David M. Green: Purveyor of fine humour

Category: photos

Man Alive 2025

This was without a doubt the toughest year of my life. Not because of any singular horrible event but just due to the daily grind. Of course, plenty of people have been through far worse this year so I shouldn’t complain. But obviously, I will.

You hear a lot about the ‘Terrible Twos’ but not so much about the ‘Terrible Threes’, which I can confirm are much more terrible.

Last year we had three childcare days a week, plus a nap during the day, which gave Annika and me a nice little break to recharge and get stuff done.

This year we could only get two days a week and the naps were suddenly replaced with a 1000% Gus energy increase. And two days of childcare a week is only the theoretical maximum. It was rare to actually get that more than a couple of weeks in a row thanks to the regular carrousel of exotic daycareborne illnesses that swept through our house.

So it was a challenge to get anything done this year. On the plus side we did spend a lot of time together doing family things like going to playgrounds and/or centres, swimming lessons, riding to the end of most Melbourne train lines and hanging in the backyard.

It’s been fascinating seeing Gus’s sense of humour develop. He’ll often say things wrong on purpose and then look at me with a sly grin to see my reaction. For example: “Wee comes out the butt.”

Hmm… the farce is strong with this one.

Speaking of cracks, we’d noticed the ones in the walls were getting pretty big and several of the doors no longer fit in their frames so we got a structural engineer to come have a look at our house.

Turned out our circa 1939 terracotta sewer pipes were leaking, causing the nearby wall and everything else to move. So after a series of quotes and inspections and soil testing and coordinating with our neighbour (because yes, turns out it’s a shared sewer) and many, MANY different opinions, we finally got that fixed just before Christmas.

The sections that were more accessible were dug up and replaced with PVC and the rest was re-lined.

Mmm. Love that new sewer smell.

Aside from releasing the 2024 season finale of VHS Revue in February, I took a break from making new episodes this year. It just wasn’t practical to make any with the time constraints.

I did however post some of the shorter clips from the back catalogue as YouTube Shorts. In the past I hadn’t posted many Shorts as it requires the video to be in portrait and if I upload the 4:3 file directly it crops the sides off (and I hate that).

So my Shorts upload process involves using the Instagram stories editor (or TikTok if the video is longer than 60 seconds) to add black squares at the top and bottom of the video to fill it out to portrait and then add some text at the top. This is somewhat tedious.

But it was something I could do on my phone (usually while at work) and when YouTube increased the maximum length of a Short from one minute to three, it meant a lot of my older VHS Revue clips were now Shortable. Ditto with BlueSky.

Occasionally a Short would get 10k views and I’d get a trickle of new YouTube subscribers. More recently a couple got over 100k. So despite only the one new full VHS Revue episode in 2025, I increased my subscribers from 5,600 to 7,154. That’s 7% of the way towards that shiny silver plaque 😉

I did make time for one major creative project this year however and that’s the ‘On The Talking’ podcast, which had been in the works since 2021. Here’s our just released Christmas episode (which was actually recorded LAST Christmas):

Why do these episodes take so long to come out? Although it’s mostly improv, it does have scripted material like fake ads and news gags and they take a bit of time to edit. Plus we can only record when I go back to Adelaide and get together with the other guys. It’s really just an excuse to hang out with mates and laugh a lot. But I’m really happy with the result and I think it’s some of the funniest stuff we’ve ever done.

And then there’s my actual job(s).

For the first time in five years I was back working as an audio operator at the Australian Open in January – this time at the (relatively) new Kia Arena during the evenings. It was great.

My two favourite things that happened were when a Dad held his baby up above his head and the arena roving camera put the vision up on the big screen. It was the last shot before play resumed and JUST as the vision mixer was fading back to the AO logo, the baby threw up.

The sound of the crowd was indescribable. Sadly I don’t think any cameras got the reaction in the arena. You just had to be there.

The other thing was during a mixed doubles match with an all New Zealand team. There were a lot of Kiwis in the crowd and a couple of pockets started singing ‘Slice of Heaven’ by Dave Dobbyn.

Incidentally, this song has a special significance for me as it was the number one song in Australia the week I was born.

After the third or fourth time hearing it from the crowd I thought we should play it for real. I got the okay from HQ (as it wasn’t in the approved playlist) and during a set break I played it from the start with the fader up. As soon as the “DA DA DA” came out the speakers, the crowd went nuts. They were singing so loud and kept singing after the players came back on court (and I had faded it down), the chair umpire had to tell them to be quiet.

I even got a shout out in the post match interview:

This was my highlight…

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— David M. Green (@davidmgreen.bsky.social) January 25, 2025 at 10:01 PM

(By the way, we always tried to balance songs from each player’s home nation but there were so many New Zealanders in the crowd it was a bit stacked against the other side)

Panelled the sport radio at SEN again. Yeah that’s still going.

Wrote quiz questions for a popular TV show throughout the year. That ended up being more work than I expected as it kept getting extended – a good problem to have in this biz in these times.

The familiar conversation I keep having with TV folks is: “yeah bit quiet out there”. Hoping these new local content quota rules will actually have a positive impact.

I found some time to get my frustration with Subway Restaurants out of my head and into this article for The Guardian. Although it wasn’t my intention, since writing it I haven’t eaten there again. Possibly because I discovered a fantastic sandwich place not far from my house in Coburg called Elio’s Panini & Coffee. Once you have their focaccias there’s no going back.

In May the extended family spent four days on Lady Elliot Island in the Great Barrier Reef (thanks Mum!). Really enjoyed snorkelling and seeing the sea turtles up close.

Swimming was really the theme this year.

Annika, Gus and I went to Sweden again for the northern summer. We stayed for six weeks this time. It was the best weather I’ve ever experienced there and the water was unusually warm.

I finally had no excuses to swim across the bay to the neighbouring island. It’s only 120 metres but it looks further when the water’s up to your neck.

Every year I’ve wanted to do it but the water has been just a bit too cold or the current a bit too strong. There’s also a bit of boat traffic but I figured if I didn’t do it this time I was never going to do it.

So I did it.

It sparked a love of swimming that’s continued after we got back to Melbourne, where I’ve joined up at a local gym and now swim laps regularly in their pool. This was also a new year’s resolution, which frankly I assumed I wouldn’t keep.

However, I didn’t realise this exercise would actually be enjoyable. I feel great too. I’ve never been a gym person. But I think you get to your late 30s and you’ve got to face the reality of “use it or wake up every morning with an aching back”.

By far the worst thing that happened this year was losing my Uncle Richard, who passed away in June. He was 71 and had been diagnosed with cancer three years ago.

He’s the uncle I saw the least, as we only lived in the same city at the same time briefly. He was in Sydney when I was growing up and then just after he came back to Adelaide, I moved to Melbourne. This is probably also why I have so few photos of us together.

My earliest memory is visiting him in the Hyatt Hotel when I was about 7. He let me waste half a roll of his film taking photos of the trains from the window as they pulled into Adelaide Railway Station below. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen the photos so it’s possible there was no film in the camera.

On my first trip to Sydney in 1996, Richard took my sister Alice and me to see ‘The Phantom’ and ride the monorail.

He loved the arts and had exquisite taste. When I moved into my first apartment he gave me a Laguiole cutlery set and a Royal Albert tea strainer. He was also a Le Cordon Bleu graduate so dinner at his place was always a treat.

Whenever I was back in town, I enjoyed catching up with him for a coffee (or two) and a chat. He had a great sense of humour and knew all the gossip.

Richard also loved to travel and wherever he went he made lots of friends. He never stopped planning his next trip. Even as he lay in his hospital bed in March, he told me he’d love to visit Spain again.

When I open my email, it sorts them by the oldest first and I’m always welcomed by this one he sent me in 2009 when he was working with Mum at Chandlers Hill Surgery:

“I’m well and happy, and enjoying working with your mother, although it may be time for an O.S. trip. Perhaps France later in the year. See you soon, Richard.”

I figure that’s where he is now. Out there somewhere, having a wonderful time on his next adventure.

Perhaps France.

I was very proud (well, more proud than usual) of my Mum, Dr Carolyn Lawlor-Smith, this year as she was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in the King’s Birthday Honours List for services to General Practice and Community Health. She has worked as a GP in Adelaide for over 40 years and was one of the first doctors to be trained in Voluntary Assisted Dying in South Australia. She travels all over SA to assess people who are requesting access to VAD and has so far assisted more than 280 people in their VAD journey.

My sister Hannah, Aunty Lorry and I went with Mum to her medal ceremony at Government House in Adelaide. I’d never been in there before. A wonderful experience and a great day.

Other things… We had a small olive harvest from our seven trees – about 25kg – which gave us a couple of litres of oil and I preserved two jars of olives. More than last year (which was zilch) but not as many as the 62kg we got in 2023.

I think our cherry tree is on the way out. Last year’s cherries must have been its swan song because they were probably the best I’ve ever eaten.

I’ve started learning Swedish on Duolingo five minutes a day. I figure I’ve been to Sweden six times and probably going to go many more times so should make an effort.

I got Lyme disease again this year thanks to another tick bite (yeah cheers Sweden). That’s the second time that’s happened – so I had another huge course of antibiotics, which wrecked havoc with my digestive system.

The worst thing about it is I’m now not allowed to donate blood in Australia, which used to be something I enjoyed doing regularly. There’s talk of the Lifeblood people changing the rules some day but doesn’t sound like it’s happening any time soon.

You may have also noticed I’ve given this website an upgrade and changed its appearance for the first time since I launched it in 2007. It’s okay if you haven’t.

Mainly to fix some compatibility issues in the back end and change the page design to one that displays better on a phone. This website is so old it can have its own social media account in Australia.

I was also (forced to) upgrade to a new laptop thanks to Microsoft ending support for Windows 10. I’d had my old ASUS laptop since 2017 and felt like I’d only just got it set up just the way I like it. It had all the ports I needed. A DVD burner, which I didn’t really use any more but when I did, I was glad I had it. Windows 10 was very stable and reliable. I used it for all my video editing.

My God I’d been to hell and back with that thing. I originally got it with Windows 7, which must have been one of the last ones out the door because most of them came with the awful Windows 8 at the time – and I was keen to avoid that.

Then after about six months I stupidly used Windex to clean the keyboard and it shorted out a bank of keys. My friend Alexis had to take the whole thing apart and snap the plastic connections off to remove the keyboard, then put a new one in by using a soldering iron to melt the plastic back together. Seeing that laptop in pieces with tiny screws and ribbon cables all over the table was one of the most stressful things I’ve ever witnessed.

When I had to upgrade to Windows 10, Alexis helped again and we took the opportunity to replace the 1TB mechanical hard drive with a 2TB one. The new hard drive always felt a bit hot and failed after less than a year (thankfully) just after I had finished editing season 2 of ‘Good Afternoon Adelaide’. This was in the middle of the second Melbourne Covid lockdown in 2020 with all the state borders closed.

This time my talented friend John Hnatowych – who was also trapped in Melbourne – saved the day. He put in a 2TB solid state drive and reinstalled everything. Man that was a quantum leap. Over the next few years he also added more RAM for me and eventually replaced the entire keyboard section of the case when Alexis’s initial keyboard repairs started to come loose.

But in 2025, Microsoft insisted my laptop was too old to run Windows 11 so I had to get a whole new one.

Eventually I landed on the ASUS Zenbook with an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor and ordered a 4TB hard drive, which was the largest it could take. I would have preferred a keyboard layout with a proper number pad instead of the weird one integrated into the touch pad.

Also going from four USB-A ports to one plus two USB-C’s felt like a downgrade but these are the compromises you have to make. It was more important for me to store a lot of video and render it fast and boy, this thing is a beast.

After one day using it though I suddenly realised everything I was looking at was out of focus. It turned out the screen is much more reflective than my old laptop and where my desk is situated with a window behind me, I was straining my eyes without even realising. That’s a great feature isn’t it? “Yeah let’s design the screen so looking at it makes the user blind.”

So I had to install an anti-glare filter (and I hope that’s the last time I have to stick one of those on a screen this decade).

As nice as the keys are to actually press, I realised just how often I need the ‘home’ and ‘end’ buttons, which are technically there but you need to hold the ‘function’ key down to use them. Plus the slightly smaller screen meant over the course of a day I was unconsciously leaning in closer and hurting my neck. So I propped it up on some books and got this cool retro external keyboard. The setup looks a bit unwieldy but it works.

Still not thrilled about Windows 11 but I’m hoping future updates will make it better.

So it seems the theme of this year was very much about stepping back and doing some much needed maintenance. I know I said earlier the theme was swimming but swimming is also a form of maintenance.

And in news just in we’ve just been confirmed for FOUR child care days a week next year!

Okay so I’ve got my laptop, my sewer, my health, my family.

2026. Let’s go.

DMG

PS. Best book this year = John Romero’s ‘Doom Guy’. Best TV show = Pluribus

December 31, 2025
It’s 2024 Etc.

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:

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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.

December 31, 2024
Bye Bye 2022

It’s been a large year. New house, new car, new phone, new baby. Pretty much compressed all of being an adult into a few months.

Also wrote on the final 2 seasons of Mad as Hell before catching Covid at the wrap party. Here are some of my favourite things I got on the air this year:

Like I said after the finale in September:

Sitting in the Hoddle Street Hungry Jack’s at 1AM this morning after the #madashell wrap party, I realised this was also where I went after getting the email from Shaun in November 2013 offering me a job on the writing team. I couldn’t believe it. I literally dropped everything and drove to the closest Jacca’s to give myself a burger treat.

I started writing on series 3 in 2014 and kept getting just enough gags on the show to justify being invited back and somehow managed to do that for 13 more seasons. It’s been the greatest job. Getting to hang out with some of my best friends and just think of funny stuff feels like a scam.

When our comedy idol Shaun Micallef gives one of our scripts the nod of approval and it’s brought to life by the absolute best cast and crew in the business, and it gets a laugh, it is an unbeatable feeling. So many things have to go just right.

We’re all feeling many things about Mad as Hell ending. Personally I can’t be sad because the show gave me so much laughter. I can’t think about it for long without remembering something hilarious and smiling.

Thank you to everyone on the team. It’s been like flying first class. I hope I can work with you all again someday. And thank you to the audience. It’s certainly a rare thing in Australia for a local television show to be so beloved. But we never took it for granted.

Got a pretty nice souvenir from the show:

Also very much enjoyed Shaun’s autobiography ‘Tripping Over Myself: A Memoir of a Life in Comedy’. Especially stories from his time at Sacred Heart. One particular prank he pulled with the school’s PA system had me laughing out loud. Should make a nice telemovie or miniseries some day.

Made some new VHS Revues this year and currently writing more. They bring me much joy. This one is probably my favourite of the latest batch thanks to John Hnatowych’s amazing VCR animation:

In May, I moved back to Coburg after a ten year absence. The place hasn’t changed a bit. Literally.

This local milk bar for example:

A closer look in the window…

Following advice from several real estate agents, Annika and I made sure to buy our first house right at the top of the market. But it has radiators and air conditioning and art deco features, plus a beautiful backyard with several fruit trees and plenty of places for Rockley to explore.

Shortly after in June, we welcomed Gustav Luke Green into our lives. To quote my favourite Futurama episode, he was “named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit.”

He is objectively the cutest baby.

Already getting him started on Thomas the Tank Engine and very much looking forward to teaching him how to play Donkey Kong Country and Heroes of Might & Magic 2 when the time is right.

Was a nice change to get the extended family in Adelaide coming to visit us in Melbourne several times this year, instead of us going to them.

I did make three trips to Adelaide though before Gus was born. First for Dad’s 70th birthday back in February, where we enjoyed a wonderful dinner at The Lenzerheide (my favourite Adelaide restaurant) and a very nice 1982 Grange.

In April, I attended the wedding of my good friends Tim and Daniel, which had been postponed twice due to various lockdowns and border restrictions over the last couple of years. I made a pretty good speech.

And then just a few weeks later I was back again for my sister Hannah’s wedding to her partner Nick. I emceed that one. I love this photo of the two of them. The gum tree looks like a watercolour painting.

Other things, wrote my first piece for The Guardian.

Still panelling radio for SEN and in April it was 10 years since I started working for them (back when it was called Crocmedia). Once again put on a suit to panel the AFL Grand Final. It’s a tradition that’s starting to catch on among the panel operators, with young Matt Donald taking up the tie this year as well.

After 11 years of sheer driving mediocrity, I said goodbye to my 2000 Toyota Corolla. Donated it to the good people at Kids Under Cover.

There have been some truly awful events this year. Russia’s blatant disregard for human life and the international rule of law in their invasion of Ukraine created traumatic scenes many believed would never be seen again in Europe; incompatible with our modern age. But the swift global condemnation as well as the remarkable resilience from the Ukrainian people and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen.

A seemingly never-ending run of natural disasters around the world should ring alarm bells for us all that man-made climate change is quickly making parts of our planet uninhabitable. We need to stop burning fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy FAST. We clearly don’t have the infrastructure to adequately deal with these floods, fires, heatwaves and storms now and they’re only going to get worse.

Some hope though and there was a collective sigh of relief in May when Australia finally voted out the Morrison Government, which had left the country in neutral with the engine running in the national garage for the last nine years. Thank Christ for that because I could not take another term of Coalition corruption, rorting and their complete lack of accountability and leadership in practically every facet of Australian culture. Good riddance.

Whoops getting a bit political here. Quick, here’s a picture of Rockley in front of the Christmas tree:

Travel, renovations and putting my precious things on progressively higher shelves are my major plans for 2023.

I’m also open to more comedy writing work if ya know of any. Or if you wanna grab a coffee and talk about life and stuff, send me a message sometime.

All the best to you and yours.

-DMG

December 31, 2022
End of Year Bloggy Blog 2021

I spent all of January in the zero Covid paradise of Adelaide, watching the crazy events in the United States on TV as their infection and death rates skyrocketed, a violent mob of right-wing conspiracy theorists literally stormed the Capitol Building and their political system teetered on the edge of collapse. It was quite horrifying to be honest. All you could do was watch and hope they held it together.

Luckily those brilliant scientists whipped up some vaccines in record time and adults were allowed back into the White House. But I feel it’s only a matter of time before a new variant returns and starts wreaking havoc. A new variant of Trump I mean. Also the virus.

Summer in Adelaide was surreal. People were walking around in the sunshine and in packed supermarkets, or sitting in a crowded theatre like in the before times. No masks. Almost as if the pandemic and the Melbourne lockdowns were just something I dreamt. It was nice though. Even though I was still very sad about losing my brother just before Christmas and my wife was stuck in Stockholm until April after travelling to visit her dying father, it was good to be among friends and family again.

One way I dealt with my grief over Luke was to throw myself into a new season of VHS Revue, my video tape-reviewing webseries. I had written 10 episodes in the latter half of 2020 with the intention that I’d shoot all my pieces to camera in Adelaide. And that’s exactly what I did, with the help of my good friend Alexis Kotlowy.

I basically spent 3 solid weeks in January editing every night into the small hours and by the end of the month I had 10 new episodes, which I released over the first half of the year. There were times when I was editing where it felt like Luke was sitting on the couch next to me, occasionally offering suggestions just like he used to 20 years ago when I made little cartoon animations in Microsoft Power Point.

One joke in particular I reckon came straight from Luke. The animated Pierce Brosnan line-up in this episode:

He would have laughed hard at that one.

I was quite happy with these new episodes. Got some nice comments and about 200 new YouTube subscribers this year. I also launched a Patreon account and acquired some wonderful financial supporters too. With that money I was able to buy a better video camera and some other equipment so the 8 new episodes I’m working on at the moment will all be in high definition (1080p at 50 frames per second).

Yeah, I think I’m done with the degraded VHS look. It’s too much trouble and I wonder if it deters people from clicking on the videos? I’m sure the YouTube algorithms kick non-HD videos to the back of the queue. So look out for those shiny new ones in 2022.

In February I drove back to Melbourne just in time for Lockdown 3. That one was only a few days so compared to the other ones it hardly counts.

Went straight back to panelling radio at SEN. Panelled all the usual stuff: AFL(W), tennis, A-League, horseracing, cricket (BBL and The Ashes) plus a bunch of shows around the network, from Perth to Adelaide to Tasmania to Brisbane and now New Zealand.

Panelling radio is a strange job really, especially when I’m not in the same room as the on-air talent. One of the Big Bash League cricket matches was played in Sydney. The commentators were in Perth, calling the match off a TV screen. And I was pressing the buttons for it at head office in Melbourne, sitting in a studio on my own. There are people I’ve worked with for years, talk to regularly, and have never met. Or even seen their face.

For the second year in a row the AFL Grand Final couldn’t be held at the MCG due to a Covid outbreak, so Optus Oval in Perth staged it. I panelled one of SEN’s four calls, all going to different radio markets. They had two commentary teams in Perth and another two calling off the TV in Melbourne. I upheld tradition and wore a suit. Not the best lighting in those upstairs studios…

Annika was due to fly back to Melbourne from Sweden in late March but Melbourne still hadn’t resumed hotel quarantine for international arrivals, so her flight was changed to Adelaide.

In April I drove back to Adelaide during that brief period where there were no cases anywhere in Australia and all the state borders were open.

I visited her towards the tail end of her two weeks isolated in Peppers Hotel in the city. Gave me a good opportunity to test out the zoom on my new video camera.

https://twitter.com/David_M_Green/status/1382318947190534144?s=20

We drove back to Melbourne via a couple of days in Halls Gap. Beautiful country.

In May I was back writing on Season 13 of Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell. Was great to be back in the office again without the masks. Unfortunately that didn’t last long and on May 27 we were back in Lockdown 4.

The studio audience was all set to return as well but the ABC pre-empted the official lockdown and made the call on May 25 – literally just before taping the first episode – that we were going ahead without the audience. Probably the right move.

Lockdown 4 lasted a couple of weeks and was notable for us because we got our rescue cat Rockley. I’ve always been more of a dog person but I think he’s converted me. We love him.

He’s also on Instagram.

So I wrote from home for a couple of weeks before we were allowed back into the office and by episode 6, the studio audience had returned. It was so great to hear the sound of laughter again. I’d forgotten what it sounded like. But alas, it was short lived as the 12-day Lockdown 5 began July 15.

We were really jerked around this season. It was annoying for sure, but I understand the reasoning. The “let it rip” alternative would have been far worse.

Couple more weeks writing from home before the office opened up just in time for my last 2 writing days before closing again for Lockdown 6. That was the big one. And things didn’t open up again until November when 80 per cent of Victorians were double vaccinated.

Made a couple of cameos this year in between lockdowns, with various face coverings.

I was relieved when I finally got my Pfizer vaccines. Would have been nice to get them a bit earlier and maybe avoid some of those lockdowns but I think Scott Morrison had a photoshoot with a bird feeder or some time sensitive rorting to do or something. Understandable.

So it feels like – in Melbourne anyway – we spent about as much time stuck indoors this year as we did last year. Consequently I read about 10 books. I think that’s a PB.

The best of them was Van Badham’s excellent “QANON AND ON”. Very well researched, fascinating and deeply disturbing. Reminded me of (my favourite) Eric Schlosser and his style of non-fiction writing. I highly recommend. I read quite a bit of it while queuing up at the drive-through testing clinic outside Chadstone Shopping Centre.

Other achievements include finishing a puzzle my sister Hannah sent me and also finishing GTA San Andreas to 100 per cent. Man that NRG-500 Challenge is a bastard.

Oh yeah and last year’s season of Good Afternoon Adelaide won the Antenna Award for Outstanding Sound (two in a row!). Had the ceremony been scheduled for one week earlier, it would have just snuck in before the lockdown chaos but nope. They rescheduled a couple of times but it just wasn’t happening so they finally decided to do it remotely. Fortunately community television has that capability, what with being a television broadcaster and all.

And in fact due to sustained community pressure, the federal government caved once again and gave Channel 31 and Channel 44 extensions to their broadcast licences. Swish!

I was also a guest on a few live streams. They were good fun. It’s sort of like television except I’m on it.

It was nice the SA border opened up again just in time for Christmas. Of course, it has lead to over 1,000 cases a day in Adelaide but it also meant I could see my family for the holidays. So… roped off swings and roundabouts clogged with cars lining up to get tested.

We’re back in Melbourne to see out the end of the year. The cat was happy to see us after spending 5 days in a cattery. His meow sounds a little different now though.

Something new for 2022, and a decade since I moved out of Coburg, I’ll be moving back as we’ve somehow bought our first house. Looking forward to being north side again. The last few years in Malvern have been a little sterile. Although it could just be because I’m sliding into middle age… Well we’ll see about that.

I get the feeling things are still going to get a bit worse before they get better what with 21,000 cases in New South Wales today. But if we’ve all come this far… well what are ya gonna do?

All the best for you in 2022.

-DMG

December 31, 2021
2020 Hindsight

Well the results are in for 2020 and, yeah not so good.

I began the first day of the decade by panelling some radio on SEN for that fabulous public holiday money, then heading to the beach at Black Rock with Annika. I remember feeling a bit guilty about lying on the sand in the sun while on other beaches around the country, people were being evacuated in landing craft by the navy as the ‘Black Summer’ bushfires raged through communities. Of course, our prime minister pissed off to Hawaii and then had his office lie about it so maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on myself.

In the days that followed, Melbourne became choked with smoke and briefly had the worst air quality in the world. You knew it was bad when you started seeing white people walking around wearing masks.

For the 4th year in a row I was an audio operator at the Australian Open. Early on when they were testing the sound and light show, I saw a spotlight cutting a beam through Rod Laver Arena. My first thought was “oh, I didn’t think they were using the smoke machine for this?” No, they weren’t. That was just the smoke from the bushfires INSIDE the arena with its closed roof.

Had a nice distraction from struggling to breathe when my good friend Tim Wray discovered my driver’s licence was being used on the Optus website, unknown to me. You can read all about that here, here and here. Also here, here, here, here and here. And here. Also on this error-riddled article that looks like it was written by a bot.

Then it was back to the ABC’s Southbank studios for the usual tomfoolery on season 11 of Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell. No better place to be for the 10th anniversary of my move to Melbourne.

The first half of the season was business as usual. Mum even came over from Adelaide to see a taping. That’s her in the yellow jacket and the same hair style as Michelle Brasier’s character:

My brother Luke enjoyed watching that on TV back in Adelaide:

But that little story about a new coronavirus outbreak in China turned into a story about people trapped on cruise ships, then the health system in northern Italy being overrun by cases, then Iran and New York and every day it seemed to just get closer and closer to home until quite suddenly the Grand Prix in Melbourne was cancelled and we got the call we couldn’t have a studio audience. Like, literally one morning Shaun was saying he reckoned we should be able to make it through the last 6 episodes with our audience and then a few hours later, nup. But I suppose we were lucky to be able to continue at all. Fortunately the ABC is an essential service.

The writers kept coming to the office for a couple more weeks and then we all just wrote from home. We were also only allowed at the taping on the Tuesday night if we were an extra in a sketch. Otherwise, we could watch a live stream at home or just wait til Wednesday night and watch it on TV with everyone else.

The show itself was a little bit different without a studio audience and it took some getting used to the sudden absence of laughter, but I think we adapted quite well. Sometimes it was better actually because you could hear every word. Personally though, nothing beats a big laugh from a crowd to give a joke that undisputed tick of approval. And when it’s a joke you’ve written, it’s the best feeling in the world. I’ve really missed that this year and I’m sure my stand-up comedian friends have missed it even more.

Not to mention no end of season wrap parties this year.

Our whole society changed this year and a lot of those changes will probably be permanent. Like additional barriers between customers and employees at supermarkets, hand sanitiser dispensers at the entrance to stores and markers on the ground to help with social distancing. Now they’re installed, I think they’re just going to stay with us. And they’ll be incorporated into the design of new buildings.

Hopefully this will spell the end for the open plan office. I am yet to meet a single person who likes them.

In March I got a call from Crocmedia to let me know they had to stop all casual shifts because so much live sport had been cancelled. Panelling their radio coverage of AFL has been one of my main sources of income the last 8 years. But I only lost about a month’s worth of work before they got me back in under the JobKeeper scheme. I ended up panelling mostly the weekday afternoon show on SEN – ‘Dwayne’s World’ with Dwayne Russel – as well as SportsDay on 3AW with Gerard Healy and Sam McClure (both done out of the same studios). It was nice to have a reason to leave the house. The 2020 AFL Season eventually resumed, but man the logistics required to make it work this year are astounding. Will make a good ESPN documentary some day.

Crocmedia officially changed its name to Sports Entertainment Network this year and Hit107 in Adelaide changed back to SAFM, as it was called when I had my first radio panelling job there back in 2008. I don’t think it’s a real radio station unless it changes its name and/or frequency at least once a decade.

Although I didn’t panel the AFL Grand Final coverage, I did panel some of the pre-game and took the opportunity to keep the tradition alive of “wearing a suit to the big games” (as Rex used to say).

We thought things might be back to normal by the time pre-production for Mad as Hell season 12 rolled around in July but just as we started, Victoria’s second wave of Covid was ramping up.

My first day back at the office was day 1 of mandatory masks in Melbourne. I did 2 weeks at the office before we were all writing from home again. But on one of those fleeting office days, I wrote this Bunnings Conspiracy fake ad, which is probably my favourite thing I’ve ever written for anything, and so brilliantly executed by Emily Taheny and Stephen Hall.

Melbourne’s second lockdown was much more severe than the first. There weren’t many reasons we were allowed to leave the house and when restrictions were at their peak, we couldn’t travel more than 5km from home unless for essential work. So like all of Melbourne, Annika and I spent a lot of time staying in. We made the most of it. Watched all of Stargate SG1, Stargate Universe (underrated show – what are the chances of a reboot?), Schitt’s Creek, and a few other things I can’t remember.

With all the fun things in Melbourne closed, it was fortunate I had a big project to work on while stuck at home for all those months; that of editing season 2 of ‘Good Afternoon Adelaide’. Lucky for us we shot all the footage just before Christmas last year. And spending a large chunk of this year at my desk, staring at a screen and sorting through footage of my friends laughing really felt like I was still there hanging out with them.

Season 2 of GAA consisted of six half hour episodes, all of which are now up online. But if you’ve only got two and a half minutes, watch this:

And then this:

Oh and you may as well watch this one while you’re at it. And big thanks to John Hnatowych for the brilliant ident at the end and Yuri Worontschak for the Channel 9-eque music that goes with it:

And thanks to a hard won campaign to get community TV’s broadcast license extended for another year, the episodes did get to air on Channel 31 in Melbourne and Adelaide’s Channel 44, which was cool.

It was particularly difficult this time as the current Minister for Communications and The Arts, Paul Fletcher, apparently didn’t know what ‘community television’ is. Or what ‘television’ is. Or ‘community’. But I suppose it’s a bit ridiculous these days to expect a minister to have a basic understanding of their own portfolio. I mean, they only work 4 weeks a year or something.

So I guess community TV will be running the exact same campaign to stop the current federal government from killing the industry again in 2021. It’s been an annual tradition since 2014.

Speaking of Adelaide, state border closures in the wake of the pandemic (the first such closures in more than 100 years) meant I couldn’t visit my home town all year. The last few years I’ve been going back every month or two, mainly to see my brother Luke, who’d been steadily declining in health as he approached the final stages of a terminal degenerative condition called hereditary spastic paraplegia (or HSP). Our sister Alice had the same condition – she died in 2016.

After the first wave started to die down around the country in May, SA announced it would open its border to Victoria on July 24. I was really looking forward to getting over there. 7 months was already the longest I’d been away from my family and many close friends who still live there. But the case numbers remained stubbornly in the double digits and then started to take off, causing the border re-opening to be delayed indefinitely. I had a thought at that moment that I was probably not going to see my brother alive again.

Meanwhile, Annika faced a similar dilemma with her ill father in Sweden, who had been undergoing treatment for cancer the last few years. It can be tricky to drop everything and fly to the other side of the world in normal times, but now there’s the increased risk of getting Covid oneself, then the prospect of months waiting to get back into Australia, not to mention the increased cost of the flights plus two weeks of hotel quarantine upon returning. But she got permission to leave Australia on compassionate grounds and managed to make it there and be with him for a few days before he died on November 25.

I’d spent time with him the three times I’ve traveled to Sweden with Annika. He always made me feel welcome and I enjoyed his company and our discussions of history, movies and space travel. He had a keen eye for style and a great sense of humour and I’ll miss him.

Back in Melbourne, we had finally got the second wave under control and were now seeing weeks of zero new cases and zero new deaths – so called “Double Donut Days” – and South Australia had announced the Victorian border would be open again on December 1.

It really was an extraordinary effort by the entire Victorian community. Even more amazing when you consider that fighting on the side of the virus was also an opportunistic and inept state opposition, a buck-passing federal government lead by a part time prime minister and the Murdoch media pushing their usual agenda. On those days in July and August where we were seeing new cases in the six and seven hundreds, I think a lot of us had just about given up hope. But we pulled together in a way I’ve never seen before, and probably not seen by anyone round here since World War 2. Quite incredible. People will no doubt be talking about this for hundreds of years.

I was so relieved I was going to be able to see Luke after all. He had really been struggling to talk the last couple of months and he was having difficulty swallowing. That’s not good. I could still get him to laugh though when I busted out the Simpsons quotes during our video chats. He was looking forward to me visiting as well. His carers made up a sign on his shelf that counted down the sleeps until I drove over.

There was one more scare though. In November, a breach in Adelaide’s hotel quarantine and a subsequent cluster at the now infamous Woodville Pizza Bar lead to a sudden and severe lockdown. Thankfully they got on top of it and it turned out not to be as bad as first thought, but my heart rate was up for a couple of days there.

So finally on Tuesday December 1, after 11 months away, I drove from Melbourne to Adelaide. Had to stop at the border and quote a reference number to a police officer (even though the border was open, people still had to register online beforehand). It was actually surprisingly easy in the end. A few hundred metres later I was welcomed by a Stobie Pole guard of honour.

I drove straight to Luke’s house in Pasadena. When I arrived he was sitting in his wheelchair at his computer, watching Pimp My Ride (which seems to have been his favourite show this year). He was thrilled to see me and I almost couldn’t believe I was actually there. I sat and watched a couple of episodes with him and then put on some Rick and Morty season 4, which I’d been saving all year so we could watch it together. Lots of laughs, just like old times.

The next day I went back again and we watched more stuff. Then Dad and my sister Hannah and her partner Nick came round and we had pizza and watched Flying High in the lounge room. It was so great. After that though, Luke went downhill quite quickly. Thursday he lay in bed and we all hung out in his room and watched fun things all day. He still laughed a few times at Rick and Morty. Friday, he was barely conscious and it was now clear he had pneumonia. We listened to his beloved Beatles and watched old home videos and reminisced about the good times. Saturday he was worse, and he died at 7pm.

Life is so precious.

A lot of people have experienced the death of someone close this year. And many wouldn’t have had the luxury of being there in person. I’m glad both Annika and I were with our loved ones. In a perfect world, I would have been in Stockholm with her and she would have been with me in Adelaide as well. Although, in a perfect world neither her father nor my brother would have been sick in the first place. But if it’s a choice between being there or missing it, and you have a choice, I say you’ve just got to be there.

We’ve known this was going to happen for a long time. In 2005, Luke started to have trouble walking. By 2009, we learned what it was and that it was going to just keep getting worse. We knew theoretically he probably wouldn’t make it to age 30. But when my sister Alice died aged 27, it was such a shock. It brought our whole family closer together as we made a real effort to see Luke and each other as often as possible. I started coming back to Adelaide more frequently (until this year).

The reality of what was to come had been hanging over us for four and a half years. Every time Mum’s name popped up on my phone, my first thought was: “Is this the call? Am I going to the airport now?”

Because Alice was only 27, I think we all assumed Luke wouldn’t make it past 27 either but he made it to 29. Each of the last three Christmases I thought would be my last with him.

I don’t think knowing it was going to happen made it any easier. But it did make us squeeze the most out of the last four years as we possible could. Luke’s life really was the best it could have been. Two trips to Melbourne (one to see Mad as Hell and the other to come to my wedding). Lots of great birthday parties, trips to the movies, his regular ‘Sunday Night Dinners’ with the extended family, lots of presents, lots of laughs. Lots of love.

Luke received outstanding care from his carers at Community Living Options (CLO). They just got him and over the last few years, really maintained his quality of life and dignity. They made sure he had fun every day, even when some of those days were pretty tough. It was also great visiting Luke because it was a surprise to find out which carers were on and always good to have a chat. Many of them I now consider part of our family too. And I want to give a special mention to Ruth and Sharon, who came with Luke on both of his Melbourne trips and spent many Christmases with us.

I also want to thank my Aunty Lorry and Uncle Graham for the years of love, and especially for their help with Luke’s palliative care towards the end. It meant my Mum (who like them, is also a GP) could just be a Mum.

Most people don’t want to talk about death or think about end-of-life care but we all have to face the reality eventually and with our ageing population, it’s only going to become more commonplace. I don’t know about you but lying in my own bed, watching my favourite shows, surrounded by people I love sounds pretty good to me.

I miss Luke so much. I have so many great memories with him. We spent so much time together growing up, riding our bikes around the backyard, going to Marion, playing video games and watching funny TV shows and joking around. He was my favourite person in the world to make laugh; usually with a line from The Simpsons.

Because of his Asperger’s Syndrome (or autism spectrum disorder, as they call it now), it was hard to get Luke to smile for photos, so I used to get him to laugh by whispering a quote in his ear just before the photo. Here’s us at our cousin Alex’s wedding in 2018. From memory the quote was “Can you pass me a handful of peanuts? No not those peanuts… the ones at the bottom”.

In fact, I’ve got tons of these.

Luke’s funeral was at the Port Noarlunga Surf Live Saving Club on December 16. It was a wonderful service with Simpsons jokes, a James Bond cardboard cutout guard of honour, Beatles music & decorations and a beautiful eulogy by Ruth McIntyre and my sister Hannah.

He would have loved it.

We were actually in the lounge room at Luke’s house 3 days after he died, discussing whether to have that Bart Simpson “Hey cool. I’m dead” image in the booklet. Aunty Lorry first suggested it and I thought it was hilarious and knew Luke would have loved it too. Mum wasn’t convinced, so there was some debate. But just at that moment, a light fitting fell out of the ceiling about a metre away from us and crashed onto the tiled floor, making a loud noise and scaring the hell out of all of us.

We all agreed that was Luke giving it his approval.

So it’s been a pretty bad year. And it’s been especially sad to see how nations one would think would know better – like the USA, UK, Sweden and others – have so badly mishandled the pandemic and caused so many people to die needlessly and left so many others to now deal with chronic illness. We are pretty lucky here in Australia.

But you know, I still feel like 2016 was worse. At least this time Trump lost. But also, I think this year has really made me appreciate the good things. A lot of them very simple things that are so easy to take for granted, like sitting in a cafe and drinking a coffee, riding a tram, hearing a crowd of strangers laugh in a darkened room, seeing family and friends.

My experiences this year have lead me once again to the same conclusions. Live life to the fullest. Do all the things you want to do. If you want to do something, and you can, don’t wait. And do what makes you happy. But you know all this already.

Suppose I better get back to it.

Wishing you a safe and dull 2021.

-DMG

December 31, 2020