The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

For my friend George’s birthday, I flew down to New York and took him and his wife Leesh out for dinner at Babbo. This was one of those damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead nights where I decided that we should try the traditional tasting menu, complete with the wines to match each dish. Birthdays are sacred after all, and George is a man who enjoys the finer things in life (for example, he eats only fromt he $1.29 menu at Taco Bell and buys only premium pork rinds).

The courses, in order, were:

• Braised beef tongue

• Very fresh tagliatelle in a very nice herb sauce

• Pork shoulder in creamy polenta

• Guinea hen in an amazing pepper sauce (this was George’s and my favourite)

• Goat cheese in a fig compote

• Turrone

• Cakes — Leesh had a pumpkin pastry, George had the apple crumble and I had a flourless chocolate cake. Each one was covered in a matching sauce.

George and Leesh

Me and my guinea hen

Recommended Reading

Some profiles of Babbo’s chef, Mario Batali. The man is a freakin’ genius.

Some reviews of Babbo. You must go sometime.

Susur’s. Not in New York, not Italian, but it’s an amazing Toronto restaurant with a world-renowned chef, Susur Lee. Another must-go place.

What I’m having for dinner tonight. Can’t eat at expensive restaurants all the time. At least not on my salary.

“Good old rock. It always wins”. A sex parlour in Fukuoka, Japan will give you a major discount — from about 5,000 yen to a mere 100 yen — if you can win three consecutive games of jan-ken-pon (rock-paper-scissors). The article is interesting for the bits about how to improve your chances of winning, rather than the sex shop aspect. Really. I swear.

Dissed by a five-year-old. One more reason to not have kids.

From 1983 to 1987, there was a band of very nice if somewhat tempermental lads from Manchester known as The Smiths. Although their lineup was conventional — a front man, a guitarist, a drummer and a bass guitar, they were unconventional in most other ways, with their odd chord patterns (the closest thing to a standard rock song being Bigmouth Strikes Again, whose chords are reminiscent of All Along the Watchtower), odder lyrics and even odder front man and throat, one Steven Patrick Morrissey. Morrissey (on the album credits, he went by only his surname), also affectioantely known as Moz, was your classic tortured soul: angsty, lonely, depressed and mopey. Exactly the kind of personality that many a teenager — especially pasty, gloomy Brit kids writing poetry in a tiny bedsit in something-on-another, UK, could really appreciate.

Prior to his stint with The Smiths, Moz had a pen pal named Robert Mackie. Mackie collected this correspondence and made them available to anyone who would cover the cost of the photocopying them. Someone’s taken some of these letters and put their text on a Web page — complete with Moz’s spelling and punctuation — here.

A long time ago, Spin magazine ran an interview with Morrissey, after which someone wrote a letter to the editor saying that Morrissey should get over himself, and that what the perpetually glum vegetarian needed was “a cheeseburger and a fuck.” After reading these bits of correspondence, I’m inclined to agree.

Some choice excerpts:

Dear person,

So nice to know there’s another soul out there, even if it is in Glasgow. Does being Scottish bother you? Manchester is a lovely place, if you happen to be a bedridden deaf mute. I’m unhappy, hope you’re unhappy too.

In poverty,

Steven

Do you really like Kate Bush? I’m not surprised. The nicest thing I could say about her is that she’s unbearable. That voice! Such trash!

…thank you for your photo. It came in handy until the plumber arrived. Did you know you had a dead caterpillar on your lip? Real deco, man. You could have smiled but it’s dreadfully unfashionable, isn’t it? Observe the enclosed piccy of your author, disguised as an artiste. This photograph is suitable for framing. Incidentally your real name IS Robert, isn’t it? Everyone in Scotland is either Robert or Billy or Jimmae. Have you got a real Scottish accent? How novel! Why don’t you join a traveling circus?

I’m sure there are worse groups than Duran Duran, but I’ll be damned if I can think of any.

I’m glad your body is still untouched by human hands, at least it gives you something to look forward to, besides Christmas.

He hated Duran Duran? Blasphemy!

Recommended Reading

The Reflex. Lyrics to the greatest song about self-gratification ever written. Even better than the Divinyls’ I Touch Myself.

Is Your Son a Computer Hacker? Is he obsessed with “Lunix”? Every parent should know about this.

Lawrence Lessig’s new book, The Future of Ideas. I may have to get a copy of this.

One cartoonist’s take on Segway, a.k.a. Ginger, a.k.a. It, a.k.a. Dean Kamen’s new invention.

And in honour of your birthday, I present you with this lovely photo of when I last came down to NYC for your birthday. It’s me, George, Alicia and none other Misharu Morimoto (Iron Chef Japanese) at Nobu.

Okay, I may have edited the photo just a little.

I’m leaving today…

…for New York City for a mini-vacation and to celebrate my friend George’s 32nd birthday.

I know it’s a day early, but George, as you once wrote on a birthday card: Happy birthday, you old poop. I’ll be in Manhattan by lunch, and maybe we can hit that nice Mexican place a couple of blocks up from your house. What say you, George?

Thanks to the Current Situation, I have to wake up at yet another ungodly hour in order to allow for enough time for airport security to make me crack open my accordion and prove it’s a working instrument. Hence this short entry…gotta get some shut-eye. But first, a couple of links…

Recommended reading

CBGB OMFUG and The Knitting Factory: Someday I’ll gig at these places. Someday.

The Soup Nazi. Yup, he really exists.

The app I’ve been working on

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks hammering out a prototype of an news-gathering app that would be based on the peer-to-peer kernel that we’re developing. I’m pretty proud of this prototype for a number of reasons. For starters, it’s my first serious application written in C#. Second, there’s a clever little database-based engine underneath it that simulates a network of users exchanging and recommending news stories. For a “canned” app, it’s pretty smart. Finally, with only the most vague of specs provided by the suits and with the departure of our UI specialist and our graphic artist, I’ve had to do all the interaction and graphic design — this sucker really has my fingerprints all over it. I think I can show you the splash screen I designed without violating my NDA…

Ah gotz to reprasent to them wack-ass VC bitchez, yo

One of the occupational hazards of being a programmer at a start-up is doing early morning demos of your latest work for the monthly “dog and pony show” for the investors. The Chief Suit likes my prototype app and wanted me to show it to the guys from our VC, who I’ll just refer to as “J-Low” and “L-Dogg”. The prototype app isn’t quite done yet and I haven’t had a chance to build an installer, so I decided it would be safest to run it on my development machine, so there’d be no nasty surprises come demo time. I spent a good chunk of last night and the wee hours of this morning putting up enough “scaffolding” so that I could run a reasonable-looking demo. I woke up after 4 hours’ sleep to double-check the prototype for bugs (None! Yay!) and then wait for Johnny to come and pick me up from the corner of Queen and Spadina.

Ten minutes after he was supposed to pick me up, the wind started to blow and I was beginning to feel a little chilly.

Fifteen minutes after he was supposed to pick me up, I was really getting cold. I gave his cell phone a call and got his voice mail.

Twenty minutes later, still no lift. No answer on his phone either.

Half an hour later, I was trying to reach the office to tell them I’d be late. I’m imagining J-Low and L-Dogg sitting at the office, wondering where this nifty prototype that Chief Suit promised was.

I wrote Johnny off and called Kostya, the co-worker who normally gives me a lift to work. I arranged for him to pick me up at the usual place at our more civilized usual time and went to Lettieri (the Italian cafe at the corner) to have a hot chocolate and bash on the app a little more. Kostya picked me up about forty minutes later and got me to the office in time to do the demo, which took less than two minutes and got an simple nod of approval (and barely a mumble) from L-Dogg. This is what I stayed up late and woke up early for?

Normally, I’d say that L-Dogg is the strong, silent type, but that sounds too close to a compliment for the likes of a VC. They all need a good pimp-slapping.

One tiny upside

While waiting in the cold for Johnny to not show up (it turned out that he slept straight through his alarm clock’s blare), a car pulled up to the curb where I was standing. The cute brunette driver rolled down the passenger window (where an equally cute passenger was sitting) and they both yelled out “Hey, Accordion Guy! How’re you doing?”

Being greeted on the street like that — to me, that’s worth more than a million half-hearted nods of approval from a semi-interested VC.