[Cross posted to Global Nerdy]
Click to see the comic on its original page.
Trust me, kids: learn to play a musical instrument reasonably well before college.
As for accordion playing, the “coolness graph” looks like this:
Category: Accordion, Instrument of the Gods
My brother-in-law Andy Ramoniac honoured me by inviting me to join his balalaika group in performing a selection of Russian and Jewish numbers at his wedding reception. Between my terrible music reading — one of these days, I’m going to have to get better at it — and having to read tiny chord markings in a dimly-lit dining room, I decided to scribble out some quick chord charts for the performance:
After catching danah boyd’s “My Friends, MySpace” presentation at the Berkman Center at Harvard, the Ginger Ninja and I made our way to an old hangout during her days there: Grendel’s Den, a nice little pub in Harvard Square.
We took a corner table and caught up with all sorts of friends — from Wendy’s high school days, her days at a dot-com and from the Berkman Center. A friend of mine dropped by too — Mike Zole, creator of one of my favourite webcomics, the now-defunct Death to the Extremist.
Among other things, Mike’s a musician, and he brought his accordion with him, which meant only one thing: Jam session!
Preconceived Notions
Even though I’ve been to a good number of U.S. states, especially those on the east coast, this is the first time I’ve ever set foot in Connecticut. I have some preconceived notions about this place, culled largely from three sources:
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Friends from Connecticut, all of whom went to prep schools and good universities
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Episodes of Gilmore Girls (the Ginger Ninja watches them religiously and has most of the DVDs)
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A staple of 80’s teenage reading: Lisa Birnbach’s The Official Preppy Handbook.
The Official Preppy Handbook
The Official Preppy Handbook is sort of like the old campy Batman TV series — how you looked at it depended on how old you were:
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At a certain age, people interpreted it as a “how-to” guide. For a while, my sister and her friends and classmates at Havergal College did just this, treating it as an instruction manual.
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Once a little bit older, they then dismiss the book as junk.
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Finally, they appreciate the book for what it is: a tongue-in-cheek “it’s funny because it’s mostly true” self-deprecating lampoon of the life of people who wore uniforms in high school, took tennis lessons and had alligators on a fair number of their clothes (I’m guilty of all three).
I should go see if the ol’ Preppy Handbook is still kickin’ around Mom’s place.
What am I Doing Here?
I’m here as a guest, groomsman and accordion player at the wedding of my brother-in-law Andy Ramoniac and his fiancee Sue. I get to do double accordion duty at this wedding, joining Andy’s balalaika group to do some Russian and Jewish tunes as well as his Ramones tribute band, The Ramoniacs. It’s going to be a party, and rest assured I’ll post pictures.
Click the photo to see the article in the Toronto Star.
Click here to read my account of the wedding.
Today’s Toronto Star has a story about Julie’s and Amanda’s wedding. I should run over to the corner store and pick up a few copies for the ol’ scrapbook (and to send to Julie and Amanda, of course!).
For the Star readers who came here, my story about the wedding is here.
The “Give Me Liberty” after-work party takes place on the second Thursday in June and is a chance for people who live and work in Liberty Village — an area of Accordion City full of factories converted into lofts, offices and television and radio stations — to gather for a street party featuring a beer tent, food from local restaurants and live and DJ’d music.
One of the traditions of the “Give Me Liberty” party is my playing a couple of tunes on accordion between DJ sets. This year was no different — I played Fatboy Slim’s Praise You and Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild for the crowd. The Ginger Ninja shot video of the whole thing, which appears below:
YouTube took its own sweet time processing them, but the two (short) videos from Julie’s and Amanda’s wedding are finally up and I’ve included them in the blog entry. If you want to jump directly to those videos’ YouTube pages, here are the links: