And in summation...

It never ceases to amaze me just how strange the world is and it becomes much more evident when one considers world  happenings over the course of a year.

 

In January of 2009 two things, which were already very evident, became even more clear. First a credible and thoughtful individual  was placed behind one nation’s figurative automobile after an eight year joy ride with a  mindless dolt. The car hasn’t stopped careening as yet but we are hitting a lot less trees and leaving much less road kill. It is still dangerous but a least we’ve got a driver that can focus on that which lays before us and not harp on what happened to daddy in the driveway. We also learnt in January that of all the shows on TV, the Soprano’s was probably the best cast show in TV history when  Lillo Brancato Jr. was convicted of Burglary ( the murder charges were dropped). His buddy got the murder rap. Who, you might ask, is  Lillo Brancato Jr. He was one of Tony’s young guns that got wasted for ripping off the New York crime syndicate after having been told not to.

 

In February we saw the Catholic Church go up against God in a face-off on whether people have the right to die episode. The Catholic church, in their infinite wisdom, feels that only they have the right to kill or molest and the rest of the world should live forever until they deem their time has come. However a young Italian women(Eluana Englaro, 38) after having been in a coma for more than 17 years finally succumbed and therefore we never did get to find out whether the Church or God would have won. Believe me, it was a toss-up. The church has more money and pull these days.

 

In March there were 2 British soldiers killed by the Real IRA. The first to die since 1997. Apparently all the other deaths in that struggle were not conducted by the Real IRA and when “all peace broke out” the Real IRA had to step in and fix it. It only took them 12 years to find any Neanderthals stupid enough not to realize the rest of the nation had moved on.  

 

In April the US declares a swine flu Pandemic and the whole world starts going nuts. What isn’t stated to the world is that only weeks before, the World Health Organization (WHO) (Exactly) changes the definition of a pandemic to simply a virus which  hasn’t been present in the population for 40 years or presents as a new virus. The other four qualifiers were removed (Increased death rate, wider presentation of symptoms than normal virus, etc.)  I guess because CNN hadn’t had the opportunity to report on a good pandemic in oh so long.

 

In May Scientists found the missing link. Apparently it was really lost because it was 47 million years old. Thank god!! Now maybe somebody could help me find my glasses.

 

In June The US is shocked to see the headlines President Ahmadinejad Wins Reelection. This in a country which elected GW Bush twice. I might add the first time people believed those results were a tamper as well.

 

In July in NJ there were 44 arrested for corruption including three mayors. This may have surprised a whole nation with the exception of everyone living in NJ.

 

In August Michael Jackson’s death is ruled a Homicide because he couldn’t possibly be crazy enough to have taken two lethal drugs together on his own volition. Nay – not the man who had shown such restraint and well thought out personal care in the past. Has anyone done a before and after picture of that guy in the last couple of years. I guarantee you he looks healthier now than any time in the last 10 years.

 

In September republicans decide to protest the fact that President O’ Bama is going to speak to students across the nation. They don’t want the president controlling the minds of their children. They would rather invite Sarah Palin to do that. Really? This is all starting to sound too Col. Flaggish to me. (See M.A.S.H. many episodes)

 

In October math results show that the “No Children left behind” has left all children behind.

 

In November we all found out that just because a nation is giving thanks – there are individuals who apparently weren’t giving thanks to family. In fact they had been giving it to everyone except family and we also learnt that even an Escalade can’t out run a good two iron.

 

And in December we all discovered that I have an opinion on just about everything I know very little or nothing about.  I suspect this too will continue in the new year.

 

 

Things Are Good

Look it – as we grow older we sometimes can’t help ourselves and start grumbling about the way it used to be. The music was better, hockey was better, life was simpler, but I have to tell you that while there is nothing wrong with reminiscences and remembering fondly those things which caught favor with us early on and remained entrenched in our memories as the best of this or that, it doesn’t mean that everything was the best. Let me tell you that I do not remember fondly, learning in school to duck beneath our desk in case of a nuclear attack. Do you remember that? Heck those desks wouldn’t have stopped a good slap shot let alone the idea it would protect you from the initial explosion and subsequent fall out of a nuclear holocaust. Automobiles is another one. I don’t care what anyone says, but driving my ’65 Corvair anywhere was taking your life into your hands. Need I remind people of the self-lighting Pinto’s, the aluminum Vega’s and the miserably constructed Gremlins appropriately named because the only thing that you could count on in those cars were the gremlins.

 

Don’t get me started on talking about the red velveteen pants that Santa left me for Christmas one year with the assurance from my parents that all the cool kids were wearing them. Oh yeah and the puffed sleeved psychedelic shirt with the mother of pearl buttons to accompany the pants. It was no wonder people wanted to beat me up lest their parents saw me wearing them and thought that all the cool kids were wearing them. Fashion was just awful back then and if you think I’m lying just check back and look at some old pictures of the great clash of plaids and dots that hammered the lenses of the brownie camera’s everyone sported. Most of the pictures went undeveloped because the cost of developing them was equal to the national debt.

 

Now TV is another item that causes most people to skew the past far too heavily in favor of being great. If you ever lived through even one Velveeta cheese commercial or the Wayne and Shuster comedy hour you would know what I mean. Hockey games that only started at 8:30 and you would join them in progress and watch them on a set with rabbit ears in black and white and if someone shifted in the room you could lose the signal until everyone returned to the exact same spot that they had been in before.

 

Go ahead, remember fondly those days for whatever reasons warm your heart but please let me enjoy my ipod, HDTV, cars with all wheel drive, DVD’s and at least enough fashion sense to know a good pin striped suit when I see one.

 

Happy New Year and bring on more of life’s changes.

Christmas Is Coming!!

Alas- a glimpse of the calendar tells us yet again that a year has sprinted by faster than a Ben Johnston 100. Though the year has held some ups and downs it has more or less transpired without delivering on those expressed wishes from the previous year. In order to try and remedy that I have assembled my personal Christmas wish list which may provide some guidance to my family when trying to buy for the man who eats everything.

 

• A dog that won't counter jump
• Kids that would counter jump
• Hair that doesn't grow in your ears
• Ears that stop growing
• Hair that grows on your head
• Feet that don't crack
• Cracks that don't feet (I couldn't resist - though I don't know what it means)
• Joints that don't ache
• Nose hair that doesn't resemble piano wire
• Hockey without headshots
• Headshots without hockey
• Less of a mid section
• Less of a top section
• Far less bottom section
• Uninterrupted sleep
• Uninterrupted anything
• The movie Trinity
• Wine that doesn't make you drunk
• Drunks that don't whine
• 4 calling nerds
• 3 french maids
• 2 hurdle shoves
• And a cartilage in a spare knee

 

Merry Christmas everybody!!

The Visitation of Those Sounds

On Saturday night I made my way to the Steely Dan concert with my brother Terry, often times my partner in crime to some of the best rock shows I've ever witnessed. I say rock but really in this case at least, SD is a hybrid Jazz and Rock band (Jack or Rozz - take your pick). In any event the show was intended to showcase their famed Aja album from 1977.

 

From the opening note of Black Cow it was apparent that what the crowd would be treated to one of the tightest, smooth sounding bands ever assembled. The band articulated every sound within the confines of this album with an ease of performance rarely heard or seen. They recreated every song in order and even halted for one of the vocalists to flip the record at its appropriate point.

 

Black Cow

Aja

Deacon Blues

Peg

Home At Last

I Got The News

Josie.

 

By the way, don't let anybody tell you different, the song Peg is about Margaret Trudeau.

 

Though this album is now some 32 years old it is amazing how well it has held up its end of the bargain. Offering only 7 songs it was one of the most detailed albums in sound arrangement and complexity of its time. Upon completion of the album Fagan intimated that they would be offering up some other favorites over the course of the remainder of the show. Rikki,  don't lose that number, Dirty Work (the only less than stellar performance) My Old School (he did go back when they apologized and gave him an honorary degree) , Babylon Sister and a host of others.

 

The encore offered up the capper (including a wonderful reproduction of the guitar intro) from Reelin' in the years. Aren't we all. I have subsequently spent the last two days revisiting their repertoire and I have to say that if you haven't listened to Steely Dan for a while take the time and do it now. It is still ear candy of the highest order.

 

Thank you Donald Fagan and Walter Becker for some of the most tantalizing sounds to come out of our generation of masterpieces. For the kids out there who aren't familiar with their offerings, take the time and get educated. This is what good music should sound like. All elements of jazz, rock, blues and a good measure of RnB to get your toes tapping and your hips to sway.

 

 

 

55 is the new Teen

Someone told me the other day that 55 is the new 40 and I had to think about that. Their reasoning of course was that unlike our parents hitting 55, where they looked and acted like, em let see 55! , we tend to be much more active and with it. However, the more I thought about it, the more I concluded that no way are we the new 40. No way. We are much more like teenagers. Now hear me out. I was first struck by this idea when I received a call from one of my brothers who informed me that he was out looking for a job. He had been let go and was hoping to latch onto something in fairly short order. In the current economy it is certainly not a rarity and in fact, in my age group, it seems to be happening with more frequency then a rabbit coupling on a bunny farm. In fact I think I have more relatives and friends out looking for a job than are currently employed. That's when it struck me. This had not been the case since we were 16 and all looking for our first full time and / or part time job depending on whether one had decided to pursue higher education or hire education. My god, I thought, I'm going to have to decide what I want to be when I grow up!!

 

Now that is not my only evidence however, because, I have also had this lingering knee pain for the last year or more and it comes and goes, is mild to severe and always hits when there is really something fun to do. While I was popping yet another handful of advil to try to get my knees working, it occurred to me that I had been through this before. When I was a kid, I got these growing pains (ask my mother) that always presented themselves in the knee or hip or shins and my god they hurt. These pains feel just like that. Maybe I've started growing again. God only knows, my waist line has. Maybe my body has been tricked into thinking I'm sixteen again. With that little tidbit, I also remembered that about a week ago I slept in until 9:30 in the morning. Usually, I would have been up for 3 hours and had at least one nap. I can't recall sleeping in 'til 9:30 since (you got it) I was a teenager!!!

 

Now the kicker. Yesterday I was busy shaving when I felt a discomfort on the back of my neck. My hand slowly travelled the distance from the facial area to the neck area, all the time wondering, what in heavens name is that.

Mother of god, I had a pimple, full prom night, ready to burst on the scene and cause immediate embarrassment, honest to goodness acne. Acne so gargantuan that aircraft would radio air traffic concerned about the obstruction. I hadn't had a pimple that big since one took up residence on the tip of my nose in 1967 and finally faded to obscurity around 1978.

 

So you're still not convinced, well I was holding onto this one not wanting to pull out the big guns but you asked for it. When was the last time you saw a group of 55 year old women sitting around having coffee. I noticed this in one of the bagel shops the other day and its when my suspicions were finally solidified into the scientific equivalent of sure thing. One lady either not realizing how loud she was or completely oblivious to everything but her immediate table company (just like a teenager) started fanning herself with a newspaper creating an airflow that may have succeeded in lifting the Spruce Goose and telling everyone within the four surrounding counties that if she had another hot flash like the one she had last night she'd be "sweating like a pack mule in the Grand Canyon country side". This fueled a cacophony of "I got you beats" and "That's nothings" all dying to be the first to humble the previous tale. Well, I thought, wouldn't they love to know just how young they are.

 

 

 

The Fading Light of the NHL

Is it me or is the NHL going bad quicker than a jar of mayonnaise on a hot summer's day. I'm not talking about the players or the game, rather I'm talking about the NHL product in all of its forms. Allow me to enumerate some of the failings that provide this ever increasing feeling of product erosion. In the last several games that I've watched, the officiating has fallen to nothing better than peewee hockey, though this may be egregiously unfair to peewee officiating. I've seen pucks hitting the protector screen over the glass, high sticks (not just shoulder high - I'm talking well over your head high), face punches, missed off sides, slashing, goaltender interference, too many men on the ice (I mean 7 men on the ice!!!!), missed head shots, slew footing and hitting players from behind. All of these infractions have gone unnoticed by the very people purported to be watching for these very things and many of these offences have been turned into goals by the team committing those infractions.
This has a very significant impact on the game and how it is perceived by the very people this league is apparently trying to attract.

We have all witnessed the often pathetic, sometimes comedic handling of the Phoenix Coyotes debacle. In business, one expects an organization the size of the NHL, from time to time, to realize failings such as the Coyotes. An organization can't expand without taking risk and therefore I do not find fault with the attempt to put a team in Phoenix. Where I do find fault, was in their inability to recognize the severity of the problem before it got so far out of hand and to take remedial steps to correct its course. What they now have is one of the hockey's iconic figures (Gretzky), at odds with the NHL in a public way. Gee, this sounds all to familiar (Orr, Howe, Hull). Furthermore, the NHL has created the distinct impression in Canada that while it is perceived and treated like the poorer cousin; this cousin is basically picking up the tab (or a large part of it) on behalf of the richer target markets. Everyone understands that Canadians would enjoy hockey if it was played at midnight, broadcast on radio in a candle lit room. Heck, it is how the NHL came about, but I would be very cautious about letting that attitude permeate the country for too much longer, lest a European league takes interest in the Southern Ontario, Quebec and western Canada markets.

Finally, many Canadians wouldn't know this but there is a huge p#$%%#g match going on between cable tv and satellite broadcasting here in the great US of A. Caught in the middle of this are hockey viewers who have paid for but don't receive the services promised. It started with the lapse of the contract between Versus and Direct TV. Versus as you may not know, was given broadcasting rights by the NHL when ESPN showed no interest in their product several years ago. Nearing the end of September 2009, Direct TV announced it would not be broadcasting the Versus network as they were being held hostage by Versus for increased fees. Versus, coincidentally is owned by one of the cable companies. Why, may you ask, would the NHL not intervene in this little tiff? Well the cable companies are also owners of several teams in the NHL and have been carving out this little territory for themselves. Fair enough, as a viewer one realizes that if you want to watch the product you'll ante up the money for the NHL Center Ice package at a fairly hefty cost of $170.00 per year. Lo and Behold, if you purchase the NHL Center Ice package on Direct TV, the cable companies refuse to provide the HD signal that viewers of the NHL Center Ice package get with the cable companies. Even the games broadcast in HD from Canada are being blocked out.

Keep up the good work NHL.