"I fuckin' love Duran Duran!" he says, but in the video below (shot last night in Accordion City's Koreatown neighbourhood), I'm actually playing Nine Inch Nails' Head Like a Hole. Still, a compliment is a compliment...

John Philip Green, Pete Forde and I went out one night in Portland to check out Ground Kontrol, an place that's both bar and arcade devoted to 80's pinball and video games (I wrote a little bit about the arcade in Global Nerdy). Along the way, we passed by a glowing red neon sign that proclaimed "Jesus is Lord" and couldn't resist posing beneath it. You know, just in case The Rapture happened that night, or perhaps we might get discovered as supermodels. You never know.

We took the Max, Portland's light rail system, from the convention center to the stop at Skidmore Fountain. The place's name is so spot on that it's downright Dickensian:

The light rail stop at Skidmore Fountain, Portland, Oregon.

Here's John, posing underneath the sign. Jesus, please send him some venture capital!

John looks like he believes. Testify!

Pete struck a good pose:

Pete: "Dear Jesus, please give me a brand new drum kit..."

And here I am. Yea, though I walk through the valley of darkness, I have no fear, for I have a big honkin' accordion:

Me: "Yay-us! The power of the accordion compels you!"

Here's a great shot that New York-based Ruby guy Sebastian Delmont posted to Flickr -- it's of that pre-keynote performance that I did with RailsConf organizer Chad Fowler:

Click the image to see it on its Flickr page

Texas-based Ruby guy Sean McMains took a video of the whole performance:

Photo by James Duncan Davidson. Click to see it on its original page.

Yes, it's total bias on my part, but one of my favourite moments from last week's RailsConf conference -- the premier conference for Ruby on Rails developers -- was playing the intro musical number for the evening keynotes -- me on accordion, along with conference organizer Chad Fowler on his ukelele. It's not every day that I get to break out the accordion in front of an audience of 1600!

Photo by James Duncan Davidson. Click to see it on its original page.

We took the Radiohead single Creep and changed it from a song about unrequited love and self-loathing to a little ditty about Rails and its creator, David Heinemeier Hansson. Here are the reworked lyrics:

Writing applications
Used to make me cry
But you wrote a framework
So friendly and dry

You're a supermodel
And I hear you code too
You're so effing Hansson
David Heinemeier Hansson

But I'm a noob
I barely wrote depot
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here

(Falsetto part)
Da da da da...
David Heinemeier Hansson
has_many
has_one

The song's chords are pretty simple: G - B - C - Cm, over and over, so rehearsing it didn't take very long. Here's a video that Aaron Huslage shot during our rehearsal just outside the administrative area:

Here's the video of the actual performance, shot by one "KeeperPat":

This makes this the second RailsConf at which someone performed a musical number with the words "David Heinemeier Hansson" in the lyrics (why the lucky stiff did it last year with lyrics about how Hansson was killed by Robert Scoble after a flamewar). It's a tradition now!

I'd like to thank Chad Fowler for going along with the musical suggestion and for being an excellent musical partner. Maybe we could do it again next year -- perhaps a ditty where we mention everyone in the Rails Core Team by name?

This Thursday, May 10th at 7:00 p.m., my friends from Crazy Go Nuts University David W. Scott and Andrea Medovarski will have a screening of their new film, The Behaviour of Houses at the Brunswick Theatre (296 Brunswick Avenue).

Here's a synopsis:

Melinda, an aspiring artist with a dead-end job, lives in the city with Colum, who is pursuing his PhD. Escaping her privileged upbringing, Melinda is deeply critical of her family's business "building suburban bungalows for the moral majority." When Melinda's brother, Jeremy, comes to the city for the Home Builders' convention, he brings shocking news that will change all three of their lives.

As they all try to cope with unfinished family business, Melinda must make the most dramatic choices of all. Caught between her artistic dreams and her family's demands to take over the business, she must now find her own place in the world.

The Behaviour of Houses is a story about finding your voice. It deals with that period in your mid twenties when you have to face up to where you come from - and decide where you're really heading. It explores the awkward space between what someone says and what they really do.

Melinda is the daughter of a real estate developer who is running from her past. Colum is a PhD student trying to make his own place in the world and create the family life he never had. Jeremy is Melinda's younger brother. His wild side hides how much he wants to protect those he cares about.

After the movie (it runs 98 minutes), there'll be an after-party at Boom Shiva (1180 Queen Street West, halfway between the Gladstone and the Drake). One of the lead actors is also a singer so she will be singing there that night. It's pretty casual, and anyone with musical ability is invited to attend and participate; I've been invited to kick out some accordion jams.

Come and support indie film and rockin' accordion!

Tomorrow, Tuesday May 8th, another Geeks and Guitars event will take place at The Press Club (850 Dundas Street West), a lovely little bar on Dundas Street West, a bit east of Trinity Bellwoods Park:

It's their weekly open mic jam night; Mark Kuznicki gave it a name by which we TorCamp people refer to it. They provide a decent drum kit and amplification for guitar, bass and vocals. There's a house band that does a handful of numbers, and the free-for-all format allows for either solo performances or group jams.

You know it's a good jam night when not one but two accordionists show up.

Here are some excerpts from Martini Boys' (a trusted reviewer of Accordion City drinkeries) review of The Press Club:

Credit co-owners Shawn Merritt and Natalie Robinson with recognizing a singular opportunity when it came their way and seizing it. They have graced the Dundas West Strip with a hidden gem that will soon be discovered especially since they’ve opened it up on a street that is still a local secret.

Having the opportunity to chat Shawn up it turns out that he did a stint as a columnist in Vietnam but makes it clear that PC isn’t some dry “book club”. His main intention was to eventually offer rare liquors that he’d import from Vietnam: snake flavoured booze, rare flower spiked liquids that one can’t find in your regular bar-around-town. The atmosphere, being more European bar than English pub makes it easy to sidle up next to your neighbour and actually have a conversation, as suggested by the large corner bench that pulls the whole place together.

...

“The Press Club”, being the newest addition to an area that isn’t yet sullied by overpriced drinks, obnoxious doormen and dress codes in effect will surely succeed in due time. It has just opened after all, the art work that the owners plan to display has yet to make it on the walls, the rare liquors that Sean intends to import have yet to make it across the border, but once the little wrinkles are ironed out, The Press Club will attract more of a Dorothy Parker type than, say, an “Alfie” type.

The jam night doesn't really get going until about 9:30 or 10ish; I plan to show up avec accordion around then.

Jammin' with James on accordion at the Press Club a couple of weeks ago.

If you plan to attend next Tuesday's open mic night -- a.k.a. "Geeks and Guitars" at the Press Club (850 Dundas Street West, between Manning and Euclid), you have an assignment.

Make sure you are familiar with these two chords, E and A:

Those two chords are all you need for a number of songs, including one I'd like to try: The Gourds' version of Snoop Dogg's Gin and Juice.

After a long period of relative inactivity, I'm getting back into accordion practice and plan to play way more often this year. It's time to kick the ol' squeezebox old school!

9:30 a.m., Saturday May 1st, 1999 -- eight years ago today:

"That's the last of the boxes, Mom!" I said as I walked through the front door of my parents' house. It was spring cleaning day, and my job was to take junk out of the basement and bring to to Goodwill.

The older British man sitting in the kitchen looked at me with a somewhat perplexed expression as I poured him his cup of tea. He was my sister's friend's father, and he had come to pick up his daughter's belongings. She had no place to store her stuff while she was off in Nairobi, and my sister had volunteered the space.

"Oh," I said, realizing what he was looking at, "the purple hair. It's an experiment."

"It's...er, jaunty," he replied. "Really comes out on a sunny day like today. You don't find it...shall I say, career-limiting, do you?"

"Not really. I'm a computer programmer, and I run my own business with a friend."

"And your clients?"

"They don't have a problem with it, either. In fact, I think it reassures them. They're not just buying our services, they're also buying a bit of that Wired magazine image, too."

He smiled, and Mom entered the kitchen.

"Joey, is that accordion in the foyer yours?" she asked.

"Yes it is. Isn't it a beauty?"

"It's nice. I didn't know you played."

"I don't. Not yet, anyway. Karl and I are going to try busking on the street today."

"Really? What will you play?"

"I know some chords to some pop and rock songs. Simple stuff. We're just going to try it out and see what happens."

"Who's going to sing?"

"It might have to be me. Karl seems to know only the lyrics to his own music."

"You? Sing? Uh-oh..." she said with a smile.