Follow @james_tanner123 "PLUS/MINUS is the NHL's best stat, and the only one I use" - Craig Button*
PLUS: My son is turning five and his idea for his birthday is to go to the Hockey Hall of Fame. I couldn’t be more pumped, and neither could he. Also, he’s starting hockey this year and I can’t wait for that either. I don’t look forward to getting up at 4 AM, but other than that, it’s gonna be pretty sweet.
I’ll stop here because otherwise I’m going to get all sentimental and weird, but this is really exciting.
Ryan Suter in the top ten? What year do these jokers think it is?
PLUS: The Leafs getting Connor Brown on a deal worth a $2 million cap hit. Just when you think Lamoriello has gone insane, he goes and does this.
PLUS: Emillioooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
PLUS: My credit card debt has been reduced by 66% since January. I just brought the balance of the smaller card (didn’t seem that small, actually) down to zero. Paid off. 100%. The other card, which was once double the balance of the other card, is now more than half-way paid off.
My goal was to pay them off by the end of the summer, but I think I’m going to come up about 2K short. Still, I’ve but 100% of my extra-curricular activities paychecks towards the cards since January and have made great progress.
It’s real tempting to just pop over to Leons today and buy a couch, a BBQ and a new TV, but I think I’ll just enjoy the feeling of paying for things I bought three years ago instead (!).
PLUS: With only one week left in the summer, I can put away my Speedo, stop shaving my legs and get ready for all the fun autumn has to offer: pretty trees, temperatures that require a denim jacket, the new TV season (OK, so I’m a fat ass, sue me!) the new poker league, hockey pool drafts, and of course, the return of the NHL.
PLUS: The War on Drugs. The band, not the waste of tax payer money. The band War on Drugs gets my vote as the most important and best band currently active and in their prime. While creepy wierdo adults were debating the new Taylor Swift single (an activity I consider seriously gross) I was jamming on the one with my favorite contemporary band that makes it sound like it’s 1984 and Don Henley just bought a new synthesizer and coaxed the members of Steeley Dan into the studio to make an album.
Of course WOD sounds nothing like Steely Dan, but these are guys who are among the best in the entire world at playing their instruments. If you enjoy lush, meticulously arranged songs, performed by virtuosos and singing about the most depressing stuff in the most uplifting way, this is the band for you.
I don’t pull out this level of hyperbole often, but I am going to say it: War on Drugs just made arguably the best rock record since Kid A.
Pickle Rick!
PLUS: Anze Kopitar is still one of the best all-round players in the NHL. He doesn't get fair recognition and you can expect him to have a bounce back year this year. The Kings are going to be really good and Kopitar is going to show those Bergeron comparisons weren't out of line. Somehow Kopitar became underrated. What is going on?
MINUS: Boxing, UFC, Game of Thrones. Man, if you don’t care about these three things, good luck finding something to talk about with other humans. Never has such nonsense dominated the realm of public discourse.
Game of Thrones was at least a good book series, but the last two novels sucked and the show is probably good, but I just don’t care. As for UFC and Boxing, it must have been a great sales week for the folks making Axe Body Spray, and probably a good week for the makers of tank-tops.
Maybe I’m a snob, but nothing makes my eyes glaze over and my superiority complex kick in like people talking about UFC.
MINUS: CCR.
I keep having this argument.
A few weeks ago, I got into a discussion with the girl at the record store about why she was playing CCR and how was it possible that she wasn’t sick of CCR at this point? She was incredulous to learn that CCR wasn’t universally beloved.
Then my boy Brian said I was a hipster weirdo who only hated things because other people loved them. But this just ain’t true – all my favorite things, like the Flash, Back to the Future, Marvel Movies, REM, Bill Burr, Stephen King – are super popular not at all obscure things. I just got sick of CCR.
Also, and this might be confirmation bias, but I keep seeing movies lately with CCR on the soundtrack. And ACDC (which is worse) and I just want to offer my services to anyone film maker who wants an actual good soundtrack on their movie, and not just recycled garbagio.
Putting CCR in your movie should be something about as cool as putting your cell phone on a clip on your belt. Or not owning a sweet jean-jacket. MINUS: I am reading the book the Hellfire Club by Peter Straub, and even though Stephen King told me it ‘moves like a freight train’ I think it sucks. I hope it gets better. I was pretty disappointed though, I thought Peter Straub was gonna be good.
PLUS: That feeling you get when you correctly predict that something will be a complete disaster and then it’s even worse than you said it would be!
PLUS: In order to add more hockey related content to this blog, I want to again give a PLUS to my man John Chayka for his acquisition of Annti Raanta.
MINUS: Quitting Smoking. I quit for a long time, got real fat then started again.
Now I’m fat and I smoke!
What a great plan that was!! But, for the record, I went nearly four months without smoking at all, then for the last five months it’s been just on weekends. The last week or so it’s been a bit more. I’m still not smoking at the level I was when I first quit, and I still go a few days without smoking during the week, but it’s clearly time to redouble my efforts.
I realize this isn’t interesting to most people, but the fact is, it’s helpful to talk about it and write about it. I think I put a good 25 pounds on in the last year, due to my replacement plan of rewarding myself for not smoking with my greatest weakness: the Big Mac. Also, when you quit smoking, and you don’t feel like working out, you can just say ‘hey, at least I quit smoking' and then skip the exercise. In fact, it’s a great excuse to indulge in every other vice you have.
I wish I was one of those people who thought McDonalds was gross, but I’m not. I would eat three breakfast burritos every morning and have two big macs for lunch, if it was socially acceptable. I believe in a past life, I may have been a Grimace.
Either way, here’s to healthy living!
Thanks for reading!
*obviously that's a fake quote!