The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

When Jello Biafra last passed through Toronto on his spoken word tour a couple of years back, he noticed an excessively-pierced guy sitting near the front row. Between topics, Jello walked up to him and said, “Wow, that’s a lot of piercings.”

He then turned to the audience and asked “Ever wondered what kind of fashion your children will take up, just to annoy the hell out of you? I’m thinking horns and tails, they’ll think it’s cool, and you’re not gonna like it.”

That got a lot of laughs, but somewhere in the laughter was that nervous note that said geez, he’s right.

Some people ask why I’ve never gone for the piercing or tattoing thing, especially since I have some kind of a rep for being the type of person who’d go for just that. I could in all honesty say that we can rule out earrings and nose rings, because my large, round face just doesn’t lend itself well to that kind of thing.

That, and I hate needles. Really, really hate ’em.

I’ll simply borrow a line from the younger brother from the movie Once Were Warriors when asked why he didn’t adopt Maori traditional tattoos to show Maori pride: “Mine are on the inside.”

(Besides, my large, round face already clearly says I’m a badass. In it, you will see the features that could only be those of a descendant of badass Chinese pirate Li Ma Hong. My Mom’s family traces their ancestry back to him, which explains a helluva lot about Mom and also why you shouldn’t mess with her.)

Anyhow, I was reminded of Jello’s remark after reading Megan Lindholm’s short story, Cut. It’s not a new one, having appeared in the sci-fi magazine Asimov’s back in 2001, but it’s a very interesting read. It’s not what a lot of people would consider to be “science fiction”; there are no robots, nanotech, aliens, starships, cloning or virtual reality, and while there is mention of computer, it’s just a prop, no more significant than a telephone or toaster. Still, it is about the future — in more ways than one — and how you’ll react to it might depend on if you’re about to leave your parents’ nest or starting one of your own.

I found myself siding with grandma. Damn, I am turning into my parents. Good thing they’re right-on people.

For those of you not familiar with the lay of the land of Accordion City, I live in a tiny pocket residential neighbourhood bordered by the one of the Chinatowns (we’ve got at least three here) to the north and east. Hence our house’s unofficial name, Big Trouble in Little China.

Big Trouble is a minute’s walk from Asian Farm, the English name of a large Chinese supermarket whose original name was “Big Land Farm” (I guess someone finally decided to get the name translated properly). In Asia, the Chinese have a reputation for scrimping and saving, and the prices here reflect that. Chicken legs sell for 79 cents a pound, pork goes for about a buck fifty, with beef and fish going for only a little more. If you’re a cook-it-yourself type who’s also not a wuss, you can get fish heads and chicken necks (with bonus head) for a soup stock that’s miles better — and cheaper — than what you can make with bouillon cubes. And hey, they’ve got squid puffs! Asian Farm lets Paul and I cook healthy gourmet dinners for five for about a two dollars a person, a blessing given the underemployed circumstances we’ve lived in until recently.

The Asian Farm clientele is, as one would expect, mostly Chinese. You can do all your shopping here speaking only Cantonese or Mandarin. In fact, a lot of the signage is only in Chinese characters, including the most important one: the prices of the two dozen brands of rice they carry. I can read the pictograms for our house’s preferred brand, Golden Ox, and for when I really feel like blowing the budget and living large in the rice sense, Golden Buddha, the tastiest and most expensive of the lot. After Golden Buddha, Uncle Ben’s becomes the “bad touch uncle”. They get a lot of customers from other Asian countries; lots of Vietnamese and Filipinos do their groceries here and you almost always hear someone speaking in Tagalog on their cell phones.

Speaking of cell phones, whenever someone’s rings in Asian Farm, you’ll see everyone frantically looking at their pockets and belts, checking to see if it’s theirs. Like everyone else who caught the big sale at the Chinatown Centre’s phone store, I got the Kyocera phone (with built in tip calculator and I Ching!) and chose Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyrie for the ring used whenever one of my friends calls. Unfortunately, that tends to be the favoured ring of everyone in the neighbourhood from grade school kids to little old ladies, and there’s a mass self-frisking every time that ring gets played. “Aiyah! Not mine.”

Whenever I go shopping there, it’s like a real-life game of AllLookSame for the staff. They first try addressing me in Chinese, and my Chinese is limited to food, a couple of polite things to say to people’s parents and cussing (I’m really good with the cussing). I answer back in English, and after that, the conversation continues — the verbosity directly proportional to how much English they’ve mastered. They do try to guess my nationality, but strangely enough, none of them have figured out I’m Filipino. I don’t have the accent, and to them, I look either Korean or Japanese. The last time I went to buy pork chops (fourteen for less than five bucks!), the butcher concluded with a slight bow and a “domo arrigato” (Japanese for “thank you very much”). I was going to correct him, but then Ride of the Valkyrie started playing, which had me, all the guys behind the meat counter and a couple of people behind me in line checking their phones. It was mine.

Strange toys are coming out of China these days. First, the musical box/night light toy that supposedly whispers “I hate you” and now this:

The photo was taken in Baguio City, Philippines, a city north of Manila and high up in the mountains (so high that the temperature drops to a chilly 12 degrees C — that’s 53 degrees farenheit — and the locals break out the leather jackets.) The game is made in China and retails for 250 Pesos (about US$4.70). You play the Americans, and the object of the game is to defend the World Trade Center from the bombers.

Another version of the game is shown on the Web site bootlegactionfigures.com. The packaging uses photographs from the September 11th disaster. Classy.

The Tapei Times reviewed the game:

Laden vs USA is a monumentally boring game, but its value as pure kitsch may be a turn-on for collectors of such items.

The game’s soundtrack is an attempt at a Middle Eastern melody, but the sound is so high-pitched and grating it’s almost impossible to listen beyond five notes. Adding a touch of surrealism, Deck the Halls or London Bridge plays when you win a round.

The game has two versions, one that pits bin Laden against Bush in a boxing match and a version in which a submarine shoots down fighter jets screaming around the tiny screen.

Both versions require some imagination on the part of the player. The bin Laden and Bush characters look nothing like their real-life likenesses in the boxing one and the submarine in the second version is hilariously out of place in the context of Afghanistan, which the manufacturers apparently forgot is a landlocked country. Made by Panyu Gaoming Electronic of Guangzhou, China, Laden vs USA is now out of production for reasons that a company spokeswoman refused to clarify. She also declined to answer what the submarine is doing in Afghanistan and whether the player in the boxing version controls bin Laden or Bush.

From neighbouring Taiwan comes Final Battle Afghanistan X-Tank (gotta love the names that Asian manfacturers come up with for their videogames!), which according to the Taipei Times, was conceived a day after the World Trade Center attack:

On Sept. 12, the managers of INSREA, a Taiwanese game software firm, convened a hasty meeting at their downtown Taipei office to discuss how to make the events of the previous day into a gripping video game.

Hu Long-Yun, marketing director at INSREA said (half-jokingly, for what it’s worth, according to the Times) “We’re the first company to make software for a game specifically themed on the conflict in Afghanistan…..we wish bin Laden would contact us so we could give him a copy of the game.”

Hey, Mr. Hu: Du lei lo mo*, punkass.

* Extremely rude. Ask your Cantonese-speaking friends, but not in front of their moms.

[Thanks to Ed’s Up, Hos Down!, where I saw the photo; he found it in Yahoo News.]

For the first time since moving back to Toronto from San Francisco back in spring 2001, I missed a Kick Ass Karaoke. I had to do a little freelance programming work for a client in order to guarantee that I’d be able to cover next month’s rent.

I thought my absence would go unnoticed, but it didn’t, which proves two things:

• Never doubt the power of the accordion
• More importantly, I’ve got some great friends. I love you all!

A phone message from Will

Monday, 6:00 p.m.

Call answer voice: You have…one…new message. To hear this message, press “one”

Will:Hey, Joey, it’s Will! Long time no see, and we missed you at karaoke last week. You never miss it! I hope everything’s okay.

Hey, I’m actually at the gym and I’m watching you in the Body Attack class right now, doing those punches. Looking good, my friend, looking good…oops, you just went the wrong way…oh, there you go.

Anyhow, I hope everything’s okay, you were missed at karaoke, let’s catch up some time. Talk to you soon. Ciao! [Beep]

Thanks, Will! I’ll give you a ring.

Email from Carson

Wednesday, 5:52 a.m.

Missed you last week.

Everything OK? Do you have that flu?

All your sweet babies came.

Joey! Where are you?

— Cars

All my sweet babies came? Damn my client! Damn him to hell!

Oh wait, I need his money. Bless my client! Bless him!

Next month, sweet babies, next month! I’ll catch up with you soon, Carson!

A phone call from Karin

Karin: Hey there! We missed you last Wednesday. I was a little worried. You weren’t sick, were you?

Me: No, I was doing some urgent work for a client. I needed the money and they needed it first thing the following morning.

Karin: That’s too bad. We had a great time. We did The Strokes’ Last Nite. Will was there. We all missed you, and Carson was asking where you were.

Me: I wanted to be there. I haven’t missed a single Kick Ass Karaoke in about a year and a half.

Karin: It was a lot of fun, but I think I’ll be doing things a little more low-key for the next few weeks.

Me: And low-key for you is what…keeping it down to seven, maybe eight drinks?

Just kidding, Karin! Looking forward to a low-key evening soon.

Once again, to all my friends: thanks, and the job situation is improving dramatically. I’ll be back on the scene before you know it.

I drop by the Your Good Health (hmmm…no Web site) store on Queen Street West quite often. It’s only a couple of blocks from my house, it’s on the way to the gym, and since the summer, I’ve made friends with the staff, especially Char.

Although it’s called a “health food store”, for the longest time, they didn’t actually stock much actual food, save for the protein bars. They carried a wide range of protein powders, vitamins and other supplements, diet aids, muscle-building pills and powders, some cosmetics and shampoos, but nothing that looked as if it belonged on your dinner table. I remember that once this summer, a guy from South Asia came in and was immediately confused because:

• A place billing itself as a health food store didn’t have any recognizable food in it
• Coming from a place where you see starving people every day, it’s mind-blowing to come to one of the best-fed nations in the world and find out that they still need food supplements.

That state of affairs has changed since the management embarked on a program to increase the sales at that particular branch. It was decided to make the place more grocery-like and they started stocking health food. Now you can purchase rice cakes, soups made with free-range chicken and organic vegetables, pasta made with spelt and a whole rack full of those mostly-twigs-and-bark cereals that my housemate Paul got brainwashed into eating by a couple of hippie chicks.

The problem for me is that I’m on a low–carb diet (which is working quite nicely — between that and a lot of working out, I’m approaching the fifteen-pounds-lost point) and most of the stuff in the store is low-fat. Low-fat often means high-carb. In fact, when some food item — say, soup — comes in both a regular and low-fat or “light” version, the low-fat version is almost always higher in carbohydrates. A number of customers at Your Good Health, myself included, pointed this out and they’ve been pretty good about stocking some low-carb items.

This brings me to the title of this entry. One kind of low-carb item they carry is low-carb baking mix. It’s made of soy flour instead of wheat flour, which is not only low in carbohydrates, but pretty high in protein. It’s also incredibly expensive. One can of Keto Quick Bread Mix, which contains enough to make one loaf of bread, is selling for 8 dollars Canadian (that’s $5.25 American). On a per-weight basis, the Atkins Bake Mix sells for the same price; it comes in a bigger canister that sells for $18 Canadian. That’s a lot of bread for very little bread, so it had better be tasty.

(Is soy flour really that expensive? They give away holy communion bread for free, and they tell me it’s high in Jesus.)

My question goes out to you low-carbers out there who’ve tried the stuff: which tastes better? Or should I just make like Jared and just have regular bread (he had a 6″ sub for lunch and a 12″ sub for dinner every day for at least a year)? Put your opinions down in the comments or e-mail me.

Earlier, I promised that if your nominations got me on the nominees list for the 2003 Bloggies, I’d tell you the stories of my two worst dates ever.

Even though my bid to become one of the nominees was not successful, I’d still like to thank everyone who reads this weblog.

So I decided “screw it, I’m telling those stories anyway.”

Give me a week to write them up. I promise you’ll get a chuckle out of them. I hope they don’t turn you off dating.

I didn’t make the nominations for the 2003 Bloggies. I still encourage you to check out the nominees, as you’ll probably find a lot of interesting weblogs you might not have seen before. (Even if they are accordion-deficient lesser blogs. Can’t eat caviar all the time, you know.)