This month: 1) you might already be a weiner, 2) jammin’ on Sunday, and 3) post-secondary pooches.
Shameless Self-Promotion
Some of you may not know this, but I have previously1 organized several pools for the World Cup and the European Cup2. I intend to do so again this year, when the NAFTA3 countries co-host the World Cup starting on 11 June.
You are all invited to join in the 2026 Edition.
THIS IS IMPORTANT: You don’t need to know anything about football/soccer4 to join in! Many previous participants knew little to nothing about the teams and I, myself, am officially the world’s least interested soccer fan5, So, don’t be intimidated.
I call this little project “The Beautiful Pool” and all the action takes place at beautifulpool.org. It’s pretty quiet there now, but you can see all the updates that were posted for the last pool, which was for the Euro Cup in 2024.
I will post the entry forms on the website at least a month before the first fixture6.
Anyhoo! Why not subscribe to beautifulpool.org and give it a whirl? It’ll be fun.
PS: Tell your friends.
Jazz
This might become an occasional feature here at 3 things. HVW and I are going to check out the musical offerings on weekend afternoons in Toronto. First up, the Dave Young Quartet at Hirut Cafe.
A talented double bass player, Young has been a fixture in the Toronto jazz world for decades. He is now 86, and still going.
We arrived at Hirut a good half hour before the 4 o’clock show and the room, which probably comfortably seats about 40, was already half full. The admission was $20, cash only, which goes directly to the musicians.
Hirut is like most jazz clubs: Nothing fancy. It’s an old space that has been spruced up with a lick of paint and some artwork. The room has an African theme in keeping with its alter ego as an Ethiopian restaurant.
Looking around, there was lots of white hair. We seemed to be the target demographic, plus or minus a few outliers. As the room filled up, it started to feel like a private club. Everyone knew everyone.7
The show started exactly at 4 pm. Bravo!
The band consisted of:
- Dave Young – Double bass – looking younger than 86, possibly because he dressed like a hedge-fund bro in a plaid shirt and fleece vest. I love the double bass, and Young has been playing for so long, and is so skilled, he is a treasure.
- Tom Szczesniak – piano – has a shock of unkempt white hair and a walrus moustache. He drained a glass or red wine before the first set, and another before the second. In my opinion, it was a smart move. His playing became more fluid and interesting later in the show. When he plays, he hunches over the keyboard in a posture that must give physiotherapists or chiropractors nightmares (see photo above).
- John Johnson8 – saxophone and other wind instruments – looked like a shoe repair guy from Eastern Europe (don’t ask me why, that’s what I thought). But he was surely Canadian, because when he muffed a couple of notes in his first solo he said “Sorry”. The sax is generally my least favourite jazz instrument, so the odds were stacked against him in my mind. And he played louder that the others which didn’t endear him to me, but just reinforced my anti-sax prejudices.
- Davide DiRenzo – drums – I’d guess he was 25 years younger than the others, maybe more. He was an interesting dude. With his unwashed shoulder-length dark hair and beard, he looked like Rasputin. When he played, his eyes rolled back in their sockets, his mouth was sometimes agape, sometimes grimacing. He looked like he should have been bashing the drum kit with all his might, but actually his playing was very restrained. An interesting dude.
Young introduced each number, and included a couple of not very funny or interesting anecdotes. They played some standards and some less well known tunes.9 I enjoyed them all.
The Dave Young Quartet plays at Hirut on Sunday afternoons once a month. When they were introduced, the MC said they were going to keep that schedule “as long as they can”. Given Young’s age, I fear that might have been a discrete way of saying “as long as Dave is alive”. I hope it is a very long run.
Doggo University
How do you find truffles? Release the pigs and follow them, right?
Wrong. Pigs love truffles, and are darn good at finding them, but have a nasty habit of eating them too. Not an ideal technique.
Enter man’s best friend. Dogs don’t particularly like truffles, but can be trained to find them10.
In the small hill-top town of Roddi, in the Piemonte region of Italy, you can send your dog to Università die cani da tartufo, where they have been training truffles dogs since 1880.
We didn’t visit, but as we drove past, our guide pointed to the castle on top of the hill and told us about the training site, He found the whole concept of a university for dogs incredibly humorous. In the lobby of our hotel, they gave out booklets of a 1953 The Reader’s Digest11 version of “School for Truffle Hounds“. I think it is charming that they have been giving out the same booklet for nearly 75 years, and I imagine that the Universidá hasn’t changed much during that time.
PS: the header image this month is self-evident and nothing special.
- Established 2010. All rights reserved. ↩︎
- These are international football (a.k.a. soccer) competitions. ↩︎
- Now known as CUSMA, and in the US as USMCA and in Mexico as T-MEC. ↩︎
- Also known as fútbol in some places. ↩︎
- Or any other sport, really. ↩︎
- “Fixture” is just another word for a scheduled game, or match. In case you were wondering. ↩︎
- Except us. ↩︎
- By sheer co-incidence, we saw Johnson again, a couple of weeks later when he was performing with Holly Cole. He was much better with Cole than Young, IMHO. ↩︎
- On Green Dolphin Street – Bronisław Kaper and Ned Washington.
Groove Yard. – Carl Perkins (not the country singer).
Lover Man – Jimmy Davis, Roger (“Ram”) Ramirez, and James Sherman
2nd theme – Art Blakey
No Me Esqueça – Joe Henderson
4 on 6 – Wes Montgomery
‘Round Midnight – Thelonius Monk
Will ye??? (I didn’t catch this one) – Thelonius Monk ↩︎ - There is a very sweet movie about truffle hunting with dogs, called “The Truffle Hunters”. It is good. ↩︎
- You will probably be surprised to learn that The Reader’s Digest is still being published. I certainly was. ↩︎
