Well, that’s a quarter of the 21st Century done… Hey, anyone else feel like consequences no longer exist, apparently nothing matters any more and everything’s kinda terrible? Yeah.
I think the Macquarie Dictionary made the right choice for their word of the year: ‘enshittification’.
Whether it’s coffees and boxes of cereal getting smaller and more expensive, social media becoming inundated with garbage to the point where it’s essentially useless, or Melbourne City Council removing free street parking on the weekends, it seems many things that used to be quite good are now all just a little bit shit. Oh and Trump being re-elected. Really? How was he even allowed to RUN again? The guy should be in prison.
Anyway, putting all that to one side, I’ve had a good year.
Let’s start with VHS Revue and (once again) it’s been the best year ever. Made 10 new episodes – Ep 60 will be out in January – which is fewer than the 16 I released in 2023 but they’re longer this year so it works out to about the same runtime.
Started the year with just under 2,000 YouTube subscribers. It’s now 5,591. This Tedious Explanation was responsible for some of that:
As were a few more radio appearances, including some ABC shows and my first time as an in-studio guest on 3AW – and with my old pal Tony Moclair from the Mad as Hell writers’ room no less:
Only one TV appearance this year but it was a good one. On October 8th I was a guest on The Cheap Seats Season 4 Episode 24 showing a few of the stranger ads I’ve unearthed on VHS Revue over the years. Watch it on 10 Play.
It’s been really rewarding seeing the overwhelmingly positive reaction to these episodes and I love reading everyone’s nice comments (as well as the occasional nut trying to convince me that Coon Cheese isn’t a problematic brand name). To both groups I say Cheers!
I was back pushing the buttons at SEN for another year, mostly on their live sport broadcasts: AFL(W), (W)BBL, NBL, netball, golf, greyhound racing (hasn’t been banned here yet!) and the odd breakfast and morning show on various local stations around the country.
Here’s me in action playing some AFL highlights out of a break:
If you’re wondering what the bed music was during that highlights package, barely audible over the cue speaker, it was this classic. This of course was shortly before panel operators were forbidden from choosing their own music.
Wore the traditional attire to panel the AFL Grand Final again obviously.
Also this year I picked up some casual panelling work at SCA. It was a bit of a surreal experience actually as my first radio job back in 2008 was panelling radio at SAFM in Adelaide – back when Southern Cross Austereo was just Austereo – primarily babysitting the Sydney-based network feed of ‘The Hot 30 with Tim Lee and Biggzy’.
Now here I was 16 years later panelling none other than Tim Lee on Melbourne’s Fox FM for a week of OBs at Crown Casino! Thanks again Tim for the opportunity. And also good to work with Fox FM afternoon presenter Kat Markey.
Australian media really is a series of revolving doors. If you wait around long enough, eventually you’ll get back in. If you haven’t been flung out under a bus.
Although I only did a handful of shifts at Fox FM this year, it did give rise to one unusual situation on March 22 where I panelled for two different commercial radio networks on the same day. Figured I’d choose that day to do one of those ‘Day in the Life’ type videos. And here it is:
Of course, if it were a typical day in my life in 2024 a large percentage of it would be me either sitting in front of my laptop writing/editing VHS Revue or sitting with Gus as he transfers his toys one by one from the toy box to every empty part of the floor while the same four kids’ YouTube videos play on repeat. But who wants to see that?
As for family life in Melbourne, we’re doing well. Feels like we’re finally putting down some roots in the community. We’ve got lots of friends within walking distance and I’ve now joined both the local library and R.S.L. (Boy, if I had known how cheap the food and beverage prices were at the Coburg R.S.L. when I lived in the Bell Street share house back in 2010 I would have signed up a lot sooner).
No olives this year on our trees. In fact, I didn’t see many on any of the olive trees around the neighbourhood. Great year for plums and cherries though.
Annika did an amazing job transforming the run-down cubby house in our backyard into what I’ve dubbed The Gingerbread Shed. Lost count of how many Bunnings trips we made but it’s been a hit with both the kids and grown-ups alike.
Annika, Gus and I went to Sweden again for a few weeks in June/July. Gus had most of his 2nd birthday in the skies above the Middle East and Eastern Europe (not exactly where you’d want to be at the moment).
The flights this time round were a lot better than last time. He slept for most of it. Memories of the 2023 flights from Australia to Northern Europe with a 1-year-old are still in the process of being repressed.
This time though Gus could walk, which changed things a little. He loves walking. Away, mostly.
The log cabin we stayed in at Dalarö was near a parking area for construction vehicles and if Gus got outside he’d immediately start running up the dirt road to look at the trucks and front-end loaders.
He’s got an eagle eye for little details too and while we’re out walking he will often say a word, eg. “candy cane”, and only after a while we realise he’d actually seen a candy cane decoration in someone’s window 50 metres away. He honed this skill in Sweden to pick wild blueberries with great success.
I prefer the wild strawberries myself. They’re small but they pack a burst of flavour.
Sweden highlights this year include visiting Junibacken (AKA Astrid Lindgren World), seeing two baby deer with their mother on our front lawn and the usual joys of lovely food, drinks and saunas with family and friends.
I signed up to Bluesky this year. That’s now 10 social media apps I have on my phone. 10! God, remember the days when it was just Facebook and Twitter and that had you covered? Those were the two logos you saw in every TV show’s end credits, or the cafe’s front window, or the back of the bottle of hair spray. Who exactly would befriend a pharmaceutical company on Facebook or follow their favourite brand of dip on Twitter, I’m not sure (both now and back in 2012 when I was actually writing Tweets and Facebook posts for such brands).
But Facebook and Twitter have been crap for ages now. You used to see fun updates from your friends and interesting news. Now on Facebook I just see stuff from pages I don’t follow between the occasional birth/death/marriage. And everything good about Twitter has been systematically removed one by one ever since Elon Musk took over. Eg. letting any Nazi incel buy a blue verification badge, suppressing tweets with external links, hiding quote tweets and likes, the search function barely works at all, and apparently the only people who reply to tweets now have OnlyFans pages (which wouldn’t be a problem if their comments were actually relevant to the tweet they’re replying to).
Bluesky has been a breath of fresh air. It’s like what Twitter used to be – The Twitter of the early 2010s. The enshittification process hasn’t taken hold yet. I’m sure it will of course, but for now it’s a nice place and I think I’ll be spending more time there. Come join me and VHS Revue.
As for next year, I’ve already got quite a bit of work locked in, which is a nice change. Plus I’m planning a couple of new projects: a podcast with the ole GAA gang and a book. Both should be fun. Watch this space.
This year I could finally do that Monty Python and The Holy Grail line “I’m 37, I’m not old”. In November I made a brief trip back to Adelaide to (among other things) attend my 20th high school reunion. This is the first one where you really start to see some variation in how people are ageing. There were some classmates who looked exactly how I remember them and others who look about 60. I think I’m somewhere in the middle.
It was just an informal gathering at a bar in Glenelg. Maybe 70-80 people there, so about a third of the whole year level. I’m guessing a third of people don’t live in Adelaide any more and another third probably want to put that whole chapter of their lives out of their… lives. And fair enough. Me, I didn’t mind Sacred Heart Senior School. Hated most of my four years at the middle school. By comparison, years 10-12 weren’t so bad. A lot of good memories.
Our Year 12 video (which I had personally converted to a .mp4 from the 20-year-old DVD) was projected onto a wall with the sound off. It was a nice addition, which we didn’t do at the 10th reunion. Back in 2004 there were a couple of people with a nice video camera who came to school and recorded interviews with kids and showed up to capture all the big moments, eg. sports day, retreats, the formal, muck up day, etc. At the end of the year everyone got a copy for our personal archives. We were the first year to get a choice between VHS and DVD.
Apparently they stopped making Year 12 videos a few years after us? Not sure if that’s true but if so, that’s a shame. Sure, every kid at school now is recording video on their phones every day probably, but without someone to coordinate it and cut it into some sort of coherent highlight package, it’s not much use.
After the reunion ended just past midnight, it was a nice night so I figured I’d walk in the direction of my Mum’s place in Brighton and get an Uber when I got too tired. The walk down Brighton Road took me right by Sacred Heart College. It was about 1.15 in the morning and the gate was open so naturally I wandered in and had a look around. While trying to remember what the brickwork in the quadrangle used to look like, I saw a possum crawl by with a little baby possum riding on its back. I suspect they weren’t supposed to be there either.
I ended up walking all the way to Mum’s. As usual with this genius tactic, you typically reach a point where you’re too close to your destination to justify paying the Uber service charge so you just keep going. You know, in all the years I lived in Seacliff, not once had I ever done that walk.
I think it’s good to do new things, while occasionally looking back at the old things.
Hope you have a good 2025. I’ll be around.
DMG
Oh yeah also I was diagnosed with Lyme Disease and found broken glass in a packet of chicken nuggets but more on that later.
