HE DROOLS while chomping at any semblance of food. In other words, Griff's a hulking, lovable lug of a St. Bernard -- and he's missing.
While the world ponders the latest from the resident Ahmadman, The Missus has been crying and Susan has been holding her head in her hands. Bill B. and the Ol' Columnist, meanwhile, have been sulking while spinning our wheels in the backroads of B.C.
Yes, Griff (or Griffey to some) has been among the missing since Saturday morning and his family is already in mourning. Of course, there have been reports from insensitive residents that if he had been chasing deer up in the mountains, they would have turned on him and killed him. When I heard that word, it shook me to my boottops.
Then another claimed that if a nearby "bitch" was in heat, Griff would have been solicited for his "services." Of course, I didn't bother to tell them he'd been "fixed."
This tale of woe began Saturday morning around the Ol' Homestead. There was the usual visitations to the back stoop; the little Lab named Sadie, stalwart Benny, known as The Philosopher, and the "wanderer" Griff all expected a (dog) biscuit or two or a dozen. Griff slobbered as he woofed down his share and then he and Sadie left.
At noon, I asked the question: "Where's Griff and Sadie?"
Everyone had a blank look on their faces.
Then the suggestions came. "Maybe, they wandered down by the river," said one. It had been something that his family had often feared since Little Sadie always tagged along with her friend, Griff.
The hours passed by, and as darkness settled in around Whispering Pines, there was no sign of either one of them.
Then the search party continued patrolling the area, shining flashlights into fields and as the winds picked up, a chill went through my bones as I drove along Highway 97 towards Falkland. No sign of either one of them.
On my return to the Ol' Homestead, Bill B. told me: "Sadie's home." Then he quickly added, "But there's no sign of Griff."
Sadie was exhausted as she showed up, whining at the door. She hadn't been down by the river since her shiny black coat wasn't wet, but her feet were tender and she was hungry from her day-long ordeal.
"Let's get some sleep," someone suggested, knowing full well that was the last thing on our minds.
As a feeble light welcomed Sunday morning, the search began anew.
The cries of "Griff, Griff," could be heard throughout the entire Pines' area. Our green "chariot" again searched the ditches, under area bridges and even among the cattle in numerous fields ... no sign of Griff.
"At least Sadie came home," one said. There was no relief in that statement.
Throughout Sunday, the Ol' Columnist pasted up posters with a picture of a short-haired St. Bernard in the neighbourhood, which read: "Where's Griff ??? Beautiful St. Bernard Missing Since Saturday In Whispering Pines Area. Call 379-2757 or 379-2980."
Monday the search slowed to a crawl; no one had seen the lovable lug with a tattoo inside one of his sensitive ears. He had vanished.
Then I began to find out more about one of the world's most favorite breeds. On a number of websites, the St. Bernard is identified as being very ancient and especially famous for rescuing lost travelers near the hospice of Great St. Bernard in the Swiss Alps. Those lovable dogs are also known for their acute hearing, which far exceeds human beings.
If that is true, can you hear me calling: "C'mon home, Griff, your family misses you."
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Little Black Book and The Rock (Dwayne Johnson)
WHILE DWAYNE JOHNSON savours the high life as the star of a new Disney epic, known as The Game Plan, life wasn't always a thrill. Not by a long shot.
In fact, this one-time defensive end for the national champion, Miami Hurricanes, tried out for the Calgary Stampeders in the 1990s and failed miserably.
Before reading the latest review of the new flick, I started thumbing through a Little Black Book on my bookshelf. It's called The Rock Says ... with Joe Layden and published by Judith Regan, who has become a notorious name with her involvement in the O.J. Simpson book, If I Did It. That script now reads, I Did It, and benefits Ron Goldman's family.
Chapter 7 opened with these words: "It's a hot summer day in Calgary, Alberta, and we're standing behind a seedy motel, the kind with flashing neon lights and hourly rates. There are four of us, big guys, athletes, and we're stomping around in other people's garbage, trudging through flies and maggots and half-eaten fast-food dinners, in search of a prize. We find it beyond the Dumpsters, a pile of discarded mattresses ten feet high ... After a while I find one ... I take a deep breath, hoist it onto my back, and walk toward the truck that will deliver us from this little corner of hell. My teammates are still foraging, and as I watch them I can't help but think ... "We're professional football players. I can't believe we're doing this. It's so embarrassing."
While I've bypassed some of the seamier descriptions of Johnson's misadventures, you get the picture that life didn't always have a perfect Hollywood ending.
When Johnson was bypassed in the NFL draft, he opted for the CFL and despite hearing the meagre salary of $30,000, he told his agent, "Let's take it. I'll go up there and kick some ass."
Then reality stepped in when he realized the opposition -- one was a CFL veteran, an all-league lineman, and the other was a Nebraska standout Kenny Walker, who was also the first deaf player in the NFL, according to that Little Black Book.
Shortly afterwards, then Calgary coach Wally Buono (now the B.C. Lions boss) gave Johnson a choice: Either come back the following year or work out with the practice team, which paid about $175 (U.S.) a week.
Ouch! How the mighty had fallen.
That's when the story for a decent "used" mattress came into being in a less-than-luxurious apartment, across from McMahon Stadium, which he shared with three other practice players.
In addition, to that "glamorous" lifestyle of sleeping on those mattresses, Johnson remembers the food menu consisted of "gallon jars of cheap spaghetti sauce"and eating pasta. He was later cut by the Stampeders.
It was at this time that Johnson realized that pro football wasn't really in his future and he started to daydream about wrestling. After all his father, Soulman Rocky Johnson, and his grandfather, High Chief Peter Maivia, had been in the business. In addition, his heritage included his uncles, The Wild Samoans Afa and Sika, Superfly Jimmy Snuka and cousins Samu and Yokozuna.
During his Calgary stint he became acquainted with the late promoter Stu Hart and his wrestling sons, Brett, and the late Owen Hart, and the infamous Dungeon in the basement of the Harts' home.
But when he lost out with the Stamps, he headed for Florida and pursued the family business and went through a series of name changes from Flex Cavana to Pidlaon Rock, Rocky Maivia to, finally, The Rock.
Besides his extraordinary rise from dingy arenas to superstardom, Dwayne Johnson has evolved on the movie screen from the The Scorpion King to what has been called a "lovable lug" in The Game Plan.
There's also talk of him playing Captain Marvel/Black Adam in Shazam next year.
In the meantime, if all else fails, Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) can fall back on a degree in criminology and physiology he received from the University of Miami.
JUST SOME ADVICE (From Uncle John's Bathroom Reader): Al Capone once said, "You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone" ... And from Alfred Hitchcock: "There's nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever" ... And in the words of the late J. Paul Getty: "Rise early. Work late. Strike oil."
FINALLY FROM THE 'I DIDN'T KNOW THAT' LIST (Courtesy The Book Of Lists): Famous Men Known By Their Mothers' Maiden Names -- William Arden (Shakespeare); George Ball (Washington); Frank Buchar (Mahovlich); Abraham Hanks (Lincoln); Stephen Pillsbury (King); Mick Scutts (Jagger).
In fact, this one-time defensive end for the national champion, Miami Hurricanes, tried out for the Calgary Stampeders in the 1990s and failed miserably.
Before reading the latest review of the new flick, I started thumbing through a Little Black Book on my bookshelf. It's called The Rock Says ... with Joe Layden and published by Judith Regan, who has become a notorious name with her involvement in the O.J. Simpson book, If I Did It. That script now reads, I Did It, and benefits Ron Goldman's family.
Chapter 7 opened with these words: "It's a hot summer day in Calgary, Alberta, and we're standing behind a seedy motel, the kind with flashing neon lights and hourly rates. There are four of us, big guys, athletes, and we're stomping around in other people's garbage, trudging through flies and maggots and half-eaten fast-food dinners, in search of a prize. We find it beyond the Dumpsters, a pile of discarded mattresses ten feet high ... After a while I find one ... I take a deep breath, hoist it onto my back, and walk toward the truck that will deliver us from this little corner of hell. My teammates are still foraging, and as I watch them I can't help but think ... "We're professional football players. I can't believe we're doing this. It's so embarrassing."
While I've bypassed some of the seamier descriptions of Johnson's misadventures, you get the picture that life didn't always have a perfect Hollywood ending.
When Johnson was bypassed in the NFL draft, he opted for the CFL and despite hearing the meagre salary of $30,000, he told his agent, "Let's take it. I'll go up there and kick some ass."
Then reality stepped in when he realized the opposition -- one was a CFL veteran, an all-league lineman, and the other was a Nebraska standout Kenny Walker, who was also the first deaf player in the NFL, according to that Little Black Book.
Shortly afterwards, then Calgary coach Wally Buono (now the B.C. Lions boss) gave Johnson a choice: Either come back the following year or work out with the practice team, which paid about $175 (U.S.) a week.
Ouch! How the mighty had fallen.
That's when the story for a decent "used" mattress came into being in a less-than-luxurious apartment, across from McMahon Stadium, which he shared with three other practice players.
In addition, to that "glamorous" lifestyle of sleeping on those mattresses, Johnson remembers the food menu consisted of "gallon jars of cheap spaghetti sauce"and eating pasta. He was later cut by the Stampeders.
It was at this time that Johnson realized that pro football wasn't really in his future and he started to daydream about wrestling. After all his father, Soulman Rocky Johnson, and his grandfather, High Chief Peter Maivia, had been in the business. In addition, his heritage included his uncles, The Wild Samoans Afa and Sika, Superfly Jimmy Snuka and cousins Samu and Yokozuna.
During his Calgary stint he became acquainted with the late promoter Stu Hart and his wrestling sons, Brett, and the late Owen Hart, and the infamous Dungeon in the basement of the Harts' home.
But when he lost out with the Stamps, he headed for Florida and pursued the family business and went through a series of name changes from Flex Cavana to Pidlaon Rock, Rocky Maivia to, finally, The Rock.
Besides his extraordinary rise from dingy arenas to superstardom, Dwayne Johnson has evolved on the movie screen from the The Scorpion King to what has been called a "lovable lug" in The Game Plan.
There's also talk of him playing Captain Marvel/Black Adam in Shazam next year.
In the meantime, if all else fails, Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) can fall back on a degree in criminology and physiology he received from the University of Miami.
JUST SOME ADVICE (From Uncle John's Bathroom Reader): Al Capone once said, "You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone" ... And from Alfred Hitchcock: "There's nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever" ... And in the words of the late J. Paul Getty: "Rise early. Work late. Strike oil."
FINALLY FROM THE 'I DIDN'T KNOW THAT' LIST (Courtesy The Book Of Lists): Famous Men Known By Their Mothers' Maiden Names -- William Arden (Shakespeare); George Ball (Washington); Frank Buchar (Mahovlich); Abraham Hanks (Lincoln); Stephen Pillsbury (King); Mick Scutts (Jagger).
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Harvard Man tackles concussions in sports
CHRIS NOWINSKI, a Harvard grad and former WWE wrestler, is a man on a mission. And it involves chilling concussions, which has spread across the sports spectrum, from hockey to football, and zeroes in on every age bracket, from the tykes to the seasoned professionals.
While there has been an outcry concerning 'roids of ruin, which was launched in 1994, with the Long Island trial concerning WWF promoter Vince McMahon and featuring the now reality TV star Hulk Hogan, the plague of concussions, seemingly, was swept under the rug as just a "given" or the price one pays for being involved in contact sports.
However, Nowinski has peeled back the covers of one of the great dangers on every level with his notable book, Head Games: Football's Concussion Crisis.
And he has been prominent on the television the past few days explaining his conclusions that pro wrestler Chris Benoit's murderous rampage could have been caused by severe brain cell damage. The accompanying photos showed Benoit's brain resembled that of an 85-year-old Alzheimer's patient and the analysis seemed to indicate that the 40-year-old Canadian had suffered multiple concussions during his career.
Nowinski has first-hand knowledge of the subject for he was forced out of pro wrestling because of concussions, resulting in cognitive problems, migraine headaches, sleeping problems and depression. In his book he attempts to link such head traumas involving other athletes to long-term neurolgical disorders such as Alzheimer's and memory impairment.
In a Boston Globe article, Dr. Julian Bailes of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of West Virginia and medical director at the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes at the University of North Carolina, finds Nowinski's "mission" credible, knowing his history of concussions.
Nowinski, who has established the Sports Legacy Institute, which has begun to study sports-related brain traumas, believes repeated concussions can definitely lead to "irreversible neurological damage and dementia."
In the not-too-distant past, young athletes, most notably in football, who had "their bell rung" were told to shake it off and get back in the game.
As someone, who has had more than three concussions earlier in his life, this columnist now suffers the effects in a variety of ways, including depression and other maladies.
In an article for Sports Illustrated, Nowinski wrote about Carolina Panthers' star linebacker Dan Morgan, who in October 2006 announced he would sit out the rest of the NFL season after suffering the fifth and sixth concussions of his career.
Of course, Nowinski detailed other NFL players, who had retired because of post-concussion syndrome (PCS) and proceeded to name the likes of Steve Young, Troy Aikman, Merril Hoge, Ted Johnson, Wayne Chrebet, Al Toon, Ed McCaffery, Bill Romanowski, Chris Miller, Stan Humphries, Frank Wycheck and Bob Christian.
However, football wasn't the only sport that Nowinski pointed his fingers at; claiming that concussions were prevalent in pro hockey and even could be backtracked to those in the younger age brackets.
He claimed such players as Pat Lafontaine, Mike Richter, Brett Lindros. Jeff Beukeboom and Keith Primeau were prime examples of PCS. Then he listed others such as Eric Lindros, Jeremy Roenick, Jason Allison, Peter Forsberg, Scott Stevens, Paul Kariya and Tim Connolly, who had been sidelined with concussions.
In another article, this one by Alan Schwarz of the New York Times, he discussed the post-mortem brain images of former Pittsburgh Steelers offensive lineman Justin Strzelczyk, who died in an autombile crash in 2004. Those images showed four red splotches showing early signs of brain damage. Strzelczyk was only 36.
As for Nowinski's book, Jesse Ventura, the former Minnesota governor and pro wrestler, said: "Head Games is the kind of book that everybody who is part of football or any contact sport needs to read. I've played. coached, or commentated football my entire life, and I'll never look at this game the same way. It's all right here, in black-and-white football does have a concussion crisis, and we need to fix it now."
Pro Wrestling Insider's Mike Johnson added: "If there is one person that sports fans, much less wrestling fansm should be thanking, it's Nowinski, who has taken a terrible turn of events from his own life and is trying to warn others and better the way concussions are treated (and sometimes dismissed) by the medical and sporting worlds."
VOICES REMEMBERED: Luciano Pavarotti and D. James Kennedy were as diverse as two humans could possibly be, but for me their voices remain as distinct in my memory bank as any member of my own family. And I never met either one of the them. However, I wanted to sing like the great tenor, Pavarotti, although I never succeeded. And as for Dr. Kennedy, the television mininster, he made sense and offered solutions for this scarred planet's past, present and future. Both of those vibrant voices were silenced this week.
While there has been an outcry concerning 'roids of ruin, which was launched in 1994, with the Long Island trial concerning WWF promoter Vince McMahon and featuring the now reality TV star Hulk Hogan, the plague of concussions, seemingly, was swept under the rug as just a "given" or the price one pays for being involved in contact sports.
However, Nowinski has peeled back the covers of one of the great dangers on every level with his notable book, Head Games: Football's Concussion Crisis.
And he has been prominent on the television the past few days explaining his conclusions that pro wrestler Chris Benoit's murderous rampage could have been caused by severe brain cell damage. The accompanying photos showed Benoit's brain resembled that of an 85-year-old Alzheimer's patient and the analysis seemed to indicate that the 40-year-old Canadian had suffered multiple concussions during his career.
Nowinski has first-hand knowledge of the subject for he was forced out of pro wrestling because of concussions, resulting in cognitive problems, migraine headaches, sleeping problems and depression. In his book he attempts to link such head traumas involving other athletes to long-term neurolgical disorders such as Alzheimer's and memory impairment.
In a Boston Globe article, Dr. Julian Bailes of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of West Virginia and medical director at the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes at the University of North Carolina, finds Nowinski's "mission" credible, knowing his history of concussions.
Nowinski, who has established the Sports Legacy Institute, which has begun to study sports-related brain traumas, believes repeated concussions can definitely lead to "irreversible neurological damage and dementia."
In the not-too-distant past, young athletes, most notably in football, who had "their bell rung" were told to shake it off and get back in the game.
As someone, who has had more than three concussions earlier in his life, this columnist now suffers the effects in a variety of ways, including depression and other maladies.
In an article for Sports Illustrated, Nowinski wrote about Carolina Panthers' star linebacker Dan Morgan, who in October 2006 announced he would sit out the rest of the NFL season after suffering the fifth and sixth concussions of his career.
Of course, Nowinski detailed other NFL players, who had retired because of post-concussion syndrome (PCS) and proceeded to name the likes of Steve Young, Troy Aikman, Merril Hoge, Ted Johnson, Wayne Chrebet, Al Toon, Ed McCaffery, Bill Romanowski, Chris Miller, Stan Humphries, Frank Wycheck and Bob Christian.
However, football wasn't the only sport that Nowinski pointed his fingers at; claiming that concussions were prevalent in pro hockey and even could be backtracked to those in the younger age brackets.
He claimed such players as Pat Lafontaine, Mike Richter, Brett Lindros. Jeff Beukeboom and Keith Primeau were prime examples of PCS. Then he listed others such as Eric Lindros, Jeremy Roenick, Jason Allison, Peter Forsberg, Scott Stevens, Paul Kariya and Tim Connolly, who had been sidelined with concussions.
In another article, this one by Alan Schwarz of the New York Times, he discussed the post-mortem brain images of former Pittsburgh Steelers offensive lineman Justin Strzelczyk, who died in an autombile crash in 2004. Those images showed four red splotches showing early signs of brain damage. Strzelczyk was only 36.
As for Nowinski's book, Jesse Ventura, the former Minnesota governor and pro wrestler, said: "Head Games is the kind of book that everybody who is part of football or any contact sport needs to read. I've played. coached, or commentated football my entire life, and I'll never look at this game the same way. It's all right here, in black-and-white football does have a concussion crisis, and we need to fix it now."
Pro Wrestling Insider's Mike Johnson added: "If there is one person that sports fans, much less wrestling fansm should be thanking, it's Nowinski, who has taken a terrible turn of events from his own life and is trying to warn others and better the way concussions are treated (and sometimes dismissed) by the medical and sporting worlds."
VOICES REMEMBERED: Luciano Pavarotti and D. James Kennedy were as diverse as two humans could possibly be, but for me their voices remain as distinct in my memory bank as any member of my own family. And I never met either one of the them. However, I wanted to sing like the great tenor, Pavarotti, although I never succeeded. And as for Dr. Kennedy, the television mininster, he made sense and offered solutions for this scarred planet's past, present and future. Both of those vibrant voices were silenced this week.
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