As soon as Carson (the host) saw me walk into last night’s Kickass Karaoke, he attached something to the mic stand. It was an instrument boom. He’d bought it just to make it easier to set up a second mic for the accordion.
Holy crap.
Thanks, Carson! You’re the best!
Kim says that I have a perfect double in Montana, which is kind of funny, because she has a clone whom I’ve seen at Sneaky Dee’s a couple of times.
While I’m on the topic of interesting things that you can see while walking down Queen Street West (just two blocks south of my house), I saw this scene outside Pages Bookstore on Saturday afternoon:
The woman in the photo was reading Fahrenheit 451. After finishing both sides of a page, she would rip it out and hand it to the man who set it alight in a makeshift brazier:
Ah, performance art.
On Saturday night, I was heading to Smokeless Joe to catch up with my friends Liz and Keith when I saw the coolest upright bass ever. It belonged to the bassist of The Matadors, who performed at The Black Bull later that evening. I aksed if I could photograph his bass, and not only did he oblige, he even posed.
Alas, I’d already made arrangements to catch White Cowbell Oklahoma with Meryle at the same time The Matadors were playing, but I’ll have to catch these guys at some point.
Duuuuuuuude.
Sebastien “Seb’s Open Research” Paquet, one of Canada’s bright lights on the social software and blogging front, made his first visit to Accordion City (he even called it “Accordion City” in his email!) on Sunday, and invited a few local bloggers to come out for lunch on Monday. The attendees were:
We met for lunch at Cafe Diplomatico, in the heart of the Little Italy that occupies College Street West (we have a couple of Little Italies). Discussed in addition to blogging (which was to be expected) were the supposed rigor of academics, the upcoming election, censorship, Iran, search engines, the University of Waterloo and the glassy-eyed expressions of most of the other folks in the restaurant as they watched Italy playing the World Cup.
It was also the first time I’d met this group of bloggers, and I had great fun. Thanks for organizing this get-togerher, Seb! As for you locals — Hoder, Michael, Kaveh, Melanie — I’ll be sure to let you guys know about any upcoming GTABlogger gatherings.
Here’s a photo that just landed in my inbox. It’s from the “Give Me Liberty” party that look place last Thursday.
The accordion is the true rebel’s instrument.
I am just one of the buskers on Queen Street West,
a lovely stretch of trendy boutiques, electronics shops, off-beat
stores, bars and restautants, the CityTV/MuchMusic/Bravo/Space
television headquarters and street vendors. Another busker is Mysterion the Mind Reader, who performs feats of magic and mentalism for passers-by on the weekends. I occasionally provide backup music for his act (Meryle’s written about it).
He likes trying on my accordion, and I got took some photos. You can check them out the photo album or the slideshow.
Doesn’t he look like Jon Stewart’s evil younger brother?