October 2002

Accordion City’s venerable BamBoo Club, a long-time fixture on Queen Street West, is closing its doors for the final time tomorrow night. It’s long been the home of live world beat music, great Thai and Caribbean food and for providing weekend-like drum-and-bass nights on Monday and Tuesday evening for those of us who work in the bar/restaurant service industry. The wall mural is already gone, and the rest of the club disappears after tomorrow night.

If you live in Toronto and have enjoyed the BamBoo over the years, be sure to catch it one last time. I’ll probably be there tonight along with some of the Thirsty People of Toronto and tomorrow night with the Sunni Choi Girlz.

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I’m less than a week away from being thirty-five. The actual birthdate’s November 5th, Guy Fawkes Day, but the party’s taking place on Saturday November 9th chez moi. So far, 44 people have said “yes” to the eVite (and more than those who respond always show), so it looks as if this may be the record-breaking party for this house.

You don’t have to bring a present if you’re attending the party, but if you must, you can check my Amazon wishlist to see what kind fo stuff I like. If you can help me stock the bar for the party – beer, wine, or liquor — it would be appreciated. If you’re a musician, feel free to bring an instrument!

For my birthday, I’ve decided to adopt some new expressions: “Do an old man a favour” and “Make an old man happy”. As in “Do an old man a favour and get me a beer, please?” or “Make an old man happy and have dinner with me, won’t you?”

I rather like the sound of that.

Lyric time!

It Was a Very Good Year

Music and lyrics by Ervin Drake

When I was seventeen,

It was a very good year

It was a very good year for small

town girls and soft summer nights.

We’d hide from the lights on the village green

When I was seventeen

When I was twenty-one,

It was a very good year

It was a very good year for city

girls who lived up the stairs

With all that perfumed hair and it came undone

When I was twenty-one

When I was thirty-five,

It was a very good year

It was a very good year for blue-blooded

girls of independent means

We’d ride in limousines,

their chauffeurs would drive

When I was thirty-five

But now the days are short,

I’m in the autumn of the year

And now I think of my life as vintage

wine from fine old kegs

From the brim to the dregs

It poured sweet and clear

It was a very good year

For you young whippersnappers who don’t know how this song goes, you can check out this Windows Media file. It’s the Robbie Williams/Frank Sinatra version, taken from Robbie’s album, Swing When You’re Winning.

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Some more photos from Saturday night.

Atmosphere

About a quarter of Peter’s loft space was used as the dance floor. Music was provided by — of course — a computer playing from a selection fo MP3s while a laptop hooked to a projection TV showed images such as those shown below on the wall closest to the dance floor:

Peter was kind enough to post the entire set of projected images here.

Charles the butcher

Paul arrives

The ladies! The ladies!

Return of the Jedi

“Obi-Wan” bought the lightsaber from one of those online places that makes replicas that are very faithful to the movies, right down to the glow. Unfortunately, the flash on my camera makes the saber appear white; it actually glows blue.

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Earlier that evening: Drinks with Diane Duane

Early Saturday evening, I met sci-fi/fantasy/animation author and fellow blogger Diane Duane, who was passing through Accordion City, for drinks. She showed me her husband’s new computer, a Sharp Mebius laptop.

Never heard of the Mebius? That’s because it’s not normally available here in North America — the japanese market has determined that we’re not interested in incredibly skinny laptops with DVD-RW drives, built-in 802.11 and Ethernet and cool design (they have determined that we want all the tentacle porn we can eat, however).

Diane picked this up for her hubby at Dynamism, a New York-based company that specializes in bringing the latest and greatest Japanese electronics to North America (I’d love one of their tiny Ericsson cell phones!). Although it’s a Japanese computer, it has a standard QWERTY keyboard that has the Roman alphabet in large characters on its keys, as well as Japanese characters — you’ll feel like a console cowboy punching deck in a William Gibson novel using one of these.

I’ll write a little more about my meeting with Diane in a later entry.

Party at Peter’s place

Peter Timofjew, one of the kahunas behind the social group/drinking club/bunch of troublemakers Thirsty People of Toronto, held a Hallowee’n party last Saturday night. He’s the first set of pictures.

I used to go for more elaborate costumes in my younger days, but I’ve given up on that in more recent years. For the past three or four years, I’d simply throw on an apron and chef’s hat as go as “Chef” from South Park. This year, I toyed with going as Angus Young from AC/DC, or perhaps as “Manila Rice”, the Filipino answer to Vanilla Ice. Instead, I went as “Random Hong Kong Movie Gangster”. Rob loaned me his “Tom from the Chemical Brothers” yellow shades. And then I messed up the look with the hat.

Matt “Black Belt” Jones and I agree — your best clubbing outfit is an old tuxedo or equally formal black suit. You can wear it traditionally with a shirt and tie, as I did, or tieless with a black shirt, or go all Man from U.N.C.L.E. and wear a dark turtleneck with it. I went trad and wore a raffish (well, in Asian clubbing circles, the tie is actually understated) gold tie and white shirt. The suit’s a 10-year-old hand-me-down Hugo Boss courtesy of Dad. We should all have such generous fashion plates for fathers — thanks, Dad!

Rob got some coloured hairspray, but it didn’t work quite as advertised. Instead of making his hair platinum blond, it just made him look older. Very distinguished, though.

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I’m in the middle of answering e-mails from recruiting agencies, who seem to have recently taken up asking candidates essay questions. It feels like midterms all over again. I’ll post once I’m done.

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On Friday night, Paul and I went to my friend Amber Joliat’s pumpkin-carving party. It was a fun evening with about two dozen people in attendance, carving pumpkins, drinking wine, eating homemade cookies and seeds taken from the pumpkins and roasted in the oven. I was also the musical entertainment for the evening; that night, I tried two new numbers in the repertoire: AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap and Cake’s Sheep Go to Heaven. A fun evening all ’round — mucho thanks to Amber and her housemates for having us over!

. It wasn’t a terribly labour-intensive design, but I had to get mine over with quickly because people were asking me to get on the squeezebox and rock out.

Some of the jack-o’-lanterns, close up:

Some folks got really ambitious and carved these, using the “level 3″ (the most difficult) templates in the jack-o’-lantern book. The results were pretty impressive:

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For old times’ sake, I downloaded MacArthur Park with Kazaa Lite, played it, and now it’s stuck in my head. Especially the go-go danceable instrumental break. It’s palying right now, and I’m go-go dancing as I type this.

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Updated on Saturday, October 26 at 7:45 p.m. EDT. Just added a few more links.

Being Filipino, I have a higher tolerance for disco and musical theatre than what is normally allowed for straight men. So when Camelot came to the O’Keefe Centre (now known as the Hummingbird Centre) in Toronto during the fall of 1985 — a return to the theatre where it was performed for the very first time, twenty-five years earlier, I went willingly. The role of Lancelot was played by its original actor, Robert “Cajun Christmas” Goulet as was King Arthur’s, by none other than Sir Richard Harris. After the show, he gracefully went out into the lobby and autographed souvenir programs, one of which was mine. I’ll have to dig it out of “the memory box”, now a large crate where I keep stuff like that.

The kids know him as Albus Dumbledore, beloved headmaster of Hogwarts Academy in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone or as Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator, older filmgoers know him from This Sporting Life, Heroes of Telemark, A Man Called Horse or The Guns of Navarone, but I will remember him for his hit single — that completely bombastic, over-the-top anthem for anyone who’s ever lamented over what-could-have-been: MacArthur Park.

MacArthur Park became a little bit of an in-joke between me and my friends Ryan and George when we worked together at our summer job designing and producing the student directory and daytimer for Queen’s University. We’d been watching the SCTV episode in which Dave Thomas lampooned Richard Harris. “Harris” appears on the music show “Mel’s Rock Pile” and proceeds to do an extended version of the already-long MacArthur Park, getting more exhausted by the second and screaming “somebody get me a bloody towel!” during the upbeat rock bridge. We also enjoyed the SCTV episode in which “Harris” played the title role in “The Man Who Would be King of Popes“. Harris then became our unofficial mascot of sorts, and MacArthur Park was our unofficial anthem — it ended up getting mentioned in the “thank you” section of our the directory and daytimer.

A tip of the hat to you, Mr. Harris — rest in peace. And for those of you old enough to remember MacArthur Park, here are the lyrics, in all their soggy-baked-goods-metaphoric glory:

MacArthur Park

Music and lyrics by Jimmy Webb

Sung by Sir…Richard…Harris!

Spring was never waiting for us, girl

It ran one step ahead

As we followed in the dance

Between the parted pages and were pressed

In love’s hot, fevered iron

Like a striped pair of pants

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark

All the sweet, green icing flowing down

Someone left the cake out in the rain

I don’t think that I can take it

‘Cause it took so long to bake it

And I’ll never have that recipe again

Oh, no!

I recall the yellow cotton dress

Foaming like a wave

On the ground around your knees

The birds, like tender babies in your hands

And the old men playing checkers by the trees

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark

All the sweet, green icing flowing down

Someone left the cake out in the rain

I don’t think that I can take it

‘Cause it took so long to bake it

And I’ll never have that recipe again

Oh, no!

[The short break]

There will be another song for me

For I will sing it

There will be another dream for me

Someone will bring it

I will drink the wine while it is warm

And never let you catch me looking at the sun

And after all the loves of my life

After all the loves of my life

You’ll still be the one

I will take my life into my hands and I will use it

I will win the worship in their eyes and I will lose it

I will have the things that I desire

And my passion flow like rivers through the sky

And after all the loves of my life

After all the loves of my life

I’ll be thinking of you

And wondering why

[The extended "somebody give me a bloody towel!" break -- everybody go-go dance!]

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark

All the sweet, green icing flowing down

Someone left the cake out in the rain

I don’t think that I can take it

‘Cause it took so long to bake it

And I’ll never have that recipe again

Oh, no!

Oh, no

No, no

Oh no!!

If you want the MIDI version, check out this page.

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Blogger somehow ate my post and I haven’t got the time to re-type it right now. In the meantime, you might enjoy this photo I just dug up. It’s of my friend, A-list blogger, science fiction author and EFF Outreach Coordinator Cory Doctorow trying on a suit at the San Jose Flea Market just before the end of 2000.

The suit really works for him. Cory, have you considered being the front man for a rockabilly band?

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Yes, today isn’t the Wednesday closest to the middle of the month, but Kick Ass Karaoke, the most rock-and-roll karaoke night in town is tonight! It’s at the Bovine Sex Club (Queen, about half a block east of Bathurst). Not only will there be karaoke, there’ll also be a Thirsty People of Toronto gathering at the same time!

If you come you’ll be greeted by mean-looking but friendly bouncers…

…your host, Mr. Carson T. Foster…

…cute women…

…and dapper gentlemen,…

…among whom is Yours Truly.

Won’t you come out and play?

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While flipping thorugh some of the photos in Yahoo News, I found this shot of Charlton Heston and just had to post it.

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Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong

– lyrics from Industrial Disease by Dire Straits

I know that the plastic Jesus figures (“with gliding action!”) are the all the rage, but if you’re considering buying me one for my birthday, don’t — I already have one.

I am, after all, a good Catholic boy.

[Thanks to Cory at BoingBoing for the link]

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Last month, I stumbled across the eXile, Moscow’s alternative paper written largely by expats driven by American xenophobia, culture shock, homesickness and the fact that communism tends to turn places into joyless hellholes. What it lacks in journalistic standards — consider their current contest: whoever guesses the date closest to the American invasion of Iraq wins an hour with one of the prostitutes featured on page 23 — it more than makes up for in hilarity that makes you feel slightly guilty for laughing.

Anyone who’s done a little travelling is probably aware that Europeans generally perceive Americans as bloodthirsty, greedy gun nuts who make lousy beer. This is why the Lonely Planet set often do un-American things such as sew Canadian flags on their backpacks and maybe even attempting to learn a few phrases in the local blabber before hiking across Europe.

What a lot of people don’t know is that Europeans hold their neighbours — Europeans other than themselves, that is — in equal, and possibly greater, contempt. While the worst thing the Americans did to most Europeans is flood them with bad food (Spam during the Marshall Plan, McDonald’s today), Europeans have been raping and pillaging each other since the earliest days, when the rivalries were between villages, not nations (this sort of rivalry continues today). I’m surprised that the word “neighbour” doesn’t have a secondary use as an insult in most European languages.

The eXile have done a little research — and I use the term “research” very loosely — and the result is a feature article called 18 Ways to Hate Your Neighbor. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

Bigotry and hatred are the bread and water of European life. This isn’t a vague, impersonal hatred; rather, it’s a profoundly evolved, carefully tailored hatred, a SMART Hatred if you will, tailored as tightly as a Swiss banker’s shirt towards the village over the hill, where your bosom enemies live.

Through hard and thorough research (ie., by pouring beer into the throats of selected Europeans and letting them rant), the eXile has managed to isolate and map the 18 fundamental hatred genomes that Europeans carry towards their neighbors—the RNA strand of Euro-hatred, if you like.

So put away your Lonely Planet guides, and pick up your Euro-Bigotry primer. It’s because of European hatred that the biggest massacres in human history have taken place. And the wonderful thing is, in spite of all the post-war European talk of peace and understanding, all the bigotries still live on, waiting for the day when they can transform Europeans back from harmless disco-dancing buffoons into the murderous village brawlers they once were, and may someday be again.

You should probably take any primer on Europe that makes liberal use of the word “Eurofag” with a grain of salt, but there’s quite a bit of truth in the article and the accompanying charts.

I’m just surprised that the increasingly popular Simpsons description of the French, cheese-eating surrender monkeys, doesn’t appear at all.

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