The View From Wisconsin

Just a random set of rants from a Sports Fan from Wisconsin.

Friday, January 27, 2006

Asperger on Rye, Hold the Mayo

A friend of my wife pointed something out to me the other day, and it's been both revealing and bothering me to no end.

In doing some informal research with my wife, she's determined that Sarah may have something called Asperger's Syndrome - essentially, a higher-functioning version of Autism.

For those of you who might not know specifically what Autism is: Autism is defined as a "psychiatric disorder of childhood characterized by marked deficits in communication and social interaction, preoccupation with fantasy, language impairment, and abnormal behavior, such as repetitive acts and excessive attachment to certain objects. It is usually associated with intellectual impairment." (Taken from dictionary.com)

The difference between Asperger's and autism is that someone with AS doesn't have the communication deficits or a full language impairment.

Unfortunately, knowing all this doesn't help me much, as AS is hard to diagnose properly - and is not, at this time, "curable".

I'm looking in to a lot of background books and such about AS; I may be using this blog as a means of sharing what I find as time goes on.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Big And Rich And Dumb

There are times that Stars Behave Badly. Unfortunately, one of them occurred at a recent Predators game (back against the Devils).

A poster named JLSG made the following post about an incident at that game, involving John Rich of the country music group Big and Rich (they of "Save A Horse Ride A Cowboy" fame):

Our seats are in section 105 row G. Great view.

At the Devils game about 5 minutes into period 2, John Rich of Big & Rich fame and his entourage of bimbos and hanger ons come in a couple of rows in front of us.

First it takes a couple of minutes for everyone to decide where they want to sit. Then Mr. Rich stands up with the cell phone in his ear yelling "Here I am with the beer over my head!".

After he makes contact with whoever it was he was talking to he stands there waving and making gestures to this person. This goes on for a minute or so and finally someone yells "Sit down please" and he turns around and says "You're telling ME to site down? I'll just stand as long as I like to."

He stands for the rest of the period 2. The usher comes down a couple of times to ask him to sit.

"I'm a fan" he yells, "Fans are supposed to stand". Apparently the usher can't make him sit, so at the start of period 3 a rep from the Preds comes over and talks to one of his "peeps". Few minutes later the guy comes back and says "Come on John, thy're going to give us a suite." to which he replies "No! I'm standing right here.".

At around the 8 minute mark a couple of Metro Police officers had a short converstion with him (just a few seconds, wish I could have heard what was said) and he promptly sat down. He turned and waioted for the police to leave and then shot evryone behind him (including myself and my 8 year old son) the bird.

The point of this venting is that I want the word sent far and wide to true hockey fans everywhere to boycott Big & Rich. An arrogant punk like that does not deserve the support.


The issue has taken on a life of its own. The incident was mentioned en passant in the Nashville Tennesseean in the "Brad About You" gossip column - twisting the facts just a bit to make it look like Mr. Rich was the one wronged.

Several fellow posters have tried to get the original post out over on the CMT Big & Rich Message Boards, only to have any thread deleted minutes later.

Right now, I'm not sure what's worse: Mr. Rich's behavior, or the reaction to the post.

Monday, January 23, 2006

The Aftermath

I wanna go on record right now: there is no truth to the rumor that Vegas is taking bets on which will be greater come Super Sunday - the score of the winning team in the Super Bowl, or the number of wins by the Detroit Red Wings.

I was very surprised that the opening line of the game was set at Pittsburgh by 3 1/2. I'd take that bet in a heartbeat, and even choose the Seahawks to win outright. I saw the NFC championship game Sunday, and swore I was watching clones of the Green Bay Packers from 1996 - except that the running back was 100 times better than Dorsey Levens.

This was a plus/minus weekend for hockey. The minus came Friday when Bryan Berard came forward with his positive USADA drug test, and his ensuing two-year ban from international competition. It gave guys like Dick Pound of WADA ammo to lump the NHL in the same basket as the rest of the sporting world - the professional sporting world, I might add. The plus was the great coverage by NBC on Saturday; the Peacock network is doing a great job in showcasing the game. The guys over at OLN should take note.

By the way: congrats to Luc Robitaille on passing Marcel Dionne for the all-time L.A. Kings lead in scoring. (No, I'm not going to make the obligatory reference to his wife, Stacia.)

As the sport has too many black eyes as it is, I'm glad that the whole situation with the World Baseball Classic and Cuba got sorted out. However, I do hope that the entire team, as soon as they set foot in the U.S., decides to defect. And I do mean the entire team.

Had an interesting dream the other night, about revisiting my grandma and grandpa's old house in Racine. The place looked like it did when I was growing up, but it was empty - something very much unlike what it was the last time I was there. My grandfather, bless his soul, had collected all sorts of things, and they were strewn around the house - including some snowblowers and rototillers sitting in the dining room. In the dream, I think I was just trying to imagine what it was like now - now that someone else was living there.

Gonna be a roller-coaster ride of emotions the next two nights for me: It's bad enough we have to play the Wings back-to-back, but now because of the Jiri Fischer situation, we're playing both games at the Joe in Detroit. I just hope we get some points out of the two games, because if we don't, we might as well resign ourselves to fourth in the West at best.

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Sure way to cause PPDDS

MEDICAL BULLETIN

Scientists at Middle Tennessee State University have discovered the fastest way to invoke a severe case of PPDDS (Post Predators Defeat Depression Syndrome):

Lose to the Red Wings.

This has been a special report. We now rejoin the NFL playoffs, already in progress...

Thursday, January 05, 2006

College Football Power Rankings

Since everyone else does their own polls and lists of rankings, I figured I'd add my own to the cacophony. Mine aren't based on any really elaborate system, just simple wins and losses, points scored and points allowed. The only adjustments are to compare them to Division I as a whole.

Since Blogger isn't letting me do a nice table here, I created a separate webpage with the rankings here.

Monday, January 02, 2006

2006

Ah, what a year it's been. We went from reversing the Curse of the Bambino to reversing the Curse of Shoeless Joe. We saw Tom Brady win, Donovan McNabb disintegrate, and T.O. implode. We witnessed San Antonio ascend to the top of the NBA (again) – and Larry Brown couldn't do anything to stop it. We saw steroids grab the headlines, we saw Barry grab his knee, and we saw Mark Attanasio grab the reins of a team that suddenly remembered how to win. We saw playoff games that looked like they'd never end; we watched and waited as the lockout that we never thought would end finally did, and then watched the improbable happen as a hockey team in Nashville, of all places, jumped off to one of the fastest starts in NHL history. We also watched the end for Barry Alvarez, the "New Orleans" Saints, and (probably) Brett Favre. We also saw the beginning of a new ballclub in Washington – albeit in a dumpy old stadium – and new possibilities as Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin skated out onto the ice.

That doesn't mean we can't hope that some things are different in the new year. Like, for example: