Tag: Life/Yeah…girls…geez

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Uncategorized

She’s Just Not That Into You, Greg

Photo: 'She's Just Not That Into You' -- a Photoshopped version of the cover of 'He's Just Not That Into You'.

A slightly modified version of the actual book cover.

I suspect that there are the fortunate few for whom dating never was an ego-crushing experience; they may have had bad dates or bad relationships, but they have the perfect combination of looks, charm and plain old luck to have been spared. The rest of us — that includes me — have to deal with rejection.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (quit rolling your eyes, I’m trying to make a point here) introduced the “Kobayashi Maru” test, a starship simulation in which a Starfleet cadet is put into a  situation considered to be a “no-win scenario”.

The simulation is meant to be a test of the cadet’s discipline, character, and command capabilities when faced with great adversity. “How we face death,” as Admiral Kirk put it, “shows how we face life.”

Getting rejected in dating provides all the character testing of the Kobayashi Maru scenario without the military service — or William Shatner’s acting.

There are many ways to get rejected, but one of the worst has to be when they simply don’t return your calls. Many rejectors take this take because it spares them the awkwardness of having to be “the bad guy”, but the rejectee is left hanging with an “unresolved” feeling.

In my opinion, the correct way to handle such a scenario is to leave a single message along the lines of “I’d appreciate it if you would call me back” and leave it at that. There are many wrong ways, and this set of messages left by a guy named Greg [1.7 MB MP3, included as an enclosure for you Podcast listeners] is a prime example.

I don’t know either party in the recording; I just stumbled across the file. The first girl I ever asked out stopped returning my calls after a while and I think I responded in the same way that Greg did, but hey — I was 15. Greg sounds old enough to know better.

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It Happened to Me

Greater Toronto Area Bloggers / Toronto Area Photobloggers Party THIS FRIDAY

It’s at my house. I still have the karaoke mic. Special out-of-town guest Min Jung Kim.

In case you need more convincing, check out last year’s party, in either album or slideshow version.

And yes, Wendy’s first visit to Toronto included last year’s GTABloggers party. I wish she could be here, but she’s got her hands full helping organize next week’s Internet + Society Conference at Harvard.

Photo: Wendy and Joey at last year's party.

Wendy and me, in the rock star wigs that we keep handy at my house.

Want an invitation? See this entry in the GTABloggers blog.

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Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me

I’m Back!

Photo: Thanksgiving turkey.

I was so rushed and so busy last Wednesday that I didn’t get time to

mention that the blog would be a little silent while I flew to Boston

forAmerican Thanksgiving, an engagement party thrown by my future in-laws and

to pick up the accordion that Wendy found for me (and bring in back in the super-cool nigh-indestructible accordion case that Wendy gave me for my birthday). I’ll update throughout the rest of the day.

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Uncategorized

300 Love Letters

A handwritten note that reads: “The girl at the coffee shop is half in love with you and too shy to tell you. Just thought you should know.”

One of the letters in the “crush” category.

300 Love Letters is a project of Asia Wong, who explains…:

So I’m telling this boy, one of the boys that lots of these love letters are to, about this project. “I’m writing three hundred love letters and sending them to strangers. The letters are going to be glued to the outside of the envelopes, so that the mailman, and presumably whoever the recipient lives with, will be able to see and read them. The letters aren’t to the strangers, they’re to people I know.”

The boy looks at me. We’re walking around, after work, deserted streets. He says, “I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?”, and I answer vaguely, talking about crossing space and the kind of intimacy that I believe is lacking from our society. And I’m left thinking: Is this project complicated or simple, idiotic or interesting?

It turns out that there are actually 400, not 300 letters. Once again, I’ll let Asia do the talking…

When I got to 300, I re-read my explanation and I was unsatisfied. It felt like it was only within the last hundred letters that I had started really writing to strangers, acquaintances, family, it felt like I had just started getting to the hard part. So in a month of no lovers (well, nothing serious) I wrote another hundred letters, felt better about what I was doing, finished the project for real.

The user interface of the site is a giant field of coloured squares. Clicking on a square will show you a letter. The colour of the square indiciates the type of letter associated with it:

  • red and pink ones are addressed to lovers
  • orange ones are fan letters
  • yellow ones are for strangers
  • green ones are for acquaintances
  • blue ones are for friends
  • purple ones are for crushes
  • indigo ones are for family
  • brown ones are for people she doesn’t really like
  • gray ones are for anyone
  • black ones are for everyone
  • white ones are for her
  • flesh ones are for her dream lover

The letters make for some fascinating reading. If any of you need a Cyrano de Bergerac to assist you in writing missals of love, lust or infatuation, you could probably find a letter in the collection to use as a starting point.

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Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me

The Birthday/Engagement Party: The Announcement!

It’s almost that time. The legendary Joey deVilla birthday party

returns, now enriched with an extra reason to celebrate: my engagement!

Here’s the basic info:

  • The Date: Saturday, November 6th, 2004
  • The Place: Big Trouble in Little China (a.k.a. my house)
  • The Time: 8:39 p.m. (derived from “When does it start?” “Oh, eight-thirty, nine…”)
  • How Old I’m Turning: Thirty-seven, and proud of it!
  • What They’re Like: Check out my 35th birthday party (2002) [album format | slideshow format ] and 36th birthday party in the hot tub (2003) [album format | slideshow format ]

A number of people of asked me, so I’ll state it here: as much as

I would love to have Neil’s wonderful hot tub on a truck back, if my

neighbours from across the street even see

that truck coming down the street, they’re going to call the cops on

me. Besides, seeing Eldon in a Speedo should be a once-in-lifetime

event for anyone. (There is a story about what happened when the cops

showed up last year, and I will tell it soon.)

At the 2001, 2002 and 2003 parties, I have been accosted by one of my lovely female guests (here’s the 2003 story). Since this is also an engagement party and since my lovely fiancee

will be there, this streak is likely to be broken. It was fun while it

lasted, but as an older, wiser gentleman (stop snickering, you!) it’s

time to move on.

Want more details about the party? Contact me.

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me

Accordion-o-Rama

The Accorgan

Ladies and gentlemen, meet accordion number four, an Iorio “accorgan” (which I assume is a combination of “accordion” and “organ”):

Photo: The Iorio 'Accorgan' that Wendy got me.

I’ve heard of these things before — they’re acoustic accordions with

some electronic components and switches that suggest that they’re like

electronic organs. According to Wendy, the accordion has a number of

electric switches and volume dials not unlike old-school electronic

organs; I suspect that it could be plugged into an amplifier for REAL

ULTIMATE POWER.

This lucky find never would’ve happened without Wendy. She was riding home on the bus when she overheard a woman talking to the bus driver.

“Who can I give my father’s accordion to?” the woman asked.

Wendy, who says that her ears perk up whenever she hears the word “accordion” (aww…) approached the woman and said “My fiance plays the accordion! You could give it to him!”

And so an arrangement was made. Last Saturday, they met at Dunkin’

Donuts, where the woman gave Wendy the accordion, which was wrapped up

in duct tape and garbage bags.

“It must’ve looked like a drug deal,” Wendy said.

She brought it back, played a couple of notes for me over the phone so

I could hear it (it might need a little tuning) and took the picture

above. She says it “smells like a bar”, to which I said “Good! That

means it has stories.”

And now the Iorio sits in her living room, waiting for my next visit.

She says it’s strange having an accordion in her house, but no guy. Soon, sweetie, soon!

My fiancee is nothing short of amazing.

Law-siana!

Liz “I Speak of Dreams” Ditz sent me this news about yet another convert to the accordion:

Photo: No-Butt Bob & Murphy's Law-isiana

Bob & Murphy’s Law-isiana: 

Murphy’s Law string band has “transmoogafied”  into a traditional

Cajun band. Caity’s been pulling out the squeezebox and making noise at

folkfests and dances  around the state of Florida including the

recent Cajun Cafe On The Bayou’s Fais Do-Do Fest ’99 held in Pinellas

Park FL in early October.

Thanks for the heads-up, Liz!

Wendy Plays Accordion

Quirky singer-songwriter Wendy McNeill

is also a convert to the accordion. For her third album, Such a Common Bird, she’s taken up

the accordion as both songwriting and performance instrument. Bravo!

Photo: Album cover for Wendy McNeill's 'Such a Common Bird'.

She’s put a couple of tracks online, both of which are quite good: 

Soon to be a Respectable Instrument

And finally, here’s the last paragraph of an article from the September edition of Air Canada’s in-flight magazine, EnRoute.

The article is about the ukelele (an equally-maligned instrument,

championed by BoingBoing’s Mark Frauenfelder), but the paragraph could

easily be applied to the accordion:

As more of the world hears Jake Shimabukuro,

it will become impossible to continue to associate the ukelele with

novelty acts. And Hawaii itself will no longer  be considered to

be one big Elvis movie, augmented by happy dancing natives, wacky

cocktails and tacky tiki. This sort of thing has happened before. At

the beginning of the 20th century, for instance, a certain instrument

was associated only with vaudeville comics and horn-honking clowns. All

it took was a single virtuoso to reform that instrument’s reputation.

That man was Coleman Hawkins, and the instrument was the tenor saxophone.

Deep Thought on This Engagement Thing #1

Just as I’m going to trade in bachelorhood for the married life, there’s a guy on Craigslist who’s ready to do some moving on of his own [Warning: Picture with butt-cheeks — might not be safe for work].