thursday january 21

today i came across a thread on a friend’s facebook wall joking about how the blue jays losing munenori kawasaki meant losing a "mascot," which was followed by a discussion of classic jays mascots that had been replaced over the years. no one involved in this discussion mentioned my favourite mascot, domer, a turtle who is technically associated with skydome rather than the jays themselves. domer made an appearance during the 2014 season for the skydome’s 25th anniversary, and stole the show — one especially hilarious gag involved the "world’s fastest grounds crew" at the dome, with domer trying to help them but only making it about eight steps onto the field (he’s a turtle) before they finished and ran back off the field past him.

anyway, remembering my fondness for domer, i decided to do a little research to see if i could find out when he stopped doing regular appearances at the dome (i assumed it was sometime around when it became the rogers centre). during my hunt for this information, i happened to stumble upon one site that cited the illustrator who created domer back in the 1980s. incredibly, this illustrator happened to be the dad of one of my good friends, shocking and impressing me to such an extent that i immediately sent that friend a text message full of incredulous expletives about my discovery.