Short Shifts
Posted by jtbourne on March 3, 2009 · 5 Comments
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More Bourne blurbs on random topics:
Jim Rome spends the majority of his hour-long program offering sage wisdom to athletes who messed up. My advice to him: You aren’t “hip-hop”; stop calling people “suckers”, “chumps” and “fools”.
Here’s a sentence not many people have uttered in their life: Clark Gillies bought me a Snuggie for Christmas.
I had a phone call with Stan Fischler tonight, and was fully entertained. You can’t help but love a man that tells a hippo joke within 12 minutes of the beginning of your relationship.
I vote we keep it classic and stay with calling golf clubs irons and woods. People have taken to calling them “fairway metals”, but let’s not start describing clubs by what they’re made of, I’m pretty sure that’s a slippery slope to start heading down. For some reason, “Pass me my nine graphite-titanium alloy” doesn’t sound right.
The Lighthouse Project on Long Island would be amazing. Unfortunately, it involves an earth shaking volume of money and time that seems less and less likely in these sketchy economic times. Even more unfortunate, is that the Isles can’t stay in Nassau County if they don’t get a new building; theirs is embarrassing. What player wants to climb the impossible ladder to crack the big leagues and spend their career in a dressing room worse than the one they were in years earlier with their junior team? Has anybody proposed just building a new arena? Why does it have to be billion-dollar city-changing overhaul or nothing?
I tend not to believe in coaches and managers that get hired straight to the NHL after playing without being tested at a lower level. I’d rather have a coach who barely played (if ever) but was a student of the game than have a former great player be a figurehead to the team I’m a part of. Read up ex-players, these positions involve more than just knowing the game; you have to be able to teach systems in every zone to sometimes stubborn players, not just dress nice.
A recent travel day: A) I had to rebook my flight to NY last second because the Minneapolis airport was closed. My bags were to switch planes with a few others. Before I boarded, I asked to make sure my bags had switched flights, but no, it turns out, they had not. When they called down to have my bags switched, it turns out the workers thought the guy had been making some Bourne Supremacy joke… siiiggghhh. Seriously?
B) The guy on the flight beside me swiped his credit card in the seat in front of him to buy a movie, then proceeded to watch it with no headphones or captions. When offered headphones, he declined. Huh.
And the big news of the day: I spoke with David Kolb this morning, the managing editor of the new Max Hockey site.(www.maxhockey.com) I’ll be a columnist on their site starting after the trade deadline. The site looks great, and includes a news wire of constantly updating NHL info from all over the internet. There are individual team sites with recent game highlights and conference statistics available on the brand new site that’s fully committed to being the best at covering the NHL. Check it out!
Also, my second piece “The Pro’s of Rec Hockey” is up on The Hockey News site, www.thehockeynews.com
I'm a hockey player turned writer. After playing for Alaska Anchorage in the WCHA (NCAA), I carried on with an NHL tryout (New York Islanders in 2007) before spending a couple seasons in the AHL/ECHL (last year was 2008-09). My father, Bob Bourne, won four Stanley Cups with the Islanders in the '80's, as did my fiancee's dad, Clark Gillies. I'm now the web editor for theScore's hockey blog "Backhand Shelf."
Bourney I’m a little disappointed I didn’t make into your “Vandy” story line. Although I know you can’t mention everyone. LOL. Perhaps at some point you might mention the night the oranges came flying and the suit rack got in the way of a perfectly good stick swing. To which we all laughed, some immediately, some later. Well, everyone except Nick Binder, probably because it was the only suit he owned.
According to everyone associated with the Lighthouse Project, the only way Wang will recoup his investment is by building the whole project. Why should he spend millions of dollars of his own money to redo the Coliseum when he gets no monetary benenfit from it? All the parking, concessions and walk-up tickets sales go straight to Nassau County, which owns the building. If he did that, he would be increasing the value of the Coliseum for Nassau. He would get nothing out of it. So it’s the whole project or nada. I don’t blame him. He is a businessman after all and he is in business to make money. Sucks for the team, but that’s the way it is.
Bourne, your latest article on THN is hilarious and inspiring, and this entry here is by far my favourite of your blogs. You got me laughing with a mouthful of coffee with Gillies and the snuggie. How often will you be posting on Max Hockey?
I never got the point of the Snuggie. It’s just a backwards robe, and if you wear it out in public, it looks like your in a cult of wizard impersonators.
You should do a random entry about weird items they sell on infomercials. It would be hilarious, though definitely not about sports..
Hi, Justin!
If you have some time one of these nights, deck youself out in your snuggie and take a look at
http://lettherebelighthouse.blogspot.com/2009/02/mythbustin-tuesday-shining-light.html
I think that you will find it really interesting. It deals with why nobody wants to invest billions in renovating a building that belongs to the county withought having somehting that makes it worthwhile. It is made by a friend of mine, not by anyone affiliated with the lighthouse project. There is a lot of great stuff to read there about the project.
Oh and dont take pictures in the Snuggie, you never know whose hands such things wind up in lol.