Nominate Me!

I would like an Anti-Bloggie, please.

If the Bloggies are the Oscars of the blogging world, then the Anti-Bloggies are the Sundance Festival. Or the Lapdance Festival. Or the Adult Video Awards. Anyhow, I didn’t stand a chance in even getting nominated into the Bloggies, and Wil “Wesley Crusher” Wheaton’s blog pretty much swept them this year. But with your help, I stand a fair-to-middling chance of netting myself an Anti-Bloggie.

In the Bloggies, you vote in categories such as “Best Canadian Weblog” (Congratulations, Natalie!), “Best-Designed Weblog” (Whoo, what a photo!), “(Best Tagline of a Weblog” Wesley Crusher), “Best Weblog About Music“, “Most Humourous Weblog” and “Best-Kept Secret Weblog“. In the Anti-Bloggies, the categories are “Most Obsessed With Radiohead”, “Most Obsessed About ‘Which X Are You?” Tests”, “Most Distracting Background Image”, “Biggest Stalker”, “Bad Hair Blog” and “Most Insensitive Response to 9-11”.

I’m asking for you to vote for me for “Dumbest Name”, “Best Heterosexual Weblog” and “Weblog of the Millenium”. C’mon folks, after all the hours of fine reading I’ve given you, is it so much to ask? Do you really think that Wesley Crusher deserves more awards than me (after all, even though it took a while, I at least finished school while he dropped out of Starfleet Academy, the little whiny quitter!)? I’ll even sweeten the pot: if you can prove you’ve voted for me (a screen shot of the Anti-Bloggies site with The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century will do nicely) and come over to my house, I will bake you some cookies. Really.

Update (Tuesday, February 5th, 12:50 p.m. EST): Give your “Dumbest Name” vote to Nick Mark’s Naked Pope: The Movie instead. I still want “Best Heterosexual Weblog” and “Weblog of the Millennium”. Vote, dammit!

“Unfinished Business” Week, Part 7

A special hello to some engineering friends

Funny I should mention Wil Wheaton.

His show, Star Trek: The Next Generation had a seven-year run, spanning from 1987 with the rather dreadful premiere episode Encounter at Farpoint (the new city is actually a big space jellyfish!) to 1994 with the pretty decent series finale All Good Things… (Captain Picard dooms, then saves the human race). In a very fitting coincidence, my University career also spans those years, from 1987 with Hey Baby, Why Don’t I Help You With Your Mech Assignment at Your Place? to 1994 with Do You Mind If I Take Off My Pants?. Like the show, I hit my stride in the 3rd and 4th years, there were several cute guest stars, ridiculous costumes and a lot of technobabble. That, and my friend George made smart-ass comments about both the show and my life (the two stand-outs are “It’s not easy being me, but it’s easier than being Joey” and “If Joey does it, it must be sordid”).

I spent a good chunk of my years at Queen’s as a DJ at Clark Hall Pub, a bar run by the Engineering Society. Being a DJ gave me the best seat in the room, all the beer I could drink, opportunities to meet new people (read “women”) and make friends. My university years predate my accordion-playing years, so when I run into old college buddies while busking, they’re quite surprised.

The most noteable run-in I’ve had so far took place before Christmas when Jane “Killer” Buchanan (we called her “Killer” because she’s so laid back — go figure), Chris Hilborn and Chris Evans ran into me while I was playing at the corner of Queen and Spadina. I played some classics off my Clark Hall Pub playlist (You Shook Me All Night Long, Head Like a Hole and so on), and even made some decent coin while doing it. Chris tried to call two other friends whom they’d just said goodbye to — Kristine “Dobber” Dobson and Greg Alexander, but they didn’t answer their cell phone. Too bad; I thought I was in pretty good form that night.

It being almost Christmas, I gave my earnings to Leanne, a very sweet street kid who panhandles at the corner.

So there you go, “Killer”, Chris and Chris — the mention I promised! Hi, guys!

Saturday Night’s Gig

I missed out on playing at a jam at Eclipse while taking care of some programming business with Peekabooty. CVS — the system that keeps our software straight while Paul and I work on different parts of it at the same time — was acting up and preventing me from checking in my changes. Once that was done, it was off to the Art Bar to back Lindi up at a gallery opening for Rannie Turingan’s photos.

They started the show earlier than than I was told it would start, so I arrived a few songs in. Lindi was just finishing Naughtly Little Thing when I walked up to the stage and introduced me as her accordion player, saying I was very cute and that she wanted to wrap me up in a package so she could have Christmas every day. Isn’t she the best? She always says really nice things about me.

Special message to George: you never did that for me when we were in a band together, you bass-playing beeyotch!

Anyhow, it was just her on the Art Bar’s charmingly honky-tonk piano and my street accordion. We did the songs on her new album, some “head” covers — namely Radiohead and Portishead — and even improvised a I-V waltz about watching dirty movies while I yelled out porn titles like In and Out of Africa, Malcolm XXX and Assablanca. Lindi’s improvised lyrics were hilarious.

After the gig, I got to chat with some folks from the audience, including fellow gtablogger Emma Jane. Lindi, her friend Damian and I went to 7 West and had drinks and dessert, talking about serious stuff like upcoming gigs and nonsense like the one time I go-go danced for Electric Circus (hey, they were short some people that night).

I went home after that and worked on some more Peekabooty code until 5 that morning. No rest for the wicked, folks!