YOU KNOW YOU'RE IN BRISBANE WHEN...

People around you start wearing scarves, coats and jackets the first time the temperature drops below 20 degrees in April and steadfastly refuse to stop dressing like Londoners in December even if the temperature climbs again;

The spiders that invade your house are big enough to back your cat into a corner;

If you want a major print news alternative to the ultra-parochial, conservative News Corporation-owned rag masquerading as a newspaper that rules the roost here..................... you're a long way from Kansas, Toto;

Being outdoors at sunset in summer after a bushfire is like watching a movie scene in the sky;

Almost every major public event / festival / celebration you come across is sponsored by a mining company cheerfully claiming to be part of our "green future";

Northern suburbs residents suddenly lose all navigational skills and coherent driving ability upon crossing the river in a southerly direction, and vice versa for southern residents;

If you light up a cigarette in the CBD mall you run the risk of being sconed with a shopping bag (and then fined while you lie dazed on the pavers);

The local national championship-winning sports team sees its crowd attendance drop by 90% if they lose their first two games of the following season;

People at every party you attend grimly tell you how glad they are not to be living on the Gold Coast;

Growing your own vegies is sometimes like being in charge of constructing the D-Day defenses on Normandy's beaches due to the plethora of nibbly beasties who seem to have evolved to subsist on plants grown only within your property boundary;

You watch a cockroach the size of a sunglasses case carry off your lamb cutlets before you've finished defrosting them on the kitchen bench;

You get road-raged by wildly-gesticulating 20-something females with infants in baby seats in the back for driving as slow as 100km/hr in a 100km/hour zone;

The newer buildings look like they were designed by Soviet architects after smoking their first spliff and the older buildings look like they were designed by Michaelangelo's Australian nephew;

Local mates talk about the city's far southern suburbs as if they're referring to the Bronx in the early '80's;

You can spend a warm subtropical evening gazing up at the CBD lights from an inner city riverside park while hand-feeding the bull sharks;

Catching public transport involves packing a good book, 4 bus timetables, a seat cushion, antiseptic surface spray, motion sickness tablets and a day's rations;

You get tail-gated, road-raged and swerved at by an over-caffeinated labourer in a ute going at 95 clicks an hour through the speed-camera-infested Inner City Bypass tunnel;

Locals continually bemoan the fact that there are no good dining-out/cafe/bar options within the city limits whatsoever...... thereby highlighting the fact that they've not paid a visit to Toowoomba, Ipswich, Caboolture, Redcliffe, Logan or Beenleigh lately;

You get tail-gated and road-raged while going through a MacDonald's drive-thru;

You can write "Swerved to avoid scrub turkey" in the "Cause of Accident" section of your car insurance claim and actually be granted a pay-out;

My Dopplegangers

Don't ask me where I found the time to finally write another blog entry (okay, okay, it was underneath the bed beside the vacuum-sealed winter woolies, the little rascal), but by Jove I need to put something out there.

Once again a friend who shall remain nameless (Kirsten) has had the temerity to declare that I bear an uncanny likeness to a celebrity who, in my humble opinion, is about as similar in appearance to me as George W. Bush is to a miniature schnauzer.

The celebrity in questions is one Matt King - apparently a Canadian purveyor of comedic stylings, host of a number of edgy television shows and owner of a serious "second-straight-day-wired-on-crack" bouffant, among other things. See left:

As I politely informed Kirsten, Mr. King looks for all the world like an ageing crystal meth tweeker. To no avail.









Like I mentioned above, this happens every now and then. Other celebs I've been accused of being directly related to include:

1. Robin Soderling

Professional tennis player. Playing style described as "brutal". Middle names are "Bo" and "Carl". Frowny sort.

My team leader at work sidled up to me one morning and breathlessly attested that he'd seen my honest-to-god doppleganger playing in the Wimbledon quarter finals the previous evening. I checked up on Monsieur Soderling. Doppleganger FAIL.

2. Ed Norton

Actor. Fluent in Japanese. Penchant for smoking-hot latino girlfriends.

Sweet Jesus, really??? He's a damn fine thespian, to be sure, and I know that a few ladies with severe glaucoma consider him a tidy bit of crumpet they'd like to give their own Oscar-winning performance to, but being likened to Tyler Durden's skinny, wimpy alter-ego is like being told you've won the Most Likely To Be An Office Drone award in high school. Boooo.





3. Chris Martin

Falsetto-voiced frontman for overly-earnest UK band Coldplay. Free trade activist. Hubby of Gwynny Paltrow. Fond of fruit-derived children's names.

Another bag-over-the-head-punch-in-the-face winner from a work colleague. This one, for mine, is like when those South American types start seeing an image of the Virgin Mary in their burnt tortilla. Or maybe those hateful 3D pictures you had to stare at until your eyes protested and a recognisable picture emerged (and which I could never get, by the by). Sometimes the viewer just wants to see something. Of course I couldn't be considered similar to a rugged action man like Hugh Jackman or Brad Pitt, oh no. I get puss-boy Chris Martin. Oh the humanity.

4. Larry Bird

Greatest forward in the history of basketball. Smartest basketball player ever. Shortest shorts in NBA history. May be The Messiah.

Don't get me wrong, I have nuttin' but lurrv for Larry, but this one really got my goat. Some high school friends started banging on about my likeness to Larry Legend in the early '90's. Clearly those friends were in dire need of retinal surgery. Or a swift cancellation of their supply of LSD. I mean, come on. Seriously??? Larry frickin' Bird???




5. Mystery Porn-a-Like

Un-named male adult film "actor".

A friend-of-a-friend once loudly and emphatically stated at a party that he'd been sampling some visual entertainment of the Rumpy-Pumpy kind earlier that day (as you do) and one of the participants in an interracial DP 3-way fun-fest had born a near mirror-image likeness to ol' Muggins here. So much so that the shock of recognition threw him out of rhythm. My first question was where he'd seen me in action to be able to make such a comparison, to which he replied that he'd just used his imagination. My questioning stopped at that point.

My mind has naturally rejected many of the other look-a-like claims thrown my way over the years out of pure shock and revulsion so I can't remember the majority of them. However I'm learning to embrace the horror - it's cathartic, apparently. As a great man once said: "Laugh and the whole world laughs with you; Cry, and I'll give you something to cry about you little b*stard".

So if any of you have an MB look-a-like in mind, send me a photie - I'm offering a bounty for the most ridiculous doppleganger example. Entertain me.