WE HAVE MOVED - COME HITHER

We be evolving. And renaming. And boldly going where millions of blogs have gone before.

Henceforth and forever, my new blog is hogsatemysister

Yep, that's Hogs Ate My Sister, one word, no caps.

Why? Because my mother always said, "Haven't had so much fun since the hogs ate my sister."

'Nuff said.

See you at the new site.

And forgive the tech teething problems. After 30 years in PR and journalism, I've used up a lot of brain cells already...

Gaga, Cher, Justin at Meat TV Awards

Let's see. What's in entertainment news?

Lady Gaga contracts hoof and mouth disease at MTV awards. She is featured in a meat dress that showcases her rump roast, and glams it up with armadillo high heels featuring 12-inch stilettos. Slaughterhouse meets road kill fashion. Yum.

Cher, at 64, wears the same Fredericks of Hollywood see-through black body stocking that she made infamous in 1989 when singing "If I Could Turn Back Time." She hugs Gaga's meat and boasts that ex-daughter-Chastity-turned-son Chaz recently had species re-assignment surgery and is fantastically happy as a newt.

Justin "Mini MTV" Bieber was keen to prove he's now a manly teenage stud muffin but entered wearing his Mommy's big ol'lady sunglasses. On stage he stood nearly as tall as Gaga's shoes and literally towered over his dance partners, who were specially recruited from Miss Muffet's preschool. Sadly, his carefully choreographed "Big Hunk Justin" branding campaign stumbled when Rihanna bitch slapped him backstage and he cried.

Jane Fonda, 72, not at MTV but saturating the airwaves nonetheless, is once again all Spandexed up. She's leading the nation's aging Baby Boomers into a new era of fitness, facelifts and flashy mobility scooters. Jane tried to get Gaga and Cher on her exercise video, but health officials worried that the raw meat and preservatives would react, sending the wrong message - Ewww - to health conscious seniors.

And critics say the internet is offensive...

Questions for your 50s: Where are the car keys? Isn't he dead yet?

George Clooney just turned 50. I hate him. He still looks like, well, himself. Me and my old friends, not so much. Except maybe in our minds.

That was recently brought home to a tall, still-studly buddy of mine. He was at a social function when a pretty high school girl offered him her chair so he could sit down. Sad? It was way worse than sad. He initially thought she was flirting with him.

My "senior awakening" was internet related. I heard that there WAS an internet. Kidding. But I really was stunned when I had to click TWICE on drop-down menus to get to 1956, the year I was born and when gravity was invented.

Being mid-50s means my new car will probably outlast me. I will soon qualify for Denny's Senior menu. And when I look in the mirror, I see ... George Clooney... Except he now looks just like my grandpa.

Bugger.

I didn't expect my 50's to be an age of exploration - exploring the room I just left for clues ... what exactly did I just forget to remember. Car keys? Fire extinguisher? No. 1 son?

Being in my mid-50s means my body and brain are changing. I now like Advil way better than M&Ms. Putting milk in my innards is like dropping a Mentos into a Diet Coke. And my memory loss mantra is "Denny Crane, Mad Cow."

But lately, what has annoyed me most is not knowing who is dead and who isn't.

Sure, I know which family members are breathing and which have karked it. Mainly. But when I'm thinking about a major sports star or actor from my youth, I never really know whether they still have a pulse. Usually, if I think they are are dead, they ain't, and vice-versa.

I was at the grocery store and learned that Michael Douglas has throat cancer. That's sad, but way better than being dead, which is what I thought he was. In fact, his DAD is still alive. Kirk is now 93.

Wonder if he says "I am Spartacus. Now where are my chariot keys?" Or just
"Denny Crane. Mad Cow."

Give Me Tornadoes Any Day

An earthquake just whacked Christchurch, which is New Zealand's second largest city, about 500 miles south of me. Thankfully, no casualties to report, but perhaps $2 billion in damage.

It all makes me think about relativity and Mother Nature.

Growing up in Oklahoma, we spent most fall and spring evenings with the television on, listening for the omnipresent boob boop boop tornado warning (e.g. "it could happen folks") and the occasional tornado alert (e.g. "some of ya'll about to get all kinds of blown away").

Since we heard the boop boop boop about eleventy hunnerd times every tornado season, tornado warnings were just part of the weather forecast: humid, fair to partly cloudy, with a high of 92 and a low of 74, with a 90% chance that some mobile home, somewhere in Oklahoma, is gonna get blowed away, but it's not near you so don't worry.

People who don't live with tornadoes seem to think they are like atom bombs, blowing up all over the place. Truth is, most tornadoes are small and stay in the clouds, never even touching down. But when they do touch down, you can be sure it will end up on the news: roll helicopter footage of the "path of destruction", the three twisted mobile homes on their sides, a pickup stuck in flood waters, and a fat woman saying "it sounded lock uh big ol' freight train."

And people outside of Tornado Alley would wonder: why do those stupid Okies live in a place where there are tornadoes? Most of the time, these comments were from smug Californians.

Note: California is the state that will drop into the Pacific Ocean when the Big One hits. Californians have never grasped that while you can outsmart a tornado - "run sideways to it", get in the truck and outrun it, join the poisonous snakes in the cellar - there is nowhere to run when an earthquake hits.

Thankfully, the earthquake that hit Christchurch was not deadly or the Big One, though it was plenty bad. And, thankfully, those of us in Auckland don't have to worry about earthquakes. Or tornadoes. Or killer floods for that matter.

We've got volcanoes.

It's all relative.