Wednesday - Accordions and Kings
Jun. 14th, 2006 03:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, I was thinking about Joe, the Brainiac in my office. I'm not just calling him that, it's official: the folks at Yahoo! Answers have deemed him a Brainiac and flown him out to New York City to sit in a building shaped like a giant purple brain and answer questions for them this week. The only reason he got to be an official Brainiac is because he has a competitive streak, and when he started answering questions on Yahoo! Answers he gave long, insightful answers with links to his sources, which resulted in 55% of the answers he picked being deemed "best" and getting him more points. All of us in the office were playing for a period of time, but the rest of us got bored before Joe did. He also had a better strategy than the rest of us. He answered questions about things that he happened to know a lot about. I answered questions like, "What would you do for a Klondike bar?" (For the record, I got Best Answer for that one; the problem is, not enough people asked it.)
After a while, he had such a lead in the number of points he had accrued over the rest of us that we had no chance of catching up, so we stopped trying. I was in 2nd place in our office next to Joe, but I was still at least a thousand points behind him. I don't like playing any game I can't win, so I closed up my browser and got back to work.
If you go to http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/asktheplanet/brain.html and click on "Meet the Brainiacs," he is AstroJoe888, on Team B. His Yahoo Avatar actually does look a little bit like him, or at least shows what he might have looked like at the age of 14. Yahoo Avatars are not exactly accurate depictions. If they were, they wouldn't be so popular. If you click on his name, it will take you to a list of the questions he has asked and answered so far. Because he has answered so many this week, his percentage of Best Answers is down to 48% (as of the last time I checked).
Joe is probably the nicest guy in the world, or close to it. He is also kind of dorky and a nerd, but in our 4-person office that means he fits in just fine. The only thing that makes him more of a nerd than the rest of us is that he plays the accordion. It's one thing to work for a software company, to like corny jokes, and to not just watch Sci-Fi but to talk about it in public; playing the accordion is the kind of thing that makes other nerds rag on you. And do we ever.
We found out about the accordion thing the day he brought a large, rectangular case into the office. We, his co-workers, gathered around it and stared. "What's that thing?" we asked.
"An accordion," Joe replied, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to bring into the office.
"You're kidding."
"Nope."
"Why do you have an accordion?"
"I'm borrowing it from a friend. I don't have one in this key and he's letting me use his."
That sealed it. Not only did he play the accordion, he had accordion-playing friends as well. It would have taken superhuman powers of self restraint not to tease him at this point. I do not have superhuman powers of self restraint.
"Does your wife know you play the accordion?" I asked him.
"She does," he replied.
"I bet you didn't tell her until after she married you, did you? Guitar players get the girls. No girl knowingly marries an accordion player." His wife later confirmed that she did not learn that he plays the accordion until after they married. She said it was too late to back out at that point. Yes, we had this conversation in front of Joe. His wife also does not have superhuman powers of self restraint.
The funny thing is, the accordion has been very good to him. When he started playing the open mics (beginning with the one that used to happen close to my house, after I told him about it), he showed up with a guitar at first. He is an average guitar player; it's not painful to listen to him, but I wouldn't pay money to hear him, either. The other guitar players didn't show much interest in him. But when he mentioned the accordion, they all wanted to be his friend. A lot of homegrown Texas music has influences from both Tejano and Zydeco, both of which use a lot of accordion; good accordion players are in demand in Houston, but hard to find because who wants to play an instrument that has no chance in helping you get laid?
He plays with a couple of bands now, and gets money for his trouble. He likes to be called Astro Joe, because he is a fanatical fan of the Houston Astros. At the office, we call him Squeezebox Garcia, which annoys him more than a little bit. No one in my office, it turns out, has superhuman powers of self restraint, except for maybe Joe himself. He is the only person I know who has been able to stay on the Atkins Diet for the last 2 years after it helped him lose 70 pounds. That, and he had the discipline to follow his heart and take accordion lesson, knowing it could only lead to ridicule and wouldn't help him score.
Watching the live feed from Yahoo yesterday, we got to see them interview Joe live. As he was listening off the kinds of questions he preferred to answer (including baseball and questions about the Atkins Diet), he mentioned music, as well.
"I play seven different musical instruments," he told the interviewer. We in the office cried foul; he was making himself sound cooler than he actually is. Four of those instruments are accordions in different keys (EAD, FBbEb, GCF and ADG) and would only count as one instrument to the minds of most people. When he comes in on Monday, we are planning to give him a hard time on this account. You lose coolness points as a musician when over half of the instruments play are different kinds of diatomic accordions, or at least you should.
Still, he can hold it over our heads that he is so smart that he got to go on an all-expense paid trip to New York City and was issued a t-shirt proclaiming him to be a "Yahoo! Brainiac." Which means that he is not just one of the four nerds working in this office. This makes him Lord King Head Honcho Nerd, playing his own fanfare on an accordion.
Of course I'm jealous. Who wouldn't be jealous of that?
After a while, he had such a lead in the number of points he had accrued over the rest of us that we had no chance of catching up, so we stopped trying. I was in 2nd place in our office next to Joe, but I was still at least a thousand points behind him. I don't like playing any game I can't win, so I closed up my browser and got back to work.
If you go to http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/asktheplanet/brain.html and click on "Meet the Brainiacs," he is AstroJoe888, on Team B. His Yahoo Avatar actually does look a little bit like him, or at least shows what he might have looked like at the age of 14. Yahoo Avatars are not exactly accurate depictions. If they were, they wouldn't be so popular. If you click on his name, it will take you to a list of the questions he has asked and answered so far. Because he has answered so many this week, his percentage of Best Answers is down to 48% (as of the last time I checked).
Joe is probably the nicest guy in the world, or close to it. He is also kind of dorky and a nerd, but in our 4-person office that means he fits in just fine. The only thing that makes him more of a nerd than the rest of us is that he plays the accordion. It's one thing to work for a software company, to like corny jokes, and to not just watch Sci-Fi but to talk about it in public; playing the accordion is the kind of thing that makes other nerds rag on you. And do we ever.
We found out about the accordion thing the day he brought a large, rectangular case into the office. We, his co-workers, gathered around it and stared. "What's that thing?" we asked.
"An accordion," Joe replied, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to bring into the office.
"You're kidding."
"Nope."
"Why do you have an accordion?"
"I'm borrowing it from a friend. I don't have one in this key and he's letting me use his."
That sealed it. Not only did he play the accordion, he had accordion-playing friends as well. It would have taken superhuman powers of self restraint not to tease him at this point. I do not have superhuman powers of self restraint.
"Does your wife know you play the accordion?" I asked him.
"She does," he replied.
"I bet you didn't tell her until after she married you, did you? Guitar players get the girls. No girl knowingly marries an accordion player." His wife later confirmed that she did not learn that he plays the accordion until after they married. She said it was too late to back out at that point. Yes, we had this conversation in front of Joe. His wife also does not have superhuman powers of self restraint.
The funny thing is, the accordion has been very good to him. When he started playing the open mics (beginning with the one that used to happen close to my house, after I told him about it), he showed up with a guitar at first. He is an average guitar player; it's not painful to listen to him, but I wouldn't pay money to hear him, either. The other guitar players didn't show much interest in him. But when he mentioned the accordion, they all wanted to be his friend. A lot of homegrown Texas music has influences from both Tejano and Zydeco, both of which use a lot of accordion; good accordion players are in demand in Houston, but hard to find because who wants to play an instrument that has no chance in helping you get laid?
He plays with a couple of bands now, and gets money for his trouble. He likes to be called Astro Joe, because he is a fanatical fan of the Houston Astros. At the office, we call him Squeezebox Garcia, which annoys him more than a little bit. No one in my office, it turns out, has superhuman powers of self restraint, except for maybe Joe himself. He is the only person I know who has been able to stay on the Atkins Diet for the last 2 years after it helped him lose 70 pounds. That, and he had the discipline to follow his heart and take accordion lesson, knowing it could only lead to ridicule and wouldn't help him score.
Watching the live feed from Yahoo yesterday, we got to see them interview Joe live. As he was listening off the kinds of questions he preferred to answer (including baseball and questions about the Atkins Diet), he mentioned music, as well.
"I play seven different musical instruments," he told the interviewer. We in the office cried foul; he was making himself sound cooler than he actually is. Four of those instruments are accordions in different keys (EAD, FBbEb, GCF and ADG) and would only count as one instrument to the minds of most people. When he comes in on Monday, we are planning to give him a hard time on this account. You lose coolness points as a musician when over half of the instruments play are different kinds of diatomic accordions, or at least you should.
Still, he can hold it over our heads that he is so smart that he got to go on an all-expense paid trip to New York City and was issued a t-shirt proclaiming him to be a "Yahoo! Brainiac." Which means that he is not just one of the four nerds working in this office. This makes him Lord King Head Honcho Nerd, playing his own fanfare on an accordion.
Of course I'm jealous. Who wouldn't be jealous of that?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 09:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-14 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-15 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-15 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-15 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-15 06:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-16 03:20 am (UTC)Me, I'd like to rock out on the harp. I just wouldn't know where to purchase one.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-16 04:57 pm (UTC)Mostly, I've seen harps for sale online. Finding a site based in Australia might save you on shipping charges, but one site out of the US is: http://www.lyonhealy.com/.