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?
Photo by Frank Lemire. Thanks, Frank!
Details later.
[ via diveintomark ] Mark got a 77 on the Life Assessment Quiz, while I got a 70. I don’t quite understand this, as I can imagine this conversation taking place only a few years ago:
Okay, I kid. A little. And you probably know that I stole that scene from The Simpsons.
My strongest area was “relationships”; my weakest is “money”.
Give the test a try, and try to make a game plan based on the results.
I’d received an earlier invitation to Google’s GMail
service (which currently is available by invitation only, guaranteeing
that only the cool geeks have it right now), but I told the guy who
invited me that there was someone who needed it more than I.
Later, I got another invitation, which I was going to accept, until I remembered that I owed Boris a favour for his loaning me his apartment in Montreal for a weekend last September.
Last week, I got a third invitation — this time from Adam Hill — and I finally took it. I plan to use it for blog-related communication. It’s accordionguy {the-ubiquitous-at-sign} gmail {the-equally-ubiquitous-full-stop} com.
Thanks, Adam!