5 Questions (Bartl’s Blog)

There is a lot going on right now… ECHL playoffs, Stanley Cup Playoffs, bin Laden being dumped into the sea and some stupid wedding was held. I’m like a kid with the air rifle in that old arcade game – I’m surrounded by targets of good topics this week. So here are the five biggest questions on my mind right now, if I can just stay off twitter long enough to write them down………

5. When will I get sick of twitter? Is this just a passing fad? Will it go the way of MySpace? (Doesn’t MySpace seem like an ancient memory now? Like when you see a Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots game at a garage sale?)

Here’s the deal. First, I rejected twitter as stupid. Then I capitulated only for the purpose of starting one for the Condors. Then, all of a sudden I became fascinated with it and its innocuousness and now I’m like a full-blown addict. It started out watching Charlie Sheen on twitter, hoping that he’d make reference to our Charlie Sheen Night back in March, then I was tweeting during the game broadcasts, now I can’t even sit at home watching TV at night without feeling compelled to tweet something, like a running commentary about the news of the day.

Only, I can’t really do that with the Condors twitter, so I started up my own. At first I had only two followers – the two people sitting right next to me in the office – so tweeting something was really the equivalent to just sending them a text message. But now I’m around 6 followers. If I can get to 100 I’ll probably feel like Charlie Sheen himself. I can’t even imagine having a couple million people following me, that’s a lot of pressure.

{Editor’s note: Follow the Condors on twitter @condors, we’ll do contests on there throughout the off-season, and that’s where team news shows up first. And yes, if you really want to, mine is @KevinBartl.}

4. Was I wrong about Victoria, or what? Really Victoria? Four straight losses against Alaska??? I’d say I was wrong, but that would be an understatement. You just can’t predict the ECHL playoffs, it’s crazy.

3. Why do we care about the royal wedding? I guess I can thank the Navy Seals for putting a quick end to the coverage of the royal wedding. If I saw one more story on Yahoo! about some stupid hat that some rich chick in England was wearing I was going to throw my computer out the window.

Let me make sure I’m crystal clear on this: the very foundation of our country, the basis for the creation of the United States of America, is built around our overwhelming desire to rid ourselves of the British monarchy. Period. End of story. Now a couple hundred years later we are obsessed with it.

Seriously, Prince William is no different to me than Paris Hilton – someone who looks really good, has a ridiculous amount of money and doesn’t do a thing to earn it. At least her wealth isn’t funded by the tax payers. Can you imagine the outrage if we had to pay half a million bucks a year to cover Paris’ cell phone and internet bill? I know the prince served in the military? But so did Elvis and MC Hammer. It’s not enough on it’s own to let you live in a castle that everyone else has to pay for.

2. Am I sick for wanting to see Osama bin Laden’s body? That depends on your definition of sick. But I think since I hold him responsible for making me inadvertently watch people leaping to their death out of a skyscraper 10 years ago, I kinda just want to make sure he’s really dead.

1. Who do I want to win the Stanley Cup? That’s easy. The Sharks.

A) They’re Californian, B) They impressed me getting through the Kings in the first round, and C) I love the fact that they’re doing this to Detroit. It’s old school stuff… snow the goalie. Listening to commentators rant about how it should be a penalty is a joke. They sound like a bunch of whiners.

Not so long ago it used to be considered reasonable to get punched for doing that to another team’s goalie. Now, they just want to complain to the refs. Really? In the playoffs? Who’s going to call a penalty on that? First off, he’s not even being touched. Are they going to call penalties on name-calling next? It’s definitely NOT a penalty but what it is, is a sign of blatant disrespect. It’s a lack of respect for the goalie, and for the Red Wings because they’re basically saying, “I’m snowing your goalie, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” And they’re right.

Remember that first round match up against the Kings? L.A. really hammered San Jose, pounded them. As we’re watching them against Detroit it doesn’t look like San Jose is soft anymore; it looks like the Kings were a really tough team, which they were. So if the Sharks can keep bothering Howard, keep running over the Wings D, they’ll be good to go. The really tough team is out of the way.

Go Sharks.

Kevin Bartl is the Vice President of Communications for the Condors, and one of the team’s broadcasters. His blog comes out every Tuesday on BakersfieldCondors.com