Category: It Happened to Me

I.

Am.

Spartacus.

Yesterday in Toronto, it was a sunny day with summer-like temperatures in the high 20’s (that’s low-to-mid 80’s for those of you who think in degrees Fahrenheit). People hit my neighbourhood — Queen Street West, the bar/boutique/broadcasting part of town — in droves, wearing short sleeves, shorts and tank tops. Every sidewalk cafe and bar patio was packed well into the evening, and any band who had a gig last night played to a full house.

That morning, I’d received an e-mail from an old supervisor of mine who needed a programmer to do some short-term but lucrative contract work. I had a great meeting with him that afternoon to discuss the project, and pending approval from his client, I could be starting in a couple of days. Apparently the pharmaceutical companies have just discovered computers and the Internet, and they have scads of cash to spend on software and Internet projects. I’m more than happy to help lighten the burden of having all that moolah.

After a quick “victory dinner”, I hit the streets with my accordion and got some busking in. With the throngs on Queen Street, I made that evening’s drinking money, handed out my phone number to various people who want me to show up at their parties, got a free pint of Guinness and worked on my rendition of the White Stripes’ Fell In Love with a Girl.

Then, a trip to the gym. I never thought I’d see the day when I was a regular in a weight room. I have to agree with Arnie: the best part is “the pohmp“.

While at the gym, Will and I were talking about making alcohol versions of bubble tea.

“The problem is that bubble tea takes so long to drink,” he said. “It’s too big a drink for there to be a practical way to sell an alcoholic version.”

“I’ve got it — how ’bout putting it in a martini glass and make bubbletinis? With the tapioca balls at the bottom, instead of olives or pearl onions?”

I think we’ve struck gold here, folks.

That was followed by a run home for a quick shower, followed by a little more busking outside the Horseshoe Tavern to join my friends Will and Tina, where someone invited me to make an appearance at her show, and then inside to see Tuuli, the all-girl power-punk-pop band who are oh-so-cute and have-oh-so-catchy tunes. They sounded put on a great show before a full house. I’m definitely buying their CD when it comes out next week. Now if I can only convince them to wrestle with me in a kiddie pool full of creamed corn, I can die a very happy and sticky man. How ’bout it, ladies?

After the Tuuli show, I collected the “sweaty hugs” that the band promised to the audience (and to offer my accordion backup services). Then we were off to the Bovine Sex Club to hang out and play pool (very poorly, I might add). Will had his usual — a glass of warm water. It takes balls to order that at a place that’s liberally decorated with empty Jagermeister bottles.

“I don’t drink,” he said, “and cold water is bad for you.”

Some guy saw the accordion on my back and invited me to do the between-set music at his stand-up comedy revue at the Poor Alex Theatre.

“I saw you and thought to myself ‘if he’s got an accordion at the Bovine, he must be into comedy,” he said.

After last call, we walked through the still-warm night to Happy Seven for some late-night Chinese food and conversation. We came up with a great name for Will’s band — Cockpunch — and Tina went on about how easily amused she was and shocking it was that she had hardly anything to drink that night.

“She’s off the booze and high on life,” I said, making hand motions suggesting the layout of a newspaper headline.

“Write that about me and you’re dead,” she retorted.

After that, I gave them a quick tour of Casa di AccordionGuy, after which they headed home.

I looked at the clock. 4:30 a.m. Considering I was up at 8:30 that morning, I figured it was a good time to turn in.

“What country is Laos in?”

Thursday, March 28th: Paul, Rob and I are at the Liquids Lounge on the trendy bar strip of College Street West. It’s a party for our friend Nasreen, who’s just successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis (mating behaviour in snapping shrimp). The bar is packed with at least three or four dozen well-wishers. Paul and I have been drinking weapons-grade cosmopolitans — only enough cranberry for colour — mixed by Sarah the bartender, who coincidentally happens to be in Paul’s tae-kwon-do class.

One of Nasreen’s friends was telling me what her plans were. “She’s taking a couple of months off — going to Vietnam and…what country is Laos in?”

“Laos is a country.” I replied, “It’s right beside Vietnam.”

I was suddenly reminded of a classic cartoon depicting a New Yorker’s view of the world: Broadway, 5th Avenue and the Hudson river rendered large with Chicago and L.A. rendered almost as dots and everything else on the horizon. To most non-Asians in North America, the map of Asia probably comprises of Japan (a good place to be if you have no marketable skills — they will pay you just to be a gaijin, Thailand (good backpacking, non-threatening food), China (too big to ignore, home of uber-hottie Zhang Ziyi), Afghanistan (a recent addition thanks to that cool war show on TV) and Everything Else.

“I think this monkey plays some other sport.”

Later that evening, I ended up chatting with my friend Liz — an old friend of mine from Queen’s University — and her boyfriend Keith.

“My Dad,” said Liz, “said that the younger me would’ve hated the present-day me.”

“Because you’re getting an M.B.A.?” I asked. “Back at Queen’s, I never would’ve guessed that you’d end up getting one, either. But still, isn’t your Dad a business prof?”

“Yeah. He just finds it surprising.”

“I don’t think the younger you would hate the present you as much as Elan’s younger self would hate his present, writer’s-credit-on-MVP2 self.”

Elan Mastai is a friend of ours and at Queen’s, he was the film student’s film student. He’d be the guy at the party telling you that the “Steps Scene” from The Untouchables — the one where Andy Garcia has to both plug the bad guy and save the baby carriage — was lifted straight from Sergei Eistenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. After The Phantom Menace, he let us in on George Lucas’ dirty little secret: that he’d liberally borrowed all kinds of plot elements from Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress and that Trade Federation bad guy Nute Gunray’s name is an amalgam of Republican names — Newt (Gingrich) and Reagan (with the syllables reversed). He and my ex-girlfriend Anne (also a film major) produced a film that won a small indie film award from TVO, the Ontario education channel, after which he graduated and entered the industry.

I’m not sure what kind of mental gymanastics he had to perform in order to justify it to himself, but his biggest writing credit to date is MVP2: Most Vertical Primate. Here’s the plot synopsis from the official website:

Jack, the most valuable primate, is back – and this time he’s taking skating in a whole new direction.

Everyone’s favorite hockey-playing chimpanzee from MVP: Most Valuable Primate returns to the ice after being drafted by the Seattle Simians into the ZHL hockey league. Jack amazes the Simians with his hockey skills and instantly proves himself to be an invaluable member of the team. But the Car Jackers, archrivals of the Simians, have plans of their own for Jack. Jealous of his success and popularity with the fans, the players plot to have him thrown out of the league. Confused, scared and with the authorities hot on his trail, Jack makes a run for it.

Alone in the big city, he meets Ben, a homeless boy who loves skateboarding. The two loners discover that they’re kindred spirits and form an instant friendship. Under Ben’s patient tutelage, Jack learns how to skateboard and is performing like a pro in no time. When Ben learns of an amateur skateboarding competition with a grand prize of a corporate sponsorship, he dreams of entering and putting an end to his life on the streets. But qualifying for the competition isn’t as easy as it seems.

Meanwhile, the Simians are struggling through the playoffs without Jack, their star player. With the last game of the series quickly approaching, the team is desperate to find him in time to have a shot at the ZHL Cup.

Can Jack help the team win the Cup and help Ben enter the skateboarding competition? The action – and the laughs – unfold as this big-hearted chimp gives it his all to come to the rescue of everyone who’s depending on him.

“He’s just paying his dues,” I said. “Mark McGee told me that Elan wrote some really clever stuff that ended up getting cut out of the script.”

Besides, bad animal-based comedy movie or no, he’s doing what he set out to do when he first came to school: make movies. Most of us ended up taking up whatever career path seemed easiest, and I’m sure there are some people in our graduating class who still don’t know what they want to do with their lives.

“The monkey-movie thing will be a little bit of colour in his resume, something for Premiere or Film Threat to have a little fun with when he’s big and famous.”

(It’s always good to keep things in perspective. There are many more embarrassing stories in the film-and-TV world, such as my actor friend Jeffrey, whose best-known scene to date is one where his head explodes on Earth: Final Conflict.)

“Of course,” Liz replied, “but…baseball playing monkeys and Joey Trebbiani?”

“No, you’re thinking of Ed. I think this monkey plays some other sport.”

Here are some of the more interesting quotes I’ve heard in the past fortnight, and the stories behind them.

“You’re the happiest unemployed person I know”

Friday, March 22nd: Walking into salsa night at the Courthouse is like walking into a movie.

The Courthouse — so named because it actually was a courthouse built in the 1800’s — has a gorgeous 19th-century ballroom with high ceilings and a balcony, lit only by chandeliers, a couple of fireplaces and dozens of candles. The floor is packed with well-dressed dancing couples and spectators lounge in large and comfy couches by the fireplaces at either side of the room. The musical selection is mostly salsa, with a little cha-cha and merengue thrown in now and again. Unlike most dance clubs, this is one place where strangers walk up to you and ask you to dance.

We were invited there by our friend Sue, whom we’d met at one of the “Singleton” parties organized by our friend Marichka. (The Singleton gatherings are rather yuppified affairs held at a chi-chi resto-bar called Fat Cat, where twenty-, thirty- and forty-something professionals — mostly journos, from the look of it — gather to meet others of their ilk.) It was a little send-off for Sue; she was due to move to San Diego to start a new job in a week.

Paul and I have been to a couple of salsa nights. Paul has ballroom danced for years; he’s even been in competitions and won. He tends to seek out the women who know how to salsa, take them to the floor and then transform himself from dairy country rube to dancing machine. Paul takes dancing seriously and complains that he keeps forgetting all his steps, but as far as my uneducated eyes can tell, he does just fine.

I, on the other hand, can barely waltz. I tend to ask the wallflowers staring longinly at the dancefloor:

“Would you like to dance?”

“I’d like to, but I really don’t know how.”

“Neither do I,” I’d say and then dancing — or a cartoonish approximation thereof — would ensue. There’s a lot of “so what do we do next?” throughout the dance, I tend to turn my partner more times than the legal limit and I’m sure Arthur Murray spins in his grave every time I take to the floor. The “I don’t know what I’m doing but I don’t care” approach to ballroom dancing is cheesy John Hughes movie behaviour, but so is carrying an accordion everywhere, and that’s done me nothing but good.

After watching me, our friend Valerie told me as we watched Paul the Midwestern Mambo Machine, “You’re the happiest unemployed person I know.”

“My brothers would kick your ass”

Saturday, March 23rd: It was like Coyote Ugly, except with better dialogue and an accordion player.