Category: It Happened to Me

Yesterday, I decided to drop by a career expo at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. With the expo a short walk south of my house and with sponsors like by the Globe and Mail and workopolis, it seemed like a good idea to attend.

There was the usual maze of registration booths at the ground floor of the Centre, but it turned out to be for a conference for estheticians and people who work at spas. The career fair, a sign pointed out, was in a single conference room in the basement. The sign also had a noted hastily taped to it that read “No IT firms today”, which left two categories, “Business” and “Engineering”. I could say that curiosity is what kept me interested in taking a look inside, but truth be told, I was more interested in seeing if Laura was still there.

There was a line of about 50 or 60 people leading to a single registration desk. You couldn’t enter the conference room without regsitering first, but I had no interest in putting up with a wait for something I wasn’t really interested in. If this were a conference and I had my accordion, I could do what I’ve done a couple of times: claim to be part of the show and that I was running late. It’s worked at a couple of Linux expos and DefCon.

I pulled my laptop out of my knapsack and walked up to the attendant minding the door. She looked me over. I wasn’t wearing a suit like everyone else at the show, but a vintage work shirt, skater-boy pants and running shoes. I also didn’t have a file folder full of resumes like everyone else.

“Hi. Nortel tech support,” I said, picking a likely company name. “Problem with one of our display computers.”

Please please please don’t ask me for some kind of ID, I thought.

“Can I get in? I’m running late, and if I don’t get that computer up and running, it’ll be bad karma.”
The attendant waved me through with a terribly disinterested look.

I went inside, and there was no Laura, and not much in the way of companies either. In the area for “Engineering” companies, there was a total of five companies. The pickings were evn slimmer for “Business”, where there were only three. I’ve seen livelier booths at a high school science fair. Nortel didn’t even have a booth here.

I decided to look around the “Engineering” section. It was a room full of people in ill-fitting suits carrying portfolios and drafting tubes. Nobody was looking particularly happy. I haven’t seen a room full of people this glum since I sat in the waiting room of a towing company a few years ago.

General Dynamics had the flashiest booth and the highest turnover. Being a weapons manufacturer, their security requirements couldn’t accept anyone who hadn’t been a Canadian citizen for at least five years, which apparently disqualified most of the people in the room, which skewed heavily towards middle eastern and south Asian.

“Damned bin Laden, he is screwing us all out of a job, eh?” said the only guy in the room who didn’t look morose. He must’ve thought I was also applying for work.

“I don’t know about you,” I replied, “but if the career fair’s like this, I’m thinking about opening a hot dog cart.”

A Google search for the word accordion currently puts me on the fifth page of results.

So for now, my Google claim to fame is that I have the Google search for the word accordion currently puts me on the fifth page of results.

A Google search for the mispelled version, accordian, places me on the first page, seventh item down. This would indicate that while my readership is a little low on the spelling skills, their taste is impeccable.

Here’s I photo I’d never seen until I ran a search for pictures from Burning Man 1999 using the non-word accordian:

So for now, my Google claim to fame is that I have the number one entry for stagette.

My friend Anne works for Aerial Communications, the PR firm behind the Toronto dates of Jackie Mason’s latest stand-up comedy show, Prune Danish. She always gets tickets to any show promoted by her company and invited me along to see this one.

Mason comes from the great tradition of the comedians of the Borscht Belt, a vacation spot in the Catskills that became a popular destination for Jews starting in the 1950s. The hotels and resorts in the area hired Jewish entertainers to match their clientele, a lot of whom were stand-up comics. From the Belt came the great comic staples of observational humour (think Jerry Seinfeld and even Cory Doctorow) and aren’t-WASPs-funny jokes (think BET) that we take for granted today.

(I was probably the only Asian in the audience. Most of the audience looked as though they came from North York, which means their only encounters with Filipinos are usually with their housekeepers and nannies. I wondered if they thought I had the night off. “Did you press my shirts and get the kids’ lunches made already?”)

Mason put on a good show, starting with his traditional jabs at audience members in the front row and then going straight for the observational humour. While there’s nothing terribly ground-breaking in his material — the standard items from the news and ethnic jokes (there were moments he really sounded like Krusty the Clown, but then again, Krusty’s probably modeled after him, right down to the bit where he quit being a rabbi to go into comedy and making fun of foreign accents) — he still got a laugh out of the audience, who ages ran the gamut from university students to seniors.

I really liked the bit where he said that “only Gentiles think they have to sit in the airplane seat assigned to them”; it’s funny because it’s true.

I.

Am.

Spartacus.

Yesterday in Toronto, it was a sunny day with summer-like temperatures in the high 20’s (that’s low-to-mid 80’s for those of you who think in degrees Fahrenheit). People hit my neighbourhood — Queen Street West, the bar/boutique/broadcasting part of town — in droves, wearing short sleeves, shorts and tank tops. Every sidewalk cafe and bar patio was packed well into the evening, and any band who had a gig last night played to a full house.

That morning, I’d received an e-mail from an old supervisor of mine who needed a programmer to do some short-term but lucrative contract work. I had a great meeting with him that afternoon to discuss the project, and pending approval from his client, I could be starting in a couple of days. Apparently the pharmaceutical companies have just discovered computers and the Internet, and they have scads of cash to spend on software and Internet projects. I’m more than happy to help lighten the burden of having all that moolah.

After a quick “victory dinner”, I hit the streets with my accordion and got some busking in. With the throngs on Queen Street, I made that evening’s drinking money, handed out my phone number to various people who want me to show up at their parties, got a free pint of Guinness and worked on my rendition of the White Stripes’ Fell In Love with a Girl.

Then, a trip to the gym. I never thought I’d see the day when I was a regular in a weight room. I have to agree with Arnie: the best part is “the pohmp“.

While at the gym, Will and I were talking about making alcohol versions of bubble tea.

“The problem is that bubble tea takes so long to drink,” he said. “It’s too big a drink for there to be a practical way to sell an alcoholic version.”

“I’ve got it — how ’bout putting it in a martini glass and make bubbletinis? With the tapioca balls at the bottom, instead of olives or pearl onions?”

I think we’ve struck gold here, folks.

That was followed by a run home for a quick shower, followed by a little more busking outside the Horseshoe Tavern to join my friends Will and Tina, where someone invited me to make an appearance at her show, and then inside to see Tuuli, the all-girl power-punk-pop band who are oh-so-cute and have-oh-so-catchy tunes. They sounded put on a great show before a full house. I’m definitely buying their CD when it comes out next week. Now if I can only convince them to wrestle with me in a kiddie pool full of creamed corn, I can die a very happy and sticky man. How ’bout it, ladies?

After the Tuuli show, I collected the “sweaty hugs” that the band promised to the audience (and to offer my accordion backup services). Then we were off to the Bovine Sex Club to hang out and play pool (very poorly, I might add). Will had his usual — a glass of warm water. It takes balls to order that at a place that’s liberally decorated with empty Jagermeister bottles.

“I don’t drink,” he said, “and cold water is bad for you.”

Some guy saw the accordion on my back and invited me to do the between-set music at his stand-up comedy revue at the Poor Alex Theatre.

“I saw you and thought to myself ‘if he’s got an accordion at the Bovine, he must be into comedy,” he said.

After last call, we walked through the still-warm night to Happy Seven for some late-night Chinese food and conversation. We came up with a great name for Will’s band — Cockpunch — and Tina went on about how easily amused she was and shocking it was that she had hardly anything to drink that night.

“She’s off the booze and high on life,” I said, making hand motions suggesting the layout of a newspaper headline.

“Write that about me and you’re dead,” she retorted.

After that, I gave them a quick tour of Casa di AccordionGuy, after which they headed home.

I looked at the clock. 4:30 a.m. Considering I was up at 8:30 that morning, I figured it was a good time to turn in.