We saw the Finn Brothers last night at the Palais in St. Kilda. It was an excellent show made better because of the brothers' obvious affinity to Melbourne (they both lived here for some time) and to the Palais (where Neil made his live debut with Split Enzs). There was a guest appearance by Paul Hester, former drummer of Crowded House. And towards the end of the show, Neil and Tim were joined onstage by Neil's sons Liam (of Betchadupa) and Elroy, which was very sweet. Most of the set list was material from the new album Everyone is Here, but they also played several from their Crowded House and Split Enzs days including:
Six months In a Leaky Boat
Message to My Girl
I Got You
I See Red
a brief rendition of What's The Matter With You
Dirty Creature
Four Seasons in One Day (which they had to play as the song is in part about Melbourne Weather)
Better Be Home Soon
It's Only Natural
Weather With You
There Goes God
Great show. I'm really glad we went. Hopefully P.J. Harvey will be as excellent next week.

Tonight we are going to Thanksgiving dinner with an American couple we've befriended in our neighbourhood. Should be quite yummy.

Elvis Costello is playing up the road right now, and somehow, I'm not there. It wasn't in the cards this time.

Tomorrow, though, we're off to see the Finn brothers. Front row!

This Thursday, we're invited to a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of some Americans we met. I'm excited. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, or at least my favorite meal.

Then, next week, we have good seats again for PJ Harvey. There are advantages to living in a country that doesn't have the internet saturation of the USA -- you can score good concert tickets if you're among the savvy.

Comparing countries. I made a couple of graphs, just out of curiousity, with a little help from NCES's Create A Graph.

First, here's a comparison of Australia, the USA, and China, in terms of area. Pretty close, yes?

Now, see the graph comparing their population.

The point? I have none. I just think it's interesting.

Book roundup. Recent reads:

Call Of The Wild/White Fang (Jack London). I've read a lot of London, but somehow, never these books. Now that I have a dog I figured it was about time. Good stuff. London knows his dogs.

Great Expectations (Charles Dickens). I'm reading this for historical reasons. Recently I came across a couple of separate references to this novel which refer to it as a cultural phenomenon of its time. Pretty much the whole world, it seems, was reading it when it came out, serialized in a magazine. So I thought I would too.

Singularity Sky (Charles Stross). Science fiction candy. The guy obviously reads Slashdot. Some seriously crazy technical references, not dumbed down. Still, his short stories are better.

Titan (Stephen Baxter). Timely reading. Written in 1997, the story begins with the Cassini/Huygens probe -- which lands a month and a half from now -- finding evidence of life on Saturn's moon Titan.