Best jaw dropper this week!

Best jaw-dropper of the week is watching the moment Sarah Murdoch's mouth opens in shock (see green arrow) as she is told via her earpiece, live to air, that she's just about to shatter a young girl's dream and make another's come true, twice in one night.
Every cloud has its silver lining, especially when you're the new Australia's Next Top Model, Amanda Ware, 18, from the Gold Coast.
It was a crazy couple of minutes last night in Sydney when the wrong winner was announced live to air.
It's all over the net as one of the biggest fails so here is a little graphic of the key moments from the winner who eventually loses, to supermodel hostess Sarah Murdoch's sincere 'oh no I'm so so sorry' apology, and back to the loser transformed into winner.

When I spoke to fashion designer and judge Alex Perry mid ANTM season, he said there would be some surprises, but not even he could have seen the bomb dropped on stage at the live final - poor Kelsey Martinovich had already delivered an entire thank-you speech and just as supposed runner-up Amanda began her gracious bow out, you can see Sarah's jaw open as she hears the mistake via her earpiece.
Today Alex Perry defended the show saying it was not a publicity stunt, and knowing him, he's 100 per cent.
Plus Sarah is a sincere personality - she's always been super nice everytime I've crossed her path at events such as Australian Fashion Week last year.
Embarrassing mistake, yes, YouTube gold, yes, epic fail for live TV, well yes if you were Kelsey's relatives and friends watching from around the country, but no in terms of global attention - any publicity is good publicity and that two minutes was unbeatable.
Watch the vid here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_OowbhjJXE

RANDOM Q & A: What makes you think of The Goodies? For me it's string, people named Kenneth, hearing A Walk in the Black Forest, and black puddings. Leave a comment :)

Now, any chance I can get I'll mention Brad Pitt, so Brad, if you're reading, this blog post is for you since you have a keen interest in architecture. Just put whichever of your seven children you're holding, down in front of the TV to watch re-runs of the Brangy Bunch for two minutes and read on ...
When you drive through a city, its architecture can speak a thousand words, but you rarely think of the person behind the building. So it was quite interesting to speak with Michael Rayner for the new issue of Bmag (Brisbane Magazine), one of Australia's top architects who has designed some of Brisbane City's iconic buildings and bridges, and other structures throughout the world.

Plus he has just designed his own house on the banks of the Brisbane River with an indoor swimming pool in the middle of the house, joking he planned it that way to give his kids space from their parents as they grew older. That kinda beats a bike for Christmas doesn't it!
You'd need an Olympic size pool though, wouldn't you Brad, to fit the whole family, the nannies, the chef, personal trainer, chauffeur, lawyer, agent and security guards in all at once?
Plus your Oceans Umpteenth mate is on the cover, so click HERE & go to pages 14-15.
There's also a Home/Living story in this issue of Bmag on a new home at Springfield Lakes which the owner told me was so luxurious, he can't bear the thought of going on holiday anywhere to lower his standard of living! He laughed, but I think he was only half joking. Click HERE & go to pages 42-43.

And want to say "g'day" to new readers who've just joined me from Canada, the United States, France, Germany and the UK, and via a translator, 'gidday' to the New Zealanders.

French impressions - not impressionism!

CLICK ON IMAGE TO READ ARTICLE

Had one of the toughest assignments of my life for Queensland Luxury Style Magazine and Brisbane Style Magazine recently - interviewing a French woman!
That's right, it was the full hard yards. Not only did I think she said 'in a shower sprocket' when she had actually said 'in each other's pocket' thanks to a rich and sensual accent, but she was petite, witty, pretty and I could go on with more rhyming words but you get the drift. Yes, Nolwenn Stephan made this hardened journo feel like the vulnerable untoned untanned unpetite Aussie woman that she is thanks to a genepool I had no choice in. (Sorry Mum, I do like the curly hair you gave me though!)
Femme envy aside, Nolwenn is a formidable emerging artist whose graffiti-inspired style with spray cans amongst her tools of choice, simply rocks.
Local Gold Coasters can catch her debut solo exhibition mid-November and see some awesome modern takes on portrait icons such as Beethoven, Brigitte Bardot and my fave - Linda Carter as Wonder Woman.
I mean, who didn't spin around in the loungeroom wearing their mum's secretarial glasses and pretend to turn into that insanely curvaceous superheroette when they were 7? And the garden hose made a mean golden lasso!
(Ha ha, just had to spell check 'lasso' because I think in the past 19 years of writing I've never had cause to include that word in any of my news articles ...)

A different way to spend the baby bonus

What does botulism, sumo wrestling, the baby bonus and a dead tortoise six foot under all have to do with life this week?
Glad you asked ... they all thread together two Speedy Reads published in this week's new issue of That's Life magazine out today, penned by me to help pay my mortgage (and my secret addiction to Cadbury Flakes - I figure because they weigh almost nothing, so will I if I eat them, but somehow that hasn't happened as yet).


Yep, I must say the yarns I am handed from the Speedy Reads editor keep me bursting with party lines whenever I do manage to get out.
"Did you know a pregnant woman had her waters break at the vets where she was visiting her sick dog who was paralysed because it ate a dead tortoise infected with botulism, then she had the baby and came home but before that, stopped off at the vets with her newborn so the dog could lick its toes? Oh, and they spent the whole baby bonus from the government on the vet bills. Gee this dip is nice, and er, pass the bowl of Cheese and Bacon Balls over this way why dontcha!"
Hmmm, I should try to get out more these days.
Ah yes, and sumo. Well here's the thing, it's a growing women's sport, and you don't have to eat as many Cadbury Flakes as one may think. In fact, I wish I was slim enough to qualify for the under 65kg category myself, but that would take effort - say no more.

As for my media watching this week, it included me watching the media, literally.
I sat on the side of the Nerang bike track watching the Channel Seven cameraman film my four year old skateboarding for a news story yet to air, meaning I now have to watch Channel Seven news every night until then. Wish I knew how to program my VCR!!!

I read the news today oh boy!

I read the news today oh boy! (Yes that's a Beatles lyric - 10 points if you picked that up!) and it triggered one of my most vivid memories of my days spent in the newsroom .. the day Princess Diana died.
What leads me to this is a story today where, apparently, the editor of a rural Aussie newspaper has been stood down after commenting on Facebook about how his circulation would benefit from coverage of the tragic shooting death of a local policeman.
His Facebook friend left comments saying how inappropriate that was to post on Facebook, and I wholeheartedly agree. Read the story on news.com.au
Yes the newsroom can desensitize a news journo, no doubt.
But essentially I think a newsroom is just like Vegas - the trick of the trade is to remember that what's said in the newsroom, stays in the newsroom.

Case in point - the day Diana died. It was a quiet Sunday morning in the newspaper office, nothing much had happened on Saturday night which meant the following day's Monday paper would be almost devoid of crime stories, so when I heard the weekend news editor shout out with glee that he was lucky to already have a front page for the next day's paper, I went to investigate.
"Princess Diana's been in a car accident in France, we know she's injured but that's all at this stage," he said, almost clapping his hands at what had fallen into his lap on a lazy Sunday.
The hours rolled on and tiny pieces of info filtered through but in between leaving the office to parking the car on my driveway at home, the announcement came that she had died.
Suffice to say, it was front page all right, across the whole world.
Now what if back then there was Facebook, and my news editor has become excited and made some knee-jerk comment - he probably wouldn't be a senior figure in the Australian news industry now to say the least.
Luckily only I and a handful of journos were the only witnesses to his initial excitement, which in the end turned to shock and dismay like the rest of us.

That day, and September 11, 2001, made me see history in a whole new light. Something had affected me. I FELT the tragedy. Then it hit me how my parents had always spoken of the day that JFK died, and I'd never really given it much thought. Their world at the time had felt that blow hard. It's a horrible feeling but a uniting one at the same time, and tomorrow on the anniversary of 9/11, I'll be reminded of that when I cry at all the horrific TV coverage I'm bound to watch.
So here's my thought for the day, and for tomorrow on September 11 - over time you may not think you'll change, but eventually the world changes you.



(Still trying to figure out how to change the date to an Australian timezone from the current US one - because it says this is Thursday at the top, but I know for a fact that today is Friday in Australia because I live here - did I mention I can't program a VCR either? God help me!

Only 7 hrs and 49 minutes since my first post and in between that time there's been a flurry of Weetbix, honey toast, teeth-cleaning and drop offs for school photo day ( I did resist, by the way, using my fingers to lick down the stray curls that somehow resembled devil's horns jutting from his head on either side) ... and a half-dose of sleep that wasn't overly satisfying to tell you the truth.
But it's a new day and that means more stories to be done!

So today just out is the new issue of That's Life with two Speedy Reads by me (and an awesome free cookbook on low fat chicken) on a truck driver who loves watching the ballet, and a young mum who gave birth through her shorts - no joke - in the garage half way in/out of the car.




Birth ... don't get me started. But I can tell you now I wasn't wearing shorts and even if I'd been half way up/down a camel's hump I wouldn't have noticed.

Oh, and by the way, I also have red hair so I'm not going to give you another vote either for whether I run this blog or not for the next three years!

FAR OUT ... it's 25 minutes past midnight and my blog is finally ALIVE! Major excitement for someone who still can't program a VCR, but since that technology barely has any modern relevance anymore it looks more and more like I'm going to get away with it. In fact, if you're under 25 you probably don't even know what I'm talking about. Ahem, moving right along,so, here we are then ... you like nice today, love the hair ... um, want to hear what's happening in the corners of the world I write in?

Well, just out today is the new issue of bmag - Brisbane's largest lifestyle magazine - with an article detailing a chat I had with one of Queenland's rich list, Graham Turner who founded the Flight Centre, whose assets are worth around $350 million (hang on, just double checked and there's another cool million dollars to add to that) yet takes pleasure in the simple joy of riding his bike for some alone time ...

Weirdo reflection of the day - realising that in 1998 I bought my first home for a piddly $127,500. OMG I should never have moved and instead sold it for four times that much which it's worth now - perhaps I'd be a little closer to joining my aforementioned mate on that list.

Best LOL, ROFL or PMLOL or whatever letters you like to use to symbolise that you had a giggle, was from my Facebook friend Caitlin whose friend vented that 'Rob ``bloody'' Oakeshott's ridiculously drawn-out Oscar-style speech' had rather annoyed him. I questioned whether the Independent had also thanked God, since I'd switched back to Triple J on the car radio after five sets of traffic lights and still no end to the speech in sight. To which Caitlin replied (and get ready for the boom tish symbol crash) ... 'Rach, he didn't thank God, and thank Christ for that!'

Well, it is 10 minutes to 1am ... I find anything's pretty amusing at this time of night.

L8r (that's so Bill and Ted - embarrasment! but I still can't look away from Keanu ... can anyone?)
:)Rach

Pssst: I know there are 50 gazillion more illustrious, ridiculous, witty, crafty and creative sign off symbols than a basic smiley facey these days but did I mention I still don't know how to program a VCR, so BACK OFF!

Hello!

Hi everyone, welcome to my new blog!!!

Rach :)