Category: It Happened to Me

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It Happened to Me Music

Last Wednesday: The Pixies Concert

Last Wednesday’s Pixies concert

marked the start of my mini-vacation for American Thanksgiving. This

reunion concert was one that nobody expected — in spite of their

relative obscurity, this band is so loved by alt-rock fans that tickets

for the show sold out when they went on sale six months ago.

When the tickets went on sale, I simply bought four and assumed that it

would be easy to find three other people who would want to attend.

Photo: Adina and Paul at the Pixies concert -- Toronto, November 23, 2004.

Deenster and Paul, just before the show began.

Those three people turned out to be my housemate Paul, Deenster

and her boyfriend Chris. They’d arranged to meet me at the office, from

where we’d hop into my car and drive to the show. For some reason, the

concert was booked to take place at the International Centre, a

cavernous warehouse typically used for auto and computer shows located

in a bleak industrial park right by the airport. Still, we were seeing

The Pixies, providers of inspiration for Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit,

key players in the soundtrack of my years at Crazy Go Nuts University,

and we’d have gladly seen them play at a sewage treatment plant.

Deenster arrived first with two guys named Chris. One was her

boyfriend, the other an internet friend from the HappyRobot.net online

community. HappyRobot Chris was accompanied by his girlfriend, Becky. I

invited them into the Tucows kitchen, where they were impressed by our

vending machines and assorted free coffee, teas and hot chocolate.

We’re livin’ the high life in this office!

After giving my guests some hot drinks, I showed them my desk, located

in the dead centre of the Tucows offices. Becky noticed a photo of Wendy that I had on my bulletin board.

“I know that girl!” exclaimed Becky.

“That’s Joey’s fiancee,” said Adina.

“Wait…you know Wendy?” I asked.

“I know Wendy from NTI!” Becky replied.

I knew Wendy attended NTI — short for the O’Neill National Theater Institute

in Connecticut — about ten years ago, back in her school days. That

clearly ruled out any possibility of mistaken identity; it was just

another one of those strange coincidences to which I’ve grown

accustomed.

Photo: Becky and Chris at the Pixies concert -- Toronto, November 23, 2004.

Becky and Chris,

just before the show began. They came up from Jersey to catch the show.

To the right of the photo, an unknown hand attempts to do some product

placement.

We arrived at the International Centre in the middle of heavy rain. The

pairs of glass doors at the entrance had a sign with this laser-printed

on it on each left door:

NON-DISPOSABLE CAMERAS ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN

And each right door had this laser-printed sign:

MOSHING AND CROWD SURFING STRONGLY DISCOURAGED

I interpreted this as:

ANY ACTIVITY WHICH WE THINK WILL HURT OUR ABILITY TO MAKE MONEY OFF YOU IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN

…but…

ANY ACTIVITY WHICH WE KNOW HAS A HIGH RISK OF HARMING YOU AND THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU, WELL, BE CAREFUL, EH?

I resent the fact that Ticketmaster thinks that by dint of booking an

act, they own your experience and the right to take some snapshots of

it. We really need to spank the music middlemen.

I had my Nikon Coolpix SQ in a case attached to my belt. I told security it was a cellphone and they waved me through.

I ran into a number of friends at the show and even saw Miranda the Accordion Girl and her friends (although they didn’t notice me waving “hello”).

Chris and Deenster suggested going back downtown for drinks after the show, but I had to decline.

“I fly to Boston at 6 a.m.,” I said.

“6 a.m.! It must be love,” said Chris.

“You better believe it.”

Photo: Joey at the Pixies concert -- Toronto, November 23, 2004.

Me, phasing in and out of our space-time continuum just before the show. I had a 6:25 a.m. flight to catch to Boston the next day.

It’s been a dozen years since I last had a chance to catch The Pixies

live in concert, and I must say that they sound much tighter this time

around. Perhaps the fact that bassist Kim Deal requested that it be a “dry tour” — she was famous for playing sloppily onstange because she was drunk or high — helped.

Photo: Black Francis onstage at the Pixies concert -- Toronto, November 23, 2004.

Black Francis (a.k.a. Charles Michael Kitteridge Thomson IV) gets things rolling.

Here’s some video that I shot during the show. The quality’s not going

to be the greatest, but it should give you an idea of what the show

was like:

Categories
In the News It Happened to Me

Thank You!

Photo: Cover of the November 25, 2004 issue of 'eye' Magazine, featuring the 2004 Readers' Choice Awards.

eye Magazine is one of Toronto’s “alternative” weekly magazines.

Last Thursday afternoon, I was in a small town outside Boston, eating Thanksgiving hors d’oeuvres

at my future in-laws’ place. During that time, I noticed that I’d

received a phone message. I checked it later that evening and got a

rather excited voice mail from Meryle telling me that The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century had won “Best Local Blog” in eye Magazine’s 2004 Reader’s Choice Awards.

Photo: 'eye' magazine's 'Toronto's Best' 2004 logo.

I didn’t even know that they were taking nominations, so my thanks to eye Magazine and all of you who voted for me!

Categories
It Happened to Me

Hello Again, Lupo!

Low job satisfaction. Click the picture to view the movie — warning: ridiculous cartoon gore, over-the-top swearing.

Lupo the Butcher is a hilarious short animated film and one of

my happy memories from my university days. They used to show it on the

big screen at the Diamond Club (it’s now called The Phoenix) during

last call. My friend Ryan Murphy gave me a QuickTime copy of the film,

and it became a regular feature whenever people came over to visit.

Unfortunately, Lupo was one of those files that I failed to transfer to

later computers and I’d forgotten all about it until Darryl Wiggers

(program director for Scream, Canada’s horror movie channel and all

’round ace dude) sent me a copy. Here it is, for your enjoyment [2.9MB QuickTime — Warning: Cartoon gore, loads of swearing].

International Rocketship, the animation company that made Lupo the Butcher, went on to make the funny and disturbing Far Side animated special. If anyone know how to acquire a copy of that little gem, please let me know!

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Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me

I’m Back!

Photo: Thanksgiving turkey.

I was so rushed and so busy last Wednesday that I didn’t get time to

mention that the blog would be a little silent while I flew to Boston

forAmerican Thanksgiving, an engagement party thrown by my future in-laws and

to pick up the accordion that Wendy found for me (and bring in back in the super-cool nigh-indestructible accordion case that Wendy gave me for my birthday). I’ll update throughout the rest of the day.

Categories
It Happened to Me

Random Tuesday Photos

For your viewing pleasure, a random collection of photos that I took over the past month or so.

Here’s Wendy on the night we took her out on the town (Bosotn, that is) for her birthday. This was taken just after her transformation into Drunkie the Birthday Girl:

Photo: Wendy on the night we took her out on the town (Boston) for her birthday.

Here I am, apple picking with Wendy. I was feely particularly jovial as Wendy had said “yes” to my marriage proposal the night before:

Photo: Joey goes apple picking.

And here’s Dave “Logan’s Dave” Ahrens, promoting his special cure:

Photo: Dave and the 'Got Gas? Sauerkraut Helps!' sign at Global Cheese.

Categories
It Happened to Me Music Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Scenes from Last Night’s Kickass Karaoke at the Bovine Sex Club

Here’s a video from last night’s Kickass Karaoke at the Bovine Sex Club:

Photo: Still frame from video of Kickass Karaoke at the Bovine Sex Club, November 17, 2004.

Kickass Karaoke host Carson T. Foster usually strips down to his skivvies by the end of the night.

Categories
It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Midnight Trash Run

Photo: The trash pile at Toronto's Bermondsey Transfer Station.
The trash pile at Bermondsey Transfer Station.

Accordion City — in addition to adding a new “green bin” into which compostable trash should go — has switched to a once-every-two-weeks garbage collection schedule. This is workable for my household most of the time, except for a couple of weekends ago, when a combination clean sweep of the house and king-sized birthday party attended by about 100 left me with ten bags of trash and six bags of recyclables. I had one week to wait until trash pick-up time and already the raccoons had made a mess of the garage (where the bags were being stored) twice.

My old tactic of taking the bags to Spadina Avenue, the busy street half a block west of my house, and tossing in my refuse with the trash of some business would no longer work. The garbage collectors will now only collect specially marked yellow City of Toronto bags, which businesses have to procure (I have no idea whether these are free or cost some nominal fee). I remember grumbling to myself “Rat bastards! I want my Tragedy of the Commons back!”

I decided to look at the Toronto trash and recycling calendar and found that a number of 24-hour dumps were scattered throughout the city. The schedules are such that residential trash can’t be brought in during business hours on weekdays; in fact, the ideal time to bring in your house trash is between midnight and 8 a.m.. For a night owl like me, that’s nothing.

I figured that the easiest place to get to that would also take trash and recyclables would be the Bermondsey Transfer Station, which is just off Eglinton Avenue, just east of the Don Valley Parkway. With the CR-V back seats folded down and the cargo area carpeted with newspapers and stuffed with bags of trash and recyclables, I motorbootied to the dump.

Bermondsey Road is a nondescript street filled with buildings devoted to light industry. The Bermondsey Transfer Station is easy to miss; from the road, all you see is a City of Toronto sign bearing the station’s name. The driveway led to a toll-booth-like station with a truck scale. I was instructed to drive onto the scale and hand over a $10 deposit, after which I was given a sheet of paper and told to drive down the road and into the main building.

An old guy with a long grey beard manned the station at the main building. He took the paper that the guy at the guard station had given me and directed me to back my car near the large trash heap.

The main building is a concrete cavern housing what looks like a minature air traffic control tower, bulldozing equipment and a hill made entirely of trash, whose height varied from two to five times that of my car.

I added my trash bags to their pile, after which I took some pictures and even shot some video of a bulldozer in action. I then returned to the “toll booth”, where I stopped the car on the exit scale and got $8 of my $10 deposit back.

Getting rid of the recyclables required a return trip to the “toll booth”, where I got another piece of paper to hand to the old guy at the building. He directed me to a smaller pile in the back corner of the building, where I unloaded my clear bags of recyclables. Unlike trash, there is no charge for getting rid of recyclables.

Bermondsey is one of seven dumps in the city [PDF file]:

There you go: a how-to on getting rid of excess trash. Who says blogs don’t tell you anything useful?

It may sound strange, but I recommend travelling to the dump, if only to get a sense of the waste material we produce (and often send to Michigan).

Bonus reading material: National Post writer John Geiger whines about having yet another container into which to sort trash, “Chief Dan George-type philosophy espoused by the solid waste bureaucracy” and about how our current trash situation is the fault of the “garbage bureacracy’s” bungling in the search for a new landfill. It’s all “I want my Tragedy of the Commons back!” and “What have future generations ever done for me?”