The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

According to this MTV.com report, Wesley Willis died yesterday:

Wesley Willis, one of the most unusual characters in music, died Thursday evening, most likely from heart failure. He was 40.

The schizophrenic singer from the streets of Chicago had been recovering at an Illinois hospice after undergoing emergency surgery on June 2 to suppress and identify the source of internal bleeding, according to his record label, Alternative Tentacles, which noted that Willis died peacefully.

Willis, famous for greeting fans with a head butt, was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia at the end of 2002 and his health had been deteriorating rapidly.

Wesley was an inspiration to me when I got started with the street musician thing. Before I hit the street for the very first time on that fateful first of May in 1999, I was listening to his cover of Girls on Film from the Duran Duran Tribute Album. I figured, if he could make music that was fun to listen to, so could I.

I’ll close with what Jello Biafra said about Wesley:

“Wes was deeply religious,” Biafra said. “He was afraid that if he died he would no longer get to go see bands play. If there is a hereafter I hope he’s right up front with Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, his beloved Otis Redding and his dear friend Bradley [Nowell] from Sublime ‘storming the stage’ as the crowd ‘roars like a sea monster.’ All opening for Wesley, of course.

For this blog entry to make sense, you’ll need to know what I look like. Here’s a photo of me, taken by improv genius Fuzzy Gerdes last Friday:

For the past couple of months, I have been approached by at least a dozen times, asking something along the lines of “We were trying to guess your background. Are you Hawaiian?”

For some reason, unless they find out my Spanish-sounding name — Jose Martin deVilla — nobody guesses that I’m Filipino. The guys at Asian Farm, the grocery store around the corner from my place, think I’m Japanese and still say domo arigato whenever I shop there. The guy at the corner store thinks I’m Korean. Kudos to the cosmopolitan guesser on College Street who thought I was from Peru (remember, they have a sizeable Japanese population there — their president until 2001 was one Alberto Fujimori, and they pronounced his name Spanish-style: foo-hee-mo-ri).

But most people guess I’m Hawaiian. My aunt says I look Hawaiian, especially because of my collection of loud Hawaiian shirts. I think it’s my lei’d back attitude (har, har).

One guy added to his comment: “It’s your voice. It’s very smooth; like Don Ho.” His buddy follwed up with “And you speak such good English too!”

Me so happy you rikey my speechie velly much, honourable round-eye.

Have I ever faked being Hawaiian? Only for a moment, and only once, two Saturdays ago at my friend Derek’s stag party. We were dancing at the Velvet Underground when a cute brunette slid beside me and put her arm around me.

“Are you Hawaiian?” she asked into my ear, doing that cute girl thing were they press their nose into your cheek.

“Alooooo-ha!” I replied.

Awww, c’mon, you’d have done that too.

Recommended Listening

Cowboy Jack Clement singing My Little Grass Shack (Quicktime video). I should really learn this on accordion.

You know, for a guy who carries a Powerbook around a good chunk of the time, a digital camera most of the time, writes his own Palm software, and maintains a blog, I’m a little behind on my geeky must-reads. Luckily, as I settle into full-time work and move away from freelance — which actually seems to be giving me more free time, I’ll be able to do some catching up on…

• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It’s doubly shameful that I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, since I’m both a geek and Filipino. Big thanks to Emma Jane for giving me her hardcopy edition!
• Idoru, All Tomorrow’s Parties and Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Also a shame, because at Crazy Go Nuts University, I was the go-to guy for cyberpunk.

I’m also catching up on my popular culture criticism reading:

• Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism by Daniel Harris
• Welcome to the Jungle: The Why Behind “Generation X” by Geoffrey T. Holtz.

First, there was Amborse Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary, and later, Stan Kelley-Bootle’s computer-related twist, The Devil’s DP Dictionary. Now, Greg Knauss has created The Devil’s Dictionary 2.0, a lovely skewering of terms you’ve heard in the blogosphere (he even dumps on the term blogosphere!). He seems to be adding new entries whenever the inspiration strikes.

Some examples:

Anti-Idiotarian, noun: Idiot. “That Eric Raymond is quite an anti-idiotarian.”

BigCo, noun: A successful software company.

blogosphere, noun: An poisonous environment of methane, self-satisfaction and other hot gasses. “The only creatures that can survive in the blogosphere are low-order molds, able to feed off the waste of others.”

flash mob, noun: An impromptu gathering, organized by means of electronic communication, of the unemployed.

This one is my favourite:

social software, noun: Any arbitrary collection of algorithms, protocols and metadata that allows friendless agoraphobics to pretend otherwise. “I’m having trouble deciding which node in my social software network I’m going to ask to the e-prom.”

Recommended Reading

Here’s the etymology of the non-word Anti-Idiotarian.

Dave Winer likes to throw around the term BigCo, which is a conglomeration of Big and Company.

I saw Freddy Vs. Jason on Monday. Not because I was planning on seeing it, but because I got invited, last-minute style, by friends I hadn’t seen in a while: Ed Leung and Mike Wise (yes, as in the CBC reporter), two friends of mine from Crazy Go Nuts University, and Ed’s girlfriend Jenn.

I have this to report about the movie:

• In my opinion, the fight between Freddy and Jason ends in a draw.
• Those are precious brain cells and moments of my life I will never get back.