Category: Writing

It’s the end.

Well, not really.

But it is the end of the year. Also the decade. The decade that gave us both vaping and vaporwave.

February 13 actually marks 10 years since I moved to Melbourne, so that’s probably the more significant milestone for me rather than the technical end of the 2010s. And if my 22-year-old self saw where I am now, I think he’d be thrilled.

But as for 2019, I did a few things of note…

I got married! Annika too. 29 March 2019 at Glasshaus Inside in Cremorne, just off Swan Street, Richmond. It’s a plant nursery by day so the greenery provided a lovely setting that seems to be in vogue at the moment with the recent surge in the popularity of house plants. Take my wife.

My beautiful wife of course deserves all the thanks for the many months of planning. And also for saying yes.

It was a great night and in particular it was really special to look out at the crowd and see my brother Luke, who flew over from Adelaide with Mum and two carers. Thank you again to the good people at Qantas and Jetstar (and Mum) who got him here, to my best man Tim, and all our friends who came to celebrate with us.

Beautiful photos by Jessica Grilli.

For our honeymoon, we spent a month in September/October traveling up the west coast of the USA and Canada.

To give you the executive summary: we started in LA, rented a car (first time driving a left-hand drive car!) and drove to Desert Hot Springs, Palm Springs, then up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Luis Obispo where we stayed at the fabulous Madonna Inn (highlight of the trip). Then to San Simeon, checked out Hearst Castle, to Carmel-By-The-Sea through San Jose to San Francisco. Out to Yosemite National Park and back. Then flew to Portland, Oregon. Never been there before and really liked it. Lots of cool vintage stores and cafés (felt a bit like Adelaide or Melbourne). Then drove to Seattle via Mount Saint Helens (absolutely spectacular) and across the boarder to Vancouver.

We took more photos obviously, but I can’t be bothered re-sizing them for the website so just go to my Instagram.

It was my third time visiting the USA. I went in 1998 and 2005 with my folks and both times I came back home a bit disappointed about what I was missing out on, not living there. This time was different and I was glad to be home. I guess that says something about how much I’m enjoying my life and career at the moment.

But also, maybe my eyes were more open. So much waste. So many ridiculously big SUVs only carrying one person. So much plastic packaging. So many homeless people, with tents on the side of the freeway and under bridges.

America is only a great country if you’re rich. As Paul Keating said, “Australia is a fundamentally better society.” He’s right. I guess as you get older, things like universal health care and not being shot become more important to you.

And really, there’s nothing there now that you can’t get here, thanks to the Internet and globalisation. I remember in 2005 I was blown away by all the different coloured jackets you could buy at Macy’s. In Adelaide at the time, your options were basically black, brown or navy blue. Now you can get anything you want.

It was a different experience beverage-wise too. Last time I went to town on Dr Pepper at every opportunity. This time I only managed one and I felt pretty sick afterwards. It’s the sugar. I just can’t drink the non-diet/max stuff anymore.

Also, I wasn’t a coffee drinker last time I went. My God. They just don’t get it. It’s expensive and it’s awful. And more generally, with taxes that aren’t included in the price, plus having to tip all the time, after a while it’s just really fucking annoying.

But despite all of that, America still does have that special glow to it. Aside from the incredible scenery, the feeling that this is where the big things happen. Definitely on show while walking around Paramount Studios. I certainly wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to make a movie or work on a TV show there. What am I, nuts?!?

Speaking of TV shows…

In June, the TV special “Good Afternoon Adelaide: Live at the Birkenhead Bridge” aired on the usual community channels. It’s possibly the best thing I’ve ever done.

Reflecting that, we received five nominations at the 2019 Antenna Awards, winning one for “Outstanding Sound in a Program”, which also seemed a fitting way to make up for Channel 44 Adelaide airing the special with no audio in the second act… true story!

Voice-Over’s Tim Wray made the trip to Melbourne for the ceremony:

We applied for a grant from the Community Broadcasting Foundation to make a second season and they came back to us with an offer of absolutely nothing, which is unfortunate. However… we’re making season 2 anyway. We had two big weekend shoots just before Christmas and hopefully we’ll have 6 new episodes by the middle of the year.

(BTW if you like the show and want to help us out, there’s a donate button in the top right corner of this page.)

Oh also, back in January the first season of GAA was voted the 3rd Best New Comedy of 2018 (behind the esteemed company of Nanette and Sizzletown) at the annual Australian Tumbleweed Awards. Great blog about Aussie TV comedy that, along with my bank account and the website with Commander Keen mods, is permanently open in Safari on my phone. Here’s what they said about us:

“It’s a marker of how little new comedy of quality was premiered in 2018 that a show which aired on community television and was released online has garnered as many votes as it has in this category. Good Afternoon Adelaide, a parody of local TV made in Adelaide in the 80’s and 90’s by Mad As Hell writer David Allen Green, has some good ideas in it, but it’s pretty obscure. Its YouTube channel has 64 subscribers and its most-watched video has had 395 views. Presumably all 395 of those viewers voted for it here. Thanks for stopping by.”

There’s only 7 people involved with the show and I think only 3 of us voted… so thanks everyone!

As for the kind of work where they pay you actual money…

2019 continued in much the same way as the last few years. Did the audio at the tennis again. Got the day shift this year, so no late nights. Did have a couple of 6AM starts though, but mostly 9-5. Like a real job or something.

Still panelling radio for Crocmedia/SEN. The photos above are from when I brought my 35mm camera to work to use up the end of a roll of film. Panelled the usual things, mostly AFL but also some soccer, basketball, cricket, tennis, horse racing and general sport talk back.

SEN completed its transition from Swan Street, Richmond to the Crocmedia building in Southbank. After sharing studios with Croc on the top floor for a few months, in June the new dedicated SEN studios opened on the ground floor in what turned out to be perfect timing because there was a fire in the building. No one was hurt but there was a horrible burning plastic smell and a loss of power that left the upper floors uninhabitable for a few weeks. The tech guys did an amazing job of getting the stations back up and running with minimal impact to broadcasts.

Had another wonderful 3 months writing on series 10 of Mad as Hell. Here’s something I wrote that’s easily linkable on YouTube, performed by the brilliant Stephen Hall and Shaun Micallef:

It really is the best God damn job in the world.

I was also Andy Lee’s stand-in during rehearsals on Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation in February/March (I did that for the previous season in late 2017 as well – don’t think I mentioned it before). Basically, when they rehearse and run through all the segments, they don’t want the real contestants there as they’ll be exposed to the questions and gags, so they have six stand-ins.

One brand new addition to the resume this year was writing questions for Mastermind Australia on SBS. Now I just need to get something I’ve written on Channel Ten and I will have completed the Australian network TV Yahtzee (Seven = The Chase. Nine = the “UN’s bring your daughter to work day” gag in the Mad as Hell clip they played at the Logies this year – it’s a bit of a stretch, I know, but still).

Of course, if you saw me in anything this year, it was probably this Toyota ad:

My first proper job as an actor. Absolutely loved it. Definitely looking forward to doing more stuff on camera.

What else? There have been a couple of other writing projects. I was offered the chance to write a TV sitcom pilot by a long time Twitter friend and did a couple of drafts. Would love to see that one get made. Was also asked to help with a web sitcom, which I also did. Waiting to see what happens with that. You know, the usual.

As for 2020, I’m back on series 11 of Mad as Hell early in the year and there’ll be more Good Afternoon Adelaide at some point and in some quantity. Also getting the urge to make some more VHS Revue. Watch this space.

As it is coming up on a decade in Melbourne, I’ve been reading some of my old blog entries from those first few weeks and I had forgotten just how hard a time I was having.

I used to write a lot more… well… ‘openly’ about what I was experiencing (there’s really nothing holding you back when you don’t have an employer or a relationship or the benefit of experience and better judgement). Particularly, I went into quite a bit of detail about that first (horrible) sharehouse in Altona. Reading it back now, it’s quite passive aggressive. That’s partly because those two housemates asked me to remove their names after I had already written a few posts, so I had to go back and replace their names with vague, non-identifiable descriptors like “Miss Altona” and “Mr X” etc. But also, clearly I was not having a good time. Next time I’m a guest on one of those podcasts where they exchange tedious stories, I’ll make sure to elaborate on their lack of a bath-mat system.

One passage I came across from 9 March 2010 still resonates:

“…it was a somewhat rambling week. Had some bad days, then a good one, then some bad ones, then a good one again. I’ve often found myself recently thinking and remembering about “the good old days” back in Adelaide, seeing my close friends regularly, working every now and then at the Palace Nova … it was all so care-free… And let me tell you, you never appreciate the beauty of nature and the outdoors so much as when you’re stuck at a desk reading a text book. But then, even though those days were great and I knew exactly what I was doing, I wasn’t going anywhere. At least here in Melbourne I feel like I’m achieving something.”

Yep. It took a while, but things worked out pretty well. And quite ironic that I had to move to Melbourne to make a TV show called “Good Afternoon Adelaide”.

But, I would do it all again.

Here’s to the 2020s. Humanity’s last chance.

– DMG