I finished getting all the photos and writing smart-ass captions for the Indie Incubator photo essay.
Check it out or I’ll send the scary girl in the pink dress and leg warmers after you. Although you might like that, you sicko.
Good taste, Harley Parker (he designed Marshall McLuhan’s book, Counterblast, after which the NYU journal is named) once said, is the refuge of the witless. There’s wit aplenty in an online comic that has the following line:
“I’ll give you a buck if you promise to ask Daddy why Mommy’s goodnight kisses are so salty.”
Any comic with a line like that has got to be worth reading. And Something Positive is.
Today’s breakfast is a croque madame, which is just a snooty french way of saying “ham and cheese sandwich with an over-easy egg on top of it”.
The eggs we have in the fridge at the moment are the preternaturally large. They look as if they’d been laid by turkeys, not chickens. Better still, these are “Super Bon-ee” doubles — there’s a guarantee that at least half the eggs in the carton will have double yolks. My housemate Paul and I are keeping a tally to see if it’s true. So far, we’re at three double-yolks, one single.
Here’s a question for any egg farmers out there: how do they ensure such a high percentage of double-yolk eggs? Sorting by optical means (I remember reading something about houw you could see a chick embryo inside an egg using only a candle)? Selective hen breeding? Something they put in the chicken feed? Radiation?
I may end up mutated eating this stuff, but I’m going to have some killer Eggs Benedict on the way there.
My sister went to visit her friends Tanya and Ian yesterday. Tanya and Ian are lawyers who live in Forest Hill, a very tony part of town, a neighbourhood so WASPy that they step out of the shower to pee.
While serving snacks, Tanya was asked by her four-year-old son: “Mom, may I have some Perrier in a sippy cup?”
This kid’s going to go places. Or get beaten up a lot. Possibly both.
(Not my usual branch of Amato — Queen Street West — but the uptown one at St. Clair West. I was there with my friend Anne and Gil, a visitor from Israel. I had my accordion with me — natch — and was spotted by a table of white high school kids in sports-cum-hip-hop clothing.)
Guy #1: I bet he’ll play accordion for us.
Girl #1: Could you please play something for us?
Girl #2: I know what the keyboard does, what do the buttons do?
(I play the first verse of Sloan’s Underwhelmed and a little Jungle Brothers, collect my applause, answer some questions about the accordion – “I taught myself, the buttons play chords,” etc., etc.)
Guy #2: Damn, you must be the biggest pimp at all the clubs!
Girl #1, to Anne, pointing at me: Do you go out with him? He’s so cool!
Anne: I used to think he was, when I was 19.
(Anne gets some money for pizza from me, and walks to the counter. I bemoan the fact that high school girls of my era didn’t hold me in the same esteem as today’s do.)
Me: She’s one of the “Exes of Evil”.
(I shrug.)
Girl #1, surprised: Whoa. Sometimes a girl doesn’t know when she’s got it good.
Guy #2, making “Westside!” hand sign: Straight up, yo!
True dat.
Indie Incubation was the showcase of indie bands where we played Friday. Check out this still-under-construction Web page featuring shots of the band, our friends and our friend Tina’s new band, Fresh Meat.
Here’s one of many entertaining and artistic shots you’ll see if you check it out:
Enticing, no? Click here for more.
It’s too nice a day to stay indoors, so this posting’s going to be really quick.
Last night’s gig at the Steam Whistle Brewery went really well. We won over a crowd that was ready to see nothing but emo (for instance, the first band’s songs were all of the “nobody loves me” variety) with waltzes like Sweet Jezebel and Kate-Bush-meets-Billy-Corgan epics like Many Moons. Lindi and the band were in fine form; I really loved the backbeats that our new drummer Devin was playing. The crowd sat up and took notice during the set, after which there was a rush to buy Lindi’s CDs. I got a lot of compliments on the accordion playing and a couple of people came up to me and said “I just want to run out and buy myself an accordion right now!”
It’s a great feeling, finally being a key part of a band’s sound and catching the love from the audience. Thanks, Lindi, for taking a chance on a goofy accordion player.
I’ll post a full set of photos from the gig, including some great shots of Fresh Meat, our friend Tina’s band, soon.
Now I’m going to run outside and get some fresh air.
Someone once observed that most Jewish holidays could be summed up as “they tried to kill us, they didn’t, let’s eat!”
The Jewish Holiday of Purim is, in this gentile’s opinion, the best holiday because it’s the most festive. You’ve got the “they tried to kill us” angle with a genocidal plot, the “they didn’t” angle in that in the end, the plot was folied and the enemies of the Jews who were executed instead, and naturally you’ve got the eating. As an added bonus, you’ve got Irish-on-St.-Patrick’s-Day levels of boozing, a Hallowe’en-like donning of costumes, and everything gets turned upside-down in a fashion similar to Sadie Hawkins’ Day. In McDonald’s terms, you could say that this holiday’s been super-sized.
There’s a special pastry baked for this occasion called hamentaschen, which mean’s “Hamen’s hat”. These triangular pastries recall the three-cornered hat of Hamen, the vizier of the king of Persia (the country now known as Iran) who plotted to kill all the Jews just because one of them, a cat by the name of Mordechai, refused to bow to him. Clearly Hamen had some serious self-esteem issues. Hamen slandered the Jews in order to get the King’s approval for his genocidal plan, which was eventually thwarted by Queen Esther.
When last I checked, hamentaschen had fillings like poppy seed, apricot, dates and in one very yummy instance, chocolate (I’ll celebrate any holiday with anyone as long as there’s food involved). I don’t ever recall blood being used as a filling, which the Saudi paper Al-Riyadh claims is traditional in this editorial:
“I [Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faysal University in Al-Dammam] chose to [speak] about the Jewish holiday of Purim, because it is connected to the month of March. This holiday has some dangerous customs that will, no doubt, horrify you, and I apologize if any reader is harmed because of this.”
“During this holiday, the Jew must prepare very special pastries, the filling of which is not only costly and rare – it cannot be found at all on the local and international markets.”
“Unfortunately, this filling cannot be left out, or substituted with any alternative serving the same purpose. For this holiday, the Jewish people must obtain human blood so that their clerics can prepare the holiday pastries. In other words, the practice cannot be carried out as required if human blood is not spilled!!”
The article goes on to claim that hamentaschen filling is made from the blood of an adolescent gentile and describes a pretty gruesome bloodletting process that is supposedly overseen by a rabbi. The story contradicts the fact that in order to be Kosher, food has to be blood-free.
It’s yet another example of blood libel, a term I haven’t heard since doing a project for comparative religion studies back in high school. Blood libel is accusing that people you don’t like perform unspeakable horrors, most often something like the killing of children. It started in medieval times with the accusation that Jews used the blood of Christians to make matzoh for Passover, and exists to this day in many forms. As the Al-Riyadh story shows, it’s still used to slander Jews, but it’s expanded to become an all-purpose smear tactic. There have also been “Fu Manchu”-style horror stories about the Chinese eating fetuses not only as a delicacy, but as a way of prolonging life and about witchcraft-practicing pro-choice feminists whose rituals call for human sacrifice in the guise of abortion.
I’m not certain which I find more disturbing: that a national newspaper still prints this kind of stuff, that some significant portion of Al-Riyadh’s readership just might believe it or that the story, which is printed by a government-controlled paper, was approved by a taste-tester who reports to the House of Saud, who are supposed to be our allies in the war as well as architects of a proposed Palestine/Israel peace plan.
(I’m assuming that the translation provided by MEMRI — the Middle East Media Research Institute — is accurate. I believe it is because blood libel is an age-old form of slander. Anti-semitic blood libel still exists today in other places: there have been documentary films that perpetuate the myth, and it’s also something that the neo-Nazis like to bring up once in a while.)
At one point in the article, Dr. Al-Jalahma states that during Purim “the Jews wear carnival-style masks and costumes and overindulge in drinking alcohol, prostitution, and adultery.”
That’s not Purim, you moron, that’s Mardi Gras!
March 2002
Once again, it’s the Wednesday closest to the middle of the month, so that means Kick Ass Karaoke at the Bovine Sex Club! This was a particulary fun Kick Ass Karaoke: the crowd was wild and cute, and the accordion’s chick magent powers were serving its master well. Take note, boys: an accordion is cheaper and possibly more effective than Coincidence Design’s consultation services.
I performed two number tonight: OMC’s How Bizarre and Fatboy Slim’s Rockafella Skank. Mike D told me that he was playing Rockafella Skank at the office today when one of his co-workers said “Hey! That’s the Accordion Guy song!“. Memo to Fatboy Slim: Nyeah, nyeah, nyeah.
To my surprise, Lindi showed up. To everyone’s surprise, Lindi and Tina started a contest to see who could put a bottle into her mouth the deepest. I think Lindi won. Us boys just watched the competition in awe. Could this be an Olympic sport in 2004?
Here are some of the Kick Ass regulars peforming…
At one point, someone walked up to me and asked “Do you work at a dot-com?”
I replied “I used to work at a dot-bomb. I named the urinal mint of a company for which I used to work.
They turned out to be art directors for R.O.B. Magazine, a branch of The Globe and Mail (“Canada’s National Newspaper”). In March 2001, the magazine ran an article called Peer-to-Peer to Profits ( the text of the article appears here), in which the company was profiled. The one photo that accompanied the article featured the three founders — Grad Conn, John Henson and Cory Doctorow (actually, it was Paula Martins holding up a picture of Cory in front of her face) — and me, playing my accordion. We chatted for a while, and I told them about Peekabooty. One of them, Vanessa, told me to drop her a line about the project when it was near completion. Cool.
Here’s some other silliness:
Some new (and cute) faces showed up this evening…
Two of the bands performing at the Steam Whistle Brewery this Friday were represented at Kick Ass Karaoke tonight: Tina, whose band, Fresh Meat, will be playing along with Lindi and her band (featuring yours truly). Miss this gig at your peril.
(Nice title, eh?)
It was a springlike day in Toronto: bright and sunny with temperatures around 14 degrees (that’s almost 60 degrees in that antiquated scale for my American friends). I decided to take a break from work at around 4 p.m. to finally do what I’d been meaning to do since getting fired: join a gym.
I was going to join the Premier Fitness Club down at Skydome. My friends Anne and Adina work out there, it’s nice and big, and it’s pretty good for peopel watching. My friend Rob once asked me: “Why would you want to work out there? It’s just full of models!”
Duh. (Nice kid, but sometimes he’s as sharp as a sack of wet kittens.)
Rob suggested that I get a membership at the Jewish Community Centre. I said it was too far away, and besides, being Filipino, they’d think I was the houseboy.
The real problem with Premier is the price. The best deal they could offer me was a $90/month membership, with some fairly hefty start-up fee. It would be cheaper if I were working for “The Corpse” — Frank Magazine’s nickname for the CBC — or any other firm with whom Premier had cut some kind of employee rate deal. I couldn’t afford Premier’s on my current salary, which in financier’s term is referred to as bubkus, so no models for the Accordion Guy.
Luckily, I had a backup plan: GoodLife Fitness on McCaul. It’s smaller and definitely less glamourous than the SkyDome club, but it’s also closer to home, being only a few blocks away (more incentive to go).
I walked into GoodLife and was immediately greeted with “Accordion Guy!” It was Will, a guy I know from Kick Ass Karaoke. It turns out that he did membership sales there. He gave me the grand tour — a little cramped, but the equipment was nice, and all the classes were free — and then we got down to talking money. I told him that I was currently unemployed and working on Peekabooty for the learning experience and the exposure. It turns out that he runs a couple of Web services on the side, and in an act of solidarity with a fellow geek and karaoke performer, he cut me some very nice deals that blew Premier’s best offers right out of the water. Another lucky break, thanks to the accordion.
While going over the contract, he called over a woman who turned out to be the bassist for the local band The Rockertits. “Look! It’s the Accordion Guy!” Shortly after, my friend Danielle walked over.
“Hey, Joey! Are you signing up here?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know this was your gym.”
“Not only that, but this is where we had that shower conversation about you,” she said, walking into an aerobics-with-weights class.
“Shower…conversation…?” Will asked.
“It took place last year,” I explained. “Danielle told me that she was in the shower after one gym session, and she asked her friend if she knew me. She was in the middle of describing me — Filipino, plays the accordion, takes it everywhere — when another girl pipes in and goes ‘I know that guy! I see him all the time on Queen Street!’ So the three of them, in the shower get into this conversation about me. Danielle e-mailed me because she wanted me to know that three naked women, all lathered up in the shower, were enthusiastically talking about me. She thought it might brighten my day.”
Will just arched an eyebrow in response.
“Accordion, Will. It’s the future.”
