The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

I (finally) got my paws on a copy of Cory’s new novel Eastern Standard Tribe at his reading on Thursday. Personally autographed, even:  “For Joey — In circadian solidarity!”

(We agree on many things, but circadian rhythm is not one of them. Cory

likes to start his day insanely early, while I prefer to end mine

insanely late. His upcoming move to the GMT zone may actually put us in

sync.)

I read it in two bursts: from the start to the point where the

protagonist explains tribes to his incredulous group therapy-mates

yesterday, and this morning, I read from that point straight through

the end. There’s a certain casual but insistent forward flow to his

writing that makes you want to keep reading. It’s rather like the

motion of a Haunted Mansion Doombuggy: it shows you something cool, but

its wiggle tells you that something cooler is waiting just over there

in the next chamber.

One thing I enjoyed about the book was the way it was peppered with

little bits of OpenCola cultural folderol:

• Quirky

  coworker/friends: argumentative personalities, smooth-talking biz-dev

  guys and anal-rententive user experience orthos so real that you want

  to pimp-slap them with a hardcover edition of Tufte.

• The

  wireless

  Napster on the Massachusetts Turnpike in the novel is a refinement of

  ideas that Cory would bounce at us during our runs to Fry’s when we

  both lived in Bay Area (“Impulse-shopper aisle, Joey! Beef jerky plus

  porn equals-equals good!”). We talked about how a peer-to-peer network

  of WiFi nodes in cars could be used to report traffic conditions and

  provide drivers with optimal routes.

• The instant-messaging nicknames: “opencolon” and “ballgravy”.

  “Opencolan” was the company’s joke name for its employees. We’d started

  using the phrase “that eats serious ball chowder” after stumbling into

  it on a message board where the Icy Hot Stuntaz were getting dissed.

• San Franscarcity: Cory’s pet name for Baghdad-by-the-bay. I called the satellite office we shared “Deep Space Nine”

  because it shared certain qualities with the ficitious space station:

  far from the central organization, a visiting place for strange aliens,

  and bad acting.

• The phrase “midget wrestling”. One project we worked on,

  Colavision, was a personal broadcasting tool, and we always suggested,

  even to the most stoned-faced no-apparent-sense-of-humour

  investors,  that “backyard midget wrestling” was one of the things

  that people wanted to broadcast. I think the midget wrestling thing was

  an obsession of John Henson’s (not the guy with the TV show, but our friend and coworker).

Of course, I can’t imagine a writer not throwing in little bits of

his or her own experience to give some meat to a novel. They make the

story feel more “real”. It’s especially cool when you’ve worked,

played, double-dated and gone to Disneyland and even watched Dude, Where’s My Car? (and in the theatre, no less!) with the author; it makes those bits feel like little secret high-fives.

I was about two-thirds of the way through the book when the feeling of deja vu

hit its peak, and then it dawned on me. A clever idea to make a cool

tech product? Everything going smoothly until the double-cross? The

idea’s originators being run out of the deal and dicredited and screwed

over by the suits? This was OpenCola. This was life, from late 1999

through to early 2002.

Keep in mind that this is Yours Truly’s interpretation of the book. I

have no special inside knowledge: I never saw any notes for the book,

nor do I have direct access to the part of his brain that he will

eventually stick a Creative Commons badge on, once we get wetware technology.

It’s a great read, and I highly recommend it.

Had a great time at last night’s Poliblogger (politics blogger, not

polyamory nor polysaccharides blogger) get-together, which took place

at

the little side-bar on the west side of the Drake Hotel, a place where

somehow a number of friends of mine have acquired jobs over the past

few weeks.

I spent most of the evening chatting with the folks at the end of the

table that still had some free seats, which inlcuded David “Ranting and Roaring” Janes, Rick “Boomer Deathwatch” McGinnis, Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle and special out-of-town guest blogger Damian “Daimnation!”

Penny to name just a few. The conversation and beer flowed freely, and

topics ranged from poncy local journos to

love-the-people-hate-the-Cuban-government to little indie pet software

development projects to “you had me, then you lost me” politics to WiFi

to hot tubs and rock and roll to wondering what it is about Accordion

City that gets people from wildly divergent

socio-economico-complexo-migraino backgrounds to get along reasonably

well.

At one point, someone at the table saw Kathy and I in conversation and

said “Glad to see you two have made up.” We both got a laugh out of it,

and took turns explaining that there’s a difference between spirited

difference of opinion and blood feuds. Besides, fashion-coordination

rules alone dictate that we had

to get along: she wore an American flag scarf, and my over-shirt was a

big Hilfiger affair whose back was one huge stars-and-stripes.

One thing David and I talked about were sideburns. His wife made him

trim down his. Wendy likes mine, so it’s up to me to hold up the fort

for the Toronto Python-programming sideburns contingent.

Rick and talked about Thor and his work at the Metro newspaper, which definitely has more of a local feel than the Metro in Boston (the Metro chain of free newspapers is owned by Metro S. A. in Sweden).

Damian told us a funny story about the independent TV station in

Newfoundland, NTV, which is owned by a rich-but-completely-bonkers old

man. One day, he wanted to watch the cartoon show Inspector Gadget

right then, and phoned the station, demanding they put it on

immediately. Unfortunately, it was during a broadcast of the news. He

had enough pull for the station to come up with a compromise: they

showed Inspector Gadget in a tiny window in a corner of the screen as

the nightly news continued.

I had a great time at the gathering, and hope we can do it again

sometime soon! Thanks to all who showed up, and thanks to David for

pulling the whole thing together!