Awww, Eileen has posted a great story about a stranger returning her lost wallet. Very heart-warming!

Margaret Cho
Last night I joined Bex, Fin, and two of their friends at the Sydney Theater to catch the world premiere of Margaret Cho’s new show, “Beautiful.” It was AWESOME. I can remember when my Mom and I first discovered her in the early 90’s. We liked her because she was Korean, and because we’d never seen a smart, funny Korean on TV before. Her imitations of her mother had us in stitches. I knew that she’d gotten really popular in the last few years, but I had no idea that she’d become such an international gay icon. (She’s actually the grand marshal of this year’s parade.) Last night the packed audience consisted of 90% gay men, 9.9% lesbians… and me. The audience loved her. They couldn’t get enough. Most of the show was about sex, but she still threw in some hilarious Korean humour too. We didn’t stop laughing for more than an hour. She was fabulous, much tinier than I imagined, and she ended the show with a song (whose title I won’t repeat here, but which was stuck in my head for an hour). And then when we were standing around out front afterwards, Bex and I suddenly found ourselves talking to Mark Trevorrow (aka Bob Downe), an honest-to-goodness celebrity! He seemed really friendly.

Vote for Niko!
Got thirty seconds to do a good deed? My mom’s friend Jane has an autistic son and three adopted special needs kids, and a great charity called 4 Paws for Ability was able to provide them with a companion dog called Niko. Jane’s entered a photo of Niko in an online contest with a grand prize of $10K to be donated to a pet charity. Jane wants to win so she can give back to 4 Paws for Ability. Isn’t that awesome? If you’d like to vote for Niko, just go over here. (Yeah, it asks for an email address, but just use a throwaway one like I did.) Thanks!

For those of you who wanted to see it, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is finally opening at the Dendy theatres tomorrow…

I just want to publicly acknowledge some good customer service. I got an email today from GoGet (the car share we belong to) letting me know that there’s a new car available not far from us in Glebe, and that they’re doing a special rate on it for the next month. It’s going to save us like $60 on a day trip we’ve got planned. So “yay!” for saving money. I also like that all of their communications are really friendly and non-corporate, and they make me happy to be a part of such a successful local business.

Happy birthday to crumpet! She’s a blogger, an artist, a knitter, a beloved doggy-mama, and she makes a mean vegetarian chocolate pudding. And if you buy me a piece of art from her shop, you will make us both very happy. 🙂

Excellent. I just got a call today from the Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre letting me know that their Adult Swim Classes are starting back up again. I was a little hesitant to spend the money ($200 for ten lessons plus unlimited use of the pool over those ten weeks) when we’re so broke, but I rationalized it to myself and the Snook thus: I am giving up Diet Coke. I know I tried that once before, but I’m serious this time. I spend at least $10 a week on Diet Coke, so I figure it’s a good sacrifice for the class. I start a week from Thursday! (But the Diet Coke prohibition starts NOW.)

“Local laws could scuttle iPhone deals.” Nooooooo! But– wait. That article is stupid. I seem to recall that France had the exact same law about tying a mobile to a carrier, so Apple released an unlocked iPhone. So they’ve done it before! There’s a precedent. I refuse to give up hope. (That was the #1 Google result for “iPhone France”, by the way. You’d think these fancy pants QUT researchers could’ve turned up that little gem. Shoddy journalism.)

Big Spanish Castle Optical Illusion. That is SO NEAT! You stare at the dot for thirty seconds, then mouse over the image so the black-and-white version comes up. Except your eyes have gone all wonky, and it looks full colour til you move them! (Link courtesy of Daring Fireball.)

The web-goddess Oscar Contest 2008 is now CLOSED for new entries! The awards show is about to begin. I’ll be updating scores as often as I can over the next few hours. You’ll be able to see how you’re doing on this results page. And remember to count the dead people for me! Thanks…

Update: And it’s all over! Congratulations to Gerald Granozio, who takes out the top prize this year. There was actually a five-way tie for first between Gerald, Brinton Callaghan, Jeremy Muir, Kevan Tucker, and Terry Rutherford, all of whom got 11 out of 12 correct. It came down to the dead-people tie-breaker then, which this year ended up being 43. Gerald guessed 42, just beating out Kevan who guessed 45. I think this was our closest contest ever! Thanks to everybody who entered.

Even later: Wow! It turns out that Gerald is a bit of a ringer. 🙂