Traffic Jam poem No 3. (aka eucalyptus oil inhalation verse)

I'b god a veby bad cold in deh head.
Id's so bad I'b dagen do bed.
My head's lige a melon.
My nose geebs on swellin'
I thig I'd be bedder off dead.
(Only joging)

Paracedamol's nod done a jod,
Egginacea's nod helbing a lod,
Berhabs I'll tage 'Plagebo',
Need lods of faith though,
Do helb me ged oud of my cod.

Well, the days have slipped away fast,
I'm starting to feel better at last,
No long slumber here,
As once was the fear,
(Only joking)
M'hooter just needs one more blast.

Dame Edna, eat your heart out.

Dame Edna Everage

Piers Lane

You couldn't find two performers more different than Barry Humphries and Piers Lane. Seeing both on the same weekend made for a stark contrast. On Saturday night, Humphries in "Dame Edna - Back With Vengeance" played at the Lyric Theatre. The following afternoon, Brisbane born but London based concert pianist Piers Lane performed next door at the Conservatorium Theatre.

Dame Edna's vengeance was exacting. No one was safe from Humphries' rapier sharp wit. To an overweight audience member returning to her seat, Edna called out, "Don't worry Colleen, let gravity do its work!". Even before the show had opened, Humphries told a local newspaper the best thing about Paris Hilton was that she gave hope to girls who aren't pretty!

On the night, the humour was both black and blue, tending to the burlesque side of vaudeville. The satiric one liners came thick and fast, the next one set up as soon as its predecessor had fallen. There was dancing and music, monologues and mayhem.

The audience were a motley crew: fans of Humphries and interested others it seemed. There weren't many very young people (most were of retirement village age with seat cushions and thermos flasks in hand) and I didn't spot any of the usual blue-rinsed, hoity-toity crowd who frequent the Queensland Performing Arts complex (QPAC) with their subscription tickets and beaded purses. Hard-boiled lolly wrapper crinkling lady wasn't there and neither was the bow tied whisker-scratching fat man. Perhaps the humour was too vulgar for them.

I found the show (especially Les Patterson) at times, unnecessarily distasteful and knew it would be. Still, nothing much shocks a zimble these days and I had wanted to see the show because Humphries' writing is very clever (especially in the Sandy Stone monologue). Humphries is also an icon of the Australian entertainment industry and I got the sense that this might have been his last run in Brisbane.

Piers Lane also gave a show to be remembered. I've heard him a few times before and often listen to his Cd's. He gave an all Chopin recital with two encores and roused a standing ovation.

If someone asked me how I would recognise Piers' playing, I would say from the absolutely clear pronunciation of Chopin's beautiful melody lines and from the depth of understanding of the music's layers and colours. He spoke to the audience before each work and then left for a deeply personal world of his own, beckoning, with absolute sincerity, us to follow.

Both men are top artists with everything completely sorted. Who is better? Although Humphries is the more celebrated, for a Brisbane audience, I'd have to say it is Piers Lane who is better. Whilst Barry Humphries played to us, Piers Lane played for us and I think there is a difference.

Tooled up.

Sometimes things happen for a reason. I was standing in the bathroom brushing my teeth, warbling 'Climb Ev'ry Mountain' between rinses this morning, when my elderly two-bar wall heater decided it was time to end it all by leaping from its mounting and plunging to the cold hard lino floor below. (I think it must have had a screw loose).

I immediately ensured that none of my limbs were missing and that I still had a pulse. Fortunately, no self-administered precordial thump was required. Next came a cup of tea and a lie down.

Then, in an unexpected and momentary channelling of Lara Croft, I decided to replace the fallen heater with a new one myself. I've largely avoided drills, thinking them loud, heavy, mess-creating and quite possibly dangerous but on the other hand, the calling in of a tradesman or handyman is never an appealing thought. Sometimes you just don't feel like putting up with someone who sniggers at what they consider too minor a job and then charges like a wounded bull.

A 4 'mil' bit, two self-tapping screws and an enthusiastic, if off-key, rendition of 'Spice Up Your Life' later and ta-da! New wall heater! And do you know, using the drill was somehow strangely empowering. There was a wall and whether it liked it or not it was going to have a hole in it. Feng Shui can only do so much when what you really need in your life is some gutsy, fire in the belly, drill-till-you-drop demolition.

In fact, an urgent scan of the latest junk mail catalogue suggested that zimbles could successfully own and use any number of tools: a laser guided 550W jigsaw, a 110 litre GMC one-half horse power cement mixer, a 115 mm 860 W angle grinder! There's a whole world of power out there just waiting to be discovered.

Indeed, who needs a Husquvarna when there's a Red-Roo 'SG350-2' 200 kg 16 hp manual stump grinder to be had!

Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End.

To tell you the truth, I wasn't looking for much in this hyped up block-buster. It was largely because of all the hype that I had avoided the first two movies of the series. All I really expected was a couple of hours of mildly entertaining distraction and it was nice to go to the cinema. The ticket price was only $A 7.90, thanks to the terrific people running Cineplex who, along with Centro at New Farm, regularly stick it up the Megaplex Corporations - go you good things!

But, I was surprised to find myself thoroughly engaged by this movie. The cast is terrific: Johnny Depp never fails to impress; Geoffrey Rush looks like he is having fun and Keira Knightly works hard. I always enjoy Tom Hollander's performances ('Cambridge Spies' and 'Pride and Prejudice' especially).

A drawback though was Orlando Bloom. He certainly has the looks to make the teenage girls swoon and his imbd resume seems to be that of a nice solid jobbing British actor. Still, his performance was lack-luster and the chemistry with Knightly not very believable. (I think she did the right thing to send him off to the locker).

To give him credit though, it was probably a hard task to play the straight man and romantic hero beside Depp and Rush who were clearly in their element.

The other thing was the CGI. It certainly holds the movie together but at 168 minutes, there's simply too much of it with unnecessarily long battle scenes. (I'd also ditch the monkey and the macaw but I suppose they're needed to draw in young families).

Despite these minor gripes, I found 'Pirates' much more than 'mildly entertaining'. In fact, it was rollicking good fun. In the end, I was believing in pirates. I knew which side I wanted to be on. Heck, yeah! I was going to fight for freedom!

Better dead than red.

It's not a phobia.

When you ask people about their earliest memories, most will talk about family or Christmas or places of warmth and happiness. My earliest memories prescribe a life long abhorrence of tomatoes. At three, I howled at a kindergarten picnic because no one would take me seriously when I said I didn’t want tomato sauce on my bread roll. My anti-tomato sentiments are certainly not the acute or ephemeral whim of a crazed zimble.

The reason for the tomato's existence is totally beyond me. Why this fruit should ever have succeeded on the rocky slopes of evolution is a conundrum of the highest order. The reality is that the tomato is a pestilential blight on the earth and should be forced onto the endangered species list as quickly as possible with a view to its total annihilation.

I hardly need to expound the deficiencies of the tomato. Even if anti-tomatoism is not yet their reality, most decent and sensible people have some intuitive understanding of the problem. They know their love of the tomato is a mere illusion.

There the tomato sits, all red and shiny, plump and inviting, whilst secretly hiding a squelchy horror worthy of Beelzebub himself. Its pretence of ripeness is a shallow ruse with sour immaturity and post-date putrefaction its norm. Unforgiving of an even slightly blunt knife, the tomato spurts in the eye of the unwary.

Of course, the greatest and most obvious deficiency of the tomato is its philosophical bent. Here is a fruit that pretends to be a vegetable! The tomato is living a lie! It has none of the sweetness of the strawberry, the sunniness of the orange or any of the practicality of the banana. The tomato, if it were going to ‘be’ anywhere, should have stuck to fungal decay on the floors of remote jungle valleys instead of plonking itself into the baskets of innocent grocery shoppers.

From the bitter, bruise-if-you-blink skin to the slimy seeds of its hollow core the tomato is a rotter.