Category: It Happened to Me

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It Happened to Me Music

From the backlog: Movies from the White Cowbell Oklahoma concert at the El Mocambo

They’re trashy, they’re vile, and they’re ugly paunchy men who  sometimes play the guitar butt naked. They’re White Cowbell Oklahoma, and they put on one helluva show back in June.

Opening Sparkfest [2.2 MB QuickTime]
The opening number, accompanied by one of the band running a circular saw against some scrap metal to spark-o-riffic effect.

Chainsaw 1 [2 MB QuickTime]
Chainsaw 2 [1.5 MB QuickTime]
No White Cowbell Oklahoma perfomance is complete without a chainsaw performance. Here, they chainsaw two stuffed dinosaur toys.

Freebird in the Worst Way Possible [Not safe for work: full frontal male nudity; Lynyrd Skynrd — 1.6 MB QuickTime]
The wrongest way to play slide guitar: butt naked, with the glass slide
on your member. I’ve seen every episode of Beavis and Butt-head, so I
find this sort of thing mildly amusing.

Categories
It Happened to Me

From the backlog: Movies from the Om Festival

They’re a little bit overdue (it took place at the start of the Summer
Solstice back in June), but here they are: my videos from the Om Festival.

Friday

The Dance Screen [1.7 MB QuickTime]
At once dance area, they set up a large translucent screen and aimed a
projector hooked up to a computer at it. There was some space between
the screen and projector for dancers, which led to some pretty cool
shadow effects. Near the end of the video, I move away from the screen
and towards the DJ booth.

Saturday

Saturday Morning [1.8 MB QuickTime]
It’s never too early to dance — the SumKidz stage had DJs 24 hours a day. Here’s a 360-degree view of the area.

Poi 1 [1.4 MB QuickTime]
Poi 2 [1.8 MB QuickTime]
Poi 3 [630K QuickTime]
Poi dancing — dancing with little flaming braziers attached to chains
— is mesmerizing and also look great on video. We watched this for
about an hour.

Dharma Lab 1 [700K QuickTime]
Dharma Lab 2 [730K QuickTime]
Dharma Lab 3 [930K QuickTime]
Dharma Lab are two guys from Buffalo who make some pretty good
electronic music. They’re not afraid to drop a little classical
leitmotif into their hard techno — one of these videos has a Fur Elise sequence.

(Hey kids: you may not know what Fur Elise is, who composed it, or why it was composed, but you’ve probably heard the cellphone ringtone).

Sunday

Sunday Morning [1.1 MB QuickTime]
So…spaced…out…but the kids are still rockin’. This was one of the dance areas, around 6:30 a.m..

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

The Further Adventures of the Swing Formerly Known as Secret

I’ll be damned: MuchMusic just called me, asking for the location of the Secret Swing.

VJ Jennifer Hollett (whom I met during my 2002 and 2003 appearances on the live afternoon show
MuchOnDemand) placed the call; she thought it would be a great place to
conduct a band interview.

The Secret Swing is a perfect place for interviews — I can see rock,
indie, punk and hip-hop bands jumping at the chance to answer questions
and try out the swing. It’s also located quite conveniently: a
five-minute drive from the MuchMusic studios. I’m also sure that sooner
or later, someone’s
going to shoot a music video there (I see Hawksley Workman crooning and
swinging there).

I can draw two conclusions:

  • The Secret Swing ain’t so secret now.
  • My whuffie must be going up; a major video network called me for intel!
Categories
It Happened to Me

Odd and Somewhat Disturbing Photo of the Day

Here’s Scott drinking beer — hardcore robot doggy style!

We really have to stop serving malt liquor at the Tucows annual picnic.

Categories
It Happened to Me

A Day in the Life

Sometimes Scott and I have these conversations that end up sounding like this police scanner chatter:

Make sure you the read the whole comic.

(I am sooooo car 15, dude.)

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

Scott Murff IS Dick Starbuck!

Here’s my friend and co-worker Scott Murff
(he’s in the Research and Innovation department with me) posing in the grafitti alley south of Queen Street, posing beside
the grafitti that speaks to him the most:


He’s a complicated man, and no one understands him but Boss Ross…

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

Christine on the Secret Swing

Here’s Christine (who writes the Blogware-powered blog Purplecar, hosted by the fine folks at BlogHarbor)
enjoying the secret swing that someone — nobody seems to know who put
it up, how, or why — set up in an alcove in the grafitti alleyway just
south of Queen Street West.

She got some serious air; at some point, the swing’s chains were 90
degrees to the ground. With that kind of angle, she got some seriou
speed, which isn’t easy on that swing. The alleyway is so narrow that
it’s pretty easy to scrape yourself if you drift a little too far to
the side.

Rannie “Photojunkie” Turingan has taken a much better photo of the swing in its alcove; take a gander at this picture of the swing and this one of the rod that holds it up.