Happy Barry Day.

It's Barry Humphries's birthday, one of my favorite days of the year, when we celebrate the birth of one of my favorite people, a man who has brought more laughter and joy into the world than just about anybody else. Make no mistake; Barry is a comic genius every bit the equal of W.C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton,and all The Marx Brothers combined.

Here he is 9 years ago in Los Angeles with Little Dougie, to whom he has always shown more kindness than I bother with. That's right, he's even nice to people whom you don't need to be nice to. (What a waste of niceness.) Incidentally, the big yellow book Barry is holding is a copy of the manuscript of my autobiography, My Lush Life, which he was taking to Dame Edna to read for the lovely cover blurb she wrote for it.

When he was here in Los Angeles last June, Barry told me he had stopped having birthdays, and was now no longer aging. I lived that way for years, until I noticed that while I was staying young in person, I was aging in my movies. Every year my image in my old films got older and older, and looking ever more debauched and dissolute. I blame our cinematographer at PMS Films, Dorian Gray. Once I started letting my real self age, my movie images returned to their original youthful freshness.

Anyway, though Barry was born in 1934, he's not the age that would imply. In fact, he may even be younger than Little Dougie now, who is staring 60 in the face in just a little over three months. So while this adorable picture of Little Barry was shot back around the time Bride of Frankenstein was shot, Barry is still terribly youthful and energetic, so much so that he is, at this moment, rehearsing a new stage show, to open later this month on Broadway, unfortunately co-starring Michael Feinstein, an overpraised wanna-be whom Barry needs about as much as a snake needs a shoehorn.

We should make Barry's birthday a national holiday, when we celebrate comedy in all it's glory, because face it, after sex and booze, comedy is what makes Life worth living. We probably won't though, since Barry is not an American, more's the pity for us.

Technically, he's not a Brit, or as he calls them, Poms, either; he's Australian, but as that's considered part of the "British Empire" (a formerly-worldwide, now-defunct organization of conquest and racism), the Brits felt able to confer upon him the honor Commander of the British Empire, so he is now Dr. Barry John Humphries CBE. In an email he sent me following the announcement of this honor, he wrote: "It was a shock, but a very nice one, and my fellow Australians are now treating me with a new and grudging respect which I have no doubt will turn to a most un-republican adulation when, in a couple of years, the Queen reveals her plans for my further ennoblement."

But Barry is not a prophet without honor in his own country. He was recently honored on Australian postage stamps, seen here cancelled in Moonee Ponds, a Melbourne suburb which is Dame Edna's home town.

As part of that same celebration of Dame Edna's Golden Anniversary, Dame Edna was put on a 50 cent Australian coin. We're all in this to make money, but Barry has become money. And just like me, he has to share his money with a Queen, as you can see on Barry's coin's obverse side. No matter how many times you flip this coin, it always comes up "heads."

So celebrate Barry with some comedy today or tonight. It would be nice if it were some of Barry's, if you have one or more of his DVDs lying about. (I certainly do), but if you don't, try an old WC Fields movie, or a Marx Brothers picture, or even a network repeat of Modern Family, just please, actual comedy, not crap with Will Ferrall or Adam Sandler, or something vulgar from Judd Apatow's factory, and for Heaven's sake, not the Winter Olympics, although there's not much danger of that. Whoever watches the Winter Olympics? (Actually, judging by the weather in Vancouver, it's practically The Summer Olympics anyway. The way things are going, they're going to be skiing on dirt.)


Speaking about aging, Barry and I may be ageless, but my public, I am informed, are not. Here's one of my most ardent long-time fans perusing My Lush Life, a great way to spend your life, or even your afterlife. His eyes aren't so good anymore, which is the reason for the magnifying glass. I haven't brought out a large print edition.

The pennies trickle in. Little Dougie takes his cut. (Somehow, although all he did was take down my words, he got his name put on the cover, title page, and copyright page, as the author. Imagine!) And if he isn't bad enough, here's my agent, down in my money bin, helping himself to his cut, and then some.

Well, how much do I need? As long as I have enough to pay my chauffeur Skelator to drive me to a liquor store, and can pay for my little beverages, I'm fine. Especially if, when I get home, and Eduardo, my gardener's son, has finished pruning my bush, I can enjoy some comedy from Barry Humphries: Life is good.


Check out my new posting on Survivor: Heroes vs Villains: Hi Y'all over on The Huffington Post.

Till then, Cheers darlings.

I Lost My Heart on LOST!

It's St. Valentino's Day, although I knew Rudy, and believe me, he was no saint. He also wasn't Rudy Nureyev, so please ignore Ken Russell's silly movie about him.

There's no mystery about whom my Valentine is this year. If you check out my Huffington Post column: Survivor: Heroes vs Villains: Sugar's Lumps, you will quickly perceive that "Hero" James Clement is my Valentine this year. He's dreamy!

If you were to look at my notes for that column (which would involve breaking into my home. Really not worth it. And my Great Dane Baskerville might eat you, or hump you. He weighs over 200 pounds. When he wants to hump you, you get humped! What a good doggie!), you'd find scribbled in the margins: "Mrs. James Clement, James and Tallulah Clement, Tallulah Clytemnestra Morehead, Knight, Thalberg Tepes Karloff Towers Herkert Borgnine Bronze Rockwood Van Owen Clement." (I hope I haven't left off too many last names. If you were ever married to me, and your last name was absent from that list, shoot me an email.)

Little Dougie is on this "Facebook" gadget, whatever that is. I have my face on a book too, namely my book (My Lush Life), but Little Dougie tells me it's some sort of Internet thingie, and for Valentino's Day, all those sappy people in relationships, in order to keep rubbing everyone else's nose in their being shackled together and desperately pretending that it's bliss, insisted that everyone put up profile shots of themselves with their "partners," like everyone on earth follows their boring life pattern. Why can't they just go to dinner somewhere and annoy waiters? Waiters at least get a tip for putting up with them. Anyway, Little Dougie put up this picture for his Valentine's Facebook profile photo, and then politely suggested that the lovey-dovey couples (in other words, couples where the woman, or the controlling-bottom, is still buying the bullshit the man, or the butt-whipped top, is shoveling out to keep her off of his back) go be pretend-happy somewhere else.

Of course, Hugh is from Australia, so Little Dougie had to do some compensating for the Northern Hemisphere. Here's how the picture looked originally.

Frankly, this day shouldn't belong to Rudolph Valentino at all. It's the birthday of Jack Benny and Thelma Ritter, who are far more worth celebrating than the sham which is "Romantic Love," but which is really just a pitch to sell greeting cards, candy, and flowers, and to keep women in firm control of their "partners" (i.e., their de-balled men.). So let's hear it for Thelma & Jack. (It's also the birthday of our friend Little Kent Levine, who turned 60 today, barely half my age, but it's the age staring Little Dougie in the face come his birthday in May. See how Kent feels about it by a trip over to his flog: By Kent Levine.)

My darling James Clement is a gravedigger, a profession he chose because he likes working with people. I know most people think of Death as a bad thing, but if it means meeting James, well, it can't be all bad. He was certainly worth a quick trip to nearby Samoa.

Sadly, visiting the Heroes camp to fondle James also meant running into the insufferable Cirie. I hope that my columns on The Huffington Post will be soon chronicling her ouster. Check them out weekly to find out.

Fortunately, a visit to the Heroes camp does not risk running into Sore-Loser Russell, whose ego is larger than K-Fed's chins, or Ex-Coach Wade, whom I have dubbed "Voldetool," the most full-of-himself egotistical gasbag on earth. It's quite a crew, but why run on about them here, when I'm running on about them there?

Frankly, for viewing pleasure, there's a different TV show about folks marooned on a South Pacific island that I vastly prefer, although unfortunately, this is its last season.

Everyone of taste loves Lost. Even The Simpsons.

You see, last season they set off an H-Bomb (like you do) to reset time and undo the first five seasons of the show. This plot ploy inspired NBC to set off their own H-Bomb, to try to undo The Jay Leno Show, but it didn't work, because The Jay Leno Show was a bigger bomb than the H-Bomb.


Anyway, it did reset history, but it also didn't, so all the castaways of Oceanic Flight 815 have landed safely in Los Angeles, but they're also still on The Island in 2007, where The Smoke Monster is disguised as Locke, who is dead - well - dead-ish. There the castaways are hiding in a Masonic temple, where they've met Fu Manchu, a doctor who treats infections by giving you death pills (not much repeat business, I imagine), Hurley is now the leader, Jacob is dead, except for when he isn't, and does macarme tapistries under a big statue that isn't there anymore (Sayid was bothered by the fact that the statue only had four toes. You see, it's a statue of the Egyptian goddess Tawaret, who apparently usually has three toes.), and Richard Alpert still won't give me the name of his plastic surgeon. Even Dorian Gray was saying, "Doesn't that man ever age?" So, all that's clear, isn't it?

They've promised to end the show this season, answering all our questions. That means look for the Harlem Globe-Trotters to show up in the final episode.


We seem to have two mutually-exclusive storylines going on. How can they reconcile this without the help of Doctor Who? Wait! That must be it! The Doctor just regenerated. Maybe he's The Smoke Monster! My brain hurts. I need vodka. Fortunately, I have some. Cheers.


I have dropped in on The Island from time to time. I get around. Albeit, that hobbit got a bit startled to find me peering into his porthole. Or was it his starboard hole? Well, one of his holes anyway. It was towards the rear; maybe it was his aft-hole. (It was, after all, on his poop-deck.)

Here I am trekking all over the place with The Locke Monster, Ben, Sun, Richard Alpert, and some Others. I was trying to get Richard to give me his surgeon's name, but all he would say was: "All your questions will be answered by the finale." I stuck close to Sun because we were both looking for the same thing: Gin, though she doesn't know how to spell it. No wonder the skipper was so puzzled. Bob Denver was just alarmed to see me, as we haven't run into each other since we toured together in A Streetcar Named Desire. Bob was the sexiest Stanley Kowalski anyone had ever seen - that afternoon.

I'm an old hand at hanging out on Mysterious Islands. I was billed as "The Panther Woman" in this 1933 thriller by error. The publicist, when he saw me, was trying to say "Pants her!" the perv. (Like I ever needed to be coerced into dropping my panties.) But the silly man had a terrible lisp.

Anyway, I first got invited to The Island back in 1977, when Sawyer was "LeFleur" of The Dharma Initiative. He reads a lot, and a copy of my award-dodging autobiography fell through a time-wormhole (They have them all over the place on that island. Time wormholes, not copies of my book.), much the same way he did, and so he read my book 23 years before I wrote it, and got totally turned on by me (The usual response) and invited me to visit him on The Island, though he asked me not to mention the invitation to someone named "Juliette." Darling, I've been avoiding wives and girl friends since before Richard Alpert was the age he looks. Le Fleur was welcome to whip out his stamen and pollinate me anytime!

The visit had one labor-saving aspect that helped out Little Dougie and myself quite a bit when it came time actually to write my book. I simply took Sawyer's copy (though not until he'd finished reading it, of course) back home with me, and when it came time to write it ten years ago, we didn't have to. It was already written. I just handed it to my publishers and they printed it. In fact, it was never written at all. It came into existence entirely through time paradox. H.G. Wells, who wrote my 1933 island movie, did the same thing. He never wrote any of his books. He just traveled ahead in his time machine, bought some cheap paperbacks of his complete works, took them back to Victorian London, and released each one on the date on the copyright page.


Time Paradoxes: what time-savers they are. With no writing to do, I had plenty of time to spend just shagging Sawyer's brains out.

Like you wouldn't do the same thing. I'm hoping they hit another good time paradox on Lost this season, so I can skip ahead and snag my future Huffington Post Survivor-recap columns. Then, instead of spending every Thursday night sitting here, watching that tiresome show, and touching myself inappropriately every time James is shirtless, I could devote that time to drinking and shagging. Then every day is Valentino's Day!

Cheers darlings.