Free scoop night
Don’t forget, tomorrow — May 1st — is free scoop night at Baskin-Robbins. George and Leesh, the participating Baskin-Robbins nearest you is here.
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April 2002
Emerging Technologies Conference, here I come…
I’ll be attending the O’Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference in Santa Clara from May 13th through 16th. I’m flying on accumulated points and am attending the conference on a free pass, so I figure it won’t put too much of a beating on my pocketbook.
I’m certain that I could probably pick up most of what’s going on at the conference without having to attend it, but there is a reason people often follow up stories with the line “you had to be there”. In spite of the fairly tightly-knit clan that a lot of us P2P veterans have on the IRC channel #infoanarchy as well as through e-mail, there’s still nothing like meeting face-to-face, hanging out, exchanging ideas or even just talking guff. I’m looking forward to catching up with some folks I haven’t seen in a while — Cory, Grad, John, Jill, Bram, Bryce, Justin, Roger, Clay, Rael and the world’s coolest geek book publisher, Tim O’Reilly.
It’s a real pity I no longer have the budget of a Director of Developer Relations. I’d love to buy rounds of beer for all you guys again.
By the way, Tim, if you need a closing keynote accordion number (just like the P2P Conference in February 2001), I’ll do one…
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Yesterday, I decided to drop by a career expo at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. With the expo a short walk south of my house and with sponsors like by the Globe and Mail and workopolis, it seemed like a good idea to attend.
There was the usual maze of registration booths at the ground floor of the Centre, but it turned out to be for a conference for estheticians and people who work at spas. The career fair, a sign pointed out, was in a single conference room in the basement. The sign also had a noted hastily taped to it that read “No IT firms today”, which left two categories, “Business” and “Engineering”. I could say that curiosity is what kept me interested in taking a look inside, but truth be told, I was more interested in seeing if Laura was still there.
There was a line of about 50 or 60 people leading to a single registration desk. You couldn’t enter the conference room without regsitering first, but I had no interest in putting up with a wait for something I wasn’t really interested in. If this were a conference and I had my accordion, I could do what I’ve done a couple of times: claim to be part of the show and that I was running late. It’s worked at a couple of Linux expos and DefCon.
I pulled my laptop out of my knapsack and walked up to the attendant minding the door. She looked me over. I wasn’t wearing a suit like everyone else at the show, but a vintage work shirt, skater-boy pants and running shoes. I also didn’t have a file folder full of resumes like everyone else.
“Hi. Nortel tech support,” I said, picking a likely company name. “Problem with one of our display computers.”
Please please please don’t ask me for some kind of ID, I thought.
“Can I get in? I’m running late, and if I don’t get that computer up and running, it’ll be bad karma.”
The attendant waved me through with a terribly disinterested look.
I went inside, and there was no Laura, and not much in the way of companies either. In the area for “Engineering” companies, there was a total of five companies. The pickings were evn slimmer for “Business”, where there were only three. I’ve seen livelier booths at a high school science fair. Nortel didn’t even have a booth here.
I decided to look around the “Engineering” section. It was a room full of people in ill-fitting suits carrying portfolios and drafting tubes. Nobody was looking particularly happy. I haven’t seen a room full of people this glum since I sat in the waiting room of a towing company a few years ago.
General Dynamics had the flashiest booth and the highest turnover. Being a weapons manufacturer, their security requirements couldn’t accept anyone who hadn’t been a Canadian citizen for at least five years, which apparently disqualified most of the people in the room, which skewed heavily towards middle eastern and south Asian.
“Damned bin Laden, he is screwing us all out of a job, eh?” said the only guy in the room who didn’t look morose. He must’ve thought I was also applying for work.
“I don’t know about you,” I replied, “but if the career fair’s like this, I’m thinking about opening a hot dog cart.”
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If you’ve seen the movie Snatch, you’ll remember this exchange:
U.S. Customs official: “Anything to declare?”Avi: “Yeah. Don’t go to England.”
Avi, who was played by Dennis Farina, has a gruff swagger that my accountant Syd has. Syd’s been our family accountant for over 20 years, and all of us deVillas swear by him. He works hard to make sure we get the best possible outcome at tax time, and he’s not afraid to get into shouting matches with the folks at Revenue Canada.
He’s a large balding man with a goatee, who often wears a dress shirt over his paunch with the top three buttons undone. Underneath the open shirt, he wears his always-present large-link gold chain, from which hangs a gold Star of David the size of a quarter. If Shaft were Jewish, he’d wear this medallion. If Shaft were an accountant, he’d be Syd.
The deadline for filing taxes in Canada is midnight at the end of April 30th. I normally don’t like cutting things so close when it comes to financial matters, but life’s been hectic for the past couple of months, and in the confusion, filing taxes almost slipped off my to-do list. It didn’t, partly because I have an accountant like Syd.
“Joey,” he said in his basso profundo when he called me last week, “it’s your best friend Syd!”
“Syd, baby,” I said — and yes, I actually did say ‘Sid, baby’ — “I’ve got some file folders for you, all organized nicely in chronological order. Pay stubs, T4 slips, charitable donations, the works. I’ll drop them off at your office.”
“All right. And don’t just leave ‘em and then fuck off — make sure I come out and say ‘hi’ to you.”
“Sure thing, Syd.” I find it reassuring that Syd swears more than most gangsta rappers. I’m not sure how Mom deals with it — she hates profanity like the dickens.
When my parents first used Syd’s services, his office was located in Greektown, a reasonably central location. It was possible to get to his office by subway, and it was a good excuse to go and get some souvlaki and walk through one of the more colourful parts of town. About ten years ago, he moved to Markham, a dreary accessible-only-by-highway suburb consisting of cookie-cutter housing projects, industrial parks, office complexes and open spaces punctuated by electrical transmission towers.
As coincidence would have it, his office is a five-minute drive west of my old workplace.
The tax deadline is Wednesday at midnight, which meant that Syd’s office was incredibly busy. Still, Syd managed to break away from number-crunching to have a little conference with me.
Syd (going through the folders I brought): All organized. Chronological order. Very nice. Not like your dad. He usually gives me two shoeboxes six hours before deadline.
Me: Generosity’s his strong suit, not organization.
Syd: A fuckin’ saint, your dad. Hey, you goin’ grey?
Me: Syd, I’ve had grey hair since I was thirteen.
Syd. No shit. You got nearly as much as me. So…you still a computer…guy?
Me: Yup. I got laid off in January and I’m thinking of going back to being an independent contractor for a while. I’ve got clients lined up without much trying on my part.
Syd: Good, good. Notice I didn’t call you a computer geek. I didn’t want to offend you. You see, I consider myself a fucking accounting geek.
Me: Geek isn’t an insult, it’s a badge of honour. At least in computer circles.
Syd: Fuckin’ A. Hey, has that deadbeat yutz housemate started paying you back yet?
Me: No. He keeps saying he’s working on it…
Syd: You know, we have ways of persuading to pay their fucking debts faster.
Me: We? You mean [the accounting firm]?
Syd: No, I mean my people. Like payback for Munich 1972.
Me: But that doesn’t have anything to do with owing money.
Syd: No, but it taught them that you can’t fuck around with us.
Me: I dunno, the yutz is worth more to me alive than dead.
Syd: Yeah, and fuckin’ contract killing isn’t deductible.
We laugh.
Me: Hey, Syd, I need your help with getting incorporated and setting myself up as an independent contractor. Can we talk soon?
Syd: Of course! Just make it next week — after Wednesday,
I’m going to fuck off for a couple of days which a big bottle of Chivas. I can’t incorporate you, but I’ll hook you up with the best fuckin’ lawyer I know. Then I’ll walk you through getting your GST and PST shit. Fuckin’ piece of cake.
Me: Cool. Monday then. (I get up and shake Syd’s hand). Thanks, man.
Syd: No fuckin’ sweat. Say hi to your mom and dad for me!
Syd fucking rules.
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The score
I was a bad boy and didn’t file my taxes in 2000. I was a good boy and filed this year.
For the year 2000, I earned a nice, healthy tax refund from Revenue Canada. However, for the year 2001, I owe Revenue Canada about half of 2001′s refund. A combination of lower deductions from my former place of employment, coupled with a certain deadbeat housemate’s failure to pay rent for half a year (which in turn made me unable to make a decent RRSP contribution) did this. While the net result still puts me ahead, I’d rather have at least broken even with the tax folks this year. That 2000 refund would’ve been enough to buy me that new iBook.
I’m off to the gym to work off my annoyance. More tax stories later.
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I am David Hasselhoff
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According to the Guinness Book of Records, Hasselhoff is the world’s most-watched TV star. According to my friend Adina, Hasselhoff is scary.
I’d been thinking about splitting this weblog into two. The Adventures of AccordionGuy in the 21st Century would have all my stories and observations about life in general while another blog would be more technically oriented.
One of the names I was considering for the tech blog was “Happiest Geek on Earth”. This turn of phrase is actually Cory Doctorow’s; he came up with it by altering the Disneyland slogan “The Happiest Place on Earth”. He’s used it to describe both himself (in many places, most notably this Industry Standard article from October 2000) and me (in a recent bOINGbOING entry about my becoming a go-go dancer). I decided to run a Google search for the phrase to see if someone was already using it as a title for a web page.
The result was a single page of entries, and they were stories about either Cory or me. Of the two about me, one was the bOINGbOING entry. The other was from a German blog called Der Schockwellenreiter (in English, that’s “The Shockwave Rider”). He’d seen the story in bOINGbOING and decided to link to The accidental go-go dancer. Here’s the entry in the original German:
[Der glücklichste Geek der Welt]. So könnte ich mir mein Leben auch vorstellen. Tagsüber ein wenig hacken und bloggen und abends durch die Musikkneipen tingeln, schräge Songs auf dem Akkordeon spielen und dabei immer von hübschen Frauen begleitet werden. Joey ist jedenfalls the happiest geek on earth.
Google’s translation feature offered this interpretation:
[the luckiest Geek of the world]. So I could also imagine my life. During the day a little chop and bloggen and by the music taverns tingeln, diagonal Songs on the accordion in the evening play and by pretty women to be always accompanied. Joey is anyhow the happiest geek on earth .
“Diagonal songs”? As you can see, machine-based translation has a long way to go.
Between this entry and Der Spiegel’s coverage of Peekabooty, I’d have to say the time may be ripe for me to get out of this dead-end software business and launch a David Hasselhoff-like career in Germany.
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A Google search for the word accordion currently puts me on the fifth page of results.
So for now, my Google claim to fame is that I have the Google search for the word accordion currently puts me on the fifth page of results.
A Google search for the mispelled version, accordian, places me on the first page, seventh item down. This would indicate that while my readership is a little low on the spelling skills, their taste is impeccable.
Here’s I photo I’d never seen until I ran a search for pictures from Burning Man 1999 using the non-word accordian:
So for now, my Google claim to fame is that I have the number one entry for stagette.
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A paucity of evening plans, but I’m not worried…
Too many people I know are planning to “take it easy” tonight. It could be the cloudy weather, or simply the fact that after last week’s summer-like temperatures, the current chill has dampened everyone’s spirits.
Luckily, my folks want to take the family out to Susur Lee’s amazing-but-expensive gourmet restaurant tonight. I’m always up for any excuse to dress up and dine out.
Susur’s, on King Street West in Toronto.
And I can always follow that up with a little go-go dancing.
(I always have a backup plan, folks.)
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My friend Anne works for Aerial Communications, the PR firm behind the Toronto dates of Jackie Mason’s latest stand-up comedy show, Prune Danish. She always gets tickets to any show promoted by her company and invited me along to see this one.
Mason comes from the great tradition of the comedians of the Borscht Belt, a vacation spot in the Catskills that became a popular destination for Jews starting in the 1950s. The hotels and resorts in the area hired Jewish entertainers to match their clientele, a lot of whom were stand-up comics. From the Belt came the great comic staples of observational humour (think Jerry Seinfeld and even Cory Doctorow) and aren’t-WASPs-funny jokes (think BET) that we take for granted today.
(I was probably the only Asian in the audience. Most of the audience looked as though they came from North York, which means their only encounters with Filipinos are usually with their housekeepers and nannies. I wondered if they thought I had the night off. “Did you press my shirts and get the kids’ lunches made already?”)
Mason put on a good show, starting with his traditional jabs at audience members in the front row and then going straight for the observational humour. While there’s nothing terribly ground-breaking in his material — the standard items from the news and ethnic jokes (there were moments he really sounded like Krusty the Clown, but then again, Krusty’s probably modeled after him, right down to the bit where he quit being a rabbi to go into comedy and making fun of foreign accents) — he still got a laugh out of the audience, who ages ran the gamut from university students to seniors.
I really liked the bit where he said that “only Gentiles think they have to sit in the airplane seat assigned to them”; it’s funny because it’s true.
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Which Nokia phone are you?
I haven’t taken a “Which X are you?” online test in some time, but I couldn’t resist this one. I’m sure my friend Ryan Murphy already knows not only what kind of Nokia phone he is, but which Bang and Olufsen product and which BMW model too.
Here’s my result…
Daaaaaaaamn right.
You can take the test here.
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The other entertainment bigwig in Washington
Elmo’s quite stylin’ these days. See how his tie matches his fur?
While MPAA head and Enemy of the Internet Jack Valenti is busy trying to scare Congress into imposing ridiculous laws designed to screw over customers and futher fatten the pockets of the entertainment industry, Sesame Street’s Elmo is speaking in front of the Education Appropriations Subcommittee. Along with head of an international trade association of musical instrument makers, he’s urging the U.S. Congress to spend more money on music research and musical instruments for school programs.
I will gladly testify in front of Congress that in addition to the sheer joy of playing music, there are so many unexpected benefits that come with playing a musical instrument.
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At last, the go-go dancer story.
There was a birthday party for my friend Marlo on Saturday. Dinner — which I missed, owing to some prior commitments — was at the anything-goes yuppie hangout Seven Numbers.
I caught up with Marlo and her entourage after dessert, at which point everyone decided that they wanted to go dancing. I suggested the neighbourhood I call “Clubland”, a busy row of bars and clubs just south of where I live. We were going to see if we could get into Fez Batik, and if the line was too long, we had at least a dozen other clubs from which we could choose.
The line for Fez wasn’t moving at all, so we decided to walk south and try our luck at the clubs on Adelaide Street. Luck was with us; while The Living Room had a decent crowd inside, there wasn’t any line.
Always let the ladies try your pimp hat on.
A brunette bartender in pigtails and olive green tank top motioned for me to come over to the bar.
“Can you play that thing?” she asked, pointing at my accordion, which I was wearing like a backpack.
“Yeah, otherwise it would just be a thirty-pound fashion accessory,” I replied.
“I’ll buy you a drink if you play something for me.”
I don’t remember what the DJ was playing at the time, but it was easy to figure out which key it was in. I remember the song having a simple riff and that I had no trouble playing it. The bartender was impressed and she poured two shots of Goldschlager — one for her, one for me.
A bearded man in a grey sharkskin suit walked up to me.
“That was great! By the way, I’m Tony. I run this place. Follow me to the DJ booth.”
I followed him through the crowded dance floor and into the booth.
It was occupied by the DJ and a couple of hangers-on. The DJ was
starting an old-school set with Prince’s Kiss. Tony asked the DJ for the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Tony announced, “please welcome the latest addition to The Living Room family…the Accordion Dude!”
I tipped my hat to the crowd. Tony pointed the microphone at the accordion and said “Go on, play.” Luckily, Kiss is a I-IV-V song, heavy on the sevenths, and it took me only two stabs at the keyboard to find the right key – A. I played through to the end of the song and even managed to get in a decent solo.
Tony led me to the bar on the opposite end of the dance floor, where he asked me to play something for the dreadlocked barman. I forget what the DJ was playing at the time, but once again, it was easy to figure out the notes and I played along. The earned me a free drink from this bartender, and Tony gave me a fistful of tickets good for free drinks. He then led me to the lounge near the front of the club to play for the bartender there. Marlo and company were in the lounge, so I gave them the drink tickets.
“When the accordion train comes in, everybody rides!” I said.
I managed to have a couple of vodka-and-cranberries with the birthday party before Tony came back with an idea.
“I’m gonna have you dance right on the main bar. It’ll be just like Coyote Ugly, but with an accordion.”
He put two crisp fifty dollar bills in my hand and led me to the bar with the pigtailed bartender who served me first. They cleared off a section of the bar for me, and I climbed up and played and danced.
The bartender, Jenn, kept feeding me Goldschlager shots. So far, I hadn’t spent a dime on drinks and I was actually making money.
Marlo had my camera and took a couple of pictures:
The guy in the sharkskin suit in the foreground? That’s Tony.
A couple of women reached up and tucked fivers in my pants. Inspired by this, Jenn climbed on the bar after last call and tucked my shared of the bar tips into my pockets while spanking me to the beat. This, of course, is why we boys take up playing instruments in the first place.
We decided to head out for some late-night eats after Jenn closed the bar. As I walked out, Tony asked me to meet with him later in the week to discuss a performance schedule. He wants me there every Friday and Saturday night.
I don’t really want to sacrifice my weekend nights to go-go dancing.
(I just read that last sentence and thought: That’s one of those things I never expected to write.)
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Congratulations, Eileen and Richard (and Aidan, too!)…
…on the purchase of your new house. You’re in serious grown-up territory now.
Unfortunately, you’re also in another kind of territory, according to this article in The Onion:
According to Kiplinger’s senior writer Peter Akkaf, in addition to buying more homes, lame-o’s are refinancing existing mortgages to take advantage of lower rates.“Lame-o’s across the country are making appointments at financial institutions to ask men in ugly neckties and women with hairstyles 10 years out of style to adjust their mortgages to a slightly more favorable rate,” Akkaf said. “When that’s done, they return to their homes, where they stare at their $12.99 Monet prints from Target and listen to Andrea Bocelli on their mini-stereos. What kind of life is that?”
Asked if the recent warm temperatures could have goosed the market, National Realtors’ Board president Maggie Zadora rolled her eyes.
“God, if that’s true, that’s sad,” Zadora said. “It’s like, ‘Ooh, Mary, it’s 10 degrees warmer outside! Instead of going out and doing something fun or creative, let’s all pile into the minivan and search for the bland colonial of our dreams!’”
(The full article is here.)
But seriously — it’s a lovely looking place and any house that has Aidan’s approval has mine.
Aidan William deVilla-Choi: “I approve of the new house, Unca Joey!”
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As it gets closer and closer to the third anniversary of the day I first played the accordion in public, its powers to bend reality seem to be increasing. Life becomes more and more like a beer commercial every time I bring it out.
This, of course, is a Very Good Thing.
More details later.
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