The Saddest Words

My late great-aunt Mary used to quote a line from Maud Muller, a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier:

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

I was reminded of this line of poetry by a conversation I had yesterday afternoon.

“I’m comfortable where I am right now.”

That’s what my friend S. said over beer at the Black Bull. It was in response to my final offer for him to move into the available room in my house.

I’d been stalling the search for a housemate for as long as possible in order to give my good friend S. a chance to think about moving in. I’d rather have S. rather than some stranger because I want someone I both like and trust in the house. I also think that moving into this house would be good for him; it’s beautiful enough to have been featured on the television show Love By Design (yup, I was one of the eligible bachelors on the show) and in Toronto Life magazine. It’s a hub of activity, be it geeky (Peekabooty, plus Paul’s and my consultancies), musical (Paul plays guitar, I play you-know-what, and my musical friend often drop by) or social (impresarios that we are). Its location — an intersection of Chinatown, the student ghetto, Kensington Market, the club district and the “cool” street with the boutiques and bars — is such that you can almost fall out of bed and land where the action is. The landlords will take my lease away from me when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.

S. turned it down, though. He said that the cost of moving would be prohibitively expensive (he lives in a bachelor apartment a 15-minute drive away from me when traffic is light) and that he’d have to reprint all his stationery and business cards (like me, he runs a small consultancy out of his home). His current rent includes utilities; moving into my place would mean a slight rent increase and that utilities would no longer be a fixed cost.

He also said “Besides, after a couple of months, you’d kill me.”

(If you live in that kind of daily fear of going broke over smallish expenses, to kill you might be doing you a favour 😉 )

I’m not mad, nor do I consider his turning down my offer a snub. I think his reasons for not moving in are pretty flimsy excuses, but he’s gotta do what he’s gotta do, and I have to respect that.

However, what he said got me thinking.

Could’a, Would’a, Should’a

This isn’t the first time S. has turned down an interesting offer of mine. Three years ago, I offered him a chance to go down to Burning Man. I was renting an RV with two other people and there was still plenty of room for him. He knew of Burning Man and while he thought it might be fun, turned down the chance to go. I went, and came back with photographs and stories about my adventures in the desert, all the cool people I’d met and the fun I had. After seeing the pictures and hearing me go on about Burning Man, he said that perhaps he should’ve gone.

Has something like this happened to you?

There’s a slim chance that there might have existed a very, very fortunate person who’s never had to say “I shouldn’t have passed up that opportunity.” If you’re that person, give yourself a cookie. You’ve earned it.

The rest of us — myself included — have at least one “could’a, should’a, would’a” regret. In most cases, those regrets outweigh the regrets over things we have done.

Here’s one you might find familiar: there are a couple of women whom I’ve filed under “the ones that got away” because in a failure of courage, I didn’t ask them out. A psychologist friend of mine pointed out that this kind of regret is quite common. He also pointed out that most people, upon later reflection, say that getting rejected is far easier to live with than never having approached that other person.

I’ve also had some near misses — moments where I was wavering on the edge of not doing something because it seemed like too much effort to be worth it, it would me look foolish, or that it was too great a risk. I almost gave up trying to play the accordion and I almost didn’t try busking. I almost didn’t make hasty arrangements to fly to Prague to celebrate New Year’s 2000, and when there, I almost didn’t ask the cute Czech czick out on a dinner date. I almost didn’t join the startup company where I had the most exciting and rewarding time of my career to date (it was the riskier choice; my other offer was to work for the tools group of the considerably better-heeled and better-known Chapters Online, then poised to become Canada’s equivalent of Amazon.com). In all those cases, I’m glad that I followed through.

Adventure Minus Risk Equals Disneyland

It’s one of the first lessons they teach you in any “Intro to Business” course: the greater the risk, the greater the reward.

The hard part is determining what an acceptable risk is and dealing with the consequences when the dice don’t come up in your favour.

I took that kind of a risk in late 2000, when I was offered a position in the company’s San Francisco office. It was an opportunity to do what I do best — a mixture of programming and PR, with lots of accordion playing as a job requirement, right in the Bay Area, where a lot of the industry action was. Being in the States would also make it possible for my then-girlfriend, an American, to live in the same city and take our relationship out of the “long-distance” category. While there was much to be gained, there was also much to be lost. It meant leaving a beautiful house in a great neighbourhood in Toronto, a place where I’d already carved out a comfortable niche and gained some notoriety as the Accordion Guy. It meant leaving friends and family. It meant making the biggest move I’d ever made since emigrating from the Philippines for Canada almost 27 years ago. By going, I was betting my career and my personal life.

Things didn’t work out they way I wanted. The girlfriend, having suddenly realized that she had completely moved cross-country into a city she couldn’t stand, left a few hours short of two weeks after arriving. The company’s financial situation worsened, and the San Francisco office was closed as one of the cost-cutting measures. A few months after moving to San Francisco, I was moving back to Toronto, suddenly single and working for a company that was starting to circle the drain. I had gambled and lost.

Still, I’m glad I took that chance. For a short while, I lived within walking distance of the beautiful view of the Bay at the top of the hill on Fillmore. The job gave me a chance to visit both Apple’s and Microsoft’s campuses, something I’ve always wanted to do. I got to talk tech, exchange ideas and just hang out with some of the brightest lights of the industry. I made many new friends in my new city. I joined a band. I tried my hand at stand-up comedy and got invited to do my routine at many other comedy clubs as a result. I got to do a lot of thing I’d been meaning to do. In spite of the fact that it didn’t go according to plan, I know that I would’ve regretted not going more than going.

Blame the accordion

It always comes back to the accordion, doesn’t it?

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while (it turns 6 months old this Saturday, by the way) or have gone through the archives, you know that I often say that the accordion has some mystical reality-bending powers that cause wonderful and unusual things to happen to me.

Of course, I know that it’s just a wooden frame holding metal reeds encased in black plastic, chrome and “mother-of-toilet-seat” keys. It’s just a tool that I’ve learned to use particularly well, both as a musical instrument and as a “social engineering” device. I’m sure I’m using it in ways that weren’t imagined when it was first invented about 150 years ago, in that William Gibson-esque “the street finds its own uses for things” kind of way.

If I hadn’t taken a chance and not turned it into my personal totem, my life would be less interesting and the accordion would be just another musical instrument sitting in a basement, gathering dust and slowly going out of tune.

All the difference

The root of the word decide comes from the Latin verb meaning “to cut off”. Each decision we make cuts off a set of future possibilties; in fact, quantum theory (and at least one Star Trek episode) suggests that each decision we make cuts us off from complete universes.

Sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon has a law named after him. It states that “ninety percent of everything is crap.”

A corollary to that law is that ninety percent of the lucky ten percent who live in a G8 nation are probably just going on with their day-to-day lives, marking time. Birth – school – work – death, punctuated by trips to Blockbuster and package vacations to tourist traps. I’m not suggesting that everyone should run out and lead a thrill-a-minute existence like James Bond or take up naked bungee Russian Roulette. What I am suggesting is that when given a reasonable opportunity to do something out of the ordinary, no matter how small, consider taking it.

I started with a snippet from a poem, so it’s only fitting that end in the same manner. Here’s the last bit of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Choose your roads well, folks.

A special note for S.

Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to move in, nor am I getting on your case for not moving in. All I’m asking is that you try and resist the known and embrace the unknown every now and again. Just remember that you don’t always have to play it safe — stretch a little. You might like it.

Blood, sweat, tears…and karaoke

As I mentioned in yesterday’s posting, Kick Ass Karaoke (that’s at the Bovine Sex Club here in Toronto) takes place tomorrow. It’s a fun evening, but for Carson T. Foster, its host, it’s also a delicate balancing act with several factors: the need to keep the audience entertained versus the individual’s desire to be the star of the show for their three or four minutes, keeping bar sales up, dealing with noise problems and making sure the costs are covered.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the politics of karaoke.

The complaint

In addition to its own Web site, Kick Ass Karaoke has a mailing list. Here’s a posting from last week from a disgruntled attendee:

Hi,

I really love Kickass Karaoke, it is an event like no other, BUT…

Could you please play the requests in the order that you get them? Too many times myself and other friends have waited, and waited, our karaoke fires

growing ever cooler, and approached you only to find our requests at the bottom of the pile, and more recent requests being played before ours. I

know, when Bovine-associated persons are present, you have to give them a lot of stage time, but this happens even when Robin Black [Canadian glam rock star who frequents the Bovine. One of his bandmates, Starboy, works at the Bovine. — Ed.] isn’t there. What’s really frustrating is when one friend, who is a longtime regular, gets to go onstage in a timely manner, and the rest of us, who haven’t been

coming as long, have our requests constantly shunted to the back of the pile.

I don’t want to boycott K.A.K. I really love it. But I’m getting upset and it’s a simple matter to fix the situation.

The reply

Here’s Carson’s response…

Hey, thanks for your post. I appreciate your comments and criticisms. In regards to boycotting KAK, you have to do what you feel is right. Kickass Karaoke is worth as much as you paid to get in. [Ed. Note: There’s no cover charge.]

The request list has always been a bit of a headache.

I try to balance people who have never sung at KAK before, with people who haven’t sung that night, with people who arrived at the Bovine at 9:15 (they came early, shouldn’t they be rewarded?). There are also regulars, people who have been supporting the night since day 1. There are the people who practice at home, change lyrics or mix 2 songs together. (Mike and T’s version of Closer/The Gambler comes to mind. Ad Rock’s rapping and Accordion Guy are also good examples).

There are the people who do the same song every month, as if honing it to perfection. And there are the people who go up to sing and just die on-stage. It can be they get lost in the Karaoke version of the song, it can be the intimidation of being in front of a group of people or simply that they just really didn’t know the song as well as they thought they did.

On top of all this, yes, there are the Bovine associated staff, friends and bands who are fun to watch, perform well in front of people, but seldom are willing to wait to sing.

I also try to balance men to woman singers. A girl/boy/girl/boy thing. Otherwise it becomes a college frosh night…and nobody wants that.

As the host I try to keep the show moving along and interesting. The things that slow the evening are:

• People not filling out the request form properly (

  i.e. Singer’s name, song title, disk number and track number)

• People leaving the room and not being there for their request.
• The time it takes for people to get through the crowd to the stage.
• The karaoke disk not playing or skipping.

Also I work as a filter… like a big sponge. I will be more inclined to play something that’s geared to the club and the night, over say, Celine Dion, 9 times out of 10.

I will be more inclined bring up someone I’m familiar with. That’s human nature. Yes, it’s arbitrary…and yes, it’s my judgment call. That’s my job. For those who are upset by this, or feel they could do better, I respectfully suggest you consider starting your own karaoke night. I’d come.

There’s lots of stuff that is at every other karaoke night in the city. That’s fine…for them. I play Rock n’ Roll in a Rock n’ Roll club. That’s me. That’s the Bovine. I try to do my best, yet always, someone feels ignored.

I’ve considered putting the requests into a big drum, spinning it around and pulling out the grand prize winner, but that might be too arbitrary.

I’ve considered strip karaoke. After using a photo of the Men’s US Water Polo team where they were nude except for volleyballs over their privates with the title “KARAOKE NUDE!”, the club started getting calls from various weirdoes who just wanted to be nude in public. That might not be a fun night.

My problem is demand always outstrips supply. On April 17th, I got slammed. By 11pm, we had hit the clubs legal capacity. At that time, I had enough requests to play straight through to 5am. By rights, no one who arrived at the Bovine after 11pm should have sung. A lot of new faces in the audience went home pissed off and angry because they didn’t get the opportunity to sing.

Here’s what I’m going to try this month. I will take 10 request forms at a time. WHEN I CALL FOR THEM. I will not take any requests until I call for them. First 10. Only one song per form. If the request is not filled out correctly, it gets eliminated. If the singer is not there when their name is called, they get eliminated for that night. At the end of those 10, I sing in and out of the break, and I will take another 10 requests.

As the host, I reserve the right to jump someone into the lineup, or to nix a lameass song. If I nix a lameass song, I will offer the singer the opportunity to retain his or her lace in the queue, BUT with a different request. This means that potentially anyone can get in at anytime regardless of when they arrived. I can play until 2am sharp. The noise complaints are the issue here. Sort of like Karaoke Survivor. I may have to make it first 5 guys and first 5 girls. We’ll see how it works.

While I always try to make the night run smoothly and seamlessly, logistically KAK is a bit of a nightmare. People always feel ignored, left out or slighted. Every person in the audience has an opinion on how the night would run better, should be run, what songs should be offered…and all those things that I do wrong. I would suggest that these people have no clue as to the factors involved in KAK.

First, KAK is an expensive night to produce, both for the Bovine and for myself.

A soundman has to come in, rewire the sound system in the backroom, and set up monitors, effects and sound. He returns the next day to do a rewire/tear down. This costs money.

A Bovine staff member sets up the stage, curtains, and soundproofing. Soundproofing has become a major issue in recent months as the club has been getting noise complaints on every KAK night. This person returns the next day to tear this all down. This costs money.

My Karaoke provider, Charlie Calvo, brings by the karaoke machine and additional catalogue. His catalogue is the standard karaoke stuff. All that stuff that I won’t buy. This costs money.

I produce a poster every month (more on this later), the Bovine photocopies said poster (B+W, Color and flyers) and hires a guy to put the B+W up around the city. I put up the color and distribute the flyers on my own time. This costs money.

Every 3 to 4 months, the Bovine photocopies my karaoke catalogue. Presently, 123 double-sided pages x 15 copies. This costs money.

The Bovine purchased a JVC 3 tray karaoke machine. After 12 months, it started to act up intermittently, and finally locked up on one memorable rainy night. I brought it in to JVC and had it repaired, but I still don’t trust the damn thing. I keep it standing by as a backup machine. This costs time and money.

I am paid a nominal fixed amount plus expenses (mostly dry-cleaning the tux). Darryl Fine’s commitment to this event has been considerable. The Bovine has been very generous… considering all the costs involved. This too, costs money.

The Bovine doesn’t charge a cover. All these expenses are all covered by bar sales. Keep in mind that the average business in the service industry usually runs at a ratio of 10 to 1 in terms of bar sales to profit. I now take 10 minute breaks in order to feed the bar. The audience supports the night through their bar sales. The audience supports the bar staff through their tips.

I host a Karaoke night once a month. I work 5 days a week at a flexible job. Karaoke pays, at most, 50% of what I make in my day job. I usually end up taking the Wednesday and Thursday off work in order to set up and wind down KAK. On the Wednesday, I spend approximately 12 hours in and around the Bovine (including the show itself). The Thursday is usually a write off. Decompression Day. It’s impossible for me to get up at 6am after going to bed at 3:30, and perform my work safely. Searching images and producing the monthly poster takes 5 to 10 hours/month.

Karaoke disks cost approximately $12 to $30 (US$). I own 125.

Reprinting my catalogue is a total horror show. I update it to reflect additions to my catalogue. After getting the disk, I have to find the disk listing on line. This listing is not always accurate or correct. After confirming spelling, artist listing and track order, I enter this information into my karaoke database. I print about 3 full copies to proof and check for mistakes. I try to make it easy to find a song in my book.Eventually, I print out a final copy and bring it to Kinko’s. This process takes about a week.

All in all, it’s very time consuming.

Possible Solutions:

• Play a bigger venue
• Hold KAK more than once a month.

A bigger venue won’t help. Because KAK is an audience participatory event, having a larger audience only compounds the problem. Presently, I’m going as fast as I can with breaks. If I don’t take breaks, the bar suffers and I might as well do it in my living room… unless I could start earlier or play later. That’s a possible option.

Having KAK more than once a month is an option that certainly exists. The problem is that I might dilute the audience to the point where it becomes a money pit, both for the venue and myself. Personally, I can’t justify taking 2 additional days off work in another week. KAK already messes up 1 weeks paycheque.

Another thought is doing another night in the same week at another venue. This I could justify, but whether the audience is there to sustain a Wednesday/Thursday type of thing is questionable.

More direct sponsorship to offset costs. i.e. Liquor/Cigarette companies. This would be great. I have no clue who/how to approach this area.

If you have any input or constructive criticism drop a line.

Carson T. Foster

Kickass Karaoke

We’ll have to see how Carson’s new scheme works tomorrow.

Scoop: O’Reilly to announce Mac OS X Conference!

(In The Happiest Geek on Earth)

You could wait until the official announcement, or you could get the scoop from me. Your choice.

Read it here.

Actual conversation from last night at the Velvet Underground:

Cougar 1: Sorry about borrowing your hat, but I thought it might be a good way to get you on the dance floor.

Charming accordion player: No problem.

Cougar 2 (attempting, but failing, to say it discreetly to Cougar 1) I think you should take the kid with accordion home. He could be the man of your dreams.

Cougar 1: My friend says I should hook up with you…

Charming accordion player: So I heard.

Cougar 1: but I’m too drunk to do anything right now. Maybe later. Can I have your phone number?

Charming accordion player: Waaaaait a minute. Hold on. What say we step back a little. My name’s Joey. Yours is…?

A few of her personal anecdotes later, my instinct to flee had crystallized into a watertight rational argument to run away screaming. I excused myself, saying I had to go and do some busking and went to my usual roost outside Amato’s Pizza.

My friend Sean [he’s the one on the left] was hanging around when I got there.

Sean: I thought you’d be here sooner.

Me: Uh, yeah. Had an…interesting time at the Velvet.

Sean: It sounds like there’s more to it than that, judging by the tone of your voice.

Me: Little misadventure. Somebody hitting on me and giving me a heavy dose of the TMI. Older women…

Sean: One blonde, one brunette, black tank tops and tight jeans?

Me: Yeah, how’d you…?

Sean: They were grabbin’ me and my buddy’s asses last week at the pool tables.

The Velvet isn’t typically cougar hunting grounds. I blame global warming.

A little while later, cougars 1 and 2 walked by. Cougar 1 walked up to me, apparently to give me a peck on the cheek but changed directions for the mouth at the last moment. For some reason, I did a mental calculation and figured that she’s probably the oldest woman who’s ever kissed me (as my friend John Henson would say in a tiny, high-pitched voice, “I’m different now…”). She walked off saying, “Nice meeting you, Joey.”

Sean: Perhaps you want some Lysol for your lips.

Napoleon (the Zen Lounge door guy, and yes, that’s his real name): Ladies loooooove the musicians.

Sean’s friend: Accordion Guy gettin’ his freaky-freak with the divorcees.

Me: I feel soiled.

Sometimes the accordion mojo shows its dark side. Stan Lee was right: with great power comes great responsibility.

“Where’s your Messiah now, Flanders?”

It’s lovely day in Toronto today. As I type this, I’m looking out the south wall of my bedroom/office/looooove palace (as I’m fond of mentioning, the south wall of my room is entirely glass and has a door that opens to the Casa Di AccordionGuy back deck) and seeing a cloudless sky. I’ve propped open the door to let some fresh air in. Even though I’m two blocks away from a major intersection — Queen and Spadina — the buildings due south and west of the house absorb most of the traffic sound. The loudest things you can hear are a plane in the distance and the birds roosting in the tree. It is, as Bill Withers put it, a lovely day [that’s a .WAV file]. There’s nothing I like better on days like today than to…

…have my beliefs in God challenged! C’mon, belief! You want some, you punkass bee-yotch?

In Batteground God, you’re asked 17 true-or-false questions in the game. Every time an answer contradicts a previous answer, you take a hit. Your mission is to get through the game alive (that is, taking fewer hits than needed to kill you). Every now and again, you may also have to “bite the bullet”; this happens when your answer is consistent with your previous answers but has some “strange or unpalatable” implications. You also want to bite the bullet as little as possible. Think of it as a philosophical version of “Hangman”.

I came out alive, taking two hits and biting two bullets, earning me their third-highest award, the TPM Service Medal:

You have been awarded the TPM service medal! This is our third highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.

The fact that you have progressed through this activity without suffering many hits suggests that whilst there are inconsistencies in your beliefs about God, on the whole they are well thought-out.

For those of you who are insatiably curious (or who wonder what kind of belief system a guy who carries an accordion everywhere because stange and wonderful things happen would have), the analysis of my answers is here.

Have a lovely Saturday, folks.

What would Optimus Prime do?

(In The Happiest Geek on Earth)

Morbus Iff writes about MacOS, Windows, Un*x and how they can all be joined together to form Superion. Well, maybe not that last part.

Read it here.

Wesley for sale

After getting countless requests to sell some kind of personal memorabilia, super-unlikely sex symbol Wil Wheaton — yup, Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation has a five-day auction for this photo:

The current bid at the time of this writing is somewhere in the low two-hundreds. According to the description, he’ll sign it for the lucky winning bidder with the message of his or her choice. He’s set some very clear limits on what he’ll write:

There’s no way I’m writing “Dear Bubba, I loved being your bitch.” So don’t even ask.

Well, there goes my idea.