Welcome to My Online Website

Whenever you go to a professional sporting event, you experience that growing buzz as you walk towards the building. You start to notice more fans getting onto the train as it gets closer, or you notice more outside patios with lingering fans paying a comparative bargain for their drinks before heading up to scan their tickets at the door. And you can tell they’re fans because so many of them, these days, are wearing jerseys or sweaters sporting their favorite player’s number.

I love that feeling. I’ve been addicted to it ever since my first Los Angeles Dodgers game when I was (I think) nine years old. Seeing thousands of fans all going to the same place my family was going was thrilling, and even scary. The sense of critical mass was palpable, and that’s before I even started to hear the speakers thumping during batting practice as we crossed the parking lot of Chavez Ravine.

That feeling is different at American Airlines Center, but it’s no less special for being less scenic. Just because you walk by sushi joints, gyms, Chipotle, and six different boutique dessert places in the process doesn’t mean you aren’t still joining a throng of delightful degenerates on your collective way to scream at a bunch of rich athletes you don’t really know. Sports are sports, always.

This website is, among other things, my attempt to carve out a space for the conversations I have while walking up to games, or back from them. Basking in that hubub of fandom is special, but not as special as forcing whoever is walking with me to listen to my opining on whatever comes to mind. Nowadays, you get to see the Modano statue out front, you know. I have Thoughts on That Thing! It is mostly very good.

So, this site is gonna be filled with a lot of the sorts of ramblings I used to do for DBD, which is to say it’s gonna be in dire need of editing that will never come. Unlike my stuff at D Magazine, this is going to be a repository for whatever is on my mind. Most of it will be about hockey in some sense, but I have always wanted to have a place where I can save everything I write for posterity and the inevitable criminal trials, and the day before a playoff run is as good a time as any to launch one.

So, welcome! You don’t have to subscribe or anything, because I’m not really trying to monetize anything just yet. Instead, I want this space to be for me, for you. You might even call it…My space. (Note to self: copyright that name.)

So, thanks for stopping by. Check in whenever you can. Maybe we’ll even end up with a commenting community that eventually shouts me down as I attempt to force all of my terrible opinions on the internet. How do digital pitchforks and torches work, exactly? I reckon we’ll find out before long. Cheers!

-Robert