Potvin Sucks

I think the chant sucks. I’m a lifelong Rangers fan. I began this love affair at the Garden on 50^th Street when I was a little boy. I know why the chant was started but don’t understand why we still hear it.  First of all, Potvin doesn’t play any more. How can this chant be encouraging to the current Rangers, when they can only revere a player like Potvin. He was a Captain. He was on a team that won four Stanley Cups in a row. He was a good defensemen. I’m wondering how the chant can serve as inspiration to Rangers players when they are on the ice, especially if they happened to as kids like the man. How can this chant inspire the fans? The Isles have broken my heart more times than I want to remember. So why would I want to hear that man’s name mentioned and used not only at the Garden but when I’m enjoying a Rangers game in another arena?

Why is this chant still being used? Using a negative to try to inspire something positive is counter intuitive. I’m not even sure the folks who start these chants today ever saw Potvin play. Most people today need to use Google to understand the origin of this chant and Google to learn more about each player involved. Why do those of us who do remember the players and the constant broken hearts of the Ranger fans? I would like to hear more creative and inspiring chants from the Ranger fans like what one might hear at an international futbol match. I’d like to hear more encouraging chants that single out players during the game. Certainly Henry gets his praise and rightfully so. The Potvin chant doesn’t tell me the folks are really paying attention since this chant has nothing to do with the game. There is an entertainment value to it if it were used once, like the Marlboro Man who did his air guitar licks at Yankee Stadium to “Enter Sandman” when Mariano came in.

I may be a curmudgeon, but I think the Rangers players deserve lots more than this pitiful bygone negative chant that means nothing. How about chanting and cheering for our boys than one of the most dastardly villains in Ranger history. Let’s be more positive and let’s not remind us of a sad past. Even if actors like Hanks mouth it to a camera, remember he is a paid actor to ham it up in front of a camera.

Gosh, I wish the Ranger fans could actually make playing in Madison Garden a more classy act as it once was rather than a constant reminder of those days of broken dreams. We now have new dreams with this new team and we need a new chant. Let’s go Rangers.

Inherit the Dead edited by Jonathan Santlofer

Inherit the Dead edited by Jonathan Santlofer is the introduction of Pericles Alexandros Christo, Perry to everyone but his mom. To know Perry, you must read what twenty mystery authors, that’s right, twenty, two zero, mystery authors have to say about a character they collectively created in one mystery. I do not know all twenty, but I do know some. Each of the authors uses Perry to tell us their philosophy of mystery writing. It was an interesting thread I chose to follow. “Perry let the quiet expand between them. Something he’d learned as a cop: let the suspect fill the uncomfortable void.” Jonathan Santlofer. Sometimes we get philosophy, “They remind me that people die but culture lives on.” “Can I borrow that for my tombstone?” Julia Driscoll peered at him, (Perry) her grey eyes narrowed. “Is that a joke?” This is Perry according to Santlofer.

Stephen L. Carter tells us that Perry hates Long Island in the beginning of the chapter and then explains in the concluding paragraph of the chapter why he hates LI. As the plot unfolds and Perry evolves, Carter reveals his bottom line on mystery: “This was why he didn’t like missing-persons cases: the lies were almost always central to the mystery. Once you solved the lie, the mystery ceased to mystify.”

I found the chapter written by Marcia Clark, yes that Marcia Clark had an interesting take on Perry. “What was her angle? After years as a homicide dick, Perry accepted nothing and no one at face value (his ex-wife used to say he’d been that way long before he was a cop – he’d always tell her he doubted that).”

John Connolly has a perfect description about vinyl and why those of us who listen to vinyl do listen to them. (Page 121). The sinister character following Perry has been elusive and is on a mission to get it all. So who is it?

A fun book for the different styles if nothing else.

Sites on a bike ride

Cries of the Lost by Chris Knopf

Cries of the Lost by Chris Knopf returns me to Knopf and to Arthur Cathcart, a Renaissance Man who can do anything anytime. I first met Arthur in Dead Anyway. He is a computer geek-genius who lost half his brain to a bullet and is still twice as smart and capable as any body.

“I keep putting your life in danger.”

“It’s a funny way to impress a girl.”

“It’s not on purpose.”

“All you have to do is tell me you love me,” she said.

“I love you.”

“See how much easier that is?”

This dialogue establishes the working relationship here on. Arthur Cathcart and Natsumi Fitzgerald spent the next couple of hundred pages traveling the world in search of answers while being pursued by the FBI, international agencies, and gangsters. It is about money Arthur’s former dead wife embezzled. Arthur wants to right the wrongs; he’s that kind of guy. Oh yes, he has been officially listed as dead. So he is flying under the radar and in many different disguises. This is a classic case of the hunted becoming the hunter.

“All you bastards who want to kill us,” I (Arthur) said out loud. “I’m coming after you.”

Natsumi stuck her head in the room again. “What did you say?”

The conversations they have while hunting and being hunted add great levity:

“My parents loved dogs, but it was unfair to keep them in apartments.”

“My Japanese mother used to say, ‘Cats, dogs, what’s next, water buffalo?”

“It’s a slippery slope.”

With part of his brain shot out, Arthur explains his gift: “One of my graduate professors would describe research as a methodical progression, searching for hidden pathways that would allow you to move along from phase to phase. I hated that idea. To me, there was nothing linear about it. Where he saw chain links, I saw a wild, gnarly bush. There was no gleaming, singular truth at the end of the journey. Only a jumble of approximate facts and assumptions, leading to a set of probabilities.”

I’m looking forward to more Cathcart books.

Clyde Butcher in the Everglades

Estero Bay Preserve SP

Man of War