Happy Holidays!

As some of my readers know, I’m a huge Barenaked Ladies fan. And that’s why I’m going on a BNL cruise in the new year!

I’m getting excited as the date approaches. Recently I got an email from the cruise company. There will be some events on board that will have limited capacity. So the company got us to list the events in order of preference. The attendees will be decided by lottery and the event they get chosen for will be determined by availability and preference. So here is the list of events, in order of my preference:

• Wine Tasting with Steven Page
• Grilled Cheese Sandwiches and Trivia with Kevin Hearn
• Songwriters Panel
• Guitar Hero with Ed Robertson

Guitar Hero sounds like lots of fun, but I know I will just embarrass myself - hence it being last. Hopefully I get into one of them! If not, there’s always the naked photo!

I added a little widget that plays the song “Maybe You’re Right” by Barenaked Ladies. I really enjoy this song, as it captures the way you fight yourself over your opinions when other people do no accept them. Do yo just concede and tell yourself that you are right, or do you speak out? That’s my take on the song anyways.

If this is truly annoying, I will take it off. I know sometimes the web can be full of little trinkets, and I don’t want to overwhlem my readers. So let me know.

It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L’Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.

On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

Washington Post

Interesting. I know that even real “street musicians” that are great at their art, have trouble gathering crowds. I think that busking is an art of it’s own though, it’s much different than being on a traditional stage.

I want this for Easter! If rabbits can fit into a holiday about the resurrection of Christ, then so can accordions!

Hit all the right notes and get the crowd on their feet waving their beer steins in unison - you are an accordion hero! Includes all the great accordion melodies you’ve ever gotten really, really drunk to…from Ein Munchen Steht Ein Hofbrauhaus to Rock You Like A Hurricane.

Accordion Hero comes with one Gloss Black USB accordion controller. Kirschrot (Cherry Red) controller sold separately for two-player squeeze action. Awesomely rad sticker sheet included.

Some of the songs included:

• Leichtensteiner Polka, Traditional
• The Bowling King, Those Darn Accordions
  
• Can’t Touch This, M.C. Hammer
• Ya Ya Wunderbar, Frankie Yankovic
• Pictures of Matchstick Men, Status Quo
• In Heaven There Is No Beer, Traditional
• Ride The Lightning, Metallica

Accordion Hero