Please forgive the lack of a blog entry for the time being. Between teaching actors how to convincingly wield accordions, playing the part of “accordion-playing guy in hallway” and programming on my laptop during the downtime, it’s been a very busy day. Stories are forthcoming, I promise.
Doctors may have reason complain about the unrealistic portrayals in ER. Cops and lawyers say that while Law and Order’s stories are well-told, they’re hardly what happens in the real world. Military personnel have griped about how Hollywood always gets it wrong. My geek friends and I have laughed at the way computers and their programmers are written for TV and movies.
I am doing my part to prevent this kind of on-screen misrepresentation from happening to my fellow accordion players. You see, I’m the technical consultant for a Canadian Film Centre film called Squeezebox.
I admit that the range of technical errors about accordion playing made by movies and TV is minor in comparison to other fields. Rambo has launched missles with the radio’s “transmit” button, ER‘s doctors take too-heroic measures and Hugh Jackman’s geek in Swordfish broke encryption just by thinking about it hard enough. The most likely error a Squeezebox cast member will make is trying to put on their accordion upside-down.
But dammit, I’m going to prevent that. They will strap their accordions on right side up. They will master the art of moving the bellows. They will position their fingers properly over the buttons and keys. They will learn how to do a convincing bellows shake. Hell, I might even be able to teach them Louie Louie. This will be like the accordion version of boot camp that the actors in Full Metal Jacket and G.I. Jane went through before filming. I will break them! Break them and rebuild them into my Unholy Accordion Army of the Night!
And then I will feast on their souls. Or maybe just the tuna salad from the film’s craft services.
I will also be an extra in the film — I’ll be one of the contestants in the “accordion competition” scene. One of my keyboard heroes, Trent Reznor, started out this way too, with a bit part as a member of the band “The Problems” in the Michael J. Fox/Joan Jett movie Light of Day.
At last, I’ll be able to leave this unprofitable software business and get into music. I hear that’s where the money is.
Here are the top twenty terms that have led people to this site, kode-fu.com, in reverse order along with appropriate links:
20. party slut
19. kode
18. joey
15. data types in vb
14. accordion guy
13. chauvinism
11. rosetta stone
10. accordian [That’s not the right spelling!]
7. priceless
5. accordion
3. white trash
and the one you’ve all been waiting for…
1. nudity
Last night, I ended up at the Indian Motorcycle Cafe, a lounge/dance club/restaurant/clothing store along the King Street club strip. While the company that actually made Indian Motorcycles has been out of business for fifty years, someone bought the rights to the brand name and created a line of clothing that features the logo. The club takes the branding up another notch — the Indian logo is everywhere: on the beechwood-and-metal panelling (the designers read a lot of wallpaper* magazine) , the felt of the pool tables, the museum-like displays that showcase miniture models of Indian motorcycles and old advertisements, the frosted glass behind the bars, and even the glass cases for the firehoses. While they never charge a cover nor for coat check, the place screams expensive, with dozen of leather armchairs arranged around coffee tables, a couple of gas fireplaces and pairs of giant plasma computer monitors behind most of the bars, flashing old photos of happy Indian motorcycle riders and advertisements for cheap martini nights. It looks like yet another one of those places from the “club scene” of a movie, or perhaps a Smirnoff Ice commercial. It’s somewhat yuppified cheese, but being an Asian and a Honda driver, I have a high degree of tolerance for such places.
Paul and I were there, attending a farewell party for Sarah, one of his classmates from his Taekwondo class. Paul left early, but I had bumped into my sister-in-law Grace while there, and decided to hang out with her and her friend Anita for a little while longer. We stayed on the extremely crowded dance floor for a while, and I noticed something was missing.
As I’ve mentioned in some other postings, Accordion City is a very multicultural city. This is reflected in a lot of dance clubs, where you’ll see people of every race and dozens of nationalities, and compared to the States, inter-racial dating is as big a deal (trust me, I’ve done it in both countries). A good number of the couples were mixed race, a clear violation of what was until recently part of the Bob Jones University code of conduct. Around me on the dance floor were:
…all shakin’ their rumps to Nelly’s Hot In Here (So Take off All Your Clothes)…
…but practically no black women (and therefore no boobalicious sleeveless tops). At a club where the music is a hodgepodge of hip-hop, R&B, house, reggae and dancehall, this is extremely unusual. This is certainly not the case at other clubs that put out the same vibe and cater to the same sort of clientele.
Anyone got a theory as to why this is so, or did all the black women hear the weather report and say “I’m making it a Blockbuster night”? Your comments, please.
A number of people have written to me, telling me that the photos from the Butt Skirt posting are Photoshopped. Cass pointed me to the ever-reliable Snopes site, where they very recently debunked the photos, and also feature the infamous breast scarf shots.
My friend Zooko points out that if the butts were actually silk-screened onto the skirts, they’d look right from only one angle. And if you silk-screened butts onto skirts, it’s most likely that you’d choose an image from a right-behind-you viewing angle. That’s clearly not the case in this shot:
So alas, the photos aren’t of some new fashion. It’s probably just Japanese porn catering to their underwear fetish. It just seemed so plausible because of the breast scarves, the tentacle porn (almost work safe), the vending machines that sell used girls’ underwear (this link is work safe), the hentai video games (including a particularly vile one called “Battle Raper”, a Mortal Kombat-style game that takes “to the victor go the spoils” way too far) and all the other weird stuff that comes from The Land of the Rising Contradiction.
(The breast scarves, however, still seem to be real. I stumbled across this Japanese page which seems to have some information about them.)
I think it’s also that we — okay, maybe I mean “I” — really wanted to believe that such things existed. So here’s a revised butt skirt photo, with a little X-Files twist:
Michael Dingler has come up with an answer to the butt skirt that should please the ladies.
The phrase “fact-check your ass” has been attributed to blogger Ken Layne. Samizdata.net’s Blog Glossary says that the phrase means “to use Internet search engines to ascertain the veracity of dubious claims made in the press.”
See this entry for details.
Take a look at this:
No, it’s not a see-through skirt. Rather, it’s a regular skirt with an pretty realistic image of panties and legs silk-screened onto it.
It’s possible that these are Photoshopped fakes, but I also once thought that Japanese tentacle porn and the purchase of used girls’ underwear were urban legends.
Call me crazy, but this faux-peeping-tommery seems dirtier than actually seeing the woman nude. Maybe that’s the intent. These clothes do come from the land that brought you tentacle porn.
My friend Josie sent me the photos yesterday; she got them from someone else. My apologies in advance to any Playboy editors who might be reading and want to buy the rights to these photos from me.
According to the person who forwarded the mail to Josie, these skirts are “all the rage” in Japan. Didn’t I say that about the breast scarves too?
Of course, these photos have probably cemented my reputation as the go-to guy for kinky Japanese fashion. It’s a cross I’ll learn to bear.
What is it with the Japanese, anyway? Maybe’s it a crazy island empire thing.
I’m a little busy today, so I won’t be able to post until much later. I promise that it’ll be worth it, and here’s a three-word summary of why:
Disturbing. Japanese. Fashion.
