The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

C5 restaurant in the Royal Ontario Museum.

Accordion City gets the spotlight in the City Life section of the September 2008 edition of National Geographic Traveler.

Here’s the introduction to their piece:

Buzzing with 140 singular neighborhoods and a soundtrack of 150 languages, Toronto is anything but straight-laced. New architecturally bold museums, a celebrity-packed international film festival, and top-notch dining give the city plenty to brag about. But even with a population of five million in the greater metro area, Canada’s largest city boasts an emerald netherworld of parks and ravines for unpeopled moments with nature. Before a visit to Toronto, browse Traveler’s picks for the ultimate blogs, podcasts, newspapers, magazines, maps, and more essential resources.

Included in their list of notable blogs: this one!

The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the Twenty-First Century
Born in the Philippines, Toronto resident and rock-and-roll accordion player (no, that’s not an oxymoron) Joey deVilla presents an assortment of local highlights with his unique and insidery voice. Heed his picks for the city’s best burger and soft-serve as well as festivals worth attending, sprinkled among his personal politics and policy rants.

Go check it out — they cover Toronto’s blogs, podcasts, newspapers, magazines, maps, books and movies.

Want to know what’s open in Toronto on Labour Day 2012? Click here!

“Neighbourhood 6” in Vaughan Mills Mall.

According to the Toronto Star and other sources, here’s what’s open and closed in Accordion City today…

What’s Closed

• Most department and retail stores, with the exception of the malls that are open for the holiday (see below)
• Major grocery stores (some smaller ones will be open)
• Liquor and beer stores
• Government offices
• Banks
• Post offices
• Libraries

What’s Open

• Eaton Centre
• Pacific Mall
• Vaughan Mills
• Some Bloor/Yorkville stores
• Some Yonge Street stores
• Movie theatres
• CN Tower
• Canadian National Exhibition / Air Show
• Royal Ontario Museum

The TTC and GO Transit will be operating on holiday schedules.

Want to know what’s open in Toronto on Labour Day 2012? Click here!

Bonus Reading: Malls

As you can see, three of the items in the “What’s Open” list are malls. If you don’t like the idea of shopping at malls, indie comic artist Peter Bagge — a recovering mall-hater — has Malls, a comic that might make you see them in a slightly different light. Here’s an excerpt:

An excerpt from Malls by Peter Bagge.
Click the image to read the full comic.

These are even more wrong than gummi lighthouses…

Update: Even more Hannah Montana gummi wrongness here.

This is the final weekend of the Canadian National Exhibition here in Accordion City, which means that it’s the last chance for most locals to get the wonderfully deep-fried, sugar coated, bad-for-you but oh-so-tasty Tiny Tom Donuts. I’ve loved these ever since I started going to the CNE as a kid, not just for the donuts themselves, but also for watching them getting made on their assembly line:

You’ve probably heard reports of the “Obama $3 bills” being passed around by Republican supporters in which Barack Obama is wearing an Arab headdress.

It’s meant to insinuate that he’s a Muslim, secret or otherwise, and apparently they’re all plotting to bring about the destruction of America.

(I remember there being some kind of commandment that says not to bear false witness against your neighbor. Since the Republican Party are purportedly big on the Ten Commandments, maybe that one has recently been repealed.)

In keeping with their inability to fight back against Republican campaign tricks, the Democrats’ response has been rather lame: a couple of statements expressing disappointment in this cheesy tactic. I thought I’d do them a favor and teach them a thing or two about winning a war of memes by creating this template for a bill featuring John McCain. Better still, I don’t have to tell any lies.

So, Democrats, take this idea and run with it: the “McCain Keating $5 bill”:

I didn’t have much time to whip this up and I’m not a graphic artist by trade, so if you can do better, by all means, please feel free to improve upon my work and spread it around.

Keating Five?

You know, as in the Savings and Loan Crisis, which cost the American taxpayer about $125 billion (and in late ’80s/early ’90s dollars).

See McCainKeatingFive.com, AZCentral.com’s writeup of McCain’s involvement with the Keating Five, the Wikipedia entry for “Keating Five” and the Phoenix New Times article titled McCain: The Most Reprehensible of the Keating Five.

If you ever meet someone who’s not sure of the difference, you can always use this picture as a visual aid:

Click the chart to see a larger version.
Chart courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.