Celine Dion has emerged as a potential bidder for the Montreal Canadians.  Yahoo News

 

"Le zone trap de neutral!  Grab et clutch!  Maintenant!"

Dear Diary:

Today, my lifelong secrete has become, how you say, une knowledge de la publique--I want to own Les Canadiens du Montreal!

"Mais officer, it's just like Celine's!"

Pour une very long time I have dreamed of calling le shots for the team that has more nicknames than six, which is how many teams the NHL had to begin with in the first place!  Les Canadiens, Le Bleu-Blanc-et-Rouge, La Sainte-Flanelle, Le Tricolore, Les Glorieux, Nos Glorieux, Les Habitants and Le Grand Club.  Take that you big slobby Boston Bruins fans!

"Should I pull le goalie?  Ou non?"

All I need for my dream to come true is to outbid ten other potential suitors--just 10!  Do they not know I have my own theatre in Las Vegas in which many times ten people can be seated--at the same time!  Ha!

"You call that a kick save?  This is a kick save!"

It is only right and fair that I should own Les Canadiens.  They are the most successful sports franchise in history, I am the most successful singer and multi-talented, all-purpose entertainer in history.  I am including Sammy Davis, Jr., who was both black, Jewish and Willy Wonka.

Sammy Davis, Jr.

Okay--so maybe he tap dances better.  But he has not les pipes that I have.  And now I will have les pipes of the greatest hockey team ever to pull their goalie out from between them when they are down 4-3 with less than a minute to play!

 Entre les pipes

There are many benefits to my ownership of Les Canadiens.  We would save on national anthem singers, which can be quite costly.  You have to sing two--My Country Tis of Thee and O Canada--every game.  I can sing them both in my patented vocal Franglais which interviewers around the world take such joyeux in.

Right now, much of theez francs are going to little kids who do not have my vocal range.  Listen, you little enfants--you're cute, but you always merdre out at "the land of the free" part.

Second, we would bring une image nouveau to the Coolest Sport on Earth, which as you know is associated with bleu collar types now.  My trademark sheen of glamour will now grace the rinks and the dashers, from bleu line to bleu line. 

 

"Don't forget mon curling iron!"

Third, attendance will go up because I would bring my entourage to every game.  This melange consists of many sophisticated hair dressers, stylists, colorists, manicurists, pedicurists, eye-linerists, mascaramouches, bladda bladda.

I know zee boys will let me sit on the bench for a shift or two, no? Thees ees my fondest wish, to change on the fly with them, just as I do when I hold an audience spell-bound avec my lightning-fast costume changes during my latest review "Spreading Love to All Her Fans Around the World!"

So tonight, when I go to sleep in my 100% cotton Canadiens thermal pajamas (which come with both tops and bottoms!) if I snore, it is the log-sawing of happiness you will hear.

Goodnight, my little paper ami,

Celine

The Boston Red Sox have three psychologists on their staff--Boston Herald.

Dr. Donald Kalkstein rubbed his eyes and looked up at the ceiling as J.D. Drew lay on the couch and rambled on about his mother. The frequently "injured" outfielder's fifty minutes was almost up when he said something that caused the Director of Performance Enhancement for the Boston Red Sox to snap to attention.

"I think my momma liked my brothers more than me," he said in a pained tone of voice.

"Why was that?" Kalkstein asked. We're finally getting somewhere, he thought.

"I don't know-I liked to play in the mud, which is good, because I have to use pine tar now that I am a man."

Hm-thought Kalkstein. "How old were they when they were potty-trained?" the Red Sox shrink asked.

"Oh, they picked it up right away," Drew replied.

"And you?" The Red Sock on the couch couldn't see the doctor above him, but the psychoanalyst's eyebrow arched upward as he asked this question.

"Uh-not so good. I had an accident one time in kindergarten."

"I see. Well, that will be all for today. We shall begin again at the same place next week."

"Thanks doc," Drew said. "I think I'm on the verge of a breakthrough."

"Wonderful," Kalkstein said.

"Which way's the restroom?"

"Out by the elevators on your left."

"Okay-see you next week."

The two men shook hands and after the ballplayer left, Kalkstein looked out his window at the people below, scurrying this way and that, ever striving, impelled by their baser animal instincts to hit away when told to bunt. He heard a knock on his door.

"Come in," he said. It was Bob Tewksbury, the team's Sports Psychology Coach.

"What's up, doc?" Tewksbury said with a smile.

"You wascally Wilhelm Reich acolyte you-sit down."

Wilhelm Reich

Tewksbury headed for the couch. "Not there, you dingbat," Kalkstein snapped. "That's expensive equipment for a Freudian analyst."

"Jeez-sorry. What's eating you?"

Kalkstein realized he had sublimated suppressed Oedipal rage against his father towards Tewksbury, who at 6' 4" towered over him.

"Nothing."

"C'mon-'nothing' means something."

"It's that damned T.J. Norris."

"What's he up to now?"

"He's messing with Big Papi's swing."

"Hm-bad stuff."

Just then T.J. Norris entered the room brusquely and without knocking, as he was wont to do. The noted behaviorist used a system of tangible rewards and punishments to cure people of anxieties that the other two psychologists diddled with for years while they paid the rent with "talking cures" and orgone-energy accessories.

"Either of you two mesmerists want to grab lunch and watch the game with me?" Norris asked.

"Why must you always be so damned insolent, Norris?" Kalkstein asked.

B.F. Skinner

"I like to pick on intellectual cripples," Norris replied.

It was Tewksbury's turn to ask a question. "If you think so little of us, why do you seek our company?"

"Why do people throw peanuts at elephants?" Norris replied. "Listening to you phrenologists babble on is more fun than watching a lab rat beg while I eat a grilled cheese sandwich."

The three men headed down the hall to the lounge, where a wide-screen TV was flanked by tomes with the names of psychology's immortals on their spines-Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget, Dr. Ruth.

The eminent Dr. Ruth

"I've solved Big Papi's problem," Norris said arrogantly.

"Most hitters would gladly take his problems if they could have his homers," Kalkstein said.

"That's the problem with you Freudians. You're willing to settle for 'ordinary unhappiness'. 'Civilization and its Discontents', yadda, yadda," Norris said with disdain. "If B.F. Skinner could teach pigeons how to play ping-pong, I can get Ortiz to hit to the opposite field when the shift's on."

"I think the problem's sexual," Tewksbury said.

"You think everything's sexual," Norris said as he grabbed the remote and turned the television to the Red Sox game.

Dustin Pedroia walked to load the bases and David Ortiz--"Big Papi"--stepped to the plate. The infielders moved to the right side of the infield in a mass migration like a captive people fleeing from bondage.  As the pitcher looked in for the sign, Papi settled into his stance. The hurler went into the stretch, looked to first, and threw.

Ortiz cocked his bat and swung, driving the ball to left, where it hit high off of Fenway Park's "Green Monster" near a gold circle.

"That's new," said Kalkstein, as three runs scored and Ortiz made it to second on the throw to the plate.

"Yes," Norris said smugly. "Take a closer look on the replay."

As the film rolled in slow motion, Tewksbury saw some text next to the new symbol.

"What does it say?" he asked.

"Hit the ring--win some bling," Norris said with satisfaction. "With the right system of rewards, you can teach anybody anything."

INDIANAPOLIS.  Marty Trowbridge is Chief Operating Officer of WidgeTek, a manufacturer with locations throughout the midwest.  "Our business is crucial to customers who buy our stuff," he says, "whatever it may be."

Trowbridge:  "There's somebody dicking around with a bracket sheet right now!"

But over the past week, productivity has stalled at the manufacturer of fly-wheel hasps, then slipped behind schedule as the NCAA's Division I men's basketball tournament began yesterday.

"We generally see a drop-off of twenty-five to thirty percent in non-farm productivity once 'March Madness' starts," said Edward Hutchins of the U.S. Department of Labor.  "All of sudden people who don't give a rat's patootie about Gonzaga are checking scores on-line when they should be filing paper in manila folders or doing important stuff like that."

 

"Your secretary beat you too?"

In the past, business groups have held their fire under the assumption that office betting pools helped boost employee morale and ultimately made for a more productive work force--but no more.  Yesterday, the US Chamber of Commerce, the country's large business group, filed suit against the NCAA in federal court here, alleging that the annual hoops extravaganza hurts American businesses.

 "I picked North Carolina because . . . I like their colors."

A poll by Fortune Magazine indicates that the change of heart comes after years of losses by CEOs to their secretaries, who use non-traditional handicapping techniques to make their picks, ignoring more sophisticated measures such as strength of schedule, margin of victory and total compensation paid to players.

"I have found that the most reliable predictor of success in the tournament is uniform colors," says Ilene Grealey, executive secretary to Marvin Kramm of International Auger and Boring Machines.  "A lot of 'gals' swear by mascots as the most relevant yardstick, but you never know who's inside those big furry outfits."

2009 All-Mascot 1st Team 

The Chamber is seeking a court order that would limit the number of bracket sheets a secretary could fill out, at least for companies with fewer than 40 employees.  "In a mom-and-pop company, you can't have somebody doing three different sheets based on who's got the cutest coach, where their mother went to college and an old sweatshirt their boyfriend gave them in high school," says Kramm.  "It gives your secretary too many ways to win."

"There's the wind-up--and the pitch!"

An NCAA spokesman said it would try to reach an out-of-court settlement with the powerful trade organization, but was not optimistic.  "Your average businessman is about as flexible as Bobby Knight on a bad day," Allen Barkley noted.  "They don't negotiate--they throw stuff."

CHICAGO.  As the newly-installed President of the Society of American Structural Engineers, Armand Tuttle says he's realized a childhood dream.  "When I was a little boy, I was already thinking about it," he recalls wistfully.  "I'd sit and play with my Erector Set-which is a toy, not a body part-and imagine what it would be like to gavel a meeting of fellow engineering geeks to order."

Erector Set

But Tuttle's dream has turned into a nightmare, he says, as he found upon taking office that he faced a challenge nearly as imposing as the troubled economy inherited by President Obama; the looming problem created by the offspring of 7'1" basketball player Wilt Chamberlain, who claimed to have had sex with 20,000 women before he died in 1999.

Wilt Chamberlain

"You now have four generations of these giant mutant offspring out their breeding," he notes with alarm.  "If each one produces just 20,000 offspring before he or she dies, you're talking 400 million seven-footers bumping their heads into lintels," the horizontal load-bearing member spanning an opening such as a door.

Chamberlain snags a rebound in another losing effort against Bill Russell.

Chamberlain towered over most players during his time, attracting women "like mosquitoes to a bug zapper," according to demographer Norman Schonfield.  "For some reason chicks dig tall men," notes the 5'10" senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Population Change at the University of Iowa-Keokuk.  "They don't seem to realize that you're much better off with a shorter guy who's going to love you for who you are," he says, before excusing himself to sob quietly while eating alone.

In one day?  When did you have time to eat?

Chamberlain was known as "The Big Dipper" because he had to duck his head to enter most buildings and rooms, but he lacked the political clout to force changes to American building codes.  "What you'll see as Chamberlain's offspring become eligible to vote is a new standard," says Tuttle.  "Most doors are 6 feet, 10 inches now, or about the size of Bill Russell," Chamberlain's long-time nemesis on the Boston Celtics, he notes.  "If they try to go through them, they'll get rejected."

PHOENIX.  It's All-Star Weekend, and I've come here with Father William Kilkenny and the boys of St. Brigid's CYO Bombers all the way from Brighton, Mass. as part of the NBA's outreach to underrepresented minorities-Irish-Americans-for a weekend of fun, hoops and intense instruction in the basics of basketball acting.

Tommy Heinsohn, Boston Celtics great, practicing the "set shot", Irish-American hoop innovation.

"Can we have some water?" little Devan Colclough, my scrappy point guard, asks the priest, who will attend a break-out session with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban on "Intimidating Your Opposing Pastor Through Emotional Outbursts."  We've come here on a shoestring budget, funded by collections the kids have wrung from reluctant motorists by "canning" cars stopped at red lights along high-speed Nonantum Road, begging them to drop the coins from their change caddies into coffee cans.

"We finished the bottle back in New Mexico," the outwardly stern but inwardly gruff priest says.  "Going without water will be good training for when you burn in hell until the end of time."

I tousle Devan's hair as we get out of the van.  "Don't worry-there'll be plenty of allegedly healthy sports drinks inside," I say as we head into U.S. Airways Arena to meet some of basketball's greatest actors.

Wallace:  "I wasn't even in the building!"

"Wow," Timmy Hogan says as he spies Rasheed Wallace, who is conducting a master class on Simulated Outrage.  Wallace is a proponent of the "method" acting techniques developed by Konstantin Stanislavski, who treated basketball drama as a serious endeavour that required dedication, discipline and an almost fanatical belief in one's perpetual innocence.

Konstantin Stanislavski:  "After you throw an elbow, you must will yourself to believe that it is not attached to your arm!" 

"You guys need to believe in what you're doing," Wallace is saying, his face contorted into his trademark expression of anguish.  "When a ref calls a ticky-tacky foul on you for clothes-lining a point guard driving the lane, you have to persuade him, a national TV audience and your own bad self that you weren't even in the building when the guy broke his own nose."

Isiah Thomas questions a Leon Wood call:  "Are you watching the game in Braille?"

We move on to a session in progress that features Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers and 2008 NBA Finals MVP Paul Pierce, who are holding forth on "Dramatic Duos: Working the Refs From the Bench and the Floor."  "An apparently unflappable coach who saves his explosions for just the right moment will have a greater impact than somebody who blows like a teakettle the whole game," Rivers says, drawing a pointed contrast with Rick Pitino, his unsuccessful predecessor.

Pitino:  "A foul-my kingdom for a foul!"

A hush falls over the crowd as a tall white man joins Wallace's session.  "See that guy over there," I say to Marty O'Brien, a 5'2" low-post prospect I've been working with after school.  "That's the greatest actor in NBA history."

 

Bill Laimbeer, the Greatest of All Time

"Now I want to introduce a very special guest," Wallace says as the guest's face takes on a look of bogus humility.  "Four-time NBA All-Star, two-time NBA Champion-Bill Laimbeer."

Scarlett O'Hara:  "As God is my witness . . ."

"Thanks, Rasheed," Laimbeer says with a self-effacing tone.  "You know," he begins, "I got a lot of criticism in my career for being a lousy actor."  The kids are all ears, especially Brendan O'Shea, whose ears stick out like taxi cab doors.

Brendan O'Shea

"Johnny Most used to call me 'Stanisflopski'," Laimbeer recalls bitterly, referring to the Celtics' broadcaster who covered the team's fierce Eastern Conference rivalry with the "Bad Boy" Pistons of the '80's and 90's.  "I took my art seriously, and today I'm going to lead you through a dramatic interpretation that will help you get in touch with your inner rage-the scene from 'Gone With the Wind' in which Scarlett O'Hara curses the Yankees in the garden of Tara."

Laimbeer composes himself, and a hush falls over the room.  Suddenly his face becomes contorted, his hands slap his head, and he falls to his knees, tears welling up in his eyes.  "As God is my witness," he moans, "I don't even know Larry Bird!"