TGIF, Vanessa Hudgens, Maslin Beach, Jim Sharman, Mozart, and enough already with the commentariat when there are women to ogle

Oh dear. The statistician and bean counter came in today, and revealed that this site - dedicated as it is to truth, justice and the battle against commentariat commentators - is rampantly popular.

But only through the downloading of images of Vanessa Hudgens, and a shot of Maslin Beach from an obscure nudie movie shot in South Australia bearing the same name as the eponymous beach.

Vanessa Hudgens? If you have to ask who she is, you're too old to handle the answer. Or the truth. Fetid bloody baby boomer.

What to do? Go on fighting for truth and justice. Write another column about Piers Akerman, or Gerard Henderson, or Janet Albrechtsen? Torture The Punch? Flail away at the new National Times format?

Hell no. After all, Vanessa Hudgens is political. Look at the kind of T she's wearing. Ban the bomb, not her!

As for Maslin Beach, apart from the women being nude and therefore ready to fight like brave warriors in defiance of Greg Sheridan's injunction, they like to take sketch pads to the beach so they can be artistic and cover up the things that might give the show an XXX rather than a R rating.

Speaking of Greg Sheridan, I hadn't realized he'd written the libretto for Mozart's Cosi fan Tutti. But surely he had a hand in this three hours of patrician Masonic ritual of bashing women, as three men conspire to teach a couple of sweet, innocent, trusting girls the harsh reality of life and love. If only Vanessa Hudgens could sing opera ...

"Woman's constancy

Is like the Arabian Phoenix;
Everyone swears it exists,
But no one knows where."

"He who builds his hopes
On a woman's heart
Ploughs the sea
And sows on sand
And hopes to snare
The wild wind in a net".

(Full English libretto here in case you want women bashing quotes).

And so on and on, until one of the women even wants to go off and join the army. It was then that the penny dropped and I knew Greg Sheridan was involved. Seems opera's just another way to prove the lunacy of letting women get notions of equality, because next thing you know, they'll want the upper hand in everything. (Equality for women in war is lunacy).

As for the latest production of the Mozart (seen last night in the Sydney Opera House), directed by Jim Sharman, it reminded me of an acid flashback to the nineteen seventies. There was a video cameraman putting up real time images of the cast (and reflexively, the audience) on a flimsy filmy curtain, there was a wedding party of extras doing nothing except providing distraction for extensive parts of the proceedings, presumably there in case the main cast and the music got too boring, so that you could look back stage rather than nod off.

There was a strobe lighting attack, lots of petal shaped confetti, and even a very tame homage to a Gypsy Rose Lee routine. Given the average age of the audience, I kept fearing a random heart attack or three.

But then a show which starts with the cast in track suits and bathers isn't aiming for nuance, even if it then proceeded to get more and more conservative as it rolled along. Still everyone seemed to have a good time, the leads were valiant and cheerful, and only the music suffered. As usual in the Opera House, where the sound coming out of the pit comes across as a second thought by a very small band, no matter how hard they might try. Another reason to insist Nathan Rees embark on a mud wrestling match with an Amazonian woman.

But we've strayed from the point. By popular demand here's a couple more images from the most popular people ever looked at by this site. Roll over Jim Sharman, roll over commentariat columnists, your days are numbered.

By golly, I'm on my way to beating The Punch at their own game. Sure it'll be an airhead zone, but it's already about airheads by an airhead, full of bubble and squeak. Thank the kind lord it's Friday.