March 2008

The photo below could be the greatest movie scene re-enactment ever: it’s a re-enactment of the “Spider-Man stops the runaway train” scene in Spider-Man 2:

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

In case you haven’t seen Spider-Man 2, here’s the relevant scene:

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On our final night in Austin, the b5media crew had a barbecue at the b5 ranch with food supplied by The Salt Lick, widely regarded as one of the best barbecue places in the area. Here’s what their van brought us:

• Pork ribs
• Beef brisket
• kielbasa
• coleslaw
• beans
• potatoes
• peach cobbler
• blackberry cobbler
• pickles
• loads and loads of barbecue sauce

Darcie: What do you mean my margaritas are poisonously strong?

For drinks, we had a keg of beer on ice and Darcie’s poisonously strong margaritas, and Darren added to the dessert offerings with Tim Tams he brought all the way from Australia. Dinner was followed by a giant bonfire and some roughhousing around the pool (three victims claimed).

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If you’re at SxSW and you missed the bus for the Salt Lick, b5media’s having a barbecue with food from…The Salt Lick! Send me a tweet for details.

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Here’s a photo of Lindsay from Mob Logic interviewing me at South by Southwest. Feel free to make up your own caption:

Photo by Mob Logic.
Click the photo to see it on its Flickr page.

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It may have been a Monday night, but the way the parties were going, you’d think it was Saturday…

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…Cosmopolitan, who should be considered experts in the area, spell it “Va-jay-jay”:

Out of curiosity, I decided to see if the domain names vajayjay.com and va-jay-jay.com were taken, and yes, they are.

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You see all kinds of weird stuff at South by Southwest. For instance, I hear there’s some weirdo wandering around carrying an accordion. Here’s another weird sight: Tara Hunt escorting a unicorn (or perhaps the unicorn is escorting her)…

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One of the great things about attending the South by Southwest Interactive conference is that I’m getting the chance to meet the actual faces behind some of my favourite blogs. I’ve already walked up to a number of people and told them how much I loved their work.

What I didn’t expect was for some bloggers whom I hold in very high regard to walk up to me and tell me how much they liked both the Accordion Guy and Global Nerdy blogs.

Tony Pierce

Me and Tony Pierce at SxSW 2008.

One of these bloggers was Tony Pierce, whose blog, busblog I’ve been reading since the very beginnings of The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century. He recently became the editor for the Los Angeles Times blogs. Tony’s been to Accordion City a couple of times and has some ties with local bloggers Christie St. Martin (who also blogs for the L.A. Times) and Raymi the Minx, but I’d never met him until this week. He came up to me and told me he’d been reading my stuff for a while and then shot video while I performed Baby One More Time (which, along with Head Like a Hole have been the most requested accordion songs of the conference). I feel cooler for having hung out with Tony, short as that time was.

Merlin Mann

Me and Merlin Mann at SxSW 2008.

Merlin Mann is another blogger who’s a hero of mine. He’s probably best known for introducing the geek community to David Allen’s Getting Things Done system and for creating the “lifehacks” blog 43 Folders. He’s also given my blogs very hearty recommendations on his own very influential blogs and podcasts.

While getting my registration badge for the conference, I heard someone call out “Joey!”. I turned around, and there Merlin was, shaking my hand. He introduced me to his wife by saying that he “fell in love” with me when he saw me performing at a past ETech conference. We later had a great time wandering around the trade show floor together, talking about the sort of work we’d like to do and the sort of work environment in which we’d like to do that work, and I feel smarter for having spent some time hanging out with him.

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Inspired by the trainwreck of a Q&A session with Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg and the self-destructing Sarah Lacy, Jay Goldman created a single-serving site called KickedOffTheNet.com that holds this single image:

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Hugh “gapingvoid” MacLeod said on Twitter: “The accordian guy just turned up. Luckily I remembered to bring my shotgun.” Stowe Boyd concurs.

You can’t buy publicity like this, people!

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