Sadly, the beast needs more torque

Well, on a sad note, Maury Chaykin has passed away. It was his 61st birthday today -- which, strangely, makes him exactly the same age as my mother. (She, thankfully, is in the pink of health, and yes, I did call her with birthday wishes long before I contemplated this blog post.) It also means that he is the second instrumental cog of the Whale Music movie to have shuffled off this mortal coil this year, as Paul Quarrington died in January. They both seem way too young to go, and all I can say is that I hope Dave Bidini is taking his vitamins.


Rest in peace, gentlemen.

 "The music ends, that is to say, it disappears forever to journey in the cosmos."

Wave of Decrepitude

Well -- I gotta say, I have no idea what you do for a living, and neither do I have any idea what hobbies you enjoy in your spare time. Maybe you're a nurse, or a cut-man in a boxer's corner. Maybe you enjoy dumpster diving at the hospital, or perhaps you're a groupie with an odd assortment of souvenirs gleaned from your personal associations with rock stars. What I'm getting at is, I have no idea how many plaster casts you see in an average day, but as for me, I could probably go a good six months without seeing a single one -- and even then, I couldn't guarantee you that seeing that single plaster cast would make a big enough impression that I'd even vaguely remember it the next day. So, yesterday was a little odd -- I saw:

• one plaster cast on a broken wrist on a customer in a Subway at Vic Park and Danforth at about 4 in the afternoon;
• one on the arm of the driver in a car next to me on the 401;
• one on the arm of  patron outside a gas station convenience store just outside of Belleville;
• and yet one more on the arm of the clerk at the Burger King counter in Belleville at about 10:30 at night.

So, what I'm gathering from that (besides the fact that I eat juu-u-ust a little too much fast food), is that the average South Ontarian suddenly needs a whole lot more calcium in their diet. Weird.