Intrepid NHL to host first intersport game

OK, OK… The Lightning will be opening at home against the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes, not the NFL’s Panthers, but I didn’t Photoshop that picture at all. That’s what it read during a pre-season game against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Thought it was pretty funny.

I’m curious to know who was responsible for the blooper, whether it was a sleep-deprived staffer, a non-hockey fan or what. Not judging that person whatever their reasoning may be, but I gotta say if I was working there, I wouldn’t let that go up.

For your next trick, get a new stadium

Approximate view from our seats Wednesday

LAKELAND, FL — Congratulations to the Tampa Bay Rays, who clinched their first AL East title this evening. In only one season, they went from dead last in the MLB to winning their division with bravado. Quite a remarkable feat, and people around the bay are rightfully excited about their team’s postseason prospects. It’s a great story, especially because of how they’ve found ways to win games without Longoria, Crawford and Upton. There’s no way Joe Maddon doesn’t win manager of the year.

It’s just too bad they play in the worst stadium in baseball.

I’ve been to the Trop a few times, once when it was a hockey arena (fear the THUNDERDOME) and most recently this past Wednesday when I saw them rip Tim Wakefield and the Boston Red Sox, 10-3. I’ve sat in a bunch of different locations, but even a seat right on the field can’t change that dump’s most obvious flaw: IT HAS A PERMANENT ROOF.

I’d like to meet the group of geniuses who decided in the early 1980’s that an open air stadium modeled after KC’s would not work because it’s humid and rains a lot during the summer here. The bottom line has to be that they saved a bunch of money by doming the place for eternity. Rogers Centre in Toronto broke ground around the same year as the Trop (1986) but cost $570 million to the Trop’s $130 million ($235 mil if you count renovations). I don’t see why a retractable wouldn’t work here, I think for enough money they could find a way to do it.

My hope is that the Rays playoff run brings to light all of the ugly truths about this stadium.

I hope someone hits a ball into one of the catwalks and this whole ridiculous set of rules comes into play:

The catwalks are lettered, with the highest inner ring being the A Ring, out to the furthest and lowest, the D Ring. The A Ring is entirely in play, while the B, C and D Rings have yellow posts bolted to them to delineate the relative position of the foul lines. Any ball touching the A Ring, or the in-play portion of the B Ring, can drop for a hit or be caught for an out. The C and D Rings are out of play; if they are struck between the foul poles, then the ball is ruled a home run. (Wikipedia)

Balls get stuck and lost in the catwalks all the time, and it’s no surprise that the first use of MLB instant replay happened here.

My sister and her boyfriend live in the area and said that where the stadium’s located in St. Pete is kind of a bitch to get to because of traffic on 275 and it’s out of the way for most Tampa Bayers.

Should the Rays ride this thing out to shore, they will have done something no one could have fathomed a year ago. Here’s to hoping that success deserves them something better.

Cruising at Mach W

Sometimes, you just have to throw caution and sleep to the wind and cruise at Mach W. If you don’t know, stop reading right now and get a faceful of this.

If you don’t have a Wawa near you, I am sorry you’ve chosen to locate yourself wherever you have. In my opinion, Wawa can do no wrong. Every single one of their products is kickass, from their Philly-style pretzels (which I learned you have to squeeze to judge freshness) to their fruit punch and orange drinks (10% actual juice, 90% sugar, but who cares?).

Going to Wawa is one of my favorite things to do when I’m home. Doing so means I AM home, and as much as I’d like them to take over the globe and stick a Wawa flag on the moon, there’s something I appreciate about the chain’s regionality.

I would like to personally thank this can of Mach W energy drink for all the work I have accomplished tonight. If you make your way over to the Emerson Hockey blog, you will find the fruits of my labor. Two of the interviews from the summer retreat are up and ready for your infotainment.

Mach W also helped me pack my suitcase. I have to be on a plane out of Atlantic City by 10 this morning, and I’ve been out of a good sleep rhythm, so I figured why not get some work done? I can sleep on the plane, and in between innings of the Rays/BoSox game.

I’m heading down to Florida for a week to spend some time with my sister. The vacation should be nice. She’s coaching a soccer team of ten year old girls, so who knows, maybe I’ll do a little story on her and post it.

Adios for a bit, and GO PHILS! I wish we could get Comcast in Monmouth County here, but unfortunately we don’t. I’m stuck watching the Mets, rooting for them to lose and keeping an eye on ESPN for the Phils (and Brew Crew, as things are) scores…

Emerson Hockey blog is up

It’s up it’s up it’s up!!

emersonhockey.blogspot.com

Get familiar… x-posted my two stories from Sports Journalism and will be adding the video I shot at the summer retreat once I get my reel taken care of.

That’s actually coming along nicely now. I’ve learned to multitask in dealing with the slowness of my version of Final Cut Pro. I doubt it would go so slow if I brought in my footage from tape, but I have only digital copies of my work, and it needs to render the footage any time I edit it in the slightest bit. Kind of annoying.

Note to self: output to tape more often.

Blogspot doesn’t count words. I’m keeping my WordPress. Wish it were easier to bring everything over to qbloga.wordpress.com though. It’s a sexier domain, don’t you think?

Moving?

You know when you were like 12 and all your friends had AIM but there was that one weird kid who had ICQ? I kind of feel like him, here at WordPress. I’m considering moving over to blogspot, mostly because you can upload video directly to it, which you can’t do here. This has it’s own advantages however (my stuff gets picked up almost instantaneously in Google searches, that little SNAP preview thing that comes up when you mouseover links) and I’m not ready to abandon it quite yet.

—

In other news, I’ve been incredibly lazy lately. This is something that needs to stop NOW. I tried resetting my biological clock by pulling an all-nighter Tuesday/Wednesday but I still woke up at 11:30 today. I know for a fact my eyes opened around 6:50, but I opted for more sleep anyway. It’s too easy to roll over and go back to sleep when there’s no place and no one expecting your presence.

I grabbed NHL 09 yesterday and it is awesome as expected. The new Be-A-Pro mode is dangerously addictive. You make a version of yourself that you have to strengthen through gameplay and eventually get to the pros from the minor leagues. Pretty cool.

But yeah, playing the game and beating it is not going to get me anywhere fast. I need to self-discipline myself and use it either as a reward or something to do when footage in my reel (which I began work on today) timeline is rendering.

Time to get back to work.

Young Folks

I’ve been meaning to get a post about music I like up here, so here’s my first.

Peter, Bjorn & John – Young Folks

Heard this song on the Point Pleasant boardwalk the other day and haven’t been able to get the infectious whistling out of my head since. First heard it last summer on WERS I think… just figured I’d share it and get it stuck in your craniums as well.

Kanye West is apparently a fan… he joined Peter, Bjorn & John on stage at the Way Out West fest in Gothenberg, Sweden (they’re a swedish band… learn more through the almighty scholarly research power of wikipedia!) last summer and rapped over the song.

Here’s that:

And here’s a studio remix from him:

Some of the YouTube commenters hate on it, but I think it’s a fun remix, even though Kanye seems to go on forever about himself at the end of it.

Personally, I think if there’s any hate, it should be directed unilaterally and powerfully at one Mr. James Blunt, because this is effin’ terrible… he sounds like he’s trying to channel Cat Stevens and there’s no whistling. Boo this man.

Ugh.

This cover by a British band called the Kooks is nice, but you’d really be best served downloading the original or **GASP!!** actually buying the album “Writer’s Block”, which I’m planning on doing.

6 days until NHL 09 ruins/enhances my life.

There goes my gun

My Glock and I spend some quality time together

I think I feel most alive when fear and excitement are coursing through my veins, so this weekend I went to a shooting range in New Hampshire to get my fix.

Let’s get all the ugly puns out of the way right now: Kate rode shotgun and we had a blast.

We took I-93 out of Boston and arrived in Manchester, NH about an hour later. I believe we got off exit 2 on I-293 (Google says I believe well), made a left on Brown, a right on Winston, and another right on Gay St (/childish giggle) and amongst a strange industrial mix of buildings and baseball fields stood the Manchester Firing Range on the right at 50 Gay.

The kind of crowd you’d expect to be hanging outside of a firing range was there smoking cigarettes and loafing at a few picnic benches in their dungarees and NASCAR apparel. They were in no way menacing, but my nerves began to stand at attention walking towards the entrance the way they seem to do whenever I arrive at orientations. I think it’s the fear of fitting in, paranoia that people I don’t yet know are judging me as a freshman, a n00b.

Kate held my hand as I opened the door, and I don’t know if she was gripped by the same fear and wanted me to take charge and step inside or just wanted to show some affection (probably the latter), but once we got inside there was no turning back. Even if that meant an waiting for an hour+.

“It’s worth it,” the nerdy-looking gunsmith wearing a Glock smock (OK technically it was an apron, but smock goes nicely with Glock) standing behind a glass case filled with an array of unloaded pistols testified.

We took his word for it and put our names on the waiting list for one of the ten lanes to open up. They took our driver’s licenses and made us sign a waiver. I’m assuming they did a background check while we went outside to kill some time, but I don’t know for sure.

“A lot of couples come in here,” one of the other gunsmiths told another couple. “Lot of girls, too. Especially on ladies night. And a lot of them are better shots than the guys.”

While we were waiting, I tried to observe some of the other people in the waiting/gun and ammo rental zone so I would know what I wanted to shoot and not look like a complete moron when I went up to ask for it. I ended up choosing a Glock 9 millimeter and a .44 Magnum.

Not gonna lie, pop culture picked my guns for me and made them cool. I wouldn’t know what the hell a Glock or a “fo-fo” was if it weren’t for any number of rappers and/or action heroes. Hunter S Thompson, one of my favorite writers, loved guns. I guess that’s why I went in the first place. I just wanted to see what it was like to do something that so many of the badasses I read, watched, or listened to did.

Plus I like fire and explosions. (Who doesn’t?)

I made no bones about my level of skill with the gunsmith when he called to set us up for our lane. He explained the process of loading and firing the Glock (which I’m not going to share because that kind of information should probably not be floating about the Internet, even though it likely already is) and gave us our ammo, targets (we picked the one that looked like a person with a bull’s eye in the chest), and protective eye and ear gear.

I soon discovered how necessary the shop glasses and landscaper headset we were given were. When we got into the range it was loud as hell. Shells were popping and flying everywhere. I mean, I’m used to things that are violently loud noise because I’m into that kind of music, but this was LOUD. LIKE HOLY SHIT THREE EXCLAMATIONS!!! LOUD!!!

We passed a few people firing oh you know, just your everyday machine guns, and found our spot. I clipped our target in and sent it 5 feet away with the flick of a little metal knob. I tried to load the bullets into the clip, but I’ll admit I forgot which way the gunsmith told me to put them in and I was scared one of them was going to explode in my hands if I did something wrong. (Can that even happen?) Kate remembered which way was right and put the first five in, I loaded in the rest.

I cocked it, took my stance, aimed the sight at the target’s heart, and fired.

Wow. Just wow. I don’t think I hit it on that one, but I hit somewhere on the chest, and that was good enough for me. I shot the rest of the clip so quickly I remember being surprised when it clicked out. I set it down gently and let Kate have a go. We traded off until we ran out of bullets. I moved the target further and further back with each reload. 10, 15, 20 feet. Not surprisingly, the shots got more inaccurate as our distance from it increased.

You always hear about how powerful these things are, but I don’t think you can really understand it unless you fire one. Especially the .44, I shot that one next. It was a six-shooter like you’d see in the wild west or a Dirty Harry movie, and you’re damn right I felt lucky holding it. Kate wouldn’t touch it, and I don’t blame her, because that thing had one hell of a kick.

The bullets were huge and they went through the target paper much cleaner than the 9 mm shots did. That is, when I hit the paper. You aren’t supposed to shoot the target in the head… and I didn’t mean to, I was aiming for the chest. Wish I could have gotten a little better with this, but no one was really in there to coach me on my technique. I’m sure one of the friendly staff members would have been glad to help, but they were pretty busy in there, and I didn’t think to ask. I finished my box of bullets and went in to pay.

All told, an hour there cost us about $130. You only live once (twice if Bond) so I didn’t really worry about the money. They charge per lane, per gun, per targets and per ammo. The .44 ammo was significantly more expensive than the 9 milli ammo, so I got one box rather than two of that.

Some final reflections.

Gotta say I have a lot more respect for Wesley Snipes now. He’s always shooting dudes who are 20+ feet away and MOVING.

This was a lot of fun and I’m glad I had the experience, but I don’t think I’d ever want to own a gun, and I’m glad that more populous states like Massachusetts and New Jersey have the gun laws they do. The danger I spoke of at the beginning of this was only exciting because I don’t experience it on a daily basis. These are powerful machines capable of so much damage within one short burst.

I respect the second amendment, but I don’t think most modern urban and suburban life requires us to bear arms, or at least it shouldn’t. You have to take into consideration that when that law was written, much of our country was a vast wilderness and man vs. bear is not as effective as man with gun vs. bear. I do think it’s OK for guns to be available in rural states like New Hampshire because I’m not morally against hunting
and/or protecting your family and property from wild animals.

I myself wouldn’t want to own one. Too much could go wrong. And I think I’d feel safer living in an apartment building where little to no one owned a gun. But would I ever want to shoot another one at a range or in the great outdoors?

Well, what do you think?

Gwizdowski ready to take the reins

Alan “Gwiz” Gwizdowski wears many hats. He’s a talented photographer, graphic designer, student, marathon runner and golfer. But the most important piece of headgear he’ll be donning this Fall is his hockey helmet. Gwizdowski has been handed the captaincy of the Emerson hockey team, and he’s not taking the task lightly.

“No matter how busy I am with school, once we step on the ice it becomes all about hockey,” Gwiz said. “I don’t even think about anything else.”

Quiet by nature, Gwizdowski lets his stick and skates do most of the talking, delivering timely offense in critical games and giving 100% at every practice. He has worn the “A” as Emerson’s assistant captain for the past two seasons, earning his honors through skillful play and a fierce commitment to conditioning.

“He does the right thing, all the time, and that’s the epitome of captain material,” said former captain Matt Porter.

Gwiz met all his predecessor’s criteria for someone he’d want captaining the team:

Nearly insane amount of love for the game?

Check. Gwizdowski’s been on skates since he’s been a tot, and still gets excited when the lagoon in the Public Garden freezes over.

Never wavers in dedication to the club?

Check. He’s had to miss a few games and practices for school activities, but how many of those opportunities did he sacrifice because there was a road game and he was one of the few players on the team who had certification to drive an athletics van?

Extreme confidence, intelligence and aware of the people around him, their needs, abilities and possible shortcomings?

Check. When he’s on the bench, he studies his teammates. If he notices something that could help their game, when they hop back over the boards, he gives them tips for improvement.

Believes in the team and is a positive force without losing his realness?

Check. In the darkest moments of last season, Gwiz was the player that kept believing, continuing to go for goals in games that already looked like lost causes and never losing his head or picking a fight.

“If you’re not on your game [as captain] and don’t believe you can win,” he says, “nobody will believe they can win. Even if you as a single player have an off game you have to keep everyone else riled up.”

The team has come to him for offense and inspiration, but they’ve also come to him for help training. Having run the Boston Marathon three times, Gwizdowski is a prime source for fitness and nutrition information, and he’s more than willing to share what he knows. Known to run 60-70 miles in a week, he shared one of his routes with the team — up and down the inclines of Beacon Hill — that left more than a few of his less fit teammates gasping for air.

But lazy Lions of 2008 beware, captain Gwizdowski plans to reward only those who make the effort:

“If they don’t try, they don’t play,” he says. “We have plenty of kids who want to be out on the ice and if they try harder and are more deserving then they will play.”

Ice hockey at Emerson gets serious

“Rise like Lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number,” Percy Shelley once wrote in The Mask of Anarchy, a poem addressed to his fellow Englishmen after a massacre which took place at Manchester in 1819. Outgoing Emerson hockey captain Matt Porter might as well have delivered the same invocation to his rag tag squad at the end of their 2007-08 season.

The Lions were certainly asleep for the majority of last season, posting an abysmal overall 3-12-0 (1-8-0 NECHL) record, with two of their wins coming against the Rhode Island School of Design (GO NADS!). There were nights the team simply didn’t have the unvanquishable numbers they needed to win, as players were in and out of the lineup, tied up with school projects rather than thugs from Berklee College of Music or Tufts University.

“We weren’t really able to establish flow and coherence and identity,” Porter admitted. “To be frank, I’m sort of left with a bad taste, because we didn’t really win a lot.”

But 2008 looks to be an exciting year of transition for the Lions. Leadership duties have been handed down to Alan Gwizdowski ‘09 and Pete Keeling ‘10, who are looking for more team commitment. Porter has faith the duo will keep the Lions rising — both in level of skill and in the attention of the Emerson athletics department.

“Once you establish yourself as an actual club, I think, there’s not as much wild growth,” Porter said. “But the key is to keep moving forward and reaching new goals. And I’m confident Pete and Gwiz will do that.”

Captain Gwizdowski (who served as assistant captain the past two seasons) says he plans to make the team stronger by getting them comfortable with each other and building chemistry.

“People get used to playing with certain other players on their lines,” said Gwizdowski, who is known as “Gwiz” to friends and teammates. “When people can’t make it to a game because of a film shoot, final project, etc. lines start getting switched and players skate at positions and with players they are not necessarily used to.”

Newly minted as assistant captain, Keeling spent his summer taking care of organizational duties, scheduling practices and games and ordering jerseys. Managing a team is nothing new for Keeling, who built a team, the Mendham Ice Bats, in his home state of New Jersey. With that experience, he gained experience in fundraising, team conditioning, logistics, and on-ice direction.

“Pete came to me as a enthusiastic young player whose enthusiasm sometimes got the better of him,” Porter said of Keeling. “He’s grown into the leadership role a bit, but I feel he has a little way to go.”

As Keeling goes, so does the team. He says the 2008 Lions are joining the ACHA — a move the Berklee Ice Cats made last year — which he believes will put the Lions on a legitimate level of competition and standards.

Keeling has been pushing for a condensed alternative to the sprawling season that dragged the last year’s squad from September through March, and an ACHA schedule will provide that. The team will play a total of 14 league games; 7 at home (Simoni Rink, Cambridge) and 7 on the road between September and December. They will also participate in an exhibition game against a team to be announced, and square off against Berklee for the 3rd annual Boylston Cup, which the Lions have came close to winning but lost in the previous two bouts.

The condensed schedule effectively makes ice hockey at Emerson a Fall-only endeavor, much to the relief of TV/Film students like Gwizdowski and Keeling, who plan to finish their Emerson studies at the school’s Los Angeles campus. Had a condensed schedule been in place last season, the team would not have lost players like hard-hitting Jeff Duray or star goalie Greg Cohen, who left in the Spring semester to take classes in Kasteel Well, Netherlands.

Keeling hopes the team coalesces around his enthusiasm for being on the ice, because they’ll be skating at least four times a week this Fall.

“More ice time helps us to progress as players and as a team,” Keeling said. “We used to be on the ice once maybe twice a week, and we’d get rusty in our off time. This allows us to really hone in on our skills and tune our games to the fullest potential.”

To get the team ready for the heavy workload, Keeling has organized a pre-season weekend retreat of work outs and team-building activities, which is taking place next weekend on the Jersey Shore.

The Lions are gathering, and they’re hungry.

—

They’ll hit the ice for the first time September 18th and will have home games on Tuesday and Sunday nights. The full schedule will be released at training camp next week, which I’m going to try to attend and report on, so if I go, I’ll post that here once I get back.

American Hooligans

Supporters of the American & MLS Revolution cheer New England to victory

My class was lucky enough to get media passes for this past Tuesday’s Superliga final between the New England Revolution and the Houston Dynamo. Superliga is a tournament that pits the top 4 American Major League Soccer teams against the top 4 Mexican Primera División teams. This is only the second year it’s been held. That two MLS teams reached this year’s final was a significant achievement for Major League Soccer, which has long been considered a second-class league by much of the soccer world. It didn’t hurt that those two teams met each other in the last two MLS championships (Houston beat N.E. in the past two MLS Cups), either.

Revolution Forward Kenny Mansally evades two Dynamo defenders

Midfielder Steve Ralston takes a corner kick

New England won the game 6-5 in penalty kicks to become the first MLS team to win the Superliga championship, but I’m not going to talk much about the game. I got there with plans to take pictures of players in action but soon learned that my camera wasn’t capable of zooming in enough to get great shots (I needed a telephoto, a vet photographer I met in the elevator recommended I check out sportsshooter.com for tips on good ones) so I turned my lens to the hooligans in the stands.

The revolution is coming! The soccer Revolution!

Fans let goalkeeper Matt Reis know they're not worthy

These hardcore Dynamo fans drove all the way from Houston to see the game

A fan looks on as the Revs go to OT

They may not boast the numbers of their European counterparts, but the crowd of just under 10,000 (Gillette Stadium holds 68,756 — an entire side was roped off, seats covered by a blue tarp) was certainly loud and passionate about their team and game. I moved around a bit during the game to observe and speak with a few of them to get an idea of who the average American soccer fan is. What I discovered is there’s no such thing. There were Latin Americans, White Americans, Black Americans, men, women, children, families, soccer teams, Revs fans, Dynamo fans, all sorts… and barely one of them sat there silent during the game. They badgered the refs, conversed about who they liked

Sign informing fans what to expect in "The Fort"

(”I wish we had Parkhurst for this game”) and didn’t (”that [defenseman Chris] Tierney is a Canadian fruit!”), made fun of the opposition (Dynamo midfielder Corey Ashe, who is 5′5″, got called a “midget” every time he touched the ball), and joined together for songs and chants.

The Fort goes wild

Most of the latter took place in “The Fort,” a standing room only section of the stands behind one of the goals reserved for the most hardcore of Revs fans. I sat there during the penalty kicks that decided the game.

My ears are still recovering.