An actual conversation I had with an older busker friend of mine, near the corner of Queen and Spadina:
Scrawny-looking panhandling kid: Can either of you spare a buck so I can get a hot dog?
My busker friend: Fuck no!
Me: Here. (Hands over a loonie.)
The kid walks off and buys a hot dog from the nearby stand.
My busker friend: I guess I should’ve given him some money. I am, after all, a Tibetan Buddhist.
The right girl doesn’t return my calls, the wrong one e-mailed me earlier this week.
Mr. Murphy. We meet again.
Prick.
Always check for wedding bands before pouring on the schmoove moves.
June 13, 2007: More than five years have passed since the events in this story took place. I’ve decided to make some small changes, namely:
I’ve been sitting on this story for a couple of weeks, for reasons that will become apparent as you read on. It’s the story of how I got a really good client, a client for whom I begin full-time work this morning.
Like all good stories, it begins with a girl. Like many of my good stories, the accordion plays a role.
It was the start to particularly beautiful weekend in April. The weather was gorgeous, with cloudless skies every day and temperatures that would be the norm for July. My neighbourhood responded in kind, with the sidewalks packed with people in short sleeves, shorts and short skirts and the patios filled with people drinking beer late into the evening. I spent my days programming on my laptop with a wireless connection in my back deck under the the shade of a large tree with a cooler of Diet Coke at my side and The White Stripes on the stereo. I spent lazy summer-like evenings playing the accordion near the patios in exchange for beer, watching cute bands and getting drunk with my friends Will and Tina. Best of all, I had a date with someone very cute that Friday.
People have asked me if I actually bring along the accordion on dates. I do. It may seem like cheesy romantic comedy behaviour, but it’s been my observation that people actually like being serenaded, even if only for laughs. (I’ll admit that only one person has ever done the same for me. She spent a week learning to play Happy Birthday on the harmonica, and I damn near cried at the end. I’m a big ol’ sap sometimes.)
Good things happen whenever I bring the accordion, and if there’s a time when you want good things to happen, it’s on a date. My luck, if you haven’t noticed, tends to run to the bizarre. While I’ve had some really memorable someone-should-turn-this-into-a-movie dates, I’ve also had some absolute nightmare outings, including one where my date ended up in the fetal position, screaming her lungs out right in front of the Art Gallery of Ontario as a busload of horrified tourists looked on. Although it’s very unlikely that something like that will ever happen again, I still try and shift the odds in my favour by packing a little accordion mojo.
My date, Maura, in addition to being cute and hilarious, was a cervisophile — a beer connoiseur. Knowing this, I suggested that we visit a specialty beer bar after dinner, and she agreed. There were a dozen bars from which I could’ve chosen, and from these I chose Smokeless Joe’s.
It wasn’t the closest choice — Smokeless Joe’s was a cab ride away — but that’s what popped into my head at the moment. I hadn’t been there in a dog’s age, they had one of the most extensive collections of exotic beers in the city, and it just seemed like a good idea at the time.
We were hoping to get a seat on the patio, but Joe told us that he was having some troubles getting it licensed. We took two stools at the end of the bar and proceeded to drink some expensive beers from the French section of the menu. I was having a great time, telling her stories about Burning Man and listening to her stories about her trips to the U.K.
As the end of the night drew near, the bartender, an Irish exchange student, asked if I would play the accordion after he announced last call.
“Go ahead,” Maura said, “I haven’t heard you play all night.”
“If you insist,” I said, unsnapping the two straps that held the bellows shut. I played a quick riff to warm up the valves and broke into Roadhouse Blues. Joe (I’m referring to the bar’s owner, not myself in the third person) favours bluesy music, followed by Born to be Wild.
The bartender and patrons sang along, while Maura couldn’t stop laughing.
After I was done, the bartender slid me a pint of draught (“on the house,” he said) and Maura nodded her approval.
Caught up in the moment, I didn’t see the woman walking towards us.
“That was great!” she said to me, completely taking me by surprise, as my back was to her.
“Uh, thanks!” I replied.
She turned to Maura. “Your boyfriend is so cute and so talented,” she said to her, “How long have you been going out?”
The fact that she thought we were a couple amused me to no end.
Maura answered “I’ve only known him three weeks.”
“Three weeks? You’re just starting out! That’s so cute!” she exclaimed, with increasing giddiness. She turned to face the other end of the room and call to her boyfriend. “Shen! Come over here!”
It was all falling into place. She was caucasian, with dark hair and Eastern European features, while her boyfriend was Chinese. In seeing Maura — who was also caucasian — on a date with me, I guess that she saw in us an earlier version of her and her boyfriend.
This was squeezebox synchronicity, and I recognized it immediately.
I introduced myself to Shen, and then his girlfriend, Yvonne, introduced herself to me and Maura.
“You guys make such a cute couple!” said Yvonne I threw a sideways glance and smile at Maura, who returned it.
“Well, cute couple,” said Shen, “please come and join us. I have an office just two doors down the street, and I’ve got more beer.”
“Yes, please come!” said Yvonne.
I looked at Maura and asked her what she thought. She nodded. “Sounds like fun,” she said. “And hey, more beer!”
Yvonne and Shen called to the other people who were sitting with them at the opposite end of the bar. We walked en masse out of Smokeless Joe’s and into a brownstone two doors south. Shen unlocked the door and let us in.
I looked around. It looked as if they’d moved into the place recently. There were signs of recent renovation work, and the carpet looked new. The place was clean and sparsely furnished; being a recovering dot-commer, I immediately recognized the furniture as being from the IKEA Office line. Each desk had either a late-model Toshiba laptop or a desktop computer with a large monitor with a red Buddha statue perched atop it. I saw a copy of Visual Studio .NET on a desk, a couple of programming manuals on a chair and a skateboard leaning against the far wall.
This place has all the earmarks of software development house, I realized. I wondered if they were looking for contractors.
“We’re working on some trivia games for Maxim,” Shen said, as he opened a closet to reveal a refrigerator full of beer. “If you’re a contract programmer, we might have some work for you.”
“Give me your card,” I said, trying to give the appearance that I was taking all this improbably good fortune in stride. “I’ll give you a call on Monday.”
One of Yvonne’s friends turned on some music. Shen introduced me to him as Bryan, and Bryan’s fiancee, Kirsten. While Kirsten and Bryan asked me the standard set of questions (“How long have you been playing the accordion?” “Why accordion, anyway?” “Do you always carry it around with you?”), Yvonne was hitting Maura up for some details about our “relationship”, asking about how we met, what I’m like, and so on. I was trying not to burst out laughing at how absurd this entire thing had become.
While conversing with Shen, I found out that he and I had both gone to Queen’s University. He graduated in 1995, and thanks to my Van Wilder-esque seven-and-a-half-year stint there, our academic careers overlapped for three years. He’d probably read at least one of my cartoons in the paper and attended at least one function where I was the DJ. The coincidences were piling at an unrealistic rate.
Meanwhile, Yvonne was getting Maura’s phone number. “I want us to stay in touch,” she said to Maura, “I think it would be fun if the four of us went out together sometime.”
She hasn’t known us ten minutes and already she’s scheduling a double date, I thought. Still, no one’s screaming the the fetal position, so I’m still ahead of the game.
Maura turned to me and said “Doesn’t that sound like fun, Joey?”
I put my arm around her and replied “Sure does, honey.” I hoped I wasn’t pushing my luck too hard.
We were both trying not to burst our laughing, and nobody else in the room seemed to notice.
Shen turned to Kirsten and said “Don’t you think they make a handsome couple?”
“They do, Shen. Really cute.”
Shen’s eyes narrowed a little and with a little grin, he said “Kirsten, use your woman’s intuition. Look at Joey and Maura long and hard. They’ve been going out for just three weeks. D’you think they’ve had sex yet?”
Oh, sweet Jesus Christ.
Maura and I looked at each other with a “Huh?” expression. Kirsten leaned forward and squinted at us, as if focusing her sex-ray vision.
“I’d say there’s been some fooling around, but I don’t think they’ve technically had sex.”
“Technically?” Maura and I said, almost at the same time.
I raised both my hands. “Wait, wait, wait. I don’t think you understand. Maura and I…well, this is a first date.”
There was a second’s silence followed by a group “Ooooooooooohhhhhhh.”
Shen saw an opportunity and slid beside Maura, putting an arm around her. “So,” he said, “a first date, huh? What would you say the odds of Joey getting kissed tonight are?”
I smiled, but thought If Shen has completely ruined this date with that idiotic fucking question, I thought, I am coming back later tonight with a fucking can of gasoline and fucking torching this fucking place right down to the fucking ground.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Maura said.
I was glad she had a sense of humour.
“Well, I think you should,” said Yvonne. “He’s handsome, he’s talented, and he looks like a keeper.”
Damn, I’d never had a cheering section on a date before. The double-date idea was sounding better and better all the time.
We all talked for another ten minutes, after which Maura and I excused ourselves. We bade them goodbye and walked out into the cool night air.
“I swear,” I said to Maura, between laughs, “I did not set that whole thing up.”
She laughed.
I dropped Shen a line on Monday, thanking him for his hospitality and made an appointment to meet with him and his CTO later that week. We had a couple of meetings over beers, and as a result, I have a steady client with lots of future work, all thanks to a little accordion-powered serendipity.
Halfway through a rather nice goodbye kiss, Maura gave me a gentle punch on my right temple.
“You’re weird,” she said, “but fun. Call me.”
With a wave, she disappeared behind the door.
I rubbed my temple and walked home, smiling all the way.
Someone sent me this clipping from the Eugene Weekly’s personals:
Studio of Unfine Art.
You: lanky dork behind counter.
Me: dark hair stray looking at your accordion.
Want to find bigfoot together?
Sounds like my kind of girl and my kind of date. You bring the sasquatch bait, I’ll bring the mazola.
Yesterday was an exercise in patience and perseverance.
It all started with an airline ticket that never made it to my house. I got the ticket using points I’d accumulated on my VISA card and the travel agency associated with the card insisted on sending me a paper ticket. I can’t even recall the last time I used a paper ticket. They were supposed to send it to me in the mail, but it never arrived. I tried calling the agency, but got stuck on hold each time.
Not knowing the difference between a paper ticket and an e-ticket, I went to the airport anyway. I’d paid for the ticket, so I assumed it would be on the airline’s computer.
Apparently not. The folks at the ticket counter explained to me that while an e-ticket represented an actual booking of an airline seat, a paper ticket was simply a cash equivalent that could be redeemed for a booked seat. No paper ticket, no seat.
I spent the next hour navigating the voice mail system of my credit card’s travel agency. About eight levels deep, I found an option that might help.
“To contact the emergency travel arrangements desk,” the voice said, “press five.”
I pressed five and twelve rings later, got connected with an agent. He suggested that I buy a ticket to San Jose and fill out a lost ticket indemnity form that would allow me to get the money back once my ticket had been confirmed as lost. The round trip ticket was a little more than I could afford — even with the guaranteed refund — so the people at the airline counter suggested that I buy a one-way ticket to San Jose and have the travel agency courier me a one-way ticket back home.
I followed their advice and proceeded to customs.
I handed customs my passport and boarding passes. They took one look at my ticket and decided I fit the profile:
I was escorted into a customs interview room, a small place with a desk equipped with a microphone, a chair on either side of the desk and a surveillance camera pointed at the interviewee’s chair. As I waited for my interviewer, I imagined someone in one of the adjoining offices snapping on a pair of latex gloves and slathering them with lube.
After about fifteen minutes, a man in a U.S. customs uniform approached the room, but was interrupted by a coworker. “Hey, Phil just brought in four boxes of Krispy Kremes!”
Both of them made a beeline in some other direction, and I waited another ten minutes for my interviewer to return. By then, I’d missed my flight.
The customs guy was pretty nice, asking me the same questions I’d been asked earlier — where was I headed, how long was I staying, whom I was visiting — as well as some out-of-the-ordinary questions:
He then asked if he could search my luggage; I said “yes,” partly because I had nothing to hide and partly because I didn’t want to face the consequences of saying “no”.
When he opened my accordion bag, he asked me to play it in order to prove it was a real musical instrument.
It was then that I decided that there is only one song you play when trying to establish your bona fides with a U.S. customs official: The Star Spangled Banner.
About four bars in, he declared me free to go.
He explained that my circumstances looked a little suspicious, hence the interrogation and search. I told him that I understood he was just doing his job and hustled out of there.
I was thankful that the searching was restricted to my luggage. I’m pretty sure that playing the U.S. national anthem played a part in convincing him that I was not a terrorist and that he should recognize my right to anal sovereignty.
I just realized that yesterday was the six-month anniversary of The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century. I’d like to thank all of you for your readership and kind words; I hope you’ve had as much fun reading it as I have writing it (and, where applicable, living it). I’d also like to thank all of you who recommended this blog, especially Will McLean for telling everyone he knows in Toronto — which makes up most of the city — and Cory Doctorow, whose influence and reach is rivalled only by that of Chancellor Palpatine.
This blog owes its existence to twerpish management at the company for which I used to work. The management had reduced the company to a skeleton crew — I was the only programmer remaining in the Toronto office — and installed new people in charge. The New VP R&D hand-picked a team of corporate cubicle drones to be his new programmers and as their numbers swelled, my role as UI Programmer diminished from oversseing the entire design to working on the “About” box and correcting the most minor of bugs. I was being paid to spend a good chunk of my day twiddling my thumbs. Out of boredom, I hit the Blogger site and created this blog.
2001 was full of big plans scuttled, career disasters and heartbreak; I found myself dumped, re-relocated from San Francsico back to Toronto after a mere four months, working for a company teetering on the verge of collapse, seeing most of my co-workers get laid off and watching the best job I’d ever had get whittled away by a self-serving, self-aggrandizing assholearchy. I wasted an hour and a half each day in a mind-numbing commute. I was put on the programming equivalent of chalkboard eraser-cleaning duty. I had more shouting matches with friends in six months that I had in the previous six years. The girl who’d dumped me moved back in with the postman I’d stolen her away from fair and square, and after September 11th, they got “terror engaged” (Fuck you, Osama, now it’s personal). If there was an upside to all these events, it’s that it gave me the fire to keep writing. While I rarely wrote about how far down to Hell things at gone (and in at least one case, I did it very elliptically), the act of writing, no matter how impersonal the topic, was cathartic.
As the days passed and the archives grew, I took the time to read what I’d written. I read some of the entries and think “well, that was an off day”, while I’d read others and swear that the writing was too good to have come from me. Good or bad, the act of reading my own writing gave me a chance to step back and look at myself from a more detached perspective. It became clear to me just how bad my current situation was; it should’ve been obvious, but I was too busy keeping my head down and trying to pay the rent. I would’ve figured it out eventually, but thanks to this blog, I did it that much sooner.
Maybe it’s one of those Heisenbergian “the presence of an observer at an event changes the event” kind of things, or maybe it’s just coincidence, but soon after I started writing the blog (and reading it, as it gained more entries), things changed for the better. Getting fired is normally a very unhappy event, but in my case, it felt as if I’d been paroled. It certainly looks that way, judging from the differences in my writing before and after I got sacked. The really fun stuff in The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century — the true adventures — started happening after that day. My examined life felt more and more worthy of living, starting with a Saturday night and expanding into new musical collaborations, travelling to San Francsico to experience CodeCon, the Lusty Lady and the Stagette, making a wealth of new friends, and various other adventures. While I was pulling down a much larger paycheque six months ago than I am now, I much prefer my present condition and the future hasn’t looked this bright in quite some time.
As I type this entry into my computer, I am also packing for another trip down to the Bay Area for another conference that I’m looking forward to. I’m in the process of starting my own consultancy, and the clients are coming in with little effort on my part. There’s one client in particular that’s working on a project that’s a lot of fun, and the story of how I landed that client — I’ve only told that story in a very cryptic way, but let’s just say there was a girl and an accordion involved — is quite funny. I’m back in a great city, well-established as a Queen Street fixture, reunited with old friends and making a lot of new ones.
I’m exactly where I want to be, and part of the credit has to go to this blog.