(To my American student readers: substitute “dorm” for “residence”.)
The first thing you should do when entering your room — after introducing yourself to your roomate, if you have one — is to flip the mattress over.
Trust me on this one.
I finally got the mess with my kode-fu.com email address straightened out. In the backlog, I found out that The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century made the August edition of BlogsCanada’s “Top Blogs” list. Here’s what they had to say:
Jim Elve says, ” I met Accordion Guy Joey deVilla in person recently
and he’s every bit as gracious and talented in real life as he comes
across in his superb blog. I’m not sure how we managed to overlook this
high-energy blogger for so long.”
Wow, thanks, Jim! I’m flattered. Now truth be told, I considered the mention of this blog in the beta version of the Top Blogs listing more than enough, but thanks to the BlogsCanada judges — Briana Doyle, Jay Currie, Vicki Fox Smith and Jim Elve — for adding it to the official list!
Categories
Speaking of “Hellraiser”…
…this Hellraiser-inspired lunchbox appeared on today’s Photoshop Phriday on SomethingAwful.com:
A week ago today, I got a call from Darryl Wiggers, whom I met by
chance while picking up some lunch at the Liberty Market, a
deli/grocery near work. Daryl is the programming director for Scream,
the all-horror movie cable channel. He had a couple of tickets to a
party being thrown by Rue Morgue
magazine (Gothica, horror and general Rob Zombie-ism) in conjunction
with last weekend’s science fiction and horror convention. I’d planned
on having a rare quiet Friday night at home, but since the event was
taking place at the Pussycat Club, a mere couple of blocks from my
place, the Law of the Rare compelled me to go.
(The Law of the Rare is a personal philosophy: if I’m having trouble
deciding between two things, always choose the more rare one.)
I met Darryl at the Second Cup at Queen and John Streets and we walked
around the corner to the Pussycat Club. It hasn’t been the Pussycat
Club for very long — last summer, it was a jazz-funk bar owned by a
guy who looked like a very well-dressed Heavy D.
While walking there, Darryl mentioned that Tom Savini would be there.
“Don’t recognize the name,” I replied.
“He was the biker guy in the original Dawn of the Dead.”
“Been a while since I’ve seen Romero’s version,” I said.
“Well, he was also in From Dusk Till Dawn. He was ‘Sex Machine’.”
“OH MY GOD!” I yelled out. “Sex Machine is my hero!”
How can I not be fan of a guy with a machine gun codpiece and a ridiculous name?
More later, but in the meantime, you might want to check out the photos
of me, Darryl, Sex Machine and other horror movie stars who were at the
party. You can see them in photo album or slideshow format.
“Chop Top” from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
“Dog must hunt! Dog must hunt!”
“Pinhead” from the Hellraiser movies
Actual quote from Hellraiser II: “You’re so ripe, Joey. And it’s harvest time.”
“Sex Machine” from From Dusk Till Dawn
Machine-gun codpieces rule!
Gideon Strauss, in a comment on the photo with me and Doug “Pinhead” Bradley, wrote:
I love people who even KNOW the word “cenobite.”
The traditional definition of “cenobite” is “someone who belongs to a
religious order. Priests, monks, nuns, rabbis and druids are cenobites.
However, in the case of the Hellraiser
movies, the captial-C Cenobites are Clive Barker’s creations: evil
beings from another dimension delivering pleasure that soon turns into
gory pain. Doug Bradley played the most famous Cenobite: Pinhead, the
Cenobite leader. In Kingston in the summer of 1992, I spent a couple of
creeped-out evenings in Rik “DJ Stinky Poo-Poo” Young’s liviing room
watching the entire Hellraiser series.
Categories
Sick Day Yesterday
I took a “sick day” yesterday owing to something I ate, which gave me
some pretty wicked exhaust. Anyone who stood behind me yesterday
would’ve felt like the truck in this United Airlines jet safety video [800K Windows Media]. I’m back in action, and free of dangerous exhaust!
Mark Pilgrim, author of Dive Into Python (Python’s analogue of the “Camel Book”, IMHO), tells me that my prediction from this entry
has been fulfilled. Yesterday, he was in an IRC channel where various
Python programmers were discussing the errors in the Python Marriage
Proposal (not to be confused with Python Enhancement Proposals).
Summer at Iridesce Sent pointed me to this proposal that is also working Perl code:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my$f= $[;my
$ch=0;sub l{length}
sub r{join"", reverse split
("",$_[$[])}sub ss{substr($_[0]
,$_[1],$_[2])}sub be{$_=$_[0];p
(ss($_,$f,1));$f+=l()/2;$f%=l
();$f++if$ch%2;$ch++}my$q=r
("\ntfgpfdfal,thg?bngbj".
"naxfcixz");$_=$q; $q=~
tr/f[a-z]/ [l-za-k]
/;my@ever=1..&l
;my$mine=$q
;sub p{
print
@_;
}
be $mine for @everAwww.
I remind you that this is working Python if you’ve made the appropriate definitions:
from Russia import bride
In no particular order:
- Lovin’ from Wendy
- Smoothies for me and Scott from the Lettieri Cafe at Queen and Spadina
- Beer from the bartender who looks like Heather Locklear’s younger sister at the 606 rooftop bar
- Beer from the wandering magician at the 606 rooftop bar
- “Best performer of the night” award from Kick Ass Karaoke
- The gratitude of the CEO’s kids at the company picnic
- A card with a picture of “Legolas” from the Lord of the Rings movies
- Jagermeister shots from the 606 manager
- Beer from a guy at the Drake Hotel who wanted Happy Birthday played for his girlfriend
- Beer and chicken roti at the “Give Me Liberty” street festival
- Kit Kat bar from the vendor at LaGuardia airport
- Beer from the girl having a stagette at Smokeless Joe’s
- Anarchist zine from a hippy chick at Kensington market
- Beer from the table of girls at the Drake Hotel who didn’t think you could play pop songs on accordion
- The opportunity to jump the line at a couple of clubs
- Free cover for me and Wendy at FunHaus (the club formerly known as the Zen Lounge)
- Beer from the guys at John’s Italian Deli on Baldwin Street
- Beer from the waitress at Shoeless Joe’s
- Pizza slices at Amato’s on Queen Street
- Pop from the hot dog vendor at the Parkdale/Liberty market
- The
opportunity to demonstrate squats in front of my all-female BodyPump
class. I got applause. “How do you know when an accordion’s ass is bad?
When it looks like THIS!” I will never tire of that line. - Free cover at the El Mocambo for the White Cowbell Oklahoma show. Meryle
asked the bouncer at the door if he’d seen an “Asian guy with a flaming
cowboy hat and an accordion”, and he just laughed. I showed up 15
minutes later and he started laughing so hard that he lost his balance.
“I thought she was asking me some kind of trick question,” he said.
“You go in free for giving me the biggest laugh of the night.” - A hearty handshake and slap on the back from an nice old man
with an Eastern European accent who saw me on my bike with the
accordion on my back. He pulled over his van, nearly cutting me off and motioned to me, asking
me if I really played that and could I please play it for him. - A look of approval from actor/makeup artist Tom Savini, who played my favourite character in From Dusk Till Dawn: Sex Machine.
- The
biggest value: Plane tickets, hotel accommodations, admission,
coveralls and booze by the organizers of the Dystopia party at the
CONvergence SF conference in Minneapolis. Thanks, Dystopians! You made
me feel like a rock star, and for that, you rock!