The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

What happened when the production team at a local cable TV channel in Whitehorse was told “hey, you’ve got to make an ad promoting our broadcast of city council meetings…and try to make it look interesting”? They got creative and gave their promo a wonderfully over-the-top “based on the best-selling John Grisham novel” treatment using only stock footage and library music:

This is brilliant, and it’s an idea that local cable TV here in Toronto should borrow. We’ve got waaaay more interesting footage to work with, including this “never gets old” gem:

Either that, or he’s found an exercise that gives you the elusive ten-pack, or “metric abs”!

This and many other things that suggest that people should take a break from dating all appear in a funny/sad Buzzfeed article titled 30 People Who Should Have Their Dating Privileges Revoked.

I spend most of my days working for a client in the Bloor and Sherbourne area, which makes for a nice bike run to and from “the office” on the bike pictured above. By taking my bike, I get gym time — the aerobic part, anyway — and an almost cost-free commute, all at once!

Here’s yours truly at the start of the ride:

I had a pretty straight run of green lights from Bloor and Keele all the way to Bloor and Shaw:

…then got a quick look at Christie Pits…

…got a good look at the Honest Ed’s sign, because it might not be around for much longer…

…and then had a good run of green lights from Bathurst to Bedford.

That’s when I saw this gentleman on his electric bike. C’mon, kid, you’re young, have both legs and seem to be in shape — either get a moped, motorbike or motorized wheelchair, or just stop being lazy and do some actual pedalling! 

From this point on, I can practically coast into the office:

If you read National Lampoon back in the 1970s and ’80s, you probably saw ad like the one below near the back of the magazine:

Back before Neil Strauss’ The Game (which I wrote about in My Invitation to Become a Pickup Artist) and the rest of the Pickup Artist and Seduction communities, before the Red Pill Reddite, before evolutionary psychology douchebags and before the “alpha male” sites in an increasingly whiny section of the ‘net calling itself the “manosphere” — before the current glut of how-to-date-and-live resources for guys where the overarching philosophy seems to align with Peter Griffin’s (“Women are not people. They are devices built by the Lord Jesus Christ for our entertainment”) — before all that, there was Eric Weber’s How to Pick Up Girls.

Written when it was still a relatively new thing to approach a woman to whom you hadn’t been introduced, How to Pick Up Girls made tantalizing promises of techniques that you could use to have the ladies eating out of the palm of your hand.

There was enough demand for the book to justify the creation of an 40-minute album, in which you can listen to people in various settings — at the beach, walking in the dog, in a clothes store, at the library — acting out textbook-perfect pickups.

The scenes sound as if they’re being acted out by “Larry” from Three’s Company (he was Jack Tripper’s womanizing buddy who lived int he apartment upstairs), and while they may have seemed a bit sleazy back then, in today’s pretty ungentlemanly dudebro/douchebro-driven dating scene, they now have a retro charm, and they remain high-larious. I’ve shared the album on SoundCloud, and you can listen to the entire thing below:

If you prefer Picking Up Girls Made Easy in single servings, the folks at WFMU have broken the pickups into individual MP3s, which you can listen to below:

• The Street Pick Up (6:00)
• Love In The Library (5:11)
• Singles Bar Action (6:12)
• Women’s Clothing Store Pick Up (6:39)
• The Ballet Is A Ball (4:08)
• Museum Pick Up (5:42)
• Walking The Dog (5:53)
• Pick Up At The Beach (5:46)

A Bra for Dudes

Back when I worked at Shopify, I racked my brains trying to think up an idea for an online store, but couldn’t come up with one that hadn’t already been done by hundreds of other vendors with a considerable head start. I once joked with my co-worker Edward that I should sell “manties” — panties for men into that sort of kink — and now I know that I wasn’t that far off from the next big thing in online shopping:

Japan, still at the vanguard of exporting high weirdness to the rest of the world, is the home of the online shop Rakuten, which boasts page after page of dudes’ over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders. Here’s a screenshot:

Rakuten’s customers come from all over the world. According to Rocket News 24 (my go-to site for all sorts of Asian WTF), a satisfied customer from England says that wearing a men’s bra makes him feel “relieved and protected”. Another from Italy talked about the back-support benefits of the male brassiere. Other men say it feels like a sort of security blanket.

Before these guys discovered the “BROssiere’s” benefits, they had to have some reason to try them on first. Rocket News 24 reports a couple of reasons, including losing a bet, an excuse that sounds as lame as explaining to the folks at the emergency room that you just happened to be at home in the nude, fell over backwards, and that is the perfectly innocent explanation why you now have a beer bottle up your ass.

If any of you can read Japanese, could you please tell me what’s this ad says? I like Topless Robot’s interpretation of its text as “Halo of Awesome”, but I’m sure that’s not an accurate translation:

Ironically, for all the feelings of safety, support, and security that the male bra provides its wearers, it’s also a source of great anxiety. In the world of men, where an effective insult is “You know what we calls guys like you? Chicks!“, I’m sure a male bra wearer, like a Nickelback fan, secret furry or Surface RT owner, lives in perpetual shame and fear of being found out.

The “Male Bra” Segment from The World of Golden Eggs

How did I not know of the existence of the anime series The World of Golden Eggs? It’s every little bit as twisted as you’d imagine a Japanese comedy series set in a midwestern rural American high school could be. It’s so very, very wrong.

Here’s a segment from The World of Golden Eggs in which one bodybuilding jock asks another why he’s wearing a bra. “It’s not a bra! It’s a supporter for my pecs!” replies the other, in this sequence in which they beat a joke to death much better than Family Guy ever has:

If you’re in Accordion City and looking for something to do tomorrow after work, I recommend checking out Patio Friday, a loosely-organized gathering of people at a randomly-selected bar patio somewhere in Toronto. It’s normally organized by Toronto graphic designer Lee Dale, but he’s out of the country this summer. Luckily for us, Lady Miss Verna “Lake Louise” Kulish took the reins and got the Patio Friday ball rolling this summer. Verna won’t be able to make it this week, but she deputized RJ “World’s Nicest Lawyer” Moorhouse to run the show this week, and he has selected the patio at the Town Crier Pub (115 John Street), located in that row of pubs on John Street across from Chapters. If you’re reading this article, you’re invited! I’ll be there.

The fun starts at 4 p.m. and is reserved under the names “Patio Friday” and “Robert Moorhouse”. It runs until whenever we decide it runs until. The first Patio Friday of this summer took took place at Remy’s, ran until closing time and featured me entertaining lots of ladies:

Always give a lady an accordion lesson if she asks for one.

Last week’s Patio Friday took place at the Kennedy Public House near Bloor West Village and ran until about 11. It was great fun as well:

And here are some shots of Patio Fridays from previous years, courtesy of Lee Dale:

Once again, if you’re looking for something fun to do after work tomorrow, go hit Patio Friday!