Confessions of a Cheese Grits Fiend

An Open Letter to Churches, Charitable Intervention Agencies in Nashville, Barbara Ehrenreich, the Powers That Be at the Occupy Org

2011-10-25T09:59:00.001-05:00

I have way too much to do to be noodling on my personal webspace about anything not pertaining to sports. Still. Sometimes life impinges on our best-laid plans. Woman proposes and God gets the giggles and says, "That's cute. Now get with the program." So today I am writing about the occupy movement.

Speaking as someone who has just now gotten back her capacity for taking in lungful of air without wanting to punch a wall because it freaking hurts, I understand that some people are contributing the best way they know how. For some of us, the best way might be to offer those who are camped out items that will aid in their comfort and well-being. We can also use our words, our reach as writers, photographers and artists to tell the story of what is happening.

In telling that story, we sometimes have to make choices. I understand what many commentators are trying to do when they point out the fact that homelessness is an important issue and it has a place in the discourse of this movement,. The problem is. they are also pretty blithely sidestepping the uncomfortable reality that these homeless people include individuals who are in the throes of addiction or are mentally ill. They need care. More care than their fellow occupiers might be able to give.

This past Sunday I went to Legislative Plaza in downtown Nashville, Tennessee to speak with members of the Occupy Nashville Movement and take pictures. My hope was and still is to spread the word that there are people Nashville who care enough to put their well-being on the line in order to get the message across. While I was there, I sat in on what turned out to be an emergency community meeting to address problems with alcohol being brought into the encampment, theft between campers and the need to protect more vulnerable members of the community from assault.

Some of the women stated that they did not feel safe. One volunteer, a registered nurse who was physically small in stature stated that she spent the previous night in fear for her safety. She was shouted down by a much larger man who towered over her and accused her of bring a quitter and running away. As I spoke with her and a few other volunteers later on, it came out that drugs and alcohol were a problem, that there had been instances of women being assaulted on the grounds. While we were having this conversation, a few feet away an obviously un- or undermedicated mentally ill woman was hectoring a volunteer who was trying to feed people.

Does anyone involved want to see these people removed from the movement? No. Everyone stated that to do so would make them as bad as the people they are protesting against. I'm not saying that the people who are coming to the Occupy camps shouldn't get help. I am saying that it's not constructive to point to situations like the increasing number of longterm homeless people at the Nashville encampment, declare that it proves a point and leave it at that. The people who are suddenly finding themselves in the position of caregiver, referee and mental health care worker need some help, too.

You see the affirmation of your stance in the abstract. I see a woman young enough to be my daughter who spent the night being held by her husband as she wept. Her tears were for her own fears, not just the ones about her financial future that led her to Legislative Plaza, but for her own safety. Her name, by the way, is Sara. She is an RN, a caregiver by nature and vocation. She is there because of her own needs and those of her mother and everyone else whose medical needs are not being met because somewhere someone decided the corporations who hold out that access to the highest bidder are actually people themselves, special people with more rights than your rank and file citizen. The problem is, Sara can't really address that because she is doing the work of the agencies, the churches and the coalitions.

I should note that when I got a look at who was there, I recognised more than a few people from my decade and a half as a counselor, advocate and social worker. Before I even had a chance to talk to anyone, I suspected that what was happening here was similar to what happens whenever there is a chance to get basic needs met. Shelters stay inundated with calls and walk-ins from people who were turned away elsewhere. Social workers who should know better call every place, desperate to keep clients from falling through the cracks.

In 2010, I volunteered at one of the community centres that served as an information clearinghouse and distributed food, clothing and cleaning supplies after the flood. Maybe a fraction of the people we helped were actually displaced by the flood. Refugee advocacy groups sent clients to get what they could. People who had been displaced well before May of 2010 came, pitched in to help and were given what we could spare. I credit the representative from the Mayor's Office and the staff of the community center, who turned no one away. I credit the people who worked along with me, some of whom, like me, prayed that we wouldn't run out of cases of water or food boxes from Second Harvest but did - sometimes hours before closing for the evening. Sometimes all I had to offer the workers on the ground on my way home were donated cookies and flowers. It felt like the cliche about the bandaid in the open wound brought to life. I bring this up because that same sort of wave of need is hitting the men and women who are staying at Legislative Plaza. To those who have the administrative power and (admittedly limited) resources, I say, "You know this is going on. You should also realise these people are standing here to speak for your interests and those of your clients. Where are you?"

Not everybody can and should spend the night at the Plaza. We should not be forgetting about those who do. While you and I and everyone else goes back home to their computers to argue the Big Issues online, that very real young woman and her husband are still back at the camp, struggling to meet the needs of those who see the movement as a chance to get some small respite from their problems. There are many people involved but I am focusing on her so you will know the name of one person there and maybe think twice before shunting her aside as an illustration for your talking points. The fiduciary malfeasance has a very human cost that is unacknowledged by the people in power. Those of us supporting the movement from our safe vantage points should do better than the 1% we're criticising.

My Luddite Moment

2011-09-06T23:52:00.000-05:00

To steal a turn of phrase from an old internet friend, a good astrological description of this summer would be that the moon is in fuckface. Who am I kidding? I know jack about astrology beyond the fact that I'm a Libra.

So, this summer of suck? I'm not sure I'm ready to write about that. I will, however, write about a whinyass little first world problem that occurred to me tonight. This evening a friend in Ontario called to talk. The phone vibrated and I saw a Canadian area code. Squee!

So for the next two hours I'm on my front porch and we're discussing the finer points of American and Canadian communication styles and I'm getting a lot out of it and so are my neighbors. Why? I'm on a cell phone, the best reception is on the front porch and I have to practically shout to be heard.

I seriously miss analog phones. Really. It's true that you can't store music or books on an analog phone. My old AT&T Ranger phone from my Memphis dorm days with the abnormally long cord? It would have never occurred to me to play Angry Birds or any game with it beyond the occasional round of Hot Potato with my boyfriend at the time when we were trying to find excuses not to go out. Analog phones are, or were, impervious to power outages. There's no such thing as a dropped call on an analog phone and I can talk in the privacy of whatever room the phone is in.

Honestly people, if we can bring back vinyl, eighties fashion and voodoo economics, what would be so hard about a revival of the analog phone? In the meantime, don't mind me. I'll be in the corner knitting a shawl and complaining about half naked kids and their loud music.

Please Help Spread the Word About Beth Odets

2011-08-08T11:59:00.000-05:00

Hi! It's been a while and I've really been remiss in keeping up the store and doing (at the very least) monthly interviews of people who have committed to living a creative life. I'll get into that a bit more in my next post, but first I want to write about something very important.

Texas artist and musician Beth Odets is undergoing a risky, experimental procedure to remove a brain tumor. For those of you not familiar with her work, she is one of the founders of the synagogue on Second Life. She had created a beautiful virtual space for people from all over the world to congregate for Shabbat, fellowship and study. As the leader of "Fish Fry Bingo" she has also provided music lovers with many a night of good music.

For more information and details about some of the ongoing fundraisers, please visit Wayner James Au's blog, .New World Notes. I'm up to my nose, but I'll be putting up my own fundraiser to help out at Zen Dixie within the next few days.

Tales From The Press Pit: W.C.Fields Was Right, Sort Of.

2011-07-25T07:56:00.005-05:00

It seemed like such an easy project. Take pictures of Nashville's G.O.A.L. program, talk about the atmosphere around the event and make some slideshows of the kidlets (ages 4-7) on the ice. Somehow over the course of the month, I ended up with around four thousand pictures and have been spending protracted periods of time in a state that my friend, Beautiful Alice, would describe as "just...fraught".

Camping out in one of the penalty boxes of the B rink at Centennial Sportsplex every Monday afternoon in June gave me a chance to see the G.O.A.L. participants develop a sense of their own potential as athletes as they explored what it was like to do more than watch from the sidelines. I wanted to catch that evolution. I also hoped to capture the energy and commitment Predators Youth Development invests in their outreach programs.

I enlisted a friend who does photo editing for a dead-tree sports publication that shall remain nameless. He whistled when he found out that the 350 pictures I cropped and edited were only from the first week.

"You need to pick the best twenty-five of each week," he said.

"I can't do that."

"Hon, you've got a lot of great pictures, but this is way too much."

I sighed. "Okay, here's the thing. When I was 14 I attended Nashville Academy Theatre. One of the papers came out to do a feature. They took lots of pictures and kept moving me to the edges of almost every group shot. When the article came out, I was the only kid in the entire program who was not named or pictured in the article. To the best of my -our- ability, we're going to be sure every kid gets a good picture in this. Okay?"

"Jas, that's sweet. It's also nucking futs."

"I'm stickin' to my guns here, Bubba. As Captain Picard would say, 'make it so'."

We went round and round on pictures and his need to be a good editor and my need to follow my own ethos. What I had hoped would be a couple of weeks' work has stretched into a couple of months.
Over the course of that time, we have both had to step away from this project to cool down. I've reminded him that these are children and he has accused me of being possessed by random Drew Barrymore characters. To our credit, we still adore each other to the point that we would to go to the airport if we needed a ride.

Weeks 1 and 2 are now ready to go. I think they meet my criteria and show off my bud's mad skills as a teacher. So, whew! If you want to see more, visit Greetings From Smashville to get a gander at the slideshows and check out the TheHockeyWriters for more of my articles on hockey.

Just a reminder, all content on this site is the property of Jas Faulkner.

Please be a mensch and abide by the copywright laws

Tales From The Press Pit: Hi Mister Kalis! Nice to Meet You! I'm Idiot Girl...

2011-06-30T07:14:00.000-05:00

Okay, not really. Thing is, after I've been in the rink or the arena for a little while, my inner Martian tends to come out. I'm all about getting those perfect shots that put people right there and it makes me more than a little like Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein before the "Puttin' on the Ritz" scene. Predators staffers and people who have shared a perch with me know to nudge me aside if needed and be prepared repeat whatever they're telling/asking me at least twice.

A big part of this is because I'm now at the point where I put on my laminate and walk into the writers' pit or onto the photographers' perch or into the media lounge because that's where I'm supposed to be. It's my job. And yet there are times I am still that kid who was herded along with her classmates through the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal's maze of desks thinking everyone looked approximately eleven feet tall.

"Oh, snap out of it! Say your mantra" I tell myself, "Now!"

I am Jas Faulkner and I am a paid professional columnist and photographer.
I am Jas Faulkner and I am a paid professional columnist and photographer.
I am Jas Faulkner and I am a paid professional columnist and photographer.
My name is Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire, I own a mansion and a yacht.
My name is Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire, I own a mansion and a yacht.

Okay. Stop it.

Poor Rudy Kalis*. His cheery "Hi!" was met with two cheery "Hiyas!" from me and he got that I couldn't hear him but not that I was already in willing-the-players-into-artful-and-evocative-poses mode. I stepped up on a bench to start snapping pictures and Mr. Kalis motioned for me to take a place at the dasher. I thanked him and told him was puck shy**. I started to raise my camera and was surprised to see Kalis was looking at me and dancing the hula.

I smiled and nodded and snapped a couple of pictures and then when the bech shook as a videographer bumped it that he was trying to tell me it was rickety. At that point, I declared that "Rudy was right!" and got my tuchis on solid ground.

Nonverbal social cues, they're what's for breakfast!***

So. The blades are hitting the ice and I'm playing catch up. I'll see you at examiner.com, Greetings from Smashville! and TheHockeyWriters.com throughout the week.

*For those of you not in Nashville, Kalis is one of the city's veteran television sports journalists. Yes, I know I'm a paid professional and all that, but meeting him is kind of a big deal.

**Wait. What? Puck shy? I got yelled at during a practice last season for standing in the doorway of one of the penalty boxes and snapping pictures as the team skated by at ungodly speeds. Yes it was a stupid thing to do and I now know where to go and where to avoid when taking pictures.

***The anthropology department at Western Kentucky University must be so proud...

The Hamsters Are Back!

2011-06-21T14:02:00.000-05:00

Please visit my sports blog, Greetings From Smashville to see what they have to say about the NHL Awards!

Hi! Welcome to Nashville! You've Seen It, Now Go Home!

2011-06-11T09:13:00.002-05:00

We've been invaded again. Who are these pantsless, cowboybooted people who seem to have taken over my nice city? I made the mistake of driving down 4th yesterday afternoon and... Oh the humanity! Orange, minimally dressed in the shortest shorts or flimsy babydoll microminis and cowboy boots.

There were a few people who, at first blush looked like they were either wearing those clear halloween masks with makeup tint on them and blonde fright wigs or they were possibly followers of some cult that worshipped the Sizzler Sisters from the old Kids in the Hall show. Then I realised that these were people who wanted desperately to look like Taylor Swift.

As an alumnus of Opryland, I pine for the days when people called to complain about Loretta Lynn daring to wear red spandex on the Saturday night show. The generously proportioned, braless biker chicks in wide mesh Bocephus tank tops? Now I see that they were amatuers compared to the coordinated uniform of sheer damned IDon'tGiveAFuckIfNashvilliansGetAGoodLookAtMyVajayjayEvenIfTheyAreWeepingAndTryingToTurnAway that is invading the streets of my home like..yes, like the damned cicadas.

And seriously, if anyone EVER again decides to talk shit about Detroit Red Wings fans (who are usually very nice), I'm going to remind them of the annual Invasion of the People of Walmart.

For the Seventh Men and Women Who Are Far Away

2011-05-05T18:07:00.000-05:00

"I noticed that you sing both anthems. I never took you as a flag-waving type. Whats's the deal?"

My first impulse was to completely ignore the email. At a time when everyone was wanting connection to any set of eyes they could get at the playoffs, I had neither the time or the inclination to defend or deny my allegiances. As the day after the game wore on, I thought more and more about the letter writer's curiosity and misunderstanding of what I was doing.

Why was I singing "Oh, Canada" and the "star Spangled Banner" before the games now?

It has a lot to do with who isn't here as who is present and cheering the Predators and Canucks.

Who isn't here? Lots of folks: people who are currently overseas on military duty, people who are doing field research, people who are on mercy missions with the Peace Corp., Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross, the Red Cescent, Samaritan's Purse, The MCC and many other agencies. People who are sitting vigil to make sure I' safe, to make sure someone who can't take care of themselves isn't alone. Many of those people would love to be here in Bridgestone Arena, but duty calls and they answered as their hearts and talents have dictated they must.

That's all very lofty but I have to admit that I am actually singing for two particular people. D. and R. D. is from Atlanta and R. is from Toronto. I first met them in 2005 when I was doing travel processing for the Red Cross relief workers who were pouring into Mississippi and Louisiana after Katrina. D. was an old hand at hurricane triage who hated waiting in airports and loved hockey. She mourned the loss of her beloved Flames and adored her Thrashers. We would talk about life in general and hockey in particualr whenever there was a lull in the people demanding vegetarian meals or shorter tours.

D. has to be the most philisophical hockey fan on the planet. Her love of her Leafs rivals an Chicagoan's devotion to the Cubs. Beautiful, smart and possessed of the gentlest sense of humour I have ever encountered, the only time I ever heard her utter a cross word against anyone was when she found out Matt Cooke managed to go unpenalised for his hit on Marc Savard.

The second thing she wrote after she sent out an email blast informing her friends she was going to Japan with the Red Cross was that she would miss seeing the Leafs shake hands and/or salute the fans before skating off the ice for the summer. R. comiserated.

"All for a good cause, " she added.

Before they left we all chattered and promised to keep safe, keep writing, keep ferocious and funny and everything friends do before big adventures start. Just before we signed off, we tipped virtual Lablatt's at each other.

So this weird thing I do? The gesture that might only be borderline appropriate because I have always thought the US National Anthem should be "This Land Is Your Land' and I am Canadian only as far as my outlook and choice of sports is concerned? I do it for the people who aren't here. Sometimes the seventh man is as close as the next seat over in the barn and sometimes they're on the other side of the world.
Stay ferocious and funny, ladies! Tonight I'll sing "Oh, Canada" and "The Star Spangled Banner" for you as I've done all spring. Tip of a virtual Lablatts to the east to both of you!

Three Women In Search Of The Perfect Marked Down Paint Tube

2011-04-26T19:35:00.005-05:00

Deep in my black little heart, I knew by two this morning that I would not make it to Bridgestone to take pictures. That was roughly the time that HH the Doggy Lama Niklas Lidstrom decided that he could not bear to sleep quietly one more minute and stood in the middle of the hallway to howl at...well, to howl at something. I had initially dropped off to sleep at around 1:15 am.

When big dogs howl, there is a magnificence to it. There is something primal and grand and bigger than the present in the howl of a large dog.

That magnificence was not present in my hallway as far as I could tell. Well, maybe it was there in Niklas' little bitty mind. Niklas is a shih tzu. He weighs nine pounds and is roughly a foot tall standing on all fours. Watching him try to howl is like watching a dust mop throw a tantrum.

I opened my bedroom door a little wider and he trotted in, hopped on my bed and then creatively sprawled in a way that made my sharing it with him almost impossible. His predecessor was a bearded collie/sheepdog mix who weighed roughly 125 pounds, was taller than me when he reared up on his hind legs and yet he and I managed to share my bed quite comfortably during storms. I'm not sure where this "What's yours is mine and what's mine is mine" ethos is coming from with the current Dogboss.

So I attempted sleep, failed, then got up and took my mother to her doctor's appointment.   While I was waiting and pretending to be productive by editing the roughly five thousand pictures that are currently sitting on my hard drive, my phone rang. I saw the exchange and immediately assumed it was Sarah making her initial salvo in the now eight year old War To Make Jas Go To Bonaroo With Sarah.

I answered the phone with: "I don't need to go to Manchester to see hippies. All I have to do is talk to my mother."

There was a pause and then Amy asked me if I was really turning down a chance to go to Bonaroo. She counseled me to sleep on that decision. After I asked her how she and her very lovely and wonderful husband were doing, she caroled a single word into the phone:

JUNKET!

Oh, yay!

Oh, crap. I was so ready for sleep. But...butbutbutbut...JUNKET!

Okay, you're probably picturing some outing where a hand full of women pile into a car and go to Green Hills or Cool Springs and squee over mass produced cuteness.* Nothing could be further from the truth.

All of us, right down to the girliest of the group.** hate to do that kind of shopping.

There are two kinds of junkets we make.

Food and Books - In some ways they're kind of the same thing in terms of where they fit in our lives. A real score is finding something on any of our PaperbackSwap wish lists for less than five dollars.   I would tell you where we look at/for books but then I would have to apply for the witness protection program.

Art/Phography Supplies - No big secrets. If there's a good sale at Plaza or Jerry's, that's where we go first. If not, we check out the clearance aisles at the local home improvement stores and those temples of home schooling craft genius: Joann, Hobby Lobby and Michael's.

Today we got a shock as we stood in the wedding wares aisle at Michael's and stared dumbfounded at the wall of baskets that had replaced their clearance section.   A sweet, perky clerk walked up and asked who the lucky bride was. Alice pointed at me.

The clerk squealed and started wiggling my arm.

Don't ever squeal at a group of artists, especially if two of them are wearing hockey sweaters.

"Awesome! I love it when older people find loooo-uuuuove!" She squinched her cute little nose. I considered pinching off Alice's cute little head. "What does he do?"

"Well, there's not really a he," I said.

Perky's eyes widened and she nodded slowly and said, "Oh... I don't think we have a cake topper for that, but we could make one. So who is the lucky girl?"

I glanced at my friends to see who was going to volunteer. Amy raised a finger.

"Actually, she's coaching hockey in Saskatchewan right now. They made it to the postseason! I hope they manage to have short series so she can come to Tennessee before she gives birth."

By this point, PerkyClerky had the same look that I've seen animals in PeTA ads have when they've chewed off a limb to get out of a trap.

"You never really can tell..." she stammered.

"Tell what?" I asked.

"I don't know!" she practically shouted. "Um, okay. If you ladies need anything. Holler."   And then she speedwalked away.

We watched her go, all of us silent as if we were waiting for the Chuck Jones dribble of gravel that inevitably follows all good cartoon mayhem.

"Our work here is done." Alice bowed her head, looking almost beatific.

"Was that really necessary?" I asked.

Amy nodded. "She started it. Bitch shouldn't have taken away our clearance section.

                 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

* We are nothing like the ridiculous radio ads that seem to be in high rotation on every station advising women to get surgical or chemical help to make them all 25 again and to withold sex if they don't get a big, sparkly product of forced child labour from a third world country. They suggest "getting a headache" if you don't get a diamond. Excuse me? Sex is actually good for headaches.

**I am actually the second girliest although my standing might have slipped now that the phrase "punch (x) in the junk:" seems to be a permanent part of my idiolect.

copyright 2011 Jas Faulkner

Tales From the Press Pit: I Am A Camera

2011-04-01T16:47:00.001-05:00

Quickie field notes (cue the skin drums):
Upon arriving at Centennial Sportsplex, I saw a rather sparse scattering of fans and one player. There was no one in the pit. Well. crappity. Actually, a couple of minutes after I got there, Grouchy Radio Guy Who Doesn't Like Female Reporters* walked out of the locker room area, glanced at me and walked back in. Note to self: Try to avoid Grouchy Radio Guy. A few minutes later, I saw some other writers, Tom the PredsRadio guy and Kevin the Communications Czar. Yay! There's nothing quite like spending the afternoon at the 'Plex watching a practice. I hadn't done it in a while and it was nice to catch up with some of the people I first met at training camp. My inner Margaret Mead made me want to chat up everyone about the season ending, the playoffs etc. For at least one reporter, the coming weekend with it's lone afternoon game is a time to take it easy before the huge rush of playoffs, the NHL awards, drafts, prospects, trade deadlines, etc.

I made a couple of attempts at taking pictures of Cal O'Reilly practising through the scratched plexi only to find that they look like stills from an undergraduate effort at a pastische of a Brian DiPalma thriller. Attempts to be unobtrusive while shooting through the ring gate were also not working. Poor Cal. I got three shots of a net full of pucks while he skated to the side to get out of my way.

Pekka...Pekka... I hope he's here today because that boy loves the camera. Pekka does show up. Yay! I try to stay out of everyone's way and be the invisible woman. I want them to feel like I'm not there. Okay, that makes this nothing like anthro fieldwork. Unless I strap on a cup and pair of shoulder pads, the whole participant-observation thing that has been stressed as the foundation of anthro fieldwork is not happening. And you know? I've seen Joe Thornton and Dustin Byfuglien up close. Those men are huge and scary**and I kind of like having the full use of my body, so...um...maybe if I come back in the next lifetime as a Samoan man or a brahma bull -something that would guarentee I'd be the biggest critter on the ice- I'll consider the NHL as a career option.

I decided to stand to the side with a thousand mile stare as the players filed past on their way to the ice. The shyest, least comfortable player I've ever interviewed started to walk past me. I thought, "Please start talking to one of your buddies or something. Oh crap, he's going to look this way. Dude, I have a camera and while most of the time I'm engrossed in my own life, today I am here to record yours." This makes me feel creepy. As he walked past, we made eye contact. I gave him what probably came off as a shit-eating smile. Sweet lord. Extroverts. I need extroverts. Where are Smithson and O'Brien?

I eventually found my place (kind of the story of my tenure as a sports columnist so far) and spent the rest of the session snapping teeny pictures of everyone. Second note to self: You have to get a telephoto lens.

Tempus fugit and work beckons,
Jas Faulkner

*In the interest in being fair, he might specifically dislike me. I have no idea. His rather dark thoughts about women in sports journalism might have simply been an extremely baroque exercise in obscene verbal filigree whose entire purpose was to scare me back into interviewing two headed ladies and people who claim to have been ridden by Legba or Brett Favre or maybe Legba AND Brett Favre. Who knows? Hello from Cafe Neurosis, table for one in nonsmoking, please.

**...on the ice. Off of it, they seem like really nice guys.

You Only Think You Want To Be Married To Lloyd Dobler

2011-03-26T10:01:00.000-05:00

All of us have -or at least I hope we all have- an internal filter that goes off when we start to say the wrong thing. I call mine my "Not helping, Sister!" filter and sometimes its not quite as effective as I would like for it to be. Earlier this week was one of those times. I tried to be Switzerland when someone called on me for some female solidarity.

I guess this blog post is my chance to say what I didn't get to say that afternoon. It will probably cause at least a few people who read me to mutter, "Throwback." and delete me from their RSS feeds and bookmarks. Oh, well. Here goes...

Okay, you have every reason to assume that I'm going to be sympathetic with your significant other's desire to spend an afternoon at Big!Huge!OutdoorManlyManEmporium! with the guys looking at fishing lures and deer pee and whatever else they look at when we're not around. However, you are probably coming to this conclusion for all of the wrong reasons. Let's get this out of the way right now. Yes, I work in a field that has been traditionally the domain of male interest and is still dominated by men.* I enjoy the company of the people I share a camera perch with and am lucky to cover a group of guys where are decent and drama-free.

In spite of the fact that I spend a large portion of my week knee deep in all things macho, there are times when I just want to be around other people who have voices as high as mine and talk about shoes and knitting. Does this make me anti-male because I want time with my girlfriends? No. The flip side to that is that your husband's or boyfriend's desire to do things with his buddies is not anti-woman or anti-you or anti-anything. It's a healthy desire to identify with his own sex whether it entails sitting in a duck blind at dark thirty o'clock or comparing the munsell scale of tubes of cerulean blue acrylic paint at Plaza.

As his life partner, you should be his best friend and his favourite person in the whole world. As his BFF and his FPItWW, you should also recognise that he needs time with his friends following his interests just as you should be wanting time with your friends following your interests. Have you ever been in a relationship where the other person seemed to have no friends and no enthusiasm for anything beyond spending time with you?  Does it sound like something out of the movies?  Is it the manifestation of the fantasy we're all supposed to have where Lloyd Dobler steps right out of the screen wearing his trench coat and blares his damned boom box full of Peter Gabriel at your bedroom window? **

Let me tell you from personal experience that being completely, totally responsible for someone else's happiness is a bigger burden than you think it's going to be. Let's face it, even if you did end up with Lloyd Dobler, the first week you might be thinking, "Lucky me waking up next to Lloyd Dobler! He looks just like 80s' vintage John Cusack. I done good!" But from roughly Wednesday of the second week on, he'd be telling you that all he wanted in life was to be at your side while you'd be thinking, "Please, for the love of God! Go read a book or something!"   I've been there and believe me, the man who looks to me to complete him is the man who will cause me to run for the hills with my trusty shih tzu at my side.

So listen, girlfriend. He was complete when you married him or you wouldn't have wanted him. Does he want to spend ALL of his time with his friends instead of you? No? Are his friends jerks or are they respectuful of you as the person he has chosen to be with? Respectful? Check. Okay, then. The fact that he has a group of decent friends who are either happily attached themselves or are what Benjamin Franklin might have called "unclaimed blessings" and they think enough of him to want to spend time with him says a lot about his good character. Unless they're all out buying crack or hiring hookers, that time spent isn't hurting anyone. If anything, it reestablishes that you trust and respect who he is. It should free you up to follow some of your own interests.   Just my .02.

*For the few of you who don't know, I'm a sports columnist and photographer. According to my BGBF, Kevin, who submitted a bunch of pictures to Getty (via his current media wonk squeeze) on my behalf last week and caused me to curl up in a closet and breathe into my yoga bag for twenty minutes, I am now the real thing.

**I've been told that "Say Anything" is supposed ot be the ultimate in Chick Movie romantic fantasies. This supposition must have come from a focus group composed of two dozen male college students who were working on their degrees in marketing.

Elizabeth Taylor

2011-03-25T19:24:00.000-05:00

Responses to the death of Elizabeth Taylor have been varied. Some people are bowled over by her physical beauty and acting talent. Others view her as tabloid fodder, famous for being famous.

I first encountered the work of Ms Taylor as a horse-mad tween. My late night sleepover TV fare usually consisted of scratchy local station prints of The Thin Man series, Hammer Horror movies and the sublime delights of Godzilla and his pantheon of clumsily destructive but sadly misunderstood monsters. One night whoever was at the switch at the Lubbock UHF station gave everyone a break from the usual silliness and ran "National Velvet".

I was enchanted. Elizabeth Taylor as Velvet Brown was pretty. She was smart and she was spunky. She rode horses. And best of all, she had the same color eyes as me. No "freaky devil blue eyes" as the fundamentalist crotch fruit loved to call my own dark blue orbs.* Miss Taylor's eyes? They were violet. I wanted to be Velvet Brown and race horses and have an adorable, crushworthy red-haired guy sidekick.**

I'm sure I saw her in movies over the years that followed but the next time she would impress me would be a little over ten years later. While working as a volunteer stitcher for those who needed help with memorial panels for The AIDS Quilt, I would often see the men seated around me stop what they were doing and glare at images of Ronald Reagan on the evening newscasts.

"Say it," someone would mutter.

"He won't," responded another volunteer, "He never does. He never will."

Everyone would shake their heads and get back to work as the list of the dead lengthened and Ronald W. Reagan refused to ever publicly utter the the words "GRIDS", "AIDS" or even "homosexual" while he was in office. All of this went on as many people who made his career in Hollywood possible fell to the strange virus that was cutting a swath through the LGBT community.

Not everyone would be so afraid to put themselves out there in order to help their friends. One night another famous face appeared on the news. It was Elizabeth Taylor, older, thicker, but still possessed of those blue/violet eyes and whatever personal reserve of courage she pulled from to breathe life into Velvet Brown. Ms Taylor spoke up for the people who were abandoned by individuals who once declared their love but who now ran scared in the face of men and women who thought nothing of declaring the purple, bruise like marks of Kaposi's Sarcoma to be modern-day Marks of Cain. Elizabeth Taylor was one of the first people to lend her face and name to the cause of AIDS awareness, of extending mercy to people who were being subjected to what amounted to a witch hunt. She named the disease and she named the sufferers and she asked all of us not to forget them.

To be honest, I hadn't thought much about her lately, but in considering her very long, very storied life, her activism is the first thing I think of now. Whenever someone tells me that causes x, y, or z aren't my fights. I remember that living in the comfort of being part of the majority culture as a straight, white, heterosexual theist doesn't necessarily give me the automatic privilege of happy obliviousness of the lives of others. I will also remember that for may in my generation, this ethos was explicitly demonstrated and prescribed when Elizabeth Taylor did not turn her back on her friends.
Godspeed, Ms Taylor! I hope your heaven is a place full of glamour, cute lap dogs, comfort and all of the friends you had to say goodbye to way too soon.

*Okay, the fact that I used to do a very good impression of Linda Blair as Regan and that this was the late seventies did not help matters. I offer this bit of data in the interest of fairness.

**My parents mercifully let me keep my crush on that movie; so for many years I had no idea that Taylor would grow up to change husbands the way John Mayall changed bands and that Mickey Rooney would grow up to be, uh, Mickey Rooney.

More Tales From The Pit

2011-03-11T13:23:00.000-06:00

I am busy editing pictures and trying to get two stories written and am taking a break to just verbally doodle on my personal blog.

First of all, I'm happy that Wade Belak is still going to be around and that he'll be working in the broadcast end of things. I'll miss seeing him on the ice, but his shows are always fun. Am I ticked that I won't be the funniest person in the outer bowl? A little, but I'll deal with it.

I have been wandering around the bowl taking pictures during the games. This works for me for two reasons: 1.) When I move around or at the very least, stand, it keeps me warmer and the migraines aren't quite as bad.* 2.) Thinking visually works for me. When I write something, I am composing but I am also describing a very specific vision. It's almost as if I'm interpreting a movie for a blind person.** I can actually go through my pictures and reconstruct the game.

The other thing that thinking visually does is it makes me compose images that are not necessarily there to push forward a story. This can lead to some moments that are, um, goobertastic. Last night my thing was getting a first look at the pyramids of pucks that are placed at each team's bench.

Turtle-brained photographer me had one thought: "Want!" Not the pucks themselves; I wanted to take good pictures of the pucks. I ended up climbing over empty chairs in the lower bowl*** in an effort to get just the right shot. Of pucks. Stacked in a pyramid.

So now I have a couple of nice shots of pucks that will probably appear as end pieces or headers and I've also gotten a feel for capturing the games in a way the works for me. My only regret is that it took nearly a season to figure it out.

*I've been in migraine mode since the last week of February. Whoever made the case for Lewis Carroll beinga migraine sufferer might be on to something.

**sigh...It's a dyslexic thing. You wouldn't understand.

***Nobody was there but the broadcast people so no fans were alarmed during the artistic fit of the author.

Greetings from Smashville! Season 13, Week 17

2011-02-14T19:07:00.000-06:00

Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars

Week seventeen saw Predsnation go from a humilating low to the kind of highs that come from a pair of rousing wins and dominating the buzz of the moment in two arenas of popular public discourse. So, let's take a look at Week 17...

The Revenge of Junkyard Jones
Edmonton at Nashville February 7th, 2011

After the tough fight that ended with a triumphant win over long-time division rivals Detroit, it seemed to many that winning over Edmonton, who were (and I think still are) last in the division would be easy. However, it was almost as if Edmonton knew only too well that Nashville was likely to fall back on one of the worst habits the Predators have had over the years.

They have a tendency to play down or up to whoever they are facing on the ice. When they're playing Chicago or Detroit or any other big-shouldered upper tier team, they're unstoppable. Put them against a team with considerably less juice, like, say, Edmonton or Ottawa and they phone it in. Sometimes it works and they win just by dint of having as much talent as the Predators have.

Other nights?

Someone knew that particular Predators' weak spot and took advantage of it. This isn't placing blame so much as it's recognising the possibility that former Big Cat, Ryan Jones, would have the idea that the Predators would be in Bellsouth Mode when the puck dropped at Bridgestone that Monday night. If so, it was excellent gamesmanship on his and his teammates' part. They deserved the win, they deserved the shutout and they deserved the buzz that comes from seeing the clock run out when you're miles ahead of the competition.

The shock and indignation that seemed to pervade every corner of the sports conversational landscape was not borne of people who had given up on their team. Not by a long shot. This was the outrage of the disappointed optimist, this is the frustration of the fan who knows what good the boys at 501 are capable of bringing to the ice. They want to see the fire that makes the Predators who they are reignited. As trite as it may sound, the only term I can think of that fits is "Tough Love". The Predators received it both inside and out of the organisation this week.

Detroit, Rocked City
Nashville at Detroit February 9th, 2011

Games at The Joe are always tough. The ice is rough, the fans are rabid and the Red Wings...

Even in an off year a bad day for Detroit is still usually better than a decent day for two-thirds of the rest of the NHL. Teams that regularly play against Detroit know they're facing a tough team with a ferocious offense and an almost inpenetrable defense. Their trademark ability to isolate and screen the opposition's goaltenders has sometimes been the thing that keeps them alive when everything else is just a touch out of sync.

Well, that and the sometimes undersung talent between the pipes... Chris Osgood seems to be their wall when he's playing and their rock in the locker room. From anecdotal observation, his voice is the one that not only guides but encourages his teammates and he's sometimes the first to offer a kind word to the losing pipesguy. Yeah, I like him. Get over it. I also like the goaltender they chose to be Osgood's partner and netmate. He has as much talent and exhibits the same qualities that make Osgood such a pleasure to watch. When the Predators were looking for a second goaltender this summer, it was my hope that they would find the kind of hand in glove match that Jimmy Howard has proven to be for Ozzie. Lucky for Nashville, That Lindback Moppet is exactly what everyone was hoping for.

But I digress, it was Jimmy Howard versus Pekka Rinne that night. The Great Wall of Finland and his retinue of stalwarts, The Gelfling, The First Gen and The Cannon, among others kept the fight going and eventually prevailed, leaving the Wings winded and floundering with the score at four to one in favour of Nashville.

You Say Goodbye, While I Say Hello...Hello! Hello!
Colorado at Nashville February 12th, 2011

The shank end of the week was the source of a lot of mixed feelings for Predsnation. While the organisation was all about creating as much buzz as possible concerning the acquisition of Ottawa forward Mike Fisher, the sports and entertainment media were all over the fact that Mrs. Fisher is country music recording artist Carrie Underwood. In both arenas, the connection to Underwood almost oveshadowed the transition that took place at BeeStone. Steeply discounted tickets filled a barn that might have seen robust attnedance but not a sellout against the O'Reilly Brother-free matchup. When a generic blonde country music singer stepped forward to sing the national anthem instead of Ms Underwood, the disappointment was palpable.

The game, however, was another story. Where Colorado managed to finesse a trio of wristers around Pekka Rinne, the five goals that put Nashville in the winner's spotlight were all muscled in. Some analysts might even argue that they were darned ugly. Personally, I loved seeing the Predators playing with that much aggression.

The promotional poobahs may have wanted Saturday to be The Mike Fisher Show, but the night belonged to David Legwand, Martin Erat and Patric Hornqvist, with excellent turns by Shea Weber and Cody Franson. Legwand kept the right people company all night long, fighting his way to the most dangerous part of the ice by any and all means possible. Pat the Bear was unleashed, doing everything he could to put himself and the puck behind Colorado's Budaj at every opportunity. Erat was the Czech Menace. Nearly every time something good happened, he was a part of it. Everyone named managed to get netters and assists and Nashville got the win.

What almost slipped past the attention of many during those heady crazy days was who was back and what would happen when he got there.. Peter Forsberg. Foppa. That name brings back memories of the team that might have been if The Fire Sale hadn't happened. Like the Good Boyfriend That Got Away, he is named whenever people speak fondly of departed denizens of Nashville's roster. News of his return to the NHL was almost overshadowed by the showbiz glitz but he made his presence known on the ice, often outskating and outplaying people who were almost young enough to be his kids.

Those of us who are old enough to remember, those of us where were there when he wore Nashville's sweater remember and from that part of Predsnation there was fond respect that was borne out of loyalty along with the usual high-spirited trash talk that goes on at The 'Stone.

This was to be Forsberg's last NHL game, (unless he does a Favre and comes back next year) and while it might not have ended with a win, it did end with him wearing the laundry of the team he felt the strongest affinity for in an arena full of people who still see him as a hero. Regardless of the score, he went out on a high note.

This is Jas Faulkner, who is hoping next the Preds will keep all of their claws on the ice instead of in the air. I'll be seeing you at the 'Plex and the 'Stone and online at Facebook and Twitter!

Sometimes You Just Have to Be A Fan...

2011-02-04T14:36:00.000-06:00

It's not like I sit around jaded and sick of covering hockey. Far from it.  However, there are days when I find myself doing the equivalent in my field of not being able to see the forest for the trees. Its easy to get too caught up in the politics and trying to be the best when its such an apples and oranges (and kiwi fruit and melons and...) undertaking in the first place.

So I did my duty and when I got off from my very early am job, I went to Centennial with a story in mind. When I got there, I saw Jim Diamond* and no other media. The usual milling around that happens in the press pit just wasn't happening.  This wasn't a huge concern until I got to the stands and saw they were pretty sparsely populated. Braving the possibiltiy of being told no, I started to wade in and ask people a few questions. There were a few younger men and women but there were also more older men standing around than usual.  Keep in mind as you read this that I'll ask people for their names but often depend on my digital recorder to catch them because I sometimes can't hear lower voices when there is a lot of ambient noise. I haven't heard the recordings yet, so there's no telling who's dad I talked to except one very nice gentleman who demurred being interviewed about DET but didn't mind chatting about Detroit. He was from Sweden and observed that there were many good hockey players from Sweden playing for the Red Wings.

Okay, this was when my fangirl self kicked in because yeah, there have been and are some great players frome Sweden in Detroit. Heck, my dog is named Niklas Lidstrom**.   However, this was Nashville, and it was my town and my team and...and...

"That's very true," I said, "but some of Sweden's best play for Nashville." I borought up Patric Hornqvist and started to bring up Anders Lindback and then blanked as to whether he was from Sweden. Crappity. The man next to him (I'm sorry sir. I'll know who's Dad you are when I sit down to transcribe the interviews.) prompted me to say Lindback. Being relieved that I was sure of The Moppet's provenance and a goalie geek en extremis, I got all gushy about Lindback.   Then I remembered to ask the gentleman for his name. Yep. He was Lindback's dad.

I had forgotten that this was Dad's trip week in NSH.  When stuff like this happens, I try not to do any locker room interviews***. The guys need that time with their parents. I can always talk to them later on. So I decided to talk to more fans instead and ened up at the other end of the bleachers with some female fans who were roughly my age. We ended up doing something I hadn't done in a very long time. We just started chattering about hockey and how much we love this city and the team and how we're blessed with some of the nicest players in the league and how great they did in Philadelphia last night and I stuck my recorder in my pocket and was just a fan for a little while. We even squeeeed a little bit over Sullivan and Tootoo. (Not really in the puck bunny sense, more like "They're back! Yay!") I even met "BlackBarbie".

For those of you who have never visited the Predators message board, "BlackBarbie"^ is the person who loves the Predators, especially Jordin Tootoo better than anyone else. When people get too snappy and critical about them, I know I can go to the message board and be encouraged by Barbie's unconditional adoration of all things Predator. In person she is exactly the way she is on the message board. She's a blast to be next to when they're on the ice and I can imagine the people who sit with her at actual games feel the same way.

I hope it's not the case, but the chatterchatter might have gotten on 22, 26 and 39's nerves, because they eventually moved to the other end of theice and I knew I needed to call it an afternoon and go write.   Here's the thing: the bottom line is that I wouldn't trade what I do for anything. I love being one of the people who is lucky enough to give the Predators, and Predsnation in general, a voice. This is a dream come true and I hope to be able to continue to improve and provide even better representation. However, for a half an hour, I went back to being a fan. While its no longer where I live, its a great place to visit and it reminds me that Nashville is a great town because of who is on both sides of the glass.

*If you haven't already, check out his sportswriting on examiner.com/nashville. He's one of the sharper sports writers around here.

**The different spelling of the first name is deliberate.

***I still feel guilty for going into the locker room on Canada Day when they probably had family waiting for them to get away from the rink.

^ Yes she does look like my my fifth grade friend Angela's African American Barbie Doll.

"See Rock City!" Death: The Cheese Grits Interview*

2011-01-13T15:52:00.000-06:00

So I went out to get the mail and when I came back in, he was sitting there, all four feet nine of him.

"Do you really think going outside in your sock feet is a smart move?"

"Hey!" I pointed at my feet. "Double thick thinsulate booties from L. L. Bean. Not just socks..." I trailed off. "Why are you here?"

"I need to speak with you."

"Oh shit. Now? Really? Now? Couldn't you wait until after the Predators win the Stanley Cup? And why are you manifesting yourself as a middle school FFA member."

"You have a soft spot for ROTC and FFA kids.** To your thinking they're making an effort to do the right thing."

"Don't pander.."

There was a flurry of glitter and whirling plasma, the air had the ozone smell one associates with an appliance shorting out.

"And don't try to materialise as a dishy goth girl with an ankh pendant. That's been done to death."

"Oh, ha ha." The glittery mass shuddered to stop and then reformed as Tom Stoppard."

"Please tell me you didn't kill Tom Stoppard."

"I don't kill..." he held up his fingers to do air quotes, "anyone. When its their time, I accompany them."

"How nice. So- will you please put down those drafting pens? They cost a fortune!"

"Like you're gonna need 'em. I'm kidding. Relax. You're alive and so is Tom Stoppard. I happened to run into a friend of yours..."

"Which friend?" I felt sick and cold.

"I was just doing my job, but as always, I'm sure there were hurt feelings. Usually, I try to be sure family is given some nudge. You're like family, so consider yourself nudged. I'm not saying any more. You'll get the call."

Death took a deep breath and cocked his head to one side. "Well?"

"Words aren't my strong suit right now."

"I guess you could paint me the message? Interpretive dance? Quilting? Oh, wait. You did that in the 80s."

"Please don't be so...so..."

"Glib?"

"That word has gotten a bad rep over the past few years. I'm really put out with you."

He sighed. "Do you think this job is easy? I would have rather been a lawyer or a veterinarian or any number of things. Didn't happen. We are who we are. Can I let you in on a little secret?"

"Please don't."

"When your number's up, when your time has come, when they call your name out yonder, you'll be glad to see me. Everyone is."

"That is such bullshit."

"No it's not. Think about it. Better yet, let me show you..."

He reached toward me and the only sensation I had for a few seconds was the sound of wind moving through trees. Then a second later everything came back, my office, the January chill, the fact that I was standing in my home talking to Death.

"Of course it's different for everyone," he said. "Your favorite sound in the whole world is the wind moving through tree branches. You didn't know that until now, did you? For someone else, it might be the street noise they woke up to as a child. For another person, it might be the noise of their wife making breakfast. Everybody is different.

And another thing... Death is kind of like Rock City."

"What?"

"Okay, you know how there are parts of Rock City where it looks dark, dangerous and fairly impossible to navigate without pain and injury? That's before you actually take those paths. Death is like that. It's only scary from this side."

"Yeah, but.."

"Your phone is ringing."

He handed me my bluetooth thingie and I leaned over to answer the call.

"And put some shoes on," he said as I reached around to answer the call, "It's freezing in here."

I turned around to answer him only find the room empty and my friend on the other end of the line.

In memoriam for LS 1927 - 2011

*This is satire. Any resemblance between the characters and allegorical figures from the classical Western canon, living or dead, are purely coincidental.

** For my Canadian readers: ROTC = Reserve Officers Training Corp, kids in high school and college can get academic credit for taking military training classes FFA= Future Farmers of America Future Farmers starts in seventh grade in the US. It's very similar to 4-H.

copyright 2011 jas faulkner

Should I Go Out To The Middle Of Bridgestone Plaza And Toss A Beret Over My Head?

2010-12-12T15:20:00.000-06:00

No, wait. That was Mary Tyler Moore. Last night was more of a Bridget Jones sort of thing. Oh, who am I fooling? Every night (and day, if you want to quibble) is a Bridget Jones kind of day, except I am not cute and squinchy-faced like that actress from Texas.

This morning I finally got a look at what I wore to the game last night. Dark maroon jeans, a navy long-sleeved tee, my running shoes and a black knitted pancho. Did I get dressed in the dark yesterday? As a matter of fact, yes I did. There was Weather and the power went out and after some struggling with a candle and deciding that Abraham Lincoln must have only worn black for a reason¹, settled for anything that felt warm. I also neglected to accessorize; but at that point, what would have been appropriate, a babushka around my head and a cigarette hanging from my lower lip?

Then there's the whole "skin of thirteen-year-old" thing going on which would be great except that this would have to be a thirteen year old on meth because I am seriously broken out.

"Hormones?" asks the BGBF in a hopeful tone.

"Look, I am nearly fifty and I am not giving you a gaby. I'm sorry. I do good to take care of Niklas Lidstrom and even at that I have help." I'm not sure how much longer Mom is going to enjoy sitting the Grand-Tzu. She told me he kept demanding to go into my office, where he would stand and howl.

"He misses you." Says Mom as she coos at twelve pounds of grouchy hair attached to a stuffed Powerpuff Girl.

"No, he is being the Chinese lapdog equivalent of Ernest T. Bass.² Seriously Mom, 'Yipyipyipyipyiypyipyip rarf yipyipyipyip woooooooooooo rarf rafrarfrarf!' translates to, 'Awright Bigbutt, I know you're in here somewhere. Come out now and throw my stuffed penguin!' "

So anyway, dressed from the Ugly Betty Collection (Season One) and desperately wanting to rub against the side of the building to moult, I almost missed saying goodbye to the departing intern from the communications office of the Predators. That was because I was wearing purple foam ear plugs³ and they make me feel like I'm underwater and kind of spacey. Luckily she tapped me on the back and after a moment of thinking, "Why is this child in fangear?"⁴ I remembered we were losing her to her final semester at U of Michigan.

Dear Music Executives, You cannot do better than Britany! Ask anyone covering the Predators this year. She⁵ made everyone's life in the pit and the box a lot easier. Look at her work on the "Preds Press"⁶. Be smarter than the average bear and hire her before the Red Wings people wise up and offer her a job.

I don't think I'm going to be able to come to a point beyond "Hire Britany!" but that's okay. You really should hire Britany and I can promise you she will never show up to work in a yarn-fringed pancho.

By the way, to the other writers, coaches, trainers and officials I ended up next to in the elevator going to event level after the game: All of you looked very nice. Your mothers should be proud.

Signed,
Oscar Madison is alive and well and can be found in the form of a middle-aged, straight, female, native Nashvillian

1.Yeah, yeah I know...Matthew Brady made daguerrotypes, not color photos.

2.The rock thrower from the old Andy Griffith Show. Look him up.

3. Wait a minute. Do those count as accessorizing?

4.Fangear is verboten in the press area. Heck, even the coaches and players wear suits unless theyre playing or at practice.

5.And pretty much everyone on staff, but she was often the front person...

6. The magazine/program for each game.

copyright 2010 jas faulkner

Framing The Magnolia

2010-11-13T05:59:00.000-06:00

I have this seemingly weird thing that I do that actually makes perfect sense when you think about it. When ever I get a bunch of frames for prints and drawings I leave them in the car until I'm ready for them. If I don't do that, one of two things will happen: they will either be appropriated and filled with photos or reproductions of the works of French Impressionists because I insist on breaking my family's heart by being a printmaker or they'll get broken in a way that will be maddening and sometimes will even lead to a good story. The latter is an inevitability even when the former is avoided.
"I've set a new record," I told Kevin over the phone.
"You broke it going into the gallery?" he guessed.

"That's for next time. I got the frame painted and lacquered, the mats -yes, this is a two-layered jobbie- cut, painted and covered with textured paper, I picked out the perfect print from the run, got my title card ready, got everything lined up and then the glass slipped out of my hands."

"And this was not a sixteen by twenty rectangle that you could replace with glass from a thrift store frame."

"Of course not. This was a sixteen by sixteen square. Luckily I did find a replacement. I'll just use the open frame for a painting."

"Good thinking. So did it lead to the inevitable awkward encounter of some sort?"

"No. Well, yes. Indirectly." I said.
"And it was in the books section," he said.
"It's not always the books section," I countered.

"It's always the books section. Isn't that where you met the homophobic God-guy?" Kevin asked.

"Well, yeah, but..."

"Then there was guy who wanted you to tell his daughter that girls do not read books about bugs."

"That was at Davis-Kidd."

"The man who kept mistaking you for someone he dated when he was at Lipscomb"

"Barnes and Noble."

"The woman who insisted that you tried to convert her to evolutionism at Western Kentucky?"

"Thrift store book shelf. I'll give you that one." I said

"The guy who yelled at you when he saw you didn't take his suggestion and get the Glenn Beck book?"

"You make it sound like I go there to argue"

"No, I'm not, "he said, "It's just that you're a loon magnet. So what happened this time?"

"There was this nice lady and were talking about cookbooks and then I had kind of moved on and out of the blue she asked me about 'Gone With The Wind'..."

It was at this point in the conversation that Kevin probably regretted getting through art school without ever having picked up a drug habit.

"What did you say?" He asked.

"She's not from here. I tried to laugh it off and say that being a writer and native Southerner means that I've been Williamsed and Faulknered and Weltyed to death. She persisted and asked me if I read the sequel."

"Oh, lord..."

"I babbled a bit and then finally said, 'Look, if you want to know the truth'..."

Kevin sighed. "Sweetie, if she wanted to know the truth, she would not be reading Margaret Mitchell."

"Good point. So I said, 'If you want to know the truth, I'm glad we lost the Civil War. She looked stunned for a moment and then aghast. 'Why?" she asked. I tried to be circumspect. I really did. She has told me how much she loved the South and how nobody better say a bad thing about it and all that. So I said, 'It was really a pretty immoral place back then."

"What did she say?"

"She seemed very surprised to hear that. Maybe it was the source, I don't know. Then she asked me how it was immoral. My mouth dropped open. I told her I needed to get going and that I hoped she enjoyed Bittman and Prudhomme and to look for Emeril's Louisiana books. Then I left, feeling a little mad at myself for wimping out and not saying what I think we both knew."

"Jas..."

"I know. I suck. My pictures look nice, though."

Some of you are probably confused as to why I have such a visceral reaction to "Gone With The Wind". Here's the thing: It's one of those works that people love when they really don't want to think about what the Southern US means or is or can be. "Gone With The Wind" is the archetypical Big Lie that things were really great for everyone down here, that all people of European descent lived in great big mansions and whiled away their days at fox hunts and cotillions whole a other group of people were only too willing to devote every fiber of their being to creating this utopia. Any school child will tell you that's a big steaming pile.

Here's the truth: Many of those "lost family mansions" were actually just big, nice farmhouses with a few shacks in back or sometimes a crude minature of the larger house where the people who were kept as slaves were expected to live. The people who lived in those big Greek revival mansions may have let a few of their sons play soldier at first, but when the cruel reality of war finally hit them, they often paid off the children of poor whites to go fight in their places. And no, the Africans who were brought over were not happy to be anyone's slaves. Would you be happy to be a slave? Why am I even having to type this in 2010 AD? Finally, I am frankly very happy to be an American. I am not about to abdicate my citizenship just to make people who put wealth above human rights feel better about what they're doing so they can stay rich. So why in the world would I, a native of a state whose official nickname points to the desire to sacrifice and protect what we see as our role as Americans want to use a brief period of seditious nonsense as the primary cultural touchstone to explain who and what I am?

I don't. My South can be found in the way my family and I talk. It can be found the stories we tell and the art and music we make. My South is historically the hotbed and laboratory where the entire country's ills are hammered out on the hearts and minds and bodies of those who weren't not given the luxury of the thin veneer of civility to be sheltered from the unjustices or to hide their biases. My South is also a place of healing the past. The grace and forgiveness I see here, sometimes on a daily basis, still amazes me and confirms the presence of the divine that can be seen in every person. My South is Christian and Jewish and Muslim and Atheist and Sikh and Hindu and Wiccan and Buddhist and Santeria and a thousand other ways people try to touch heaven. My South canbe found in the cities that are beginning to regroup after a decade of fiduciary and natural disasters. It's about pitching in and not giving up and not forgetting the people who are still there after the reporters and their camera crews have gone away. My South is green and getting greener as we realize that Grandma and Michael Pollan have a point. My South is summer tomatoes and people forming CSAs and other independent ways to fuel our bodies. My South is loving the established sports traditions and yet embracing the new ones as people come here to create lives for themselves and their families. My South is my home as nowhere else could be in the here and now. That's my South.

I hope that anyone who still buys into the old lies will see there is so much more to what is here and who we are. Y'all come by sometime; y'hear?

copyright 2010 Jas Faulkner

So this concussion thing...

2010-10-15T09:32:00.000-05:00

Original post deleted.

It's gotten weird. I'm turning pro.

Stay tuned.

I love these guys...

And I probably imbibe less that they ever did. In fact, I don't imbibe at all. No chemical assistance is needed because mijos, I can do weird all by myself. Bless Russell and Rice for being inspirationally good and God bless Hunter S.Thompson for creating a precedent for the page having room enough for everyone who wants to find their destinies on it.

Flying Blind in the Predators' Locker Room

2010-10-12T07:49:00.000-05:00

Halloween came a little early for me this year. Over the weekend I developed bluish/greenish circles around both eyes and a full-on shiner over my right eye along with the lovely blue streak that continued up my temple into my hairline. In short, I look like what happened when my baby brother got hold of my Ranger Rick coloring book when he was three and and I was five. Pretty.

It meant that me shadowing some of the players as they worked with kids was not going to happen. However, I figured that my bumps and bruises wouldn't phase the Preds on their home turf and went ahead with doing the research for my latest article.

Once I got out to the 'Plex, I realized that my glasses were going to be very uncomfortable and wearing them for driving only was my plan. Going fuzzy is not a big deal when they're on the ice. I've watched them skate enough that I can pick out who is who based on their posture, their skating and how they interact with their team mates. The locker room was a totally different story. Anyone more than a foot away was a moving blur with few distinguishing features. (I got some eyerolls from my BGBF who noted that Lindback and Rinne are both well over six feet tall and should have been easy to pick out in the crowd.)

I have to give Kevin Wilson, the media coordinator for Nashville some serious kudos here. I explained to him that I absolutely could not see and he did some point and shoot work to get me to the guys I needed to interview. Otherwise I was wandering around with a thousand yard stare, trying to stay out of the way and watching the floor to be sure I didn't trip over anything. So, uh, yeah, I probably looked like Jas Faulkner, Zombie Reporter. Weee!

I am very happy with the way the article turned out. You can read it here: http://thehockeywriters.com/vem-ar-malvakten-who-dat-playin-between-the-pipes/

So now I need to round up my phone numbers and start stalking the broadcast guys again for their interviews. October really is looking like a Romero flick, only with hockey pucks and I don't want to eat brains, just pick them for a bit.

Getting Just A Little Too Into That Whole Participant-Observer Thing? Possibly.

2010-10-06T12:40:00.000-05:00

"Again? AGAIN?" Kevin is shouting into the phone as I explain why I'm passing up on the chance to meet what he thinks is probably the love of my life. He should have been grateful for the change in routine because my usual response to offers like that is something along the lines of being too old for dating/romance/pitching woo/whatever the kids are calling it these days.

But no. He decided to be Lord of the Hissy Fit because I was playing the "I got a concussion this morning" card. Okay, to be fair, I've been covering the local NHL team up close (instead of writing cutesy fictive pieces like I did last year) and to be honest, I've been handling being taken moderately seriously by combinations of breathing in a paper bag and trying to convince myself this is no different from doing anthropological field research. I am also going through a clumsy phase. The second? first? week of training camp, I tripped on a mat in the walkway between the rinks at Centennial and wrenched my left knee sufficiently to make me want to whimper and swear every time I saw a flight of stairs.

My friend Jeff responded to this infoirmation with, "Uh, no. YOU'RE not the one who's supposed to get hurt at training camp. Oh, This is some observer participant thing you're doing, isn't it?"

Well, no. There are times when I cannot walk and chew gum at the same time and this is what was going on. The concussion? Maybe it would sound better if this was some kind of field writer's tribute to JP Dumont or Jason Arnott. The truth is a little more embarrassing.

I was in my studio talking to a friend of mine about screen printing. I was on the phone telling someone, "You really have to pay attention to detail with the acetate overlay." Before tripping, pitching forward and banging my forehead against the corners of some boards I had stacked against a cabinet to use for block printing. So much for paying attention. A little dazed, I was more concerned about my hands, which I had landed hard on while trying to break my fall. I stood up and that's when I realized how much my head was hurting.

I stumbled into the bathroom, telling myself that there was no way I could be hurt, not at this particular time in my life, just no. I tried to throw up because it was what I thought I wanted to do and while leaning over the sink, got the sensation that regardless of what physics and the physical limitations of the basin might present, I would keep falling like Alice down the rabbithole if I leaned over too far. They found Elvis in the bathroom, didn't they? I needed to get out of there.

My vision was blurry and my ears had gone beyond ringing and were roaring. I managed to make it to the couch and sat there, feeling of the lump that was raising just past my hairline and thinking about all of those trepanned skulls I'd seen in textbooks in college. I put up my feet and kept telling myself that this could not happen now, not when I was learning to make the kind of art and writing I've always wanted to do, not when I had a sweet gig writing about hockey and credentials that gave me access to see how it worked from the bones out. Nope. Not gonna happen. This was a really stupid way to go.

I realized I still had my phone in my hand and tried to talk and at the time had no idea if I was actually talking. (Amy and her husband say that I would at intervals tell them to just keep talking, that I couIdn't hear them but I knew they were talking. No, I don't know what I hoped to accomplish with that.) All I could see was a vaselined blur of the living room with the small blur that was my dog milling around the floor near me. I closed my eyes. Roaring and clicking was I could . I was ice cold and felt like the temperature in the house was in the teens and my teeth were chattering uncontrollably. I pulled my arms inside my NASA t-shirt and tried to get warm but every inch of me felt like a slab of meat that had just been taken out of the refrigerator.

"This is bigger than me." I thought as I finally let go, feeling like I'd released my death grip from the side of an unheated pool and was now sinking to the bottom.

I woke up to my senses being back to normal but my head hurting where I'd hit it. My mother was there, holding an ice pack to my head. "That's a heck of a lump you took," she said, "Are you trying to get the whole hockey experience?"

I told her there was no lump and she got out a mirror to show me. "It's actually sticking up through your hair."

"That's just where my hair is graying," I said, but in truth she was right. Here's a picture of what those lumps you've seen in Tex Avery and Chuck Jones cartoons look like in real life:

It's kind of hard ot see, but quality photography was not exactly high on my to-do list at that point.

I spent the afternoon riding with her while she ran errands. It was kind of comforting to be in the passenger seat with Mom tooling around Nashville. On the way back home, we passed a car lot where there was a large chicken and a muscleman next to the road, dancing.

"I saw it, too." said Mom.

Well, that's a relief.

copyright 2010 Jas Faulkner

The Ark Isn't Full Yet (Another Sermon...Oh joy.)

2010-10-03T17:26:00.000-05:00

author's note: All of us have our personal "roads not taken". While some members of my family would argue that my passing up law school was the epic untaken path, the truth is, I wanted to be a minister for a long time. The circumstances were never right and I realized a few years ago that sometimes you just need to wait and see what happens because you'll ultimately end up where you're supposed to be. I am not sure I have ever or will ever find my true north. At any rate, the journey is pretty interesting.

I'm writing all of this to explain that every now and then I think about what I would say if I actually became an ordained priest.  It's sort of kind of in Episcopalese, and I know that sometimes freaks other Protestants out. It's okay. We don't bite. If someone says, "Peace unto you" all you have to say is "Hey, you too!" and it's good. Okay?

So here we go.

Peace unto you.

(Yeah, this is where you say it back. It's okay. I got it.)

Welcome to the ark. It's pretty comfortable here, isn't it? Have you ever noticed that at times it seems a little echo-y? Maybe a tad incomplete? Are we missing something? Are we missing someone? Have we done everything we're supposed to do to make sure we're all safe as houses?

Let's take a look at God's instructions to Noah the first time around:

That would be Genesis 7:1-3 for those of you following along at home:

¹ The LORD then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. ² Take with you seven ^[a] of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, ³ and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

Sounds like a pretty specific set of instructions, doesn't it? And here is what Noah did. You'll find it at Genesis 7:5:

⁵ And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.

You'll notice that as specific as God was with his directions, he did not  add a bunch of conditions and clauses and exceptions. He just said, "Take 'em all." and Noah said, "Okey dokey!" and went on a Mutual of Omaha wildlife roundup and all of God's creatures were represented in the ark as the rain came down. Every one of God's creatures. No exceptions.

Noah, had something that many of us are missing right now. He had the insight to know that if we are truly created in God's image, it is not our place to question the wisdom of the diversity of his creation. Noah had no right then and we have no right now; and this leads me to a very important question.

As Christians, we have it made. We are the dominant cultural presence in this country. We enjoy freedom and security, in fact, we take them for granted and don't realize that there are people who cannot enjoy the same safety we feel in this ark we've built. I don't understand it. There's plenty of room for everybody to have an equal share of goodness, of happiness. Allowing people to live and love and worship (or not) as they see fit does not, by even the tiniest measure, diminish what we have. In fact, I can only see how being inclusive and loving and compassionate would have the opposite effect. So, please explain to me why we are slamming the door in the face of so many and leaving them in harm's way? Do we really know better than God? Are we really so wise as to try to correct the God who made these people who are perfect and beautiful just the way they are because we disagree with their very existence?

Are you smarter than God?

I'm not. Hey, I've seen "Bruce Almighty" and will tell you right now, that's one job I don't want. You shouldn't want it, either.

As Christians, we're really lucky because we don't have to wander creation to find the perfect badger to please God.   He really doesn't ask much of us beyond that initial acceptance. Well, wait there's that one tiny thing that he mentioned in passing:

John 15:12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

Love everyone without condition or limit. That's all. Yeah. I know. At times it can be easier said than done. But people do it everyday without realizing they're doing it. Sometimes it goes by the more common name of parenting. Whether its your own child or the child you have been given charge of by circumstance or simply the professional or spiritual (or sometimes both) oath you've taken as a teacher, you do this. Sometimes it is the conviction we have to be each other's keeper. The important thing about it isn't what we see as a result, it is the knowledge the recipient has that they are loved and cared for, no matter what. There is an emotional "there" that they can go to for safety.

I have to stop and confess something right here. This post is borne of sorrow and outrage. Five children dead in three weeks is not just a tragedy, it's a crisis. All of them the target of hatred. People using your faith and mine to socially liminalize children. All of them bullied, humiliated, being told over and over that they were so far less than they were. Who are we to say that any of these beautiful kids are not exactly as God intended them to be? What gives us that right? If you're not outraged by this, you're not paying attention.

We should feel sorrow about the pain that Tyler Clementi and Seth Walsh and Raymond Chase and the other children felt. No matter how much love they got, there was enough destructive stupidity and hate that it obscured all of the good long enough to make them lose hope. They did not feel parented and protected and loved. Where was their seat on the ark?   But the loss is far greater than their potential as artists or professionals. They are lost to those who loved them as siblings,sons, friends. There is someone who was meant to know these people as the loves of their lives and now they never will. In a system choked with children who go unfostered and unadopted, there will be children who might not have had to spend their days shunted from one place to the next: parentless, homeless. Any one of these young men might have turned out to be a great dad. But now we'll never know.

Decades ago, (I'm feeling really old now) I helped people who were born without the needle and thread gene create quilt panels. Those of you who know anything about the 1980s' can guess what those quilts were for. The common saying at the time was that the prejudice against ten percent of the population now had a body count. I hoped that we would never see that sort of thing manifest itself, ever again. And here we are.

You may not think this is your burden. You may not think that the responsibility lies on anyone but the children who reached a place so dark that they saw no other alternative. I've got news for you. We, and I mean we as Christians, are going to take some heat for this. And we should. Until we live out the promise that was made to us and we made in turn to the world -to love each other, without exceptions, without limits- we are horribly remiss. We have no qualms about asking people of other faiths to be accountable for what their brothers and sisters do in their name. Guess what? It's our turn. We have allowed people to terrorize others, to terrorize children. Think about it. We are letting people terrorize children.   As Christians we need to speak up and show without a shadow of a doubt that we will not tolerate hate.  We should not remain silent in the face of bullying, especially when we have the strength of cultural majority and social acceptance on our side. Do something. Anything less and we are no better than the pitiable monsters who hit the "on" button of that webcam.   Please, speak up. Do something.

I'll end this with two sites that you should visit and share with everyone you know:

The It Gets Better Project at Youtube
and
The SPLC's Tolerance.org site.

Thanks for hearing or reading me out. I hope you'll take this message to heart.

Peace be with you and those whose hearts are hurting this Sunday.

copyright 2010 Jas Faulkner

A Typical Night In The Laminate Brigade

2010-09-28T17:47:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder what a game day is like when you're the media?
The facilties open up to the media at four in the afternoon. There's an entrance for media and arena staff that we use so they can check us off the list to see that we're here. Once we arrrive we have the choice between going up to the press box where we have assigned seats or in the media lounge and work room in the besement of the 'Stone where the club serves the same evening meal that's serveed to the team. (At least, that's what one of the other reporters told me.) I've been giving it a pass because while it does look good, it also looks heavy and a bit on the carbolicious side. Great if I'm going to skate against Dustin Bufyglien or Eric Staal; not so much if I'm going to sit in the press box all night and write about the game.

There is a table in froont of the media lounge where you can pick up information about the lineups for both teams, a press clipping book and the Preds Press.  The Media Lounge is usually filled with reporters, coaching staff, club Big People and broadcast people, NHL officials and assorted others.  As time for hte puck to drop gets closer, everyone makes their way to the staff/frieght elevators and take them to the 300 level where the press boxes are located. Instead of seats with cup holders, there are long counters with phones, ports for computers and a few amenities. Its from there where most of us watch the game. At each intermission we are given printed summaries that are generated by the official people in Tronna. At the ten minute mark of third period, we are given ballots to vote on the stars of the game. Unless there is real suspense, most reporters start to head back down to the basement for player interviews and Coach Trotz's press scrum.

I can't tell you what the dressing rooms are like because the Predators are still using makeshift rooms while the official locker rooms are being repaired because of the flood in May. I have heard that its tight going just right for hte players to get ready but not so much when you add the media trying to squeeze in to get Shea Weber's thoughts on the game.  Eh, I'll wait until media access at practice and let the guys have some breathing room on game night.   Trotz's press conferences are held in the media lounge. When he comes in and sits down, everyone cranks up their digital recorders and plops it on the table in fromt of him and then everyone begins to ask him questions. Once it's done, everyone says thank you and then it's off to the work room to write or back to the locker room to get interviews or home to write and/or get some sleep.

So there you have it, a typical game night for the media. Glamorous, isn't it? Truth is, I love it.  Now that I'm starting to find my feet and am feeling considerably less, um, verbally constipated, this is going to get a lot easier.

Tales From The Pit: Have You Hugged Your Zamboni Today?

2010-09-23T09:51:00.000-05:00

I think I may have survived my first NHL training camp.

I'll talk about it at length in a minute but first I have a number of thank yous to make.

Mom, thanks for being supportive and for taking good care of Niklas Lidstrom while I was away so much. That he will now eat coddled eggs and chicken with his dogfood for Grandma is an accomplishment given that I was despairing of him eating anything execpt the eyes from his stuffed animals and the occasional string cheese.

Beautiful Alice thanks for being Lucy to my Ethel. Don't know what I would do without you. Keith, Stew, Dave, Kevin, and Dale, I still think that every woman who ever met a tragic end did so because she didn't have a BGBF (Best Gay Boy Friend). I am lucky enough to have five of them right here in town to talk me down. I love y'all.

To my editor, Rick Gethin, who spent an hour the other night giving me a pep talk, thank you so much. You have no idea how much that helped!
To the people in the Nashville hockey community who were kind enough to allow themselves to be interviewed while I fought down panic and tried to find my chops, you have been nothing short of gracious.

To everyone else who is still reading, thanks for bearing with me.

So. Predators training camp was fun and nerve wracking and exhausting and even though I am pretty worn out, have what seems like hours of interviews to transribe and reams to write, I would do it again in a heartbeat.

What is it like? Let me give you a rundown.    If you've ever watched hockey practice, you may have seen risers around the ice populated by people with computers and video cameras. Some of those people are media and some of them are coaching staff who are trying to get a good look at how everyone is playing.

The first day consisted of medicals. I got there at nine in the morning to find a number of people waiting around. I had actually been there for some of the pre-camp skates but stayed in the stands. I had to gather up the nerve to walk past the "no entry" rope and join the rest of the media.   Everyone I met was extremely kind and generous with their experience. I know in some fields its de riguer to be jaded. There was no one with that attitude in the pit. Everyone was excited to be there. I like that.

Reporters are given a press book via email and there are roster lists and clipping books that are updated and distributed daily. Because there is no one set time that everyone is available to the media on the first day, we had to tell the liasion who we wanted to talk to and he would bring them to him or us to them.

A few of the players who are requested by more than one reporter did "scrums". You've probably seen a scrum during postgame or coverage of training for a game. The person interviewed stands with everyone's microphone, digital recorder or camera inches from his face and answers questions.   They take it in stride. Personally I would find it unnerving.

The rest of the days went like this: Early morning skates with the goalies in one rink and the rest of the team on the other. This was followed by combined drills or media availability. This means the dreaded (for me) locker room visit. At this point ,they're either calling it a day or getting ready for scrimmage or whatever and here coem the reporters.   This is usually followed by either more drills or a scrimmage.

There is networking, standing around and waiting, and if I'm lucky, Pete Weber or Terry Crisp is in a story telling mood. It is exactly as fun as it sounds. Yes, you absolutely do want to be around for the latter if you ever get the chance.

I wish I could say I had all the confidence in the world. Um, no. By midweek, I realized that none of my columns were appearing in the clippings books and assumed that the organization hated my writing.

My BGBFs and Beautiful Alice stepped in to talk me down late late late one night during my complete meltdown of any semblence of confidence I had in my ability to do this:

Keith: You assumed that entire cast and crew of every show you've ever direct hated you.

Stew: She did that in Memphis, too? Shee used to get in the car after doing fieldwork and inform me that every one of her subjects hated her.

Keith: So the Greater Bowling Green Area and huge swaths of Kentucky hate you, Jas?

Stew: Mm-hmm...

Beautiful Alice: Do you want me to get out one of my kids' supersoakers and do aversion therapy with you again?

My friends love me and I love them. (Or maybe I'm typing this because I'm a little scared of them. Kidding. Really!)

But getting back to training camp, there were scrum each day with Coach Trotz and I did a hand full of interview and have pages of notes that will be turned into articles over the next few days. I also learned a few things about covering hockey, especially in Tennessee:

1.Bring your own tea. If the concession places have it at all, it will be sweetened. Also? Bring your own stevia.

2. Bring a jacket. Doofus.

3. Bring business cards.

4. Do not agree to take questions from fans into the dressing room. There is a reason you are the one going in there. I did it once. Havfway through asking, I realized it was a bad move and would have loved to have crawled under something.

5. When not in use, Zambonis are warm, friendly things that can take the chill off. I was all over the 'Plex's 'boni like GIR on a cupcake. Almost as good?   Nice, warm, huggable netbooks.

When not taking notes about everything around me, I was doing interviews. Its probably a bit dumb, but I would play those over and over in my head and worry about what I did wrong or should have done or... or...
Here are the grade I'm giving myself for the past week. Please note: This is not a comment on the players I interviewed. All one of them were gracious, friendly and patient. I'm grading ME, okay?

Here's how I did. Theyre listed in the order they happened:

1. Nick Spaling and Andreas Thuresson: I did not bring notes because I thought I had it pretty firmly set in my mind what I was going to ask. I blanked and then repeated a question. Yikes. C-

2.)Wade Belak I was flustered and wandered a bit. I stayed on task but I should have done better. C

3.)Jordin Tootoo I'm actually pretty happy with this one. I had my notes I felt ready and he was a great interview subject. A

4.)Jerred Smithson Once again, had my notes and questions at hand, felt ready to go and he was great to talk to. A

5.) JP Dumont They called him in form the weight room. I offered to do the interview another time. He was very nice and gave me a great interview anyway. Next time someone says, "I'll go get him". I'm going to say no. That's too much of an impostion. D

6.)Ryan Suter I was not ready for this one. Seriously, the media meet time snuck up on me and I was not prepared to go in there. Like every other player I interviewed, I had done my homework and had pages of notes on Suter and had written out some questions. I found the notes but my questions went awol except for the one a fan had sent to me. Almost everything I asked was in terms of someone else and only one question vaguely resembled the interview queries I had planned.I just was not ready and should have called it off until I had my questions in hand. The fan question did not go over well. He deserved better. F

So that's how it went. Tonight is my first time actually covering a game. I'll post a post mortem after I get my artcles caught up at THW.

Until then,

Namaste,
Jas

A Tale From The Pit: Adventures In Vocabulary Building

2010-09-21T08:11:00.000-05:00

I wrote this blog entry a few years ago about my rather uneasy relationship with swear words. Thing is, I'm still not good at them and it seems like my vocabulary is not nearly as extensive as I thought it was. Earlier this week, my editor contacted me with an urgent request to remove a part of the title of a series of articles I was writing. Okay. I wasn't sure what he big deal was, but I did as he asked. You see, I didn't know "wanking" was actually a word. I didn't know that it meant...well, look it up.

Freakout redacted. Here's my latest.

Today's Predators Training Camp Missive Is Brought To You By The Letter 'H'

From the Pit: Whiffing Questions and Taking Names

2010-09-20T10:00:00.000-05:00

I wish I could give you a really good report from behind the scenes but I was plagued by a case of the Stupids that lingered for the better part of the day. Vocabluary failures, tenporal and spatial confusion all of it was washed away by the sweet, sweet sounds of pucks getting slapped around the rink.

For those of you who have never been to a pro hockey training camp, theyre a lot of fun and if there's a team in your town, please consider going at least once. Aside from seeing some good hockey in the making, its a chance to see your favorite players up close.

So yesterday? At training camp? I interviewed more kids in the stands. There were a number of tween girls who were in a state of purpetual swoon over Weber, Suter and Hornqvist. They started out screaming every time they walked by and by the end of the session the reflexively squealing every time they saw a Predators jersey. Cute and a little sweet to see the guys getting treated like pop stars.

My first pro interview yesterday was with Jordin Tootoo, who is gracious and very comfortable around reporters. I'm looking forward to doing hte writep for tomorrow's edition of the magazine as it is set to appear with my piece on the Predators' G.O.A.L. (Get Out And Learn) program. Today is the last day for that and I'm going to be interviewing the kids. Lots of fun! The parents have been lovely and I wish I could have talked to more of them but I have tried to stay out of the way and let them enjoy watching their kids on the ice.

I had planned on interviewing JP Dumont and they pulled him away fom whatever he was doing in the workout room to talk to me. It was nice of them but I also felt a little guilty. After all, I can always talk to him another time. He was too nice. Of course I whiffed my quiestion about summer conditioning. (Trotz had mentioned that he was very pleased with Dumont's body comp tests earlier.) Tina Fey might say: blerg

.

Searching For Wade Belak and Other Tales From My First Two Days In the Press Pit

2010-09-18T23:01:00.000-05:00

Hi!

For those of you who don't follow me on Facebook and Twitter, I am now writing for an online magazine called The Hockey Writers. It's a really great site that mixes traditional coverage with social commentary and a literary twist. My angle? I cannot bring myself to say this aloud, but I am using my love of Hunter S. Thompson's writing and my training as an anthropologist (Heck, I'm even using what I learned in my fieldwork techniques classes now!) to introduce my hometown's hockey scene to the other 29 NHL markets. You can find my author's page here: http://thehockeywriters.com/author/jfaulkner/.

So yesterday was my first day in the press pit. I loved it! Even though a lot of it is truly a case of "hurry up and wait", the veterans were helpful during those down times and the players were tolerant of the newly admitted online writers, many of whom scuttered to stay out of the way as they went from test to test. I learned a lot. I got some good soundbites from Thuresson and Spaling, who had spent the previous Monday afternoon skating with the kids at the Preds' G.O.A.L. program. (Get Out And Learn is a youth outreach program the team sponsors to promote interest in hockey.) What I had not managed to do by the end of the day was something I had been trying to do for about a week: get a quote from Wade Belak about his weekly hockey show. Oh well. "Is Wade Belak available?" was my third most used statement after "Hi! I'm Jas Faulkner from The Hockey Writers dot com." and "Is this where the press sits/stands/loiters?"

I managed to choke and forget my questions only once. What was I thinking, while I fumbled? "You're blanking! End the interview! End it now! Kill it with fire!" all while smiling and fumbling. Then there was that lapse into fangirldom; but people, come on, it was Terry Crisp. I rest my case. I also had what could only be described as a geek/nerd moment when I was thinking how much the press pit felt like what the set of Star Wars (the first three good ones, not the travesties that happened when Lucas revisited the franchise) must have been like. The players on skates and in hockey mufti seemed so big and a bit otherworldly, especially the goalies. Frankly, they looked a bit like storm troopers or Sith Lords. I kept expecting Pekka Rinne to hiss "Luke. I am your father!" as he stalked by in full armor.

The next day was spent in the company of many people I knew by name but not by face yet. It was great to put names with faces, including fellow hockey blogger Amanda DiPaolo. We were discussing that first visit to the locker room when she was told Shea Weber would be available for her to interview.   She had admitted to being nervous because Weber is one of her favorite players, so I offered to go in with her for her first interview. Okay, it should be noted that I had not done a locker room interview yet, so this was a first for me, too. It wasn't like I was being Dante to her Virgil. It was actually more like we were middle school girls taking a look into the boys room.

While she was interviewing Weber, who was perfectly lovely, by the way, I looked around to see if there was someone I might want to interview at the moment. As luck would have it, I got a full lunar eclipse from the opposite corner of the locker room. I know, it had to happen at some point. My idealistic self was hoping to avoid it because, 1.) it's me being the interloper into their inner sanctum and 2.) It's a bit too "Superman without his cape" in my opinion.    So I had a "Superman without his cape" moment and decided the best thing to do was look only at Shea and Amanda for the rest of the time I was there. As we left, Jordin Tootoo met us in the hall and asked if we were looking for anything.

"The exit!" Amanda said quickly as we left.   Okay, maybe she saw it, too. Back in the pit, I joked to Buddy Oakes that I had seen my first bare bottom in the locker room so I guess that meant I was a seasoned sports reporter.

"You should have pointed it out to me," chuckled Amanda.

I explained that Shea was talking at the time. In retrospect, it could have been Shea Weber's Kanye moment:

"Shea! Shea! Imonna let you finish, but first I gotta point out that bare butt to Amanda..."

Next press session, I got my interview with Belak, who was also lovely to work with. You can bet I made sure I looked at the fully dressed Belak and ONLY Belak while I was in the locker room.

That's it for now. I'll bring more tales from the pit as I find a moment. I'm working on how to not be so obvious that I'm fighting the urge to shield my eyes while still effectively operating a digital voice recorder.

Love, peace and hockey!
Jas Faulkner

copyright 2010 jas faulkner

Boyfriends Come and Go But There's No Substitute For A Good Dog

2010-07-18T23:34:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, someone I dated for a short time made a blog post/website/net thingie called "Never Date O'Neill's Mom" (and then my Best Gay Boyfriend explained to him that Southern Women really aren't the meanest creatures in Tennessee and he would be happy to show him what IS the meanest thing drawing breath in Nashville, but that's another story for another day.)

O'Neill, for those of you who may be new to me and this blog, was a Bearded Collie/OE Sheepdog mix who shared my life for 12 years. Here he is:

He was my id and my best friend. He was at my side through various professional and personal disasters. What happened was that among other things, I found out that the ex knew O'Neill had been picked as the pet of the month by the local hockey team and unfortunately this was posted on their website on April 29th of 2009, the same day that he died. I don't know if it was the fact that the season had ended or if someone had dropped the dime that they were featuring a dead dog on their website, but it was taken down soon after. I am also not entirely sure if he originally never told me because I was busy dealing with the details of losing my dog. I do know that his two favorite topics of conversation were 1.) I liked O'Neill better than him and 2.) Hockey is a brutal, stupid sport played by people who are lacking frontal lobes and enjoyed by people operating with brain stems. He was right. I did like O'Neill better than him. I am glad that I always prioritized Dawg Boy ahead of that clown.

Not every woman shares my priorities. Take New York actress, Ashley Yeater. She left her ten-pound Yorkie, Emmit, with her ex-marine boyfriend, Joseph Graves, while she toured Florida with a road company of "A Chorus Line". While the dog was in his care, he kicked and hit the dog with a belt with sufficient force that he broke Emmit's ribs and caused enough internal damage that one of the Yorkie's eyes had to be removed. That is pretty bad, but it gets worse. Graves let this small dog suffer for two days before he finally took him to the vet.

Most of us would be pretty disturbed to think that someone we love would brutalize a smaller creature whose ability to defend themselves would be minimal at best. Most of us would see this as a big red flag and maybe, at the very least, take some time to think this through. Okay, to be honest here, if I had been in Yeater's shoes, we would both be doing time because I would have grabbed a hockey stick (not my David Legwand Vapor, one of my practice sticks) and belabored him to the point that he looked worse than poor Emmit.

Lucky for Graves, but not poor Emmit, Ashley Yeater is nothing like me. In fact, she chose to stand by her man and sent Emmit to live with her parents in Virginia. If Yeater is willing to throw over common sense and stay with this person, knowing what he is capable of, maybe Emmit is better off somewhere else. Maybe Ashley deserves this guy. Now that I think about it, yes, she does. Ashley and Joseph, ya'll are a match made in Hell. Now please slither back there.

Ashley? Not only am I an animal lover and a sports fan, I'm a playwright. If you ever see anything with my name attached to it, do us both a favor and give it a pass. It would really annoy me to have to tell you to leave the theatre, but I will do just that if I see your resume and head shot ever cross a table at an audition for anything I write.

Oh, and for what it's worth, hockey and dogs are still a part of my life. The ex, however, is history. I hope Ms Yeater figures out before it's too late that boyfriends come and go, but there's no replacement for the great devotion of a good dog and the knowledge that your city's team has a captain who can burn a hole in the opposing side's net.

What Anna Wintour Do? She Would Have Kept Her Butt Home!

2010-07-09T04:07:00.000-05:00

You know how when skin a knuckle, there is a rule somewhere that dictates you will hit that particular finger on everything you encounter for the rest of the day? Yesterday afternoon was like that for me.

You see, I know deep in my black little heart that I had been overextending the good will whatever benevolent guardian force was keeping me upright and only slightly hurty after deciding to cover every day of rookie camp, the annual Skate of the Union and start a series on the early days of hockey while still dealing with a migraine and a mouthfull of stitches. I also know that everything that happened would have actually been fodder for more than few juvenile giggles on my part if I didn't feel like half of my face was melting off of my skull.

As Bob on Sesame Street used to sing: these are the people in your neighborhood or at the very least at the Skate of the Union

Angry Guy in the Parking Lot I know the line was slow and the used equipment sale had already started. Shouting me down just because I mentioned in conversation that the Opry House had taken some damage in the flood and that Sullivan had taken picutures of the sodden locker room "BECAUSE THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE! NO! THAT COULDN'T POSSIBLY HAPPEN!" is overkill. Bonus points for getting in line behind me inside the arena and ranting about the fact that you needed your plate number ot pay for your parking place. Dude, I got out of line in the parking lot and went to another pay-to-park machine to get away from you. Is that some signal on your planet of origin that you should continue your tirade when you run into me again inside? I thought Invader Zim was cute and funny until I met him in human form.

Predators Photographer Wonk My head (in fact, my entire body feels like it) is swollen and one half of my face is still slightly bruised. More than once during the sale, I looked up from browsing the equipment to see your camera in my face. You know, someone ducking and weaving when they see you is a good indicator that they don't want their picture taken. Mapplethorpe-esque scenarios where you and your camera are concerned came to mind more than once.

Overly Perky "Hi! Whatcha Writin'?" Guy and The Woman Who Sighed, Fidgeted, Gave Me Meaningful Looks, Occasionally Tried To Crane Her Neck Around To See What I Was Writing and Flipped Her Hair Over My Cup of Water While I Was Typing What The People On The Dias Were Saying 1.) Not everybody with a keyboard going is twittering. In fact, if you see a computer, its a good bet that the person is actually working. Rest assured that we are fans or we would be off somewhere waiting to see whose jersey Jeff Fisher will wear next. 2.) We weren't by any stretch of the imagination cheek by jowl. If you look at aaaaalllllll of the empty seats that were there and still elect to sit with someone's netbook right next to your head, be a sport.

Bridgestone Arena Maintenance Guy You suck. I was minding my own business, doing my work when I felt something wet hit my face. Less than a second later, I figured out the roof of the arena wasn't leaking when I got an eyefull of windex. Because you suck, this was not a mere accidental spray but a full on assault with your mighty arsenal of Holy Cleaning Fluid. I managed to grab my computer and get it out of the way just before a stream of HCF hit it. When I stood up to see who was doing this, there was no one on the upper area, which tells me that you knew what you were doing. Jerk. That you came back to work a few minutes later and had the bocces to lean over to see if I was still there makes me wonder if you were dropped on your head a lot as a child. Did you think I was going to smile and wave? Oh, and have I mentioned that you suck?

Me, For Forgetting To Put My Paid Parking Slip On My Dashboard And Getting A Citation Of Trespass From The Parking Company I know you were trying to escape Invader Zim, but seriously, DUH.

A pretty accurate estimate of the amount of time that I am glad I'm me is roughly 99.9%. Yesterday, I would have been happy to have been Penn Jillette. Jillette seems pretty impervious to pain AND he has this personal charisma that indicates he really isn't someone you would want to tick off coupled with an amount of cuteness that means it is likely he could walk into the room swinging a half dozen severed heads by the hair and people would still want to give him a hug. I can't pull that off. Maybe the fierce mojo from the practice sweater I got at the sale will help. I hope so. Thanks for listening. I feel much better now.

What Would Anna Wintour Do?

2010-07-08T14:44:00.000-05:00

This week is like the hockey equivalent of Fashion Week for Nashville Predators fans. Rookie development camp happens and tonight is Skate of the Union with the usual sale of used equipment, meet and greets and spin from the talking heads.

It is also the week when I have been recovering from dental surgery, having gotten a chunk of my mouth cut away. It was tempting to stay home and worry my stitches until the drugs took effect and I started having conversations with my paintbrushes. But I had to ask myself: What would Anna Wintour do? I would like to think that she would have carted her bloated self, mouth full of stitches and all to the rink and committed some sports writing. Okay, maybe she would have sent a minion. Problem with that is I don't have minions and frankly don't want minions unless they're like the cute, squeaky ones in the "Despicable Me" ads. So being minionless and suffering from hockey withdrawal, I am covering all of this. Hey, I'm even missing the MLL All-Star game which includes another half-time show by Bret Queener. That, my friends, is dedication!

Shea Weber Is A Blockhead!

2010-06-02T10:48:00.000-05:00

Actually, he's being immortalized in a block print! Since I have your attention, this be a good time to mention Slapshot Radio's Rink Rebuild Event tonight. It starts at 5pm at Pie in the Sky Pizza at 110 Lyle Avenue near Vanderbilt. (Just off West End between the Courtyard and Hampton Inn) . The guys will be broadcasting, hosting a viewing of Game 3 of the SCFs and holding a silent benefit auction that will include a lot of neat stuff. Among those items will be hind-tinted prints of Shea Weber by me. (That's a detail of the color test up there above the copy.)

So come on out! You'll get to see the SlapShot team in action, bid on some cool stuff and have a great time. The best part is that it's all for a great cause.

Confidential to Alice and Dina: You're welcome. You're probably in good company with Shea's Mama and girlfriend in thinking he's the prettiest Predator. And yes, you're right. Young Smithson's Death Glare has not lost it's entertainment value over the past few seasons. Maybe he'll get "blocked" for the next Hockey-themed fundraiser.

Tootoo and Arnott (the female hamster hockey pundits) Want YOU To Support Youth Incorporated Inline Hockey!

2010-05-27T08:35:00.000-05:00

Tootoo: Hi, Tootoo here and this is my associate, Arnott. Say hi, Arny!

Arnott: Hi!

Tootoo: Wanna rub elbows with other hockey fans in Nashville? Want to sit in on a broadcast of SlapShot Radio? Today we want to tell you about a couple of really great opportunities to meet and greet with the people who tweet about hockey!

Arnott: They're parakeets?

Tootoo: No! Uh. Hmm... That would mean Paul McCann is a parakeet. How does he type?

Arnott: Birds have those little toes and all...

Tootoo: Yeah. So. Uh, what were we talking about?

Arnott: Paul McCann is a parakeet.

Tootoo: Yes. No. Wait a minute... Paul McCann is spreading the word about the June 7th Tweetup at the Tin Roof AND on the 2nd, SlapShot Radio is hosting a fundraiser for a very worthy cause.

Arnott: So Paul McCann is not a parakeet?

Tootoo: Let's work on that assumption for now. ANYwhoo... Paul wants everyone to know that SlapShot Radio is doing a live remote and Stanley Cup watch party at the Vandy/Midtown Pie in the Sky Pizza on Wednesday June 2nd from 5pm - 9:30pm to raise awareness and money for Youth Incorporated's Inline Hockey program. Their rink in Bellevue was destroyed by the flooding. We will be having a silent auction and donations that will go directly to the rebuild effort. Rebuilding a rink is an expensive proposition, especially for a non-profit like Youth Inc. Their inline hockey program really drives up participation in youth ice hockey in middle Tennessee and continues to make new fans for the NHL and most especially, the Predators.

Arnott: There will be pizza?

Tootoo: I guess so.

Arnott: I'd like pepperoni, muenster, and raisins on mine. Hand tossed crust.

Tootoo: You're so weird.

Arnott: I love you, man

I Enjoy Being (My Version Of) A Girl

2010-05-13T21:16:00.000-05:00

My BGBF (Best Gay BoyFriend), Kevin, has this thing he loves to do. You remember that scene in "Fever Pitch" where prim but sweet Lindsay (Drew Barrymore) gets her first look at BoSox-addled Ben's (Jimmy Fallon) closet and finds hanger after hanger containing Red Sox fan gear? Well, Kevin loves to go to my closet and slide the hangers over, saying "Predators...Predators...Red Wings...Predators...Sentaors...Predators...Fah-LAMES!...Predators...Predators...Predators...Ooh, look, I'm Drew!

It was funny the first time he did it. Now? It's a little predictable but still cute. The last time he did it, I made the mistake of asking him if he was trying to make a point.

"Noo-ooo-ooo...yes," he said. "I think...How should I put this? You're not Canadian. You seem to share my taste in boys and yet...something's wrong."

"What?" I snapped.

"Trust me on this. I think I need to help, erm, I need to teach you how to be girly."

"Excuse me? I...I...I do not need to be taught how to be...girly!"

Kevin flipped open his netbook, tapped furiously at the keyboard for a second and turned the screen toward me.

"Watch this, " he said.

"What's her problem?" I asked.

"Do you see- What would you change?" he asked.

"Well."

"Yes?"

"For starters, the French Maid outfit is totally wrong. I would have dressed as Gonchar or maybe Malkin. No. That would make it too angry, it needs to be a team mate. Scotty Hartnell. We have the same hair."

Kevin collapsed into his chair.

"I give up," he sighed.

He looked so dejected. I felt really bad and decided to make an effort to cheer him up.

"Dude. Guess what? I went to an estate sale!"

Kevin brightened. "Really? What did you find?"

"Let me show you!" I ran into my office and came back with my newest great find.

"One of David Legwand's old sticks! He shoots left!"

Poor Kevin. I tried.

copyright 2010 Jas Faulkner

Saw Ya Looking... Let's Talk!

2010-04-21T21:50:00.000-05:00

Okay, here's the thing.. There is a stats tracker on this blog. I don't look at individual paths or the whos and wheres and whats because digging that deep into someone else's business is frankly creepy. However, I do look at the macro files to see where the clicks are coming from and a lot of them originate from the hockey sites where I write a column or post. If you're one of those people, this blog entry might be for you.

You know how I mentioned listening to sports radio in the mornings when I'm at work? Right now hockey is a hot topic in Nashville (after who is the biggest D-bag) and a lot of people are starting to pay more attention to the Predators and by extension the community of fans and players who love the sport. Having said that, there has been a spate of people calling in and commenting rather crudely on Mark Howard's weight.

In all fairness, I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't know Mr. Howard and frankly some of his comments about the Predators are big cat claws on slate for me. However, I feel the need to say something, both as a part of the local hockey community and as a person who feels that what's going on is really rather cruel.

Please note that it is always a hockey fan doing this. True, Howard covers the game for Fox Sports, so that's where most people see rather than hear him. Maybe if he covered baseball or basketball there would be fans of those teams calling in. I have a feeling that most people aren't going to see it that way. They'll just assume that Predators fans are mean, booger-eating cousin daters with nothing better to do than harass some guy at work about his weight. As someone who consideres it her mission, however addledpated that might be, to promote southern ice hockey, I am offended because it makes all of us look bad.

Second, it makes me wonder about the people I sit next to at the games, post with, and talk to about hockey. There are some pretty fit people milling about the concourses at Bridgestone, but I see a lot of people who look fairly soft around the middle walking around there as well. So, hey, if that's you in the two ex ell jersey calling in and talking about Howard's profile, well, let he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that...

Finally, as someone who has lost over a hundred pounds over the past two years and still has a way to go before reaching my goal, please allow me to offer some preemptive responses to what you are probably about to say:

It's not funny. It makes you look like a jerk.
It makes the Nashville hockey community look bad. On behalf of all of us who love hockey, please have a nice, warm cup of STFU. I'll even throw in a bottle of agave nectar and a cinnamon shaker if that will help.
Speaking from experience, being a jackass to someone heavy has never worked as a motivator to get them to take care of themselves. Anyway, "I'm just concerned/trying to help" is the stupid person's version of domination through verbal bullying. You and I know it. You're not fooling anyone.

If you don't like what Mark Howard has to say about the Predators, fine. Take him to task for being misguided. Suggest that he believes Barry Trotz was breastfed by Frank Calder. Offer him your bootleg DiVDs of Peter Puck. Just keep it about hockey and even more important than that, keep it entertaining for me.

Peace, Love and Hockey,
Jas Faulkner

copyright 2010 Jas Faulkner

Where are you, Mustard and Blue?

2010-04-15T12:33:00.000-05:00

Hi gang! Some of you have written to ask where the hockey coverage is.

I have a gig writing humor about hockey in general and the Predators in particular at The Hockey Writers.

Other than that, I have been going to school, making art, trying to get a play finished and counseling. The last part is pretty trying sometimes. Spending three to four hours explaining why being a mistress or having a baby just to get more financial aid aren't good ideas can take a lot out of a person and I'm just now getting to a place where I can resurface and write and create and still juggle the crazy that is my counseling.

I'm still on Facebook, I still have a MySpace account and I'm still on Twitter although I do more following than posting most of the time. My Librarything is up and being rebuilt. If you're feeling nosey, I've just starting reposting my anthropology books.

In otherwords, I'm around. Y'all didn't think you'd be rid of me that easily, did you.

copyright 2010 jas faulkner

Contentment

2010-04-08T22:22:00.000-05:00

According to Karina, shop-fu is a gift. She says that she has it, insists that I have it, and is pretty sure Beautiful Alice was somehow passed by when it was being granted.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Ask her to go to Goodwill and see how she reacts."

"Oh, HECK no," I said. "It makes her ragey. She can never find anything there and when we check out she insists that she never saw the whatever it is that I've decided to buy that she loves. Just. No."

Karina shook her head, "That girl has no shop-fu."

It was the divine force of shop-fu that told Karina to buy her family a tetherball last Christmas. When she brought it home, her husband raised an eyebrow and dryly commented that everyone was pretty much over Napoleon Dynamite.

"It spoke to me here." she said, tapping her chest, "Somebody is going to love it."

Somebody did love it, but it wasn't her or Alex or either of the kids. Their pet pig, a rescued Hampshire sow named Maggie, adored the ball. She would bump it around with her nose until it twisted up the pole out of her reach and then she would stand back and wait patiently as the ball slowly unwound in the other direction. At first Karina thought Maggie was doing this because the kids encouraged her. When the holiday break ended and the pig was left to her own devices, Karina would glance out of the kitchen window to see Maggie happily tipping the ball with her nose.

"Did I tell you that my sister came to visit last week?" Karina poured herself a mug of tea and offered me one. "I love her but oh my gosh, the complaining."

"Maybe she was just tired," I said. "Travel and time change make a lot of people cranky."

She shook her head. "Trust me. That's just her. She was talking about how hard it was when everyone around her seemed to have an easier time of it and how she didn't understand how some people kept getting more. I told her that maybe she just needed to learn to be content."

"And then she asks me, 'What does contentment even look like?' At that moment I'd happened to walk over the to the kitchen window and saw Maggie out there bumping her tetherball. I could have told Sis what contentment looked like, because at that moment I was looking right at it.

copyright 2010 jas faulkner

It's The Douchepocalypse! (Yes, I'm Feelin' RANTY!)

2010-04-08T09:53:00.000-05:00

Anyone who works ungodly hours will tell you that morning rituals are important. Mine consist of

1.) Coffee: o sweet, sweet poison how I love thee...

2.) Internet Radio: sports coverage, CBC, NPR and miscellaneous indies.

The first is pure fuel. The second? Okay, I was not one of those people who feel the need to comment and have avoided doing more than flinging my stuffed Stitch doll at the screen while I'm working. Until this week. The AM talking heads on the local sports station (104.5 The Zone if you want to listen in) actually inspired me put down Stitch and write in after years of being a radio comment virgin.

Why? Why have I become one of those people who write in to radio stations?

I blame Tiger (and now Tiki). Maybe this is an odd revenge plot the media. Maybe this is what happens when stupid decisions happen to good athletes. Maybe they're douchebags. Oh, who am I kidding? They're douchebags. Period. Whatever it is, it has succeeded in turning sports journalists and commentators into Oprah and girl, this sports fan is ready to kick them to the curb. (Ouch! That hurt my neck.) I am waiting, hoping, and will welcome the moment when some sports journalist says, "Wait a minute! I cover sports. I didn't sign on for this!"

So I'm listening to the radio and dispensing wisdom and comfort to the forlorn and these three grownass men, -who I normally enjoy listening to- are talking gossip and, and, they cited...are you ready for this? They cited Nancy Fricken Grace. She doesn't cover sports. She isn't even a journalist.

Give me a minute to peel my hand from my face.

Okay.

They didn't quote any number of female sports journalists and how they weighed in on Tiger's bimbo eruption. Do you know why? I'll tell you why. There was nothing to quote. They are there for the games, not what happens off the rink/court/green/pitch/diamond/course/track/whatever.

They don't want to be Oprah and neither should anyone else covering sports. And Tiger and Tiki and everyone else who wants to trade off of the idea that they're the whole package? At least a decade ago, Charles Barkley tried to press the idea that ahtletes really shouldn't try to be role models. To an extent, I agree. Do I think that people shouldn't try to be the best they can be in and out of uniform? Of course not. What is getting lost in this weird turn that sports-related discourse has taken is that the only obligation a professional sportsperson has is to be a good athlete. A life lived right can and does speak for itself.

I tried to listen this morning and it was all TigerTigerTigerTigerTikiTigerTigerTikiTigerTigerTiger and then I would turn it off and turn it back on, rinse and repeat. Oy. I'll start listening again, but first I need an intervention. I actually wrote in with a stupid hockey question to encourage a change of topic. Turning into one of those "Someone on the internet is WRONG!" is scary and I will admit to being helpless in the face of it. Oh crappity. I'm about to write in again. Helpless...helpless I tell ya.

copyright 2010 jas faulkner (like anyone would steal this one...)

Hello 2010! Here's My List, So Please Don't Hurt Me!

2010-01-01T14:35:00.000-06:00

I made a promise somewhere else on the internet to do something that I've neglected since 2001: Make a list of resolutions.

Some of the items are no-brainer type things that were easy and obvious:

1.) I will eat like it's a part of my body's daily maintenance

2.) I will exercise every day

3.) I will write every day

4.) I will be kinder and more patient

5.) I will remember gratitude as a necessary component to everything

6.) I will put off procrastination in favor of productivity

7.) I will be a better friend

Somehow it seemed like a tall order and yet it didn't seem like enough, either.
Then one night I was surfing Youtube and found this video:

It brought up some very important questions about how deeply I was willing to invest in making the most of this year and the ones to follow. What kind of world is my generation leaving for the ones to come? What good will I do this year, this week, this month, on this day? If I can't effect direct change, how can I keep from doing harm?

So here is the rest of the list:

7.) I will think globally, beyond the comfortable confines of my own life and stay conscious of the true extent to which I am safe, privileged and free to do what I can to help others.

9.) I will be more socially responsible about where I spend my money. This includes learning what I can about where what I buy comes from, who makes it, who pays the greater personal price to put it in my hands and who really benefits from the purchase.

10.) I will learn more about the political process and be more active in it.

11.) I will be more conscious of the environmental impact my choices have on our planet.

12.) I will pray and meditate more.

13.) I will not stay quiet when I know making my voice heard will make a difference.

14.) I will skate more and play more hockey.

15.) I will play more.

So there it is. I hope you'll take some time to consider what you will do this year.

Happy Holidays to Everyone!

2009-12-24T10:41:00.000-06:00

Here's the card I sent out this year:

Happy holidays from me and Nik the Doggy Lama!

(as always) copyright 2009 jas faulkner

Is There A There Here?

2009-12-14T08:58:00.000-06:00

Maybe it's dangerous to channel Gertrude Stein when I've only been up for five hours, but hey, I'm feeling adventurous this morning.

I was talking to someone in another part of the world who told me she really wanted to visit America. After getting excited at the idea of someone being any place where everything would be new came the realization that what she associated with America was compressed into a few cultural touchstones that were so homogenized they are almost unrecognizable except as corporate tools for selling stuff.

Okay, that's a bad thought.

The thing she said that made me panic a little was that she wanted to see the real America, not what other people from her country see when they come here. In other words, she wanted to avoid the Disney version. I know this sounds a littlle odd, but it has been very easy to take comfort in the fact that most people come here, see The Disney Version and go home happy. Do I really want people to see the real us?

That is a very bad thought.

But would it really be that bad for people from other parts of the world to see the real us? Maybe it's the idea that it might be a letdown. Would they feel that once they saw one part of the country they'd seen it all? It's making me think back to this past summer when I was standing on the patio area thingie at Ted Montana Grill while waiting for a yoga class and looking at West End. I used to look at most points in Nashville and feel right down to the soles of my feet that the place couldn't really exist as it does anywhere else. Now I'm not so sure. That stretch of West End looked like it could have been in Indianapolis or Berkeley or Madison or Atlanta.

Thing is, I'm also not so sure I'm sorry to see the landscape changing. One of the best things about Nashville is that the chances are very good that the majority of people you'll meet in most situations will be from somewhere else. Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking the natives. Heck, "Native" is where I fit into the core sample most of the time. But if that's the case, shouldn't the face of the place be changing as well?

Nashville is the home of country music and great literature and the spark point of some important events in American legal history. It is also a place where I can get pretty good sushi, take in the mellowness of a Russian reading room, attend a capoeira class and see a hockey game if I want to. Maybe it's not the thrill ride of the Summer to other people, but I'll take it. I hope the vacationers will understand.

Guest Blog & Counterpoint: An Anti-Movember Appeal From Maggie the Pig

2009-12-06T22:32:00.000-06:00

MAGGIE THE PIG: Ahem.

I have a question for the Predators Front Office:

WHAT ON EARTH IS WRONG YOU PEOPLE? Honestly!!!!!!!!

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that some of the Nashville Predators were starting to sport a lot of facial hair. At first I thought it was a coincidence. A little later I noticed that everyone on the team was doing it and it occurred to me that they might be trying to disguise themselves from someone, but who? Joe Thornton? The Bluejackets? Jim Balsillie? Then I happened to see a picture on the website. There was JP Dumont, front and center. They had decided to flush him out so people would know it was him. But why? I clicked on the link where they had misspelled "November" (and by the way, people, it's December already. Sheesh!) and what I saw shocked me.

No wonder the guys are trying to hide! Someone at the Predators Front Office is taking bids on which one of them gets cancer. Words fail me. I know there was some frustration before the November (or "Movember" as they keep insisting in spelling it) winning streak, but isn't this a little extreme?

And you fans who are voting with your dollars? I don't know what to make of this. Do you really hate Dan Hamhuis that much? Steve Sullivan and Shea Weber aren't faring much better, either. Someone really, really has it in for them.

I know, yes, I am only too aware of how that strange little dog has endorsed this so-called charitable venture. All I can say is that he needs to start reading more for comprehension, bless his heart.

TOOTOO, DUSTIN'S GUARD HAMSTER: Uh, Maggie?

MAGGIE: Tootoo, I'm not finished.

TOOTOO: MAGGIE!

MAGGIE: I'm talking!

TOOTOO: For crying out loud, it's a charitable drive for the prevention of prostate cancer.

MAGGIE: Are you sure?

TOOTOO: Yes. Look I don't have a whole lot of time. Dustin's mom is going to put us back in the Habitrail any minute now; but trust me, they're not trying to kill the Predators.

MAGGIE: Oh, okay. So, uh, what is prostate cancer anyway?

TOOTOO: It's...Well? It's where they...Oh wow. I don't know, either. Arnott?

ARNOTT, DUSTIN'S OTHER GUARD HAMSTER: I think it has something to do with harbl health for hockey players. Tootoo? We really need to scoot.

MAGGIE: What's your hurry anyway?

TOOTOO: SOMEBODY made pellets on the bath mat.

ARNOTT: Whoever smelt it, dealt it.

A Very Special Appeal From His Holiness The Doggy Lama Niklas Lidstrom the Shih Tzu

2009-12-03T17:59:00.000-06:00

Hi! I would like to talk to you about a very important subject: facial hair. I am a big proponent of facial hair, as are many of my favorite hockey players.

Lately, all of them have started wearing more facial hair than usual. (Yeah, we know, Jumbo Joe Thornton is sporting a full lumberjack look by five every day, but he's he exception.) There's a good reason for that. It's part of a very important event called Movember

Starting in November and going through December 15th, many hockey players will be growing out their mustaches as part of a fundraiser for research and prevention of prostate cancer. All of the money they raise will be divided between The Prostate Cancer Foundation and Livestrong (The Lance Armstrong Foundation). Wanna join a Mo'Bro group? Click on the link and sign up, then click your camera and show off those beautiful Mos! You can also vote for your favorite Nashville Predator Mo! I'm still not sure who's gonna get my vote. Arnott and Dumont have pretty cool Fu Manchus going on, but I like the Dad-staches on everyone else, too. Maybe I'll vote for whoever gets the next hat trick. (Legwand? Smithson? Sully? Goc? I'm lookin' at you!)

This is all in fun but on the serious side, one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer. It's the second most common cause of death by cancer and the sad fact is, it is easily detectable and can be treated if it is caught in time. So vote often and support your local Mo'Bros! I am!

Namaste'
Nik the Shih Tzu

The Adventures of Brandie, Girl Reporter!

2009-12-01T21:51:00.000-06:00

In the midst of the flu, holiday prep, hockey season, getting ready for school and the thick of helping my friend and sometimes writing partner Marcus pull together a play, a friend of mine asked if her daughter could interview me for a project on women in the arts.

My response was something akin to, "Whah?"

"Oh goodness." I said, "Is this for publication anywhere?"

There was a long pause. "I don't THINK so... She wants to write comedy. Don't you still write comedy?"

I looked over at Marcus. He was on day two of running on no sleep and black coffee until finally agreeing to eat deli-fried chicken while informing me that soy pudding was Not of the Lord. He looked, well, scary. I thought of sweet, impressionable young Brandie coming face to face with the comedy writing version of Alec Holland and was both appalled and amused. Maybe I could scare her into nursing school.

"Send her on." I said and twenty minutes later Brandie sat on my couch nursing a Mexican Coke while Marcus typed out a line, grumbled, hit the backspace key and typed it again and again and I stood in a doorway at the other side of the room, swathed in a scarf to keep her from catching whatever I have. We looked like Nancy Drew had decided to spend career day with the Symbionese Liberation Army.

"Okay, how where do you want to start?" I asked.

Brandy thought for a minute and then said, "Pretend you don't know me. You don't have to be all nice and stuff. Act like this is a real interview."

"But it is a real interview." I said.

She preened for a moment and then opened her Jonas Brothers notebook and turned on her tape recorder.

"How long have you been writing comedy?" she read from her list of questions.

"Seriously? Since I was maybe eleven. I watched Second City and Saturday Night Live and wanted to write for Gilda Radner and Catherine O'Hara."

"They had Saturday Night Live when you were eleven? How long ago was that?"

Marcus looked up from his laptop, "It was originally on the radio..."

"Shut up, Marcus!" I shot him a death glare. "He's kidding," I said to Brandie.

She looked dubious and soldiered on to her next question.

"Who did you write for?"

"I, sometimes we, ghost wrote for various people, comedians, a couple of football players, speeches and ad copy, stuff like that."

Brandie looked more interested. "Really? Which comedians?"

"I'm sorry, kiddo. Can't say. Professional courtesy."

Marcus stopped typing for a moment, "Not even the dead ones?"

"Marcus!"

Brandie looked enthralled. Oh, dear. "You wrote for dead people? That's kind of cool."

"Brandie, they weren't dead at the time."

Marcus decided to help again. "They died after she wrote for them."

"Awesome! Do you write for anybody right now?"

"Just me," I said.

She looked a little disappointed and scanned the page in her notebook for her next question.

"Who is your favorite person to make fun of?" she asked.

"I'm more likely to poke fun at situations than people. Anymore, if they're the kind of people I should be making fun of, they're probably best left alone because they really don't deserve my attention."

How do you decide if you'll write it or not?"

"Easy," I said, "I substitute my name for the person I'm writing about. If it still makes me laugh, it stays. But I'm weird and I know it. What makes me laugh might hurt someone else's feelings. So sometimes I think, 'Eh, that's too mean' and go back and change it."

"Kind of lame. The meaner people are funnier. I write funny stuff all the time about people."

"You'll outgrow it," I said. "So, uh, Brandie? This is a class report, right?"

"Kind of. But it's gonna be in the school paper if that's okay."

Oh yeah. Gonna buy five copies for my mother...

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

The Latest Addition To My Beauty Regimen

2009-11-28T14:19:00.000-06:00

I had every intention of completely missing the little patch of creamed, chipped torture that is Black Friday. Then I walked into the kitchen to see His Holiness the Doggy Lama in front of his bowl munching away happily and realized he was on his last bowlful of crunchy security. Oh, the horror. Oh, the guilt. As soon as I got off from work, I trundled to the nearest Wally World to get him a new bag o' kibbled goodness.

While I was there I decided to get some cough drops and out of curiosity wandered over to the cosmetics section. The aisles were like the retail equivalent of a middle school girl's restroom. Everything was geared to make you think you were a barely presentable troll whose choices were 1.) run weeping into the pet supplies section or 2.) look up and down the shelves while declaring that you would take one of everything.

Needing brain bleach, I headed over to the sporting goods section. It looked like it had been sacked by marauders (and people...people...some of us still love fletched arrows, I'm just saying...). They had a lot of their equipment marked down and I decided at that point to quit worrying about what I was supposed to buy in order to feel better about myself and get something I really wanted. So I started looking for a soccer ball. At first I was ready settle for a size 4, four dollar cheapie but then concluded that I really needed an adult-sized ball. The shelf where the nine-dollar Black Friday balls had been was empty. I walked over the clearance section and found a dozen that had been marked down to fifteen dollars. Tucked behind them was a very pretty, size 5 Franklin Air Matrix X-Caliber model. I loved it as soon as I saw it. When I saw the label that declared that no child labor had been used in its manufacture, I decided to forget the cost. Then I looked at the price tag. Ten dollars. I hope whoever tucked that ball back there completely forgot about it or found something they liked better, because I put it my cart and practically skipped to the checkout.

Here it is:

HH the Doggy Lama Niklas Lidstrom the Shih Tzu is a little ambivalent about it. He loves to chase it, but when it rolls back at him he looks like Wile. E. Coyote trying to outrun a boulder. He has his own size 2, underinflated ball that he often keeps in his chair/den (along with Puu and one of whatever pair of shoes he can filch from that day) that he uses for living room pickup games.:

You know? That ball makes me feel far better about myself than the bottle of greasy stuff I'd probably use twice and then stick in my medicine cabinet until it got old and questionable looking enough to throw out without guilt. My dribbling is already getting better and I can bounce it from my foot to my knee a couple of times before it bounces to the side of the hallway. In short (too late!), that ball makes me feel pretty awesome.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

Face Pets On Some Of Your Favorite Predators and A Chance To Give A S**T!

2009-11-24T19:51:00.000-06:00

Last night's match between the Nashville Predators and Detroit was one of the best games this season. Pekka Rinne was his usual awesome self, Arnott is starting to spoil us with his habit of drawing first blood at the opposing net, Legwand, Tootoo, Bouillon and Goc continue to show the brains, hustle and heart we've come to expect from them and Erat was so jaw droppingly good that someone preemptively threw their hat on the ice after his second goal.

But.

But...

Some of us -I won't name names- some of us tried to watch the game but we couldn't get past the surfeit of facial hair on many of the guys. Some of us -cough/Kevin/cough- felt compelled to call people up and ask if they were hallucinating or if that really was a fu manchu on Dumont, a Euro-facepet on Arnott and Late 20th Century Dad-staches on Weber, Smithson and Sullivan. Okay, here's the deal: They're not trying to channel the cast of Slap Shot. They're taking part in Movember. That's right: Dumont, Smithson, Arnott, et al are Mo Bros Retro and silly? A little. But it's for a good cause. Men all over the world are doing this to draw attention to the need for more awareness of the measures that can be taken to combat and prevent prostate and testicular cancer. The best part? All of the funds that are raised will be divided evenly between The Prostate Cancer Foundation and The Lance Armstrong Foundation. So join in the fun. You have until December 15th to be a Mo Bro and grow that stylin' 'stache or be a Mo Sis and offer your support. Check out the links above at the Preds website or Movember.com for more information.

Have you ever thought, "Gee, the world would be a better place if people just gave a s**t"?

Thanks to Oxfam, you can now give a shit; or maybe you would rather give a whole cow, or vaccine or bees or a grove of trees. All of that and more is possible through Oxfam America's Unwrapped Program. Click on the link for more information on ways to give the gift that makes a difference.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

Just Get The Shot Already...

2009-11-23T11:35:00.000-06:00

A month ago I had to take an MMR booster so I could go back to school in January. I also had to prove I had graduated from high school even though I have a BA and admission to law school under my belt, but that's for another post. This blog post isn't really about that, anyway. It's about the flu.

Okay, bear with me. I went to get this lovely little cocktail of buggies injected into my arm and after the fact the doc told me it would be 30 days before I could get a vax for the flu or pneumonia. At the time, I was healthy. In fact I felt so great that I actually pooh-poohed the thought of needing a shot at all.

Fast-forward to approximately three weeks later. I have started to feel a little peaky. Heck, lets call it the way it was, I felt like creamed, chipped death on a stale communion wafer. I kept thinking, "I'm strong, I'll get over it". And then one weekend a friend in Texas asked me to buy some Predators fangear for her mother. When she realized that she would actually have to tell me what she wanted me to get while we were on the phone at the store, she went into choice-lock. In the meantime, my temp started spiking, every inch of my body hurt and I felt like I was on the verge of slipping into a pair of mustard and blue printed jammies and padding over to the bedding section for a nap. Most of the rest of it was a blur except for one instance when I snapped and begged her to move to Nashville so her poor mother would be able to see the Predators play any time she wanted instead of only when they play the Stars.

The string of apologies I owe due to the flu started right there in the sports fangear section of the Hendersonville K-Mart. So here goes:

Dear Tall Guy with Dark Curly Hair Who Just Wanted Jabba the Snot To Move So He Could Get A Pair of Predators Print Pajamas And Who Gave Up and Grabbed a Hat and Then Waited For Me To Finish Coughing, Sniffling and Arguing So I Would Leave and He Wouldn't Get My Flu Cooties,

I am sorry and hope you managed to get a pair before all the teenaged female hockey fans grabbed them to wear while they're blowing their freakin' Tootoo Train Whistles.

Which reminds me...

Dear Kevin,

I hid your Tootoo train Whistle. I'm sorry.

also...

Dear Dr. S and the Sunshine Band,

Try to see it as me sparing you and your lovely office crew a nasty case of the epizooties. My teeth will still be here when I get better.

Regards to all,

Jas Faulkner

To the rest of you? Get the shot. This year's crop of virii are nasty critters. The only one in the house who should be barking is Nik the Doggy Lama and I'm still giving him some stiff competition. And I owe him an apology for missed tummy rubs.

Peace,
Jas

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

Interspecies Hockey Chat: November 16 The Groinville Edition

2009-11-16T07:13:00.000-06:00

Hello and welcome to another edition of Interspecies Hockey Chat. I'm your host, Jas Faulkner. Before I introduce our panel, I would like to share one of my favorite fan moments involving a child:

Okay, that one was pretty awesome, but I am actually referring to a letter written to the PFO (Predators Front Office) by Beautiful Alice's son, Dustin*, earlier in the season.

Dear Coach Trotz,
I watch the Nashville Predators on Center Ice and I am glad you are letting Danny play but he needs to share. You need to let Pekka play too. Pekka came all the way over from Finland to play hockey and doesn't get to see his Mom or Girlfriend except in the Summer. One time I had to go all the way to Indiana to play hockey and they would not let me play until THIRD PERIOD. I was mad. I had a girlfriend last year but we broke up because I like hockey better. Please make Danny share.

Your fan,
Dustin
Age 7
Grade 2, Reggie Dunlop Elementary
Right Wing, Nationwide Insurance Tiny Cats

Dustin has been pleased to see that the space between the pipes is indeed being shared.

Now, time to introduce today's panel:

His Holiness the Doggy Lama Niklas Lidstrom the Shih Tzu Nik is our newest panel member. He was being held for unspecified charges at Sumner County Humane when someone agreed to post his bail. Now he is a free dog with his own kibble bowl, regular tummy rubs and a Puu doll. He loves hockey and chasing squirrels. His role models are JP Dumont, Dan Ellis and Bob the Angry Flower.

Maggie the Hampshire Pig Maggie is a world class sow who thinks Michael Phelps, Zdeno Chara and Kermit the Frog are the bee's knees.

Arnott and Tootoo (taking a deep breath) Arnott and Tootoo are Beautiful Alice's son, Dustin's guard hamsters. They are female. Everyone is aware of this except Dustin, Arnott and Tootoo. Their role models are the raptors in Jurassic Park and Joe Thornton.

Kevin Kevin is a human. He finds that cold pizza really is the breakfast of champions.

So, let's begin. What a difference a month makes. The lines, the clear winners, the assumptions that were held all Summer have been smashed to bits. The injuries, the upsets and the dramatic turnarounds have made this season interesting to say the least.

Tootoo: I blame the injuries most of all.

Arnott: Yep.

Nik: It's like half of the NHL has decided to stay home and sit on the couch in their pajamas and eat grilled cheese and watch cartoons.

Tootoo: Nik, it's not that simple. Never underestimate the power of a groin pull.

Arnott: Yeah.

Maggie: (snorts)

Tootoo: Have you ever had a groin pull?

Arnott: Yeah!

Maggie: Of course not. Have YOU?

Tootoo: Of cour- Well. I'm not sure. Arnott?

Arnott: I tried some pulled pork once...

(Chaos breaks out and Jas has to threaten them with Nik's no-no rattle.)

Maggie: It has given some of the supporting players a chance to shine. By last Spring, coverage of the NHL was starting to look like The Alex and Sidney show with Marian Hossa as the Beaver.

Kevin: I think most of the people on injured reserve are coming back soon if they're not back already.

Jas: Let's get local here. What do you think of the Predators so far?

Maggie: It looks like somebody put something in Sullivan's Wheaties and he's decided to share.

Tootoo: Maybe they really do sell cans of it in California.

Arnott: Cans of what? (Tootoo whispers to Arnott) Oh!

Kevin: They're finally starting to hit their stride. We're seeing something closer to the full team that Trotz must have envisioned when he was working out the lineup during preseason.

Tootoo: Well yeah, that, too.

Arnott: Yeah.

Nik: The last two games were made of awesome. Goals from Tootoo and Legwand? I'll take 'em! And the only thing that would have made last Thursday better would have been a hat trick for Sully since his dad was there. 55 shots on goal by the Preds and 53 saves by visiting goalie Price? Wow.

Maggie: I have mixed feelings about the California road trip, but it's always been a mixed bag for me. Sully, Smithson and Hornqvist were the standouts and I've seen hustle and guts from Goc and Bouillon that make me appreciate them being here.

Jas: So things are looking good?

(Nods from everyone)

Jas: Okay, before we wrap up, I'd like to talk about "Make It Seven"

Kevin: Do we really want to go there?

Jas: We do. I've given a lot of thought to this and can see both sides of the debate. My solution? Forget moving into Europe and make it eight with the expansion teams going to Winnipeg and Hamilton.

Tootoo: What have you been smoking?

Arnott: The NHL is pretty big as it is.

Maggie: If it's that big, will two more teams make a difference?

Jas: What about moving teams?

Nik: Shouldn't happen. Should never have happened in the first place and shouldn't happen now. There's room for everybody. On the other hand, if people think the league is too big they could always split it up and have a Canadian league and an American league.

Maggie: That would leave Canada with six teams, or eight if they got the expansion teams.

Nik: MLL has six teams.

Tootoo: True, but look at who they would have. Could be interesting.

Arnott: Yeah.

Nik: Frankly, I think a 32 team league could work and yeah, I'd like to see 'Peg and Hamilton back in the NHL.

Jas: Any other thoughts?

Maggie: I miss Ryan Jones.

Tootoo: We need more of Trotz getting his yell on.

Arnott: Loved that.

(Everyone nods and smiles at that.)

Jas: Okay. That wraps it up for another edition of Interspecies Hockey Chat! On behalf of all of us here, I wish you all smooth skating and plenty of hits between the pipes.

*Identifying information has been changed to protect a minor

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

I Need A Nap And A Cookie

2009-10-21T22:30:00.000-05:00

Today was one of those days...Okay, it was like this: if a Lewis Black monologue and a Ralph Steadman cartoon could get together and make a baby, it would look like today.

I have had three cups of coffee today.

Oh, and the Predators lost to Boston tonight. I may have to break up with my Secret Hockey Husband, Tim Thomas. Maybe I just need some space for a little while. I should have taken it as a sign when I walked out the door wearing a Red Wings t-shirt. Kevin took one look at me and said, "You are making Jason Arnott cry." I can't bear this. I'll give the t-shirt to Goodwill or wear it to my next dental appointment (#157 in a series of 1479) maybe Chris Chelios will scare my dentist and he'll actually let me get up and run around, go pee and decompress after two hours in the chair. Don't get me wrong. I love my dentist, but the past few visits have been more like being the workbench under a happy guy with a Dremel on a Saturday afternoon in May. By the way, Chris Chelios is making me cry. Every time I see him, I picture some little kid in a Blackhawks jersey following him down the ramp, screaming, "Shane! Shane!"

Should I really be this wired from three (3) cups of coffee? I am getting old.

Have I mentioned that I am going back to school? Have I mentioned that in order to do this I have to present proof of shots I got when Nixon was president? That I have to find out if I ever actually graduated from high school and if they accept United States currency to mail a transcript from Western Kentucky University. Of the four colleges I attended during my misspent youth, Western weighs in as the most expensive. Their transcripts cost 7.00. Overpriced Arts and Basketweaving comes in second at 5.00, Bayou Fried Chicken State set me back 2.00 and Tiger High's are free with the purchase of a Dana Kirk bobblehead. (#3 in the "Back In The Day Series") I got my MMR booster. The doctor was lovely and the staff deserved combat pay. The waiting room was like a Brueghel painting, only with Elmo instead of demons as a recurring motif. I will never again mourn not having a child.

Why, oh why won't this coffee wear off?

I really should have stayed home anyway. I would not have consumed that last cup of coffee and I'd probably have dozed off sometime after the final buzzer but before "Living With Ed" started. I am sure the people at Untitled Artists wanted to tranq me with a dart gun. I would have tranqed me with a dart gun. During the meeting I: 1.)apologized to a teenager on behalf of my generation for subjecting her age group to the linty horror that is the ouvre of Rankin Bass' holiday programming and the concommittant nostalgia that causes it to get foisted on a new crop of children every year 2.)allowed Robert the metalworker dude to be a Bad Influence and feed me scores and stats from his I-Phone during the meeting. 3.)be inappropriately amused multiple times 4.) talked way, way too much. Even if I know what I'm talking about, silence is golden and I should aspire to that kind of wealth. Or something like that. 5.) I also used the phrase "batshit crazy" is front of the aforementioned teen. I am still punchy and its...nearly ten thirty?

Coffee beans the wonderful fruit...

I think I also called a number of people and told them I loved them. If I didn't call you please know that I love you, too.

Love,
a very wired and silly me

Guest Blog: Meet a Boy Named Tzu!

2009-10-13T20:27:00.000-05:00

I'm turning the keyboard over to my newest guest blogger:

This is His Holiness the Doggy Lama Niklas Lidstrom the Shih Tzu. Touch his Puu Doll at your peril.

Hello! My assistant is busy trying to get some paintings finished before the deadline for her next co-op show and no one is watching hockey right now so I figured it was as good a time as any to get online and see what all the fuss is about. You're more than likely here because you want a different view on the important things in life: french fries, hockey and my Puu doll.

First things first. If you touch my Puu doll, I will cut you.

Second: All of the french fries are mine.

Third: I have been adopted into a hockey loving household. This is a huge improvement over the shelter. While I appreciate the people there for taking me in, it's nice to have the run of the house, occasional rogue turns at the remote, and a box of toys I don't have to share. Now if I could just get the fat one to stay off of my bed, everything would be perfect.

Hockey is really easy. The big panda bears in the net cages throw biscuits out on the ice and everyone chases them with sticks until someone grabs a person with the wrong sweater on and beats them before the color-challenged players tmake them go into the naughty box. I think they may do this because they are jealous of the pretty sweaters with aminals on them. There's also a man with a striped suit and no neck or facial expression who stands on the side. He may be there to walk someone out if they have to go wee.

There's this big wolfhound in a red sweater? His name is Ovechkin? Some people here like him. Some people's mothers will only say that they like him better than Hossa. Earlier this season Tim the Big Boston Panda knocked Ovechkin down and one of his teammates pushed him flat on the ice as he skated by. Gramma did this weird "Ha ha" Mom calls a Nelson Laugh. Hockey makes Gramma mean. It makes our friend Silbia mean, too. I heard she was at the Nashville/Dallas season opener and managed to get down next to the plexi and bang on it and tell Brendan Morrow that he was making her damned mad. I don't think they thought an 83 year old Methodist Sunday School teacher was going to do that!

I am also trying to get my friend, Maggie the Hampshire Pig to blog with me. She loves swimming and Michael Phelps. She said that he is the most beautiful man in sports and no one could turn her head. So I got out an old copy of Hockey News.

"Who IS that?" she squealed.

"Zdeno Chara" I said.

"He's...BEAUTIFUL!" I also showed her a couple of pictures of Pavel Datsyuk, so our girl is hooked.

Pigs. Give them a burrito and some pretty Russian men and they're as pliable as beeswax in Phoenix in August.

Until next time!

Nik

PS. Get well wishes to JP Dumont. As a former shelter dog, I am glad he took the time to speak on our behalf this Summer. He's my favorite guy here in Nashville and I miss seeing him on the ice. -Nik

Preseason Biz and a Big, Belated Thank you

2009-09-21T13:18:00.000-05:00

It's almost time. Pucks dropped all over the place as teams rolled out their shiny new rookies and the long, multi-national nightmare that was the Dany Heatley Soap Opera has finally come to an end. He's a Shark. Here in the Athens of the South, we saw some favorites from Milwaukee do some good stuff on the ice and everyone is quivering with anticipa...tion for October. So yay for all that.

On a personal note, I owe a belated thank you to the nice people at the Predators Office. Earlier this month I was working on a painting and looking for pictures of kids wearing fan gear to make a visual reference sheet. For the record, I didn't use any of them and ended up painting Beautiful Alice's son, Dustin. He's one of the co-owners of Arnott and Tootoo (the blogging hamsters, not the hockey players).

So I was Googling things like "Predators Hockey Fans", "hockey fans", "NHL fan Jerseys" and "NHL fans" and I would occasionally stumble across a picture of my late dog, O'Neill. Curiosity got the better of me and I clicked on the link to find out he had won the Pedigree Predators Pet of the Month for April. Those of you who follow the blog know he passed away April 29th. It completely slipped my mind that I should check to see who the Pet of the Month was and I never got to thank whoever it is at the Preds office that picks the winners. So, whoever you are, it was a nice surprise. I'm sure he would have been thrilled to know his Pekka Rinne Fanboy status is now a part of the fan community's history. On behalf of his family and many friends, I'd like to offer a sincere Thank you!

Art For All The Right Reasons

2009-08-29T08:01:00.000-05:00

As a former social worker, I have friends and acquaintances who sometimes pause, squint, shake their heads and tell me they "just don't get the whole art thing". They sigh and then ask me, "What does it do?"

What does it do?

My short answer is, "So very much," at least for me.

My more complete answer is that many artists, especially the ones I have been lucky enough to meet over the past few weeks here in Nashville, often devote chunks of their time and talent to helping people gain a better understanding of issues that many people, people who you may never meet or know have to deal with on a regular basis. Want to see what art can do? Then walk the walk and devote some time to visiting this show:

These Small Things

THE DEETS:
September 5, 2009 / 1st Saturday Crawl / up through September 26
6-9 PM
Blend Studio
79 Arcade
Nashville, TN 37219

Middle Tennessee photographer Eric Denton is married to a hero. His wife teaches in one of the more underfunded corners of the state and he has been helping kids in that county learn to understand and share their world through photography. The show focuses on four young artists who have been working with him, but he would like to expand the program so more children can get an opportunity to learn about photography.

Do you have an old digital camera lying around, memory cards you're just not using or did you flip off a nun for cutting in front of you on Charlotte last Wednesday and now you need to cleanse your black little soul by making a donation to a good cause? (Yes, I'm lookin' at YOU, Sara.) Well, here's your chance.

Visit his site at Thinks I Make And Do and help Eric make a difference!

You're still here? And you ask what's in it for you? Contribute to Eric's program and I'll give you a 10% discount on your next order at ZenDixie.com and donate 20% of the proceeds from your order to Cameras For Kids.

Hockey Blogs To Follow: Pot Doo (Or is this Pot Twah?)

2009-08-18T09:11:00.000-05:00

Hockey withdrawal is not pretty. This is usually when I start commiserating with other fans online and seeking out good hockey blogs. Today I'm gonna link you to a pair that are not only educational, but darned funny. Oh, and as a lagniappe: video of Jordin Tootoo's summer hair. You're welcome.

First up...

Down Goes Brown
http://downgoesbrown.com

Whenever someone in the NHL makes the news, one of the first sites I check is Down Goes Brown.
Some of his best posts include his coverage of what TSN didn't show of Brian Burke at the NHL draft:

Burke (whispering): You need to listen to me very carefully. There is a bomb hidden under you draft table. It is about to go off. You need to evacuate right away, or else you will die. Do you understand me?

Kevin Lowe: Brian, I know it's you. I have called ID on my phone.

Burke: ...

Lowe: You're not allowed to call me. It's in the restraining order. (Click.)

Burke (still whispering): Dustin Penner sucks!

and the Leafs' secret Facebook feed:

Mats Sundin left the Toronto Maple Leafs network.
July 1, 2008

Bob Gainey poked Mats Sundin.
July 1, 2008

and an etiquette guide for Jason Spezza'a wedding

Occasional place setting mixups are to be expected at a crowded reception. DO NOT make a big deal out of the fact that everyone has a cup except Marian Hossa.

Imagine The Rick Mercer Report or The Daily Show if they were all hockey, all the time. The result would be something almost as good as Down Goes Brown.

Psycho Hockey Lady
http://psychohockeylady.blogspot.com

Katrina Cady is one funny woman who writes a love letter to hockey with a pen that is loaded with equal amounts of acid and honey. Her posts offer tongue-in-cheek advice on mix tapes for the road, how to handle friends who don't like hockey and other vagaries of 'bunny life. It's funny stuff and I love her blog.

What really grabbed me as a reader was her book, Down the Rabbit Hole: A Guide to Puck Bunnies. You can find it in the body of her blog as serial posts and featured as linkable chapters in the sidebar. Her take on puckbunnies is funny, sad, chilling and infuriating. Given that it was written as a therapeutic purge when she was eighteen, it's pretty impressive. It would be interesting to see what would happen if she tackled a rewrite in a few years with the help of a good editor and some temporal distance.

Note: I like to think that the majority of the players on my team are decent guys who love their families and try to live up to the motto that the Predators are about "character, not characters". So yeah, there's a part of me reading her book and thinking, "Not Dan Ellis! Not Arnott! Dumont? Mon dieu, non!" Still, on the rare occasions that I'm not engrossed in the game, I plan to take a look around and see if the puck bunnies in Nashville are anything like the ones she writes about.

aaand:

Versus seriously needs to pick this up. For that matter, why can't we get Canadian television down here? We can get BBCA but I have to find online bootleg feeds of "Slings and Arrows" and "Little Mosque on the Prairie"? Please... (And yes, I like "Little Mosque on the Prairie". Get over it.)

A Summer Rerun: There's Always Room For The Obligatory Pictorial Essay Making Fun of Vintage Cookbooks

2009-08-11T21:14:00.000-05:00

I wrote this essay in 2007 and it was published on my blog on August 1st of that year. A couple of days ago a friend asked me about it and when I did some searching in the archives, I noticed that someone in Ohio had recently been seeking this particular post. Hunh. So, anyway, here it is. I don't do reruns often. but this one makes me laugh. I hope you like it.

Everyone else is doing them, why shouldn't I? Maybe because everyone else is doing them? If everyone decided to strip down to their underwear and jump into the Cumberland River, would I do it, too?

The cruel fact is that not only am I caving in to peer pressure, but I am doing so because I am once again my alter-ego, Phlegm Grrl, and cinema-therapy isn't doing the trick. Over the past three days I've wept copiously over "Finding Neverland" ("Kate...Kate...You find happiness with Johnny Depp and drop dead? Where is the satisfaction in that?!?!?!"), "Omhide Poro Poro" ("Taeko...Taeko...You won't be happy until you ditch the cubicle job in Tokyo and stay on the organic soy farm with Hiro. Where is your head? See? They're playing "The Rose" and all the cute little characters are scampering around your feet. It's a sign, Taeko. Go back to Soy Boy!") and the baby penguin that got eaten and his keening parents in the Antarctica section of "Winged Migration"("Bad raptor! You suck! You suck, mean bird!").

I needed some relief. I needed a cheap laugh. So I started looking through the cookbook shelf in the kitchen. All of them had some entertainment value, but the dessert books made some of the biggest leaps from kind of sublimely cool to ridiculous. Here, let me show you what I mean:

This first image is from a 1982 cookbook by Judith Olney called "The Joy of Chocolate".

It's actually a cake with chocolate leaves that were cast from real cabbage. Pretty neat, hunh? Then I flipped through and found this:

Okay, the bag itself, which is made of chocolate cast from a paper bag, is very cool and the fruit looks tasty. Maybe I'm off-base with this, but it seems like the pudding, which looks a tad lumpy and well, poo-shaped, is a bad choice. It turns the whole thing into something a young Jacques Torres might have left on the front porch of a cranky neighbor before ringing the bell and running.

Another example, one that will probably insure that you will never again take anything I write seriously, can be found in the 1983 "Farm Journal's Complete Cake Decorating Book". Actually, there's a lot to love about this book because it's all about pretty, tasty desserts that can be made without having to take months of decorating classes. We're not talking about the stuff you see coming from Texas Culinary Bronwen or Collette. These are the kinds of cakes that would make your mama very happy at the Mother's Day brunch at church.

Then, I moved on a few pages and my evil inner ten-year-old giggled like a fiend over this cake:

I'm sorry. I really am.

No I'm not. It's funny. The only thing that would have made this funnier would be if I'd found it in "Favorite Desserts of Presbyterian Women of Northern Alabama" I've already promised Big Gay Kevin that I'll make one for his bachelor party if he's ever allowed to legally marry.

Of course you know I'm saving the best for last and here it is:

It looks cute and Bradylicious and all, but I have serious doubts that anyone in the General Foods test kitchens really cared whether kids in the late 70s' would want "Amazing Magical Jell-o Desserts". In fact, I think there was a lot of toking and giggling going in in that test kitchen and the result was a book intended for stoners who love to cook when they get the munchies.

Take a look at this:

Would you even think of making this, much less eating it if you weren't in some way impaired?

And this?

It screams, "We were out of spray cheese and Fritos and we ate it and hey, maybe your kid will think it's ice cream and eat it." Come on. Those cones are grounds for a visit from the TBI and Children's Services.

Not everything in this book is bad, but I suspect that the stuff that is fairly decent was probably cannibalized from "General Foods' Presents School Cafeteria Treats For Boys and Girls".

Here is "Ship Ahoy".

And Dr. Cosby is right. You can't go wrong with "Puddin' Pops"!

But what are we to make of this?

Where is ice this color? Love Canal? Chernobyl? Planet Zarquon?

and then there's this:

In the cookbook, it's called a "Banana Wobbler". It looks exactly like one of the things that Stewart From College brought to Beautiful Alice's bachelorette party that caused him to have to write a letter of apology to the groom's mother. But that could be my inner ten-year-old working in overdrive again.

And the holiday recipes in this book...They're the stuff of kiddie nightmares, especially the Easter dishes.

These are not eggs, they're "eggs". That's right, someone at the GF testing kitchen actually cast cloudy gelatin in real eggshells and made those things. Imagine being the kid who finds those at the Annual Easter Egg Hunt. Honestly, if Easter makes you feel this mean, just skip this step and give your kid balut. (Warning: not for the squeamish!)

There was also HeckBunny:

You just know there's some demented Sunday School teacher from Lubbock doing hard time after a suckerware box of those was intercepted by the deacons.

Speaking of evil handiwork, there is a running theme in this book which looks like someone came up with a bright idea and everyone just ran with it. I imagine that person's name was probably Nathan. Nathan had always been the slacker of the GF Test Kitchen Crew. He was nice enough and he always shared the wealth whenever he was holding. As a chef? Well, let's just say that his parents thought a year of culinary school would scare some sense into him after he got kicked out of MIT for earning the nickname "Anything That Moves" and causing his room mate to gibber and drool during Fall midterms.

So here's the scenario: One of the more Type A chefs, we'll call her Denise, approached Nathan and said something to the effect of, "Look, you've been here three years and you haven't come up with anything original. This is easy. It's a gimme. Kids and Jell-o products. Give me something, anything I can use."

So Nathan sighed heavily, disappeared into the walk-in freezer for three hours and came out with this:

To which Denise said, "What the-?"

"It's food and it has a face. Kids love food with faces on it. See? Choo choo! Here comes the jell-o with the face!"

There was a long pause as they thought about this. Then they realized that it was late and it made sense, sort of. So there were lots and lots of foods with faces added to the book:

And there was much rejoicing until everyone remembered that NASA Dave, the government wonk who was there to make food tubes for astronauts, had totally missed the discussion. So they presented him with this:

"Cute face" he said.

"What face?" they all deadpanned and then NASA Dave muttered something about things just not being the same since Nixon stepped down and went home.

And with that, I'm signing off. I want some Jell-o. Their strawberry-kiwi and raspberry flavors are like buttah!

copyright 2007 Jas Faulkner

Theatrical Thursday 1 :Wiener Dogs Kicked My Butt

2009-08-06T00:39:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Theatrical Thursday! There are a number of places on the internet offering creative challenges. Most of them are for visual artists and a few are for people who do prose and poetry. There are very few out there for scriptwriters. Right now I'm going to include this as part of my blog here. If it looks like there's enough interest, I'll create a separate blog where more people can participate as bloggers.

Here's how it will work, at least for now. On Thursday morning I will post a challenge. If it tickles your fancy, write it, send me a link or include one in the comments and then the next Thursday I will post links and info and a new challenge. Critiques are welcome. Suggestions for challenges are welcome.

Unlike many of the great month-long writing challenges, these are going to be smaller in scale. The intention is to get writing and to to write something that can be completed and presented in a relatively short amount of time.

Here are a couple of more things I need to make note of:

1. I own my writing. Everyone who submits owns the rights to their work. Please respect that.

2. Remember the golden rule when commenting.

3. Have fun!

Since this is the first week, I am going to give you two challenges to pick from. The first is the task I did for today's entry:

Challenge 1A - Write a monologue. Your speaker is sitting at a bar and someone has just asked them about the girl they saw at the door with a pool cue and a football.

The second will be a scene that I'll post next week with the new challenge and links to anyone who submits something:

Challenge 1B - Write a monologue. The first line will be "This is not what it looks like."

I hope you like what I post and I look forward to reading what other people write or have to say about what is written.

Challenge 1A

Wiener Dogs Kicked My Butt

(NOTE: This piece is rated R. Thanks!)

Drew: No man. You don't want none of that. Really. Get back here. Her? Yeah, she's sweet and all. She is cute. I see 'em. I noticed 'em last week. They're very nice. Dave? Dave? Hey Kevin, will you grab him before he gets out there? DAVE! Get back here! C'mere! No, I am not a pussy. You're the pussy. Geeze. Siddown.

That girl? Last Friday I went home with that girl. Listen. It was all good. We were sitting right here like you and me are right now. I got her laughing. You know how I do that thing like Jim Carrey from "The Mask"? It was great and she was dying. No man, it was between innings. A commercial was on. You think I'm stupid? So the game's over and she asks me if I want to go home with her. No, you D-bag, she asked me. So, I'm no idiot. Cute girl like that, of course I'm gonna go home with her.

So we get back to her place. It's nice. Lots of sports stuff. She's a huge fan. So anyways, she tells me to make myself at home and while she's gettin' sump'n cold she's talking about how she feels like she has angels who watch over her and keep her safe and all. And I'm lookin' around and I don't see no guys in sheets with wings an' swords. Just some pennants and a Pirates schedule on the coffee table. I start laughin' and then I hear these little toenails clickin' on the floor.

"Oh, that's Sidney and Geno," she says.

They're wiener dogs. And they're friggin' little. I ask if they're puppies and she says they're miniatures. So she comes out and makes baby noises at the wieners and they're all wiggles. Then she goes back in the kitchen and starts talkin' about angels again. So I laugh and ask her if her angels could protect her from a devil like me and when I say it, the bigger one, I think it was Geno, he starts growling and then the smaller one, Sidney, he starts growling too. It was like having two friggin' little muppets mad at me, so I growled back at 'em.

Then I hear Miss Girlie out there in the kitchen asking me what I said so I say her doggies are cute or sump'm and rare back on the couch to get comfortable. That's when Sidney? The littler one? He jumps up and bites down, right on the family jewels. And I'm trying to stay cool and at the same time I want to slap this friggin' little pooch offa my nards. Miss Girlie in the kitchen is still talkin' about angels and that yes she does feel protected and as she starts walkin' in from the kitchen, the other little fink? Geno? He's being the lookout. He barks to warn Sidney and he lets go and by the time she's back in the living room, they're sitting on either side of me on the couch wagging their friggin' little wiener dog tails. Sucks man. She looked at the wieners and looked at me and said maybe it was time to call it a night.

It's not funny, man. Those wieners were friggin' vicious. Hey, you want to risk it? Go. Have fun. Me? I happen to like my nards, so I'll sit here and wait for a girl without friggin' wiener muppet avengers for housemates.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

A Serious Appeal from Arnott and Tootoo: Hamster Pundits

2009-08-04T08:48:00.000-05:00

Arnott and Tootoo, professional guard animals and internet pundits, have requested an opportunity to speak to you today about a matter that they feel is vitally important. This blogger applauds their willingness to engage in civilized public discourse and asks that you give them your undivided attention. And yes, I am aware that Arnott and Tootoo are Alice's sons' female hamsters. There is a lengthening list of people who are aware that they're female hamsters. That list does not include any of the following:

Alice's sons
Arnott
Tootoo

Tootoo: Hi! I'm Tootoo and this is Arnott.

Arnott: Hi.

Tootoo: Many of you associate us with our ability to add a sharp satirical edge to somber discussions about pressing social issues. We're going for a change of pace today.

Arnott: Yep.

Tootoo: It has come to our attention that the Humane Society of Dickson County, Tennessee is in serious trouble.

Arnott: Very Serious.

Tootoo: Because of the tough economy, many people have had to give up their pets. This has caused a crisis in the shelter because there is not enough room to keep them all or people to take care of them. Right now there are twenty-five dogs and puppies in dire need of placement.

Arnott: Get a puppy.

Tootoo: If you've thought about adding to your family, now would be a good time. Dogs make great family members! They're good looking, loyal, affectionate and fun to be around.

Arnott: And they eat poop!

Tootoo: Shh! For more information about the shelter, CLICK HERE. They even have a page full of pups and dogs looking for someone just like you. You can also contact Melissa Lee via email at hsdcxl@aol.com or you can all the shelter at 615-446-PETS. According to the letter, they are open on Saturday from 10am to 4pm. This is slightly different from the rest of the website that lists their days and hours of operation as Wednesday through Saturday from 10 to 4; so you might want to call before you head out there.

Arnott: That's 615-446-PETS

Tootoo: This is your chance to make a differnece in some dog's life. Please consider helping out these nice people who love animals! Oh, and thanks for listening. This has been fun.

Arnott: Peace.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

TV Review: Drop Dead Diva

2009-07-29T13:50:00.000-05:00

The Deets:
What: Drop Dead Diva
Where: Lifetime Television
When: Sunday Nights at 9 ET/8 CT, encore on Mondays at 8 ET/ 7 CT
also available with OnDemand the day after the premiere and at the official page at myLifetime.com

Unlike many of the real critics out there, my response to Lifetime's newest series, "Drop Dead Diva" is negative and it's a shame. There are a few good things to say about it. The cast is excellent: Brooke Elliot and Brooke D'Orsay, who share the lead, are charming, lovely actors. April Bowlby is bringing her A game as the comic foil. Ben Feldman is dorky-sweet and if I were much younger, I'd probably find him crush-worthy. The rest of the cast is also quite good. The message on the surface is one of empowerment and acceptance. One half of the lead is not a size zero. At the very least, they're giving me an alternative to the screechy grinning neediness that has become the norm whenever anyone female and over 120 pounds appears on camera. Lifetime is throwing me a bone and I should be happy about this. Right?

No.

Lifetime is trying to get me to accept stereotypes about who I am and what I am like and be grateful about it because there are so few big women on television who are presented in a remotely positive light. No, thank you. Yes, it's nice that Jane is kind and a sharp lawyer and pretty. She is also a bit whipped by life because she has been conditioned to disappear in the presence of her thinner cohorts. She makes what can be described as orgasmic faces over pastries. Other than Rachel Ray, who does that? Instead of finding that exercise can be fun and feel good, she whines that it's hard. She's not even that fat. There's no reason she couldn't be experiencing an endorphin high from a good workout. Oh, wait a minute. She's not model-thin, so the only thing that could possibly make her feel good is biting into an eclair. Give me a break.

I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that this show is either written by people who have never been fat or by people who are writing to accommodate women who want to see themselves represented by a bigger actress and those who think the big girl is good for a giggle at the same time. By presenting Jane as a person with intellect and feelings, a spunky hero to root for, they are trying to say the empowerment is there. By putting in the moments when the most physical gratification she gets is from eating a doughnut, they chip away at the dignity of the character with the dramatic equivalent of gaping at a fat person's grocery cart or dinner plate. Sorry, but you can't have it both ways.

After three episodes and going from hopeful that it would get better to seeing it get closer to the way I feared it would be, I'm done with this show. There have been star turns by larger actresses on television where their characters' size and beauty weren't the only things that mattered to them or to the people around them. There will be again. Lifetime, this is one favor from you I don't need or want.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

The Michael Vick Question: An Interspecies Panel Discussion

2009-07-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

This week Michael Vick will meet with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to discuss his future with the league. A number of news sources have noted that it is highly likely Vick will be given provisional reinstatement and will be allowed to attend training camp if he is signed to a team.

I'll have to admit that my initial response was, "Well, that wraps it up for the NFL for me". After all, why would I want to invest time, money and emotion into following a league that would hire someone like Vick when people like Brett Queener and Alexander Ovechkin are still walking the planet as professional athletes? Being able to enjoy mad skills and almost otherworldly creativity in play shouldn't entail feeling dirty. (Okay, it can if you're with a group of women your age and older who are eyeing Tootoo and Little Ryan for all the wrong reasons, but...well, never mind.)

Maybe it was time to go beyond a gut check and get opinions from some friends of mine who love sports and could also offer some insight into human/animal relationships. Without further ado, let me introduce the panel:

Kevin has been an athlete since elementary school. His love of track and field events started when he went home from his third grade field day with a fist full of ribbons and a gift certificate from the local Krystal. His tastes have changed since then. Now he prefers White Castle, pina coladas and walks in the rain. He is Sophie's Daddy.

Sophie is a 14 year old golden retriever. Her athletic resume includes Senior Agility Camp for Fat Dogs, eating That Mean Bitch Chicken Trudy down to her demonic waist for chasing small children and marathon farting. She roots for Alabama football, Teller over Penn and everyone in the WNBA over LeBron.

Bernard is a retired Longhorn rodeo bull. He was rescued when someone found out that he was going to be barbecued due to his reluctance to get mean for rodeo audiences. He now lives on a small hobby farm with his adopted family. His favorite food is stolen cole slaw from the big church Tupperware bowl.

Maggie doesn't sweat, she glows. She will also occasionally wallow in the back yard kiddie pool. This lovely Hampshire sow adores Michael Phelps and thinks couture footwear is delicious. On cooler days she can be found in her Radio Flyer convertible, where she matches speeds with Jimmy Johnson. In her head.

Arnott and Tootoo are Beautiful Alice's sons' guard hamsters. They prefer nocturnal runs on their squeaky cage wheel, chewing and frantic relay sprints behind heavy furniture minutes before Gramma is scheduled to arrive. Their owners are still blissfully unaware that Arnott and Tootoo are female.

Me: Good morning everyone! Thanks for taking the time to talk with me. Is everyone up to speed about Michael Vick?

Sophie: Goodell has got to be kidding! I threw my squeaky badger at the TV when I saw the crawl under the Espys last night. I mean, come the freak ON!

Me: Does anyone else want to share their initial reaction?

Bernard: I wouldn't mind seeing Goodell and Vick booted around a pen. It would be even sweeter if they were upside down in rubber barrels.

Maggie: Heathens. Michael Phelps would never be mean to a dog.

Arnott: If Vick would be cruel to a dog, how effective could he possibly be on the field?

Tootoo: Defintiely a scaredy loser. He'd turtle the first time things got a little rough.

Arnott: Yeah. Is there an NFL team with pink jerseys?

Sophie: And ruffles.

Tootoo: And they could put "Turtle Vick" on the back.

(At this point lots of giggling ensued and I had to wait for everyone to calm down.)

Maggie: I know a turtle who would be better on the field. He's a pretty aggressive snapper.

Me: Kevin, what was your reaction?

Kevin: Well, I was disappointed.

Sophie: And?

Kevin: Very disappointed.

Tootoo: That's it?

Arnott: He's such a girl.

Sophie and Maggie: Hey!

Bernard: Of course I'm angry. I think that is the general reaction, but beyond that how does one respond? A decent person would understand his return to the sport would be problematic and consider other options. That he would do this, thus putting the onus on the league and the fans to forgive and forget, shows that he's still pretty self-centered. He needs to rethink this.

Arnott: He needs a swift kick in the harbles.

Tootoo: Yeah!

Me: Girls...

Sophie and Maggie: What?

Me: (sighing) Tootoo, Arnott...

Arnott: I'm just saying...

Kevin: Are you saying he should just go away?

Bernard: Maybe not that. There are other things he could do and still be involved in the NFL.

Maggie: That's a good point. Legally, he has paid his debt. He has a right to live his life and pursue what he wants. However, this doesn't mean he has a right to play pro ball. Something like that seems more like a privilege, especially given the nature of funding for pro sports, which more often than not are heavily subsidized by local taxpayers. Should the citizens of whatever city holds the franchise where he'd play be required to pay him to play ball? That's what it would amount to and I would be pretty resentful of my tax dollars going towards Vick's paycheck.

Kevin: That kind of cruelty is pretty off the charts in terms of bad behavior. I mean, people have been banned from sports for gambling, juicing and even talking trash about ex girlfriends. This guy tortured and killed dogs. Does he deserve another shot at pro ball just because he's dotted the i's and crossed the t's in a legal sense?

Me: People can change.

Bernard: Maybe he has. You know? I kind of doubt it.

Sophie: Me, too. And there's something about wanting to go back to the NFL that seems like he feels entitled. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Tootoo: Strong words from someone who eats poop.

Sophie: So do you.

Tootoo: Nuh uh. That's Arnott.

Arnott: I do not.

Sophie: Which of you is which? I can't even tell you two apart.

Tootoo: Oh nice. Poop eater.

Sophie: Oh, go lick your own harbles.

Arnott: That shows how much you know, smart girl. Hampsters don't have harbles!

Me: Okay, that's all the time we have for today. I would like to thank my guests, Kevin, Maggie, Bernard, Sophie, Arnott and Tootoo for joining me. Thank you, readers for clicking in. Until next time, this is Jas Faulkner hoping you have a good day.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

Livable Streets Education: Kids with Flow and a Message

2009-07-21T23:13:00.000-05:00

Please check out this video and spread the word about this outstanding program:

Livable Streets Education

Who Are Those Children On The Ice At Centennial Sportsplex And What Have You Done With Vern Fiddler?

2009-07-18T21:19:00.000-05:00

We're two weeks past the NHL UFA feeding frenzy and I have managed to not reach the level where all hope for future happiness is lost and donating all of my Predators shirts to Goodwill and bitterly vowing to only follow MLL for the rest of my days seem like good ideas. Seeing the new recruits on the ice was a tonic. That Poile boy did a good job this year. What I'm not so happy about is knowing that Vern Fiddler will be wearing Phoenix laundry. Yes, I'll get over it, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.

Big Gay Kevin, his wonderful new boyfriend, Bilbo and I have been looking over the schedule for 2009/2010 and our feelings, they are mixed. Neither of our favorite Russians will be visiting this year. If we want to see Malkin being all Gary Cooper on the ice, we'll have to go to Peetsborg, tovarishes. Seeing Stitch, er, Ovechkin play our boys will entail some travel as well.

That doesn't mean Sommet is going to be innocent of thrills this coming season. My Pink-Eyed Slovakian Hockey Husband (HI MOM!) will be making multiple visits with his newest BeeEffEffs for the next twelve years.

"Why do you not love me, Jas' Mum? Marian sad."

We will also get a visit from Olli "Crazy Eyes" Jokinen and multiple visits from Big Joe and the Bitey Fish. Sounds like fun. Will this be the year the Predators become contenders for the cup? As much as I want daft Alex to get to cuddle it at least once in his career, I think it would be even sweeter to see Arnott, Dumont and the crew hoisting 35 pounds of awesome next June.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

The Air Up There...

2009-07-06T17:39:00.000-05:00

What to write about Steve McNair?

Like many Nashvillians and sports fans across the country, I am saddened by the events of this past week. What needs to be stressed is that the way he died was not the sum of who Steve McNair was as a person.

Please don't forget that that his was a life puctuated by instances of greatness that were tranformative enough to move an entire city. His legacy should be his football career, which was extraordinary. It can be found in the four beautiful sons who carry his name maybe even some of his talent. The love his fans, friends, family and the people who were part of the Titans organization have expressed for him is also a testament to who he was.

His efforts towards making life better for young people in Middle Tennesee and beyond has been part of the landscape for those who work in intervention for at-risk kids for quite some time. He was one of those rare celebrities who didn't require the presence of PR wonks and cameras when he reached out to kids who looked to him for inspiration.

There are a lot of people here and elsewhere who have expressed a desire to pay tribute. One of the best ways would be to support the foundation that bears his name so they can continue to do good. You can find them here: The Steve McNair Foundation

Rest in peace, Number 9. I hope they're taking good care of you where ever you are.

O'Neill

2009-06-20T13:15:00.001-05:00

When I was going through his pictures this afternoon, it was hard to decide which ones to use. As dogs go, he was photogenic but he dearly hated to have his picture taken. There are probably more pictures in my camera of his retreating fuzzy butt as he trotted away than expressive shots like this one of him blissed out on the couch.

That couch, by the way, was his. It was purchased with him in mind after he managed to destroy three of them by dint of chewing, dirt and general doggieness. This one withstood the last four years of his life and after me, my mother, his My Kebbin and Cookie Monster, it was probably one of his favorite things ever.

If you've read very much of this blog, you're probably aware of some of his antics over the years. Here's a bit more of his story:

He was part of a four-pup litter born in 1997 to a registered Old English Sheepdog mom. The identity of his father was always a little muddy. I have heard that his dad could have been either the doofusy Bearded Collie who loved to come visit or the suave Huskie who had a talent for climbing fences and a yen for pretty English girls.

When we first met him and his brothers at the shelter, the workers were pushing the other three pups, McNeill, McDuff and McGruff and letting O'Neill kind of languish in the background. His brothers had blue eyes or one blue eye and one brown eye and they thought it would be easier to get them adopted first. Also, O'Neill had feet like pie pans and was already the biggest of the four. I guess they figured things weren't looking too good for the boy. One thing he had over his brothers was a mellow, sweet disposition. He loved to play, but he also loved to be cuddled. There was never a question about which brother was going home with me that day. It's funny because when I brought him in for his first well puppy visit, the vet told me that they were worried he wouldn't find a home because of his brown eyes and quiet personality.

He was there through health scares, career changes, family crises. It wasn't until much later on I realized how much he served as my id, whether it was saying what I really thought about Sean Avery or farting in the general direction of The Worst Boss Ever and then smiling and wagging. A friend who was struggling through his dissertation while teaching full time considered O'Neill a brother under the fur. He went so far as to include O'Neill in the acknowledgments when he published his paper. He was a big, sensitive boy who adored children and small animals. He loved Spanish Guitar, C-Span and Sesame Street for background noise. He had a vocabulary of words and phrases that he recognized and would respond to when he heard them: pink squeaky, cookie, eating time is over, cornbread, go peepee, chicken, slider, go putter, cookie monster, Kebbin, go to bed and hey ball are the ones that come to mind at the moment. He loved summer and shared my thing for veggies. He would let anyone who dared to eat a stalk of broccoli without sharing know that they were horribly remiss in their manners and enjoyed delicately shelling and eating peas. The latter was the source of bets, astonishment and sometimes consternation for years.

Kebbin, or My Kebbin, is Big Gay Kevin. He was one of O'Neill's biggest fans, closest guy buddies and most vocal advocate for his rights as a Canine-American. I had never quite understood the dynamic behind married friends who got slightly resentful of their mates' buddies until Kevin and O'Neill laid eyes on each other. I might as well have left the house so the two of them could lounge on the couch together to watch PBS and eat White Castles. Whenever Kev came over, O'Neill would bound ahead of me and lots of growling and wrestling would ensue. I was lucky to get a backwards glance as if to say, "My company is here. Why don't you go into the kitchen and fix us some sandwiches?" If I had to pick a mental image that sums up their relationship, it would have to be one of the multiple times I've caught them sprawled on the couch, sharing a frappuccino. No, you did not misread that.

He died at home on April 29th. I won't go into great detail about it other than to say that after living a good, long life he realized he had worn out the body he was given and grudgingly admitted that it was time. He was and is loved and sorely missed by me and everyone who knew him.

The other day I got an email from someone asking me where he was and why he hadn't written about the Stanley Cup Finals or the NHL Awards. "Man!" The writer told me, "That dog is funny! You need to let him write your blog from now on."

I think he would have agreed.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

"What Is The Law And How Do You Read It?" Luke 10:26

2009-06-04T11:07:00.001-05:00

Another Precis

This has to be one of the hardest essays I've ever written. Why? Partially because it's such a hot-button issue and I know that there are people in my life who will be very upset by what I'm going to say and partially because it's such a hard subject that I am afraid I'll be hurting more than helping by adding to the discourse. So now I'm putting on my virtual vestments, getting behind my digital pulpit and delivering another sermon. I really hope the next time I do this, it will be over something joyous. I'd much rather bring the funny.

Peace be with you.

Many, many years ago, probably before some of you were born, Dennis Miller was a young guy with big hair and the anchor's chair on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. Yep. Seriously. And those Ramones t-shirts? There really were Ramones at one point and they were great. But that's for another day. I bring up Dennis Miller because he made a statement back then that drove home to me why I needed to rethink my views on reproductive rights. I believe his words were something to the effect of, "When I get a working uterus, I'll get a say in the matter."

It's a pretty simple answer to a very hard question. Who gets to decide? It would be nice if we could all, to a person, make a rational, dispassionate stand for the right thing. It would be nice if we could take stances that are free of our own experiences and influences. I just don't think it's possible and that's why I ask you to look into your own heart and open yourself up to hearing the people on both sides of the debate.

Are we even sure of what the right thing is? We weren't created from a single mold, all the same and cookie-cutter perfect. We are all unique and beautiful and molded from the same elements as the stars. That's right, you, me, everyone, we're the stuff of stars. Like stars, we're shiny, irregular and possessed of so much that is ours and only ours....and all made from the same stuff that makes up stars. Wow.

Who are we to question the wisdom of a diverse humanity? The writers of the Bible must have felt the same way when the inspiration hit for Chapter 38 in the Book of Job. To give you some context, Job has finally had enough and he questions God as to why he is being tested. Th response is 41 verses of goosebump inducing poetry that reminds us how magnificent the gifts of the world and life and humanity really are. Included in that poetry is a deft, unmistakably mighty swipe to the side of our collective heads to remind us that we don't know it all. We can't know it all and when we endeavor to decide who lives and who dies we need to ask ourselves what right we have to make that decision.

The men who decided that Pvt William Long and Dr. George Tiller needed to die claim they were doing it to protest actions that compromised the sanctity of life. They did so by killing two men, probably without ever knowing what these individuals thought or felt about what they were doing or why they were doing it. How damaged, how removed from the best part of what makes us human do we have to be to kill someone as a symbolic act?

The worst part of all of this is that Tiller, Long, and their murderers are getting lost in the verbage because we can so conveniently scoot them behind their names and their professions and their deeds as abstract symbols. Tiller becomes an almost faceless entity who represents the abortion debate and William Long, who was really just a kid, is barely acknowledged because the press and we as a people are so weary of debating about war. We can overlook the human cost because we can see these people as symbols in an argument over ideas. It becomes black and white and you're for or against with the luxury of never seeing how it looks from the ground.

This isn't a new idea. In Luke 10:25-37, Christ tells the story of the Good Samaritan. I think it's interesting that Jesus chose to identify the players in that story by their places of origin. In older translations, it is understood that tribal and regional prejudices figure into the reluctance of some to offer help to the traveler who was robbed and beaten. The Samaritan was willing to see a person in trouble and instead of looking the other way, he chose to be kind. At the end of the story, Jesus even spells it out for us:

Luke 10:36-37

36"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

37The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

So I think it's pretty clear. We have to be merciful. If it's not a part of your nature, maybe you need to fake it until it's real. That starts with empathy. It starts with these questions being more than platforms for talking points. Lives are changed, sometimes ended over these arguments.

I have said that we are molded by our experiences and their effect on us is unavoidable. In all fairness, maybe I should tell you where I stand and why. When I was young, I was pretty sure of what I thought about the question of abortion and the legal devices involved in reproductive rights and regulations. In 1990, I found out I was pregnant. I had no intention of backing away from anything I wanted to do, but to my surprise, I also knew in my gut that I was going to do my damnedest to be the best mom I could be. I even picked a school with a good education and early childcare development program so I would have resources available for my baby while I was in grad school. A month after I found out, I miscarried. My boyfriend at the time was relieved and everyone else seemed happy for me but me. There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about what that child might have been like. I wouldn't wish this on anyone.

One thing I am grateful for is that I didn't face the kind of legal inquiries that women in my position have been subjected to in the past. When I hear about women who are dealing with the grief of losing a child to miscarriage or congenital illness, I feel some relief that the small mercy of legal protection is in place for them, at least for the time being.

I don't expect anyone to change their mind based on what I've written. All I ask is that you think about it. Whatever side you're on, whether it's the morality of our going to war or legal interventions regarding women's health issues, think about the Samaritan who didn't see The Other, he saw a person suffering and answered with kindness.

I've talked enough. Let's finish this up and get out of here so we can get seated before the first pitch.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

Dennis Miller on The Right To Choose

2009-06-04T08:45:00.000-05:00

I was looking for Miller's original comments on Pro-Choice/Pro-Life and couldn't find them. However, I did find this rant. Personally, I don't agree with Miller about a lot of things, but his views on social mores and pop culture are often pretty accurate, sometimes more so than we're comfortable admitting.

Now I don't want to get off on a rant here, because basically tonight's topic is a minefield - Abortion. I couldn't be anymore on tiptoes if the show was being produced by George Balanchine. This is the Big Debate, and I'm talking bigger than who was the better Darren on Bewitched. Abortion is our nation's "Final Jeopardy," and I'll wager, Alex, that if our nation fights another Civil War, it will be about this. And I would remind you that this all from my perspective, the male perspective, a one-step-removed perspective, because I will obviously never have to decide on whether or not I should have an abortion. And by the way, my belief is that if men were the ones getting pregnant, abortions would be easier to get than food poisoning in Moscow. Having men decide the fate of a woman's reproductive system makes about as much sense as asking Quentin Crisp to coach the Raiders. All right, enough qualifying, let's get on with it. There's no doubt that passions run high on both sides, and this issue has created a divide in this country not seen since Carly Simon last yawned in public. The prevailing opinions on a woman's freedom to choose are going further to the right than a Greg Norman tee shot.

Pro-life activists attempt to paint anyone pro-choice as having no morals. On the other side of the ledger, pro-choicers are tagging pro-lifers as crazed and backward bible-thumpers bent on running the lives of the people who disagree with them. The truth, as always, is, the case of human endeavors lies somewhere in between. As much as the advance scouts on either side of this issue might not want to admit it, good people do get abortions and other good people are pained by their decision to get one.

Where do I stand? Well, I'm like most of you, I presume, I think there are far too many abortions performed in this country. And I also believe that at the end of the day, as much as I might disapprove, none of them are really any of my business. Look, there are always going to be arguments on this issue. The debate will rage until the end of time no matter what the whim of the Papal infallibility or the politics of the decade. But the simple truth is, that such a passionate and personal decision dictates that the choice be left to the individual. And you know, that's really all we can do, because we're just human beings, stumbling around in the dark, trying to get to the bathroom and kicking the shit out of our shins on the way there.

Now there's some things all right-minded human beings should agree on. We should all agree that abortions should be legal in the case of rape, incest and when the mother's life is at risk -- that's just common sense. But excluding that obvious assumption, everything else in the abortion arena is "in play." There are many quagmires complicating this issue. Religion. Now it seems that religion is most often the backboard for every bank shot put up by someone making it their business to get into your business. Roman Catholic doctrine forbids abortion. Fine. Take that into consideration when you make your decision. Right-to-life proponents contend that abortion is immoral. Fine. Take that into consideration when you make your decision. Another pothole on the road to a sensible resolution to abortion is "when does life begin?" At conception? When a heartbeat is detected? At the first drawn breath? You know, for me it wasn't until last Tuesday. Until then I was just a sperm with an accountant! Okay, so those are the variables, and there are obviously millions more variables that make each individual case unique. But the more you think about it, and the more it makes your head spin, and the more confused you get trying to figure out someone else's life for them, it becomes increasingly apparent that it has to be the call of the individual who is pregnant, because the collective, one way or another, won't have to suffer the consequences of that most personal of all decisions.

My fellow Americans, it is time to suck it up. Look deep into your immortal soul (if you believe you have one) and do the right thing. Have the courage and strength to live your own life, by your own standards, and stop trying to call the shots for everyone else. We all live with glaring inconsistencies, and sometimes, when you see something going on right in front of you that offends you to the very core of your being, sometimes the best thing you can do is walk away, because you know that's exactly what you would want them to do for you. There's only one judge on all this and that's God. And you don't get to meet him until you go backstage after the play is over. And believe me, you do not want to get a "thumbs down" from the guy who created thumbs, all right? In the interim, everybody has got to tend their own garden vis-a-vis abortion. And remember, when it comes to your body, only you wear the robes, and only you carry the gavel.

Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

-Dennis Miller

Note: I don't own the rights to this and couldn't find the appropriate contact or copyright information. If there's a question of this adversely affecting his or his publisher's ownership of his words, I'll be happy to take it down.

Peace

2009-06-01T19:10:00.000-05:00

“Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him."

-Dr. Martin Luther King

"Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being."
-Gandhi

Jesus Wept

2009-05-26T23:34:00.001-05:00

A Precis of Sorts

I'm not a minister. The thought of being one has occurred to me in the past, but it's not really something I look back upon and contemplate as a road not taken. It simply wasn't in the cards for me to be a priest. And yet tonight I have been thinking about what I would say if I was giving a sermon this Sunday. I am not sure where the need to write this is coming from, but it's there all the same. So here goes. By the way, I'll spare you the usual formalities from The Book of Common Prayer, so don't worry about knowing when to kneel, stand, etc.

Peace be with you.

The passage I would like to talk about this morning comes from the Book of John, chapter 11, verse 35. It will take you far longer to find it than it will to read it so let me save you the trouble.

Jesus wept.

Short, bittersweet and to the point. Jesus, who was the human incarnation of God, experienced something we all encounter and behaved- no, it was more genuine than that, it wasn't just rote behavior, he felt. His heart broke and he did what many of us do when we grieve, he cried.

In the context of the narrative, he wept when he heard that his friend, Lazarus, had died. And then, being Jesus, he performed a miracle, taught a lesson and moved on. It's a great story about friendship and the healing power of faith but the most important lesson we can take from that passage, which by the way is John 11:1-44 isn't that Jesus can raise the dead.

Let me explain. I promise I'll try to keep it short. As Christians, you know that the Bible, particularly the New Testament is intended to be a guide for living. And as Christians, you know that we are to look to the Bible to gain an understanding of how we are supposed to be if we are to be Christ-like.

Let me get a quick show of hands. How many people here this morning can raise the dead? Hunh. Me neither. So if we can't raise the dead what part of Jesus' example are we supposed to follow?

Jesus wept.

We cannot mourn or feel loss or weep tears of real pain for others if we don't see them as fully human. If we don't value them as much as we value ourselves, what does that make us? Monsters. To deny anyone their rights as a human being is monstrous. In those two words from the Book of John, we're given in no uncertain terms the example to follow, that we are to be human and humane and recognize the humanity in others and respond in a loving manner that is truly Christ-like.

I think Jesus and the authors of the Bible knew that some of us can be a little thick, so they spelled it out in even plainer terms further along in the same book. John 13:34-35, don't worry about looking it up right now, but I do want you to keep it in mind for contemplation later on. Where was I? In John 13:34-35 , Christ says: "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, that ye have love one to another." He didn't add any clauses or make exceptions or suggest that his love is exclusive or can be repealed or withheld based on certain conditions. He said, "love one another as I have loved you." Who are we to assume that any person or group would not be loved by Christ and would you want to follow someone who would withhold their love?

Right now there are people who are trying to withhold the rights of your friends, your neighbors, your brothers, your sisters, you fellow humans. They do this in the name of Christianity. They need, as we all do, to step back from Christianity and look deeper into the personality and spirit of Christ. People love to ask the question, "What would Jesus do?" I can't help but think that he has to look at us sometimes, do a facepalm and say, "I've already told you."

Thanks for hearing me out this morning. Now let's finish this up and get out of here before the Baptists get all the good tables at The Pancake Pantry.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

More Secrets of Southern Women Revealed: Pleeeease Don't Tell My Mom I Wrote This!

2009-05-25T11:07:00.000-05:00

"You write like a girl."

That was the message from my mom after she got caught up on my blog."

"What?" I laughed, admittedly a little indulgently, but yeah, I laughed. Then she threw down the gauntlet.

"Build me a blog. I can do better."

"What?"

"I sent you to college and that's the only word you know now? You're too nice. I'll be more honest."

"Mom, I'm honest. It's just that I write about stuff I like."

She gave me The Look. So I built her a blog. And I have to admit she's definitely telling it like it is in the world according to "Dirtsister". The thing is, if you met her she would come across as the sweetest, most genteel, well read lady to have ever drawn breath. However there's this dirty little secret about Southern Women: When it comes to sports, they can bring the haterade like nobody's business.

There's no reason this should have come as a surprise. I grew up in a Dallas Cowboys Tom'n'Roger household and God help you if you even looked like you were going to offer aid and comfort to the Washington Redskins or their fans. To be honest, I thought that this was a football thing or a seventies thing or some other kind of thing that was a part of the past.

And then the NHL All-Stars Game happened and my mother got her first look at Alexander Ovechkin.

"I don't like him." she said, "He looks like a smart aleck. Do you like him?"

"Well, he's creative on the ice and he's always fun to watch."

Mom watched him and frowned.

"Who does he play for?" she asked.

"Washington." I said.

"I knew it!" She barked.

From then on Ovi8 became Boris Badunov to her Moose and Squirrel. Lucky for him, the regular season was over and the Caps had fallen to ~~Balder/Buddha/Jesus/Insert your deity of choice here~~ Sidney Crosby and the Mighty Opii before she'd started her blog. Her laser-like gaze of white hot sports hate was turned to one team and one team only, The Red Wings*.

She hates them all. She hates their fans. She hates their color commentators. It's an ambient kind of hate beam that falls on anything dressed in red and white that skates around a puck. Oh, every now and then she'll narrow her focus. There was the time she submitted Michael Babcock's picture to the "Women Who Look Like Old Lesbians" blog. And there's her thing about Marian Hossa. This dates back to Marian's first fight as a Red Wing. It was with her beloved Ryan Suter. You don't mess with Suter. (Or Pekka, or "Little Ryan"** or Erat...) So now, the big red-headed guy, (I know...Which one???) is known in Mom's world as "Mary Ann Hoser".

You think it's scary reading about this? Today she actually demanded to know if I liked the Red Wings.

"Please don't hurt me." I murmured.

"Well?"

"It's five months until the regular season starts."

"Get out of my house."

She's calmed down, but I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Maybe they'll give me a nifty Preds gimme shirt when I graduate from re-education camp.

Want to visit Dirtsister's blog? She'd love to see you there!

OFF MY CHEST (because everyone is entitled to my opinion)

*Okay, being a Nashville Predators fan means that admitting any weakness for the Wheels'n'Wings will lead to eight weeks in a re-education center where you spend twelve hours a day eating raw meat and looking at old beefcake photos of Jason Arnott while an audio loop that says "Honestly, we love you, Sully! Please don't go!" plays nonstop until the lights go out and you are allowed to sleep on a Kroger Green Bag on the damp concrete floor of the site of the Union Station train shed for three minute intervals until the sun comes up. In other words, I am engaging in risky behavior here...

I like the Red Wings.

There. I said it.

** Ryan Jones. It doesn't matter that he might be bigger or older or have more years in pro hockey. Suter was first to the Preds roster so Jones will always be "Little Ryan". Welcome to the South.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

TV Review: Glee

2009-05-23T07:41:00.000-05:00

The Deets
What: Glee
When: Coming This Fall
Where: Fox
As of this writing you can get the first episode free from Amazon or watch it online at Fox's website or at the Glee entry on IMDB

Who knew I'd start the summer writing TV reviews, especially right in the middle of the Stanley Cup Playoffs? Bear with me. You're gonna like this one. So let's talk "Glee".

"Glee" is the latest show from Ryan Murphy, the creative force behind the reptilian charms of "Nip/Tuck" and the heart and soul of high school as presented by the kids of "Popular". To say that it's a sitcom about a high school glee club is like saying "Seinfeld" was a show about nothing. That may be how it looks on paper and I could start describing the plot to you and you could probably finish every sentence. Hey! Let's try that!

Me: So there's this jock and the teacher sponsoring the glee club finds out he has a great voice and gets him to join the club -

You: ...and his team mates find out and give him an ultimatum where he has to choose between football and singing. Oh, and he rescues one of the geekier people from the jocks and makes a speech about being true to himself or something like that and...

Oh yeah, the plot could be telegraphed from my front porch to Chattanooga without any technological assistance. But here's the thing, Murphy and the writers and the cast sell this so well that you can't help but fall in love with it, bless it's cliched heart. There is an equal amount of tongue-in-cheek humor mixed with the kind of overly earnest face-palm worthy moments that go with being in or working at a high school. This works because while everyone is in on the joke (for the the most part, and I'll talk about that in a minute) they are aware that the moments, the desires, the whole awkward, goofy gestalt is what it is and you either love it or you don't.

If I have one quibble, it's that the "all athletes are stupid and mean" trope is getting old. (Getting? How about past gone?) I sincerely hope we see some of that tempered with more than one guy seeing the light.

The bottom line? I love it and think you will, too. Go to the Fox link in the deets and see what I (and your teen daughters and recovering drama/music geek friends) will be talking about this fall.

If you're too pressed for time to watch the whole preview, here's another taste of the show. Call me an easily manipulated simp, but this gave me goosebumps:

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

TV Review: Fourth and Long

2009-05-20T21:24:00.000-05:00

The Deets
Where: Spike TV
When: Mondays @ 10 eastern, 9 central
episode 1 is also available on the website

4th and Long | | SPIKE.com

"Let me make this perfectly clear. This is a football tryout camp. I don't want to hear any of that (deleted) about a reality TV show."
-Michael Irvin

Thus begins Spike TV's newest series, "Fourth and Long". So does Spike make good on Irvin's promise?

Thank goodness, yes! This show is football, football, football and more football. No stupid challenges. No middle school drama. This is about seeing who has the ability and the heart to play pro ball. The premise is simple: twelve men whose careers in football might have ended too early are given a second, possibly final chance to play on an NFL team. They are put through a series of grueling exercises and then based on their performances, one person will be eliminated each episode. So far there is no one on the show who makes you wonder if they were cast to make good television. So if you're looking for Survivor on astroturf, this might not be the show for you. If you want to see what it takes to make an NFL contender, tune in, you won't be disappointed. Beautifully shot, purposefully and perfectly cast, exciting...It gets two thumbs way up from me.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

FAIL! Mission Aborted Due To Donkey Pee and Toddlers

2009-05-20T19:39:00.000-05:00

This morning I told Alice there was going to be a petting zoo at the East Nashville Farmer's Market thingie. I went on to mention that it would be fun for the kids and that I planned on getting some pictures of critters to use as models for drawing.

First she snorted and then she said that if she wanted Evan and Ryan to track animal poop in the house, she could take them to her parents' farm in Franklin, where her mother could get the satisfaction of exacting revenge for her own overly girl nature by making darned sure no poop in the field went unsquished before they were sent home.

I argued that they could pet them from outside of the pen, which was how I planned to take pictures.

"Besides," she said, "You won't be able to get one picture without someone's tot wandering into the shot."

So very true. My attempt at getting a picture of the bigger animals as they emerged from the trailer was blocked by an irate, bespectacled mother who stood in front of my camera and glared at me like an ostrich who has just caught a meerkat stealing one of her eggs.

As the animals skittered over to the farmer while I was trying to snap, my mother made the observation that I was going to have to suck it up and go into the pen. I was right on the cusp of agreeing with her when the miniature donkey stopped, looked very pensive and then released nine gallons of urine into the middle of the pen. A minute later, a small boy gleefully splashed through it. No. Just...no. Further attempts were scuttled by a wee, cute girl who kept jumping in front of me and shouting, "Hi!". Oy.

Honestly, I wouldn't blame any parent for being concerned when a stranger is nearby snapping pictures. What had me thinking "wha...?" was the parent who accosted us on the way back to the car. I figured she was upset and quite rightfully protective of whichever child was hers. I explained that I was trying to get pictures of the animals, particularly the pig and the chickens for an art project and then she demanded to know why I didn't like children.

You win, Alice.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

Honk! A Word or Five About Driving

2009-05-16T10:12:00.000-05:00

This is not my blog post about driving. This is a brief word to Kevin and Tasha, who vetted this essay before I posted it. Guys, I had no idea that "gerbil" was already in use as a verb. Here's what I mean by "gerbiling":

In other words, it's the act of stuffing one's cheeks to the point that they pooch out. You've seen Alice's boys' gerbils, Arnott and Tootoo, do that when we give them treats. BTW, Arnott and Tootoo are female. You want to tell Alice's boys? Me neither.

This is my blog piece about driving:

I have this friend who ended up working in Egypt right out of college. He told me that people over there use their car horns as a substitute for the brake pedal. I'm trying to imagine the typical Cairo driver trying that in Nashville and thinking he might get, oh, fifty feet before he ended up turtled on a median. It's not that we don't use our horns here. In fact, take more than a milisecond to be sure oncoming traffic has truly stopped before turning and you'll hear a chorus of beeps and honks that will make you wonder if someone has put a "Honk if you're irritable!" sticker on your bumper. Drivers around here also tend to use their horns to show support for various demonstrations on the hoof. I'll happily honk to show my love when people are waving signs. No problem. It's kinda fun.

What isn't fun is the honking I had to do yesterday. Twice. Have I said argh? Argh. How do I put this? People get on the road and they're pointing and shooting this large mass of glass, metal and plastic at speeds of at least 40mph in town and you would think that would be sufficient to keep them fully engaged. No. Yesterday a couple in a van were arguing and on cell phones and driving. They whipped around the cars ahead of them and in and out of lanes, didn't like where they were, and whipped in and out again. Rinse and repeat. I finally held my breath, honked until I saw both heads swivel in my direction and then pulled around them (they were stopped kitty cornered across two lanes) so I could be on my way. Thirty minutes later a guy in a truck pulled out into the middle of an intersection, stopped and proceeded to unwrap and gerbil a hamburger as big as his head. When the light changed and it was my turn, I waited a minute for him to move on. Much to the displeasure of the people behind me, he was too engrossed with his food to move and so I had to honk until he looked up so I would be sure he wasn't going to suddenly realize where he was and T-bone me.

This is frustrating to me because it makes me feel like I'm coming off as ragey when I am in fact terrified. I know, it's all fun and games and texting and eating food the missus won't let you have because you're on nine medications until someone gets hurt. I don't want that someone to be me or anyone else for that matter. So here's the thing. Driving just is not conducive to multitasking. If you have something better to do than drive, please go do it. The road will still be there when you're finished.

copyright 2009 Jas Faulkner

The Hard Fall (Anaheim-Detroit 5-14-09)

2009-05-15T09:18:00.000-05:00

With the Darth Ovechkin - Sid the Kid drama resolved (for now), the next biggest story of the Conference Semi-Finals played out to it's conclusion last night at the Joe Louis Arena. The tension between the Anaheim Ducks and the Detroit Red Wings had been been building from the beginning of the series. Anaheim had taken down Mighty Joe Thornton and the Sharks and having tasted blood, were going after Detroit with the same predatory zeal. It was one of those series where there were no easy wins, no clear winners until the end.

When a series gets that intense, it gets personal. Messages were sent at the end of Game Six, so it was inevitable that Game Seven was going to be sixty minutes that felt more like an allnight pick-up on pond ice. The tough games keep you on the edge of your seat, especially when there are no clear winners until the clock runs out. When that happens you either feel exhilaration for the white hats or something akin to Snoopy's "Curse you, Red Baron" as those bastards show unseemly glee at the expense of good people everywhere.

The losers tend to fade into the plexi. Maybe they want to. You'll see some disappointment, but what you get for the most part is stoicism and lots of game face. Either they've worked as hard as they could and still got outplayed or they were having an off night and the drive wasn't there. You know it and they know it and yet there's that look away dynamic that makes you not quite connect with the loss as much as you ever will with the win.

Maybe that's why it was difficult to watch Anaheim's Jonas Hiller last night. From ten minutes into the first period on, you could see his game wasn't gelling the way he wanted it to. The saves seemed too hard won and every Detroit goal was soul-crushing and we saw every bit of it on Hiller's face. When he took that hard hit at the shank end of the second period, many would argue that it was time to give the guy a break and plug in Giguere.

Was playing on dumb? Was it brave? Maybe at ice level any other course of action was no longer an option. No matter what it was, Hiller gave everyone a taste of what it must be like to get so far and no further and be aware of it while you're in the moment. No one but the guys on the ice can really know how that feels, but just getting that glimpse into being one of the people who has to skate through the line and congratulate the winners after such a long, hard slog was like a punch in the gut.

copyright 2009 Jas Faulkner

No, Honey, That's Not A Hat Trick. Now Please Let Me Hear What The Man With The Bad Hair Is Saying About Cam Ward

2009-05-09T13:50:00.000-05:00

Okay, so your significant other or your kid or your best friend or your parent has been spending hours in front of the television watching what you thought was an endless festival of Roadrunner cartoons. When you took a closer look, you didn't see Wile E. Coyote. There was just a bunch of men in matching sweaters chasing something that resembled one of your chain smoking Aint Maude's burned biscuits into a net. At critical moments, your beloved has screamed "Friggin' DUCKS!" Your kid did a couple of afternoons in detention for getting into a fight with the child of a Titans booster over the relative coolness of Finland. My friend, if this is happening to you, you need to face facts: hockey is now a part of your life.

In this blog post, I'm gonna link you to some excellent online sources so you can get up to speed and start talking to your loved ones again.

The Basics:

Need a crash course on the game? Here are some sites that will give you a better understanding of what you're looking at.

One of the best places to start is at the NHL's site. At first blush, it looks like People Magazine and Sports Illustrated made a baby. Actually it's one of the more user friendly pro league sites out there with easy to find access to all of the official team pages and good quick-see breakdowns of scores and standings.

Their education pages, found at the NHL Learning Center, might be a little confusing for absolute beginners. It's a bit like being dropped into a 200 level class at mid-term when you're a starting freshman.

Your best bet would be to start with your hometown (or favorite) team's page to see if they offer any introductory material about hockey. Keep in mind that teams in nontraditional markets often have better online resources. Maybe this is because hockey is relatively new to the city culture. This might explain why my hometown and favorite team, the Nashville Predators, has a pretty great intro to hockey site called Predators University. Prejudiced? Moi? Shirley, you jest.

Okay, I have to admit that some of the other teams have very good sites. One of the best is Florida's 101 page. I was also pretty impressed by the organization of Dallas' 101 section. Looking at the different team pages is also a great way to be an online sports tourist. You learn something new and see the game from different points of view.

Talk it out!

Goodness knows there are hundreds, no, thousands of message boards, mirc rooms and other types of social networking outlets for talking about the game. A Google search of "hockey chat" brought up 7,500,000 results. So make that millions of possibilities.

Let me make it easy for you. If you want to find other fans to talk to about your team or the game in general, there are three very good places to do that.

Click on the "Fans" button on the front page of the little band that goes across the NHL. com front page. It's the 11th one from the left or the second on from the right, take your pick. It will take you to NHL Connect. The content there is primarily fan-generated and they have a pretty good league-wide message board.

Wanna keep it local? Go back to your favorite team's page and the odds are pretty good that they're hosting a message board for their fans. Preds fans, go to the seventh button over. The first thing on the Fan Zone pulldown is a link to their message board. Is it okay to visit the message boards for other teams? I'd say yes, but remember that you're a guest. You wouldn't go to someone's house and trash their taste in decor or tell them their kids were ugly and dressed funny. Use your company manners when paying a visit to someone else's virtual home.

Tweet! You're it! Twitter is not just for celebrities any more. It's great place to chat with fans about the team, the game and anything else on your mind at the moment. Wanna know what's going on with the Preds and their fans? Here are some Twitters to follow:

PredsRadio

Predfans

Forechecker

CellBlock303

The View From 111

Predsbuzztap

You can also do "find people" searches under NHL, Hockey and anything else that interests you.

And finally: BLOGGAGE!

It was a challenge to narrow down the Twitters to the list above and I'm finding it just as hard not to turn this epic-length post into an e-book by linking all of the great hockey blogs I've found. This is why I had to limit it to a few very active standouts. Want to see more? Go to the links list on the right side of this screen and check out the links list on the blogs I'm reviewing here.

On The Forecheck http://www.ontheforecheck.com/ Dirk Hoag's SB fan site is one of the best produced fan-generated Preds sites around. His site features an active news feed, message board and excellent downloadable graphics as well as his own very good blog.

Preds On The Glass http://www.predsontheglass.com/ This father and son team present a good mix of commentary and news about the Preds and hockey in general. They're opinionated, well-written and gentlemen to a fault, which is why I have no problem pointing friends from other cities to this blog when they want to know more about Nashville Hockey.

Section 303 http://www.section303.com/ The home page of the loudest, proudest group of fans in the NHL, Section 303 gives a good look into Nashville's hockey culture from the fans' point of view.

So that should get you started.

And, uh, welcome to the family!

copyright 2009 Jas Faulkner

Save the Coyotes!

2009-05-07T08:45:00.000-05:00

Nontraditional franchise markets are the Rodney Dangerfields of the NHL. Continually dismissed as flukes and curiosities, they're held to far more stringent standards than the Original Six probably faced when they were starting out. Columbus Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock exemplified the attitude fans of smaller market teams need to take. Earlier this year, when he was asked about any concerns he had concerning the possibility that the Predators would leap-frog the Jackets and possibly take their spot in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, his response was, to wit: of course he wanted to go, but he felt it was important to see markets like Columbus and Nashville represented as well as the larger markets with deeper pockets and that we needed to support each other. He went on to say that if it wasn't Columbus, he'd be happy to see Nashville on the bracket.

So, now that you've seen how we should be; let's take a look at the situation at hand. The Phoenix Coyotes are in trouble. They're a nontrad market. There is the threat of a buyout and relocation. The staff and players have set down roots in Phoenix and become a part of the city's culture and community. Preds fans, does this sound familiar? We need to be supporting the fans in Phoenix. They're part of our sports tribe. We've been through this. We can and should help.

If you use Twitter, please add TheYotesDiva to your follow list.

You can find her blog here: Reflections From The Ice Hockey Diva

She's providing up to the minute coverage on the situation (and her blog looks like a good read!)

So do some clicking, spread the word, and keep the 'Yotes howling where they belong: in Arizona!

(I know the next blog entry was supposed to be a review of online resources for people new to hockey and/or the Nashville Predators. Please bear with me. This is important and immediate and I will do the list. I promise. To the really awesome bloggers who are to be listed in that post. Thanks and apologies for the delay.)

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

Guest Blog: O'Neill Faulkner on Hockey Again!

2009-04-29T11:58:00.000-05:00

My original blog entry for today was called "Sean Avery Is A Bitch And I'll Bet He Eats Kitty Poop", but then The Momster saw it and made me hit delete. She reminded me of one of her favorite sayings from the Doggy Lama: "Bark less, wag more". So I'm just going to wag for now.

Here's what made me wag this year so far:

The Sharks, the Flames, The Blue Jackets Guys, you fought the good fight and man, I would have loved to have seen you make it to round two. There's always next year. Ducks. Ducks? That's just so wrong. Calgary, your fans are as much a part of the show as the game itself. They personify the concept of the Seventh Man like no one else. And now that Columbus has gotten a taste of playoff sweetness, it'll be hard to stop them.

The Kremlin on the Potomac I love my Predators, but there are so many moments when the Red's play was so elegant that I'd realize I was so caught up I'd forgotten to breathe. Paws down, they're my other favorite team.

This brings me to the Nashville Predators...What can I say other than thank you? I can't speak for what the game means to my staff, but I will say that the sheer joy that I saw at times made every minute in front of the tube worth it. If you're in doubt, Google the Preds and look at the images of them in play. The majority of them show guys in the same state of bliss I used to feel as a younger dog when I'd either steal something from the freezer or take my Cookie Monster doll and run around the back yard, tongue lolling, tail wagging. Cups, playoffs, rings, those are nice and all but they're just details, what matters is feeling the love when you're on the ice. Believe me, when you do, it shows. It comes out in the leadership and the heart that my team has shown this past season.

So that's it for now. As much as I like Syd the Kid and the Opii, I'll be rooting for the Caps. After that? Who knows.

Wuff and Rawr!
O'Neill

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

A Word From O'Neill's Mom and a List of Hockey Resources For The Noob

2009-04-23T15:56:00.000-05:00

I am sure that there are a number of people who would love to read an essay entitled "Sean Avery Is A Punk And He Can Kiss My Big Fuzzy Butt And Steve Sullivan Is The King Of The Universe". Unfortunately for my boy and his readers, I'm going to play the Mom Card and let him cool down before he posts again.

While you're all in time out, I thought I'd take a moment to say hi and offer my sympathy to anyone reading who doesn't quite get the hockey/NHL/Nashville Predators love. Is it too late to read up and see what the shouting is about? Nah! We've still got the rest of the playoffs to go and Fall will be here before you know it.

In Nashville, there are intramural groups that play year-round at the local rinks.

Check out the Centennial Sportsplex site for more information.

There are quite a few good books on the subject, some of them a little more technical than others. My favorite nuts n' bolts book is Lloyd Percival's (sometimes controversial) "The Hockey Handbook". You might also want to check out Davidson and Steinbreder's "Hockey For Dummies". If you want to get the stories behind the stats and rules, take a look at Brian McFarlane's "Original Six" series, Allen Duff's excellent "Without Fear" which looks at some of the greatest goalies to play between the pipes, Wayne Coffey's "The Boys of Winter", an account of the 1980 men's US Olympic Hockey Team and Kevin Allen's entertainingly goofy "Why Is The Stanley Cup in Mario Lemieux's Swimming Pool?" For more information on my favorite team, there's Craig Leopold's "Hockey Tonk: The Amazing Story of the Nashville Predators".

Next up: Great places to visit on the innerwebs and cinema therapy for when the season is over.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

Guest Blog: O'Neill Faulkner on the First Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs

2009-04-21T17:15:00.000-05:00

I was going to write about the cage match that is the series between the Penguins and the Flyers and then I got a look at the Ducks tonight. When did the fairly good waterfowl get replaced by Moe, Larry and Curly? (Nuts to Shemp. Everyone knows the best Stooge is Curly. But I digress...) Then again, that was the start of second period. A lot can happen in 20 minutes and with the game tied 3 to 3 at the top of second intermission, I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

Until then, let's talk about the McCoy-Hatfield feudin' and a-fightin' that is going on in Pennsylvania. In spite of the presence of former Predators in the Band of the Hollywood Spray-tanned, I'm still rooting for the Penguins. When The Lovely Andrea asked my assistant what was with the ex-Preds, she tried to deflect the question. My theory is that they go through Moon Pie withdrawal and eventually turn feral. What other explanation is there for Hartnell's tendency to fling equipment and clothing at the puck? I would love to relax and watch him play, but this is hindered by the nagging fear that one day he'll get carried away and we'll be seeing naked Scotty on ice.

The Pennsylvania pickin' n' grimacin' had me on edge but it was the action over at MSG that had me on the edge of my seat. I started out rooting for the Caps and was expecting James Bond-like goals from Ovechkin and the crew. Instead we saw something that cemented my fandog-dom for them. They got out of their own way and delivered a strong no-nonsense 60 minutes of good hockey. No goals or floor shows from Number 8, but the solid assists more than made up for it. The Kremlin on the Potomac rules and Ovi is Fonzie.

There's not much to say about the Blue Jackets. I really like Coach Hitchcock and am happy for him and the fans in Columbus that they got to go this year. I'm hoping they can make a comeback in the latter half of the series.

And Calgary? The 'Hawks look like they're getting tired and cocky. Time to kick it up a notch!

What's next? Wait and see. Even if my guys didn't make it this year, it's still turning out to be a pretty entertaining series.

Loud and proud and waving my fanger.

Wuff!
O'Neill

PS. Brodeur? Dude. Time to switch to decaffeinated, big guy.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

Guest Blog: O'Neill Faulkner Wants Everyone To Relax and Love The Game

2009-04-01T06:45:00.000-05:00

Does this picture make me look like Alexander Ovechkin? Mom just rolled her eyes and went back to editing an interview with a collage artist so now I'm asking you, my loyal readers.

Let's get down to business...

The past few games have given Preds fans their share of ups and downs and then some. The high point of the last Columbus mashup had to be the huge grin on Koistinen's face when he slammed the puck between the pipes during the shootout.

Last night's game against Chicago? I was proud of the fans who were there and barked along when they roared in third period. Arnott and Fiddler's goals had me barking and wagging and I was pretty happy to see Little Ryan back on the ice. Seeing anyone come back from an injury makes the game for me, but I'd be happier if players didn't get hurt in the first place. Even if I haven't mentioned an injured Pred here (Hey, keep in mind that I'm alternating between typing this with my nose and my paws!) know that I'm not deliberately slighting anyone's favorites. We miss them all, wish them well and can't wait to see them back in the game. There was one other really cool thing I want to tell you about. If you're at the game or use the time between plays to go to the fridge, you may have been missing TerryandPete's interviews with Dan Ellis. Ellis has good information to share on the how things are going with the team, how the game is going and how hockey is played. Last night he talked about what the fans meant to the team and how the cheering helps to get them pumped up. High paw back atcha, dude! If the Preds weren't here, I'd be whiling away my time licking the same spot on the living room floor and sending 30 pizzas to the cat across the street.

There has been some talk about who everyone would like to see the Preds face in the playoffs. Most people seem to be arguing for Detroit for a number of reasons. Mom has friends in Detroit and has a hard time being mean about anyone in Hockey except Wayne Gretkzy, so I'll refrain from using Gramma and Grammy Sylbia's favorite title for Detroit (Coach Opie and the Dead Things, but you didn't hear it from me) so she wouldn't say this, but I will. I am sick of looking at Coach Opie and if I have to see him and the Wheelie Pops again, I hope Suter yanks Hossa's pants and runs around the rink hooting and waving them above his head with the refs in hot pursuit. The other mitigating factor is that Leggy seems to get very very mouthy when they play Detroit and with him out for the rest of the year, such a matchup would be lacking. Mom told me last night she would love to see the Preds play the Sharks again because she loves watching good hockey and thinks they'll be better prepared for the Big Fish than they were before. For the finals we agree that watching our guys against the Nucks, the Flames or the Caps would be the best way to end the season.

Time to sign off, Mom wants to work on the collage art article again. Save me some popcorn and a spot in front of the tv!

Wuff!
O'Neill

copyright 2009 Jas Faulkner

Guest Blogger: O'Neill Faulkner On The Last Stretch To The Stanley Cup Playoffs

2009-03-25T17:29:00.000-05:00

Hi again, peoples! It's been comfy on the braided rug in front of the old TV watching the everything from the impressive spanking the Preds gave the Wings on 2-28 to the sublime frustration that has been the California Series.

Here are a few random notes:

It's been good to have Sully back on the ice! I'm not sure if I mentioned this the last time Mom let me have some time at the keyboard, but it can't be said enough.

I hope Arnott's vet is taking good care of him and he's not having to wear one of those satellite dish collars while he gets better.

Same goes for Ryan Jones. He's a rookie so they might have defaulted to the collar for him.

Dang, but Tootoo is one tough guy. He must have been a Corgi or a Jack Russell Terrier in another life. Staubitz just wouldn't quit. Given that refs often pull fighting players apart, (I saw them do it repeatedly during the Flyers/Devils game earlier this week) I have to give a stink-eye to the guys who were officiating in San Jose.

Also, many wags to Erat, Zanon, Ward, Weber, Suter, Leggy, Dumont and everyone else for making this an entertaining stretch of games.

Then there's Pekka Rinne. I'm still amazed by this guy because I love to stop my nerf balls and popcorn and his skill at catching a puck without using his teeth is amazing.

One other thing and then I've got some important nylabone chewing to do...Mom explained the penalty box to me and now I understand that hockey players get sent there for no nos. I've never seen a no no on the ice but maybe that's because the zamboni picks them up. Anyway, it's interesting to watch how different people react to being sent there. My favorite player to watch in the penalty box is Vern Fiddler. He always looks like he has no idea why he is there, thinks he should be someplace else and is only going there to indulge the referee because he feels sorry for anyone who has to wear such an ugly shirt.

Well. That's it for now. Save me a spot on front of the tube for tomorrows game and some popcorn to bat around the floor!

Woof!
O'Neill

Guest Blog: Sports! By O'Neill Faulkner

2009-02-10T11:58:00.000-06:00

The fat lady has sung at Madison Square Garden for another year and Toots is back on the ice. But before I get into all of that, I want to give a shout-out to mah peeps! Colette, Kipper and fam, you rock. Mad props to Nancy Jaye and her family. Beenard the Retired Rodeo Bull and Maggie the Beautiful Hampshire Girl, Spring is just around the corner and the Radio Flyer Convertible is waiting. Howard, stay away from the catfish. (Just trying to help.) Jeannie, it's one foot in front of the other, my girl! Peaches and Pan? Seriously. Your mom is not going to eat you.

Now let's get back to sports. The Westminster Dog Show has wrapped up another week of walkies, squeakies, big hair and shiny trophies. The offerings this year were par for the course, ranging from the sublime:

to the, well, see for yourself:

Maybe it's just me, but I wanted to ask the little guy if he's trying to find someone to take him to our leader.

Even though it would have been a much better show if it had been two hours of nothing but two dozen ungroomed Bearded Collies and Old English Sheepdogs playing with a Cookie Monster doll, I was still pretty happy with the winner. Stump, a ten year old Sussex Spaniel was not only long in tooth, but long enough on charm that the judges saw fit to give him Best in Show.

Congratulations, big guy!

Speaking of long teeth, being a Nashville Predators fan has been a mixed bag this season. We keep seeing these really good players and then they disappear. Take Joel Ward. A couple of weeks ago, he was, as Dan Patrick used to say, en fuego.

Then where was he? It's like someone starts standing out and they shorten the leash. Joel, I'm rooting for you to chew yourself free and make some more goals.

Going by the pictures at The Predators' Official Website, it looks like Toots and his finger are back. A win against Ottawa would have been nice, but hey, it's nice to know he's off the scratch/injured list. Welcome back, dude!

Not seeing a Predators loss isn't the end of the world, but I hate to miss out on a game with Pekka Rinne at the net.

I have to admit to having a soft sport for Rinne not only because he's a good goalie, but because the first time I heard his name, I thought PeteandTerry were saying the Preds had pepperoni in the trapezoid. While it seemed like an odd choice as a swap item for Dan Ellis, I have to admit that I really like pepperoni and have at times wondered how much pepperoni I could get for my mom, so it made sense. This also makes me wonder if they have pepperoni in Finland or if it's one of those countries where you can get elk on your pizza. But enough pizza talk. I'm anxious to see them take on Detroit on Wednesday. I'll be there with popcorn and a fanger!

Wuff!
O'Neill

copyright 2009 jas faulkner

Preds Chat...It's Like Buttah

2009-01-25T09:52:00.000-06:00

This is me from September to April:

We're a little past the halfway point in the season and Kevin, Stu and Alice are ready to put a pillowcase over my head if I use any of the following words in their presence ever again so help them God:

Hockey
Overtime
Defense
Erat
Offense
Goalie
Puck
Hockey
Arnott
Regulation Play
Predators
Legwand
Hockey
Ward
Honeydew NoNeck
Suter
Hockey
Weber
NHL
Preds
Net
Goalie
Tootoo
Stick
PekkaRinne (as one word or two)
Terry'n'Pete (as one word or three)
Dumont
Hockey
and about three dozen other words.

I do feel bad about this. What they don't realize is that having been a hockey fan since I was a kid, it's like Christmas every time I'm downtown and see honest to goodness real live Penguin fans and Red Wings fans and vehicles with plates from exotic places like Manitoba and Alberta*. We have NHL in Nashville and they're locally owned and I hope they're happy here and they're OURS!

Let me take a breath and settle down.

There are people who love to bemoan the less than stellar season the Preds have had so far. Most of them have probably never bothered to pay attention to anything but the weak moments. Too bad they missed the outstanding games they played against the Red Wings and the Penguins this season. They also seem to be missing that on the whole, the hockey fans around here tend to be funny, smart and loyal. Then again, that seems to be the hockey way from where I'm sitting. I get the feeling that the owners are loyal to Nashville fans as well.

Of course it's nice to win. It's also nice to see a team stick up for each other and play with heart. That's the hockey code, too. It's nice to see fans who stick up for their team through thick and thin, til death or, God forbid, NHL disenfranchisement or relocation do us part. I think we have that here.

My family and friends have, for the most part, adjusted to me being a Predneck. They know I love hockey and they seem to get something from the games, uh, most of the time. SOME of the aforementioned fam and friends, (Mom, Sharon, Sylvia) have ulterior motives. Mom's secret hockey boyfriend is Ryan Suter. Sharon actually bought a subscription to Center Ice so she could watch Jordin Tootoo and Sylvia? Sylvia...you and Jason Arnott? Keanu is going to be crushed. I can't join in the Nashville Hockey Video Brides Program because most of these players have parents my age. It seems so...icky? Wrong? No. Just...no.

I did have a shallow moment while watching the festivities at the Montreal All-Stars thingie Saturday night. Of course I managed to startle the Beardie/Sheepdog mix that was lounging across my lap getting a ruff massage to cheer when they showed Rinne introducing himself as goalie for the Rookies in the Young Stars game. When they did the skills comp, the dog and I held our breath, hoping that no one would beat Shea Weber's impressive second shot. When someone did, I'm not proud of this, but the first thing I said was, "Oh, yeah? Well Shea is prettier!" Not my finest moment as a fan, but I'm sure Mom, Sharon and Sylvia would be proud.

*One of these days I'll tell you about the real life Wally World-like experience a nice family from Canada had when they came to visit Opryland after it had closed for the season.

copyright 2009 jas faulkner