The Opening Tirade Archive

''Uh, Mr. Burns, you mentioned you wanted an opening tirade?'' -- Kent Brockman, 9F15, Last Exit To Springfield.

Sound file on Ed's Simpsons Sounds page. Episode capsule on The Simpsons Archive.

In past lives, these lists and mini-essays anchored the top of my homepage. In the olden days, when I'd change the top, I'd simply dump what I had up there and replace it with a new one. But early in 1998, I began saving them. And here they are.

One year ago, 9/11/02.
Hersheypark (Arena) Happy, the full version of a column I wrote on the Old Barn, a great place to watch a hockey game.
Exhibit A For All Time, thanking Ron Lauder for forcing Rudy Giuliani to go home. There's other NYC stuff in here as well.
Capital of the World, Sept. 11, 2001, about exactly what you think it's about. God bless my hometown.
88 or '88? If the kid stays healthy, I take it all back. In the meantime, wondering why Eric Lindros is a Ranger for the second time.
Mikael Samuelsson and Christian Gosselin, or, Independence Day, Sorta. About fleeting childhood or something like that.
In Memoriam: Andrew Rogers, a tribute to a guy I never knew, but who brought me back to something I should have known for a long time.
The Spezz-Stakes. Sure looks like it should have been the Cuckoo for Kovalchuk watch. I gotta start trusting scouts the year before the draft rather than three years before.
Keeping the Faith, on why "faithless" electors aren't.
Sweet Absurdity, some thoughts on the greatest election of our lifetime, and why it wasn't just some awful thing to be ended as soon as possible.
The Rest Is Silence, in the same spirit, sort of, as Believe from a year ago, except... Well, let's put it this way. I hadn't felt that much at the end of a baseball season in about a decade...
The Travelogue: Toronto 2000, a day-by-day on my trip to T.O. over the summer. Written partly to change the top, partly so as not to mailbomb my pals about the trip...
Clean Up the Mess Tomorrow, about living for the moment and bitching about the moment later.
For Openers, open letters to several people, most notably ABC for depriving us of the most important 10 minutes of the season.
Count Me Out, a tirade against 4-on-4 overtime in the NHL in 1999-2000.
Teeing off, 18 mini-essays about life in the great wide open in the fall of 1999.
Believe, which gives a nod to Finish Your Credos... below in a tribute to the 1999 New York Mets.
The Guide to the Hacker's Dictionary. It's tongue in cheek, and it's supposed to be funny. Some of it works, some of it is just stupid, but it filled a gap.
Playing the Jumble, another list column on the events of the summer.
Remembering Frank Carrano, a short tribute to a kid I covered in high school hockey.
Five Years Ago: May 27, 1994. Prepared for a mailing list project, it's a long-form version of a game recap for the one of the greatest games ever played.
The Greatest, written on the day the Great One skated off into private life.
Play is onside -- no wait, they're going to replay. One for everyone who's ever had a skate lace in the crease (believe it or not, written months before Brett Hull's shaky Cup-winner).
You might be too much of a hockey fan if..., with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy -- all kinds of things that drive family members and co-workers crazy...
The Rangers shorthanded goal supplemental tirade and the celebratory supplemental top added to the homepage Jan. 10 after they finally scored one...
No. 9 in your program, but..., a tribute to the Greatest Met Never To Win a Damn Thing.
Finish Your Credos and Get To Work!, a rambling statement of what I believe, sorta believe, and believe I can't do, not to mention things that will result in good things...
Sixty-two. Go Figure, late-night reactions to a line-drive home run to left in St. Louis on September 8, 1998.
Recovering from Private Ryan, about your shoulda-been 1999 Oscar-winning movie and its emotional wallop in the gut
And If You Add 32, a numerology joke about the 1994 Stanley Cup Playoffs and our favorite two-double-OT-goal-scorer of all time
A little tribute to Phil Hartman
One Year In, a reflection on my first year pro
The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning, about the Rangers' March 1998 trades
The Nykesha Sales tirade, the one that originally deserved the term ''tirade''
My oh-so-hopeful Olympic hockey column
Since it actually got some responses (it was a bad joke that was supposed to be short-lived, and aren't those always the ones that work for some reason) -- My pop-up essay, written in response to the annoying GeoCities pop-up ad
The Fornabaio Essential Christmas Album, which has sat atop my page the past three X-mases. It's less humorous than light and fun...
The Last iteration of my index page at Columbia, typed up on graduation morning, 5/21/97
Okay, the REAL final, final iteration of my Columbia homepage. This was the cheeky redirect signpost that I stuck up there as I was seeking out new web space (which ended up being GeoCities).
Days to graduation, which I kept up daily on the way home. Just 120 of the longest days of my life.

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Michael Fornabaio---mef17@oocities.com