As the man who once said, "Life's too short to see Les Miserables more than once",* I can only marvel at the endurance of British theatregoer Sally Frith, who has seen the musical 738 times! The show is about to break the box-office record for longest-running musical, overtaking Cats.
* For the record, I don't dislike the show and I have seen it more than once.

There's no stopping Star Trek's William Shatner. According to reports from the US, he is about to host a TV game show called Show Me the Money. According to a BBC report, contestants in the show will have the chance to win millions of dollars by answering trivia questions but will also risk losing everything they have accumulated. Should be a doddle for a man who can pilot an interstellar aircraft.

Britain's premium-rate phone line regulator, Icstis, has ruled that Big Brother misled viewers who paid to evict contestants then watched as one of them returned to the house. Media Guardian reports that Icstis received 2635 complaints after evicted housemate Nikki Grahame was allowed back on to the show. Apart from often insulting our intelligence, "reality" shows like Big Brother are money spinners for TV networks which make lots of money on pemium-rate phone calls. It's good to see one of them held to account for breaching the viewers' trust.

On 612 ABC this morning, I spoke to John Schluter (filling in for Spencer Howson) about re-gifting, the lack of clocks at airport terminals, Kink Friedman's bid to become governor of Texas and the secret behind the laptop computer on the ABC TV news desk (as I suspected, it's there just for show).

I thought we all did it, but an American poll proves at least half of us admit to it. That's the practise of "re-gifting" - rewrapping a present you've received and giving it to someone else. Why do we do it? Because we think the present is more suitable for somebody else, or simply because we're too lazy to go out and shop. More here.

It really is a small world after all - especially if you're only interested in visiting Walt Disney related attractions. As this article reports, a group of Australians is taking a 32-day world tour of all the Disney theme parks - even though they are all basically the same. One of them says: "I don't think I'll ever get tired of going. What I like about Disney parks is that once you go through those front gates you sort of leave the real world behind you. That's why it's so appealing."

Gold Coast Titans boss Michael Searle is fending off criticism of how the Coast was presented at the NRL grand final presentation featuring women in gold lame swimsuits. "Come on, if anyone else can tell me how to better promote the Gold Coast, I'll take it to the National Rugby League, but we are bikinis, we are swimsuits, we are board shorts, we are malibus and we are the Gold Coast Titans."
White shoes and bling, perhaps?

Hmmmm. Here's a good idea for a scam. Tell pet owners you can turn their animals into stars, then take their money without delivering on the promise. Ooops, seems like it's already been done.

(This item also appears on the ie blog.)
As reported in The Courier-Mail today, there's been a reshuffle at Brisbane's Nova 106.9, with Brendon "Bossy" Boss moving into the nighttime Nova 9 shift and Justine McKell being bumped back to late nights. Station general manager Sean Ryan told me last night that nobody had lost their job as a result of the changes, which are not yet reflected on the Nova website. Also apparently up in the air is the fate of Simon Kennedy, who has been co-hosting with McKell since Jabba's move to Sydney a few months ago. Kennedy is the vocal talent behind "work experience announcer" Bevan, so I guess he isn't exactly out of a job.

I'm just old enough to remember hearing on the radio: "Blue Hills by Gwen Meredith". The writer of Australia's best-known radio soap opera has died at age 98, and I join many others in acknowledging her.

The Turner Prize exhibition in the UK can usually be relied on to reignite the debate about what is art and what isn't. The BBC has reprinted comments from various newspaper art critics on this year's exhibition, which includes rubbish on a floor and people apparently working in an office. Nigel Reynolds of the Daily Telegraph wrote in response to the office installation:
The biggest talking point is likely to be generated by a work that could have been crafted by Harold Pinter for the theatre. ... Was this art? Yes, definitely, because the artist said so, explained Katherine Stout, one of the curators."

Is this blog art? As its author, I say Yes.

Call it egotism if you like, but Googling your own name is also a great memory-jogger. Until tonight, I'd completely forgotten I'd ever written an article for The Sunday Mail about a woman who claimed to have been abducted by space aliens. In the article, archived here and dated October 21, 2001, I investigated the issue of jurisdiction in alien-abduction cases. A Queensland Police spokesman said it was a matter for the Australian Federal Police, while the AFP spokesman said: "I don't think there is the power in place to arrest an extraterrestrial." Unless things have changed in the past five years, it means ET can get away with anything.

A couple of mysteries for Brisbaneites to ponder:
* Does anybody ever use the bicycle racks on the front of buses?
* What exactly is the purpose of the laptop computer on the newsreader's desk during the ABC News?

Thanks to everyone who is reading this for helping to make September another record month for debritz.net. According to my stats, the average number of unique visitors is the highest since the blog was relaunched in January - even higher than in July when my analysis (or, perhaps, mere mention) of the Big Brother "turkey-slapping" incident drove huge traffic here. The icing on the cake is that things are already looking bright for October ...

Thanks to Channnel Ten News tonight for this gem: "Next up, the pictures that prove koalas and bulldozers don't mix."
I laughed at first, but now it's depressing to think that somebody wrote that, somebody else read through it and approved it, and it still went to air without anybody realising how inane it is.

"Musicians can run this state better than politicians. Hell - so could beauticians." So says musician and crime novelist Kinky Friedman, who is a candidate for governor of Texas. The man behind songs such as They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Any More is running with the simple slogan: "Why the hell not?"

Ugly Betty is no Out of Practice. It's the highest-rating new show on American television this fall (that's autumn to us), which probably means we'll see it here sooner or later.
PS: In unrelated television news, the

• debritz's blog

At first I thought this was a hoax, but apparently it isn't. Singer Katie Melua is attempting to break the record for the deepest underwater gig. She'll perform a comcert 90m below the surface of the North Sea on an oil rig. It must be true, because it's in The Guardian.

"It is also fitting to note the contribution and continued success of Nine’s local programs, including Extra, Saturday Afternoon and The Shak. In addition, Nine has maintained its position as news leader in Queensland, with National Nine News dominating the ratings so far in 2006." That's Channel 9 Brisbane managing direrctor, sales and operations Les Hart speaking after claiming a ratings victory for the year. I wonder whether that means all those shows will be back again in 2007?

Apparently at least half a million Brisbane people watched the Broncos beat the Storm in the NRL grand final on free-to-air television last night. There's no denying that's a huge figure, but I wonder how many of them would have paid for the privelege? And how many people will now watch - or better still, attend - rugby league games next year?
Where am I going with this? Well, I'll be returning to the topic again soon ...