Names at the Old Gym (Mostly people in their 20s – 30s)
From summer 2005 to the start of 2009, I was a member at a gym located a ten-minute walk away from home. The crowd is made up mostly of people in their 20s and 30s, presumably students, singles and the “yummy mummy” crowd, with students and homemakers making the lion’s share of attendees during business hours.
Here are the ways I was addressed at that gym:
Joey
Mr. deVilla
Jose
“Joe-zay” (an attempt to pronounce “Jose”)
Accordion Guy
Dude
Dogg
Yo
Sir
Names at the Current Gym (“Newly wed or nearly dead”)
I switched to the new gym not because there was anything wrong with the old gym, but because:
It’s only a block away from home, making it more likely that I’d go more often, especially when the weather’s bad. So far, it’s worked; on average, I’m there every other day.
It has a swimming pool.
Before and after business hours, the crowd is made up of people from their 20s through 40s. During business hours, it’s the retiree crowd.
Here are the ways in which I’ve been addressed or referred to by my fellow gym members:
Joey
Jerry
Jimmy
Johnny
Young Man
Young Feller
That Microsoft Guy
The Computer Guy
The Accordion Player
Young Chinese Fella
“That young guy who’s always here in the middle of the day…why doesn’t he have a job?”
At the start of every Olympic games, there’s always an extended news piece – if you can call anything under 10 minutes “extended” – describing the host country to the viewers. The 2010 Winter Olympics is no exception, and in this video, NBC’s Tom Brokaw introduces American viewers to us, their neighbours to the north. In his voice-over, Brokaw says:
In the long history of sovereign neighbours, there never has been a relationship as close, productive and peaceful as the U.S. and Canada.
Graphic designer Tavis Coburn designed the program covers for this year’s BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Awards, and they’re retro-cool! Each one features elements from the nominees for the Best Picture Award.
Here’s the cover featuring Up in the Air, with a very Mad Men-esque treatment of George Clooney:
It took me a moment to figure this one out. The helmet screams “space movie”, but the reflection of the child playing soccer in the visor makes it clear that the movie depicted here is The Hurt Locker:
Avatar, obviously.I still haven’t seen this movie. Mind you, I didn’t see Titanic until 2005. I like to think that anything I was doing around the turn of the millennium was far more interesting than any movie, especially a schmaltzy James Cameron date flick.
Amos wasn’t my dog – he belonged to my friend Chandra – but I’ve spent many a fine evening hanging out or running in the park with this big, good-natured yellow dog. I am but one of many who’ll miss him. R.I.P., Amos. Good boy.
Yes, that Dolph Lundgren – the guy who played “Ivan Drago” in Rocky IV and the cyborg preacher in Johnny Mnemonic. Here he is, bringing the house down with the long-underappreciated Elvis single as part of his co-hosting duties for Melodifestivalen, the event where the Swedish entry for the Eurovision Song Contest is chosen. He [...]
Purim is the Jewish holiday made for me. After all, it’s about Asian guys picking up cute Jewish girls, and drinking!
It’s also the Jewish holiday made for comedy writer Rob Kutner (he’s written for the Daily Show and Tonight Show), who writes the comedy sketches that the Shushan Channel perform at Purim for the annual [...]
And so, with both a bang and a whimper, Adam Giambrone’s campaign to become mayor of Toronto came to an end, a mere ten days after it began.
What fascinates me about the whole thing isn’t the impropriety or the controversy, but the stories that came out of them. Stories about a career-climbing overly image-conscious [...]
Today is all about virtual meetings; I’m spending most of it sitting at the home office with a headset microphone clamped to my head, bouncing from one online meeting to another, magically transporting my presence over great distances. My co-worker John Bristowe is in the same boat and quipped on Twitter: “I feel like I’m [...]
This article’s a bit more technical than the sort that usually appears here on The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century. However, since it’s about a technology that you, as readers of this blog, probably use every day, I thought it would be worth posting here. Enjoy!
Over at the design-oriented Smashing Magazine site, [...]
…is that sometimes, what with all the things that need to be done, all the learning that goes along with them and the pace at which they need to be done, it feels like this:
Accordion City’s mayoral election is on October 25th, which makes mayoral candidate Adam Giambrone’s admission to an “inappropriate relationship” incredibly premature. This is the sort of thing we wanted to hear about in the summer!
I have to hand it to the Toronto Star for the photo that accompanies their article on Giambrone’s announcement. It’s wonderfully [...]
Back in high school, after reading Space-Time and Beyond for the umpteenth time and drinking one too many zombies with my friend Henry, we came up with a theory:
In the infinite set of universes, there had to exist a particular universe in which the events in our lives were being watched as a TV show.
We then made a solemn vow to live the kind of life that got high ratings.
