Don't Make Your Mother Cry

When we were kids both parents worked outside the home and so it was part of our daily lives that we were expected to carry our load with respect to daily chores. In consequence my parents created this duty chart in which each of our names were listed down the left hand side and along the top were the days of the week. Within each of the corresponding 42 boxes were the chores each of us were expected to perform on any given day. It was hung on the pantry door in the kitchen and every day we were expected to check the listing and perform the prescribed labor. Failure to perform those designated chores would result in extra assignments the following day or worse including, but not limited to, indentured servitude in consignment to the neighbors. Okay I'm lying about the last part but only slightly. 

In any event, as we grew older the tasks grew more troubling to our rebellious teenage status, especially given the Woodstock years, to a point where one day my brother Mike and I decided to hold a revolt and no longer give in to the free child labor dictum that was forced upon the proletariat masses (wait I digress again). In any event we stopped doing the work. When my mother got home it was immediately a point of contention and as usual, after a brief but heated discussion, she headed to the kitchen utensil drawer to find her preferred weapon of choice. THE WOODEN SPOON. She came back into the living room and gave us the final ultimatum of doing the chores or facing the consequences. When we refused to succumb to the threat of violence, she simply approached while brandishing her Aunt Jemimah artillery. What she didn't expect was that one of us grabbed the wooden spoon out of her hand and snapped it like a pretzel leaving it in two distinctly less threatening pieces. I say one of us because I really don't remember whether it was Mike or I. The affront was immediately followed for only a brief period with us cheering and laughing like convicts running from the road side chain gang.Within a flash of that my mother began to cry. We were stunned. She just sat down in her rocking chair and cried. We were transformed from Lenin to Schmuck in a heartbeat. Our party ended as quickly as if a riot squad fire hosed us with ice cold water. We look at each other and without a word set off to go do our chores. 

Never make your mother cry.

Random Thoughts on the Opening Ceremony

I still love Bobby Orr

 

I still love Donald Southerland

 

I think the entire American team have A D D and they’ve taken them off their meds

 

Why do the totems remind me of an erection

 

I think David Hasselhoff and kd Lang share wardrobes. Hasselhoff is sexier.

 

Opera is 1000 people in the world imposing their will on the billions who hate it.

 

Was it impossible for Furlong to learn more French than mon amis and do a poor job of it. And he could’ve lost the Brit accent at the same time.

 

The rocky mountains are pretty majestic when not made out of sheets.

 

The budget for the opening ceremonies was 47 million. They spent it all at linen and things.

 

Nancy Green still looks like the kid who won the Olympic gold

 

Wayne Gretzky is suffering from the Phoenix situation. Check out the hair dye.

 

The lone Monaco athlete is 55 and didn’t carry the flag. I’m taking out my citizenship.

 

Who’s selling cigarettes.

 

My hero is Betty Fox

 

I’m shocked – it’s raining in Vancouver. Somebody can sling BS

 

I hope Canada wins the gold in hockey, men and women but I’m still mad that Cammalleri wasn’t even considered. What they don’t like smart guys!!

 

I bet Bob Costas was beat up more than I was as a kid

 

They should have made all the figure skating judges take the oath on the stage and let the crowd rate them

 

4.2          1.0          5.3          6.5

 

Did they get a deal on the Iranian hats. I. R. Iran – They thought it was all in upper case at first. Come on

 

It was very fitting the Irish were between the Iranians and the Israelis. Who better to control a brawl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fare thee well

Just like the chorus from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (he’s Canadian you know) Déjà vu track, I keep hearing voices raised high in a plaintiff and wistful drone, “we have all been here before, we have all been here before” and can’t help but feel that it is true yet again. The Bob Gainey era will now be left to the history books and the vultures known as Canadien fans who will pick at the road kill despite the dangers of the oncoming traffic. What I know is the job of general manager in the current NHL has got to be like being the impresario to the band on the Titanic -unbelievable talent and guts  being driven by a guy who can’t see icebergs (See Bettman). Being the general manager of the Canadiens is like having that band on that Titanic with tug boats latched to the side to see you don’t miss the iceberg.

 

For all the evidence one can muster on either side of an argument about whether Mr. Gainey was a good or bad gm,  the fact remains, his most recent predecessors didn’t make it to the party as often as he did.  The last icon player to hold the job of gm was Serge Savard ( I like Houle very much but let’s face it folks he wasn’t an icon) and at the time people ran him out of town with the lynch mob just waiting to heave his carcass on high from the nearest oak (thank god Drapeau had removed all of them from Sherbrooke Street). In retrospect, Savard was the last guy to bring not one but two Stanley cups to the city. In a place where one of the top two issues of hiring a gm is  that he must speak the language ( and Boivin made it very clear that it was one of the top two considerations) you are limiting yourselves. Whatever, people thought of Bob Gainey in terms of doing his job, they may find that the pickings are even slimmer now that he has departed.

 

When people raise the Gomez, Gionta, Cammalleri and Hamerlik deals as being terrible I’ll point to Briere, Lecalvalier, Brad Richards and Souray as all being worse and at the time, the outcry in the city for three of the four was resounding. The chorus of “he way overpaid” can be answered by the Komisarek and Kovalev negotiations where he offered fair market value and they took either the same or slightly better deals to go elsewhere and these were players who swore up hill and down dale they wanted to be in Montreal. It’s easy to be a manager when all you have to do is forget what you said yesterday and be the genius of tomorrow, but in these days of cap hits, taxes, climate and constant scrutiny it is easy to understand why players might take the easy road and go elsewhere. There is still nothing like playing in Montreal when you’re playing well (see Saturday against the Penguins) but lo the day when you play bad (see Sunday against the Bruins).  

 

Just like most fans in Montreal, I’m always disappointed when we don’t win a game, when we don’t make it to the payoffs, when we don’t win the cup and we blame everyone involved because of it. Fair enough. What I also know for sure is that there are 29 other teams who want to go to the dance and all of them have a crack at the same players that the Canadiens do. In fact because of their futility of floating on the bottom for so long they even got a better opportunity at the likes of Ovechkin, Crosby and Malkin. Unless Montreal is willing to forsake the playoffs for let’s say 5 or 6 years consecutively and finish in the bottom 5 teams at the specific point in time when some of the most talented new comers are on the way up, and they win the lottery to grab those players, then you’ll have to learn to live with the best that a gm can bring you while competing with the rest of the teams. If you think Bob was bad at that, hold on to your hats my friend because the winds of bad may be blowing up a hurricane.

 

Good Luck Bob and wipe that smile off your face.

 

 

New Years Resolutions

Happy New Year to everyone,

 

I'm glad you made it through the holiday season relatively unscathed and despite Zach and Marlowe not wishing to return to school (I didn't want to go to work today either), everyone seems to be fairly upbeat and ready to take on the new year with the vim and vigor that one would expect with the introduction of a new decade. It goes without saying that some of my previous new years resolutions have met with some semblance of success if I don't include anyone else's opinion other than my own, which after all is why it is "my" resolution. For instance one year I resolved to allow my nose hair to grow and I think that was a banner year in terms of fulfilling my resolution. Another year I resolved to be a better person. Well I forgot to mention that I was going to better than Attila the Hun but in any event, I believe I achieved that with some measure of success, although one or two people may wish to dispute that conclusion. The losing weight and quitting smoking one's were no brainers but thank god I didn't commit to more than a year on either of those.

 

In any event I believe it is time to declare my "new year's resolution" for 2010 and for that I have contemplated long and hard. One cannot just willy nilly change aspects of one's life without thinking about it. After all, what if that was the lone thing that people liked about you and then you decide to rid yourself of that one feature. Furthermore, to give up particular food or drink which could be damaging to you, may simply gravely wound the economy which is already suffering immensely from people giving up this and that without regard to the impact it had on their economic brothers and sisters. Hold on I say and lend some time to such an immensely serious concern. So my new year's resolution this year is to think about what a good new year's resolution would be. I will have 361 days left to decide on a good one and then declare that one next year. Well unless, despite all that thought, I've only come up with stuff that may be damaging to the environment, myself, my relationships or those who still tolerate me with any measure.

 

Oh and by the way - according to the Peruvian calendar, I will only have to do this once more because after 2012, the world will end. Thank god!!!

 

 

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.