The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Found via Hezi Hershkovitz. Click the photo to see the source.

It’s a simple, cheap idea for livening up an otherwise dull wall at the office, and it also points out the locations of the fire equipment.

Adrian and Mysterious D — also known as A plus D — are the creators of Bootie, the worldwide series of club events featuring the best, most danceable bootleg mashups. I’ve had the pleasure of catching their Seattle gig at Chop Suey back in February 2011, when they let me hop on stage and play accordion on top of a mashup based on The Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams.

Every new year, they assemble their “mixtape” of the best mashups of the previous year, and this year is no exception. They’ve put together an exceptionally catchy set of mashups from 2013, which you can listen to below:

Here’s the list of tracks in the “mixtape”:

1. Bootie Intro 2013 – ENTYME
2. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ft. Wanz vs. Dr. Dre & Rasmus Hedegaard – The Next Episode In The Thrift Shop – ABADER000
3. M83 vs. Rihanna vs. TLC vs. Seal vs. Carly Rae Jepsen vs. Shirley Bassey vs. Incubus vs. The Eagles – Crazy Diamonds In The Midnight Scrubs – DJ SCHMOLLI vs. LOBSTERDUST
4. Daft Punk ft. Pharell Williams vs. Justin Timberlake vs. System Of A Down – Bring Your Own Lucky Suit & Tie – THE HOOD INTERNET vs. LOBSTERDUST
5. Vanilla Ice vs. Robin Thicke ft. Pharrell Williams & T.I. – Blurred Ice – ED HOME
6. Nine Inch Nails vs. Carly Rae Jepsen – Call Me A Hole – POMDETER
7. Stevie Nicks vs. Avicii – Stand Me Up – DJ TRIPP
8. Icona Pop ft. Charli XCX vs. Zedd ft. Foxes – I Love Clarity – DJ SCHMOLLI
9. Pitbull ft. TJR vs. Lipps Inc. vs. Ram Jam vs. Daft Punk – Funky Black Party Starter – DJ TRIPP
10. Backstreet Boys vs. will.i.am ft. Justin Bieber – #iwantthatPOWER – ENTYME
11. Red Hot Chili Peppers vs. DJs From Mars – Otherside (Bootleg Club Mix) – DJs FROM MARS
12. Blur vs. Sia vs. will.i.am vs. Britney Spears vs. Icona Pop vs. Major Lazer vs. Ellie Goulding – Bring The Action – LOBSTERDUST
13. Taylor Swift vs. Hardwell – Trapped In Trouble – MASHD ‘N KUTCHER
14. Miley Cyrus vs. Calvin Harris – Wrecking So Close – LOBSTERDUST
15. The Outfield vs. Calvin Harris ft. Ellie Goulding – Your Love I Need – MADMIXMUSTANG
16. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis ft. Ray Dalton vs. Bob Marley vs. Elton John vs. Ludacris vs. The Doors vs. Styx vs. Pink – Can’t Hold Roboto – MASHUP-GERMANY vs. LOBSTERDUST vs. MASHMIKE
17. Imagine Dragons vs. Of Monsters and Men – Time For Our Little Talks – KILL_MR_DJ
18. Sex Pistols vs. The Velvettes – He Was Really Sayin’ Anarchy – CHOCOMANG
19. Lorde vs. Beck vs. Lil Jon – Royal Losers – DJ TRIPP
20. Katy Perry vs. Nirvana vs. B.O.B ft. Bruno Mars – Nothing On Roar Bloom – SHAHAR VARSHAL
21. Massive Attack vs. Muse – Teardrop Madness – DJ Y ALIAS JY
22. Modern English vs. Rolling Stones vs. John Lennon vs. Screaming Trees – You Can’t Always Melt A Dollar Bill – DJ MIKEA

You can download the entire “mixtape” as a single MP3 file or as individual MP3 files from the Best of Bootie 2013 page.

The inside cover of the 1988 Frosh Primer, which was mailed to incoming engineering students at Queen’s University during the summer of 1988.
Click the scan to see it at full size.

“Hey, Joey,” said Stéphane Germain, “how would you like to write the Frosh Primer?“

It was the spring of 1988, and I was an engineering student at Crazy Go Nuts University. The school year was winding down, but since we would return in the fall as second-year students, we’d be in charge of initiating the incoming first-year students, colloquially referred to as “the frosh”. Orientation Week, better known as “Frosh Week”, was a more civilized version of the opening scenes of Animal House, and a good chunk of is was run by the second-year students (and it’s wonderful, despite what professional wet blanket Russell Smith has to say about it).

Stéphane was Chief FREC, where FREC was short for Frosh Rules Enforcement Committee, the collection of second-year engineering students tasked with initiating the first-years. An incoming student’s first taste of Frosh Week was the Frosh Primer, which served as both a guide to the university and the orientation process, and advance mocking (“You’re so dumb, frosh!”).

“I’d love to, Steph,” I replied. While the previous year’s was amusing, I thought I could do a much better job. “What kind of editorial leeway do I have?”

“Lots. Just use your own common sense,” he said, with a look that suggested that he was beginning to see an oncoming disaster.

“Hey,” I said, “I just want to go for amusing, and maybe tone down some of the stuff so that the incoming girls don’t regret going into engineering.” We had a record number of women in our class, and it seemed as though there’d be even more in the following year. “And I want to drop the use of the word ‘homo’ as an insult.”

“Sure,” he said, looking relieved. He may have commissioned the Primer to the closest thing our year had to a “Bluto” from Animal House, or “Van Wilder” from the film of the same name, but even at that age, I knew the Golden Rule of Funny: if it bends, it’s comedy, if it breaks, it isn’t.

“What’s my page limit?” I asked.

“Don’t go above 50,” he said. The previous Frosh Primer was 28 pages, but he knew I loved to write.

“I want to put in cartoons, and bring in a writing staff,” I stated. Back then, I was known not as an accordion player, but as a cartoonist.

“Sure. Do you need beer for the staff?”

I didn’t expect the offer. “Four cases,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, without even batting an eye. He handed me enough money for 96 bottles of beer.

“Just make it good, use your better judgement, and remember: the frosh must be mocked,” he said.

“Frosh are dumb,” I said, reprising the mantra.

I spent the spring and early part of the summer working on the Frosh Primer, making use of a couple of then-new tools and technologies. The first was a desktop publishing application made by Xerox called Ventura Publisher. It didn’t run on Windows, but a GUI called GEM (most PCs were still running command-line DOS back then). It looked like this:

The other was a relatively new piece of equipment: a laser printer. It was the size of a small photocopier, could print a letter-size page every two minutes, and sounded like a jet taking off every time it cranked out a page.

Time and resources on the laser printer were precious, so they asked me if I could keep it down to 36 pages of laser-printed material. Since I was making a 48-page booklet, the remaining 12 pages would have to be done using something else. Since I was a cartoonist and had full editorial control, I simply decided to fill those remaining 12 will comics and illustrations.

The table of contents was the last thing to get done, and by then, I’d used up my allotment of laser prints. So, I just cartooned it instead:

The table of contents for the 1988 Frosh Primer.
Click the scan to see it at full size.

I decided to start the primer with comics rather than text, as I thought it’d be more fun, and allow for some really silly storytelling and frosh-mockery. I wrote, pencilled, inked and lettered the comic, titled I Used to be a God, whose purpose was to point out to the frosh that while they may have been hot stuff in their final year of high school, they were mere frosh now. And they were dumb. The comic was accented with sidebars written and illustrated by my good buddy George Scriban.

As for the triangle-shaped eyes on the characters, that was an affectation of mine. It came from trying to borrow Phil Foglio’s style from his comics in Dragon magazine in the early 1980s, and eventually morphed into their own thing.

While doing some cleaning up for my move out of my High Park apartment to the wilds of Etobicoke (“Rob Ford Country!”), I found my copy of the Frosh Primer and decided to scan and share some of it. Some of the references firmly rooted in 1988, but I think the comic still holds up. Of course, I’d say that. Anyhow, read and enjoy!

Click the scan to see it at full size.

Click the scan to see it at full size.

Click the scan to see it at full size.

Click the scan to see it at full size.

Click the scan to see it at full size.

Rub a dub dub!
Click the photo to see it at full size.

I found these photo over at Mom’s place and decided that they were too cute not to post. Also, there’s no harm in owning the search results for the term “Joey deVilla nude photos” — it may come in handy someday.

These photos were taken in the Philippines and are dated January 1969, when I was just over a year old. Enjoy!

Ladies, please! There’s plenty of me to go around.
Click the photo to see it at full size.

Just chillin’. Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.
Click the photo to see it at full size.

Click the image to see it at full size.

This lovely bit of bat-artwork is by Dave Collinson, and you can buy a print from him for just under fifteen bucks!

In case you’re not familiar with the theme from the 1960s Batman show, which you need to know to get the joke, here it is:

And for those of you who say that there should be eight, and not just four, nanas in the picture, someone on Reddit’s already taken care of that:

Click the image to see it at full size.

It’s the first Saturday night of the new year, so it’s only appropriate for me to post this infographic that explains quite simply what to say and do when stopped by the cops. Most avoidable arrests, as the infographic quite nicely points out, occur from police trickery and intimidation leading to an individual’s consenting to a search or admitting guilt, both when they didn’t have to. The general rule is “Be polite, ask if you’re free to leave often, and say as little as possible”.

The material on the infographic is consistent with other material that I’ve read, but keep in mind that:

• I am not a lawyer, and this shouldn’t be considered to be legal advice from Yours Truly,
• The material is mainly applicable to the United States. Here in Canada, the laws are similar, but not exactly the same. Can any Canadian legal experts comment on what’s applicable here?

Here it is — You Have the Right to Remain Out of Prison (click it to see it at full size):

Click the infographic to see it at full size.

Creative Commons inforgraphic created by Robert Couse-Baker.

A new year is a good excuse to freshen up your music collection, and these two “best of 2013” lists are excellent — and better still, free — ways to do so. If your tastes run towards the alternative and indie, you’ll enjoy these picks; if they don’t, they might not work for you.

• Said the Gramophone’s best songs of 2013: Said the Gramophone is a blog with writers based in both Toronto and Montreal, and it’s one of the oldest still-running music blogs around. Their blog is about two things and two things only: finding good tunes, and writing about them. This collection features 100 songs, and while mostly indie and alt rock, they’re not afraid to throw in some top 40 as well.
• Rollo and Grady’s best songs of 2013: The L.A.-based music licensing, management and production company known as Rollo and Grady have also put together a “top 100 songs of 2013” list, which leans mostly towards guitar-based indie and alt rock.

Not only can you listen to these “best of 2013” selections online, you can also download and add them to your collections! I don’t know how long the songs will be available online, so give them a listen soon, and if you like them, download them immediately.