Hi Everyone:
Midtown Manhattan was hoppin on Saturday.
There was a protest against Convicted Felon Captain Orange and his administration. The protests were taking place all over the country, but here in NYC, it was taking place at Bryant Park. On the train into the city, I contemplated whether I should spend my time before heading to the office either joining the protests or having a beer at the Pig n' Whistle around the corner from the Post.
George Carlin once did a bit about various license plates around the country and the phrases they have on them. Pennsylvania for example said "You Have a Friend in Pennsylvania" Carlin thought that kind of peculiar, being that the majority of the people who read that plate LIVED in Pennsylvania. "Of course you'd have a friend or two by now. 40 years you're bound to meet someone."
He went on to say, that New Hampshire's license plate read "Live Free or DIE!". On the other hand, Idaho's read "Famous Potatoes" Carlin reasoned that those were the two extremes..
"It would seem to me that somewhere between Live Free or Die, and Famous Potatoes, the truth lies. Probably it's a little closer to Famous Potatoes."
So that's what faced me. Go to Bryant Park and fight the power (Live Free or Die) or go pregame at the Pig n' Whistle (Famous Potatoes).
And then, the decision was made for me. Kind of..
The train out of RVC was running late, so I missed my connection to Grand Central. It was either stand on the platform at Jamaica like an idiot freezing my buns off waiting 20 minutes for the next train to GCT or stay on the train and head into Penn Station. Then I would have no choice but to pass Bryant Park and as Mick Jagger once sang, go down to the demonstration, to get my fair share of abuse.
I hustled from Penn to Bryant Park, but by the time I got there, either the party was over, or it have moved to another locale, because this is all I saw....
Ping Pong Diplomacy at Bryant Park
So, it was off to the bar. But then as I was walking up 6th Avenue, I saw large crowds. I thought I was in luck, maybe I could join the protest after all. But it turns out that was a false alarm.
The Mount St. Mary's Marching Band for Tartan Day
It was the Tartan Day Parade, celebrating All Things Scottish*. Apparently, Alan Cumming was the Grand Marshall. All due respect, we had Mike Benn for our parade, so I'll put that in the W column for we Irish. Still the parade was cool, you can't go wrong with bagpipes. Problem was, it was hindering my efforts to get to the bar.
Luckily there was a break in the action and I was able to get to the P n' W for a beer.
But on this cold and gray soggy Saturday, many people more determined and committed than me took to the streets to peacefully protest. And for that, I salute you.
HOCKEY: New Goal Scoring Goat
Sunday afternoon right here on Long Island, Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals scored against the Islanders to pass Wayne Gretzky for all time NHL Goal scoring leader. He had scored two goals against Chicago on Friday to grab a share of the record. Now it belongs to Ovie alone.
I'm not going to lie, I really did not want the record to fall. Especially not to Ovechkin.
Back at the turn of the century, ESPN counted down the 50 greatest athletes of the 20th Century. Gretzky came in at number 5. Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Mohammad Ali and Jim Brown were 1-4 respectively.
I thought I made a pretty convincing argument that The Great One should have topped that list. Namely, that out of those other four, not one of them owned their respective sport's record book quite the way Gretzky owned the NHL's. At the time, Gretzky owned 61 NHL records. Jordan, as great as he was, was neither the all time point scoring leader (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) the all time point per game for a season leader (Wilt Chamberlain) and even Jordan's 6 titles were a little over half of Bill Russell's 11 titles with the Celtics.
Ruth and Ali transcended their sports and while I wouldn't have put Jim Brown as high as ESPN did., I was rest assured by people who saw him play that his spot on the list was well-earned. (Lawrence Taylor was and still is the best football player I ever saw, -though Tom Brady is hard to argue against)
But Gretzky was and still is unquestionably the best to ever do it in the NHL. His overall points record won't be caught in my lifetime I'm sure. Especially given the fact that he has more assists than the 2nd player on the scoring list (Jaromir Jagr) has points. That's a stat that will forever blow my mind.
The thing I wrestle with when it comes to this situation is this: Am I upset Ovechkin broke the record because he is Russian? And if that's the case, does that make me a bad person?
I have read countless tales of Henry Aaron, as he closed in on catching Ruth's home run record, receiving tons of hate mail and death threats from racists who didn't want a black man to break the Babe's record. There were probably a whole bunch more who wouldn't or couldn't take the time to write to Aaron, but were rooting against him anyway.
Now was it OK to root against him breaking the record because you were a Yankee fan? Or a New Yorker who simply wanted to see the record stay in NYC? I guess if you kept your punches above the waist and didn't insult the man, you are entitled to root however you wanted.
Reading what Aaron went through gave me pause to actively root against Ovechkin. It was also a fool's errand, as the only way he wasn't going to break the record was if he sustained a serious injury. And I have a policy against rooting for injuries to any athlete.**.
I could justify it by saying that it's simply not a matter of Ovechkin being Russian as much as it is a matter of him being a vocal supporter of Vladmir Putin. The older I get, the more I try to separate sports and politics, but that's a tough pill to swallow. On the other hand, a Canadian born writer I read in the Athletic pointed out that Gretzky still considered CFCO a friend, despite the fact that CFCO has spoken aloud of making Canada a state and igniting a trade war.
I had a bad habit of mingling sports and politics when I was younger, especially after 9/11. I was so pissed at the Yankees for the 2000 World Series, that I spent most of 2001 rooting against them. But then I saw how the city seemed to come alive when the Yanks won those three WS games against the D'Backs at the Stadium, especially the two walk off wins in Games 4 and 5, and I couldn't help but hope another World title could help heal the city.
Of course, the Yanks went back to Phoenix, got blown out in Game 6, and lost an excruciating Game 7. Somehow the city still came back after that. Later on that winter, I was rooting hard for Team USA in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Team Canada's GM at the time was trying to rally his team by suggesting that the world was out to get the Canadians and that everyone was rooting for the US. His motives worked, Canada won the gold medal, and I took to these pages to call the Canadian GM a moron.
That Canadian GM? Wayne Gretzky.
So, yeah, I'll admit I didn't want Ovechkin to break the record. Yeah maybe I'd prefer a North American to have the record. I will say this, if it was Artemi Panarin, or Alexi Kovalev or even Sergei Fedorov, I would be happy (or happier).
The Rangers brought up 19 year old Gabe Perrault this week. Maybe 20 years from now, he'll be knocking on Ovechkin's door. More likely, pigs are going to take to the air.
But I guess that is the beauty of sports.
Val Kilmer (1959-2025)
"Jim Morrison. Sort of a Val Kilmer lookalike"- Bob Costas.***
There are few things cooler in the entertainment industry than to see an actor/actress totally transform themselves into a famous celebrity. Sarah Paulson, in both FX's American Crime Story series The Run of His Life (OJ Simpson) and Impeachment (Bill Clinton) was able to pull off an almost clone of Marcia Clark and Linda Tripp. She is absolutely amazing at that.
Jim Carrey became Andy Kaufman in Milos Forman's Man on the Moon. Like almost to the point that you really felt like if you put their pictures next to each other, you couldn't tell them apart.
There have been some others, those are the ones that come immediately to mind.
But Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's The Doors? That tops the list.
And not only did Kilmer look the part, he learned all the Doors songs, and a bunch of Morrison's poetry and sang all the songs in the movie. I only found that out a few years ago. And if that doesn't blow your mind enough, apparently the surviving Doors at the time had a hard time telling Morrison's voice from Kilmer's.
Crazy right?
I can't honestly say I was a huge fan of his, the other movie I thought he was great in was Tombstone.****
The first time I saw him was in the ABC After School Special One Too Many, where he played a teenager with a drinking problem, along with Michele Phiffer. (We read a transcript of that episode in a Read Magazine that we used to get at St. Mary's in 6th Grade) So, Morrison and Doc Holliday weren't even the first boozers he played.
But he blew me away in The Doors. That was some performance. That's how I'll remember him. I was bummed to hear of his passing this week.
RIP.
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Back to CFCO for a minute- A few people asked me this week if I was surprised that Orange said he was thinking of seeking a third term. Well, being that he has also said that he wants to be a dictator, the answer to that question is a resounding no. Wannabe dictators do things like that. They also send an angry mob of like-minded goons to storm the Capitol and try to kill the Vice President and Speaker of the House.
No, what surprises me is that you have a whole lot of folks who carry around a pocket version of the Constitution to keep handy when they are attempting to justify purchasing a cache of weapons that could arm a small nation but somehow doesn't seem to care about that part where it was decided to limit the terms of the Presidency to 2. That will never cease to amaze me.
That's all we got this week my friends.
Stay Safe
and Have a Great Week
*and pizza (IYKYK)
**John Rocker being one notable exception to that rule
***Costas didn't say that, at least I don't think he did. I once was inclined to do an impression of Costas and that's the line I came up with.
****Tara and I visited Tombstone, AZ in June 2007. There is like a three block area where they recreate the gunfight at the OK Corral, complete with old time looking bars and shops. The rest of Tombstone, AZ looks like Maspeth. The road we took to get there looked exactly like Calamus Ave.