KNOTS LANDING:

Speaking of Knots landing, Joan Van Ark always had a bit of a weird thing happening with her face and hair, in recent years Joan has obviously tried to correct this with plastic surgery and i’m pleased to say Joan has gone WAY over the top and we now have a new member of the ‘Cranio destruction society’.

MUTANT LIBERAL:

I love this, someone in Adelaide altered this election poster, i dont feel bad posting it seeing as she is a liberal.

# 1 WITH A BULLET:
Inspired to my recent visit to ‘The needle and the damage done’ show at the Opera house i’ve been searching the net for more album covers that one day i hope to have in my collection ..

ABOVE PIC: Please insert large organ joke here.

ABOVE PIC: You know i think i may actually have this album?.

ABOVE PIC: A dog with a camera .. nice.

ABOVE PIC: Best hair ever on an album cover.

PUCK YOU TAMMY!!:

HOW, WHAT, WHEN AND WHY:
I always love it when people say to me ‘So when did you turn gay?’ the only response i have is ‘I dunno, when did you turn strait?’ i dont buy the theory that you just become one or the other when you hit your mid teens, i always have been gay and have always known it .. i didnt know ‘what’ it was called or even really what it was, but i’ve always had crushes on guys, from even when i was little, i think back now to how funny it was, all the boys in my class when we were nine or ten-ish talking about and day dreaming about Marcia Brady and all i could ever think about was her brother Peter, or later when i was about fifteen and a heap of us would gather together to watch Knots Landing and again all the lads would be goggle eyed over Nicolette Sheridan and of course i’d be eyeing off Patrick Peterson who played Michael Fairgate, an early indicator to my friends should have been the time i admitted i cried when Michael’s father on the show Sid Fairgate died in a cliff hanger. Back to what prompted this, the other day while scouring the net i came across a couple of photo’s of my childhood crushes, Patrick Peterson who was on ‘Knot’s Landing’ and Matthew Labortaux who played Albert Ingles on Little house on the prairie as well as a mega rare photo of Chris Knight and Maureen McCormick’s album, ah such innocent times, when did life and romance get so serious?

ABOVE PIC’S: Patrick Peterson.

ABOVE PIC: Matthew Labortaux.

ABOVE PIC: Maureen McCormick and Chris Knight.

PUCK YOU WENDY’S!: Last weekend while visiting a friend i felt the urge while out shopping to splash out and also risk a little flatual backlash by springing for a Wendy’s chocolate milkshake, when i was handed the shake i went all Seinfeld and got all huffy, this isnt the standard milkshake container size? apparently yes it is now, this cup had shrinkage. As with everything including the marshmallow on Iced vo vo’s it has been reduced in size, i know my milkshake container girth’s and Wendy’s has cut there’s down, way down, what a gyp!, i hope the company and everyone associated with perpetrating this sham goes broke .. or at the very least becomes lactose intolerant and ends up with a weeping arse each time they drink one of these Sham Shakes.

LOVE HANDLES: I am currently in the throes of an addiction of monsterous proportions, lamingtons with cream in the middle, this isnt a nibble every couple of weeks, i’m averaging two or three of these mothers a week, our work canteen sells the freshest ones i’ve ever tasted, i simply dont know how to say no and i know things are getting bad when a work mate said to me this morning ‘Greg, you have cream on the end of your nose’ .. i have a problem.

A DAZE IN THE LIFE: I think poor Christine and i have set a record for most distance covered in the least amount of time this weekend, it started off on Friday with all good intentions, i was off to the December Unity meeting, but i was shagged! so i thought I’d have a wee nana nap before i headed out .. this turned into a three hour nana coma so Friday night was a write off, but i did get an unheard of ten hours sleep, then it all got a little crazy. On Saturday morning i headed up to Sydney to see my friend Matt who was visiting from Melbourne, Matt and i met years ago as pen pals and have become ‘off paper’ friends and catch up whenever we can, parked Christine in a ‘Costanza spot’ on Crown St Surrey Hills and wandered down the road, hmmmm whats this i spy? a new op shop? should i go in?, I’m running late but something drew me in (and it wasn’t the musty smell of the clothes) i walked strait down the end where i could see some books displayed and there sitting on the top shelf (where else) i saw it, it beckoned me like a beacon and time truly seemed to stand still, my hands reached up .. higher and higher until they gently grasped and lowered the book to my heaving bosom ‘A Rose by any other name’ Rose Porteous’s autobiography!! the very book i have searched high and low for for years, scouring ebay like a manic teuretic librarian, i have never seen this book listed anywhere, and it was ONLY four dollars!!, little did the homely shop keeper realise that i would have paid four millllllion dollars for it, such is my passion for the lovely la stupendous Rose, the old guy behind the counter leant over and whispered to me ‘Do you like her?’ i leant in towards him and whispered back ‘I love her’ he gave me a look and said ‘I cant believe it’s been on the shelf a whole week’.

ABOVE PIC: Gold from the shelves of op.

Once i had my book clenched in my sweaty little paw i scampered off to my friend Matt’s hotel where we caught up, had a quick chat (Matt is a celebrity journalist and has ALL the good goss) we then raced out for a lunch of sushi which ended up taking much longer to eat as it was right next to a gym and the parade of muscled up boys had us sitting their with mouths agape and bits of tofu and seaweed hanging from our open mouths, after that it was off up Oxford st for some shopping and on the way back we came across ‘Mr Gimp the charity case’, just another reason i love Sydney so much .. here is a guy standing on the corner with his wanger and arse hanging out, begging for money in a leather mask and people were just walking by him without so much as a sideways glance.

ABOVE PIC: Mr Gimp the charity case.

After stopping to admire the somewhat stained wonder’s of the gimp it was time for a refreshing drink so Matt and i found a cafe and relaxed awhile and carried on the chatter.



ABOVE PICs: Crown st cafe

I then had to leave Matt and race back to Rockdale to see my friends Julie and Mary, this was a quick visit then it was back into the city and parking in the Opera house, from there i walked to the Rocks and met Barb’s for dinner at a really beautiful Thai restaurant over looking circular quay and the international passenger terminal, it was such a lovely evening, Barbara and i then walked around to the Opera house to watch a performance of ‘The needle and the damage done’ the best way to explain this show is from a flyer .. “It really is is shockingly bad,” says Fiona Scott-Norman of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival hit she is bringing to the Opera House. “The whole show is full of shockingly bad stuff.”

At first appearance it seems a strange way to entice audiences but, in the case of The Needle And The Damage Done, bad is kitsch, and kitsch is good.

Over 75 minutes, Scott-Norman counts down a top 10, or should that be bottom 10, of the worst albums of all time. She trawls through the collection of just-plain-wrong vinyl she has amassed over the years, starting as a teenager in England when she shoplifted a Rolf Harris LP. It was strange preparation for her move to Australia at 18 but great grounding for her Melbourne radio program Trash Is My Life.”

ABOVE PIC: Barb’s and i at the Opera house, we asked the tourist who took the photo to make sure he got Luna park in the background of the pic, alas we later found out he didn’t speak English, that will teach me not to pick a photographer based on how hot they look.

The evening was made slightly more interesting (more or less) with the arrival of Tim Freedman from the band the Whitlams into the audience, a more tiresome, self important, boorish, drunk you could never hope to meet .. he tried heckling and drawing attention to himself and all i could think was ‘What a sad and sorry shit wadd you are, you must REALLY be missing your fifteen minutes of fame’

ABOVE PIC: Boorish has been Tim Freedman.

The show was an absolute hoot and i was happy to see that i had at least a third of the albums on display in the show, AND my faves ‘The Shaggs’ came out as all time winners of worst album ever!, if you scroll a few posts down you will see a post about the Shags i made awhile ago.

I crashed out at Barb’s place and Sunday morning we headed over to North Bondi for breakfast, yum yum yum .. and everyone over there is soooooper cool and funky, it reminds me of St Kilda with board shorts. I said farewell to Barb’s then drove down to Central station to pick up Greg (another Melbourne visitor), we revved up Christine who was LOVING all this racing around and we headed out to the Paramatta record fair, one or two bargains were to be had but it was mainly about catching up with some friends there, it was amazingly hot in the hall where it was held and the ratio of over heated, sweating, unwashed, dirty of exposed toenail, matted haired nerds to more sanitary glamour pusses such as myself was about 100/1 .. in THEIR favour, it was like walking through some futuristic conceptual art gallery for the blind where they have only different scents and stenches pumped out every one or two metres for the sightless to sniff and visualise, lets just say there were some heady aroma’s. It WAS cool to catch up with old friends Bruce and Gary (who were of course ‘Odour neutral’)

ABOVE PIC: Gary (Inspector Gadget), Greg A, Bruce and me Greg S.

Greg and i left the whiffy confines and headed into Newtown where we hit Gould’s book shop, this place is massive and is filled top to bottom with old book’s, record’s, magazine’s and as we later found a cat.

We fired Christine back up who was sitting proudly in her ‘Costanza spot’ right out the front and headed over the harbour bridge to Adam and Janelle’s new house, we hadn’t planned on staying long but Adam and Janelle surprised us by laying on a BBQ dinner, it was a lovely summer night and we got to sit out on their balcony eating and drinking and listening to music, we stayed till about nine then i got Greg back to his in laws at Engadine and i still had time to race up and see his little boy who i have dubbed Homer since he was a baby as that was one of the first words he could say clearly and it was great to also see Lesley, Greg’s wife .. who i must say had a look of understanding and compassion in her twinkling eyes when i emotionally told her of my ‘A Rose by any other name’ find.

ABOVE PIC: Janelle’s glam table setting.

ABOVE PIC: Greg, Adam and Greg.

ABOVE PIC: Adam, Janelle and Greg.

All in all I’d say that was the recipe for the perfect weekend, fun, sun and friends .. does anything much else matter?.