When Florida, Hockey, And Stupidity Collide

I know I write about hockey a lot, be it here, on my Collectibles blog, on Facebook, or even on Twitter. I also call out stupid people a lot, particularly when it comes to methheads and/or Floridians, which oftentimes are one and the same.

Here's a case of mixing it up: a player for the Florida Everblades in the ECHL (the third-world of North American pro hockey after the NHL and the AHL), Justin Agosta, was arrested for arson a couple of weeks ago... for a fire that started when he poured gasoline on pictures of his girlfriend and got out of control when he tried to kill it with water and a towel.

Kids, here's a fun science tip: water doesn't stop gasoline fire, it spreads the gasoline out so it can burn more things. Yay, science!

Video Of The Week: A Devil's Din

With their most recent song, A Devil's Din are trying to make lemonade out of a tragedy - the fire of the building that housed their jam space - by writing about their misfortune, and making a video asking for donations so they can re-equip themselves:



Obviously, being gear-less makes for a sound that isn't stellar (and the video even pokes fun at that), but you can definitely feel their hearts in the right place, and trying to make do of a shitty situation.

In just 8 hours, they came up with decent riffs and (perhaps obvious) lyrics, and a song was born. Good work, all told.

Feel free to help their cause, by Paypal-ing adevilsdin@gmail.com

The Chris Burns Fire Story

In the Montréal indie scene, few stories compare to the time where Chris Burns' place went up in flames. It had everything all of our daily lives consisted of: shitty building ran by a slumlord, not being able to afford insurance, a whole scene banding together to (temporarily) help cope with a crappy situation, from indie newspapers like The Mirror promoting a benefit show, to all the bands that wanted to take part in it, to everyone who showed up, and to everyone who gave perhaps not money but time and/or goods to help Chris and his girlfriend Isabelle get back on their feet.

Chris' story resonated deeply with me, because I lost all of my shit myself once, in a flood after the thawing of the 1998 Ice Storm - I had pretty much the last remaining pictures of deceased family members, hundreds of rare arts books and first editions of classics, four guitars (I managed to save one) and two amps (ditto), and the usual stuff like furniture and electronics.

It took me years to get back to the level of comfort I'd been accustomed to - though on the bright side probably enabled me to rely less on my possessions and afforded me the emptiness I required to spend a bit longer than a year going back and forth between Montréal and NYC.

But back to ''Crispy'' Burns. Here's the video from the benefit show that was held on his behalf, complete with his recounting the fire saga in the middle of a rendition of The Talking Heads' Burning Down The House...

Explosion Day In San Diego

Twenty minutes of fireworks explode in... 20 seconds, because of simple miscommunication.

Gotta love humanity!



This was at the San Diego 2012 Independence Day celebrations... Happy Fireworks!

R.I.P. Green Room

On Sunday, The Green Room, part of the Mile End Cultural Centre in Montréal, caught fire because of en electrical problem, i.e. ''an electrical short of an extension cord'', according to my friend and venue manager, Dom Castelli.

It had taken me years to get to play there (mostly because of their high price to rent the venue), but it was one of the fine-sounding showrooms on St-Laurent.

Bummer.