It’s kind of an inside joke – Australians will definitely get it. For you non-Australians, let’s just say that if I were so inclined, I could quite easily produce a Mullets of Adelaide photoblog with daily updates. Without even venturing into the northern suburbs.

Beyond that, I’ve got nothing to say except that my monthly science post is up at The Greenists.

Hasta la vista from Bogan Central.

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Ben Folds called the Mullet Capital of Australia home for a few years. He even wrote a song about it, which features on his “Super D” EP. Available from .

So, I started looking around for company. I asked friend after friend and was repeatedly turned down.* I began to wonder what’s wrong with me. Do I need to change brands of deodorant? Perhaps a breath mint? Have I been neglecting my conversational skills? (Complete aside. When I was in my early 20’s, I was absolutely petrified of small talk with strangers and even friends. I was convinced that I couldn’t hold a

conversation. When you convince yourself of something like this it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, I picked up a book from the 1950’s called “The Art of Conversation” at a used books tore. The book was no help except as a conversation starter. Maybe that was the point.)

What was I talking about?

Ah, yes. Whether I stink or am a boring date aside, Boy Z and I are headed to WOMADelaide on our own this weekend. Now as much as I love my little boy, a 2 1/2 year old isn’t the best of company. Six to eight hours of of conversations based on the repeated question “What’s that noise, Bubba?” tends to wear a bit thin.

So I’m looking for fellow Adelaiders (Adelaideites? Wikipedia informs me ‘Adelaideans’) to join us for a day of music in the Botanic Gardens. Actually, you don’t have to be an Adelaidean. Check out last minute fares from Qantas – South Australia is gorgeous this time of year. Come on out and spend a day with Adelaide’s two least popular guys.

To be fair, tickets are dear. And it might rain. And there will probably be far too much patchouli in the air. But I think it’s going to be a good day out nonetheless.

Seriously, though, if you’re local and keen or are already going send me an e-mail. See my contact page.

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* OK, two friends two rejections.

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New Mexico’s Calexico is the only act playing WOMADelaide that I’ve heard of before. But they’re outstanding. I saw them open for Wilco once and they actually blew them off the stage. Great live act. Their 2000 album “Hot Rail” is available from .

I certainly wouldn’t have mentioned Adelaide, Australia as a possible future home. Like most of my fellow countrymen, I had little or no interest in the world beyond our national borders. After eight years of Reagan administration propaganda, I was fully convinced that the only thing available abroad was danger and communism and filth. I lived happily that way for the next decade or so. When I went back to school in the mid-90’s and to grad school a few years later, I began to socialize with foreigners. I found them interesting, and a nice addition to a potluck dinner, but still had no real interest in traveling abroad for any period of time. I even met a few Australians – a jovial race, hard-drinking, loud and comical. I knew a bit more about Australia than what I had garnered from the two Crocodiles – Dundee and the Hunter – but no overwhelming desire to visit the place, nevermind live there.

Then, one frigid February night in mid-Missouri, I met a stunning Irish-Australian post-doc at a party.

Nothing has been the same since.

Within a very short period of time after meeting Dr. O’C – roughly two hours (that penchant for fantasy didn’t go away at 17) – I had formulated a life in Australia in my head. It took a little longer – about eight years – but today I have a remarkably accurate reflection of that fantasy life. Who says an overactive imagination is a bad thing?

We’re a year in Australia today. We walked off the plane into the balmy Adelaide sunshine on April 24, 2008. I was jet lagged and exhausted beyond what I thought was possible and thrown into a huddle of effusive Irish relations of the good doctor. The luggage, Boy Z (then Baby Z) and Dr. O’C were whisked efficiently away. I was shepherded into a waiting Jeep-ish thing and driven down to our new ‘home’.

If I’m being 100% honest, as we drove down through Glenelg I was wondering just what the hell I had done.

In fact, I spent the first couple of months wondering just that. Everything was complicated – finding my way around, finding a job, getting the dog here, getting our earthly belongings here, sorting out an internet connection. There was more than one day that I found myself ready to give up, to chuck it in and go back. Where?

Each time I jumped one of the little hurdles that my new home had erected in my path, I felt a little bit stronger and more comfortable. A little more at home. A year later, most everything has fallen into place. A year later,  I’m as happy as I can ever recall being. I’m not entirely at home in Australia yet, but I don’t really know what that means anyway.

So maybe I am.

There are a lot of things that I don’t care for about Australia. A lot of the politics. The utter lack of environmental responsibility despite being one of the most ecologically fragile places on earth. Holden utes. Boy racers. Pies. The ubiquitous anti-Americanism (though this isn’t an Australian phenomena). The distance from Australia to anywhere else in the world. Some days it’s harder than others to be 10,000 miles away from my parents and extended family. The accent.

But there are more things that I do like. The people. I was right about the people – they’re jovial, hard-drinking, loud and friendly. They’re certainly more welcoming than the Brits. In fact, a year in I can go through most days without that alien feeling that I carried around with me in England. The beaches. The empty spaces. Medicare. Sushi. Good Italian food. ANZAC biscuits. Golden Gaytimes. 

But most of all – these people (and animal):

I know that they could be around me anywhere in the world. But they’re here. And that’s what it all  comes down to. And as we make room for an addition, it is these people that are going to make wherever we are feel like home. 

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Grey Anne is Portland-based singer-songwriter Amy Adams. She released her debut LP “facts and figurines” back in November on Greyday Records. This track is about a girl named Adelaide, not my new home, but it’s gotten into irretriavably into my head this morning. “facts and figurines” feature stripped-down, whimsical folk-pop. A little bit cryptic, but utterly charming. Buy it from .

After one whole grueling day of work, today was Papa and Boy Z party day. Rather than letting my little terrorist destroy the family home, we hit the road for a visit with the Family Arizaphale. Lunch by the pool and then a trip south to Port Noarlunga was a perfect way to spend an absolutely gorgeous summer day.

Arizaphale’s become one of my favorite people that I’ve met in Australia – charming, gregarious, and an easy conversationalist. Despite her Pommie heritage, she’s characteristic of the friendly Aussie. After four years spent struggling to crack the iron veneer of the painfully reserved English, I find myself almost suspicious when I’m bowled over by affable Aussies strangers. But in general, they’re just genuinely good natured and friendly, much more like my fellow countrymen than their former colonial masters.

In fact, in most ways Australia is more like the U.S. than the U.K. There’s room for the suburban sprawl characteristic of American cities rather than the claustrophobic crowding of British city centers. Once you get into the countryside, the wide open spaces are reminiscent of parts of the American West. The Aussies love their cars and their sports and their road trips. And their donuts. They are often individualistic to a fault and fiercely nationalistic – like their American cousins. We’ve got all the American chain stores, all the American TV (or Australian imitations) and based on the news coverage during the election you would have thought that Australia had a few electoral votes at stake. Now that the Aussie twang sounds normal to my confused ears, sometimes I forget that I’m 10,000 miles away from my birthplace.

A little while before we departed for the Antipodes, I read a comment by The Prettiest Denny’s Waitress describing going to Australia as “like going to San Diego except the people use some funny words and the snakes are more poisonous”. I bristled a bit at that – surely Oz would be more exotic than a medium sized California city full of retirees and uniformed servicemen. But you know what? If you unfocus your eyes a bit while driving through parts of Adelaide, you could easily be in SoCal – San Diego with the occasional wandering marsupial and fewer Marines.

If Australia had been my first expatriate experience, I think I would have been disappointed. When I left the States in 2004, I was looking for something foreign. I got more of that than I expected in Britain, so much so that I was almost completely overwhelmed for the first couple of years. But four years into my expat adventure, I relish the familiarity that Australia offers. I’m looking for a home and on days like today – with my son, in the company of friends, basking in the sun and surf – Australia’s beginning to seem like just the right place for that elusive home.

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Badly Drawn Boy’s “One Plus One Is One” is available from .

I have sort of a love/hate relationship with Christmas. Well, that’s not entirely true, it’s more just the latter. In recent years, I’ve learned to tolerate the holiday and with the arrival of Boy Z last year almost relished the season. But not this year. This year, I’m going Grinch.

It’s largely because of the seasonal reversal here in the Southern Hemisphere. Christmas Down Under is in midsummer, but the Australians have maintained most of the traditions of their felonious progenitors (turkey, stuffing and sedition). I just can not get my head around eating a full Christmas dinner when it’s 40C (104F) outside. The Christmas trappings here are the same as they are in cooler climes: Fur draped Santas who must bog down the local ERs with heat stroke complaints during the holidays, spheroid snowmen in a part of the world that hasn’t seen snow since the Mesozoic. Come on Aussies, after 220 years of baking Christmases, couldn’t you have come up with some climate appropriate Christmas icons? A Santa in board shorts driving a surfboard pulled by a team of kangaroos? Eucalyptus trees trimmed with jingle-bell adorned koalas? Willy the White-nosed Wombat? Something?

I think I may have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. But I fear that this is going to be a Joni Mitchell kind of Christmas.

It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
But it don’t snow here
It stays pretty green

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Nothing better to cheer one up, though, than a nice word or two about one’s self. The Noble Savage, a fellow expat blogger, gave me the much coveted I Heart Your Blog award. I blush.

The best thing about the award, well beyond the stroke to my ego, is I get to pass it on to seven writers worthier than myself. I’m always up for working on my blogging karma. I’ve discovered a few new blogs (and have been relishing some old ones) in the past few weeks that I would strongly recommend. I would go so far as to say I heart them:

1. My first two awardees are a couple of ladies with whom I have a lot more in common than just the blogging. Mongolian Girl is a Misery based commie who brags about disrobing in front of presidential candidates among other things. I would describe her site, The Cusp, as gonzo blogging. A must.
2. I found the Indisputable Topcat whilst searching for bloggers to hold down the Auburn end of next week’s Smack Talk. I still don’t know how she came up in a search for “Auburn Tigers” but I’m glad she did. Australian, husky owner and a smashing writer.
3. One of my oldest blogging buddies has said she’s quitting the blogosphere. I hope she changes her mind, but if not, I’d like to give Just Jessie this award posthumously. Maybe if we all go over and beg her to stay she’ll reconsider.
4. Everyone and their Great-Aunt Siobhan blogged about the election, self included. But Matt and April really nailed it with their post-election posts. Fantastic, well thought-out politics at The Bauer Confidential.
5. As we’re into another weekend of college football, I’ve got to direct some hearts in the direction of A Bulldog in Exile. The Dean is a Georgia Bulldog in King Corn’s Court and is doing some fantastic ‘Dawg blogging up among the unwashed Midwesterners.
6. I find it difficult to explain why I like Carrie’s blog Reconstructing Fossils, but I’m well hooked. I think it’s the kind of “Truman Show” quality of it, she doesn’t use a lot of words but I warn you there’s something addictive about her photographic diary.
7. One of my consistently favorite reads is Malfeasance. But Courtney lives up to her blogging pseudonym: she is evil incarnate and, I believe, single handedly caused my beloved alma mater’s humiliation in Jacksonville last weekend. So, rather than rewarding evil doers, I will offer this award to her better half who blogs at The Prettiest Denny’s Waitress. All the writing chops of Malfeasance with 50% less evil.

Have a Christmas free weekend, gentle readers.
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I was too depressed to take my own photo, so had to nick this photo of the Rundle Mall Xmas decorations from here.

If you don’t own Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” then you really should. It is available from and Amazon or your local independent record store.

This particular crazy man was one of the ghost talkers – he spent the ride having apparently one-sided debates with phantom companions. Some of these got pretty heated, so much so that they occasionally earned him nervous glances from the other passengers and even broke through the sonic buffer that my iPod provides. But he was mostly harmless.Seems that every big town, and probably small, has a whole subculture of people that – let’s put it kindly – march to the beat of their own drummer.  Some of them are frightening, some (like your man on the bus) are mildly irritating and some are entertaining. There’s a guy that I see on my way into work in the mornings who rambles around Adelaide’s Rundle Mall singing the same tune over and over. He’s not particularly talented and I’ve not a clue what the song is, but he seems to not care one way or the other. A few years back, when I lived in Seattle, one of my favorite local characters was a fellow who used to wander Pioneer Square and Downtown singing Al Green songs. Only Al Green songs. He was actually pretty good but like the Rundle Mall singer, other people’s opinions seemed of little interest to him.

There was a big part of me that really used to envy these guys. From the outside of their heads – things seemed pretty good for them. Obviously I don’t know what goes on in the inside – what’s shaken loose. But, compared to myself, trudging through life Atlas-like with the combined weight of all my problems on my shoulders, their lives appeared simple, even happy.I’ve been pretty quiet on the blogging front lately. A fair bit of that has to do with work and not really wanting to spend any more time on the computer when I get home. But some of this has to do with the absence of that weight that I used to carry around on my back. I firmly believe that most good writing is fueled by angst or conflict or melodrama.** I don’t know if its age, exhaustion with the energy that being angstridden requires or what but lately, I’ve been tacking toward the street singing state of mind. I just don’t feel it so much these days. I even find myself singing, sometimes, in the street. Maybe that’s how it starts, with a quick chorus of “Jelly Man Kelly” on the way to the bus stop and then it’s a slippery slope to “Let’s Stay Together” on repeat and yelling at invisible assailants on the 721 bus.

This tendency to break out into song stems from the fact that things are pretty good for your underwhelming narrator. On the crazy man bus last night I got to thinking about things and realized that I’m approaching that El Dorado of the spirit I’ve heard referred to as “happy”. I like both of my jobs, a definite improvement from the recent past. I’ve got a beautiful family. I live minutes from the beach (13 to be exact). I’ve got feets to walk, arms to reach and ears to listen. And, crucially, I seem to be developing an ability to leave the buts behind. Like, for example, but:

1. We’re still borrowing a car.
2. We’re still renting a house.
3. Said house is way the hell  out in whoop-whoop.
4. My daily commute is pushing two hours round trip.
5. Australia does, in fact, have a winter and it is now.
6. My family is very far away.
7. I don’t get to the beach nearly as much as I would like to.
8. Dr. O’C won’t let us get the cable TV so we can watch something other than “Home and Away” and reruns of “Neighbors“.
9. I only get to see my son awake for about half an hour a day.
10. I have to do something this weekend that I really don’t want to do.
11. I don’t have enough money to buy an iPhone.
12. I appear to be getting older at an alarmingly fast rate.

Huh, when I put it all together like that, it’s actually a bit depressing. But the fact is that on a daily basis it’s all manageable. And actually liking my job, from someone who spent far too long in a job that I hated, makes all the difference in the world. That list above is daunting, but I don’t actually face it up on a daily basis. I can ride the bus home, and just chill the hell out. Just enjoy what’s in front of me. I probably smile sometimes for no reason, occasionally whistle a happy tune or tap the rhythm of that tune a bit too vehemently. To the random observor, maybe this whistling tapping glint-in-the-eye guy looks a little bit crazy. Maybe that’s why the seat next to me is often unoccupied on the busy bus trip home.

* I realize, dude, that “crazy” is probably not the ‘approved nomenclature’, but just don’t care that much.

** This post has really just been a long-winded excuse as to why I’ve not written a thing this week. And an opportunity to show off my kid. Sorry to put you through that.

But it’s a daily limit and I’m back at a lovely little suburban library this morning. While the stated purpose of this child-free jaunt was job searching, I couldn’t resist a little update. Don’t tell Dr. O’C.

I’m slowly finding my feet. Every little accomplishment – finding the bus to town, sorting out my mobile phone, getting a library card – makes me feel a little bit more grounded. This adventure today, on my own is another minor victory. This isn’t my first intercontinental move but it’s much harder than the one to Oxford. For that one, I arrived and went to work pretty much immediately. Dr. O’C was left with the trivia of getting all the things we needed. For this one, I’m intimately involved and I’ve got to tell you I’d rather be headed to work on a daily basis.

Lack of work is part of the uncertainty and discomfort. I haven’t been jobless for any significant period of time for the past fifteen years or so and I haven’t a clue what to do with myself. I also seem to have this reflex reaction of emitting a grumbling sigh every time we spend more than about $5 on anything.

So, I guess I should get on with it. Here’s a picture from our successful trip into the city center the other day. Look for more pictures coming down the pipe as I conquer jet lag and the hills of the southern suburbs.

So, bear with me a wee while longer. Hopefully things will be back up to the underwhelming standards to which you’ve become accustomed in a matter of, well, weeks.

Sigh.

I’m currently scavenging someone’s free wireless from a shopping mall somewhere south of the Adelaide city center, so no music or photos. If I’m being honest, I’m not yet enamored. But, I’m open minded, with the full recognition that the more sleep I get, the better things will look.

Impressions so far – bone dry, lots of birds (including wild cockatoos), more American than British.

Z and Dr. O’C are slowly coming into Australian time. We get Timmins back on Friday – I think things will start looking a lot better by then. Hopefully we’ll have our internet sorted by next week and your underwhelming correspondent will be back like cooked crack.  Until then, I’ll be trying to keep me kangaroo tied down.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure that I saw some kind of exotic Australian marsupial crossing the road last night but everyone is trying to tell me it was a cat.

Harry and Phebe sat down on A Free Man’s virtual couch this week for a chat about Queen, photography and radio songs.

AFM: It’s hard to pin down your style – kind of ranges from this film-soundtrack instrumentals to dark 80’s synth-pop. How do you describe your sound? What are your musical influences?

Harry: I think even we find it hard ourselves to describe our sound because it changes from song to song! We don’t like sticking to any particular style, it’s just whatever mood we’re in at the time. Our first songs were written as a joke so they have a real cheesy childlike feel to them but now with the addition of a synthesizer, our style has progressed to a more electro-pop sound, but that will most likely change down the track when we get bored of it!

Phebe: Our influences are quite broad as Harry is a huge Queen fan and he loves doing his fancy guitar solos and harmonies and I listen to a lot of The Polyphonic Spree and other pop bands like Architecture in Helsinki, New Young Pony Club and CSS.

AFM: You guys are both capable of playing multiple instruments. Where’d you learn to play them all?

Harry: I did about six months of piano when I was a kid and a bit of viola before that, but then I got a guitar for my twelfth birthday and I stuck with that. We’re pretty much self taught, Phebe learned recorder at school for a few years but that was about it for her. We just make it up as we go along!

Phebe, it looks like you can ‘play’ the camera as well – nice photography! What do you shoot with?

Phebe: Thank you! Most of my work is done with a Polaroid or Holga (lomography) camera. I’m not too keen on the whole digital revolution as yet (mainly because I don’t have a good digital camera) but I prefer the unpredictability of using film. I’ve just started studying photography this year so I’m looking forward to expanding my skills.

AFM: Radio Spectacular!!! is the second band in a week that I’ve interviewed that pays real sonic homage to the 80’s. Is there a revival of the music from the most shallow decade going on?

There’s always a revival of something or other but we don’t really pay attention to it, we like to think we’re fairly unfashionable when it comes to music styles. The 80’s had so much strange and fun music come from it like Split Enz and Blondie which we both can appreciate and enjoy. We even whip out a bit of Blondie on stage sometimes, it’s good fun.

AFM: Harry, you play with at least one other band and do some solo music as well. Can you tell me about the other projects? How do they differ from Radio Spectacular!!!?

Harry: I have another band called School of Two with a guy called Jason Sweeney which is a lot different as Jason is the primary songwriter and he’s very much a child of the 80’s so our sound is a much darker synth-pop sound. My solo stuff is really just me fooling around, helping out on film soundtrack projects every now and then.

AFM: You guys make big sounding music as a pair, but if you were going to put together a dream band what artists (living or dead) would you sign on?

Vocals: Freddie Mercury!!! Best voice ever.
Guitar: Brian May (hello, Queen?)
Bass: John Entwhistle
Keys: Mozart (hahah this band is awesome)
Horns: The entire Polyphonic Spree horns section
Drums: Meg White … just kidding! Mitch Mitchell for real.

AFM: I’m building up an impression of the Adelaide music scene based on some of the interviews I’ve done. It seems like pretty fertile ground for musicians to get started but I get the impression that there’s a ceiling that bands hit after a while. If you want to ‘make it big’ you have to go east or even overseas. Is that a fair impression?

I think for more pop oriented bands, there is definitely a ceiling. If you’re a rock band there’s more of a scene here for you but we’re hoping to change all that around with a monthly indie-pop night organised with We Grow Up called Popsicle. We hope to encourage more people to embrace pop and start their own pop bands!

AFM: What other Aussie bands should folks overseas pay attention to that we’re not?

Well definitely We Grow Up, Belittle League and BrotherSister are some awesome Adelaide bands to watch out for! Also our buddy in Melbourne Mildsparrow has some wonderful songs everyone should check out.

Three best places to while away a sunny afternoon in Adelaide?

In the summer months we spend a bit of time at Christies Beach, haven’t seen any sharks there yet so that’s a good thing. Rundle Mall/Rundle Street is always good fun when you’ve got money and we love going to Glenelg for ice-cream and coffee.

You guys released an EP back in ‘06. What’s next for Radio Spectacular!!!?

At the moment we’re recording a handful of new songs that will serve as a demo that will get us signed hahah hopefully! If not, we’ll just keep chipping away and keep having fun with what we’re doing.

Bonus: R.E.M.’s ‘Radio Free Europe’, The Buggles – ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ or Elvis Costello’s ‘Radio, Radio’?

Actually, none!
We choose Radio Ga Ga by Queen as that song was how we came up with our band name. But if we can’t choose that song then Video Killed The Radio Star for sure!

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Hmmm, the “None of the Above” option – controversial. We’ll let Pheebs and Harry slide because they were great sports. Check out two tracks from Radio Spectacular!! Contact the band directly to buy their self-titled EP.

MP3: Radio Spectacular – “Instant Love”
MP3: Radio Spectacular – “Ghosts and Ghouls”