it's snowing down south.

2006-09-06 || 5:37 p.m.

|| Sydney ||

We take a plane to Sydney with our new best friends, Clue to Kalo. At the airport we are briefed on the meaning of "pash" and the importance of meat-flavored potato chips in our diet. Haima suggests the chicken-flavored. We recount the origin of Owen's and my relationship (met in college. O thought my boyfriend and I were mean. He�s now my BFF. Singing in various cars throughout California and the Pacific Northwest). I am thoroughly enchanted with the Australian boys, as is Owen. We secretly start the weeklong game of "Who's Your Tour Crush?"
We meet Chris from Popfrenzy at the airport. He whisks us away to Surry Hills and we become acquainted with Sydney architecture and the city�s striking resemblance to San Francisco. Eliza takes us to FBI radio for our first Australian on-air interview. The deejays comment on our height. I try not to breathe heavily into the microphone. Owen is charming and waxes romantic about rap and Paul Simon. When asked about the relationship detailed in �Nashville Parthenon,� Owen explains how the Parthenon seems to be the greatest gay cruising spot. He then explains that as a counterpart to N.P., �I Love Creedence� is the lesbo love anthem. The DJ cuts to the song and I remind Owen he�s just said �lesbo� on the radio. The DJ didn�t cut the microphone. The word �lesbo� and my comment travel across FBI�s mighty airwaves.

We meet up with Clue to Kalo and opening act Anthony Rochester for sound check at the Spectrum. It�s a lovely rickety place at the top of a wide set of stairs. I think it feels haunted but am unable to make any supernatural contact while washing my hands in the ladies� room (speaking of supernatural, Alan Beverley is a total Ghostbusters fan). Owen assembles his keyboards and mixers and drum machines and all those cords in a precarious stack atop bar tables and suitcases. I wait out sound check by reading Australian magazines and listening to Haima check the microphones and levels and technical things I am unable to elaborate on. It�s hypnotizing, the sounds he makes. I wish I had brought a recorder. After a few tries, Owen determines one of the mixers is cutting out and he�ll need to find a new one. See Owen feverishly make a few calls. See Owen and I dashing out into the dark to find an open music store. See the biting of nails, general cursing, addressing the heavens for a celestial soldering iron. Chris shows up a bit later with a substitute mixer and order is restored.

A lot of people attend the show, and they all happen to be very well dressed and attractive and kind. Anthony starts and I am struck by how comfortable he is on stage: he�s charismatic and teases the crowd with requests for heckling. He has a very smooth handsome voice, and you would expect a throng of librarian groupies to be waiting just off stage to shower him with flowers and tea once he�s finished his set. Owen and I acquaint ourselves with Australian beer. I begin my love affair with Cooper�s. Clue to Kalo plays and Owen and I sigh from off stage. We take pictures and start learning the words.

Owen plays a really great set regardless of bad mixer vibes and a touch of the jet lag and someone yelling out a request for �Freebird.� He announces we�re obsessed with hugging koalas and won�t leave Australia without getting a serious marsupial love sesh. When I sing I am excited that I am getting less and less nervous, although I still do the seventh-grade-choir hand-claspy thing. I see Curtis in the back to the right, which makes me feel better, and Alan is to the left with a gaggle of fawning girls and Mark is over to the left I think, too. It�s nice having them there.

Owen doesn�t like encores. He walks off stage and doesn�t know where to go and I feel like I should shield him until the clapping stops, but it doesn�t. He sheepishly goes back onstage and starts in on a cover of �Graceland,� and I stand by Brittany and Hannah at the merch table and you�d never know there were so many Paul Simon fans stuffed in the Troubadour. Graceland in Sydney is a magical thing.

We have the next day off and ask the Concierge to keep our bags for us while we explore the city. We figure out how to order coffee (flat white for me and long black for Owen) and sit outside a coffee shop practicing our Australian accents. We meet up with Popfrenzy Chris and Thommy for Dim Sum in Chinatown. I freak out over an ibis and spend ten minutes trying to make friends with it in a park and then feel very self-conscious about being too touristy. Owen is wearing his North Face jacket because there was evidence of rain earlier and Thommy points out that the jacket is also a little touristy. We try to keep our koala-hugging intentions to ourselves. In the restaurant we take our seats and sip tea and Chris and Thommy order all kinds of things in Chinese. We eat dumplings stuffed with prawns and vegetables and noodles with delicious sauces. Owen tries a chicken foot. It looks like a muppet hand. We gossip about various musicians and figure out friends we have in common. After lunch we walk to Popfrenzy headquarters tucked away in a building in the garment district. The windows of the office overlook buildings full of bolts of material and giant spools of thread and rows of sewing machines. I wonder what the seamstresses think of this office, looking through the windows to see band posters and computers set on MySpace and kids with funny haircuts conducting rock-and-roll business.

Owen and I get out to walk around and secure postcards and international stamps. We look for the ibis but there are only sea gulls and pigeons. We end up sitting outside a coffee shop across the street from our morning stop, and the owner comes out to offer us water. He detects our accents and asks where we�re from and what we�re doing here, and when I gush that we�re on tour, he takes a step back and sizes us up. �I feel like I should know who you are, but I�m not going to ask.� I say something about our being the Captain and Tenille, but he shakes his head and tells us to wait a minute. He goes inside and we assess his behavior: a combination of caffeine and early roasting hours and intense staring. Five minutes later he appears with a kilo of coffee from East Timor, recently roasted and promised to be perfect by the time we get back to the States. I apologize for not really being the Captain and Tenille. I offer to run and get him one of Owen�s CDs, but he says just to surprise him some time by sending it in the mail. Note to self: procure one album by the Captain and Tenille. Sign with lots of hearts and exes and ohs.

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