Grant Thomas And His Curious Finger

Why is Grant Thomas pointing at his eye?

Is he trying to poke at it to extract a tear?

Has he a sty?

Conjunctivitis perhaps?

The World's Only Accepable Personalised Number Plate

As seen parked at the footy last week.

Naomi Robson's Steve Irwin Tribute

The lizard's on the dole.

Photo from Crikey's daily news thingy.

My First Big Advertising Award!

Me and Adam Liddiard came third in The Age and MADC's Creative Raw Awards on Friday.

We beat all the big agencies.

When he announced our award, Clemenger BBDO/Melbourne Chairman, Ron Mather described our tagline, If it's not Dodoni, it's just wet cheese, for Dodoni Feta Cheese as "the best in the competition".

Each of Melbourne's big advertising agencies sent in one or two of their young creative teams to compete in the one day competition.

It was the first advertising award Adam and I have entered since finishing AWARD School last month.

The winners were a team from Marmalade and our mates at Grey Worldwide came second.

Big thanks to Nick and Michael at Singleton, Ogilvy & Mather for letting us represent their agency on the day.

Photo from MADC's Flickr set and you can see all the ads here.

Bill Grainger's Mysterious Reducing Hair Trauma

Sydney celebrity chef, Bill Grainger disturbs me.

His books and cooking shows check out. Bit prancy but mostly easy to follow recipes. Saw him live at one of those cooking shows. He did scrambled eggs. Use cream, butter and a hot pan. Don't muck around. Fry eggs quick, flip and get the hell out. Good advice.

Nope, there's nothing wrong with Bills (his books and restaurants don't use an apostrophe) cooking.

It's Bills hair that winds me up.

Bills paranoid about balding. Pick up any of his books, look at the photos and I'll guarantee you won't see the top of his head. The shot is either from a strange upwards angle, from behind, in a strange light, far away or even cropped at the forehead, chopping off the top of his head altogether.

Watch his cooking shows and the same thing happens. He comes across onscreen as almost effete but sheesh, he must run his shoots with anger a la Monsieur Mick Malthouse.

"If you so much as show a teaspoon sized bit of my bald spot I will shove this spatula so far down your cakehole you'll be ordering porridge everyday until first day of cherry season!"

Aw Gee Thanks, Kids!

Almost 17,000 visitors have visited The Nightwatchman in the past 18 months.

Here's some amazing facts and figures about 2006.

42 per cent of Nightwatchman readers are return visitors (aw gee, thanks!)

914 people have visited The Nightwatchman over 100 times.

825 people have come only to see a picture of Mariah Carey having a bath with her dog.

81 people came only because, like me, they spelled Anton Newcombe's name incorrectly.

My busiest day was on June 16 when 745 people came to read about Rory Matthews and Chicky, his footballing alpaca.

My other blogs have received over 5,000 visitors in the last 18 months.

Ooh Spicy!

Ooh Spicy!, originally uploaded by glennpeters.

At last I got one!

I've been putting it off for years.

And look at its brand name!

On Beating Carlton

Um. I feel good. Don't care where they were on the ladder. We won the game and won the fight. I just feel good. Really good.

Now let's watch the original Up There Cazaly clip.

Hot Pies.

It Could Only Happen In Albury

Found this doozy in Albury Wodonga's Border Mail.

A couple of months ago, West Albury legend, Ben Sudano gets drunk and drives his ute over a steep embankment.

Amazingly, the car lands on its wheels after doing a COMPLETE BACKFLIP.

Then the self employed plumber keeps driving as if nothing happened.

Police watch the incredible feat, pull him up and ask if he'd been drinking.

"Heaps," Sudano replies.

All Hail The Toilet Flushing Cat!

Cat flushes toilet, waits for the tank to fill and flushes it again.

And again and again and again.

Hilarious.

Shakin' Not Blurred

Reckon you've got a steady hand? Check out this strangely soothing, car pinstriping footage.

I found it on Boing Boing. Best blog ever. Visit it daily and you won't need to come back here ever again.



And here's a ridiculously disturbing Shakin' Stevens video clip.

Bye Bye Bon Scott: The Exhibition

Big local rock fella, James Young was the bloke who bought Bon Scott's ex-wife Irene Thornton's collection of private letters and photo album earlier this year.

He's framed them and posted them at his ad agency's public cafe SEE for all of us to see.

Samples can be seen online at SEE's blog.

And here's a link to Patrick Donovan's (another huge ACDC fan) Age story about the exhibition.

Check it out at SEE, 25 Nott Street Port Melbourne, from 7.30am to 3.30pm Monday to Friday until Friday 29 September 2006.

All Hail The Lady Punch Video!

Have you seen the Lady Punch video yet?

I have.

At least 40 times.

What Do You Really Really Want?

I get annoyed with job ads wanting three people in one applicant.

Like this:

EXPERIENCED JOURNALIST REQUIRED

Skilled Headline Writer
Must be experienced journalist.
Skilled Headline Writer Must know Quark intimately.
Be acquainted with Photoshop.
Have keyboard speed of 60+ wpm.
Be super proficient with Apple platform.

What is it you really want? A good journalist, subeditor or a graphic artist? Or do you want an editorial assistant to type down dictation?

And when the employer hints at so many roles in one position you can only expect them to be tight arses who will pay their employees bugger all.

No wonder this employer seems to have a similar ad in Seek every couple of weeks.

A journalist who knows Quark intimately?

Eugh!

Lay Off Our Taz For Chris-Sakes!

I'm so sick of this obsessive bloodlust for Chris Tarrant right now. Even before last week's certain maritime themed nightclub incident, Taz was being blamed for everything from our so-so form to the war in Lebanon.

And it's getting much worse.

I woke Sunday morning drained by Saturday night's incredible game against Adelaide. It was intense, modern and intelligent football. As Kinky Friedman would say, the game was like Johnny Cash in 1958. Dangerous. Neither side gave anything inside their own backlines. Every kick and tackle so calculated. Not even livewires like DT and Didak could break free.

Well, that was the game I watched.

Not the Herald Sun's "Here's one we prepared earlier," front page headline teaser, FROM BAD TO WORSE: Another Shocking Night For Tarrant. Funny how there wasn't an article to go with the headline.

Visit my Collingwood footy blog, Victoria Park to read the rest of this diatribe. A highlight is when I call The Herald Sun's Mark Robinson's football analysis "atrocious, vindictive and amateurish."

Baby, Give Me A Kiss

"Joe Francis, the founder of the "Girls Gone Wild" empire, is humiliating me. He has my face pressed against the hood of a car, my arms twisted hard behind my back. He's pushing himself against me, shouting: "This is what they did to me in Panama City!"

It's after 3 a.m. and we're in a parking lot on the outskirts of Chicago. Electronic music is buzzing from the nightclub across the street, mixing easily with the laughter of the guys who are watching this, this me-pinned-and-helpless thing.

Francis isn't laughing.

He has turned on me, and I don't know why. He's going on and on about Panama City Beach, the spring break spot in northern Florida where Bay County sheriff's deputies arrested him three years ago on charges of racketeering, drug trafficking and promoting the sexual performance of a child. As he yells, I wonder if this is a flashback, or if he's punishing me for being the only blond in sight who's not wearing a thong. This much is certain: He's got at least 80 pounds on me and I'm thinking he's about to break my left arm. My eyes start to stream tears.

This is not what I anticipated when I signed up for a tour of Joe Francis' world. I've been with him nonstop since early afternoon, listening as he teases employees, flying on his private jet, eating fast food and watching young women hurl themselves against his 6-foot-2-inch frame, declaring, "We want to go wild!"

From a zinger of an article by Claire Hoffman in the Los Angeles Times about scumbag soft-porn king, Joe Francis.

I follow Francis and his bodyguard through the crowd to find Kaitlyn Bultema. She's dancing on a podium and leaps off at the sight of Francis. She's wearing a skirt-and-shirt ensemble that exposes her stomach, most of her breasts and much of her bottom. I ask her why she wants to appear on "Girls Gone Wild" and she looks me in the eye and says, "I want everybody to see me because I'm hot."

It's then that it hits me: This is so much bigger than Francis. In a culture where cheap and portable video technology lets everyone play at stardom, and where America's voyeuristic appetite for reality television seems insatiable, teenagers, like the ones in this club, see cameras as validation. "Most guys want to have sex with me and maybe I could meet one new guy, but if I get filmed everyone could see me," Bultema says. "If you do this, you might get noticed by somebodyÂ?to be an actress or a model."

I ask her why she wants to get noticed. "You want people to say, 'Hey, I saw you.' Everybody wants to be famous in some way. Getting famous will get me anything I want. If I walk into somebody's house and said, 'Give me this,' I could have it."

It gets horrifyingly worse.

An excellent article to print out and read during the ads on Idol tonight.

I found it in Boing Boing.

Middle Park Beats Middle East As Front Page News

There's an awful war in Lebanon, Fidel Castro's on his deathbed and the first elections have just been conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

What does the Herald Sun run with on their front page?

The Chris Tarrant and Ben Johnson pub brawl story.

It also takes up the back page and pages 2, 92 and 93.

Terrific.

At least in the page two story, Brawl Ends A Glitzy Night a witness introduced readers to a charming new subculture.

Ocean Blue has developed a strong following among footballers since opening this year, taking over from the Beach on Beaconsfield Pde as a destination of choice.

"It's full of inner-city CUBs (cashed-up bogans)," one Middle Park local told the Herald Sun.

Pot kettle black, anyone?

Kooky Brilliance Straight Out Of Lebanon

One little bit Sloan and ten thousand big bits Freddy Mercury, Lebanese powerpop wunderkind, Mika is going to be huge.

The first two songs on his myspace page are dainty, rocking and fabulous.

The third stinks.

Nicknaming's Golden Rules

George Bush is crap at remembering people's names so he gives everybody he meets and works with nicknames. He calls his senior advisor, Karl Rove the cutesy name, Turd Blossom.

I like nicknames. I like using them. I like making them up. But there are some golden rules you must abide by if you don't want to ever be laughed out of the stadium.

The Golden Rule: DO NOT EVER make up your own nickname.
It could be the most stupid, daggy, embarrassing, pathetic and sad thing you could ever do. Making up nicknames is your mates' job. Your mates haven't given you a nickname? Go out and get yourself a new bunch of mates. Join a footy club. Do anything but make up your own nickname.

Hot Dogs made up his own nickname. Remember how much of a pathetic site it was to see him on the first night in the Big Brother house introducing himself to everyone? "Hi, I'm Hot Dogs!"

Nobody was listening. Nor should they.

Crispian Mills from 90's Brit Pop also-rans, Kula Shaker gave himself the name, The Flash. See, that's what happens if you call your son Crispian.

If you've been known under a nickname for years and you suddenly want to be known by your real first name. Bad luck.
Only way out of this is again, get another new bunch of mates. This time don't join a footy or cricket club. Try joining your local scrabble club. Old scrabs ladies don't use nicknames.

Do not infiltrate.
If there's something more annoying and pathetic than a bloke who gives himself a nickname is the same bloke who runs around the group using long used nicknames to a bunch of mates he's only known for a few hours. As much as a nickname is earned, the right to use someone else's alias in conversation is earned.

A good rule of thumb is to only call someone by their nickname when you know the story about how they came to earn it.

Learn everybody's real names.
Weddings can be embarrassing when you're trying to complement Dud Root's mum's efforts with the chicken wing and tomato casserole.

Introduce yourself with your own first name.
Not an essential rule. Merely a matter of taste and class.

Hi, I'm Glenn. But I've also answered to Peters, Glenny, Glennis, Gleenis, Stout, GP, Twenty, Nudge, Gwendoline and Dixie.

And a big hello to Jack, Skipper, Macca, Magilla, Cockwallet, Dicko, Methers, Dud Root, Bamen, Rudeboy, Ray, Carny, Freddy, Johnny Livewire and Squidge!

President Bush Gropes German Chancellor Merkel: The Footage

The Daily Show's on Foxtel! Here's Jon Stewart's frighteningly hilarious take on George Bush's grope on German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

I've been replaying this spot all afternoon.

Incredible.