Are you a Pom? (For you Yanks, a Pom is an Aussie slang term for a British person.) I scored a sixteen, which puts me worryingly close to being one. Hopefully I’ll be able to rectify that in the near future. (Link courtesy of Kristen.)

I’m a magnet for assholes. Yes, truly. I discovered this tonight at the Paul Kelly concert in Shepherd’s Bush. Paul Kelly is a famous Australian musician that Snookums and I like a lot. (He also resembles Principal Snyder from Buffy a great deal.) The show was great, but the audience members around us were not. In front we had a pair of tarts, both in “one-armed tit tops” (TM Meg). The one to the left was being chatted up by an obnoxious loser the entire night. They talked through the entire damn show, including both encores. It was the rudest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. At one point during a lull in a quieter song, I heard them discussing the merits of the Spice Girls. (And lest you think we were sitting in some obscure corner of the balcony, we weren’t. We were standing in the center of the stalls 30 feet from the bloody stage.) I spent ages trying to work up the courage and righteous anger to tell them off. Justice was served, however, when a tall man in front of them lifted his short flossie girlfriend up onto his shoulders, placing her ass right in the chatty tart’s face. My laughter was not quiet. Okay, enough ranting. It’s been a long day. The Harry Potter review will have to wait til the morn. Sleep tight, kids.

THAT WAS BLOODY BRILLIANT.
Yes, that’s me out in front of the Harry Potter poster at 8:15 this morning, half-asleep in my glasses. (Click on it to see the full-size version.) And yes, I did walk all the way through Hammersmith with that lightning bolt on my forehead. There were probably 30 people (mostly parents and kids) at the first showing, and I was the only one who came “in costume”. There was a slight emergency when the film stopped just as the Quidditch sequence was beginning, but they eventually got it sorted and it gave the kiddies a convenient bathroom break. EVERYBODY LOVED IT. I’ll write a more lengthy review later in the day (must sleep), but for now, my advice is to get on the phone and book your tickets for the first show possible. You won’t regret it.

Why am I up at the crack of dawn? Oh yeah, to see the first public preview of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone! Now I just need Snookums to draw a lightning bolt on my forehead…

Roger Ebert’s review of Amelie is finally available. He liked it as much as I did.

Well, it’s the Snook’s last day at work. Hooray! For those of you in London, we’ll be having leaving drinks tonight in Hammersmith at Smollensky’s. See you there!

I was doing a little Internet research to discover why Lady Victoria Hervey’s Style column was replaced in last week’s Sunday Times when I came across this excellent article full of tips to fake being a posh British aristocrat. I’ll see you all at the next non-branded polo match, okay?

Cholesterol makes you smarter. That is literally the greatest news EVER. Suddenly I’m craving a cheeseburger.

So Prince Charles got slapped in the face with a flower today, right? What kind of a crappy protest was that? You wanna make an impression, you gotta throw a pie. The hilarious part of Chuck’s tale is that apparently the President of Latvia called him up later to apologize for the girl’s actions and to say that she was obviously “mentally unstable”. (They actually said that on the News tonight.) That cracked me up.

Finally, somebody else noticed the Taliban/Taleban issue that I mentioned back in September. The BBC expert explains why there are different spellings, but he doesn’t really clear up the issue of why Americans use “i” and Brits use “e”. I am unsatisfied.