The Opening Tirade 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