A number of you have informed me that the gadget blog Endgadget posted an article on the Roland digital accordion yesterday. This is great news for me because:
See the update at the end of the article.
Wikipedia user “Poccil” saw fit to delete me from the list of accordionists in the “Accordion” entry. What did I do to you, dude?
I will admit that unlike the other fine people listed as accordionists
in the entry, I am merely a hobbyist, but wouldn’t you agree that nobody pushes accordioning as a hobby the way I do?
Update (2004-09-13 12:05 p.m. EDT): Wikipedia user “Suppafly” has reinstated my entry. Thanks, dude!
Why, you might ask, didn’t I simply update the Wikipedia entry
myself? Considering that anybody is allowed to edit Wikipedia, it would
be a very simple matter. However, I think it’s poor form and a
violation of the spirit of Wikipedia to make such an edit oneself.
A week ago today, I got a call from Darryl Wiggers, whom I met by
chance while picking up some lunch at the Liberty Market, a
deli/grocery near work. Daryl is the programming director for Scream,
the all-horror movie cable channel. He had a couple of tickets to a
party being thrown by Rue Morgue
magazine (Gothica, horror and general Rob Zombie-ism) in conjunction
with last weekend’s science fiction and horror convention. I’d planned
on having a rare quiet Friday night at home, but since the event was
taking place at the Pussycat Club, a mere couple of blocks from my
place, the Law of the Rare compelled me to go.
(The Law of the Rare is a personal philosophy: if I’m having trouble
deciding between two things, always choose the more rare one.)
I met Darryl at the Second Cup at Queen and John Streets and we walked
around the corner to the Pussycat Club. It hasn’t been the Pussycat
Club for very long — last summer, it was a jazz-funk bar owned by a
guy who looked like a very well-dressed Heavy D.
While walking there, Darryl mentioned that Tom Savini would be there.
“Don’t recognize the name,” I replied.
“He was the biker guy in the original Dawn of the Dead.”
“Been a while since I’ve seen Romero’s version,” I said.
“Well, he was also in From Dusk Till Dawn. He was ‘Sex Machine’.”
“OH MY GOD!” I yelled out. “Sex Machine is my hero!”
How can I not be fan of a guy with a machine gun codpiece and a ridiculous name?
“Dog must hunt! Dog must hunt!”
Actual quote from Hellraiser II: “You’re so ripe, Joey. And it’s harvest time.”
Machine-gun codpieces rule!
The traditional definition of “cenobite” is “someone who belongs to a
religious order. Priests, monks, nuns, rabbis and druids are cenobites.
However, in the case of the Hellraiser
movies, the captial-C Cenobites are Clive Barker’s creations: evil
beings from another dimension delivering pleasure that soon turns into
gory pain. Doug Bradley played the most famous Cenobite: Pinhead, the
Cenobite leader. In Kingston in the summer of 1992, I spent a couple of
creeped-out evenings in Rik “DJ Stinky Poo-Poo” Young’s liviing room
watching the entire Hellraiser series.
In no particular order:
Another entry in the series of things that have been sitting on my hard
drive, awaiting posting: photos from the 5th Anniversary of Kickass
Karaoke!
I know I keep saying this, but I’m busy building a new developer
relations site for Tucows: more stuff later. It’s my new blogging
mantra: “More later. More later. More later.”
In the meantime, you can check out my photos, either in photo album form or as a slideshow.
The obligatory cute chick shot. That’s why you come to the blog, right?
While in Malaysia, Ross spotted the Accordian [sic] Hotel from his cab:
Dude! They’ve got Pizza Hut!
Remember, folks, it’s spelled accordin.
That’s my army of the night, doing attack drills.
Wendy sent me a link to a Boston Globe story covering the American Accordionists’ Association Festival,
which took place in Boston last weekend. I’d have gone, but my travel
budget is taken up by my friend Herb’s wedding in Baltimore this
weekend (and yes, I’m supposed to bring the accordion).
Some snippets from the article:
Across the hallway, the 23-year-old 2002 World Cup Accordion Champion,
Russian Alexander Poeluev, jerks his head back and forth,
violin-maestro style, as he finesses the last strains of “Bossanova”
for a radio broadcaster’s microphone. He’s dressed, head to toe, in
black.
“Vhen will I play?” he asks a convention coordinator afterward.
Poeluev’s got 10 minutes till stage time. Before he goes on, he
explains that although many don’t recognize him during his 10-city US
tour, he’s popular in music circles in Russia. Does the instrument
attract the ladies?
“Yes. Yes. Yes.” He pauses. “Yes.”
“Sometimes I have a problem,” he says. “So much girls. ”
…
Oh, the life of an accordion superstar. You get no respect. In this
country, it may seem that outside of zydeco, accordions are doomed to
be forever stigmatized as the source of bad jokes thanks to Steve Urkel
and “The Lawrence Welk Show.” But in other cultures, the squeezebox is
considered downright sensual. Think of “Lady and the Tramp” slurping
their spaghetti without an accordion serenade at Tony’s Ristorante.
Where would Mexican music be without the accordion? Where would the
Argentine tango be without the instrument’s first cousin, the bandoneon?
…
Then there’s 14-year-old Anthony Falco from Johnston, R.I., who, in his
Billabong cap and knee-length skater shorts, is the accordion world’s
answer to the geek stereotype. Falco regularly jams to Ozzy Osbourne’s
“Crazy Train” and Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” with friends at his
house, and he laments missing Monday’s Ozzfest for the third year in a
row because of the festival.
I really must attend next year. I’d have kicked ass with my rendition of Outkast’s Hey Ya.