The Routine

The fourteen of us who had passed the difficult “do you know how to calculate change” test were split into teams of two and assigned a truck each. Barry’s lieutenant Kevin (who actually oversaw the day-to-day operations) and his roomate/sometime-girlfriend Annie were assigned the remaining truck. I was paired with a first-year university student named Samantha, whom we always called “Sam”, just like on the TV show Bewitched. Sam was assigned the role of “driver” — the person in charge of the truck, cart and machinery — and I was designated the “runner”, the driver’s assistant. The runner’s job involved a lot of running between the truck and cart to fetch more blocks of ice and gas for the generator. While I was disappointed that I didn’t get to be in charge of a truck, I didn’t mind my role. I was still getting paid better than most of my friends and got to work outdoors. Being one who lived in the ‘burbs, the opportunity to spend most of my time downtown was very welcome.

The day started with Sam picking me up at my house and then driving across town to the warehouse to be there by 10 a.m.. At the warehouse, we’d see Kevin tending to the terriyaki hot dogs on a large charcoal barbecue (we often had some of them for breakfast). Once the ‘dogs were done, he’d divide them into 8 equal portions, put them in ziploc bags and hand them to each team. I would go to the large freezer in the warehouse and load the truck’s cooler with a day’s supply of ice while Sam got our syrups, hot dog buns and other supplies. We used our proven ability to make change to check out a float for the cash box, hand in any receipts for gas and parking expenses, check which street corner we were assigned, load the truck and be on our way.

Setting up and tearing down took about a half hour. Sam would stop the truck right be the street corner where we were to set up, while I climbed into the pickup’s trailer to start unloading. First the cart, then the generator, then shaver and microwave, followed by smaller supplies. I’d set up the cart while Sam parked the truck. When Sam returned, she’d continue setting up the cart whil I dragged the generator as far away as the power cord would let me. While the shop was “open” I ran back and forth between cart and truck, fetching supplies or refueling the generator.

At night, we tore everything down. I’d retrieve the generator while Sam cleaned up, then continue cleaning up while she got the truck. We loaded the truck and go to some place downtown to meet our co-workers and unwind, after which I’d get dropped off at home.

The Believers

One of the reasons I liked the job so much was that I got to meet interesting and often freaky people.

The first of these was Zach, a born-again Christian who “witnessed” around the corner of Bloor and Yonge, the intersection of Toronto’s main east-west and north-south streets, where Sam and I were first assigned. Zach always had a pocket full of Jack Chick comic book tracts that he was always handing out at the corner. Sam and I loved reading them; we thought they were hilarious. We’d read them out loud and go into giggling fits, which Zach seemed to take in stride.

“Laugh all you want, God can take it,” Zach would always say. The apple pie-faced teenager who always wore a t-shirt saying something like “Jesus is Lord” or “In the beginning” in cheap iron-on letters. Zach made a special effort to save Sam and me. Sam and I always gave free shaved ice to street kids, which in his eyes made us “good unsaved people”. Even though we were both Catholics — me being a rather laid back one — we were still unsaved, as Zach believed that the Catholic Church and its corrupted version of the Bible were tools of Satan.

“If you want a real tool of Satan,” I said, “there’s this guy at a swimming pool you should meet.” I told him about how the Satanist Antonio and I met made it rain.

“The Prince of Lies often gives his servants powers,” Zach replied, “I witness with a girl who used to worship the Devil; she could move objects with her mind.”

Riiiiiight. It turned out that Zach’s church often had testimonials given by people who claimed to once be into devil-worship, Santeria and voodoo. Many of them claimed to have been given fantastic powers by the Devil in exchange for their souls, but Jesus had cleansed them of their sins. They often came to the corner where Sam and I worked with their portable public address system; the sidewalk was wide and had plenty of room for them to stage their “revivals”. We always gave them free shaved ice and hot dogs; we found it more entertaining than TV.

The best testimonial we ever saw took place one evening when Zach’s full congregation gathered outside the Eaton Centre. It wasn’t our usual corner, but Sam and I switched corners with another team just so we could watch the show. It started with gospel singers in purple robes sang beautiful three-part harmonies; I recognized Mahalia Jackson’s Move On Up A Little Higher and some old number from Aretha Franklin’s earlier years. While the music was beautiful, the fun didn’t really start until the minister started the testimonials.

The best testimonial was delivered by a young black girl from the Carolinas dressed in her Sunday best. She talked about how she’d come to be in league with the Devil and how he’d given her the power of telekinesis, which she pronounced as “tuh-luh-ku-NEEE-sis!” with great gusto. Sam squealed when she heard this.

“This is the ‘Carrie-girl’ Zach was talking about!” she whispered, barely able to contain her excitement.

Carrie-girl, as we now called her, told us a story of how her powers nearly got the better of her. “One night, I was very mad at my Daddy. I was seein’ red. I got so mad that I subconsciously used my powers to throw at kitchen knife staright at his head. It was only at the last split-second I realized what I was doing and made the knife his him by only a couple of inches. He would’a been DAY-ED!”

“Day-am!” whispered Sam.

I had to keep nudging Sam; she seemed on the edge of bursting into laughter. “You’ll upset the Bible-thumpers,” I said. I wasn’t as big a smart-ass back then.

Sam began to silently mime Sissy Spacek’s actions in the opening scene of Carrie: gingerly touching her crotch with a bug-eyed expression, lifting her hand up so that she could see the blood on her fingers, and then screaming silently while curling into the fetal position against the cart. I completely lost my composure. I wasn’t able to stop laughing now, and I thought the Bible-thumpers were going to give us a lot of static.

They didn’t. Some angry teenage girl with the AC/DC logo drawn on her denim jacket blue ink had already got their attention. One of the congregation had tried to tell her that “AC/DC” was short for “Anti-Christ/Devil’s Crusade” or “After Christ the Devil Comes” and that she was a sinner.n She didn’t take too kindly to this, and an argument had ensued. The argument had turned into a shoving match between her and one of the members of the congragation. She clearly had the upper hand and knoced him to the ground with a hard shove.

He sat up, pointed a finger at her and yelled, “Cheesus loves chu, chu stupid bitch!”

Sam and I completely lost it. This was just too funny, and the crowd that gathered around thought so too. The cops broke up the scuffle and sent the congregation home for the day.

Next: Why you shouldn’t try to convert bikers or date the boss’ girlfriend’s sister.

Slashdotted!

In the past two days, this site has had over 16,000 hits! I can understand yesterday’s hits — they came from an article I’d submitted to Slashdot. But I have no idea why I got over 8,500 hits the day before.

Anyhow, I’m certain that this means I might have some new readers. Welcome!

Recommended Reading

How to run a successful shaved ice business. If only Barry knew…

Telekinesis World. Your one-stop Web site for information about telekinesis. They even have reviews of Carrie and Carrie 2!

History of and little-known facts about AC/DC. Did you know that guitarist Angus Young worked as a typesetter, or that they got the band’s name from the back of a vaccuum cleaner?

In my February 3rd posting, I mentioned that I spent the summer of 1985 driving a snow cone truck. This prompted my friend Leesh to send me the following e-mail message:

Subject: Even not still waters run deep

Joey, you are a man of eternal mystery. I had no idea that you drove a sno-cone truck in ‘85! George suggests that some “slight illegality and a lesbian” might have been involved.

— Leesh

In order to satisfy my dear friend’s curiosity and as a ploy to garner more votes for the Anti-Bloggies competition, I’ve decided to tell the story of that lovely summer.

Please note that I’ve changed all the names save mine to protect the innocent. Actually, that not true: I’ve changed the names save mine to protect my sorry ass.

The Satanist

When you’re a spiky-haired seventeen-year-old with a driver’s license, summer seems so full of promise. That’s the way it seemed to me back in 1985, literally half a lifetime ago. It was less than a week into summer vacation when I was sitting by a pool where my classmate Antonio was a lifeguard. It was only just past the middle of June and the humidity made it feel like the dog days of August.

“Please,” Antonio said, looking at the sky, which couldn’t seem to settle on being sunny or cloudy, “rain, willya?”

Aside from the creepy guy doing laps in the pool, Antonio and I were the only people there. If it rained, Antonio would be able to close the pool and call it an early afternoon. I remember that we were planning to go to Club Z, an all ages alternative music dance club on St. Joseph Street that evening and that Antonio wanted the afternoon off so that he could do something — I don’t recall what — prior to clubbing.

We sat and watched the clouds start to dissipate.

“C’mon, God! A little rain here!” he yelled at the sky.

Creepy Guy saw this and emerged from the pool. He was a good head taller than I was, with a very lanky build and long black hair. I’d say he looked like Trent Reznor, but at that time Trent was just an unknown musician working at a keyboard store in Cleveland.

“That’s not how it’s done.” said Creepy in a basso prundo voice.

“How’s it done then?” asked Antonio.

“Like this.” He raised his arms at an angle to the sky, his fists clenched. “Oh mighty Satan…”

Mighty Satan?

“Oh Prince of Darkness, I, your humble servant implore you to make it rain!”

Oh great, I thought, Creepy Guy’s probably going to offer us as a sacrifice to his dark lord.

He saw the looks on our faces and merely smiled. “Just wait and see,” he said, as he left the pool.

“He probably peed in the pool. Devil worshippers treat pee like holy water.” I said.

Less than half an hour later, I grabbed a newspaper to shield myself from the sudden downpour. Antonio quickly locked up the pool and we made a made dash for his car.

“That…was…weird”, said Antonio once we were inside the car, shaking the water from his afro.

“You should find another job.” I said. “Speaking of jobs…”

I still had the newspaper — The Toronto Sun — in my hands. The outer pages were soaked, but the inside pages were still relatively dry. I turned to the help wanted section. The only ad that seemed even remotely interesting read something like this:

HAWAIIAN SNOW
Make money selling frozen treats – bonuses!
Must have drivers license
Vehicle provided
High school students welcome
Orientation session tomorrow

I thought it would be worth checking out.

The Boss

The orientation session was held in a warehouse clear across town, in Scarborough, or as we like to call it, Scarberia. The warehouse was full of clothing racks from which evening dresses were hanging. I thought that perhaps I’d gone to the wrong address when I saw a man in a Hawaiian shirt and Jams (a brand of very loud Hawaiian shorts popular in the 80’s) giving a lecture to people who looked about my age.

“Remember,” he said, “it’s not a snow cone. That’s a trademarked term. This is shaved ice. We are Hawaiian Snow. There’s a difference. Snow cones are granular; you make them by crushing ice. Shaved ice you make by shaving ice very finely, so it’s just like snow.”

He took a block the size of a large shoebox and placed it into a large compartment inside a large white machine. He turned a crank and then stepped on a foot pedal. The machine made loud whirring sounds as it spun the block of ice in place. Shavings came out the bottom of the machine; he caught them with a cup. He stopped when the cup was full, took a bottle of blue liquid, squirted some into the cup and passed it around. It was like snow, and the blue stuff tasted like pineapple.

“I poured the wrong food colouring in that bottle. All the flavourings are clear. The colour’s just for effect.”

While we we passed the cup of shaved ice among ourselves, Barry — the guy giving the lecture — told us the story of Hawaiian Snow. Barry was originally from Montreal and had moved to Toronto a couple of years prior to help his uncle run a store that sold overstocked or discontinued designer dresses in a chi-chi Toronto neighbourhood called Yorkville. That explained the dresses in the warehouse. He went on to tell a story about how he’d seen street vendors in Califonia selling shaved ice, tried some, got hooked and became convinced that he could start a lucrative business selling shaved ice in Toronto.

“These machines cost almost a thousand dollars each and they came all the way from Japan,” he bragged, as if it were some land of mystical appliances and not the same country that my Walkman came from.

“If you have a valid drivers license with a clean driving record and if you pass the test, you can have a job selling Hawaiian Snow this summer! We pay seven bucks an hour, and you get all the shaved ice you can eat!”

Seven bucks an hour. That was almost three bucks above minimum wage back then. Fifty-six bucks a day. To my seventeen-year-old mind, that was serious money.

The Test

I waited for a while to be tested, since I was near the end of the line to Barry’s office, where he was administering the test. Most of the people coming out of the office at the end of their tests went straight out the warehouse’s main door; only a few returned to the area where Barry was delivering the orientation lecture. I assumed they had passed. What kind of test was he giving?

My turn came up. I entered Gary’s office and sat in a chair opposite him and a tall blonde woman who was obviously his girlfriend or wife. He looked at the form I’d filled out earlier.

“Seventeen. A little young…” he said.

“I have a driver’s license,” I said, in a tone of voice that tried to suggest that I was mature for my age.

“Here’s your test,” said the blonde woman. “I buy something from you. It costs $1.67 with tax. I give you a two dollar bill.” (This was back when we still had two-dollar bills.) “How much change should you give me?”

“Thirty-three cents,” I replied quickly. Duh.

“Congratulations,” said Barry, reaching to shake my hand. “You passed.”

The Tools of the Trade

The ice shaving machine was a large white machine a little large than one of those restaurant-grade KitchenAid mixers and had a shape similar to an espresso machine. Its upper half was a compartment into which you placed the ice. To load the machine, I would slide open the compartment’s transparent door and place a shoeboxed-sized block of ice into the compartment. Using a handle on the side of the machine, I would lower the shaver’s drive axle until its spikes penetrated the ice block. I would then slide the compartment door shut. At that point, the shaver was ready for operation.

The machine was operated by a foot pedal. Stepping on it would start the shaver’s motor, which would spin the ice block counterclockwise within the compartment. The bottom of the compartment had a blade which would shave the ice; the shavings fell from the bottom of the compartment into the open area beneath it, just as coffee comes from the upper compartment of an espresso machine.

I would catch the shaved ice in a paper cone as it fell from the bottom of the ice compartment, packing it gently with gloved hands. When the cone was filled to its rim, I’d continue to shave more ice and pack it into a ball on top of the cone. This would continue until a baseball-sized snowball sat on top of the cone.

After the snowball was complete, it was time to pour unnaturally-coloured, unnaturally flavoured syrups onto the snowball. Unlike snow cones (which, as you may recall are made of crushed ice), the syrup didn’t rush to the bottom of the cone and collect in a pool. The snow-like shaved ice did a good job of holding the syrup like a sponge. There were about a dozen different flavours to choose from and there wasn’t any arbitrary limit to the number of flavours customers could ask to have put on their shaved ice. If I was feeling artistic and had the time, I’d paint the customer’s cone with some kind of design. I’d make Pac-Man, Batman and Superman cones for the kids, and I once impressed a couple of art students visiting from Connecticut by making them Mondrian and Seurat cones.

The other machine that we were provided was a microwave. The other item we sold were teriyaki hot dogs, which someone would barbecue every morning. The hot dogs and buns would be stored in the ice

The problem with our machines was that they needed electricity to run. This is a problem for a street vendor; the streets of Toronto don’t have convenient power outlets at every corner. The solution was to provide each vendor with a Honda portable gas generator. Essentially a lawnmower engine attached to an electrical dynamo with two standard three-prong power outlets at the end, it weighed over a hundred pounds and sounded like an idling moped when little demand was being placed on it. When we stepped on the footswitches of our ice shavers, the generator’s sound became much louder, sounding more like a lawn tractor at maximum speed. Needless to say, it didn’t endear us to the shopkeepers around our stands.

All our equipment fit into our carts, which were custom-built kitchen counters on wheels. The carts had nooks specially designed to hold the microwave oven, cash box, a cooler for the ice blocks, the syrup bottles and some personal stuff. The shaver was put on top of the counter so that customers could see the shaved ice being made. It was believed that making shaved ice would draw a lot of spectators, and hopefully, customers.

In oder to cart all this stuff about, we were each provided with a bottom-of-the-line white Toyota pickup truck. All our equipment and a large cooler that could hold 50 or so blocks of ice fit in the back. The truck had a piddly little 1-point-something-small litre engine, so it was a struggle to climb steep hills when it was fully loaded. We were allowed to take the trucks home at night and since gas was covered by the company, they became our personal vehicles for the entire summer.

I’m still amazed that he trusted so much stuff to a seventeen year-old.

Next: The fun begins!

Some random stuff while I’m waiting for the compiler to finish

Cory in tha house!

We have a house guest for the next week or so here at Stately Accordion Manor: the one and only Good Reverend Doctor Cory Doctorow, award-winning auteur, bOINGbOING editor, freedom fighter, chain smoker and minister of some mail-order chruch or another. He’s in town to attend Ad Astra, the sci-fi conference and enjoy some time away from a slowly disintegrating city where they poop on the streets.

Welcome, Cory!

Ay, there’s the rub

A number of people with some very wide-open personal boundaries have started a website where they can log each time they’ve masturbated. Apparently they have accounts on a server, and they record each wank by logging in and then entering the command

touch .myself

(For the non-geeky, touch is a UNIX command that changes the “last modified” date of a file to the current date and time.)

The site displays its information in many interesting ways. For instance, December 2001 was the biggest month for masturbation (dammit, I knew that menorahs and Christmas trees were just too damned phallic!), and one guy named “Preppyboi” must be a serious juice machine, masturbating an average of once every two hours!

As I wrote earlier, it would be wrong of me to say they have too much time on their hands. But I’m sure they have too much something on their hands!

These people clearly have too much cat on their hands

Oh…dear…lord…

That’s one huge cat. Perhaps too large to fit into a wok.

Don’t forget the Golden Rule of Comedy: morbidly obese cat + Photoshop = HIGH-LARIOUS!

I wonder if John Ashcroft would freak out if he saw Tubcat.

See all this and more at Tubcat’s site!

(Big thanks to Chris for telling me about the roly-poly kitty.)

Yet Another Anti-Bloggie Promo

Vote for The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century as the best…hetero…site…ever!

You want proof? You got proof, baby:

I’m the Thrilla from Manila. All that, and I’m queer-positive too! Straight but not narrow, as it were!

Now go to the Anti-Bloggies voting page and vote for me now!

Salad With Steve for “Most Likely To Eat A Cheese Sandwich”!

My friend and former co-worker, Steve Jenson (who now works for Blogger, making all that wonderful Blogger Pro goodness) wants his blog, Salad With Steve to win the Anti-Bloggie for “Most Likely To Eat A Cheese Sandwich”. Steve’s a stand-up guy and I know him well enough to say that yes, he is quite likely to eat a cheese sandwich. So please go to the Anti-Bloggies voting page and vote for:

• The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century for “Best Heterosexual Blog” and “Blog Of The Millennium”
• Naked Pope: The Movie for Dumbest Name
• Salad With Steve for “Most Likely To Eat A Cheese Sandwich”

My life as a snow cone vendor (or, a ploy to get more votes for the Anti-Bloggies with actual content!)

Of course, hitting you over and over with requests for votes wouldn’t be any good if I didn’t do something nice for you in return, would it?

I happen to have a story I haven’t told in a while. It’s a story that some long-time friends haven’t heard — my friend Leesh, for example, whom I’ve known for over ten years. She wrote to me, expressing surprise that I drove a snow cone truck in 1985. Her hubby George remarked that there was “some illegality and a lesbian” might have been involved.

He’s mostly right.

Story tomorrow.

Prayer of the Day

Lord, protect us from your fans and their crappy comics.

Google’s Programming Contest

Google has just announced its first annual programming contest!

The objective is to write a program that will do something “interesting” with the about 900,000 Web pages’ worth data that’s Google provides. In addition to writing the program, contestants also have to convince the judges why their program is interesting (or useful) and why it will scale (that is, handle a constantly increasing load of data that grows as the Web grows). The prize is US$10,000 in cash, a V.I.P. tour of the Google facility in Mountain View, California and possibly a chance to run their program on Google’s complete billion-Web-page store.

Google suggest that the programs be written to fit in one of two categories — Systems or Applications. A Systems program would be concerned about the handling of Google’s data (possibly improving storage compression or indexing) while an Applications program is more concerned about the semantics of the data (say, a program that can detect two pages that are nearly identical or can cluster pages by topic or type).

I think I’ll have my hands full with Peek-A-Booty for the next little while, but I know that a least a few programmers read this blog. Guys, get to work!

The Anti-Bloggie Alliance

Nick Mark’s blog, Naked Pope: The Movie, has an even dumber title than mine. He won an Anti-Bloggie award last year for — you guessed it — “Dumbest Name”, and he wants to win it again this year. He’s willing to let me have “Best Heterosexual Blog” and “Weblog of the Millennium” — he just wants “Dumbest Name”. In the spirit of cooperation between bloggers-in-arms, I have decided to join with him in a unified Anti-Bloggie campaign.

So I’m asking you to vote in the Anti-Bloggies and enter Naked Pope: The Movie (www.nakedpopethemovie.com) for Dumbest Name and The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century (www.kode-fu.com/shame) for Best Heterosexual Blog and Weblog of the Millennium. And while you’re at it, check out Naked Pope: The Movie for all your disrobed pontiff reading.

The offer for the cookies still stands, but now you have to vote for both Nick and me.