Maybe not...

When I started this blog, I decided to use the snappy line above ("People actually read this crap?") as the title. As it turns out, people don't actually read this crap.

If I were doing this for ego-stroking purposes it would bother me. I'd be lying if I said I was content with the voice-in-the-wildnerness-ness, but I started this as much as a means to vent as anything else. So I shall continue.

There was a jazz festival here in Toronto over the past ten days or so. I actually made it to a couple of shows, although there were a couple I would have liked to have seen that I ended up missing for one reason or another. I just hope that I won't "pull a Jaco" again.

Some context: back in the early 80s I was in Europe for the summer, and kept missing Jaco Pastorius's Word of Mouth tour. He died just a couple of years later. I would have loved to have seen him and his band.

Last spring I got lucky, if you can call it that. By pure happenstance I saw Michael Brecker's last performance before he stopped playing. When I heard he was sick - Myelodysplastic syndrome if I'm spelling it right at this late hour - I was very upset, almost as if Mike were a close friend or a member of the family. I'm very glad to see that he has made some steps back toward recovery; I read the other day that he played one tune at a Herbie Hancock show.

Other happenings in my so-called life: the World Cup is nearly over, and the 2006 Tour de France has begun. The Rugby World Cup isn't until next fall, so I can't say I've hit the trifecta, but having cycling and soccer going on at the same time is pretty cool. And there's so much coverage that I can't watch it all. I've taken to recording the shows on my PVR and watching them - at least in part - on fast-forward. It's sort of like being like Adam Sandler in "Click", without the several million bucks Sandler is getting for playing the role, of course...