Blackpacker Diaries: Bend it Like Barker

Tuesday Night, 10 March 2009

I got my Arj Barker tickets, which is quite exciting. For those of you who aren’t obsessed with Flight of the Conchords, Arj plays their friend Dave, who constantly gives them bad advice and has the best deadpan ever. I hadn’t heard of him before FOTC, but I am so into him. He’s also all over the Australian scene, and every Aussie knows who he is—why hadn’t he made it onto my American comedy radar before now? Oh god--Is he Canadian???
No, not possible.
Clearly I needed to see him in the flesh so I could get some answers.

Unable to get a ticket for Arj with Justin on Sunday, I got one for the Tuesday show. One of the things I like about rolling solo is that I don’t have to check-in before making decisions, or worry about whether or not my companion wants to spend the money for such-and-such activity. It’s also really easy to get last-minute tickets to things when you only need one seat, allowing me to be all free and spontaneous and very “Eat Pray Love” about the whole thing. I ended up in the 8th row, with only 2 people seated next to me. One was a surly teen and the other was obviously his mother. While most people who’d came together were chatting it up pre-show, the three of us sat silently, with the son way too cool to talk to his mom and her way too awkward around her son’s changing body to strike up a conversation. To an outsider we probably looked like a dysfunctional family, with me playing the role of their Sudanese refugee adoptee.

It was a mixed crowd, all ages, and definitely touted as PG. Everyone from teens to 30-somethings were there, and the place was chockers. How do they all know him????? I wondered as the placed filled up. I was excited to see him do more than hilarious one-liners, and also am really into seeing solo shows, so I can take notes and figure out how to write my own one-blacktress show. Arj was hilarious. After being greeted with huge applause, he began.
“Hey guys, I’m gonna start with a riddle. Are you ready?”
More clapping.
“So, how many gold medals do you have to win in order to enjoy a relaxing bong hit at a friend’s house?”

He’s too hilarious. He then went off on Michael Phelps, and had the crowd dying. He also tackled such issues as global warming (“Have you ever wondered if it’s not the Earth’s fault, but the SUN? Maybe it’s just too hot.”), and the African pirates. My favorite line was probably, “OK, maybe I’m crazy, but I’ve always assumed that if something has been turned into a ride at Disney World, and then a movie with Johnny Depp, it is no longer a real-life threat.”



Sweet, sweet, Arj, you make so much sense to me. I can’t wait for us to make hot Afro-Middle-Eastern babies. Can you imagine how hot that’d be? That baby would be on America’s Next Top Model.

I wanted to tell him this after the show, when he was standing outside selling some CDs, but I got scared. I was intimidated by his funny and thought he’d be uninterested in me trying to talk comedy and subtly brainwash him. I should have bought an effin’ CD, which would have totes made him love me, but I had no money-cash-hos on me, so I just scurried away, consoling myself with the knowledge that we’d one day have America’s Next Top Baby.

Tomorrow I start my 6-day/5-night Groovy Grape bus tour that will take me from Adelaide, at the very bottom of South Australia, all the way to Alice Springs, at the bottom of the Northern Territory. We will travel a total of 1,600 kilometers through the red desert, visiting Coober Pedy, the opal capital of the world, Uluru (aka Ayers Rock), one of Australia’s greatest icons, and Kings Canyon and the Olgas. Apparently, I will be sleeping on the ground and expected to hike. I am really excited, but also scared that I’ll be the slow girl, slowing down the crew with my inability to move quickly.

Perhaps I should have invested in hiking boots.

Or, you know, at least developed some stamina at some point in my life.

Okay, I’m off to bed. It's only 10pm, but I think I need to rest up for this.

The Next Installment of The BLACKpacker Diaries

No matter how few comments I receive, or how boring this may be, I will continue to post the chronicles.....

Tuesday 10 March 2009


I booked a wine tour today, cause you know how I roll—good enough for Jesus, good enough for me! The Barossa region makes some of the best wines in the world and it’s only an hour outside of Adelaide, and I knew I wasn’t missing anything in the city center. I absolutely love wine tours, as it connotes early morning drinking and enables you to meet people. The day always starts out awkward, but by 11am, everyone’s slightly buzzed and super chatty. Or, maybe that’s just me, because I never wake up with enough time to eat brekkie, and that blood of Christ goes straight to my head at 9:30.

I booked with Groovy Grape, which was geared toward backpackers, and the same people I was doing my Outback journey with. As usual, I was the only soloist on the tour, so I just sat in the single seat and chatted with the driver, who I loved as soon as he took up the microphone.
“Good morning everybody,” he shouted way too cheerfully, instantly putting me on edge.
Everyone mumbled hellos, and he took the hint, bless him.
“Thanks for joining this Groovy Grape tour,” he said calmly and softly. “My name’s Stuart, and I’ll be your driver. You can call me Stuart, or Stu, I don’t really care—it’s only a day tour.”
He was dry and emotionless, and he was leading me towards wine, which basically made him my favorite human being. We made a stop for coffee, and to see one of Australia’s greatest sights: the giant rocking horse.
I kid you not.
“There’s a famous toy store over here,” Stuart explained, “and because Australians like building big things in the middle of nowhere, we have the rocking horse on our right.”
Australians seriously do like building big things in the middle of nowhere. There’s the giant prawn, the giant banana, a giant bull, and a giant bottle, among others (for the full list of randomly large things, click here). These things are large and random and relatively useless, other than providing tourists with pictures to bore their friends with. For instance:


It weighs 6 tons and is 25 stories high. And it’s a rocking horse. You don’t have to be drinking to love it.
Thank you, Adelaide. Not only do you give me an extra 30 minutes, you give me a reproduction of a childhood icon.

We then headed to wineries, which were loverly. My favorite would have to be Richmond Grove, where we were given a tour of the facilities by Essey, a spunky 40-something woman from San Francisco who I bet totally rocked an ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ vibe and moved to Australia to nurture her heart and reconnect with the land through grapes and wine. She was hilarious and had great energy, and I totally played the domineering group member who kept adding quips and sassing her. We got along smashingly, and she even let me take a pic with the barrels—holla at a wine-induced bestie! She wanted me to add her to f-book, which I love, but I knew I wouldn’t get internet time for ages, and hoped she would remember me later. Lo and behold, she not only Google-searched blacktress, but she facebooked me and is now a loyal follower!!!

We have a bond that will never die, even when my buzz wears off.

The Beginning of..... The BLACKpacker Diaries

Sometimes I feel like I’ve barely been gone at all. Like 6 months was barely anything and I have no excuse for being so jarred, drained, or awkward in the NYC-world I was dying to come back to when I was on the road. On the other hand, I am….jarred, drained, and feel like my Asperger’s/awkwardness is flaring up, especially when friends ask me about my trip.

“We have to catch up, I want to hear your stories!” one friend wrote me.
I wrote her back, assuring her there was nothing special. What did I have to say? I just hung out, did some stuff, met some randoms, spent too much time thinking about a gingerbread man, and learned that the world is both huge and miniscule--which I guess I already knew in this age of social networking sites. On the other hand, I now speak in slang that comes from a foreign land, have journeyed into Middle Earth, and jumped off a canyon of my own volition.

I’ve been back from Europe for a week, and finally have to accept that I am back home for the long haul. And I’ve been going out, trying to get myself into the social world that I missed so much, and find I don’t know what to say or where to begin. I know my trip was amazing, but I’m not even sure what to make of it. I want to share it, but am not sure how much anyone really wants to know. So I've decided to tell some stories in the easiest way I know how—via bloggery. For those who wondered where I was those 5 weeks when I was traipsing about on the other side of the world, or why I'm being so weird now, here are pages from the blacktress’ actual diary. It’s the real deal. My thoughts, plans, randomness, issues I thought about each day. It’s raw and uncut—okay, well, cut a little bit—but it’s not neat and tidy, and may not be appropriate for sensitive readers. (Note my NC-17 rating to the right) I will post a new installment each day, in hopes of sharing, entertaining, and clarifying for myself what it was all about. Tuck in, gentle reader, as I begin….

The BLACKpacker Diaries

“I’ve never seen anything like you before. You’re so… black.”
– James from Barrytown, New Zealand

Sunday 8 March 2009

I’m in Adelaide!!! YAY!!

Oh god, who am I kidding? I’m in a city of less than 1 million people, 999,900 of whom seem to be hiding from me, and I keep showing up ½ an hour early for everything (for more on that, check out my first post from Adelaide). On an up-note, I got to hang out with Justin, a friend of mine who was my primary reason for visiting the city.
Well, maybe ‘friend’ is an exaggeration.

I met Justin in a hostel in New Orleans back in ’05, where my fascination with traveling Aussies and their backpacking lifestyle began—although I couldn’t quite understand the desire to travel to such places as West Virginia and Oklahoma when they were from such exotic lands as, um, Staffordshire. I mean, hello—a a shire! Justin was just shy of 21, but with the crazy way Aussies list the date (dd/mm/yy), he was able to pass for 21, and got drunk off his ass the first night I met him in the Big Easy. Most of the night he kept asking me to show him my boobs in exchange for beads, and while I admired his tenacity, I repeatedly declined. Thanks to F-book, we were put back in touch, and knowing so few people in Oz, I reached out to everyone I could when I first landed. Although I’d heard Adelaide was boring and lame, I wanted to get off the beaten path, and figured getting a local’s perspective would give the city a bit more life.

Although I hadn’t seen him in nearly 4 years and barely knew him to begin with, we instantly started chatting and hanging out, and had a nice day, soaking in the great weather. It felt really nice to reconnect with someone, and know that you can spend years apart and have there be no awkwardness. I also sometimes feel that, being on my own so often, my social skills get rusty and I’m not quite sure what’s appropriate. After not talking to anyone face-to-face for a few days, I have a tendency to word-vomit, and then feel a bit guilty, but Justin didn’t seem to mind. He explained that the city appeared post-apocalyptic because it was a holiday weekend and most people were away. Because the Adelaide Fringe Festival was on, we tried to get tickets to a show at the box office in the “Garden of Earthly Delights,” which is a basically a carnival that runs the entire month of the Fringe. They’d set up rides and stalls, and children were running around like Tasmanian devils, hyped up on sugar and delirious from heat stroke. After getting tickets to a random show, we wandered inside the Garden, barely able to move. I was instantly drawn to the tent that touted “Fun Freaks,” such as a bearded lady and a man with flippers, because it’d be like a real-life discovery channel, which you know I heart. Nothing keeps my petty whining in perspective like watching a documentary about someone with a genetic anomaly who learns to live and love, or who gets cured through a nail-biting, grotesque surgery.

Unfortunately, the tent was charging $10, which just seemed ri-goddamn-diculous, no matter how bearded the lady is. Justin also appeared mildly frightened by my enthusiasm, so we just decided to leave. As we waited in a crazy-long line to exit, we had to listen to a man on a bullhorn try to get kids—well, their parents, really—to come into “the Spiegeltent,” where actors put on kiddie shows. He was doing the used-car salesman ramble, speaking so fast that anyone mildly interested would be worn down by his barrage of words and simply pay up. I was trying my best to tune out when he said, clear as crystal:

“Remember kids: If your parents don’t get you a ticket to the Spiegeltent, they don’t love you.”

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA.

Best marketing tool ever. It made me want to have a kid (or, better yet, steal one that was wandering around) and take it inside, just to prove I was capable of love.

Justin and I then headed to the Botanical Gardens, where I tried to hold up my end of the conversation, but literally kept falling asleep during our conversation because I was so knackered from my 8am flight. For some reason, I decided it was a brilliant idea to simply not sleep the night before, seeing as I’d have to get up so early anyway. Justin, ever the summer peach, didn’t seem to mind, and just rambled on. Most of it was a blur, but I do recall a trio of ducks walking around us, and him taking a keen interest in them. “I like those ducks,” he said casually. “They’re very plump and don’t seem scared of people. They’re plump and trusting.”
“Is that how you like your women?” I asked, momentarily roused by his random comment.
“And how.”

I think I’ve found a new back-up husband.

Oh, and as for the show we saw later that night: Couldn't tell you a damn thing about it. I fell asleep after about 5 minutes.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

Sunday, March 8, 2009.

I'm typing this post from the State Library in downtown Adelaide. It's been quite a long day, and it's not even noon yet. This could be due to the fact that I started drinking at around 3pm yesterday, and thought that since I had a 6:30am flight, I should just stay up all night.

Which I did.

I've been in a daze, and half-slept on my short flight to Adelaide. I'm rocking this backpack that weighs in at 13.5 kilos--about 27 pounds, I guess--and I'm already feeling it in the shoulders. I arrived at the YHA to find that check-in wasn't allowed until 1pm, so I have plenty of time to kill.

Everyone says Adelaide--known as the 'city of churches'--is boring, but I find that enjoying a city, much like ensnaring a man, is all about timing. It just so happens that the blacktress has arrived in the middle of the Adelaide Fringe Festival, a month of art and performance taking place all over the city. I instantly sat down with the festival guide and have already found some good stuff I want to see. Take, for instance, stand-up by comedian Arj Barker (from Flight of the Conchords). Or, House of the Holy Afro, which is billed as "A riotus African nightclub spectacular! Like the Soweto Gospel Choir on acid."

Two tickets, please!

Of course, in true blacktress style, I postpone visits to cultural sites and immediately hunt for free internet and an ATM, and find the streets awkwardly empty. I mean, for a big festival, there's no one around. I'm also unsure why stores aren't open....Am I in a scene from 28 Days Later??? I start to wonder as I roam.
Just then, I head to Rundle Street Mall, which is a strip of stores about 3 blocks long, and apparently is where all the cool (and unemployed) kids hang out. I wanted to stop in Wooly's, but it was closed. I was confused, seeing as it said it was open from 11am-9pm. My celly clearly stated 11:08.

What sort of town is this?!

I get to the library and sign up for 30 minutes of free internet. "You have computer number 5 from 11-11:30," I'm told by the lovely retiree who volunteers to keep himself active. I nod and smile, but am confused, because it's 11:15. How is this possible?
I go to sit at another computer while I'm waiting and the time reads 10:45. I'm utterly baffled. Where the F am I?

Just then, I remember a little fun fact I learned during my IEP orientation: There's a half-hour time difference between South Australia and New South Wales.

I kid you not. A half-hour time difference. This country never ceases to amaze. It's not even really a time difference so much as government-sanctioned tardiness.

Well, now that I've got that sorted, I'm less annoyed by my friend Justin because he's not actually late to meet me and show me around. This does, however, mean I'll have to wait 30 more minutes to stuff my face with lunch.

I'll let you know how I go in the City of Churches (and free internet).