Author: Joey deVilla

Liz is competing in Blogwhore II, which is some kind of competition. Apparently the more blogs you get to link to your name and the contest page, the better. Here ya go!

I think it’s time to throw another party, and this weekend provides a nice theme: it’s Groundhog Day (given the unusual cold, I can’t imagine the Groundhog predicting an early spring) and Chinese New Year for the year 4700. Better still, it’s my Chinese New Year — the Year of the Ram/Goat/Sheep, depending on whose translation you use. I prefer to use “ram” as the other two have different (and unfortunate, in my opinion) connotations in the West. “Ram”, on the other hand, is a great double-entendre, just like Shaft. Daaaaamn right.

(Of course, not all sheep are uncool: there’s the Black Sheep, and some Chinese guides will also refer to this coming year as the year of the black sheep. Sepaking as the closest thing that my immediate family has to a black sheep, it’s all too fitting.)

The party will take place this Saturday, starting at 9 p.m. at my place (as seen on TV!) and run into the wee hours as usual. Invitiations will be sent out later today. Depending on the response, we’ll fill one or both tubs with ice. In keeping with the theme of the party, I am asking attendees to wear wool sweaters. Given that it’s still 18 degrees below zero out there, it shouldn’t be to hard to comply.

Anyone interested in what my parties are like should consult these pictures.

And now, in honour of the upcoming year, the first of a few Ram/Sheep/Goat lyrics…

The Choice is Yours

by Black Sheep

Who’s the black sheep, what’s the black sheep

Not knowin’ who I am it’s DLB rippin deep

I wasn’t in your realm but I’m in your sphere

You still don’t know the click so just listen here

Trik Turner on the one’s DBX on the two’s

3’s for them off beat crews like you’s

back middle to the front don’t front

you want a good time were gonna give you what

you want, can I get a hey, can I get a what

can I get a buck buck you know that’s what I want

the styling is creative, Trik Turner is the natives

we can be violated or ever duplicated I got

nuhs from catch wreck and cousins of the

wize you know its no surprise that this shit

flies hi, yes which way, what, when, how, Mr.

Otto D. flip the track right now, I know you’ve

Heard the others wanna be dust covered but

Then again the choice is yours.

Where’s the trick at here’s the trik

And even if you wanted to you can’t sound as sick

Watch us swing like this why should we

Swing it like that because in fact what yours

Might hold us back – therefore, I ignore

I do as I feel as I trust in “D” He’s got my

Back tonight you know what I’m sayin’ yo’

Trik I ain’t play’n it’s easy to roll

With this than to roll with that

With no delay and see an actuality to one

It can not be, I made it look easy because

It is to me, anytime capacity was filled, tried

To rock it, anytime a honey gave us play, tried

To knock it, never was a fool so I finished

School never seen us sweat, and you never

Seen us schooled, out to rock the world

Right here from my block, don’t punch girls

And we don’t punch a clock, gotta go gotta

Go see you later by the cat and you can’t

Beat that with a bat

[Hook]

You can get with this or you can get with that

You can get with this or you can get with that

You should get with this cause this is where its at-

Engine engine number nine

On the New York transit line

If my train goes off the track

Pick it up pick it up pick it up — whack!

Back on the scene, crispy and clean

You can try but don’t lie because you can’t get with me

We be the outcast, can outlast, and outblast

Let this shit rip and feel the rush, crushed

Open your doors you best believe we’re sliding thru

Quickly, niftily we can make it hip to be

Down with this mess with two MC’s

Fuck what you heard we on some T.O.P.

I’m still DLB

So now I turn triks cause I’m the true player

Hold your coat cause I got the container

Pass the plate across the fader

Trik Turner gets played like a Sony innovator

Never the traitor party inflator

And you can get a scoop later

I just got email from Playboy, and no, it wasn’t “Dear Mr. deVilla, please pay up or we won’t renew your subscription.” Here’s the important part:

I am a photo researcher at Playboy Magazine in Chicago. We were on your website and saw the following photo:

We would like to purchase rights to use this photo in the magazine. We will pay $250 american dollars for one time english language use and we will give photo credit in the magazine.

Huh? “We were on your website?”

The optimistic side of me is thinking “Well, if I’m being read by both awe-inspiringly deep Calvinist theologians and Playboy writers, I must be doing something right.” The more realistic side is thinking that thanks to a lot of linking (especially from A-listers like The Reverse Cowgirl), a little Googling will show that I am responsible for this particular meme.

(This is the second major meme for which I am responsible. The first is “Drug Dealers vs. Software Developers”, which started with an email I wrote back in ’95 for a newsletter for the alumni of my engineering class.)

Unfortunately, I didn’t take the picture in question. My friend Karin was sent these photos, and she emailed them to me. I just posted ’em here for your amusement. I’ll email Karin and see if I can’t backtrack and find the photographer.

Now I hope that the people at Playboy magazine realize that they’ve a got a golden opportunity to hire a clever, handsome, worldly-wise bachelor who understands their readers very, very well. Or perhaps Hef might be thinking “you know, I’ve never had an accordion player at the mansion. It might be nice.”

I like my cosmos with just enough cranberry for colour and no more, Hef.

When Jello Biafra last passed through Toronto on his spoken word tour a couple of years back, he noticed an excessively-pierced guy sitting near the front row. Between topics, Jello walked up to him and said, “Wow, that’s a lot of piercings.”

He then turned to the audience and asked “Ever wondered what kind of fashion your children will take up, just to annoy the hell out of you? I’m thinking horns and tails, they’ll think it’s cool, and you’re not gonna like it.”

That got a lot of laughs, but somewhere in the laughter was that nervous note that said geez, he’s right.

Some people ask why I’ve never gone for the piercing or tattoing thing, especially since I have some kind of a rep for being the type of person who’d go for just that. I could in all honesty say that we can rule out earrings and nose rings, because my large, round face just doesn’t lend itself well to that kind of thing.

That, and I hate needles. Really, really hate ’em.

I’ll simply borrow a line from the younger brother from the movie Once Were Warriors when asked why he didn’t adopt Maori traditional tattoos to show Maori pride: “Mine are on the inside.”

(Besides, my large, round face already clearly says I’m a badass. In it, you will see the features that could only be those of a descendant of badass Chinese pirate Li Ma Hong. My Mom’s family traces their ancestry back to him, which explains a helluva lot about Mom and also why you shouldn’t mess with her.)

Anyhow, I was reminded of Jello’s remark after reading Megan Lindholm’s short story, Cut. It’s not a new one, having appeared in the sci-fi magazine Asimov’s back in 2001, but it’s a very interesting read. It’s not what a lot of people would consider to be “science fiction”; there are no robots, nanotech, aliens, starships, cloning or virtual reality, and while there is mention of computer, it’s just a prop, no more significant than a telephone or toaster. Still, it is about the future — in more ways than one — and how you’ll react to it might depend on if you’re about to leave your parents’ nest or starting one of your own.

I found myself siding with grandma. Damn, I am turning into my parents. Good thing they’re right-on people.

For those of you not familiar with the lay of the land of Accordion City, I live in a tiny pocket residential neighbourhood bordered by the one of the Chinatowns (we’ve got at least three here) to the north and east. Hence our house’s unofficial name, Big Trouble in Little China.

Big Trouble is a minute’s walk from Asian Farm, the English name of a large Chinese supermarket whose original name was “Big Land Farm” (I guess someone finally decided to get the name translated properly). In Asia, the Chinese have a reputation for scrimping and saving, and the prices here reflect that. Chicken legs sell for 79 cents a pound, pork goes for about a buck fifty, with beef and fish going for only a little more. If you’re a cook-it-yourself type who’s also not a wuss, you can get fish heads and chicken necks (with bonus head) for a soup stock that’s miles better — and cheaper — than what you can make with bouillon cubes. And hey, they’ve got squid puffs! Asian Farm lets Paul and I cook healthy gourmet dinners for five for about a two dollars a person, a blessing given the underemployed circumstances we’ve lived in until recently.

The Asian Farm clientele is, as one would expect, mostly Chinese. You can do all your shopping here speaking only Cantonese or Mandarin. In fact, a lot of the signage is only in Chinese characters, including the most important one: the prices of the two dozen brands of rice they carry. I can read the pictograms for our house’s preferred brand, Golden Ox, and for when I really feel like blowing the budget and living large in the rice sense, Golden Buddha, the tastiest and most expensive of the lot. After Golden Buddha, Uncle Ben’s becomes the “bad touch uncle”. They get a lot of customers from other Asian countries; lots of Vietnamese and Filipinos do their groceries here and you almost always hear someone speaking in Tagalog on their cell phones.

Speaking of cell phones, whenever someone’s rings in Asian Farm, you’ll see everyone frantically looking at their pockets and belts, checking to see if it’s theirs. Like everyone else who caught the big sale at the Chinatown Centre’s phone store, I got the Kyocera phone (with built in tip calculator and I Ching!) and chose Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyrie for the ring used whenever one of my friends calls. Unfortunately, that tends to be the favoured ring of everyone in the neighbourhood from grade school kids to little old ladies, and there’s a mass self-frisking every time that ring gets played. “Aiyah! Not mine.”

Whenever I go shopping there, it’s like a real-life game of AllLookSame for the staff. They first try addressing me in Chinese, and my Chinese is limited to food, a couple of polite things to say to people’s parents and cussing (I’m really good with the cussing). I answer back in English, and after that, the conversation continues — the verbosity directly proportional to how much English they’ve mastered. They do try to guess my nationality, but strangely enough, none of them have figured out I’m Filipino. I don’t have the accent, and to them, I look either Korean or Japanese. The last time I went to buy pork chops (fourteen for less than five bucks!), the butcher concluded with a slight bow and a “domo arrigato” (Japanese for “thank you very much”). I was going to correct him, but then Ride of the Valkyrie started playing, which had me, all the guys behind the meat counter and a couple of people behind me in line checking their phones. It was mine.

Strange toys are coming out of China these days. First, the musical box/night light toy that supposedly whispers “I hate you” and now this:

The photo was taken in Baguio City, Philippines, a city north of Manila and high up in the mountains (so high that the temperature drops to a chilly 12 degrees C — that’s 53 degrees farenheit — and the locals break out the leather jackets.) The game is made in China and retails for 250 Pesos (about US$4.70). You play the Americans, and the object of the game is to defend the World Trade Center from the bombers.

Another version of the game is shown on the Web site bootlegactionfigures.com. The packaging uses photographs from the September 11th disaster. Classy.

The Tapei Times reviewed the game:

Laden vs USA is a monumentally boring game, but its value as pure kitsch may be a turn-on for collectors of such items.

The game’s soundtrack is an attempt at a Middle Eastern melody, but the sound is so high-pitched and grating it’s almost impossible to listen beyond five notes. Adding a touch of surrealism, Deck the Halls or London Bridge plays when you win a round.

The game has two versions, one that pits bin Laden against Bush in a boxing match and a version in which a submarine shoots down fighter jets screaming around the tiny screen.

Both versions require some imagination on the part of the player. The bin Laden and Bush characters look nothing like their real-life likenesses in the boxing one and the submarine in the second version is hilariously out of place in the context of Afghanistan, which the manufacturers apparently forgot is a landlocked country. Made by Panyu Gaoming Electronic of Guangzhou, China, Laden vs USA is now out of production for reasons that a company spokeswoman refused to clarify. She also declined to answer what the submarine is doing in Afghanistan and whether the player in the boxing version controls bin Laden or Bush.

From neighbouring Taiwan comes Final Battle Afghanistan X-Tank (gotta love the names that Asian manfacturers come up with for their videogames!), which according to the Taipei Times, was conceived a day after the World Trade Center attack:

On Sept. 12, the managers of INSREA, a Taiwanese game software firm, convened a hasty meeting at their downtown Taipei office to discuss how to make the events of the previous day into a gripping video game.

Hu Long-Yun, marketing director at INSREA said (half-jokingly, for what it’s worth, according to the Times) “We’re the first company to make software for a game specifically themed on the conflict in Afghanistan…..we wish bin Laden would contact us so we could give him a copy of the game.”

Hey, Mr. Hu: Du lei lo mo*, punkass.

* Extremely rude. Ask your Cantonese-speaking friends, but not in front of their moms.

[Thanks to Ed’s Up, Hos Down!, where I saw the photo; he found it in Yahoo News.]

For the first time since moving back to Toronto from San Francisco back in spring 2001, I missed a Kick Ass Karaoke. I had to do a little freelance programming work for a client in order to guarantee that I’d be able to cover next month’s rent.

I thought my absence would go unnoticed, but it didn’t, which proves two things:

• Never doubt the power of the accordion
• More importantly, I’ve got some great friends. I love you all!

A phone message from Will

Monday, 6:00 p.m.

Call answer voice: You have…one…new message. To hear this message, press “one”

Will:Hey, Joey, it’s Will! Long time no see, and we missed you at karaoke last week. You never miss it! I hope everything’s okay.

Hey, I’m actually at the gym and I’m watching you in the Body Attack class right now, doing those punches. Looking good, my friend, looking good…oops, you just went the wrong way…oh, there you go.

Anyhow, I hope everything’s okay, you were missed at karaoke, let’s catch up some time. Talk to you soon. Ciao! [Beep]

Thanks, Will! I’ll give you a ring.

Email from Carson

Wednesday, 5:52 a.m.

Missed you last week.

Everything OK? Do you have that flu?

All your sweet babies came.

Joey! Where are you?

— Cars

All my sweet babies came? Damn my client! Damn him to hell!

Oh wait, I need his money. Bless my client! Bless him!

Next month, sweet babies, next month! I’ll catch up with you soon, Carson!

A phone call from Karin

Karin: Hey there! We missed you last Wednesday. I was a little worried. You weren’t sick, were you?

Me: No, I was doing some urgent work for a client. I needed the money and they needed it first thing the following morning.

Karin: That’s too bad. We had a great time. We did The Strokes’ Last Nite. Will was there. We all missed you, and Carson was asking where you were.

Me: I wanted to be there. I haven’t missed a single Kick Ass Karaoke in about a year and a half.

Karin: It was a lot of fun, but I think I’ll be doing things a little more low-key for the next few weeks.

Me: And low-key for you is what…keeping it down to seven, maybe eight drinks?

Just kidding, Karin! Looking forward to a low-key evening soon.

Once again, to all my friends: thanks, and the job situation is improving dramatically. I’ll be back on the scene before you know it.