The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

To make up for the self-inflicted torture of watching Freddy vs. Jason (at least I was seeing it with people I liked), I saw American Splendor — the biography of great comic book author Harvey Pekar — with my friend Anne on Friday.

(Friday was a busy night — first the Hawksley Workman secret concert, then American Splendor, then running into my friend Lori and getting hooked up for some future accordion jazz stuff, then dancing with the girls from the Empire Sandy. Interesting stories all, and I suppose they’ll eventually get blogged.)

Paul Giamatti played an amazing Harvey, and well, Hope Davis is one of my indie film dream dates. The movie captures the spirit of Pekar’s autobiographical comics of his everyday life in Cleveland, Ohio, which take the incredibly banal and turn it into something incredibly interesting. Today’s “alternative comics” — by alternative, I mean the ones that cover quotidian life as opposed to superheroes or detectives — owe Harvey Pekar a big debt.

Recommended reading

Wouldn’t ya know it, Harvey Pekar has a blog. As does his wife Joyce and his daughter Danielle.

You may have seen the movie, but you should read the comics that inspired it!

Last night, while wandering home from a very odd magazine launch party (more details later), Char and I were passed by the Hot Tub Truck.

It’s a modified flatbed truck outfitted with a hot tub large enough to accomodate eight people and a deck with rails that will allow another eight to stand about. I’ve seen it driving around my usual stomping grounds.

Last night, it was full of cute women, some of whom were standing on the deck wearing nothing but bubbles.

“Hi, Accordion Guy,” yelled one of them, whom I recognized, but can’t remember from where. “You’ll have to join us next time,” she said, and the truck drove off.

Memo to Hot Tub Truck Women: my email address is joey@kode-fu.com and I am always ready for hot tub action.

Won’t somebody think about the coffee?!

My friend Char works at the Queen Street West branch of Your Good Health, a health food store a couple of blocks away from my house where I’m a regular.

Earlier this week, an irate Boomer woman walked in, pointing at the store’s array of Halogen lights.

“How dare you run all these lights and have the doors open when there’s a power crisis going on?” she said, and launched into a rant.

(Memo to those who want to rail against a business: unless you’re talking to a manager or someone in charge, your rants are likely to have little effect.)

And the end of the polemic, she stormed out the door, stopped, spun on her heel and fired off a parting shot: “If I can’t make my goddamned coffee tomorrow morning, it’ll be your fault!”

This seems to be a week of “You had me, then you lost me.”

Boris’ blackout story

Boris came down from Montreal last Thursday to see the Steve Mann talk and ended up in the middle of the biggest blackout in North American history. Here’s his story.

One geeky aside

Here we have an amazing example of tight coupling — a system in Ohio fails, knocking out power in Detroit, Toronto, Ottawa and New York City — and I haven’t yet seen any articles on the concept.

I’m just going to have to write it myself, aren’t I? As if I have any spare time.

My friend (and unofficial publicist) Cory Doctorow has an op-ed piece in today’s Boston Globe on the Internet’s changing approach to politics. A quote:

This new form of net-activism heralds a change in direction. In the beginning, net.wisdom held that netheads should remain aloof from politics, first to keep from sullying themselves, but more important because the net was immune to regulation, due to its radical, decentralized nature. Traditional, horse-trading Beltway politics had no place online. But as regulators turned their eyes netwards, proposing laws like the Communications Decency Act — a broad and probably unconstitutional censorship bill that would have “protected” adults and kids alike from “indecent” material — the Internet got politicized. The fights to keep the Internet open and free are crucial; the Internet can’t serve as a conduit for independent analysis if it’s being regulated by those it calls to task.