WHAT a hoot it has been. The web warriors have been abuzz. The great Google god, in its holy crusade to photograph every square millimetre of the planet, has been snapping all manner of "street view" curios in the process.

American blogger Gawker, for example, has posted Google map photos of a big kid aiming a gun at a small kid in the streets of Chicago. The map seems to pinpoint the "crime" scene near the corner of West 63rd Street and South Western Avenue.

Another is a "drug deal" on Chicago's South Side, where a bro in the obligatory baseball cap is seen exchanging suspicious goods with the driver of a sedan.

Then there is the flasher: a young female who heaves her T-shirt up for the goggle-eyed Google-snapper in Illinois.

And Australia gets a guernsey too: it is a kid tumbling off his bike "in a Kensington street". Blogworld is delirious over that one. Says Gawker: "From all of us in New York, to whoever you are Down Under: Ha ha!" Says Cyberspin: "That's bloody hilarious, great find, great use of streets." And Nocthenik: "People officially have no privacy left thx to Google . cant wait for Canada to get street view. im gonna go out everyday and strike a pose."

Yes, the ol' Yarra village is an international laughing stock, but we're big enough to take it. It even makes a splash on a blog called "Kensington Victoria Broadcasting from Melbourne Australia". But there's just one thing: there is no West 90th Street in Kensington, Victoria, and hence no pavement to tumble on. Who knows where the kid did his dive. Another blogger now claims it is Cleveland, Ohio. Google Maps? Reckon we'll stick to the Melway.

Family ties

THE departure of Paul Mees, the public transport stirrer, from Melbourne Uni to RMIT is interesting on many fronts. Not the least being that he goes from having vice-chancellor Glyn Davis as his boss to having Davis' wife, Margaret Gardner, as his new boss. Interesting pillow talk, that.

Old news

AT LAST, the world's highest-paid unseen TV star is to twinkle again: the news yesterday was that Eddie McGuire (who used to enjoy more air time than the Nine on-screen watermark) is returning on Friday nights with his 1 versus 100. Well, he is and he isn't. What you weren't told is that these episodes are dusty ones off the shelf, recorded last year but never screened because, well, no one seemed to want to watch. Worse: these antiques won't be seen in Sydney or Brisbane because Ed's Hundreds are classed as "fillers" up there in rugby country. So the question remains: what IS the Pie prez doing for that $100,000 a week from Nine?

Shoes needed

"WEARING muddy socks and clutching a plastic milk bottle, ambulance officers checked her out," reported Alicia Grabowski on Seven News. Does the Health Minister know about this?

Curtain! Curtain!

YOU could almost hear AW chucklehead Ernie Sigley dribbling with excitement when oily Yank Tommy Garrett rang out of the blue "from Hollywood" in 2006, dropping names like celebrity confetti. Tommy wanted his mate Tab Hunter to make a movie, his godfather was Telly Savalas, his client Glenn Ford was about to turn 90 and Lauren Bacall had been invited to the party. Tommy swiftly became Ern's showbiz reporter but that all ended abruptly, and rather mysteriously, last week. Tommy "had a new book out" and was "having a rest". No wonder. Yesterday Crikey dug up a report in a Virginia newspaper saying ol' Tommy has just been up on 15 counts of forgery in a Buckingham County Court, had accepted a plea bargain deal and pleaded guilty to one reduced charge. What's the book called: Suckering Sigley?

Lead foot

SEEMS crusty old political dinosaur Mal Fraser can still dream about planting the foot. "It would be easy to lose your licence in this thing," he gushes as a "guest tester" in the latest edition of Wheels magazine. They rolled out old Mal to pass judgement on the last Ford Fairlane, which has been canned after 41 iconic years of production. Why Mal? Apparently Wheels had him write a review of the Ford LTD when he was PM in 1976. Back then, his other byline was "Kerr's cur".

Jungle drums

IT WAS serious enough to make the tabloid front page on Monday: Mrs Moonface, Patti Newton, had her handbag nicked. Worse, it contained various irreplaceable family trinkets (which makes you wonder why Mrs M took them to the Chadstone retail jungle in the first place). But hold your horses: back in February last year we told you about a "Bert Newton" papal blessing that had been found in the Sacred Heart Mission op shop in St Kilda. Turns out dizzy Patti chucked it out by mistake and a local bought it for eight bucks. Moonface, it seems, obtained the blessing during the Pope's 1986 super-tour. Doesn't seem to have worked.

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