Categories
It Happened to Me

Untold Tales of the Hot Tub Party

Here’s an excerpt from an entry that’s been sitting as a draft for far too long. It’s only the beginning, and I have every intention of finishing it this weekend.

For those who were there: yes, this is the story of what happened when the cops came.


I was not the only birthday celebrant at my party featuring the hot tub on a truck last November. Another celebrant was my coworker and guy-at-the-neighbouring-desk-at-Tucows, Guile, who shares a birthday with me. Yet another guest with a November 5th birthday was Ashley Bristowe, whom I met twelve years ago back at Crazy Go Nuts University.

“Ash,” I said to her sometime shortly after one a.m., just as the party was kicking into high gear, “you’ve go to try out the hot tub. It’s like being in a Puff Daddy video! Did you bring a bathing suit?”

Bathing suit?” she retorted indignantly. “What is this bullshit about bathing suits?”

She’s actually quite demure most of the time, but gets all potty-mouthed when the tequila comes out.

“I will go in the tub…nekkid!”

I raised my right eyebrow, which I do whenever I am presented with an intriguing idea.

“But I will only do it if you do it too.”

“Bristowe,” I said, putting an arm around her, “I’ve been to Burning
Man
, baby. I’ve had my wang out in a sandstorm, so this is child’s play. Nekkid we shall be.”

Categories
It Happened to Me

Assignment

This afternoon, Boss Ross gave me an emergency assignment. Luckily, I’m pretty good at this sort of thing  and things didn’t end up like the comic below:

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

A Little More About Saturday Night

Here are a couple of videos from last Saturday, a lovely evening spent with some GTABlogger buddies — Jeremy, Graig, Carla, Paul and special guest blogger from LA, Kristine — at the superfabulous and full-of-cute-well-dressed-women Drake Hotel.

The first one features Jeremy enjoying a glass of Couvoisier that Kristine had bought him. I’m the other voice in the video.


Livin’ in a rap video. Jeremy gets the Courvoisier passed to him.
[ Click on the picture to see the video — 1.2 MB Quicktime ]

Jeremy later got to witness the power of the accordion. One of the
group of women (seen at the end of his video) asked me to take their
picture. My birthday senses were tingling, so I asked if one of them
was celebrating a birthday. They pointed out the birthday girl, I
strapped on the squeezebox, played Happy Birthday and won more converts to the Accordion Cause.


Later that evening, a guy asked me to play Happy Birthday for his buddy, who was celebrating the big four-oh. As a sign of his gratitude, he bought Paul and I a round of drinks.

There’s nothing like having a hand-powered machine that can turn music into free drinks, let me tell you.


I shot this video of the Drake lobby (and Graig Kent) shortly after
ther Unicorns’ pointless and possibly drug-affected performance.


Teeth-clenchingly hip. Graig tells us how much he loves the Drake Hotel.
[ Click on the picture to see the video — 1.0 MB Quicktime ]



Speaking of those turds on toast known as the Unicorns, a little Googling found me an article on the band in the upcoming issue of Macleans magazine. Here’s a snippet that explains everything:

The trio’s antics have only added to their
growing legend. They hired homeless people as fill-ins for a couple of
shows and claim to have eaten magic mushrooms in preparation for an
interview with the New York Times. Topping things off, the
bandmates gave away all of their possessions last August and moved into
an RV (which has since died) to live a transient beatnik-style
existence. They still don’t have a fixed address. “The nights are
cold,” says Diamonds, during a recent 3 a.m. interview in the parking
lot of a 7-Eleven in Toronto, “but you get to walk around a lot.”
Despite inhabiting a twisted fantasy world, the Unicorns have a pretty
good idea why things are going so well. “Girls start with horses, then
get into unicorns, and then nice boys,” says Tambeur. “We like to think
of ourselves as halfway between horses and nice boys.”

Halfway between horses and nice boys — yeah…on the IQ scale or the evolutionary ladder!

Categories
It Happened to Me Music

Lederhosen Lucil at “Connect the Dots”, Saturday Night

Here’s a pic of my friend and former bandmate, Lederhosen Lucil, wowing the audiences with her Yamaha Portasound keyboard wizardry and her songs about boyfriends, food allergies and candy:

This was taken at the fomerly-fleabag-now-fabulous Drake Hotel on West
Queen West last Saturday night, where I caught the show with my
housemate Paul and friends Jeremy, Carla, Graig and special guest blogger Kristine. The occasion was CBC Radio 3’s Connect the Dots tour, a showcase of indie art and indie rock and fairly indie settings across Canada.


In my opinion, Lederhosen Lucil put on the best performance of the
night. As for the worst performance, I think most people in the
audience would hand that award to the last act, The Unicorns,
who took their half-decent tunes and mangled them by making the mistake
that all too many high school rock bands make: drinking too much before
the show. That, and being out of tune, even for a lo-fi band. They
managed to get a couple of funny lines of banter in, but completely
ruined it with their spazzy “we’re in our parents’ basement rec room
rockin’ out!” stage lack-of-presence.

To the Unicorns: I want those thirty minutes of my life back, you talentless turds on toast. You guys aren’t even worthy of the witless slash fiction written about you. Taste my future generations, you poseurs.

Nick informed me the
next day that he and his friend saw the drummer after the show vomiting
effluently, to which I say “good”. The taste of his vomit will be
sweet ambrosia next to the effluent bile I will unleash upon him should the little
future gas-pumper be hapless enough to cross my path.

Categories
It Happened to Me

Happy Day, Mom!

“Mother is the name of god on the lips and hearts of all children.”

— William Makepeace Thackeray (and yes, Eric Draven in The Crow)

I wish I could say this in person, but right now, Mom’s in the Philippines with both her brothers. They’re by the bedside of my gravely ill grandfather, who’s not expected to last much longer. Until she returns this Wednesday, I’ll just have to send my best wishes for Mother’s Day long distance.

Happy Day to all you Moms out there!

Categories
Geek It Happened to Me

I hate it when someone beats me to a good joke

Last Sunday, Paul, The Redhead and I were enjoying an Atkins-friendly meat-a-riffic lunch at the Korean Grill House when Paul mentioned something about having your cake and eating it too.

Paul and I had recently seen the Dalai Lama at SkyDome,

and the bit about his interest in quantum physics must’ve stuck in my

brain. “Sure, you can have your cake and eat it too,” I quipped, “…if

it’s quantum cake!”

This amused Paul and I to no end; Wendy just shook her head at the

transformation of her boyfriend from sexy high-functioning geek to drooling Monty Python movie-quoter.

Later, I decided to Google the phrase “quantum cake”

to see if I’d come up with a truly original joke that would eventually

find its way to the web and earn me fame, fortune, money for nothing

and chicks for free. (It’s happened once before, and my joke pops up from time to time.)

It turns out that I’m almost original. Google returned a single page of results, one of which is this scientific paper on the subject (here’s the PDF version, and here’s an HTML conversion).

Categories
It Happened to Me

Good News, Bad News

The good news: Dad is better now, and he was released from the hospital today at noon.


The bad news: My maternal

grandfather, Saturnino Ador Dionisio II, who’s in his early nineties,

isn’t doing so well. The situation is such that my mother and her two

brothers, all of whom live either in Toronto or relatively nearby, have

booked a flight for Manila.

We had a “Welcome back, Dodo” (“Dodo” is the way my nephew Aidan

mispronounces “Lolo”, which is Tagalog for “grandfather”) / “Bon Voyage

Yoya” (“Yoya” is how Aidan mispronounces “Lola” — “grandmother” in

Tagalog) dinner tonight. Mom flies out tomorrow — safe

trip, Mom.