In the entry for “accordion” in Wikipedia:
The timbre of the accordion is coarse and devoid of beauty, but in the hands of a skilful performer the best instruments are not entirely without artistic merit.
Appending this rather uneducated entry is on my “to-do” list.
(continued from Mandatory cheese sandwich entry, part one)
Thursday, March 6th, 5:45 p.m.
Cute Girl and I meet up in the Eaton Centre, the largest shopping mall in downtown Accordion City. Neither of us are really the shopping mall type; it’s just a convenient indoors place with lots of landmarks, making it an ideal place for meeting in the winter.
I haven’t seen her since before she left the country back in December and wasn’t able to even have a proper conversation with her when she called to say goodbye from the airport. Dad was in the intensive care unit at the hospital at the time, my sister had just returned from emergency eye surgery at another hospital and I was doing the pillar-of-calm thing for Mom.
She looks the way Homer Simpson describes women: “A woman is like a beer. They look good, they smell good…and you’d step over your own mother to get one!”. She thanks me for coming to see the movie with her — she says that I’m the only person she knows who’d go to see an art film like What Time Is It There?
Truth be told, I’d be happy to watch TV static with her.
6:15 p.m.
We walk westward on Queen Street. We’re looking upwards, enjoying the way everything looks on a cold and cloudless early evening: everything looks crisp, and the light of the setting glinting off the windows of buildings gives the building contrast against their royal blue background. It’s one of those moments that I wish I had a camera built into my head.
“Hey, the Queen Mother Cafe,” she says, as we cross University Avenue and into the boutique-y part of Queen West. “I haven’t been there in ages.”
“Let’s go there,” I say, “I could use some spicy noodles.”
7:00 p.m.
“Hey, d’you mind if we drop by the Silver Snail [a comic book store on Queen Street, a short walk west] before we go to the theatre? I’m behind on the Battle of the Planets comic book. I need to get issue three.”
“You’re a comic book reader?”
“Of sorts. It’s just that I loved the show as a kid. The comic book, I find it a little lacking in text. I’m really more of a Sandman reader.”
She wants to go to a comic book store. I check myself for any sign of drooling before I answer.
“Ever seen the original non-bowlderized Japanese version, Science Ninja Team Gatchman? Where Mark’s name is ‘Ken the Eagle‘ and Zoltar’s is ‘Berg Katse‘?”
“No, but I’d love to watch it sometime. And you know what else we need to see? The Electronic Music Festival in Detroit.”
Sigh. She’s a geek’s dream date.
7:20 p.m.
Later in the dinner, she explains that her friend S. is taking a date to the movie tonight.
Her: It’s very odd. A lot of my engineer friends have recently joined Lavalife.
Me: You know, I have a couple of friends — neither of them engineers — who joined too. One could definitely be classified as a geek, but certainly not some of the others. It’s catching on.
Her: Which brings to me S. [a friend of hers]…he’s on a date tonight with someone he met through Lavalife. In fact he’s taking her to see the movie.
Me: Oh, so are we meeting up with them?
Her: Nope. In fact, he set some ground rules.
Me: Ground rules?
Her: Yeah, basically he asked me not to say ‘hi’ to him tonight. I think it’s hilarious.
Me: Not to say ‘hi’ to you? Because he doesn’t want his mating ritual observed? Or is he worried that his date might get upset or jealous?
Her: I think it’s the jealous thing. Something like that. Although we’re not interested in each other, we’re pretty alike and like a lot of the same things.
Me: I’d think it would give him more street cred. Demonstrate that the S.-man is one in-demand brutha.
Her: That’s what I said. But apparently he’s just worried that she might get upset, that he and I are good friends because he and I have so many common interests. He’s worried because her interests are more…mainstream…? Classic…?
Me: I think I see where you’re going. Still, I don’t think it’s any reason to get jealous, and especially not on a first date. If her tastes are classic, wouldn’t it be a safer choice to go see a less…er, challenging movie?
Her: I wonder how she’ll react.
7:45 p.m.
We’re weaving our way past the waiting line for tables when Cute Girl notices something and taps my shoulder with excitement
Her: Oh my God, it’s S.!
Me: What? Where?
Her: Over there!
I look around. The restaurant is packed, and I’ve only met S. once or twice, so I might not recognize him in a crowd.
Her: Right by the front door.
Me: Right by the only exit.
Her: This should be amusing.
We make our way to the door and S. waves to Cute Girl. Cute Girl decides to say “hi” — after all, he’s waved to her, and his date is sitting facing him. We do introductions and then dash out.
Me: Well, so much for the “not saying hi” thing.
Her: Well, he waved at me.
Me: Yeah, I guess that means it’s okay. Either that or he let his guard down for a moment.
Personally, I don’t think it’s a big thing for another woman to say “hi” to you on a date. Hopefully the encounter didn’t throw S. off his game; after all, much worse things can happen. Watch this weblog this week to see exactly how much worse.
8:30 p.m.
What Time Is It There? is about as un-Chinese a movie as it gets. Chinese (and especially Hong Kong) movies tend to be relentlessly “commerical” and have straightforward plots. This movie has no real plot, but merely paints the alienation and loneliness of a Taiwanese street watch dealer whose father recently died, his slowly-unhinging grieving mother and one of his customers, a Taiwanese woman alone in Paris. We’re talking long shots in which almost nothing happens, where half the story is told in how the shots are done.
It is by no means a “date movie” unless your date happens to be doing a degree in avant-garde film, alienation in literature, postmodern studies or has bandages on her wrists.
Luckily (?) for me, this is a non-date. I’m making a mental note to alter the situation in the future. I wonder how S. is faring.
11:00 p.m.
Cute Girl bids me farewell — she’s going to hop onto the subway and begin the long ride home to Mississauga, the next city west of Accordion City.
“No you’re not. I’m giving you a lift home.” At this time of night, the trip by public transport is at least an hour and a half, maybe two. I can have her home in thirty minutes in the Accordionmobile.
Besides, it gets me just a little more time with her.
We need to pass by my house to get the car keys, during which time I show her the wig that Char gave me.
“Check it out,” I say as I put on the wig, followed by the flaming cowboy hat I bought in Vegas, “Rob Zombie!”
I tell her that after I drop her off, I’m making a quick appearance at Velvet Underground to wish my friend Trysh from my drinking club, the Thirsty People of Toronto, a happy birthday.
“You do all these things, and you’re the member of a drinking club? You have an interesting life.”
“It’s not that hard,” I reply, doing my best Martha Stewart impersonation, “I do it all with things you might already have lying around at home.”
The ride home is fun. I put a mixed CD that my friend Ryan made for my Year of the Sheep party, a mixture of older songs — PiL’s Rise, Love and Rockets’ So Alive — and newer songs like Pulp’s This is Hardcore, a bare-bones electric guitar and acoustic drum version of Portishead’s Glorybox and a dub-ish version of Massive Attack’s Teardrop. She tells me about the screenplay that she’s working on, and I tell her about some of the programs I’m writing.
We make plans to catch up soon, and I drop her off at her door.
Once again, she doesn’t close the door of her house when she gets in, but watches me as I drive off. That’s a good sign, right?
12:10 a.m.
I put the car back in the garage, don wig, hat and accordion, hop on the bike and start heading west on Queen Street. I notice that my phone is vibrating.
It’s a message from Hector “Turb” Catre. He’s an old friend from high school. The nickname “Turb” is short for “disturbed”. He’s at Tequila Bookworm, which is just a few doors down from the Velvet, so I decide to drop by and say hello.
I walk in, still wearing the hat and wig, which gets a laugh from Hector and the friends he’s sitting with. I’ve never formally met these friends before, but as I’m introduced, they all say they’ve seen my accordion performances on Queen Street. Oh, how I love this instrument.
One of Hector’s friends, a cute goth girl — possibly an engineer? — is talking about her addiction to playing Counter-Strike. I tell them that the new pickup line of the year will be “I declare jihad…on your pants!” Hector’s planning to get a team to try out for Junkyard Wars and invites me to join. The table is all coffee and laughter.
I look at the time and decide I’d better go catch up with the Thirsty People, so I say goodbye and head out.
1:00 a.m.
At the door of the Velvet Underground, the bouncer doesn’t recognize me.
Bouncer: Whoa! Another one?!
Me: Huh?
Bouncer: Dude, we already got our own accordion guy. Maybe you know him?
Me: Yeah, right.
At this point, I still think he’s pulling my leg.
Bouncer: No, seriously. He’s one of Nikki’s [she’s one of the bartenders] friends. Been here for a couple years now.
Me: Hey guy, it’s me!
Bouncer: What?
I take off the hat and wig.
Bouncer: Holy shit! It’s you!
(I’ll post a picture of me in the wig later. You decide if I look all that different.)
Although there’s still at least an hour’s worth of dancing left and Trysh is not the type to leave a bar early, especially on her birthday, I catch her on her way out. She has to show up at a funeral the next day, so I give her a birthday hug and she boards a taxi.
Time to go home.
2:10 a.m.
I’m answering my email when Paul stumbles into my room, drunk as a skunk.
“You look plastered. What did you have, a four-beer night?”
“Very funny.”
Paul’s gets drunk quickly, which is why we named him “Drunken Master”. He even used that as his hacker handle when he was with the Hacktivismo group.
He and Chris had gone to see the complete opposite of the movie I’d watched that evening — Shanghai Knights — and loved it. He gave me a slurred summary of the plot, tried to repeat some of Owne Wilson’s jokes and then stumbled downstairs into his room.
He’s going to be in mucho pain tomorrow morning, I thought.
…that if some Americans are referring to French Fries as Freedom Fries and French Dressing as Patriot Dressing, shouldn’t they be calling French Kissing “Patriot Kissing” or “Freedom Kissing” now?
If you check the blogroll section (the links to people to link to me — see the right-hand column), you’ll see some new entries. If you have a weblog or any web page that links to me, let me know, and I’ll link to you.
That’s not this coming Wednesday, but the following one. As usual, it’s at the Bovine Sex Club and hosted by Carson T. Foster, Karaoke Impresario Extraordinaire!
Carson has just announced a new bi-weekly Kickass Karaoke at the Rivoli! It takes place every other Sunday, starting Sunday March 16th. It’ll take place in the upstairs pool lounge.
The Rivoli is at 332 Queen Street West, about half a block east of Spadina. This is extremely convenient, as the Rivoli is barely two blocks away from my house.
Fun Rivoli Trivia Fact: Saturday Night Live comedian Mike Myers modelled “Dieter”, the host of Sprockets, after a Rivoli waiter.
Carson writes:
When I got home after tearing down the sound system [from a special Kickass Karaoke at the Duke of Gloucester on Thursday], I made a huge mistake. Because I was exhausted, I chose to leave some gear in the car.
Can you see where this is goin’?
Yup. My entire catalogue got jacked.
All 180 Karaoke CD+G’s are gone, as well as my megaphone (huh?) among other items. Yes, I am insured, but it will take a little time to sort through the paperwork and rebuild my catalogue and listing books.
I won’t cancel any upcoming gigs. I’m just going to have to cross-rent disks from Charlie Calvo. This will mean that some of the songs in my catalogue simply won’t be there, until I can replace them with the insurance settlement.
I want to apologize to everyone for being so stupid and I hope you’ll bear with me during this difficult period.
Maybe those of us who are regulars should get together and buy him a bunch of karaoke discs for his upcoming March 16th/March 19th shows. CD+G Karaoke discs sell for anywhere from CDN$10 – $20 (there are some decent English rock and pop karaoke discs selling for $10 in Chinatown Centre), and I’m sure that a handful of us could easily provide him with a half-dozen new discs. It’s the least we can do for all the years of fun Wednesday nights that he’s given to us.
Email me if you’re interested in giving our buddy Carson a hand.
Pictures from February 2003’s Kickass Karaoke
Pictures from August 2002’s Kickass Karaoke
Pictures from July 2002’s Kickass Karaoke
| cheese sandwich: (n.) Slang used by weblog writers to describe a weblog entry in which the writer simply catalogs what s/he did that day. Taken from a (probably apocryphal) blog entry that went “Today I ate a cheese sandwich”. In all likeliness, the “cheese” involved was actually “processed cheese food” slices, which are not really cheese in the strictest sense of the word. |
Thursday, March 6th, 8:45 a.m.
Damn! I set the alarm clock to 8 p.m. again. They should really work on the user interface of these things. Shower, shave and breakfast will have to be deferred, but at least the habit of laying out the next day’s clothes help to shave off a couple of minutes of fumbling around the closet.
There doesn’t seem to be a dress code at this government office where I’m doing my contract work. “Business casual” is perfectly acceptable. In spite of that, I’ve been erring on the side of new-media-snappy, which in the winter is a dark dress shirt, dark pants, dark blazer. For some odd reason, I chose to dress down a little, opting for one of my dark sweaters with a single raffish horizontal stripe across the chest, the kind you always see in the funkier sections of the department store or on guys in indie rock videos. I have an inordinately large collection of sweaters with these single stripes — some across the chest, some along the sleeves — because I get two from my aunt every year, for my birthday and for Christmas. She seems to always something in one of the Joey-approved colours (black, blue, grey, green or brown) and it always fits. As a result, I haven’t had to buy a sweater in years.
9:15 a.m.
Another failure of civility: the streetcar driver and a surly passenger are having a little standoff. The streetcar driver asked the passenger to show his transfer a little more clearly next time and the passenger responded with mumbled profanities. The driver responded by saying “fine, be that way”, stopped the streetcar, opened the door and asked Surly Passenger to leave. Surly Passenger is staying put in his seat with his arms crossed. I hate rude people, I’ve been working out and Surly Passenger looks a little scrawny; I briefly contemplate pimp-slapping some etiquette into him.
If one of them would kindly blink in this little staring contest, I can get to work and go about the business of giving the Canadian taxpayers real data processing value.
9:30 a.m.
The trip, Surly Passenger standoff notwithstanding, is short: a 10-minute ride north on the Spadina streetcar to Spadina station, 5-minute subway ride east on the Bloor Line to Yonge station, then another 5 minutes on the northbound train to St. Clair station, which is right by the Arthur Meighen Building, which houses the cubicle to which I have been temporarily assigned.
I think this position is about as unbureaucratic as it gets. I was told that I could waltz in as late as 10 a.m. as long as I got in 7.5 hours every day, as stipulated in my contract. I’m usually in between 9:00 and 9:30 so that I can leave early enough to make it down to my gym classes on time. Nothing shall prevent me from lifting barbells in sync with two dozen other people to the tune of Human Leagues Don’t You Want Me Baby.
10:15 p.m.
I’m entering notes about the project in my own little developer diary on my personal laptop for future reference. I think I’ve written elsewhere that making changes to it is like trying to play Jenga while wearing Vaseline-covered mittens.
12:30 p.m.
Lunch with Eldon. Eldon, as I’ve mentioned before, has moved back to Toronto from Vancouver. Over lunch, I detect that homesickness for Vancouver that people from eastern Canada can’t understand. Some ex-Vancouverites miss the spectacular views of the ocean and the mountains. Others miss the sensible way in which west coast coffee shops understand that they have to open well into the wee hours of the morning, if not all the time. Others still decry how expensive Toronto is, but only because they have no idea how much it costs to live in most other places in the world. I’ll admit that we could stand to emulate London Drugs, a Vancouver-based chain that seems to be part drug store, part grocery store, part computer store, and it’s open late.
I like Accordion City. It’s an underrated gem of North America with a lot going for it. It’s got economic might, decent nightlife, more cultures than any other place in North America, lots of really cool nooks and crannies to explore and enough people to make the place really interesting.
I might have one more out-of-the-city move left in me, but it would have to be to some place like New York.
3:30 p.m.
The business logic behind the program I’m working is slowly being revealed to me. I’m finding out the difference between primary and secondary applicants for refugee status, and the recent changes to the law in such matters. My job will be to turn the new legislation into code.
5:15 p.m.
Cute girl with whom I’m seeing an art film tonight calls. She’s downtown and wants to grab dinner before the movie. I’d planned to go home first and shower, shave and change since I rushed out of the house this morning and dressed down. However, I haven’t seen her in a couple of months and figure that my charm can trump a little scruffiness.
More cheese sandwich-y goodness later…
From an article in USA Today (the newspaper for the postliterate) that looks as if it’s there to whip up a little more anti-European hysteria rather than actually say something newsworthy:
During [Vince] Vaughn’s stay in England [for a film shoot], he found himself criticized on all those levels. Like a boxer countering each blow, he shot back with the best responses he could.
Sometimes the complaints left him speechless, like the time he was told ” ‘America had no culture’ by a kid wearing a Kobe Bryant T-shirt and listening to rapper DMX.”
But one incident really stung.
“Man, it was bad,” says the Rat Pack-y star of Swingers. “These girls saw us and were kind of flirting, and they kept asking us if we were American. Finally we said, ‘Yes,’ and they just took off.
“One girl turns and says, ‘We were hoping you were Canadian.’ Canadian? Since when was it cooler to be Canadian?”
[Thanks to BoingBoing for the link]
