The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

My friend: So what’s on tap for you tonight?

Me: I’ve been invited to a warblogger dinner.

My friend: As what, the token leftie?

Me: Centrist. I’m a radical centrist.

My friend: You’re sure you weren’t invited just so they could…well, sacrifice you to their god?

Nonsense. I’m the guy who’ll do the on-stage spanking at Bondage-A-Go-Go and whom you can still take to meet your parents the day after. I get along with everybody, I always know which fork to use and I’ve had all my shots. That’s why they invite me to all the good dinner parties. To paraphrase the famous summary of my hero Ferris Bueller: “The hippies and warbloggers, radicals, neocons, suits, anarchists, SUV drivers, tree-huggers… they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.”

(My friend Deenster is probably rolling her eyes as she reads this. She hates it when I invoke The Bueller, and I’ve done it twice today.)

The bash took place at the Tuscany Cafe, a nice little Italian place located in that row of charming restaurants on Baldwin Street, nestled in a tree-lined pocket residential neighbourhood and crawling distance from my house. There were about a dozen attendees, among whom were Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle, Rick “Movieblog” McGinnis, The Meatriarch, Mark Wickens, Dr. Weevil and Mark Weisblott (I’m sure I’m missing some names and URLs — let me know and I’ll update). The whole thing was organized by David “Ranting and Roaring” Janes, who did a wonderful job as host.

Being a gathering of conservatives, everyone had a job, good hygiene and a preference for eating meat, and no one threatened to launch into bad poetry or performance art (they did ask me to play a tune on the accordion before I left). The conversation was good, and was largely personal rather than political — a lot of getting-to-know-you chatting, questions about the New Girl Incident and I think Noam Chomsky, who figures very strongly in right-wing demonology, was mentioned only once (although that mention brought a collective groan from the table).

It was a lovely evening with some great folks, and it was a pleasure meeting all of you!

Thanks again to David Janes for organizing the event and inviting me!

Sinfest

• “She’s attacking my whole belief system.”

Superosity

The pop culture references and bizarro non-sequiturs are what make this a favourite of mine.

• “Here I am, at rich kids summer camp.”
• “I thought you said you read my blog!”
• “Reading just words is for lesser beings! Have it adapted into comic book format immediately!”

Achewood

Ray’s been facing off against Little Nephew in a rap battle that puts the ones in 8 Mile to shame. My buddy George would love this — he’s a “math atheist” who doesn’t get “this mixing of numbers and letters stuff”.

• Little nephew write raps dissing algebra.
• Roast Beef thinks Little Nephew’s rhymes are solid.
• “Y’all be like a queer Jack Frost, cold nippin’ at my hose!”
• Rap Battle #1: “Am I being dissed by the brontosaurus of rhyme? / There’s cave art of you freakin’ to Morris Day and the Time!”
• Rap Battle #2: “My fans roll all real in sleek black Escalades! / Your fans be all worried ’bout their D&D trades!”
• Rap Battle #3: The women approach me and whisper ‘bongiorno’ / You’re in your room watching scrambled-up porno!”

I was flipping through the book over breakfast and thought to myself: “Lightweights.”

There’s a lot of stuff I’ll be blogging this weekend. I’ve been busy. Watch this space.

Well, I like my result:

You are an AKMA.

You stand out from the crowd because of deeply held beliefs in the unknown.

You ponder endlessly and treat everyone, even fucknozzles, with respect.

WWAD (what would AKMA do) guides your actions.

What I aspire to become, AKMA already is: the Ferris Bueller of the Blogosphere. Not in the getting-away-with-stuff-sense, but the way he’s regarded by bloggers of every stripe. Here’s the relevant line from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (one of those movies that changed my life), as uttered by Grace, the principal’s secretary:

The sportos, the motorheads, the geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads, they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.

The What Blogging Archetype Are You Most Like test isn’t foolproof. While Doc Searls is “one of the possible results, Doc himself ended up testing positive as AKMA. That’s because they’re both such sweet guys.

Since he has a record deal and I don’t, Weird Al Yankovic — simultaneously high and low point for the visibility of accordion rockers (as the Village People were for gays) — is going to get the credit for coming up with playing Eminem and Avril Lavigne on the squeezebox. In the case of these two particular artists, I broke with my tradition of favouring “straight” versions of songs over parodies, what with turning Eminem’s Cleaning Out My Closet into a song by an open source software defector (warning: painful geek joke ahead):

I’m sorry Stallman

I never mean to hurt you

I never meant to make you cry

But tonight, I’m getting rid of Debian

…and as part of a stand-up routine, I’d rewritten Sk8r Boi into a song about that silly sub-sub-culture of goths who get into terribly silly things: “S8n Boi” by one “Avril LeVey“.

According to this article, Eminem, in typical hip-hop fashion, is taking himself a little too seriously:

Weird Al Yankovic said he held out hope until the last minute that Eminem would allow him to do a video for “Couch Potato,” his new parody based on the rapper’s Oscar-winning hit “Lose Yourself.” Yankovic negotiated with Eminem’s manager, Paul Rosenberg, who relayed Eminem’s permission for Yankovic to record the song–but delayed the decision to make an accompanying video until Eminem heard the final mix of “Couch Potato.”

“What we heard back from him (Rosenberg) was that Eminem was fine with me having the parody on my album but said he was afraid that a Weird Al video might detract from his legacy, that it would somehow make people take him less seriously as an important hip-hop artist,” Yankovic said.

Proof positive that constant self-aggrandizement is really just a mask for fears and insecurities. Surely someone at his record company must know that having a parody made of your songs and videos is a sign that you’ve made it.

Yankovic said even though he didn’t get to make the video, he’s grateful Eminem let him use the song in the first place. “I’m grateful to Eminem; he at least let me put it on the album,” Yankovic said. “I have to say I’m extremely disappointed at the same time; frankly, this was going to be the best video that I’ve ever done.”

Yankovic said that the video would have featured a “patchwork quilt” of scenes from other Eminem videos.

“Couch Potato” is the first single from Poodle Hat, which hits stores on May 20. The album also features parodies of songs by Nelly, Avril Lavigne and Billy Joel.

What? Nelly too? I sometimes drop the chorus from Hot in Here into the middle of another song.

Stupid big-name accordionists, stealing my thunder.

As my friend Eldon (who pointed me to this story) wrote to me: I’ll bet Eminem would’ve let me do the video.

[Mondo thanks, Eldon!]

…ooh, yeah. (Flash required)