Category: Accordion, Instrument of the Gods

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Accordion, Instrument of the Gods Geek It Happened to Me

BloggerCon Notes 1: National Anthem Session, Dave Winer

Saturday, April 17th, 2004 — 8:15 a.m. to 8:45 a.m.

Dave Winer, discussion leader

  • This is a user’s

    conference, not a developer’s conference. There are plenty of

    conferences catering to developers, but few address the concerns and

    needs of the users. Yes, as bloggers, we’re all users, but it’s too

    easy for us to think like developers.

  • The sessions are discussion groups — there are no “panels”

    nor “speakers”; just a discussion leader and all of you, the

    participants.

  • Everything said is on the record and for attribution. You need to explicitly state it if you want to say something off the record.
  • We’ve got lots of interesting people here, including   
  • Things to consider through the course of the day:   
         

    • Can we make money out of blogs?

      •    

    • Compare our ideas and experience

      •    

    • How are we better than other media? How are we worse?
    • At the end of the day, can we get a list of deliverable:”If we

      only had this and this…”, “Here’s what we need as an industry…”

      •    

  • The Star Spangled Banner played by Yours Truly on the Crucianelli accordion (a.k.a. “The Good One”).
Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods Music

Condolences for Weird Al

I heard via Boing Boing that “Weird Al” Yankovic’s parents died from

carbon monoxide poisoning in their sleep on April 9th. Having recently

dealt the possibility of losing a parent, I have a faint idea of the

pain he must be feeling right now.

In spite of this, he says that he’s not cancelling any of his tour

dates (he is taking some time for himself by cancelling all interviews

and other PR-related activites). He’s also encouraging people to buy

carbon monoxide detectors for their houses.

From one accordion player/parodist to another, my heart goes out to you, Al.

Be sure to read Weird Al’s message to his fans.

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods

And you thought my accordion technique was ridiculous

 

“Come home with me! I’ll give you…THREE DOLLARS…”

[ via del.icio.us, which I really need to use more often ] How to use a hand puppet to meet, attract, and date tons of single women. Here’s the relevant snippet:

Let me explain – Well, I’ve got a friend that uses what I call, “The

Puppet Method” to meet single women in nightclubs. Here’s how he does

it:

  • First, you will need a hand puppet. You can buy them at your major toy stores such as Toys R Us.

  • Bring your hand puppet with you to a nightclub where there are lots of single ladies.

  • When you see a girl that you’re attracted to, approach her and tap her

    on the shoulder lightly with your puppet and when she turns around

    raise your hand puppet towards her face and say something like this

    with your puppet, “Hi beautiful, would you like to dance with me?” Move

    your puppet up and down with your hand as you are saying your script

    just as if the puppet was really talking. And be sure to talk in a real

    silly voice.

  • What happens next? She’s going to die laughing and think that you are

    so funny. Plus, you will make a very favorable impression on her

    because women love a guy with a sense of humor. And, of course, she

    will most likely dance with you.

I know this method of meeting single women seems a little silly, but

try it. It works like a charm for my friend and it can work for you

too.

I’ll bet this could be turned into a decent social experiment / paying newspaper article. Hmm…

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

…Like a Polaroid pic-CHAH!

Tomorrow night is the monthly Kickass Karaoke at the Bovine Sex Club. Carson’s got some new CDs that don’t yet appear in the master list — included are The Darkness’ I Believe in a Thing Called Love, the White Stripes’ The Hardest Button to Button and Outkast’s Hey Ya, which Wil and I tried out last Sunday with him on lead vocals and me on accordion, chorus and yelling “Ice! Cold!” in response to “What’s cooler than cool?!”

(Maybe I could change my nickname to “Accordion Guy 3000”.)

I’ll try the Hey Ya solo (don’t think Wil will be there) and I’m sure Meryle will tackle I Believe in a Thing Called Love with her usual aplomb.

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me

BloggerCon bound

I’ll be in Boston this weekend, partly to see The Redhead, but also to attend BloggerCon 2.0

(taking place at Harvard this Saturday, April 17th) to meet with other

bloggers, be the Tucows goodwill ambassador along with Boss Ross and perform the national anthem on accordion for the opening keynote (I’ll do my best to throw in O Canada too).

Other Canadian registrants with whom I am acquainted include:

  • David Akin, reporter for CTV News and The Globe and Mail. Among other things, he covers tech news, and gave me my first major newspaper interview back in 2000 (an article on DefCon, where I went by the handle “Rice Cube”, the accordion-playing programmer). David’s also a Blogware user.
  • Richard Eriksson, author of one of my favourite blogs, Just a Gwai Lo.
  • Boss Ross. He’s just this guy, you know?

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods

The different types of accordions

In the comments to an earlier entry, Tom wrote:

Joey, there are way more types of accordians on that site than I

realized existed. Care to explain the differences for us non-accordian

guys (I play guitar)?

I’d love to, but I’m only familiar with the piano accordion — the one with

which you play on a piano keyboard with your right hand, and chord

buttons on the left. The other types, of which there are several, are a mystery to me (thus far).

Here are few sites that have some useful information on the different types of accordions:

Accordions Worldwide has a page that explains the differences between a few types of Accordions.

The companion site for PBS’ film, Accordion Dreams, explains what chromatic, diatonic and piano accordions are.

Wikipedia has a good entry on accordions too.

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods

I’m going to have to get one of these!

Check out this custom accordion with stars-and-stripes bellows, which appears on the main page of the Weltmeister site:

If anyone feels like spending a couple of thousand dollars on me, this wouldn’t be a bad way to do it…