The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

I’ve been taking care of some programming projects as well as a major overhaul to my other blog, The Happiest Geek on Earth.

There’s be more stuff soon, but first I’m off to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving lunch.

There’s work aplenty to be done, and most of it is about getting work to be done. It’s meta-work!

Anyhow, all this work means that today’s entry — which is a long one detailing an appearance on a TV show on which I have appeared but have never seen — will have to wait until later tonight.

The party for the big 3-5 will take place on Saturday, November 9th at Big Trouble in Little China, better known as my house. Details and invitations to follow shortly.

Yes, that’s right: I will be turning 35 years old on November 5th

— but since that falls on a Tuesday, I’m having the party on the

following Saturday, the 9th. If you’ve been to the last two at this

place, you’ll know what kind of bacchanal I’m talking about.

How do I keep my youthful appearance? Two words: clean living.

Okay, maybe not clean living. How ’bout just living?

One of the online comics I’ve been reading for a very long time is Bruno, a strip written and drawn by Chris Baldwin. A critic from Newsbytes describes Bruno as “widely recognized as one of the best realized comic characters on the World Wide Web,” and it’s true. She’s been around for years, which has given Baldwin pleanty of time to turn her into a messed-up, perpetually sad, confused, directionless, misery-seeking missile.

Which makes her rather true-to-life — I think we all know at least one Bruno — and an entertaining read to boot.

Some Bruno comics:

• Week of September 16th: Telling the boyfriend that she took the “exotic dancer” job. You get the feeling that she wanted him to take it much worse than he actually did.
• Week of September 23rd: Actually, Bruno, it is your neurotic need to be miserable.
• Week of September 30th: “Sean, who are you? My other friends, I can define who they are, why I like them, what they do…you’re just…Sean.” Where’s my long-distance slapping device?!
• Week of October 7th: Here it comes…

If only Bruno would start listening to her cat: “I think you should stop being a neurotic, narcissistic nut, okay? No? Ah well…worth a try.”

(Cats never say or do anything sensible, but it is a fictitious cat, after all.)

Cake

Short Skirt Long Jacket

[Key of D]

I want a girl with a mind like a diamond

I want a girl who knows what’s best

I want a girl with shoes that cut

And eyes that burn like cigarettes

I want a girl with the right allocations

Who’s fast, thorough, and sharp as a tack

She’s playing with her jewelry

She’s putting up her hair

She’s touring the facilities

And picking up the slack

I want a girl with a short skirt and a loooooooooong jacket…

I want a girl who gets up early

I want a girl who stays up late

I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity

Who uses a machete, to cut her red tape

With fingernails that shine like justice

And a voice that is dark like tainted glass

She is fast, thorough, and sharp as a tack

She’s touring the facilities and picking up the slack

I want a girl with a short skirt and a long, long jacket

I want a girl with smooth liquidation

I want a girl with the right dividends

At City Bank we will meet accidentally

We’ll start to talk when she borrows my pen

She wants a car with a cupholder armrest

She wants a car that will get her there

She’s changing her name

From Kitty to Karen

She’s trading her MG for a white Chrysler LeBaron

I want a girl with a short skirt and a loooooooooong jacket

A conversation at the photo shoot for Star Wars publicity stills, early 1977:

Photographer: Hey Mark, we need to take some test shots. You don’t have to pose for these ones — just stand there.

Mark Hamill: Lemme pose just once. (Strikes pose in photo above). Here, how’s this?

Photographer’s assistant (whispering to Photographer): Jeezus, he looks like one of the Village People.

Mark Hamill: Beg pardon?

Photographer’s assistant: Uh…I said this photo…should…um…be in People! You know, the magazine…

Photographer (faking British accent): Capital idea, old top!

Mark Hamill: Uh, maybe not, guys. I’d appreciate it if this test photo never got out.

Photographer: I promise, it’ll never leave this studio.

Photographer’s assistant: Of course, one day we’ll have some

kind of global data network where ordinary people will exchange

messages, news and photos like this on computers small and cheap enough

to be in every home. Then this shot will travel like wildfire.

Mark Hamill: That’s pretty far out. It sounds like you’ve already seen Star Wars.

Photographer: (Turns to assistant) You’ve been reading too much sci-fi. (Turns to Mark Hamill) I need one more test shot. How ’bout you moon the camera?

My friends Keitha and Sean (Sean has the blog House of Hot Sauce) were moving to England but needed some help getting there. The airline they were taking allows each passenger 20 kilos of luggage; anything more costs $5 a kilo.

20 kilos of stuff isn’t very much when you’re uprooting and moving to another country, especially one where things are very expensive. Using their bathroom scale, Keitha and Sean found out that their combined luggage weighed about 75 kilos — almost double their total weight allowance.

Being a resourceful couple, they launched an “Adopt a Kilo” program. For a mere five dollars, anyone could sponsor a kilo of their excess luggage. In return, the adoptive “parent” would receive a photograph and status report of their kilo. Being the kind of guy who sometimes plays his accordion beside panhandlers and lets them keep the whole take, I adopted a kilo. Today, I received a photo of that kilo, which turned out to be Sean’s collection of t-shirts:

The t-shirts that I like the most are the Clark Hall Pub ones (the ones marked “clark”) — at Queen’s University, it was my home away from home, where I manned the DJ booth for 5 very lovely (and loud) years. Sean and Keitha were regulars. The Tick ones are pretty cool, too.

If you’re going on an extended journey and need to save every penny, you might want to try something similar to the “Adopt a Kilo” program.