Author: Joey deVilla

• More Blogware help files. More instructions on how to use Blogware are currently in the “almost ready to commit to a web page” state. If you’re a Blogware user (or thinking of becoming one), there’ll be lots of new help files to check out this week.
• A blog entry about Lizapalooza. I finally got to meet mamamusings!
• Getting my ass back to the gym. I’ve slacked off for three weeks, and that’s bad. Weight room, here I come…
• Sending our invitations for the birthday party. I’d already done that by this time last year, but I was unemployed back then. At least this time I won’t have to play extra accordion to raise money for booze and food for the party…
• Kick Ass Karaoke at the Bovine Sex Club this Wednesday. I think I need to check the list (122K text link) and find some new songs to add to the accordion-plus-karaoke repertoire.
• Q & A with Neal Stephenson this Thursday! Yup — Space’s (Canada’s sci-fi channel) programing director and my friend Mark Askwith hosts a Q & A with Neal Stephenson, author of Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age and Snow Crash. Don’t you wish you lived here in Accordion City?
• Without a doubt, there will be some sort of girl-chasing activity. Haven’t figured out what it is yet, but this is the sort of thing that single guys with accordions do.

Congratulations to Richard “crysflame” Soderburg, for posting the 500th comment for this blog since I moved it over to Blogware!

Sorry Richard, I have no actual prizes to offer, but please accept this virtual high-five as a token of my appreciation.

And thank you, Blogware development team, for putting in running tallies of articles and comments!

Nobody does funny, angsty comics quite like Derek Kirk Kim. Some goodies of his include:

• My Sistine Chapel, in which a young Derek learns that comic-drawing skills and doing girls favours will not necessarily get you a girlfriend
• The Shaft and Ungrateful Appreciation, two stories about his experiences as an English teacher in Korea.
• More dramatic works like Pulling and Super Unleaded

If I ever wanted to put out Worst Date Ever in comic form, I’d hire Derek to draw it.

Derek’s best-known work is Same Difference, a serialized comic starring the outgoing and exuberant Nancy, and Simon, the overly-angsty sombre geek. You can read the whole thing online and you can also buy it in book form. It’s a great read.

Derek’s latest work, The Ten Commandments of Simon, features Simon from the aforementioned Same Difference. In it, Simon dispenses the secrets to becoming a 29-year-old virgin. Part one, with the first five commandments, is currently available; part two should be coming soon.

When I was living in San Francisco and working with Cory Doctorow at OpenCola, we probably went out to go catch a movie once every couple of weeks. Our observation, as Canadians living among Americans, was that “American etiquette” is:

a) an oxymoron, and

b) at its worst in movie theatres.

Cory told me that he believed the home theatre changed movie-going behaviour: people were simply behaving as if they were in their own homes rather than in movie theatres. It’s an example of the inappropriateness of certain private behaviours brought into a public space.

The most over-the-top breach of manners we experienced was during Hannibal. We sat in front of a couple that insisted on giving voice to every stray thought that crossed their minds throughout the movie.

During the beautifully-shot scenes in Florence: “Damn, Italy is beautiful. We gotta go there sometime, baby.”

Watching Hannibal Lecter overpower just about everybody: “Damn, he strong for an old man.”

When Gary Oldman’s disfigured character first appears in full view: “Damn, you ugly.”

Cory threw them an angry glance and I turned around to shush them with each outburst of theirs. Each time we admonished them, they’d sheepishly make some kind of apologetic gesture and remain contritely quiet for a couple of minutes. Soon afterwards, something would happen onscreen, a new thought would coalesce in their brains and they’d vocalise once more.

During Ray Liotta’s last scene — a rather grim and gross one at that — the guy behind us broke the stunned silence with his funniest outburst of the show:

“Daaa-yum! Hannibal be eatin’ HIS BRAIN!”

Glarkware has a product that might help out in situations like the one I just described. For a mere US$3.50, you can purchase a pack of 25 business card-sized “movie manners courtesy cards”, shown below:

According to Glarkware’s site:

Handing one to a talker means that you don’t have to make a “shush” noise even louder than the talking. The vague wording of the text gives the (false) impression that the cards have been distributed by the theatre chain, lending the card-giving an authority that your “shush” lacks.