Month: June 2004

Categories
In the News It Happened to Me

Welcome, Toronto Star Readers!

Today’s edition of the Toronto Star has an article in the I.D. section titled Flogging Blogging. There’s a sidebar that didn’t make it into the online edition that has this snippet:

http://accordionguy.blogware.com
Joey, the country’s foremost Filipino-Canadian blogger. His 26/05/2004 response to an anti-immigrant www.enterstageright.com article proves that My Canada Includes Accordian [sic] Guy.

 My thanks to the Star and author Showey Yazdanian!

If you’ve come here for the fisrt time, there are two and a half years’ worth of entries. You’ll find some of the “best of” entries catalogued here. Feel free to look around!

P.S. It’s spelled “accordiOn”.

P.P.S. My apologies for the use of the <blink> tag, I believe it is warranted.

Categories
It Happened to Me

By request: A better (and more recent) picture of Rob

Rob didn’t like the last photo of him I posted,
so let’s try this again. Here’s one I took last week; not only does he
not have a spaced-out expression, he’s looking pretty macho with a big
power drill as he constructs his Murphy bed:


If he looked any tougher, he’d be jumping out of the screen, drilling a hole in your head and feeding on the goo!

Categories
It Happened to Me

For the Redhead’s Amusement

Here’s a photo The Redhead has never seen: it shows the longest I’ve ever had my hair (and the last time it was red.
This photo is from February 2002 and the guy to the left is Rob
Strickler, the newest member of our house.


I like to refer to hairstyles like this as the “I Want to Hump Duran Duran” look.

Categories
It Happened to Me

A Different Loft

Continuing the loft photos from the previous post, here are two shots of the loft in which Cory Doctorow lived, taken in May 2000 in celebration of our landing the first round of venture capitalist funding for OpenCola.

This loft is at the bottom of Fraser Street, a stone’s throw away from
Tucows. It’s split-level, with the upper floor being an open platform.

This first photo shows two OpenCola founders making an annoucement from
the stairs. Grad Conn is seated at the top of stairs; as an homage to
computer programmers everywhere, he is wearing socks and sandals.
That’s Cory standing with one of the gift lunchboxes to be given to
investors. The investors are watching from below; this would probably
be the last time they looked up at us.

The area to the left below the pennants is Cory’s tiki bar. Behind Grad, you can see the bedroom area.

Here’s a closer shot. Yes, that’s a “Tigger” costume hanging on the
clothes rack. That’s the kind of thing you shoudl expect in the home of
a Disneyland-obsessed guy like Cory. Note the cool bric-a-brac mounted
on just about every wal surface.

Categories
It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Lofts

Gideon Strauss recently attended a concert held at a friend’s house. He writes:

The concert
happened in an unexpected place – an old industrial building converted
to loft suites, in a semi-rundown, slowly gentrifying part of Toronto.
(While we were walking down the street some time before the concert I
pointed out the building to the Strausslings, and Summer [one of his daughters] asked in a surprised voice, “People live
in these buildings?” A passerby covered his cellphone with a free hand,
smiled, said “Oh yes they do!” and walked on.)

I wrote in the comments that if I could get whomever it was who
borrowed my book on loft culture to return it to me, I’d be happy to
lend it to Summer. I also mentioned that I’d taken a number of pictures inside lofts and that I’d post a few.

It turns out that I can’t even remember who borrowed the book. I get
the sinking feeling that it’s in the clutches of my second-most-evil
ex-girlfriend, who now lives on the other side of the San Andreas
Fault. If this is the case, getting it back is a very unlikely
proposition. I’ll phone around and make sure; it might be in someone
else’s possession, in which case I can get it back.

In the meantime, I’ll post some photos that I’ve taken over the years at various parties that took place in people’s home-lofts.

This first series was taken at Etric Lyons’ place back in December 1999
when he threw a wine and cheese party to exhibit some photos he’d taken
that summer. This loft is a little more posh than most, but it should
still show off enough architectural and sociocultural characteristics
of the “typical” loft.

So here you go, Summer, the first series of loft photos. You can view either the photo album or the slideshow.

Categories
Uncategorized

The enbalming starts in five minutes

I’m quite surprised that I got a couple of email requests to comment on
the death of former president Ronald Wilson Reagan, as there are a
number of better qualified commenters from all parts of the political
spectrum, many of whom have already posted their thoughts. I suspect
that there are two reasons they think I might want to comment:

  • He was a supporter and admirer of President Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos’
    strong anti-communist stance was a good thing, but staving off
    communism by suspending the Philippine constitution and turning the
    country into a dictatorship is completely missing the point. When
    Corazon Aquino led the “People Power” revolution in 1986,
    he tried to get her to compromise with Marcos — not very likely, as he
    had ordered the assassination of her husband (who said “the commies did
    it”).

  • I saved his ass time and time again in the video game Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja, a martial arts/platform jumper game in which you must save “President Ronnie”:


    I fought through 7 levels of Ninja, defeated Karnov,
    saved your sorry ass and all I get is a burger?!
    Damn, this Reaganomics sucks.

Categories
It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Crazy Go Nuts University Party at Lava Lounge This Thursday

If you live in Accordion City (that’s Toronto, folks) and are a Crazy Go Nuts University
(that’s Queen’s University, folks) almnus (that’s a male graduate,
folks) or alumna (that’s a female graduate, folks), you might be
interested in an alumni (that’s plural for alumnus/alumna, folks)
social at the Lava Lounge
this Thursday. It starts at 9:00 p.m. and runs through the night. Be
sure to arrive reasonably early since Lava, being one of the more
popular destinations on a street that is itself a popular destination, tends to fill early.

I’ll be the guy with the accordion, the beer and the Queen’s Applied Science ’91 jacket.