rivercityvibe   “Puerile, smutty, schoolboy nonsense” – My Mom

Precisely the age at which to divorce the loser Ken, invest in a new rack, and hang around Twisted Martini drunk on vodka.

In the early 2000s, we called the up-market version (for some reason) nightfighters. They’d typically lurk in  very expensive bars atop very expensive department stores. They could be found everywhere – New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Berlin. Even Nicosia did a hairy version. We all have some nightfighter in our history.

Great days……

This is awesome. I know they only have a slack-handful of soldiers in Australia, but they’ve pulled their weight over the last 100 years (Vietnam, anyone). Below is a letter from an Australian soldier.

Dear Mum & Dad,

I am well. Hope youse are too. Tell me big brothers Doug and Phil that the Army is better than workin’ on the farm – tell them to get in bloody quick smart before the jobs are all gone! I wuz a bit slow in settling down at first, because ya don’t hafta get outta bed until 6am. But I like sleeping in now, cuz all ya gotta do before brekky is make ya bed and shine ya boots and clean ya uniform. No bloody cows to milk, no calves to feed, no feed to stack – nothin’!! Ya haz gotta shower though, but its not so bad, coz there’s lotsa hot water and even a light to see what ya doing!

At brekky ya get cereal, fruit and eggs but there’s no kangaroo steaks or possum stew like wot Mum makes. You don’t get fed again until noon and by that time all the city boys are buggered because we’ve been on a ‘route march’ – geez its only just like walking to the windmill in the back paddock!!

This one will kill me brothers Doug and Phil with laughter. I keep getting medals for shootin’ – dunno why. The bullseye is as big as a bloody possum’s bum and it don’t move and it’s not firing back at ya like the Johnsons did when our big scrubber bull got into their prize cows before the Ekka last year! All ya gotta do is make yourself comfortable and hit the target – it’s a piece of piss!! You don’t even load your own cartridges they comes in little boxes and ya don’t have to steady yourself against the rollbar of the roo shooting truck when you reload!

Sometimes ya gotta wrestle with the city boys and I gotta be real careful coz they break easy – it’s not like fighting with Doug and Phil and Jack and Boori and Steve and Muzza all at once like we do at home after the muster.

Turns out I’m not a bad boxer either and it looks like I’m the best the platoon’s got, and I’ve only been beaten by this one bloke from the Engineers – he’s 6 foot 5 and 15 stone and three pick handles across the shoulders and as ya know I’m only 5 foot 7 and eight stone wringin’ wet,but I fought him till the other blokes carried me off to the boozer.

I can’t complain about the Army – tell the boys to get in quick before word gets around how bloody good it is.

Your loving daughter,

Sheila

Brilliant!

The lovely Miranda Kerr. In her BeeBee......

Interesting fact about Miranda Kerr? First Australian Victoria’s Secret model.

As is my habit, I watched an episode of Entourage, On Demand, while I had lunch yesterday at Bones’ hideout. (I had Crawfish Bisque – hey, there’s a recession on….). It was one of those series three episodes, just after Vince has told the studio to kiss his swingers over the remastered Queen’s Boulevard. The boys are planning a trip to Vegas. At this stage, I noticed a bottle of wine on the table with it’s label ostentatiously pointed toward the camera (love that product placement). The label declared in big letters JAX.

For all I know it may be well known.

Some online research by a minion rapidly revealed this wine had nothing whatsoever to do with our great city. Nothing.

If you want it, for the vibe (I have no idea how it drinks), click HERE.

It had me going for a minute, there, though……

Glamor Magazine is running an American Icons series in which B-Listers get to dress as somebody’s idea of  noteworthy individuals and have their picture taken.  I can’t pretend I understand the thought processes of the creative team. They’ve got Emma Stone as the (fictional) Carrie Bradshaw, Hayden Panettiere as Amelia Earhart, Emma Roberts as Audrey Hepburn, and bizarrely, Alicia Keyes as Michelle Obama.

Our own, best beloved, Lindsay Lohan is dressed as Madonna. The early eighties version, I am relieved to announce:

Absent: disfiguring mole. Present: larger rack.

Hmmmmm.

I am not sure about this one……

It’s monkeying with my mind.

You can tell by this picture of her self-administering what a marine sniper might call “a forward assist”.

priceless paparazzi shot......

We were all shocked at how Britney Spears’ behavior over the last couple of years managed to inadvertently rehabilitate the reputation of her ex-husband K-Fed, changing public perception of him as a money-grabbing layabout of limited talent, to  “the sensible parent”, rooted and clear-headed,  with only their childrens’ best interests at heart.

It’s been a long road back for Spears. Her new tour has just launched in New Orleans and she is looking good. K-Fed, on the other hand……. well, I’ll let the pictures tell the story:

"I wish I had a penis"

K-Fed now to be known as Well-Fed

I mean, what is it with these two? Do they share a groceries budget? One gets to eat and one doesn’t, at any one time?

Bedside List girls all, each has married in 2009 and it’s only the 3rd of March. My favorites are falling to the institution of marriage like a Hun counterattack before my great grandfather’s Lewis Gun.

Where will it end? Not Lohan? God NO!*

Let’s remember the good times:

Arrivederci, my angel

Selamat Jalan, my sweet

Auf Wiedersehn, my darling

[*an unlikely contingency, I’ll admit.]

I am going to see Watchmen in Orange Park on Friday. I don’t know if it will be awesome or utterly worthless.  You see, I CANNOT get past the fact that one of the superheroes is dressed as an owl.

Hoo! hoo!

Bottom right. See what I mean?

That said, I think some of these Hollywood costume whizz-kids can do pretty much anything and make it look cool, these days (apart from Batman’s nipples in the appalling Batman and Robin. That was an error). Here’s the Watchmen trailer to help us think this through (owl alert at 1.33):

I’ll let you know how it goes – if I survive AMC Orange Park. It would not surprise me one iota if I were accidentally caught up in a police-involved shooting.

This is not a political post, more a sad comment on the state of our national politics from my vantage point on the banks of the St. Johns. I am talking of course about the latest nonsense relating to media personality Rush Limbaugh, the prescription drug-addicted, thrice-divorced, bastion of “conservative values” who  deigns to tell 20 million willing listeners what to think every day.

"He's fat! He's round! He bounces on the ground! His name is Rush! His name is Rush!

As entertaining as Rush Limbaugh is (and he is an entertainer, as indicated by A. His clown-like shape and B. his, errr,  prime time talk radio show….),  and, as much as I will go to my grave defending his right to broadcast as he does, the current situation which has led a RNC Chairman to publicly apologize to him, is nothing short of a national disgrace.  For his part in this, Michael Steele must be condemned as a lily-livered blemish on the face of the republican party. In any properly-functioning democracy his failure to stand his ground and his craven willingness to kow-tow to the media in this way would disqualify him from holding any important office ever again … but I digress. This post is about Rush.

You see, as a conservative of sorts, I am at a loss as to what people see in him. He is interesting to listen to – from a sociological or even psychological viewpoint and I am even prepared to believe he is a genuinely nice guy. But his credibility as a true conservative is pretty questionable. He is clearly a man of appetites. I bet nobody could call his diet “conservative”.

He is also a famous drug addict. And he reportedly engaged in criminal behavior to secure those drugs (interestingly, in one of his court cases, his sworn enemy* the ACLU filed an amicus brief supporting him. Good material….). He is a constant smoker of cigars having been lauded as an aficionado in the press. His addiction to women is equally well-chronicled. He has been married three times and is currently dating a lovely lady half his age called Kathryn Rogers. I wonder what first attracted her to the millionaire Rush Limbaugh? Here she is:

With her boyfriend...

She says making love to Rush is like having an armoire fall on her with the key sticking out.

I made that last bit up.

Anyway, consider this a college assignment: Rush Limbaugh: A Man of Appetites (Discuss).