The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

If you like dance music, you’ll enjoy DJ Magazine’s new-ish YouTube series, Game Changers, which takes a look at the creators and making of “the seminal tracks that changed dance music forever”. The latest installment in the series covers one Norman Cook — better known to the world as “big beat” DJ Fatboy Slim — and his 1999 hit Praise You:

Praise You is an important tune for me, as it’s one of the first songs I played on the very first day I took the accordion out onto the streets of Toronto. It’s also the song I played at the wedding where I met Julie and Amanda, who put out a call on Craigslist for witnesses at their wedding:

Word about the wedding got around, and the Toronto Star ended up covering the story, as did Mathew Ingram and MetaFilter.

I’m pleased to see Praise You — which I often slip in as an addendum to Happy Birthday when I play it — getting some love again after all these years.

Also worth watching on Game Changers: their piece on DJ Gerald “A Guy Called Gerald” Simpson and his creation, Voodoo Ray, one of my favourite tracks from the house music era:

It’s the first day of spring, so it’s time to enjoy this classic Canadian ditty: The First Day of Spring, by The Gandharvas:

This has never happened to me on a flight, but if it ever does, I reserve the right to play “This little piggy went to market…”

Click the photo to see the source article.

I’ll probably wait for the initial mania to die down or go during the middle of the day — that’s the beauty of having reasonably high rank and a telecommuter in one’s organization — but if you’re in the Accordion Bay area and are dying for Two Buck Chuck, exotic chocolate at Hershey prices, and a slew of interesting sauces, you’re probably already making plans to go to the grand opening of Tampa’s first Trader Joe’s this Friday. It’s located at 3808 W Swann Ave., just west of Dale Mabry, at its regular daily hours, which are 8 a.m. to 9 p.m..

It will have all of 70 parking spaces, about two dozen of which are designated for compact cars. In anticipation of Trader Joe’s mania and some likely asshattery, the City of Tampa is dispatching a half dozen police officers to help direct traffic and keep the shenanigans to a minimum, and the store itself has hired three off-duty cops to keep the peace on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. There will be gridlock, and hopefully, there wont be much more than that.

My advice: wait for the hype to die down in a couple of weeks. If you can’t do that, could you pick me up a bottle of their house port?

Find out more about the grand opening at the Tampa Bay Times.

I work for GSG from my home office in Accordion Bay, an arrangement that gives me enough flex to carve out time for mid-morning or mid-afternoon exercise sessions. It was a lovely Florida spring day at 24C/75F, and there was just enough time to squeeze in a quick half-hour ride before an afternoon teleconference. My neck of the woods in Tampa offers some lovely views…

…and as you can see, I’m always happy to break away from the desk and ride, even if only for a little bit:

I never used a ride-tracking app until I moved here and got T-Mobile’s all-you-can-eat super-unlimited mobile data plan. I’m enjoying MapMyRide:

I had to keep today’s ride down to a half-hour, but managed to cover just shy of 6 miles, averaging 12 mph, which is slow for road biking, but speedy for sidewalk biking. It’s the complete opposite of what you should be doing, but this is the near-suburbs of Tampa: biking on the road in most places is asking to be turned into chunky salsa. Luckily (?), the sidewalks here are all but deserted, and many cyclists here have adopted them as bike paths. It makes for slower going, but in this neck of the woods,it’s the only non-suicidal approach.

Very stylin’ bling you got goin’ there, m’man.

…are our faaaabulous colour-coded bills, which reduce the chance of error. There’ve been times when I’ve nearly made the terribly expensive mistake of handing out the wrong drab, mono-colored US denomination as a tip.