Author: Joey deVilla

In the search for a wedding venue, I’ve been calling some Accordion Bay places. I’ve got a a set of dates that will allow some can’t-miss guests to attend, and in my calling around, I’ve learned that you can’t book a venue on December 13, 2014 because it’s an incredibly popular date.

If you use the American month-day-year system for ordering numerical dates, December 13, 2014 becomes 12-13-14, which also happens to fall on a Saturday. It’s also the last time we’ll have another such “sequential” date for almost a century — the next one’s 01-02-03, or January 2, 2103, which also happens to be a Saturday. Given that we’re not going to see any memorable or “auspicious” dates that also happen to fall on a Saturday (the preferred day for weddings) for a good long time, there’s been a lot of demand for the December 13, 2013 wedding venues. Hotels know this, and have been capitalizing on the hype. Las Vegas, knowing their visitor’s obsession with “lucky numbers” has done the same by selling so-called “Traditional 12-13-14 wedding packages”.

I’d love to be able to say that thanks to my science and math background, I’m above all this “auspicious date” junk, but I’d really love to have my wedding on 3-14, a.k.a. “Pi Day”. Even better, Pi Day falls on a Saturday next year, and the next year’s date, 3-14-15 happens to correspond to the first 5 digits of pi (3.141592…)! GEEK SQUEEEE!

One of Apple’s less-remembered contributions to pop culture were the US Festivals, two multi-act musical and culture festivals sponsored by Steve Wozniak, Apple’s other co-founder. You probably last heard it mentioned in the “Homerpalooza” episode of The Simpsons, aired in 1996, when Apple was a struggling company:

The 1983 edition of the US festival had 4 days of music, each devoted to a particular category:

• New Wave Day
• Heavy Metal Day
• Rock Day
• Country Day

A video about 90 minutes long from New Wave Day has recently been posted to YouTube:

It features performances by the following bands:

Here’s a look at early INXS, in the Shaboo Shoobah era, when their best-known tune was The One Thing.

Remember, this is a pre-“I Touch Myself” Divinyls. The announcer mispronounced their name, calling them the “Die-Vinyls”.

This was Stan Ridgway’s last performance with Wall of Voodoo before going solo.

This is a pre-“Weird Science” Oingo Boingo, and their leader Danny Elfman would go on to score the Batman movie and create the Simpsons theme.

The English Beat disbanded later that year.

Here’s the hair that led to the joke in The Wedding Singer.

In the ’80s, Rockabilly got classified under New Wave.

Men at Work introduced the world outside Australia to vegemite.

This was Mick Jones’ last appearance with The Clash.

If you grew up in Toronto in the ’80s and you preferred alternative music, chances are that you listened to CFNY, the radio station located at 102.1 on the FM dial on an old technology called “terrestrial radio” presently. CFNY are still the call letters for the station, although it goes by the name “The Edge” these days, despite being far less edgy than it used to be.

CFNY’s weekday morning drive show was hosted by “Pete and Geets“, who peppered the usual early- to mid-80s alt-rock playlist of Depeche Mode, U2, New Order and The Smiths with some oddball tracks including Toast, a charming jazzy ditty recorded in 1978 by a short-lived UK group called Streetband. Many a Friday morning during my high school years started with this:

If you came of age in the 1980s and think that you’ve seen or heard the lead vocalist before, it’s probably because you have. He’s Paul Young, as in the guy who had a solo career that included so-eighties-it-hurts hits like Every Time You Go Away and Come Back and Stay.

Photo from the Toronto Star taken by Bernard Weil.
Click the photo to see the source.

If you follow the antics of Toronto’s mayor Rob Ford, you’re probably aware that he’s spent the past few weeks in rehab and is back at the job with a sobriety coach in tow. The photo above recently appeared in the Toronto Star, and it has a certain “buddy film” quality to it. It cried out for a parody movie poster, and I’m not one to refuse such cries:

This needs to be turned into a movie or Netflix series. I’m picturing Zach Galifianakis and Robert Downey Jr. in these roles.

The Toronto Star article asks an important question about Bob Marier, the sobriety coach: how is this guy supposed to be helping Rob Ford? Coaches of all sorts are supposed to set examples, and in a earlier incident this week, Marier allegedly set a poor one by kicking someone protesting at a Ford publicity appearance.

Here’s a video showing a police officer taking Marier to task for doing so, and Marier doing the very thing he’s supposed to stop his clients from doing: excusing himself through denial.

The Star quotes Peter Downing, who manages sobriety coaches at Cerberus Life Management and was himself a sobriety coach for many years. He states the painfully obvious: ““That’s not how you do it.”

When I first heard the Ford had hired a sobriety coach, I imagined that it would work out as well as the situation with Britney Spears’ diet coach, as portrayed on Family Guy (because all Rob Ford life moments have a corresponding Family Guy scene):

He’s got a sobriety coach (who brings his own problems to the table), so why not a homophobia coach?

Photo found via Toronto Sun reporter Don Peat’s Twitter account.
Click the photo o see it at full size.

If it doesn’t get them to take it easy with the selfies, it might make them consider that there’s a certain age when you should stop taking the “sexy” ones:

Found at Poorly Drawn Lines. Click the comic to see it on its original page.

The folks at Rogers — namely the team behind the @RogersHelps account on Twitter — saw my trouble trying to cancel my mobile account. They contacted me and resolved the entire thing via a Twitter direct-message conversation and a single web form, completely free of IVR (integrated voice response, as in “Press 1 for this service, press 2 for that service…”) and sitting in hold music hell. Dealing with it via Twitter chat was pleasant and let me get my work done. Nice!

I’d like to thank Rogers for their years of service — I’ve been a customer ever since the iPhone came out — and treating me much better than those rat-bastards at Bell.

Update: The chat log

Here’s our entire chat via Twitter, which is all it took to get the job done. Naturally, I’ve redacted personal phone numbers, links, and financial stuff: