...

The Osbournes is so much fun that it almost makes me like MTV for a moment. I was never a metal chick at all, but I love Ozzy. He's so *endearingly* maniacal. And Kelly has some truly awesome shit. Her clothes are great, her furniture is great, her handbags are great... it's quite depressing really.

Speaking of TV, Alex sent me this link ages ago and it deserves worldwide acclaim. Do you want the theme song to Catweazle (funniest line in The Filth and the Fury: John Lydon saying that during the Sex Pistols' river cruise jubilee concert, Richard Branson popped up 'looking like Catweazle'. Thought I would die laughing), or Rainbow, or even Charles in Charge? Go to it, then! Commentary is also hilarious. Example from the Rainbow summary: .... GEOFFREY HAYES was the amiable stooge in a three-way personality clash between Bungle the sappy bear (with mysteriously changing head), docile one-armed hippo puppet George [Jill Phythian comments: "The way George was obliged to take on the female role is particularly pertinent. Wearing curlers while in bed (with Zippy and Bungle, of course), fluttering his lashes to get attention, harbouring ambitions to be a hairdresser and occasionally disappearing just as there was a surprise visit from his "cousin" Georgina, who looked strangely identical to him, only with a curly wig on. It's all deeply suspect..."] and stroppy, one-armed thing puppet Zippy (and, originally, weird sub-puppets Sunshine and Mooney). Cosgrove Hall clunky animated intervals, ROD, JANE and FREDDY in musical interlude (again, a replacement for original six-man group and Rainbow theme writers Telltale), Playschool-style "real life" film, story at the end from guest "celeb" etc. Survived to the mid-'80s with minimal changes - George and Zippy moved from hiding behind window to hiding behind desk, Bungle getting through several different heads (see this site for a frankly terrifying photo of an early one with brief pre-Geoff presenter David Cox), switching of "third Man" in Rod/Jane triangle - originally Roger, then Mathew (Corbett, of bear pupperty fame), then your actual Freddy, then Roger, back again in the '80s (see this site for more on that), or Geoffrey getting minor haircut about 1982. Then it all went wrong... "Up above the streets and houses," etc... And we'd love to believe the rumour that the closing guitar-led theme was a toned-down version of a Frank Zappa composition, but unless anyone has proof, we remain unconvinced...

Things I would never have seen on the net if Brent wasn't writing his thesis: this amazing, powerful range of posters from the 1968 Paris Commune. 'Le patron a besoin de toi. Tu n'as pas besoin de lui.' All-fuckin'-*right*!

Suffering from what Elvis Costello tactfully calls 'assisted insomnia' in the new Rhino liner notes to the rereleased This Year's Model. He wrote 'Pump it Up' like this. Why don't *I* get creative under these circumstances?

Oh, yeah. That 'not being a genius' thing catches up with one in the wee smalls.

Here are two things which prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am an old, old woman at the age of 27.

The first is that I have a knee which feels painful and dodgy in bad weather. How? How could this happen? I'm meant to be in the prime of my life and I creak and ache! I am Henry the Eighth on his fifth wife! (Did he have arthritis, or was it gout? Or are we blaming syphilis? Yikes.)

The second is that I have to confess my number one television obsessions. They are more important to me than The Fifth Wheel, Talk Soup, Antiques Roadshow, The Real World, The Daily Show, Shipmates, The Sopranos, *and* Sex and the City.

Changing Rooms and Ground Force. I *love* them. On Saturdays and Sundays BBCAmerica shows two hours of them; on weekdays it's only an hour. I have been known to watch the same episode more than once. Brent says when he hears brass band music he now associates it entirely with me grinning inanely in front of the telly. I ask you: how have I managed to turn into a person who loves DIY shows?

I went to the rodeo *four* times this year, twice for free. I actually paid my seventeen dollars (!!!) for Dylan and Neil Diamond, but ZZTop and Destiny's Child were gratis. I have some notes about Beyonce and co. First thing: great spectacle. They had like nine hundred costume changes and groups of hoppity dancers and balloons and streamers and a *flaming hoop* through which to walk... wow. And their drummer was pretty great (I maintain that they owe most of their success to Timbaland - skittish beats are the key). Second thing: call her Miss Knowles. 'Survivor' is incredibly mean-spirited as a song, but it's kind of *magnificently* awful. Beyonce, you kicked them out of the group already. They *have* no careers. Leave them alone! She's trying to channel Diana Ross and succeeding pretty well. (Although Diana is somewhat more subtle about being a bitch - a lesson to learn?) Third thing: covers of 'Ooh Child' and snippets of Outkast and 'Get Ur Freak On' went down well. And they actually did an entire 'bit' being the Ikettes doing 'Proud Mary', complete with flailing dance moves. Nice touch. Fourth thing: Ending the show with a giant cheque presentation from the 'Survivor Foundation' to Houston AIDS research - and then *immediately* shilling for their new remix album - was *unbelievably* tacky. Egomaniacal much?

Found out yesterday while reading EW, of all things, that Kevin Smith (the hunky New Zealand actor, not the American director) recently died from complications due to accidental head injuries sustained in Beijing. First Angela D'Audney, now this. Good grief. How depressing. Will we have any local celebrities *left* by the time I get home? Although get *this*:

"Prast says the opening performance of the Vagina Monologues in Auckland on Saturday, which stars
Smith's Xena colleague Lucy Lawless, is dedicated to the actor."

Ugghhh! Is nothing safe from that perniciously egomaniacal play? Must I go *home* and hear about it too???

The best opening sentence of a freshman essay ever:

"If I were to gather the most up-to-date history books and read them, a repetitive tingle would slowly begin to inch its way up my spine and gradually explode into my thoughts."

Sounds a tad over-excited, doesn't he? :)