Tag: Boston

Boston Marathon

This is some seriously scary shit. All of the news is flying in faster than anyone can keep up, and I have no idea what is real and what is rumor and speculation.

Apparently two explosions went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, by the Lenox Hotel on Boylston Street.

Most of the Boston news websites are slowing to a crawl, twitter is hyper active, I have a police scanner app that I downloaded during Hurricane Sandy and I’m trying to follow the situation there.  From what I can tell, no one really knows anything.

I just heard a voice on the scanner report that officers should be wary of trash cans.  I also hear them talking about hearing more explosions, but that it is probably the police doing it.

What a mess.  My thoughts go out to everyone there.  Seriously scary.

Date Day

So The Book of Mormon didn’t actually happen.  We got to the Opera House, found our seats, sat down and began feeling miserable.  There was a feeling of claustrophobia combined with an upset stomach combined with being extremely tall and sitting in a seat designed for someone who is not even a little bit tall.  It was just a bad feeling from the word go.  We ended up getting up and going to the lobby just before the show started and then we left after the first song.  Maybe we’ll try again another time if we can guarantee an aisle seat.  We shall see.

The Boston Opera house is beautiful, if not tall person friendly.

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How’s this for the bathroom lobby?
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I didn’t buy a souvenir, but if I had I would have had a tough time choosing between the stuffed magical aids frog, and the Hasadeega Eebowai shirt.
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We ended up heading toward home. When we got close Jen, my amazing wife whom I love with all my heart and all my soul, asked if maybe we could extend the Date Day by aimlessly driving toward the ocean. That works for me!

We got to the ocean at Salisbury Beach in Salisbury, MA and then headed North. When we got to Hampton Beach in Hampton Beach, NH we had our first really clear view of the Atlantic. It was furious. I’ve never seen waves even close to as huge and angry as I saw today. It almost looked like the Pacific. Just North of the public beach the waves were crashing into the rocks and splashing up over the retaining wall onto the road. We stopped to admire the view. I took a few pictures using Hipstamatic. I took a few short videos too. Those will be posted later.

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We weren’t the only ones watching the waves. Just about everyone who drove by stopped for a look.
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And obviously, this is my favorite of all pictures.
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We went up North as far as Portsmouth, NH and then turned around. We ended up going to dinner at a new Indian restaurant in Andover, MA. Turns out the manager on duty was actually from our usual favorite Indian restaurant, Kashmir in Salem, NH. We might have an alternate go-to place now.

So we didn’t do what we had initially set out to do, but we still had a date day that was wonderful for the simple fact that the love of my life and I spent the day together. I am so insanely in love with her.

The Jagr Era Begins!

Jaromir Jagr made his debut as a Bruin last night.  How’d he do?  Not bad.  He scored the only goal in a 1-0 Bruins win over the Devils.  Just a game winning goal in his first game, that’s all.  Just 15,000 Boston fans chanting his name as if he were the second coming of Phil Esposito.  That’s all.

May it be the first of many.

Go Bruins!

Red Sox Domination

You have to understand Red Sox fans. We are a hyper manic depressive lot. When the Sox win a game, any game, we are on top of the world. When they lose a game, any game, we are lining up to jump off the Tobin Bridge.

When they follow up a last place finish by opening the new season at Yankee Stadium, we as a collective group spent most of March sharpening our razor blades.

But then…

The Red Sox have won the first two games of the season handily against the Evil Empire! There is dancing in the streets in Boston. There are people wandering around in a daze, randomly hugging people and screaming, “Sox rule!”

Two games down, 160 to go, and it’s a great time to be a Red Sox fan!

(Let us have this… We need it after the last two seasons’ fiascos. Just let us have this while we can)

VICTORY!

That’s right kids, your Boston Red Sox are now in first place in the American League East division!  Oh Yeah!  We are #1, babie!  #1 all the way!

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(yes, I know it’s only one game and I know there are still 161 more to go, and I know that the Sox/Yankees game that just ended is the only final score the division has had yet. I know all of that. I don’t care. Don’t ruin this for me, you jerks. It has been a long, long time)

Is Iginla Coming to Boston Tonight?

Word on the street is that Calgary has scratched Jarome Iginla tonight, and that the Providence Bruins have also scratched a couple of players.

Is Jarome coming to Boston as soon as tonight?

That would be SO FREAKIN’ AWESOME!

Of course we trail Montreal 2-1 right now.

Jarome Iginla

The NHL trade deadline is coming.  It’s time for the annual, “Wouldn’t Jarome Iginla look good in a Bruins uniform?” discussions.  Whenever Calgary starts slipping the conversation inevitably begins.  He should ask for a trade for the good of the team.  The team needs to trade their best player ever for the good of the franchise.  Yadda, yadda, yadda.  Eventually the topic always turns to how Boston should go out and get him.

A few years ago I was fully in the do-whatever-it-takes-to-get-this-guy camp.  Now… he’s getting old.  He’s 35, which is very old for most hockey players.  He’s not going to come into Boston and light the lamp 50 times in the final month of the season.  He’s not going to show up and solve all of our offensive problems.  He’s probably not even going to be one of our top scorers.  Should we still pay the unquestionably high price to get him?

HELL YES!

When the Bruins traded for Marc Recchi a few years ago, I was insulted.  Recchi was ancient by hockey standards, and his best years were so far behind him it was sick.  Then he got here and became “The Veteran”.  He set himself up as the elder statesman.  All of the young players looked up to him.  All of them saw him as a role model.  All of them saw his Stanley Cup rings and bought in.  What happened?  Well, just a Stanley Cup a couple of years later.  That’s all.

Iginla is better now than Recchi was then.  He’s never won a championship, but most of the current roster has, so we don’t need that sort of leadership like we did when Recchi got here.  What we do have is a bunch of forwards who go through streaks where they struggle to score goals.  Iginla can assume the role of “The Veteran” and smoothe out all of those scary times when Lucic and Horton and Marchant and Seguin all suddenly forget how to score.  Look at me, he can say, I’m Jarome Iginla and I have twice hit the 50 goals in a season mark.  Learn from me as I demonstrate the wonders of hard work and consistency.

On top of that, throughout his career Iginla has been an A list power forward.  He is what Milan Lucic needs to be.  Wants to be.  Must be.  Trading for Iginla would be worth it just so he could teach Looch what he needs to learn.

People are already complaining about the possibility of the Bruins giving up Malcolm Subban.  Subban is 19, playing in juniors, and a very late first round pick.  In other words, he hasn’t done anything real yet (no offense) and he won’t be ready to contribute at the NHL level for a while.  I hear people saying three years but that seems super optimistic to me.  I say deal him to Calgary and then work your black and gold asses off to sign Iginla for a few more years.

I ask you, wouldn’t Jarome Iginla look good in a Boston Bruins uniform?

I answer you.  Yes, yes he would.

Go get him!

Goal!

Martin Brodeur is the greatest goalie in the history of professional hockey.  Last night, he was also a goal scoring machine.

It wasn’t a case of “he shoots he scores”, it was more like “he makes a save during a delayed penalty and some Whaler makes a crappy pass that banks off the boards in the New Jersey end and deflects all the way down to the Whaler’s end and goes right smack into the middle of the net”.

It was the third goal of his career.  100 years from now, some kid walking through the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto is going to see the Martin Brodeur display and it is going to list his career stats:
9 billion wins.
2 billion shutouts.
3 goals.

Note, I have watched this video but I have not listened to it.  I do not know if any hockey announcers say anything stupid or not.  You’ve been warned.

Staying with the hockey theme, as I posted yesterday, I got home from picking up the kids and put the game on the radio.  By radio, I mean the CBS radio iPhone app that streams 98.5 WBZ FM.  As soon as the stream reached my ear pods Ottawa scored.  I listened for a while feeling completely underwhelmed by the Bruins performance.  Before the second period ended I put the game on the TV.  With less than two minutes left in the second the Bruins tied the game.  Intermission started, I went to say good night to the first step child.  I then watched some of the third period and the Bruins were not the snooze inducing hockey boredom machines they had been in the second.  They had a little more life.  I had to go downstairs and do some laundry business, then say good night to the second step child, then turn out all the lights and lock the doors, then get into bed.  I had planned to listen to the end of the game while reading a little, but I was a little late.  I checked the score.  Bruins win 2-1.

This season’s shortened schedule really is an insult to hockey lovers everywhere.  The Bruins have played 29 games and we’re already nearly 75% of the way through the season.  That’s garbage.  The reason you play a long season is so that everyone can get the crap kicked out of them by life itself, and the really good teams separate themselves from the not so good teams.  That’s not going to happen this year.  I mean, the Leafs are in sixth in the East.  That’s all the proof you need!

Having said that, I don’t really see the Bruins contending for the Cup the way many in the press seem to.  They just don’t have the fire yet.  They don’t have the killer instinct.  They have lost four games in which they had the lead in the third period.  When they are good they are outstanding.  When they aren’t good they are maddeningly boring and mediocre.

The third period last night was a nice change from the recent snooze.  Let’s hope the momentum continues Saturday night in Toronto.

Go Bruins.