While I’m on the topic of interesting things that you can see while walking down Queen Street West (just two blocks south of my house), I saw this scene outside Pages Bookstore on Saturday afternoon:
The woman in the photo was reading Fahrenheit 451. After finishing both sides of a page, she would rip it out and hand it to the man who set it alight in a makeshift brazier:
Ah, performance art.
On Saturday night, I was heading to Smokeless Joe to catch up with my friends Liz and Keith when I saw the coolest upright bass ever. It belonged to the bassist of The Matadors, who performed at The Black Bull later that evening. I aksed if I could photograph his bass, and not only did he oblige, he even posed.
Alas, I’d already made arrangements to catch White Cowbell Oklahoma with Meryle at the same time The Matadors were playing, but I’ll have to catch these guys at some point.
Duuuuuuuude.
Sebastien “Seb’s Open Research” Paquet, one of Canada’s bright lights on the social software and blogging front, made his first visit to Accordion City (he even called it “Accordion City” in his email!) on Sunday, and invited a few local bloggers to come out for lunch on Monday. The attendees were:
We met for lunch at Cafe Diplomatico, in the heart of the Little Italy that occupies College Street West (we have a couple of Little Italies). Discussed in addition to blogging (which was to be expected) were the supposed rigor of academics, the upcoming election, censorship, Iran, search engines, the University of Waterloo and the glassy-eyed expressions of most of the other folks in the restaurant as they watched Italy playing the World Cup.
It was also the first time I’d met this group of bloggers, and I had great fun. Thanks for organizing this get-togerher, Seb! As for you locals — Hoder, Michael, Kaveh, Melanie — I’ll be sure to let you guys know about any upcoming GTABlogger gatherings.
“Nothing succeeds in this world like imagination,” says Eric Weber, narrator of the audiobook Picking Up Girls Made Easy.
“Think about it! Einstein had imagination. Casanova had imagination.
And Romeo had a great imagination. Didn’t he score Juliet, one of the
greatest pick-ups of all time?”
(A couple of notes: 1. For my British friends: what we call “picking
up”, you’d call “pulling”. 2. I’d hardly view a pick-up that lead
directly to my death as “great”.)
That’s how the audiobook chapter The Walking the Dog Pick Up
[4 MB MP3] begins. The narrator’s dated slang and “Eddie Haskell’s all
grown up” voice, the cheesy voice acting and the advice that sounds as
if it’s coming from Larry Dallas (Jack Tripper’s swinging single friend from
Three’s Company) make this an unintentionally hilarious gem.
“There’s no doubt about it: you’ve got to use your imagination,” says
the narrator at the close. “If you’ve haven’t got a dog, try an antique
car. If you can’t afford that, try an antique bicycle. And if
that’s too fancy, try antique roller skates. Remember, it’s not what
gimmick you use, but how you use it, and how you use your imagination.
Good luck!”
Here’s a photo that just landed in my inbox. It’s from the “Give Me Liberty” party that look place last Thursday.
The accordion is the true rebel’s instrument.
Today’s User Friendly continues with its storyline on blogging:
In case you were wondering, here are the lyrics for the first part of Lump by The Presidents of the United States of America (their site currently opens with a sound snippet from Lump):
She’s Lump! She’s Lump! She’s Lump!
She’s in my head
She’s Lump! She’s Lump! She’s Lump!
She’s might be dead
Lump lingered last in line for brains
And the one she got was sorta rotten and insane
Small things so sad that birds could land
Is Lump fast asleep or rockin’ out with the band
I think Illiad could’ve done better than assonating “pyjamas” with “parameters”. I’d have written
Lump is part of my accordion repertoire. Maybe I’ll shot a video of me performing the User Friendly parody.