Knuckles Nilan Arrested

Former Boston Bruin and my childhood idol, Chris "Knuckles" Nilan was arrested yesterday at the South Shore Plaza for shoplifting.

QUINCY - Chris Nilan, a former professional hockey player known for his frequent trips to the penalty box, was arrested on a charge of stealing a bathing suit from the Lord & Taylor store at the South Shore Plaza.

"I just wanted to save a few bucks," he told police.

It's been a bad week for former Boston players, first Antoine Walker is pinched in Nevada for passing bad checks at Casinos, now Knuckles is picked up by mall cops for shoplifting a pair of bathing suit.

Growing up following the Bruins, I have always admired Nilan's toughness - even though he played the majority of his NHL career for the hated Montreal Canadiens. He was probably the most hated Canadien in Boston, and for good reasons. But this was one of those situations where you hate a player because he's the A-hole on your most hated team - but you love him when he becomes the A-hole on your team.

The Bruins signed him in 1990, I thought he was the final missing piece of the puzzle, adding toughness to a talent loaded but still a bit soft team. Excite, I ran out and bought a Nilan sweater - which I still have to this day (pictured above).

But like that pair of Lord & Taylor bathing suit, the Cup remained out of the hands of my beloved Bruins.

Police said Nilan struggled with store security officers who followed him out of the store. Police said Nilan denied taking anything and threw punch at one of the guards, but missed.

When Braintree Police officers Michael Want and Matthew Crowley arrived, Nilan was still struggling with the security guards even after they knocked him down. The police officers managed to subdue Nilan and place him in handcuffs.

Knuckles still holds the record for penalty minutes for a single game, and he is one of nine men on this planet who has more than 3,000 career NHL penalty minutes. Bested by freaking mall cops. This is like Tiger Woods getting beat by 6 year olds in miniature golf.

Thank goodness the judge had enough sense to take into account Nilan's former service to the community (I know it does not say so in the article - but come on, this is Knuckles Nilan), dismissed the case with a $100 court fine and ordered him to stay away from the store.

If I were those mall cops, I watch myself going to my car after work. Nilan is always the nastiest when coming out of the penalty box.

In other hockey news, the NHL made it official - Boston vs. Philadelphia in the Winter Classic at Fenway Park.

I already know what's going to happen, thanks to the run the Bruins had last year, the Pink Hats will snatch up all the tickets and I'll be forced to go to person A for tickets at 4 times the face value.

Speaking of fights, check out this blog entry on ChinaSmack.

Apparently, the dude in the red shirt tried to muscle this couple's child for a seat on the Shanghai tourist tram, and got his ass and his flip flop handed to him.

You might think, why would an adult start with a little kid for a damn bus seat? Well, I have been to Shanghai and have seen this first hand. This is no joke, people over there LOVE fighting for seats on public transportation. You have to have your A game on at all times when taking any surface transportation (for some odd reason, the subway was not as violent when I took it - maybe the sun light activates some sort of enzyme that make them fight).

When you are waiting for the bus, and all the people in line are old or small children? It doesn't matter - these same grandmas and toddlers will shove and muscle you at the door.

When the empty bus that seats 60 pulls up and there are only 8 people in line? They'll still use every part of their body and that Hello Kitty backpack to box you out like Dwight Howard just to get on the damn bus before you.

For what reason, I have no idea. The people I had encountered were all local, and they must know that the bus is not full during that time of the day. I think it's a form of free entertainment for them - kind of like playing pop-a-shot at your local watering hole.

A couple that fights toghether stays together

Release the Video!

LeBron James and Nike should release video of James being dunked on.

It's a bitch move by LeBron, but hey, at least he didn't rape anyone.

Inappropriate, But Still Funny

By now, you are probably sick of reading stories about Michael Jackson.

Apart from his death eclipsing another little story about what's going on in Iran, and the general wackiness displayed by his fans that prompted Jesse Jackson to come out and urge them not to kill themselves; someone told me by far the best story over the weekend.

I play softball with a guy who is a supervisor for the T bus drivers (for those of you who don't know, the T is the public transportation system for the Greater Boston area).

He told me after his shift on Friday (the day after Micheal died), he noticed several of the African American bus drivers were kind of upset.

He asked them what was bothering them. The answer he got was - throughout the day, white people were coming on the bus and telling them that they were sorry about Michael.

By the way, you can still buy the shirt for $6.

Trying too Hard on Facebook

Everyone have at least once tried to put something witty in their Facebook status. You know, something to show your friends that you are intelligent, interesting, and maybe fun to hang with.





But when you try too hard, you get something like this:

LOOK AT ME: is making laksa for dinner, but is jonesing for bacon mac & cheese.
Yesterday at 5:04 PM

See what she did thre? Threw out an exotic dish (not just a dish - mind you, a street dish), but closed with the ordinary for the irony.

Right now, this person is hitting that refresh button, begging for someone to notice and ask her that obvious question.

Somebody who doesn't know how to use Google
at 5:10pm June 18
laksa?

Bingo!

LOOK AT ME:
at 5:14pm June 18
it's maylasian street food. Soup with noodles. Lots of curry and shrimp paste and cilantro and... okay, now that's what I DO want for dinner.

Note the time stamp - 4 minutes - you know she had the response all ready to go.

I know this person, and she is not Malaysian. With this knowledge of some obscure Asian dish. She has immediately elevated herself to the top of the list amongst her white friends.

Somebody who doesn't know how to use Google
at 5:16pm June 18
OMG that sounds like awesome comfort food. Not that bacon mac & cheese didn't sound like awesome comfort food...hmm, maybe that's what I'LL make for dinner!! Thanks for the idea!

See what I mean? this person is the enabler, but an amateur one at that. If they had asked our laksa eating friend here where and when she learned about the dish, she could have gone on for hours telling her tales about her travels. Not just staying in nice western hotels either, probably some backpacking adventure where she discovered the street dish.

Then, here comes people like me to ruin her fun:

Person C
at 8:49pm June 18
isn't that a dog?

Me
at 9:56am June 19
NO! you would use parsley, mint or basil for dogs.

Now I Feel Old

It's one thing to see stuff that was popular when you were a kid being brought back as "nostalgia", it's another when you see things that were "in" when you were an adult now being called nostalgia.

Remember those Starter jackets? They're coming back. Iconix is resurrecting the brand and has signed Tony Romo to a deal promoting the brand at Wal-Mart.

I remember Starter from the 90's, seemed like everyone in Boston had one of those Starter Bruins jackets (yeah, the B's were popular once before all the front runners came on board last year). The company went belly up back in 2002, and the brand seemed to disappear overnight.


Entertainment Weekly has a nice write up of the Rise and Fall of the Starter Jacket.

Yep, the brand once favored by hip-hop artists, gangsters, and suburban gangster wannabes now have TO's quaterback (can't say the quaterback of the Dallas Cowboys, Starter does not have a deal with the NFL) at the helm piloting the resurrection.


Now I am curious if anyone is going to bring back the GoBots (the Starter brand as the Transformers) of the gangster NFL apparel - the Apex One Pro Line jackets?

More Mile High Fun

Here are some of the other tidbits from my trip to Denver.

The robes in the rooms - new photograph evidence has surfaced. It now appears that the Hotel Monaco was not satisfied with just providing their guests with leopard print robes, some rooms have giraffe print robes; and thank goodness, they didn't miss out on the $30 "Not Complementary" leopard print ladies camisole and shorts.

I am going to back up a bit here. As some of you may remember, the day I left for Denver was the weekend where the swine flu panic was in full swing in the United States. Predictably, there were people on my United flight rocking the surgical mask.

As I disembark my flight at the Denver Airport, I counted 3 of my fellow passengers wearing masks to ward off the swine voodoo. One Asian lady, who is probably a veteran of the SARS pandemic, is wearing a surgical mask. The other two clowns, are wearing Home Depot dust masks.

I may not be a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but I am fairly certain that a $4 dust mask isn't going to stop the evil H1N1.

I have to admit, I am a bit peeved at myself. I was totally unprepared for this trip. I had completely forgotten about the swine flu panic that was taking place across the country. Here was a golden opportunity to mess with people on the flight, and I didn't even have a sombrero nor a pork sandwich to induce panic.

Wednesday evening saw the 8 of us walking across downtown Denver to Coors Field to take in a Rockies game.

We had checked online early Wednesday, and found that we could purchase a 4 pack of Rockies tickets, which included 4 hot dogs and 4 regular sized sodas for $49. Being from the East Coast, and having been paying top dollar for crappy seats in rundown stadiums, this was an incredible deal.

Having been assured by our Denver colleagues that the Rockies never sellout week day games, we decided against purchasing tickets online, and planned on buying them at the box office.

The decision to buy the tickets at the box office turned out to be a major mistake. The game time was 6:45 PM, and we arrived at the stadium at 6:30 PM. Walking around to the side of the stadium to the box office windows, we were greeted with eight lines, at least 20 persons deep each.

At first, we were not too worried. 8 of us, 8 lines. We can just split up and take 1 line each, and we'll just buy all the tickets when the first person gets up to the window.

Simple, right? Nope. Not when every person working at the window was at least 90 years old, and every person buying tickets has to ASK ABOUT EVERY SEATING SECTION THAT HAD TICKETS AVAILABLE; with the Rockies not selling out the game, that makes EVERY SECTION AVAILABLE. Most of the lines hardly moved for the first 20 minutes or so.

Out of the eight of us waiting, I am the only one from the East Coast that goes to sporting events on a regular basis. With each passing minute, I wanted to just start shoving people out of the way if they asked any question other than "How much is my total?" Really, the stadium is empty, just buy the cheapest tickets and move the fuck on. I kept thinking to myself, this kind of crap will never fly in the East; half of the people would be beaten by an angry mob for asking questions like "what's the difference between this section in the right field and these on the left field?"

After what seemed like 2 hours, we finally got to the front of the line and got our tickets (another 15 minutes of waiting as the ticket seller was typing in our selection on the keyboard with the hunt and peck method with one single finger, then calling over the supervisor when the printer jammed).

When we entered the stadium, I was quite impressed. It had all the modern amenities, great concessions (no lines either!), and several other things that I haven't seen in person in a baseball stadium.

First and foremost, we got in during the top of the second inning, and there are A LOT of empty seats.


I would estimate that the stadium is less than 1/4 full. This is quite a shock for me to see. The temperature was around 70 and not a cloud in the sky, tickets for less than $10 for most of the park, and yet no one is at the game. Even back the days where I used to go to Red Sox games in the 90's, before most of the front runners "started watching baseball" in 2003, Fenway would be 70% full on most weekdays.


During the third inning, the Rockies bunted a runner from first to second with a sacrifice. My coworker from Minnesota asked me if I had ever seen that before; meaning that I follow the Yankees and live in Boston, both AL teams that don't play much small ball. Well, to answer his question, yes - I have seen teams play small ball - I watched the World Baseball Classic.

That question got me thinking of the differences between the games I have gone to at Yankee Stadium/Fenway Park and Coors Field.

Well, the first thing would be the empty seats and the ticket prices mentioned above. The next thing I have noticed is that people at the game isn't really that into the game. Not much yelling, cheering or cursing - they just kind of sitting there as if they are sitting on a park bench on a nice day. Sure they would cheer when the home team got a hit or made a nice catch, but missing is the atmosphere where the crowd is hanging on every pitch - the cheer for the home team pitcher when he throws a strike, or the "awwww!" when a close pitch is called a ball.

The next thing I noticed was the between inning entertainment after the 3rd and 4th innings. First up was a challenge where they had picked someone from the crowd for a chance to win a free authentic Rockies jersey. The challenge was the person had to run from the left field wall (I think it was at the 390 feet mark) to second base (the base had been removed from the mounting and sitting on its side), place the base back into its mounting and run to first base.

For the person to win, they would have to do this before the 20 second clock on the jumbotron reaches zero. Well, the unfortunate soul they picked to run this event was not in very good shape. In fact, I think the woman would have done better if there was a double cheese burger sitting on first base. Predictably, she didn't even come close to beating the clock. The crowd gave her a nice cheer and that was that. I think the Boston / New York crowd would have crucified her.

Next up was another challenge to win a Rockies gift pack. Another person had been picked from the crowd to shag fly balls in center field. The contestant had been a guy who looked to be in his late twenties, and probably had not seen athletic competition since kickball in 2nd grade.

The ball was to be shot from a giant slingshot in left field, and he needed to catch at least one out of two to win. With the first one, the guy took off towards the slingshot as soon as the ball was launched, not bothering to even read the trajectory of the towering pop up. The result? he over ran the ball by at least 20 yards, froze and watched the ball land even though he had ample time to recover and get back to the ball.

For his second and last chance, the man smarten up. He started back further, and waited for the fly ball to reach its zenith, and then started to move to catch it. Instead of running with the glove tucked towards his body, he decided to run with both arms flailing. After 4 steps, he does a face plant. The crowd again politely cheers the guy as he is escorted off the field. In New York or Boston? I think the crowd would have followed the guy home and booed his family and egged his neighbor's house.

After the display of Rockies version of the Biggest Loser, I decided to take a walk and take in the sights of Coors Field. I walked along the mezzanine level - all around the lower level. Among the things I saw was a nice playground, full of children on the jungle gym and slides. People milling around and chatting, watching the sun set behind the Rocky Mountains. It was rather nice, the stadium was more like a park where people go to relax for the evening rather than to watch baseball.


All in all I have to say that I am quite impressed with Coors Field. I had a nice time watching my first National League game, the price was reasonable for both the tickets and the concessions. The game turned out to be a joke, Rockies beating my old friend Randy Johnson and the Giants 11-1. A good time was had by all.

Mile High Pimpin'

I had to travel to Denver last week for what turned out to be a fun and educational week.

I stayed at the Hotel Monaco, in Downtown Denver. Instead of going to the usual comedy goldmine tripadvisor.com for hotel review funnies, I found the laughter right in the closet of my room.

Upon arriving Sunday evening, and spending an uneventful meal at the Rock Bottom restaurant - I turned in early. Micro brews always gives me a headache and makes me tired.

Woke up very early Monday morning (still living on East Coast time), went to the closet to get the iron for my cloths and I was greeted by this:


Yes, leopard skin patterned his and hers robes. A closer look:


After my eyeballs stopped hurting, I decided to take some pictures. Upon closer inspection, there were ladies camisole and shorts for sale in the closet:


They had a sign around it informing me that the camisole and shorts are "Not Complementary" and they are in fact for sale at $30 a piece. I don't know how people in Denver roll, but if I find under garments hanging in a closet at a hotel, my first instinct is not to wear it. That may just be me.

After conferring with my coworkers over breakfast and confirming that they had the same things in their closet, and that I didn't mistakenly checked into some safari drag queen fantasy suite (not that there is anything wrong with that); I felt a bit better. Although I am in a city that idolized Jay Cutler - you just never know. After finding out that there is a free happy hour at the hotel lounge every evening, I briefly contemplated with the idea of rocking this robe to Monday's happy hour.

I eventually decided against the idea because:

• This is a work trip, in this economic climate I should be on my best behavior. Although by rocking this robe I would have a strong case for sexual preference discrimination if somehow I was to be disciplined.
  
• I don't think the ladies of Denver can handle this pimp-a-licious robe.

Overall, this hotel was pretty nice. Free hour of booze and appetizers every night (my only complaint is that they only had wine everyday except Tuesday, where they had free Coronas for Cinco de Mayo) is a nice selling point.

They also had this on the desk:

Yep, that's a fish bowl with a single gold fish in it. The sign you see in front of the bowl informed me that the hotel has specialized staff to take care of the fish and I should not feed it, along with a bunch of other nagging tips on how to keep the fish comfortable. I thought about messing with the staff by hiding the fish and leaving a hand written note - "out of sushi, please refill!!".

That would probably get me in some hot water with the PETA folks, but hey, what can they do to me? this is a city that let Kobe get away with rape for Christ sake. But of course, after a few days of free wine and apps, I got lazy and forgot about it.

That was the first two days of the trip, I'll post more about my later adventures in the City of Denver in the upcoming days.