Monday, November 16, 2009

pity for fleury???

wow, theoren fleury was like the closest thing i had to an imaginary archnemesis as a kid. this tiny little player (well, for hockey anyway. he's about my height) was pesky, annoying and hated by any mildly knowledgeable canuck fan. fleury's new-ish memoir, playing with fire, is the number one nonfiction book in canada. take that, andre agassi! on a side note, agassi's interview with terry gross was pretty surprising. he apparently totally hated tennis! how is that even possible?!

according to his memoir, fleury was sexually abused over a two-year period by his junior hockey coach, then spent the rest of his life succumbing to virtually every temptation: cocaine, alcohol, prostitutes. at one point, he even attempted suicide. i don't really understand how these athletes can abuse their bodies to such a degree yet still manage to outperform any average human being.

in case you thought this was all confessional self-actualization fluff, fleury doesn't disappoint, describing forgotten one-time phenom alexandre daigle as follows: "What a beauty, that guy. He had all the tools, but no box to go with it. Dumb as a post."

haha, god, only if sarah palin could make her memoir half as interesting.

8 comments:

Thumbu Sammy said...

Ha! I remember Daigle and his pretty boy teammate, Yashin. As for hated players, no one was worse than Claude Lemieux and his ratty partner, Mike Ricci.

cold4thestreets said...

Stop it. Both of you. Stop with the hockey. Unless you're talking about The Cutting Edge, which is the greatest movie. Eva.

E said...

not youngblood?

E said...

c4ts, i almost went to fleury's book signing tonight just to spite you, then i realized that i could just, um, post stuff without exerting that level of effort.

sugarpockets said...

no, no! please no more hockey posts! i actually agree with c4ts on this one!

E said...

y'all are such lower case wangs.

Thumbu Sammy said...

Damn, Shanahan retired this week. Who's left, of the nineties heyday?

E said...

TS, i wish i could invite you on as a guest-blogger if only to make c4ts apoplectic.