Sports Guy North

Well, I am now officially back from a nice, relaxing, summertime vacation - The last summer vacation I'll ever take stag, for the most part, with my upcoming wedding in October (only 52 more days of single life). I spent the time kicking back, relaxing, hitting up roller coasters and all in all ignoring the sports world. It's nice to get away some times, even from the things you love. Then again, it's great to get back home, crawl into your own bed, snuggle up to your girl and turn on Sportscenter while she tries to talk to you. That's especially true if your vacation took you through East Cleveland at one point. If any of you haven't had that pleasure before, I highly recommend it. Stop in at T & L's Christian Bookstore and Pest Control if you have a spare minute, it's conveniently located right beside the Walgreens that has the 10 foot security fence around it, you can't miss it.

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...

Well, despite my best efforts to "tag" 5 bloggers that would surely ignore my challenge, I got my first reply already tonight. And which of the 5, you ask, was the culprit who spoiled my plans? None other than Jim Lang from Sportsnet. He replied to me a few times tonight, and the last time he sent his 5 Weird Things from his blackberry (oh to have the sweet sweet money of a real sportscaster... well, and the talent too... and the looks... and charisma... wait, wasn't I talking about the Langer? :p ).

Really, though, I am impressed that he took the time to answer, and he actually did a really good job of it. For that reason, as I take a break from packing up to head to Ohio for the next few days, I figured I should take the time to post his reply. So here, now, are Jim Lang's 5 Weird Things:

1 - my 2 kids have bigger ears than me. While I freely admit to having the biggest nose in Canadian sports, I have the ears of a newt. Hence my massive sideburns. Distracts viewers from my ears and freakishly huge nose

2 - I am quite sure I love sponge Bob square pants more than my 2 kids. actually Patrick reminds me a lot of Sean McCormick. Aka "the dude"

3 - If I wasn't a sportscaster I would love to be a military historian. Especially the history of world war 2 and the Canadian army's vastly under appreciated role in the liberation of Italy, France, Belgium and Holland

4 - I was born with out wisdom teeth. To many viewers of sportsnet and readers of our website my lack of wisdom has been painfully obvious for years

5 - I don't eat liver. Makes my stomach turn. Mind you I Feed it to my 2 kids. I guess its good for you and they like the taste.

Well played, Mister Lang. So I guess that changes my game plan from finding 5 people who will ignore the challenge to which deadbeat will be the last to reply. That's right, I've 360'd so much to calling the last person to do what I expected them all to do to begin with a deadbeat. They may actually even be put on notice as a result. Or maybe I'll have another change of heart and call the last person left my hero. It's hard to say at this point. What I can do is give big props to the Langer. As a respected hockey and CFL analyst and reporter, to keep up blog entries, keep up with comments, and even play our blogger games with us is very impressive. He obviously just loves sports and everything involved with them as much as we all do. For that he has my respect, as well as my write-in vote in the Toronto Star's Sports announcers survey in the "Best Hair" category. You should all send your votes that way for him too, he deserves it.

Anyway, the JF, Goober, Tank and a couple of special ladies are heading down to Ohio for a much needed roller coaster break this weekend, so you won't have me to kick around until Tuesday at the earliest. Everyone in Canada, enjoy your long weekend, Big Dawg best of luck studying, and don't miss me too much and everyone else just have fun. We'll be back shortly.

PS - I only picked that category for lack of a better labels to start coming back again. I do not have a man-crush on anyone, I never have, and I really still don't even know what it means. I hope all you anonymouses out there get that this time!

So apparently I was called out by my old buddy Alanah at Vancouver Canucks OpEd to do some kind of Five Weird Things deal. Yeah, I had never heard of it either. Anyway, my computer is still broken (hence the lack of posts this week), but never one to back down from a challenge, I'm going to do this at work today - something I would normally not do, because I "should" be focusing my writing "talents" elsewhere when I'm here (ie. like on fantasy sports and espn.go.com). So anyway, here goes, a list of 5 weird things about Sports Guy North:

1. i don't remember anything about my life from before i was about 12 or 13. trauma induced? maybe, but like I said, i don't remember, so stop asking!

2. I am getting married on Friday the 13th in October. Really. I found a girl that was OK with doing that. Actually, I'm still kind of shocked that I found a girl that was OK with me at all to begin with.

3. i really believe that we don't exist. that we can't exist even. as a human, i don't have the capacity to understand something being created out of nothing, and i also don't have the capacity to understand something having been around forever with no starting point. if the big bang is true, its not an explanation because where did that matter come from. if there is a god, that's also not an explanation i can understand either, because where did she come from. and if she is just all powerful and what not, i still can't understand her being all powerful, forever in reverse time, without a starting point. all in all there is no comprehensible way that we could be here, so we just aren't. and that's how it is.

4. i am not an internet person. i don't know what fads are going around on it, i don't go into chat rooms, i never really venture away from 3 sports sites and a fantasy sports site. I don't even read blogs for that matter outside of a select 4 or 5. i just don't really do the internet thing. I've never even heard of 5 weird things until Alanah told me to do it. Apparently it's a fad. Who knew?

5. I cannot eat peas. Not even one pea. I have a gag reflex. If I'm even just eating rice and a pea sneaks into my mouth, it's all over.

So there you are Alanah, a list of my 5 weird things. I just hope you know that if I get fired for it, I'm coming to live on your couch!

Oh, and I guess along with this I have to send the challenge on to 5 other people. So I've decided to pass the challenge on to 5 bloggers who will no doubt ignore my challenge, making follow through much more easy for me:



1. Paul Romanuk because maybe if he sees how much Canadians miss his broadcasting, he'll come back from England and save us from the HORRIBLE options that we're left with
2. Jim Lang because if anyone has really weird stuff, it's going to be the Langer!
3. Chris Young mostly to just get him back out there blogging again. We've all missed your posts this past month!
4. Karlo Berkovich One of the best local sports writers around, and has done a great job trying to help bring blogging to his paper, so I figured I might as well give him some props while I'm out here.
5. Last but not least, I call out the sane (er) half of Vancouver Canucks OpEd, JEFF DOWNIE. And hey, don't blame me... this is all your wife's fault!

Enjoy yourselves.

So I'm logging into the email today, and I have my normal spread of emails to go through - people with baseball questions, married women looking for a go0d f$ck, offers to make big money from Nigeria (one of them will pay off, i just know it!), and so on, and then I see it. Something way out of the ordinary in my inbox - an email from The Curling News. I'm intrigued because, as you all know, I've always liked the curling. I give updates in my blog, called it one of the few Olympic sports worth watching, I never miss a Brier and so on. I am one of the few sports bloggers out there who actually bothers with curling in any way, so I thought maybe I was finally going to be praised for all my curling endorsements.

I open the email, and all it says is

Actually... there's lots of news.

http://curlnews.blogspot.com/2006/08/curling-in-august.html

Cheers,
TCN\

Simple enough, although it sure sounded like truthiness to me. I had mentioned during the blogathon on the weekend that there wasn't any curling news because curling was in it's offseason. I took the time anyway to devote one of my posts to curling, and sure I might have said that curling didn't make an interest read in the offseason, or something along those lines, but curling was still mentioned. Because of what I said I thought I was maybe being directed to some interesting news that came up in curling that I had missed, and was happy to take the suggestion... until I opened the page. At the bottom of the post, it says:

and this guy (REFERRING TO SPORTS GUY NORTH, OF COURSE) seems, on first glance, to be a complete arse, but hey, this was Blogpost number 38 during a 24-hour Blogathon – for charity – so maybe we’ll cut him some slack. Just this once.

Cut me some slack? Oh no, it is I who is the one that cuts slack for others. Nothing I ever do needs to have slack cut for it. As I mentioned throughout the blogathon, my work is gold. All gold. How anyone could find the nerve to cut me any slack is beyond reproach.

What's worse is that I read this Curling News blog post he sent to see what the "news" was which I "missed". The post mentioned a local curling club that's opening for the season in Edmonton, and that a couple more are opening up soon in Ontario towns. It mentions the one local club in Toronto that shut down, and was baffled over why there isn't a political uproar about it (anyone else out there baffled? anyone?). Some old team reunited, some random American did a news article about learning curling, and that's pretty much it. Absolutely nothing that is noteworthy outside of remote local interest stories.

In fact, if you dig a little deeper, on the tsn.ca curling page, they haven't had a new headline or post of any sort since June 15th. And that post was about how they are the exclusive home of curling coverage in Canada through 2014. That's right, the official home of curling coverage feels like there has been nothing worth mentioning in nearly two months, and I get called an arse (really, with the "r" and everything) for saying there isn't anything worth mentioning. In fact, on The Curling News' website itself, not this fringe blog that is somewhat associated with it, their main page has a listing of the top 15 male curlers as of May 1st, and a mention that the April 2006 edition of the paper is now available by subscription only. That's right, the very website who's blog called me out hasn't updated anything noteworthy in nearly 3 months.

I have always been a big supporter of curling, but now I don't know. Even though your calendar of naked women was a bold venture into my heart, I still think I'm going to have to do it - Curling, you are on notice. Next years might be the first Brier final ever I don't go out of my way to see. You certainly have a lot of making up to do before then. Curling joins the list of the following who are already on notice with me:

John Tortorella
Ken Hitchcock
Mosquitos
Jaromir Jagr
Denis Gauthier
Kelly Hrudy
Mini-Babcock
Bobbleheads
Anaheim Ducks
Curling

Along those same lines, The Curling News, I may be an arse, but you are dead to me.

And that's the Kentbert Report. Goodnight.