It's finally here: The end of Movember

I can't stand this Movember thing. Especially since the revival of all those 70s/80s movies. Starsky and Hutch, Shaft, Dukes of Hazard...

I understand it is to raise money for cancer, but every tom, harry and dick is doing it and only about 5% of the guys I have spoken to are actually raising money. The other dufii (plural of dufus) are thinking this is a fashion trend and getting on the bandwagon.

The most common Mo I've seen this year is the trucker. It is atrocious. I have heard numerous stories of girlfriends telling their boyfriends if the mo stays, the action goes.

The funniest guys are those who can hardly grow a moustache. Love those ones.
But, the most common ones this year have been any 70s variant or combo of porn star, undercover brother, trucker and box car.
And if I have a meeting with someone who happens to have a mo, I can't take them seriously, at all. Even random people I see on the street who have these crazy moustaches, I just laugh at them out loud.

So to all those I know who have Mos, I am happy to say I will be glad to see it go, come December tomorrow.
To Charlie and Nemes, siyonara to your furry lips. You bastards actually assist in ruining my birthday photos. My birthday not only happens to be on the anniversary of JFK's death, AND onNational Lebanese day (please, dig the knife in deeper), I also have to contend with bloody Movember.
At least Scarlett Johansson has the same birthday as me. A small reprieve.

My birsday

Oh, it was a fun birthday this year.
Can't believe how close I am to 30. At least the skin is looking tip top. I don't look older than 25.

Dinner was real nice last week. All of my mates went to the Regis Room at the Beach Rd. It was a little hard to swing because they have some dumb rule- "We don't serve a table of more than 15 people after 7.30", so we just split into 2 tables that were side by side. Not a bad effort.

All my favourites were there and it was an excellent finish to a great day (which started with meetinigs at 7.30am). But...my thinkings on birthdays are that it's just another day, so all day I was pleasantly surprised with flowers and treats. Thanks to those that sent them.


I got a present from Tiffanys from everyone which was so nice. I didn't even want to open it, I just wanted to look at the bag and the box all night!

I even had a tantrum at the end of the night, because some dude spilt a bit of wine on my skirt, I lost my tiara and I really just wanted to throw a glass across a table. That was fun too. See, just take the day as it comes.

And then I went home.

Now this week is this party! It's for Deb, Eb, Deb, Deb, Leb, Neb, Steb, Yeb and Boogie. Yay.
If you haven't yet RSVP'd, please send an email to RSVP Peppermint.
Should be some GREAT stories from the night, so stay posted.

Baby love

We have a new one to add to the list!
A mermaid baby!


I don't know why I love these so much.
Another one to add to my list:
4 legged chicken (link)
2 faced cat (link)
3 armed kid (link)
2 headed snake (link)
2 headed turtle (link)

In my searches for the links, I ended finding a whole repository of all this stuff. Mad!

Oh- and then there was this cool thing. Pictures of animals in the womb. Great!

Revisitation

I think this is one of the best photos I have of me as a kid, especially considering the current fashion climate.
The outfit is just so ridiculously cool, those boots (I think those were my very first pair of boots...I'm so glad they were moon boots), those jeans. The acid stone wash with the elasticised ankles. I want a pair like that now! That great windbreaker. I love those blue stripes on the arm and the pink zippers make it.
That fringe combined with half pony also rocks my world.

To add to that little fantastic ensemble (thanks Ima for dressing me, although I do definitely remember going mad for those boots), my stance is unbelievable. I own that star and I seem to have been pretty rapt in the idea that it was Elton's.
The fact that I'm not actually looking at the camera and the open mouth (obviously saying something like "hurry the hell up") just makes me think I was already thinking of what I was crap I was going to pull next. You can see the germs of what is my fully fledged character now, were already present back then, starting to unfold to what most of you love to hate today (or is it hate to love?).

This photo is now in a place of honour of my fridge.

It was lucky I saw this photo before I left to the states, because one of my three to dos was:
And now, what do we have?
I was too tall to stand, so I had to kneel.
Grandma is a terrible photographer and she didn't really understand the concept of a digital camera. At first she would just hold it in front of her and just wait for it to take. I kept telling her it was like a regular camera, just press that damn button. But even if she did, I'd get one leg and maybe a hand in the picture. Needless to say, I had to get randoms to take photos for me.

This picture doesn't even come close to the other one (except maybe for my bunny top, the mondrian shoes and my curly hair). At least i'm wearing those "fuck off" sunglasses.

Right after this picture was taken, I did pull some shite. Outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre all these characters are dressed up . You can't talk to them and you certainly can't take photos of them, or you have to pay (or I would have a picture right here). But Chewbacca and some Dementor or something were standing there. Out of the corner of my eye, I see them chatting. Asking each other what the time is, what's happening that night, what shizz is going down. I say to them:

"You can't chat to each other! For God's sake! You ARE ruining my illusion!!"

Next thing, Chewy roars at me, I get such a fright and I jumped back and tripped over Grandma!

In the pic there are double stars on the sidewalk- a new development. I don't like how Hollywood Blvd has run out of room. I think perhaps it's time to remove the has-beens.
I think that maybe in posing, I also tried too hard.

But I'm very much liking this idea of revisiting snaps I've taken years earlier. 18 years is a long long time. I think I'll try go again in another 18. It will kind of be like that Time and again project, where they came back to the same town 20 years later and took photos of the same people, asked them stories about their lives and saw how they changed. At least I'll have this blog to look back on and see what a lunatic I was.

The great Cruise caper

Where in the hell do I begin??
As usual there was the usual trickery, scamming and tom foolery. There are so many stories, I'm not sure whether to do mini vignettes or bang it out in one big , long post- which just seems wrong.

I'll give some highlights at first and then maybe I'll expand....

Grandma and I
Grandma and I got on famously. I was a bit anxious about the dentures. But after the initial shock all was good.
Everywhere we went, her name became "Grandma". She was quite the character. I could see some gems of smart-assisms, quite clearly a link in the long line of chain of smart ass that has descended into my gene pool.
Grandma did get a little ticked off when I made her pull out the "rock on" signal in most photos. The first one, she thought it was funny, the last one she was a little bit fucked off.

Grandma in the boat safety drill

Grandma rockin it up at Virgin Mega Store, Hollywood Blvd (only rockstars wear sunglasses inside)

The Carnival Pride
This is a boat full of middle American Bogans going on holidays. They are fat, they are loud, they are constantly at the buffet.
My first day on the boat was a little bit of a shock. There is no cash. Everything is in swipecard format. I thought I would be in trouble, but prices were so astronomical that I didn't even try buy alcohol. My strategy was getting people to buy for me (it failed, badly). An hour massage was $150US, a drink was $8US. I'd been hanging out for months for that damn massage. Still haven't had one. Still struggling.

I still had a good time. Sat by the pool every day. Gym for 2 hours every day. Ports were awesome.
I went ziplining and abseiling in Puerto Vallarta. The photos they took were so expensive, I had to take a photo of the photo on the laptop (good trick for everyone for next time).
Parasailing in Cabo San Lucas
Just looking around Mazatlan.

The weather was great and the Mexicans were pretty cool.

I wanted to have a cultured, realistic experience in these towns, and the boat was so artificial and manufactured that I had to do anything I could to get away from them all.

I reckon I would go on a cruise again- but maybe one that wasn't so cheesy and with a lot of friends... I'd also bring my own shipment of alcohol. Even if you buy it duty free in port, the boat security confiscates it and doesn't give it back till you are back in the States so that you spend more on the boat. Bastards.

Other highlights

• A gay asian waiter who spoke with a hispanic accent. Think of that dude from the Birdcage, but asian. Strange.
  
  
• These americans were so fat, one woman was worried that in port she wouldn't be able to come back to the boat for lunch, then afternoon tea, then dinner.
  
  
• When she sang in the show, I was shocked. I had to close my mouth and think "take a photo for the blog, do it". Didn't come as instinct like it usually does. I thought she was wearing a fat suit. She was the human walrus.


• I made friends with the staff. I was inbetween all the demographics on the boat, so at times it was a little tough to find friends. I dressed up on Halloween, in a toga (ie bedsheet off my bed) and raced up to the party on Lido deck. It was like a bull bucking. I lasted 40 seconds before being kicked out.
  The security people, who are like Kapos (staff v security), recognised me because they were continually carding me. Apparently I don't look 21. The only thing I was thinking when being escorted out of there "...meh, at least I'll have a good story for the blog."
  
  
• Gorging myself on a chocolate bar and seeing a massive fat lady whislt doing it....
  
  
• The guy who made smoked salmon bagels, and great tuna sandwiches- his name was "Imade". I must have said the joke "Your surname is 'Sandwiches'?" about one hundred times.
  
  
• Really, really, really fat kids.
  
  
• You know you're in a heavily populated tourist area when there is one of the dickwads making those spraypaint planet paintings. There is one in every bloody city...
  
  



• On first glance, looking at this picture, I thought "Good on those Mexicans. They got their apostrophe right". On second glance, I realise they tried to shorten "Here it is". Sillyheads. At least the have good accents.



• Some moron in LA asking me where I'm from and saying Australia. His response was that he loves my accent and how sad it is that he doesn't have one. I tried to explain to him that, yes, everyone does indeed have an accent. He didn't quite get it.
  
  
• In general just walking around like I own the place. It's amazing how most people have a tendancy to follow rules. I just don't do that. I was imagining that I would be really good as a staff member on the cruise and then I realised, I just wouldn't be able to follow ANY of the rules. I'd probably last 5 minutes.
  But I used to go to whichever dinner I was assigned to, I'd tell staff that whoever "...said it was OK." The only thing that didn't work was that damn staff party.
  
  
• Seeing this painting, for real!
  
  



• Seeing toilet paper in Mexico that was like my Mondrian/Rubik's Cube shoes
  
  



• Seeing this cool Mexican guy who was so trapped in the 70s. You can just hear "Staying Alive" playing in the background.... Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk, I'm a woman's man...




• The boat having this environmental policy "please only put towels on the floor if you would like new towels. But remember, it uses a lot of resource to wash towels, so only request new ones if you really need them." But then, every night you go back to your room and on your bedm they've made these dumb animals out of towels. Each animal uses about 3 towels! Then you can go to the boat store and buy the towel making book for $29.99!
  
  
• Buying a puffa jacket from the JLo line. Because, if you're going to buy a puffa jacket, she will be the one person who gets it right!
  




• No matter who I tried to be cheeky with... everyone felt they deserved to cop a feel! There was this lovely old Jewish man in LA who would not let up. When he said to my Grandmother that he was stealing me as his grand daughter, and when he said I can't leave without giving him a hug and a kiss we knew it was time to go. He fully grabbed me right before we left. It was a little scary.
  This guy got a grope for letting me drive his boat...
  



• Tour of the Warner Bros studios. Kicks ASS on Universal. Was a lot of fun.
  



• Hanging out with Handbag in LA. Seeing one of the funniest comedians I have ever seen in my life- he acts like a redneck, talks like a redneck, but explains the comedic devices he is using like he is the Grammar Police. Gold!
  

That was pretty much it (in a nutshell). Thanks Grandma for the trip!
As I remeber more stories, I'll try post.
Otherwise pics will be on Flickr.

A quick hello

I'm on holidays.
It's fun. Good Stories. Actually, some great stories.
I love Mexico. LA is pretty cool too.

Can't wait till I get back and upload the doozies. Don't know whether to do one mammoth post or put it in bits. I guess I'll decide on the plane trip back...

See you all soon.

Don't really miss you that much...

Love Wisey
xoxo