I’m skeptical on my chances.

Look, I’m not the most interesting guy out there. Just go through the archives here on The Stonegauge (which stretch back to 2002) and you can find plenty of boring, personal, and petty drivel. I’m not flashy, but I have been involved with the sites and people that your independent newspaper has honored again and again — such as helping Tommy Duncan run Sticks of Fire from 2005-2007, or aiding CL columnist Catherine Durkin Robinson with her blog as well as editing one of her books. I’m online buddies with one of Tampa Bay’s most popular Twitter personalities in Clark Brooks (oh, yeah, he also writes for me on Raw Charge).

I’ve been blogging for nearly a decade, I am one of the longest tenured hockey bloggers in the sport (having started on Boltsmag.com in 2004). And I’m the only local net personality who has not only been threatened with litigation from the most popular pop group of the 20th century, but I’ve been in USA Today and quoted between the likes of Tony LaRussa and “Crash” Davis.

My point is, how about throwing a little recognition my way in your upcoming 2011 Best Of The Bay awards? I’m not as trendy and attractive as former Interbay Superstar Rachel Moran, nor am I as social as other personalities who’ve won accolades through their net presence…

But I have been around a while, and I’ve been the guy keeping things running for some of your favorites in the past. A hat tip to the mysterious online producer isn’t much to ask, is it?

I’ve been sending out letters, from time to time, for ages.  Usually typed up, which does dampen the personality of the correspondence…  But there’s something about a letter in the mail that exceeds electronic correspondence – even if Email, instant messages, social network communication, and even a telephone call are more instantly gratifying.

You take the time, you take the effort, you take the energy to convey what you are thinking – maybe it’s business, maybe it’s personal… Heck, maybe it’s intimate (think about it, guys and girls).  It’s something we forget when we greedily rip open a letter and read it’s contents…  Unless the letter itself is long and winding.

But here’s another piece to think about with a letter: The actual journey.  Did you ever take the time to think about what your correspondence goes through, where it travels, on it’s way to its destination?

I’ve had envelopes sitting on my desk from time to time in the last few days and months…  They’ve looked rather monotonous with an address label and return address label stuck on them, the only distinguishing characteristic on them being a number I scrawled on the back of each.  I’ve had them all ready to go, and then it’s hit me: just what is in store for these things as they travel?  They weren’t just being sent locally or nationally, but overseas…

A little envelope, a folded and glued piece of paper, containing other pieces of paper,  due to travel some 5,000 miles or more.  How many lives touch it?  How many people see it?  What does it experience on it’s journey?  And just what does the recipient think or feel when it arrives?  How do they react?

This doesn’t tell the whole story of what I am thinking, but it does give some more of an idea what a letter in the mail goes through at sort facilities:

I’m busy more often than not, and no – the Stonegauge is not dead.  Just dormant.  When I have been writing lately, it’s been personal and it’s been in the mail (didn’t I once say that it’s great getting letters in the mail?)…  That or I am doing hockey stuff.

This off-season has afforded me more time for myself (which has been a good and bad thing).  I’ve found escape in writing, an ability to immerse myself in a thought or idea, or a feeling and a story.  It’s like a release, as it used to be when I would write a real good poem that conveyed something creatively.

Oh, I’m still doing poetry too.  Just not much of it, thanks.  That’s what this post is – a poem.  Something I wrote a few months ago for an absent face.

Waiting for Her Word

I’m self aware and insecure
I’m hanging by a thread
Alone with thoughts and falancies
I’m waiting for her word

The still between us, a sea of silence,
Leaves open too much wonderment
Just a whisper would assauge me so
I’m waiting for her word

The cozy bliss of an embrace
A sight-for-sore-eyes, a lovers gaze
What is missing? A brief exchange
I’m waiting for her word

To summarize her meandering prose,
Or describe her vibrant pose:
Zest for living, wherever she roams
I’m waiting for her word

©2011 John Fontana

(this is where you greet me, “Hi, John!”)

For the longest time, I’ve been a dreamer. In a good way, and in a bad way. I like to construct grand things, I like to believe in the best… Or a mountain that you can climb. I sometimes put people on pedestals in this fashion. Placing them atop a pedestal of desire and want.

There are two potential problems with this:

1. You can get what you want and learn it’s not exactly as you dreamed it would be
2. You can learn, in the chase, that what you’re after doesn’t want to associated with you

Concerning item #2, I’m not talking about someone being direct and telling you that they’re not interested. I’m saying you learn the hard way that they’re just not that into you.

That’s only the start of my problem.

You see, I delude myself. I start trying to see someone in the best of lights regardless of what the truth is. I want things to work, or to progress… And I keep offering the benefit of the doubt in the ignorance of silence. I construct all sorts of excuses, and sympathize with situations… But in the end, I’m no closer than no where than I was before. The same place I was at the beginning.

The place where things will ultimately end.

I said in 2008 just what I learned when I was hurt int he past, and you know what? I’ve learned nothing. I’ve learned nothing because I fell into the same situation all over again… Or at least I allowed myself to get close to doing such. Again.

I’m a shitless dreamer.  I realize this.  And it hurts.  Without the dream, things feel flat, emotionally.  With the dream?  Things never happen to begin with, because I’m too busy wondering and constructing.  And being stepped on, taken advantage of, or made to feel like I’m 2nd, 3rd, 4th class or less.

I’ll figure out something new for the header soon enough.

It’s forced me to make more regular trips to this site to keep an eye on things.

I think I have found mine. I was offered a job I wanted but I did not want to lose focus on what I am most proud of.

I also knew that my physical limitations kept me from truly fulfilling the role.

Maybe in time I’ll have another opportunity, but right now I’m disappointed with myself… But I know and can admit my own limits. maybe that is a plus?

One of my favorite movies is Cast Away.  early Aughts tale of an executive who survives a jetliner crash and has to live on a desert island for four years.  Some people hate the movie because of it’s FedEx advertisement nature — FedEx is everywhere in this film and it gets to the point where the product placement is unbearable.  Even though it’s not true product-placement as-so-much brand name use on props.  It gives a little more realizsm than if Chuck Noland had been an employee of the fictional Pacific Courier shipping company.

At any rate, I enjoy the film.  the emotional stuff and the open “Where do I go from here?” end to the film.

I got bored the other day and started tooling around IMDB.com.  I’ve looked at their “Trivia” section for Cast Away in years previous and just wanted to see things again.  Some of the facts seemed to have been changed, some of them seemed to be deleted (I do recall hearing that there was a different ending, originally, to the film that did not test well and as replaced.  Hearsay and speculation on my part because I cannot find reference to this on the web).

One piece of cynical trivia that was on that page, however, caught my eye, and spoilers are ahead for those who have not seen the movie.

Chuck keeps, and never opens, a FedEx box with an Angel art print on it.  The box had washed ashore from his crashed jetliner.  He keeps that package the entire time he is on the island and during his escape from the island.  He ultimately delivers it to the place where it was destined.

The package, without ever knowing the contents, drove Chuck Noland to keep on going.  Keep breathing.  He never cited that, but it’s the truth.  The package was a visual reminder of salvation.

But it was also Chuck’s saviour if he opened the damn thing.

Director Robert Zemekis has repeated over and over again what the package’s contents actually were…  And like I say, it’s ultimately cynical when you hear it:  A water proof, solar powered satellite phone.

By not opening the package, Chuck transitioned from a career-orientated, overweight busy-body to a bare bones human, content to just be alive.  The package itself is a salvation device in a figurative sense.  He found himself by getting away from the things of man.  But if he opened it… It would be his salvation as well.

And that’s the what-if:  What if Chuck Noland had opened the Angel package while he had been stuck on the deserted island?

Forget the arty context that I cited about transitions in being and what not.  Wouldn’t it be a huge adventure of a movie just to be rescued from an island?  Not that someone stumbles across you, but that miraculously ftype of escape?

I see it like this:  It might not be in the first week or two, or three that Chuck opens the package.  Or maybe it is…  He finds the product and has the “EUREKA!” moment, knowing he’s saved…  But how the hell do you operate the thing?  Do you have to have a credit card in order to use it/sign up for it for the first time?  This alone could cause a bit of a complication.

And then, the bigger issue:  you get the phone to work, you get it charged up and ready to go and…  who the hell do you call? He’s going to try calling his girlfriend, Kelly Fears, to assure her that he’s alive…  But that brings up another trivial issue that would effect things:  The time difference between his deserted island location and Memphis, Tennessee (where she lives).

That, and the amount of time between the plane crashing and Chuck opening the package.  Kelly moved and married.  It’s not like she keeps her same phone number the entire duration of the film.  But for a time – she will be where she was, and be reachable…

Just what-if?

Even calling his girlfriend doesn’t necessarily get the wheels moving in getting home.  And when those wheels do start moving, there is the story of the entire rescue operation, of Chuck’s return to society and his return home.  Just what happens to Chuck if he were rescued by way of that satellite phone?  It’s a movie all unto itself.  An event like that changes people, and we ultimately saw that in the closing chapters of the film.  But just how much does Chuck change if he wasn’t stuck there the full four years?  Just what happens to him if he opens that damn package?  Does he still ultimately lose Kelly somewhere down the line (divorce)?  Does he fear flying once he returns home and demands a job ont he groudn from that point forward?

Really, what if?

This is an example of how the media sometimes gets things lumped on it for setting the narrative.  Stories that are carried, stories that are ignored, angles that are looked at and the “factual” narrative.  I’m not going to even try to take on the general perception of the media and news reporting, by doing it I open myself up to the same criticism after all.

The point of this story isn’t about that at all anyway.  It’s another thing I am noticing that hinders traditional media reports as well as gives a narrative that fans start following, the message that they start following.  It’s their personal relationship with who they are writing about.

Case in point, what just went down with the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday:  Rick Tocchet was fired and some fans are sympathizing with Tocchet.  Why?  The media narrative weeks ago started sympathizing with Tocchet.  He’s a nice guy and was thrown into a tough situation.  Never mind that the general manager for the Bolts, Brian Lawton, was also thrust into a tough situation.  Never mind that both Tocchet and Lawton willingly entered the fray in both cases…  Willingly accepted the tough assignment.  Tocchet was sympathized with by media persons and Lawton was vilified.

I won’t get into some of the drama that brought that on.  That’s what I do at Raw Charge.  What I will get into is the fact that everyone with a direct relationship with Tocchet seemed to be of the sort that thought Rick deserved to be kept around despite a long laundry list of issues the team had under his coaching.   The nice guy remark kept beign repeated.

The point of this story is not Tocchet and Lawton either.

There’s a great movie by Cameron Crowe called Almost Famous.  Maybe you’ve seen it…  It was semi-autobiographical about Crowe becoming a reporter for Rolling Stone while still in High School.   While most of the film is written fictitiously, there is one person from history that Crowe uses as a key character in the film…  Rock critic/journalist Lester Bangs, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in the movie.  Bangs has a few pieces of advice for William Miller (the central  character in the movie) speaking about the rock industry and what happens on the back end.  For instance:

You CANNOT make friends with the rock stars. That’s what’s important. If you’re a rock journalist – first, you will never get paid much. But you will get free records from the record company. And they’ll buy you drinks, you’ll meet girls, they’ll try to fly you places for free, offer you drugs… I know. It sounds great. But they are not your friends. These are people who want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of the rock stars, and they will ruin rock and roll and strangle everything we love about it.

He also makes it a point in this conversation that Miller should pride himself by being honest and unmerciful toward any band he’s covering.  This point is reinforced after Miller becomes friends with the band he is traveling with through the movie, Stillwater:

My advice to you. I know you think those guys are your friends. You wanna be a true friend to them? Be honest, and unmerciful

This is the point to the story.

There’s enough evidence to say that a coach wasn’t all that he was cracked up to be.  It’s a long season and following a team in person and closely, you’re going to forge bonds with people involved and overlook failings.  This is true with music as much as it is with sports:  you tour with the band and you get to know the guys and the girls who are involved.  You want them to do well personally because they are your friend, but at the same time – your job is to report the facts and mix in your opinions.   You can angle a story to gain favor but your job isn’t to gain favor – it’s to report.

This afternoon there was another case of overlooking-facts-for-favor media narration, specifically tied to the Lightning, via Twitter.  Hockey journalist Stan Fischler threw his hat into the ring talking up Jay Feaster as a GM candidate.  Despite Feaster’s sketchy record as a GM and inability to secure the position with another club since his dismissal from the Bolts in 2008, Fischler crowed how Jay would be a good candidate to resume the job.

How much was that remark influenced by the fact Stan knows Feaster?  Or that Feaster has been involved in the media since he left the team?  It’s back scratching, but it’s a mixed memo that’s being repeated by people who know Feaster and have worked with him.  You can see some fans take up the mantle of what media are suggesting in how they repeat Jay is a serious candidate.

Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinions.  Seldom we overlook things – creatively, talent wise, intellect wise, artistically — because we generally like the people involved.  Everyone has their right to do this…  But when you are in an influential spot in the media, it’s different.  You’re setting the message and the narrative among the masses.  There are times where the messenger is indeed guilty of a crime, usually crony-ism, in reporting from personal opinion and trying to grab favor by doing it.

Whatever the case, I’ve neglected Stonegauge for a very long time.Honestly, it’s easier for me to re-tweet something on Twitter or to post on my profile at Facebook than post on Stonegauge, which goes to the general masses.

Maybe it’s my audience here?  Or maybe it’s just the fact the world has moved on.  Whatever the case, my posts on this site have been few adn far etween.  Maybe that will change, or maybe it won’t?  We’ll see.

Dear Jay Leno:

You knew for FIVE years you were losing your late-night gig. Then you pushed anyway to remain on TV in a later-evening fashion. I do not buy into the “not my fault” “everyone’s angry” bullshit coming from you. I buy into you being happy being paid, and no matter who gets hurt, Jay comes out on top.

For the record, I stand with Conan O’Brien. Whee he goes, what he does — I’ll support him.

And as for Jay Leno? His humor has never worked for me – stand up, or as a variety show host. NBC shot themselves in the foot keeping him out of fear about what he’d do with a rival. They ruined their own late night schedule because of it.