LeRoi Moore 1961 - 2008

I mourn with many others. I forgot to ask him something when I met him a couple of years ago. You never know when one chance will be your last.

"We are deeply saddened that LeRoi Moore, saxophonist and founding member of Dave Matthews Band, died unexpectedly Tuesday afternoon, August 19, 2008, at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles from sudden complications stemming from his June ATV accident on his farm near Charlottesville, Virginia. LeRoi had recently returned to his Los Angeles home to begin an intensive physical rehabilitation program." -The Warehouse

LeRoi passed away yesterday afternoon and a few hours later the band took the stage in Los Angeles to play a three hour show for their fallen band mate. "That Matthews and his mates were able to soldier on so valiantly with an often profoundly moving and largely unsentimental performance wasn't just admirable – it was downright astonishing. What's more, it spoke to the inexplicable but immense healing power of live music."

When LeRoi was injured back in June the band kept on with the tour. Bassist Stephan Lessard explained, "It's what Roi wanted us to do."

Here's to you LeRoi. I'll miss you.

Spage's 2008 Olympics Moments #2

When I turned on the television I was greeted with the Canada vs. China baseball game. The next Canadian batter was walking up to the plate and was being introduced. His name? Stubby Clapp.

And that was enough to make me turn off the t.v.

Spage's 2008 Olympics Moments #1

One World,
One Dream,
One Thought...

While watching the incredible opening ceremonies in Beijing I had one overriding thought: We will never be able to beat this in 2010. Not a chance.





Images from the Boston Globe.

Once Proud

Oh CBC online news, how far you've fallen in one short year.

Now you're using the ridiculous user comments from previous articles to write new ones?

Hang your collective heads in shame while you lift your glass to useless editorialized "news" services.

Citizen Batman

"It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations." -Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Anthony Furey has written an interesting "web-exclusive comment" for the Globe and Mail about The Dark Knight movie and it's political philosophy. It may be simple but it speaks to a problem that has been infecting us, at an alarming rate: our fellow man not being civic-minded or politically involved.

When people cease to be actively engaged in the world and choose to retreat to an insular and selfish existence great harm done to societies, then starts to compound before eventually moving us towards Gotham-like social decay. Taking your responsibilities as a citizen of your neighbourhood, province/state, country and planet seriously means that care, concern, and action follows.

"[Bruce] Wayne realizes that, as a billionaire, he has the option of secluding himself from a society run amok. But he believes that as someone who has reaped the benefits of good society, he also has to stick it out with bad society. That's the social contract he feels he's signed. Thus, the story confronts our sense of citizenship."

A certain level of idealism is necessary, which seems to disappear rapidly in the psyche as one ages, so active pursuit and maintenance of ideals is needed to fend of weariness and hopelessness. This is not easy and staying accurately informed takes effort, but is at least honorable and at most a duty.

"Batman is rejecting what has come to be known as the "lesser evil" approach, in which one can commit an otherwise undesirable act if there is an urgent and significant need. Underlying this rejection is the notion that society is greater than the sum of its parts — that the sheer fact coming together to form it is something worth fighting for."

The Dark Knight movie entertains the masses, there is no doubt there, but it also holds an important, if not desperate, call to those masses to become engaged with their environment and do their part to move our societies forward, to improve ourselves and do what is right for the global community. To take our responsibilities seriously may not be the most fun thing to do, nor the easiest, but is by far the most important.

"The one basic, cogent argument that can be gleaned from Gotham City's embers: Nobody ever said democracy was going to be easy. The democratic tradition is one that asks its members to participate fully and to constantly reconsider its fundamental tenets and be willing to fight for them. The film challenges you, regardless of your views, to get in the game."

Our North

In the Northern world's mad race to claim a disputed region in the Arctic, which is land we Canadians always assumed was ours...like the maps say, a team of Canadian and Danish scientists seem to have found "proof that the Lomonosov Ridge is, in fact, a natural extension of the North American continent."

In your face underwater-flag-planting-Russia!

The team's "landmark findings" are being "presented at the 2008 International Geological Congress in Oslo under the innocuous title "Crustal Structure from the Lincoln Sea to the Lomonosov Ridge, Arctic Ocean.""

Here's to the success of their presentation and to the hope that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) approves our submission in 2013!

Insite v. Tony

For the past couple of days our Health Minister, Tony Clement, has been travelling around the planet shooting off at the mouth about Vancouver's supervised safe-injection site, the first in North America, InSite.

A hefty amount of research has been done on safe-injection sites and it has been overwhelmingly been deemed a vital step in the right direction for harm reduction plans. In the face of recommendations from such respected groups as the World Health Organization, Canada's Conservative government has taken it upon themselves to disassemble the great strides that have been made in Vancouver. From Wikipedia:

"The Canadian Insite Supervised Injection Site commenced operation in in 2003. As well as public order and improving health, the major difference between the supervised injecting centres and the unsupervised European model is the more clinical nature of the service."

But what is the worst and most ridiculous thing about the Conservatives' stance? Yesterday, at the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, Tony had this to say about the WHO's strong endorsement of InSite, "it's not my job to kowtow to orthodoxy."

Tony's Conservatives are now trying to say that a relatively recent, innovative program that has been embraced by only a handful of countries in the world and rejected by large powers such as the United States is orthodox. The Conservatives are trying to paint themselves as the progressive bunch who are going against the grain by attacking an established method. Safe-injection sites are hardly traditional! How dare the Conservatives try to even suggest otherwise? Worse still, now a whole lot of idiots are going buy the horse shit our Ministre de la Santé is serving us. Cheers!

Fording The Road

While my motorcycle is out of commission, let's talk cars.

I have a Mercury that I inherited a few years ago that I never give any credit to. I mean, it's a freaking Ford, so you know it's no good. This morning, after reading this article, I will definitely soften my attitude towards my car and ask for it's forgiveness.

J.D. Power and Associates have finalized their yearly automobile rankings for dependability. In this study, dependability is measured in "problems experienced by the original owners of vehicles after three years." For the 14th year in a row Lexus has topped this list with a record of 120 problems per 100 vehicles.

"Ford Motor Co.'s Mercury brand ranked second, followed by General Motors Corp.'s Cadillac. Toyota was fourth, and Honda Motor Co.'s Acura luxury brand was fifth. Land Rover, which Ford sold this year to India's Tata Motors Ltd., was the worst-performing brand, with 344 problems."

I never would have guessed that my car's brand ranks second and I can now laugh at all the yuppies parading around town in their status symbol Land Rovers. There are more brands listed in the article, which also has a link to the annual study. Where does your car sit on the list? Are you as surprised as I was?

One Day in the Life...

One of my favourite authors, the man who penned "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and "Gulag Archipelago", has passed away. This weekend, at age 89, Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn succumbed to heart failure. Solzhenitsyn survived Stalin's Gulag prison camps, documented their tyranny, challenged Soviet rule at home and in exile, was a critic of corruption upon his return to Russia, and on Sunday was recognised with a lying-in-state in Moscow.

Words from Solzhenitsyn...

"For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones."

"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle."

"Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press."