I see that Brian Burke is in the news again. I wish him good luck at the new job, even if, to me, he’ll always be best known for this:
»This is a must-read for the hockey fan, whether hard-core or casual. The tales are well-told, whimsical and thoughtful all at the same time.« – Brian Burke, GM, Anaheim Ducks
“What?” said the taxi driver after he picked up his phone and made the sound of a Formula One car engine finally go away.
“Is it Ben? Yeah, I missed your call earlier, tried to call you back just now,” he then went on, even though he hadn’t.
“What?” he said again. “A rat? In the Volvo? In the garage? Are you kidding me?” he said, getting more upset with each question. And then he paused, for a second or so.
“The rat ate the journal?”
I guess nobody believes a cat or a dog eating the homework anymore.
Anybody who’s spoken with me in the last two years, knows that I often begin my sentences, “I heard in a podcast that…”
Because I listen to a lot of them. On the bus, the subway, driving, at the gym, you name it.
But I realized today, walking towards the Old Town in Vienna that, whenever I’m in a new city, I don’t want to listen to my iPod. I want to hear the sound of the city, even if it is the same old sound of cars driving by.
There’s the odd clonk of the trams, the honking, and the lacking of it. The muffled sounds of everything when there’s snow. And I don’t want to miss it.
There was an interesting story about swear words in the Atlantic Monthly. I happened to read it today on a plane to Switzerland. And the on the train, a few hours later, I saw something that looked like a huge cross up on a hillside, and I started to think about symbols.
I remember when I first saw somebody flipping the bird, or extending their middle finger at somebody else. I was in the seventh grade, and back then, my classmates told me that the proper way to reply to that one was to show the “extended index finger and pinky” combination towards the bird man.
To me, these gestures seemed weird. I remember not understanding the power of an extended middle finger, or how two other fingers would be the appropriate reply. I have a faint memory of starting a campaign of my own, by replying with just my pinky. Why would that finger be any less powerful?
As you’ve probably noticed by now, after all, it’s been a good 25 years, that one didn’t catch on. But I haven’t seen the two-finger reply salute in a long time, either. Why wasn’t that sticky? Too difficult maybe?
“Life magazine announced Tuesday that is is making more than 10 million of its archival photographs publicly available through a partnership with Google.“
So, their entire archive gets scanned and made available, searchable, through Google Image Search. Among the classics and other super shots, there’s quite a bit of hockey photos as well, from, for example, the 1940s and 1950s.
Like this George Silk 1958 photo of Jacques Plante:
Warning: you will lose your sense of time and will thereby end up spending hours watching the LIFE magazine photos. (Like this one).
So yes, Cookie, I did spend more time trying to get the visa than I did in Russia. And in hindsight, I realize that in my eagerness to get a visa I may have rushed things, more than necessary.
Or else, I wouldn’t have had this conversation with Igor:
Hey, I’m back from Magnitogorsk. I was just here, a mere 50 hours earlier, waiting for a stylish little Atlas suitcase that never came. I was just an innocent little Finn, curious about Russia, a wide-eyed kid, venturing out on a journalistic adventure in George Orwell’s footsteps. On a charter plane, of course.
And here I am now, tired and weary, with images of a memorial to a war that’s mostly a part of my grandparents’ past, and a city, going forward and backward at the same time flashing before my eyes, and memories of my journey from Europe to Asia, and back, still vivid on my mind. There I was, for what seemed like days, weeks, a lifetime, with one of Magnitogorsk’s most famous TV personalities as my travel companion. In a taxi cab, naturally.
The Magnitogorsk hockey crowd was one of the rowdiest I have ever seen. They were loud, they were loud, and they were loud.
The press box happened to have another row of seats behind it, so I got to see (read: hear) the fans enthusiasm first hand. The guy behind me had a horn, a whistle, four cups of beer, and a voice that would have given him a front row place in the Red Army choir back in the 1970s.
They also had the most aggressive “wave” I have ever seen. Not violent aggressive, just aggressive: fast and rowdy. And they spilled a lot of beer on the floor. Their wave went around the rink in two seconds. A world record, I’m sure.
This morning, I decided to leave my smokey room, and go for a walk. Curious about Russia, I boldly ventured out all the way to the end of the parking lot of my Hotel Europe.
Just as I was about to pass the huge Volga, I saw a tiny little cat run across the parking lot. OK, yes, I thought it was a rat at first, even as I tried to get closer to the cat, to take a photo of it.
I saw the guard watching me, so I decided to act natural. I stopped, and took a photo of the big old Volga, then admired the photo for a second. Then I heard the cat move again, towards the fence, so I took a couple of steps to the left. Glanced at the guard, he was looking the other way, I proceeded to find the kitten.
And then I saw it at the fence.
I snapped the photo, and confirmed that it was a cat and started to walk back towards the front end of the parking lot, towards the guard, guarding the gate, that was the only entrance to Hotel Europe, surrounded by a black, metal fence.
“It was a cat,” I said.
“Przua hjuede,” said the guard.
“Sorry .. um, yeah, it was … meow,” I said and smiled.
“Da, da,” said the guard and smiled back.
I just hired a cab driver for an hour – 300 ruble, or nine dollars – and went on a sight seeing tour in Magnitogorsk.
I can’t say that I saw everything – I don’t even know what “everything” would be here – but I did cross the border to Asia, said hi to Lenin (a statue), admired the statue of the Soviet Worker handing the sword that he has forged to the Soviet Soldier, and found out that there’s no McDonald’s in Magnitogorsk, for reasons that I still don’t quite understand.
Something to do with territorial rights, and McDonald’s getting Russia only west of the river Volga.
And somebody else getting the rest. Who? No idea. Tomorrow.
