Fair warning: This article will be all over the place.
I have already accepted this, knowing that my brain is as scattered as ever after my just-completed 2,700-mile road trip.
But I’m okay with it, as should you be, since I hardly ever deviate from hockey, or ramble, or interject personal thoughts and experiences, or otherwise get sidetracked from the task at hand, or my underlying point, or whatever it is I’m trying to say or …
Right?
And I
will get to something hockey-related, eventually. I promise.
Why put rubber to road rather than fly the friendly skies in the first place, you ask?
Well, for starters, I’m not a big fan of flying in general (which is clearly something I’ll need to soon get over if ever I’m to make hockey my full-time gig and start traveling regularly).
I’m not exactly
afraid of flying so much. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen? (Don’t answer that.) It’s more an issue of me being a bit of a control freak. And, since I have no earthly idea as to how to operate an aircraft and, even if I did, I’m quite sure they wouldn’t accept my offer to give the pilot a day off and take the helm myself, there goes that control factor. (I drove every minute of this journey just passed, as an example of my obsession with control.)
Couple the control thing with the fact that the instant anxiety attack that starts as soon as you walk through the airport doors and doesn’t end until you exit those of your destination is the last thing a high-strung individual like myself needs and, these days, I’d prefer to haul it on the highway,
Fear and Loathing-style.
Not so much
Fear and Loathing by the original Hunter Thompson definition, of course. I have a 9-month-old and a wife in tow, so the only hallucination taking place was from highway hypnosis at times. The only thing in common with
that Fear and Loathing is the road trip aspect, as really any road trip for myself and a select group of buddies since the college days has been described as
Fear and Loathing in …, or something like that. (As for any hallucinations during that time period … The family consigliere has advised me to answer,
“I do not recall.”)
Anyway, 2,700 miles up the highways of the Eastern Seaboard will teach a man a few things, so I figured I’d start today with five of the lessons learned this past week:
1 – There is nothing
smart about these “Smart Cars”. For starters, you look like an idiot. Old Man River, Hippie Chick or New Wave Green Kid, it doesn’t really matter. You all look imbecilic hunched over in one of these high-end go-karts and there will be nothing even remotely smart about you getting killed in a fender bender in one of these death boxes. I don’t care how safe they
say they might be. Death box.
Idiot ≠ smart. Imbecile ≠ smart. Death box ≠ smart.
You’re a tool. Get a car.
2 – AAA Triptiks are not gospel. This was proven to me when, in the interest of saving every spare second possible, especially weighing the necessary 30-minutes to an hour stops for the baby every four hours or so, I decided to follow the American Automobile Association’s directions religiously. Two hours into the trip, in my own state no less, these yo-yos sent me almost an hour west of where I needed to be to pick up the highway, in search of some back way that Mary Sue Joe Bob Q-Bert a the Circle K in Chiefland, Florida thought,
“Don’t be ‘round here no more.”
3 – There’s no way to get through a long trek such as mine without some entertainment, particularly when your little one is taking in
Baby Einstein on the portable DVD player in the back and you can hear every second of the show. (This program is like crack for kids. I don’t what they put in there, but it works. Problem is, repetitive viewing/listening by adults will clearly lead to insanity. You must counter and counter well.)
Thus, I’ve determined that the following albums are mandatory listening for any and all road trips in the future:
Counting Crows:
August and Everything After
Coldplay:
Viva la Vida
Pearl Jam:
Vs.
Eminem:
Relapse (This one muted in the back. Em’s back, folks. And the kid doesn’t need to take these lyrics in.)
blink-182:
Dude Ranch (Saw these guys at the age of 15 before they had really made it and will be seeing them again for my 30th birthday in a few months!)
George Carlin:
Complaints and Grievances (Not muted. The kid needs to see the world as it truly is, as only Uncle George can tell it, as early as possible.)
I attempted an audio book as well (
Kenny Mayne’s An Incomplete and Inaccurate History of Sport) but found my thoughts drifting too much. I’ll read Kenny’s work later in the traditional manner.
4 – Mileage signs can be obnoxious. When I’m in North Carolina and you’re telling me Miami, Florida is
only 618 miles away, I want to hurt you. That is all.
5 – No more complaining about people in (insert your state or city here) not being able to drive. People everywhere suck out loud at driving. Hazard lights in the rain, excessive braking, going 40 in the fast lane, no lights at night, no blinkers, leaving the blinkers on, excessive speeding, passing in a no-pass zone, tailgating … All of it is everywhere. Suck, suck, suck. I am now prepared to get behind a proposition for a yearly all or nothing, pass or fail, keep your license or have it revoked immediately renewal test.
Naturally, I am a wonderful driver and never make any of these kinds of mistakes. And I’m sure you folks are just as talented behind the wheel.
It’s the others I’m worried about.
Oh … And something else I learned on the trip that I already knew but forgot or didn’t time right or, perhaps, thought I’d avoid thanks to some sort of unprecedented divine intervention.
Driving through Manhattan is a bad idea. Driving through Manhattan … on a Friday … at 5:00 PM … in the rain … on one of the first weekends where 67 billion people are heading “out East” … after driving the last ten hours in a consistent downpour … with an exhausted 9-month-old … and a wife contemplating suicide … or homicide … or both … is probably the worst idea anyone has ever come up with in the history of ideas (or at least the worst idea since the FoxTrax glow puck. Thanks, Fox.)
And thanks again, AAA.
Unfortunately, family commitments (and almost a committal or two) kept me from catching up with my pal B.D. Gallof (now of
IslandersIndependent.com fame) but I do still hope to share a Maudite or two with him come draft weekend in Montreal.
And I was also unable to track down this Eklund character. Apparently, being anonymous makes you hard to find or something like that. (This had nothing at all to do with the founder of HB’s travels to and fro Detroit and Pittsburgh making it impossible for our paths to cross.)
But enough about the road trip. I think. (I might think of something else here shortly. I kind of still feel like I’m driving.)
Here’s something bizarre that happened to me while I was away. I received an email that, in part, stated the following:
JJ, I want to have your baby.
I’ll spare you the rest of the “complimentary” remarks from this reader’s electronic message. (I don’t think I’m allowed to write as much here anyway.)
I didn’t respond privately, as I thought that would definitely open up a line of communication that I’d rather not continue. So, I’ll do so publicly to this nice young lady. (I’m pretty sure it
was from a young lady, unless that “man” that had a baby is after me. Besides, the first name was Mary. I think that’s a girl’s name.)
I appreciate your overtures, Mary, but I must decline. You see, I already have a baby and, though I would like more, any future procreation on my part (or even a little practice session) will have to be with my wife. (To be absolutely sure, I asked.) Sorry. Further, I think you might be assuming too much. I mean, unless you’re in possession of some photos that I don’t know about, so far as I can tell, you’ve only seen my HB head shot (and maybe that old model pic I used to use as my avatar). You have no way of corroborating much of what you’ve claimed about various other areas of my body. (But, for the torso, I’ll allow you to envision a smaller version of Schwarzenegger with a bigger interest in beer than I’m told the Governator himself has.)
This email came to
my Hockeybuzz account and it definitely wasn’t any sort of autobot spam message. I checked. Why bring that up, you ask?
Well, I didn’t go to those extents just to verify the existence of a legitimate stalker. (Why
not me?) No, I checked it out to be sure of one thing:
This came from one of
you people. And now the hunt is on … Submit your guesses ... Or don’t … I’ll figure it out eventually.
On that note, I will continue to encourage your emails and comments (without restrictions) as long as you know that baby-making is definitely out of the question.
On to hockey …
I caught game four of the Stanley Cup Final in the comfort of a Florence, South Carolina hotel room on about a 12” television monitor where the Versus feed froze for a good 20 minutes or so to start the game. That was not great. To accommodate my exhausted kid and my equally exhausted wife, I watched the second and third periods with the volume at level one. (Another lesson learned: There is no need to put the volume level to one. The difference between level one and mute can only be detected by dogs.) The Tyler Kennedy goal late in the second (tic-tac-toe from Chris Kunitz and Sidney Crosby) tested my ability to stay silent and, for the most part, I passed. I did, however, spill my Budweiser American Ale (by far, the best beer choice available at the Shell station in Florence, South Carolina) all over the floor. Oh well. I don’t think they charged me.
For game five, I was at a friend’s house on Long Island for a little get together and was fully prepared to be fully antisocial, sitting inside to watch hockey rather than enjoy fireside libations and conversation. Fortunately for the other party guests (you can’t spell party without JJ … um …) the no-contest contest enabled my participation earlier than expected.
By the time game six rolled around, I was nestled comfortably at my wife’s family in South Jersey, where they gave me free reign of their upstairs area, complete with a monster television, the game in HD and some local brews to sample. That
was great.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t pulling for Pittsburgh. Initially, I was backing the Pens only because I went with Penguins over the Red Wings in 7 in the series and I really want to close out my playoff predictions on a high note. 12-3 overall, I’d say, is something to be proud of. After that, once Detroit went up 3-2, aside from Red Wing Fan, who
didn’t want a seventh game?
Well, we got what we wanted then, didn’t we?
Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg vs. Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby (and his ninth grade moustache!) in game 7 of the Stanley Cup freakin’ Final!
Talk about a must-see, monster, scary good, epic, insert-overused-hockey-adjective here instant classic!
Tampa Bay Lightning-wise, I’ve got nothing new since
the affirmation I made last week that the top three picks in the NHL draft will be … Exactly as I’ve consistently claimed they’d be all along.
But
Damian Cristodero of The St. Petersburg Times has a little more (and he gets paid a lot more for this sort of thing than I do … For now … If I knew how to spell the sound an evil laugh makes, I’d write that here …) A baby for Vinny Prospal, Mike Smith’s getting better,
“No thanks,” says Jacques Lemaire to the Bolts and more …
After meeting with John Tavares, Victor Hedman and Matt Duchene (even if I’m wrong about who goes where) I can safely say that the Lightning are guaranteed to get a quality young man and an outstanding hockey player.
There. See? I told you I’d talk a little hockey.
If you’ve emailed me in the last month or so and I haven’t responded, I apologize. That’s out of character for me, as I usually return messages very quickly. (If you don’t believe me, ask your friends. If they don’t know, keep asking. Or just believe me.) While one would think that someone (me) who teaches high school by day would have a little bit more free time on their hands as the school year wound down and especially now, when there won’t be any such thing until early August, it certainly is not the case for me.
I’m working on big things, people. Big things.
And I’m a busy guy – but a busy guy who very much appreciates your patronage, which is why my lack of prompt responses of late has me feeling guilty.
That said, let’s kickstart
JJ’s Mailbag: Pre-draft Edition. Send your questions, comments and draft theories my way and I’ll aim to have some half-way decent responses to your emails by Monday or Tuesday of next week.
[email protected]
It’s been a while. Talk to me.
But remember: Baby-making requests cannot be fulfilled.
Again, my apologies.
JJ
[email protected]
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