When will they get it?

ESPN.com HNL - 12/14/05

ST. LOUIS -- NHL commissioner Gary Bettman doesn't think Mario Lemieux was being pessimistic a few days ago when the player-owner said he thinks there is only "a slim chance" the Penguins will remain in Pittsburgh after their lease at Mellon Arena expires in 2007.

Rather, Bettman said before Tuesday's Penguins-Blues game in St. Louis that he thought Lemieux "very realistically" assessed the situation, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

Lemieux, the Penguins' primary owner, and other team officials have said for years the team needs an up-to-date arena to be financially viable, and Bettman reiterated his support for that position.

"It's a situation that needs to be rectified," Bettman said in the Post-Gazette. "This team needs a new arena. Nobody can dispute that. Nobody has disputed that."

Bettman listed seven cities -- Houston; Kansas City, Mo.; Las Vegas; Portland, Ore.; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Quebec; and Hamilton, Ontario -- that have expressed interest in getting an NHL team, but he said the league is "not looking to relocate" any of its franchises. He allowed, though, that "circumstances may cause it."

The Penguins' lease expires in June 2007, and the deal allows them to begin soliciting offers for the franchise a year earlier. Bettman said Tuesday night that "at some point in the process," the Penguins "have to explore their alternatives."

The commissioner also mentioned several times that the Steelers and Pirates play in venues that were built, in part, with public money, and said that having new facilities "gives them a great advantage" over the Penguins in the competition for support from Pittsburgh fans and sponsors.

Bettman said he is in "constant contact" with Lemieux and team president Ken Sawyer about the state of the franchise, and that he thinks the Penguins can be a successful franchise.

"I believe Pittsburgh is a good hockey market," Bettman said in the Post-Gazette. "We belong there."

For the Penguins, it's ALL ABOUT the Pirates and Steelers geting new stadiums and the Pens NOT getting one. Why? I have said before, if a sports franchise is trying to hold up a city for a new arena, let the franchise move. The NHL is not the high dollar sport like football... but the football stadium also hosts U of Pitt football games and probably regional playoff high school [almost as big as Texas HS football]... basball stadium gets 80 games a year. Should the city of Pittsburgh pick up the tab for an arena for a team that can't get 16,000 people a night to see tham? What does the City get out of the deal that they aren't getting now? I am glad someone is taking a stand against sports team owners. Let the Penguins go to Kansas City or Winnepeg or Quebec City [three places the NHL failed before, and realistically, the Maple Leafs will never let them into Hamilton].

It's just like New Orleans worrying, of ALL things, about getting the damn Superdome repaired and operational. Of all the things that need fixed down there, this shows the most fucked up sense of priority that I can recall in a while... 'come to the Sugar Bowl or the New Orleans bowl... we don't have running water yet, but come spend your money!' What is wrong with people?

Eighties meets the New Millenium in My Hard Drive

I bought a program this weekend, since I was to have 4 days off in a row, to convert LPs and cassettes into WAVE/MP3s on my computer... the first 5 I did are the 4 priceless Road Tapes made for me by Jim Dunnigan and the famous 1987/88 that subconsciously tells the story....

Of course, I have only done tapes so far... recording LPs requires the signal to run through some sort of amp, and I am not about to unhook all 10,000 wires from the back of my ancient but honorable Pioneer... not again until I move... so I am looking for one of the family's old units... maybe Dana and Cory will have something...

It's wonderful to be able to preserve those memories on the less destructible digital of my hard drive and CD... the tapes are all between 12 and 8 years old and repeatedly played... of course I had to cut some things because they are 90 or 100 minute tapes, but I tried to preserve the original flow as much as possible, even leaving in the versions from Jim's or my collection when I could replace them with CD clean versions.... vinyl pops, clicks and noise forever preserved on my hard drive... whoda thunk it?

I don't remember all the road trips with those tapes, hours and miles around the metroplex and between here and Wichita and one made the trip to New Orleans... I am sure I have driven to the moon and back with those four tapes from Dunnigan; they introduced me to new things like the Damned, Smashing Pumpkins, Pere, Ubu, Southside Johnny, Television, Lou Reed, Stiff Little Fingers, Superchunk, Soul Asylum, Dream Syndicate, Camper Van Beethoven, Pogues, Bad Religion, Luna, Johnny Thunders, Supergrass, Rocket from the Crypt and the Gits... I found favorite songs like Ian Hunter's Cleveland Rocks, Jim Carroll's People Who Died, Danny Wilde's Who's Gonna Hold You Now, all of Television's Marquee Moon, the early Randy Newman catalog, ... Jim would also throw curve balls like following L7 with the J Geils Band, Izzy Stradlin followed by Sam Cooke followed by Kiss followed by Mary;'s Danish, or Percy Sledge wedged between Rev Horton Heat's Bales of Cocaine and Eleventh Day Dream's Rose of Jericho... the only thing I didn't like was the Social Distortion [never have] and a song called Circular Saw by Live Skull... but over five + hours of music, like three bad songs is a damn good track record...

The 1987 tape, I discovered after several listens tells a tale of premonition of the story of the Woman from Ohio. Well, I did reverse two tracks, then it told that tale, especially the run of Dylan’s Simple Twist of Fate, Meat Loaf’s Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad and Billy Joel’s Laura. But I know more than a couple of people like Joel’s Laura…

And maybe that’s the point of the mix tape after all, trying to provide the soundtrack to one’s own life. Certain tapes remind me of certain times or certain places. I know just about every note of International Chaz 2000 from the multiple drives up the QEW and from the Rainbow Bridge to the Zelienople exit off I-79 the summer I went to Laurinda’s wedding in Toronto. The Wichita 98 Cobweb Burner has some Keith Richards that reminds me of the curve that some engineer placed for no good reason on I-35 just outside of Moore, OK. There are two ‘Classic Rock’ tapes I made for driving that both have a sequence of Cream, Traffic and the Doors only because it amused me to do so… on the first, the sequence of Badge, Glad and LA Woman rocked me riding into Wichita one morning at 3 am, so I did it on the second tape. I have whole tapes of nothing but car and driving songs [Hot Rod Lincoln, Ramrod, Jesus Built My Hotrod, Rockin’ Down the Highway, Let It Roll, The Ballad of Uneasy Rider, etc], songs for cold nights, songs for summer nights, tapes of all first songs on albums, last songs, song that end side 1s, songs that start side 2s [just to challenge myself]…I've spent hours and hours, years and years out on the road with my tapes, not just long road trips but half hours between Burleson and everywhere, hour long rides to Oliver's apartments in Dallas and they've become burned in the folds of my brain.

One can take the random luck of a radio, but face it, you’re going to have to deal with a lot of CRAP, a lot of WORN OUT WARHORSES and a lot of commercials if you trust to radio. There are a few places it’s still worth it, like any time you can catch KATT out of Oklahoma City or the 93.3 out of Toronto [especially if you dig the Tragically Hip], but in the pigeonholed pre-programmed sterile safe for the masses that radio has become in the last 20 years, it is not really worth it most places.

I know, some people don’t get it. To some people it’s just background noise. But to some of it, it really IS that important. Can you imagine a movie with no sound track? To some of us, those tapes became a part of us, a soundtrack to road trips forever; to a few of us, they're really a part of us.

The 1988 Mix:

Crashing by Design - Pete Townshend
Ain't It A Shame - B-52s
Waterfall - Wendy & Lisa
Broken Arrow - Robbie Robertson
Runaway Trains - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
That Voice Again - Peter Gabriel
Simple Twist of Fate - Bob Dylan
Two Out of Three Ain't Bad - Meat Loaf
Laura - Billy Joel
Water of Love - Dire Straits
Following - Bangles
Sweetheart Like You - Bob Dylan
Letter to LA - Joe Ely
Savannah Woman - Tommy Bolin
Like I've Never Been Gone - Robert Plant
Train In Vain - Clash
Positively Lost Me - Rave Ups
Can't Hardly Wait - Replacements
Back on the Chain Gang - Pretenders