I Met Wayne

It took me a while to get this post published because for an inexplicable reason the picture didn't show up. I've had a chance to meet Mike "Pinball Clemons many times during my association with the Argonotes but the recent Argos fan corn roast (actually a corn boil) was the first opportunity I took to have a picture taken with Pinball. He is a great guy who always has time to talk with the fans, especially the kids.

I first heard Alison Brown play the banjo about 20 years ago when I ran across a program featuring her while flipping through channels on the TV one night. I was immediately taken by both her virtuosity and the style of her music. She played the banjo in a way that I had ever heard before. Over the ensuing years I would occasionally check her website to see if she was playing in Toronto. A couple of times she got close, I remember one show she did in Detroit when I toyed with the idea of driving the five hours each way that it would have taken. Finally in 2003 she was scheduled to appear at Hugh's Room in Toronto.I had tickers, I was ready to go when but a few weeks before she was supposed to play the concert was canceled because of SARS. As clumsily paraphrased by me she said at her show in Toronto, "Everybody in Toronto was saying no problem it's fine here while everyone outside of Toronto was freaking out".

It took seven years for her to make it back and luckily I was at Hugh's Room for another show and saw her on the list of upcoming artists. Tickets and a table were booked, I talked my two brothers into joining my wife and I. Both of them trusted my musical tastes enough to say yes without listening to Alison's music before arriving. I have purchased every CD that Alison has released but most of them have been digital versions. Just before I left I rummaged through my CD jewel case pile and found my copy of Twilight Motel, a CD she released in 1992. On the off chance that I got a chance to talk to her I took it along.

The concert was fantastic. I shall repeat that again, the concert was fantastic.My brother the pianist raved about the piano player John Burr who has been a member of the Alison Brown Quartet for 18 years and played on the CD that I had brought with me.After the concert Alison was standing at the CD table chatting with people and autographing CD's. Evidently the concert was a bit if a Mecca for banjo players, I joined the orderly line with my CD in hand, right behind a gentleman holding a banjo. After he and Alison chatted about the art and science of playing the banjo it was my turn. She was very nice and after signing my CD I had the guy behind me in line take a picture of the two of us with my Blackberry. I really should have brought along a real camera because the tiny white LED flash of the Blackberry was no match for the dark club. She looks much better than this picture represents but it's all I've got so I'm posting it anyways. Next time I see her I'm bringing a real camera.

Through my association with the Argonotes, The Toronto Argonotes Band and my position as Deputy Conductor in Training I was invited alog with a few other fans to have lunch and chat with CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon and some of the other people in the CFL offices. We all spent a couple of hours with with Mark and some of the other CFL staff eating pizza, seeing the mockup for the new CFL website, getting a sneak peak of the video the CFL is working on to follow up last years well received "This is Our League" and discussing the state of the league and football in Canada. The new video continues in the vein of "This is Our League" with a mixture of the old and new celebrating the history and tradition of the CFL. The new website has a fresh clean design with a strong emphasis on video and will strive to be the place to go for in depth information and highlights for the games. Best of all it's wide and takes full advantage of the wide screen monitors that are becoming more and more prevalent.

We heard about the CFL's plan to do the official challenge replay from the league offices to improve speed and consistency of the review. How the Commissioner's desire is to make sure the 8 (or 9 with Ottawa) teams are financially stable and adequately funded before the league considers expansion.

Everyone we met, Mark Cohon included was interested in hearing what we thought about the wide ranging topics covered in the two hours we spent at the CFL offices. I even spent a few minutes I spent sitting in the power seat at the Commissioner's insistence.
Just before we left we all gathered around the Grey Cup for a groups picture.

Notice the woman in the picture? Her name is Lori and she is the president of the Argonauts Fan Club. I ended up with the Argonotes bass drum sitting in the passenger seat of my car on the way back to the office after lunch. It's position made it easily visible and the large blue A would be instantly recognizable to any Toronto CFL fan. While stopped at a stoplight on the way home with my windows open because of my long dead car A/C the man in the next car over shouted to me "Is Lori in there?", "No she isn't but I had lunch with her" I replied. Before the light turned green he told me that she was his sister-in-law. In a city of 2.48 million people what are the chances you will end up at a stoplight beside a relative of someone you just had lunch with?

In keeping with my recent tradition to write about either websites or Linux I will pass on a useful website that relates to this story. Through some strange cut/paste error I managed to delete the pictures I took at the CFL offices before I got them off the camera. Googling like mad I ended up at cardrecovery.com. I suspect that there is a cheaper alternative but when you have just deleted your priceless pictures of your visit to the CFL offices $46 seems like a small price to pay to get them back. If you ever do something stupid with your digital camera you can download the software and see thumbnails of what you can recover for free. All my now recovered CFL visit pics can be seen here.

I was browsing through my Twitter stream the other day and saw a Twitvite for a Tweetup with @missrogue, For those who are not Twitter savvy I will translate. Tara Hunt, the author of the upcoming book The Whuffie Factor invited the people who follow her updates on Twitter to get together for drinks. At the time I wasn't following Tara's updates but someone who I was following passed the message along.

For a few seconds I had missrogue confused with roguetess, another Twitter user I am familiar with and convinced myself I should go. After some sober second thought I realized timing would be a problem, the Tweetup was scheduled from 8-12 and I was busy until 9 with the Explorers. I couldn't get home, changed and be downtown before 10 at the earliest so I resigned myself to not going. By this time I had realized my mistake with the names and spent some time browsing Tara's blog. I read a post about need to incorporate throwing sheep into your plans. Throwing sheep is her metaphor for the unexpected fun interactions that go on between people in real life and are often missing in many real people to corporation online interactions. Social media, blogs, message boards, Facebook, Twitter and the like are how the joking, banter and other person to person that facilitates relationship building in real life has moved into the Internet space. Tara's book is an attempt to educate businesses on how they can use social networking to their and their customers advantage.

I went off to the Explorers meeting and then about 8:20 one of the mothers came in and said that she had to take three of the guys home right away because she had to pick up her other son at 9. A glimmer of hope appeared, I had to drop my two guys at home plus take a 15 minute detour to drop off one of the other kids whose ride wasn't coming until 9 if I wanted to leave before then. It was 9 by the time I had dropped everyone off and headed downtown. I made it by 9:45 and dived in. Like most people I find mixing to be nerve wracking at first but after a beer or two walking up to people and saying hello got easier.I met a bunch of new people and even learned a few things. I even got a chance to chat with Tara. I even worked up the nerve to get a picture taken with her. Thanks Tara for helping teach me how throw sheep.