For those of you not familiar with Canada, today is that most generic of Canadian holidays, the Civic Holiday, the defining purpose fo which is to "not work". Although it is not a statutory holiday, it's highly unusual for any non-retial, non-restaurant employer to ask you to work.

The Civic Holiday is so generic that it goes by different names in different provinces. In Ontario, the province in which Accordion City is located, it's Simcoe Day, named for John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant (pronounced "leff-tenant") Governor of Upper Canada (the original name of Ontario).

I decided to spend the long weekend visiting The Redhead in Boston, where I am currently filing this blog entry. Unfortunately, it isn't a holiday here in the Excited States, so I'm making this entry from the lounge of The Redhead's workplace, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society in a cute little postsecondary education facility the locals like to call "Hahh-vahhd".


For some reason, I'm always out of town on a long weekend during which my name or weblog gets mentioned in  Accordion City's local media. It's happened again for the third time this year: on Saturday, the Globe and Mail featured the Secret Swing on the front page of section M of the Saturday paper and a number of my friends and family have already left messages on my cell phone promising to save me a copy of the paper. Thanks, guys!

(In case you hadn't seen it before, the post that got the ball rolling is here.)

The Globe and Mail fail to mention Rannie "Photojunkie" Turingan, whose photos of the swing are much better than mine (even though mine have the lovely and talented Christine from the blog Purplecar) and predate mine by weeks. This omission is even more glaring considering that they phoned him, asking for the location of the swing. Rannie is the heart and soul of our local blogging group, the GTAbloggers, and I feel that he should be mentioned.


Cory at BoingBoing linked to my last entry, The Breakup Style of PowerPoint, which has proven to be a topic to which many people can relate, if the comments and trackbacks are any indication.

In honour of the post, I shall provide some notes in point form:

Wendy and I saw Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle yesterday. I haven't laughed this hard at the movies in ages! John Cho ("Harold") was merely okay; it's Kal Penn ("Kumar") who really carries the film. One of my favourite scenes is the daydream sequence in which Kumar imagines himself falling in love with an marrying a one-pound bag of very fine weed.

The outdoor shots give away that it was shot in Toronto, especially the parking lot scenes in which you can see signs for Country Style donuts and Chapters. In the credits, one of the institutions they thank is Toronto's most notorious speakeasy, The Matador. I don't recall any scenes that could've been shot inside the Matador: were there any, or are they thanking them for a wonderful night the cast and crew had there after a shoot?


I had a lovely evening on Saturday night hanging out with Wendy's friends at Clery's, which we followed with a walk through Columbus Ave and then Newbury Street. On Sunday, I had an equally lovely brunch at Johnny D's Uptown with the some Boston bloggers including Michael "Dowbrigade" Feldman, Cynthia Rockwell, her friend Guy, Jessica Baumgart, Sun, Andrew Grumet and Matt Stoller.


In response to my request to record a number just like William Shatner did, Wil Wheaton left a message in the comments saying "You know how to get in touch, if you're serious."

I'm quite serious. Perhaps we can record it at Gnomedex?


I return to Accordion City tonight and I hope to spend most of tomorrow at the Exploring the Fusion Power of Public and Participatory Journalism conference and blogging it. Notable friends and acquaintances of mine who will be attending are: Dan Gillmor, Jeff Jarvis, Rebecca MacKinnon and David Akin. The conference will take place downtown at the Sheraton Centre, which is crawling distance from my house.