Sunday, January 6, 2013

Sunday Observations 1.6

So I woke up to a perfect storm of hockey this morning. After a 113 day lockout and a 16 hour negotiating secession came this from The New York Times, "Breaking News: NHL and Players Union Reach Tentative Agreement to End Lockout." As I was reading the headline it was snowing slightly in the Village, a documentary on the Philadelphia Flyers was on HBO, and today just happens to be Flyers owner Ed Snyder's 80th birthday. No details on when the season will start or how long it will last but this is critical information as my brother owes me a trip to a Flyers game which was last year's birthday present and I have every intention of collecting it.

I really don't watch a lot of TV other than sports and the usual Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Alex Wagner MSNBC lineup but suddenly I find myself swamped with things I want to see. I had been watching Revolution from the start but I never got back to it after a storm named Sandy took out our cable. I always thought Falling Skies looked good so when it showed up free on Amazon Prime I started watching that and burned through season one in a week. Now Bo is coming back in season three of Lost Girl and I haven't seen any of season two yet. But Lost Girl just appeared free on Netflix so I'm torn between watching the second seasons of Falling Skies and Lost Girl. Netflix also has all the seasons of Nikita for free so if I can't make up my mind I can always watch that. Than again soon I can just watch hockey.

While I'm on entertainment, I mentioned before I was reading Salman Rushdie's "Joseph Anton" which is actually a memoir of Rushdie's after he wrote "The Satanic Verses." If you like memoirs or history it really is very good but it's a hard book to start. Joseph Anton is the name Rushdie came up with at the request of his guards from the Special Branch of the British Metropolitan Police. What you have is Rushdie writing a biography of Anton who is actually Rushdie and sometimes reads like Anton writing a memoir of Rushdie who is at the same time Anton. Once you get past all that it's an easy read and sometimes reads more like a spy novel than anything else. Just take my word for it.

Happy Birthday Mr. Snyder, somewhere Reggie Dunlop is smiling.

You can look that one up.

update - I'm not sure if this is an update to this post or yesterday's on Penn State and the way stories twist around each other. No NHL schedule has been announced yet but it will either be a 48 or a 50 game season. If it is a 48 game season the Flyers will open with an early afternoon game against the hated Penguins on January 19th in Philadelphia. Early afternoon because that night the new Terry Pagula financed Penn State ice hockey team plays Vermont at the Wells Fargo Center.