Anyway, before I get into the Lilly-Gibbons brawl, or the Roughriders chances at the Grey Cup, or any of that stuff, I've noticed that the old inbox has been filling up while I was gone, so without further adieu it's time now for my version of the old mailbag - Dealing With Your Crap:
Curlgate
To get things going we'll start off with what's most important, Curling. More importantly, with a note about people finally respecting the power that being put on notice deserves. As you remember, due to slanderous accusations towards myself I had to put Curling on notice, and pronounced a certain curling publication dead to me. As you can imagine, this sent the curling world reeling, and with good reason. As the Publication itself said, "This is a full-fledged PR disaster!", and that's not the half of it. Even other top curling sources have turned on the once proud Curling News. Mike from inthehack.com said:
I think its unfair to punish an entire sport simply because of one outspoken curling sports "reporter"...
Do the rest of us curling fans a favour and replace curling with George Karrys on your bench.
That's right, he used reporter in quotes, and tried to shift all the blame away from curling onto one man. The curling world is running scared and are doing everything they can to be taken off notice. This kind of effort could have saved Chuck Swirsky a long time ago, but was completely lacking and resulted in his becoming dead to me. Curling, however, you keep it up and you could be seeing yourselves taken off notice soon enough.
Which brings up a good question - can someone who is dead to me be reborn? Certainly Jesus accomplished such a feet, but he was a carpenter and we're talking about mere curling reporters here. I just don't know if ethically I can allow it. In an attempt to regain face, however, George made the following offer:
Perhaps a free copy of the 2007 calendar (when printed) and a couple of free Keiths’ at the Brier Patch in Hamilton will change SGN’s mind and bring ye olde TCN back into the good books...
If you know me and my ethics you certainly know that bribery is a great place to start. I am in the Hamilton area most of the time, so be careful George, your offers will probably be taken up. Will that be enough, though? Time will tell. Of course, bumping the Brier Patch up to a ticket to the actual Brier itself one day would certainly move me towards taking all things curling off all lists altogether. Something to think over for all interested party's I'm sure.
Five Weird Things
Looks like while I was gone another of the great sports bloggers I "tagged" stepped up and joined Jim Lang in revealing his "5 Weird Things". Chris Young from the Toronto Star came back after a month's vacation (2 weeks longer than i got :( ) and immediately got to his list. So here, now, are 5 Weird Things about Chris Young:
1 The only domestic chore I like is washing dishes. And I actually really, really like washing dishes.
2 I once spent a winter living in a squat in London, sleeping on a cot in the kitchen. It was so cold
in the morning I'd hop out of bed, turn the gas stove on, get back into the sleeping bag and wait
until the room warmed up enough to get up.
3 Soccer allegiance borne out of that winter: Crystal Palace. More recently, thanks to NFL Sunday
Ticket, I haven't missed a Browns game since they came back. Between Palace and the Browns,
that's a lot of torn tickets.
4 When no one's home I like to turn the music up loud and dance with the dogs. That's not so
weird, really but the dancing ... my youngest stepdaughter says I dance like 'one of the ghouls in
a Michael Jackson video.'
5 Each year on my birthday, I decide what age I'm going to be depending on how I feel. Last year
it was 36. This year, it's 42.
All I can say is Chris - I have a sink full of dreams at home that you're welcome to come deal with (and I'm just going to ignore the dog dancing thing with a slight shake of the head, ha). So there it is, 2 down and 3 to go. And remember, Romanuk, Berkovich and Downie, the last one to comply will be put on notice, and as you read above that can be devastating, so get your 5 weird things posted ASAP. My money's on Romanuk, but I hear Mr. Canuck Op Ed is pretty stubborn himself.
Oh yeah, and I recently had a birthday too. By Chris' math last year I was 19. This year, I'm 42 right there with you Chris.
Fantasy BBall Trades
My apologies to those of you out there who send in fantasy ball questions while I was away, as in most leagues I know of the trading deadline has now passed. What can you do, though, it's not like I charge for my services, so keep those following up me-bashing emails to a minimum. That's a good way to get me to tell you to trade Roy Halladay for Hanley Ramirez anyway, so you're not doing yourselves any favours.
Closing Thoughts
Well, there are way too many other emails to deal with, so if I didn't get to yours yet, I apologize. As I go, though, I just want to send a shout out to an old friend of mine from the otherwise tiresome National Post, Adam Radwanski. It's always nice to see political minds branch out into the world of sports, as Adam has done with his new humourous take on the Toronto Argos at Boatmen Blog. I guess with the big man back at QB now the Argos aren't enough of a joke on their own anymore (as the Alouettes found out first hand last weekend), so Adam felt the need to step up the satire. A well done read for all you CFL junkies out there... all 3 of you, that is...
