Follow @james_tanner123 "PLUS/MINUS is the NHL's best stat, and the only one I use" - Craig Button*
PLUS: P.K Subban announcing at the Skill Competition.
PLUS: The Skills Competition and the All Star Game. I used to think they were lame, but my son is so into that I can’t help but enjoy myself. One of the best part of having kids is how they remind you to love things you were formerly too jaded to enjoy anymore.
PLUS: Draft Kings + 3v3 All Star Game is the best thing ever.
PLUS: There might be few record stores left, and few people who still want to buy CDs (which I don’t understand because I’m a Spotify subscriber, and streamed music sounds like ####) but few things in life are as enjoyable as spending an hour and a hundred bucks in the record store.
This week: Prince Sign of the Times, Bowie Alladin Sane, REM Automatic for the People, and the Shins Heartworms (Flipped). Funny thing about the Shins album: I played it once, and thought ‘this is weird’ then two days later, I happened upon a review of the album, and only then did I realize that I had not bought the original record, but the remix.
PLUS: Petty by Warren Zanes. I highly recommend this to anyone who likes Tom Petty. One of the best musical biographies I’ve ever read. PLUS: Will Ferrell back on SNL. Few things are as great as that.
MINUS: I was kind of disappointed the Blue Jays didn’t get Christian Yelich.
MINUS: Just add more roster spots if you have to, because Phil Kessel and Vladimir Tarasenko not being at the ASG is a bit of a joke.
MINUS: Morgain Rielly is my son's favorite player, and he deserved to be here, would have been here if not for an injury and that kind of sucks because you have no idea how pumped my buddy would have been if Morgan Rielly was in the skills competition. PLUS: I watched Pulp Fiction for the first time in over ten years. This remains one of the best enjoyable films of all time. This has been my favorite movie since I was 12, and I figured I ahd grown out of it.
Not the case, as there remains new things to discover, think about and observe after all this time. Plus is has the best soundtrack of any film ever.
I also, never realized before that Steve Buchemi and Kathy Griffin and Pat from SNL were in it. PLUS: Something that stands up even better than Pulp Fiction and is also from the early ninties is REM’s masterpiece Automatic for the People.
One of the reasons I love re-issues (besides the cool packaging, which I am a total sucker for) is that they force you to go back and listen to an old album like it’s new. It’s not like Pulp Fiction for me though – I’ve never really gone long without listening to this record, as I probably throw an REM album on – if not daily – really often – but remastered, and in heavy rotation, this album is revealed to be one of the greatest things about being alive. Every song is a greatest hit. This is a masterpiece on par with Pulp Fiction, the Queen is Dead, White Noise, Infinite Jest and Breaking Bad.
PLUS: ASG > Olympics.
PLUS: I might just have to become an NBA fan. I usually tape Sports Centre, watch hockey and delete it. For whatever reason I ended up watching the NBA package last night and it had everything – drama (Kevin Love), great highlights, and an amazing game (Golden State vs Boston). I haven’t seen an NHL pack that was close to that good in years. I might just have to start digging the Raptors a bit more.
The NBA has personality that makes the NHL pale in comparison.
Go Raps!