The Tears of the Clown

Everyone has that one "celebrity" whose death hits us harder than it should.
For many in my generation, it was Kurt Cobain. River Phoenix was a big one for others. Len Bias was a great cautionary tale for kids my age.
For me, however, none of them held a candle to Robin Williams. His death hurt. And a week out, it still hurts.
Aladdin is on my TV for the second time this weekend, as Disney is playing the movie in tribute on its various networks. And as much as my son and I laugh while watching, I know we're going to get to the end. And then he'll be gone again, with the heroic, but now tragic, line of "Genie, you're free." And the tears will come once more.
It's hard thinking that a celebrity would cause that kind of emotion. After all, it's not like I knew the man. He was just someone I saw on my TV and movie screens.
But he was more. From Mork to Popeye to the Genie to Mrs. Doubtfire, his manic genius was a huge part of the laughter in my life. How many times did you fire off one of his one liners from a movie? We quote his interactions with the Sgt. Major in "Good Morning, Vietnam" to this day.

Sgt. Major Dickerson: [Pointing to his rank insignia] What does three up and three down mean to you, airman?
Adrian Cronauer: End of an inning?

And it wasn't just those acting roles.
His standup comedy was legendary. Anytime he was on a talk show, it was worth stopping to watch -- even on Jay Leno's show. Look them up -- he's never not funny. I wore out a copy of his Live at the Met performance on cassette tape, and got a second one because I had to have it to listen to in my car. He would crack up fellow comics with his material. Track down some of his Comic Relief bits, as Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg tried -- and mostly failed -- to keep up. And then there was his bit "Inside the Actor's Studio" when he did a 10-15 minute improv riff using a woman's scarf. Epic.
Was everything he did great? No, and not all laugh out loud funny. But he still came back to laughter. And it was always great to see. Even his return to TV last fall on "The Crazy Ones" was funny. But it didn't play to Middle America, and so it didn't get a second season. 
And so I'm left to grieve this man I never met. Like the grieving process for those closest to us, the feeling will pass. But for now, I'd expect a few tears whenever I see his picture or run across him on video. RIP Robin. Thanks for the laughter.

ONTARIO REIGN POST-MORTEM QUOTES

There's only so much room in the newspaper for what was said in my season-ending interviews with the Reign staff. Here's what didn't make the final article:

FROM JASON CHRISTIE

On the season ending the way it did:

“It leaves that empty feeling in your stomach. It’s not what we wanted. It’s tough, even tougher this year with the movements we had, and we thought we had the horses this year. Obviously injuries down the stretch hurt us. Our goaltender sprained his ankle the first game. And we had Parker out. Overall, it was touch just losing Calla and Van de Moss, those guys are proven leaders.”

Injuries played a role, but...

"There’s no excuses. We lost. Give Stockton credit. They had some good players sent down from Bridgeport. And Hunt is probably one of the best leaders in the league. And you win with guys like that. And for us, we couldn’t sustain any pressure.”

On Mario Lamoureux leaving for Europe:

"You want them to play. He didn’t feel like he was getting the opportunity to move up. You’ve just got to move forward. In the ECHL you can’t sit here and dwell on it, you’ve got to move forward. I think we didn’t have a top line center. We were hoping to get DaSilva back, but he wasn’t going to come back. He would have helped. That number one center, we didn’t have that top center. We had good centers, but we just didn’t have that top-flight center to keep up with the Clark’s that they have on the other teams."

On whether we should expect much of the team back next year due to the number of contract players that played for the Reign this year: 

"They haven’t had that here in year’s past. It’s going to be tough for the fans. It’s something that we get affiliation with Winnipeg and L.A., just talking to Rob (Blake) there, it’s something that you will see guys – you want to see guys at the next level. You can’t stop a guy from making more money. You can’t stop a guy from his goal of making it to the NHL. There’s nobody happier in seeing that than myself. When I sit there and I can watch Darcy Kuemper, and obviously Cliffy was here during the lockout, and Hutchinson going up -- when you can see your players play at the NHL, it makes you pretty excited. And that’s everybody’s goal down here, is to be at the next level. And that’s why you have to have depth in your system."

Christie's thoughts on Derek Couture's status for next year:

"Couts is a guy, that’s for us, he’s a captain for a reason. He knows what we like here. It was tough for him to lose the DaSilvas and Callas, that older presence. That’s why we brough Jeremy Yablonski in, just for that older, wily veteran status -- mostly for the locker room. For Couts, we never know in the summer time, we haven’t had one-on-one meetings yet, so I’ll know more tomorrow. But he’s a guy, if I’m going to war, he’s a guy I want on my side."

FROM JUSTIN KEMP, PRESIDENT ONTARIO REIGN

On whether there were too many moves this season:

"I think there’s a lot of opinions out there about what was the reason. I think that may have something to do with it. We really haven’t sat down and evaluated what … what the reasonings were. I think there was more to it than that. But this was a year that we saw more change than we ‘ve ever seen before, which definitely makes it tough to establish a high level of continuity going into the postseason. I thought we went on that ten-game unbeaten streak near the end of the season, that we had sort of turned a corner, and we were playing as a team. And unfortunately, we didn’t see that once we got into the postseason."

I asked if the team's start gave a false sense of security: 

"It’s possible. The first half of the year, we had Hutchinson here in the goal, where he finished the year in the NHL. There were a lot of times at the start of the season, I think, that we felt that he was bailing us out quite a bit. Doing enough to give us the opportunity to win. And there’s a lot of things that happened at the same time mid-season, around the time that he left, we took on a lot new players with San Francisco and there were call-ups and injuries, just a lot of stuff that happened in a few week period that shook things up. I don’t think this first-round early exit was indicative of the team that won the division title this year. That’s tough. I fully support why we worked to get better midseason. We did feel like we were riding a hot goalie, and we didn’t want to feel like we had to rely on that. And unfortunately, all the pieces didn’t come together the way that we hoped."

On the coaching staff's future with the team:

"I still fully support the coaching staff. We have the best coaching staff in this league. Jason is still under contract, and he’s the guy that I want to lead this team. We’re definitely on board with that, and we’ll turn our focus here toward next year. Getting back to making progress, that’s what we set out to do when we hired him. It was get back to the playoffs. We got to the second round for the first time. Now we need to be looking to go beyond that. The goal is to still win a championship. We just need to figure out where maybe we could have done better this year and how we can make adjustments next year so we can get back to where we want to be."

On whether we'll see a core come back or not:

"We try to keep a core of guys. This year, unfortunately, we dealt with injuries as we do every year. But this year was worse by far, especially in the number of head injuries we had. I think we had 17 concussions this year – a lot for any team to deal with. Not to make excuses, that’s not what we’re doing, there was a lot of adversity that followed us throughout the year, despite a good regular season record and despite a lot of changes that were outside of our control."

On Mario Lamoureux leaving for Europe:

"He had an opportunity to play in Europe. Young players, when they get the opportunity to make more money and go abroad, it’s not uncommon. Obviously, we were disappointed, because he was the type of guy who could really help us. He’s an offensive spark out there, and it would have been great to have him in this series. But at the end of the day, it’s a business. A professional athlete has a finite amount of time that they can do what they do."

Missing that spark on offense:

"Some of those guys that we lost, they were spark plugs to this team. I know people are going to have their opinions on why we made it, or was it good for the team. But at the end of the day, every move that we made was an attempt to get better and get stronger. It unfortunately didn’t work out this year. The intent was always certainly there."

THANK YOU, AND REST IN PEACE, ULTIMATE WARRIOR

He knew.
He had to know.
There was no other reason that Jim Hellwig had to make his peace with Vince McMahon and the WWE after all these years.
The Ultimate Warrior was dying. For real this time.
How else do you explain it? In the last year, he came back into the fold and allowed his likeness in the WWE's popular video game series. He got the full DVD documentary treatment. He went into the WWE Hall of Fame. He signed the Legends Contract, which allows his likeness to continue to be used for more DVD's and T-shirts and more and more merchandise (including, but not limited to, that mask he wore in the ring in his now prophetic last promo on Monday Night Raw).
And why would he do all that now?
Plain and simple: Money.
Money for his family. He was dying, and he wanted to make sure they were taken care of.
And it breaks my heart that it came down to that.
This was someone I grew up watching. Playing as a video game character on the old WWF Superstars arcade game (remember when we left our house and paid at 25 cents just for the chance to play a video game). I'd team him and "Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase to cause havoc in the ring. He was the guy whose intensity made him the guy who you knew was going to put on a show.
But as often occurs in an industry where egos run wilder than the Warrior's high octane entrance, Warrior's time in the limelight exploded. Over money, natch. This was still in the days that boys were the boys, before some of the guaranteed money that are built into the contracts of current WWE performers. Drinking, drugs, partying, sharing rooms and rental cars to save money and backstabbing were more the norm if you believe the stories from the era.
And with his physique, the cloud of steroid abuse followed him -- and likely played a role in his estrangement from the McMahon empire in the first place. And, when all is said and done, the abuse he put his body through (steroids or just the wrestling business in general) will have contributed to his premature death.
So while I remain just swimming through the emotions of his death, I'm happy he buried the hatchet and protected his legacy. He deserved it for all the moments of happiness he gave to his Warriors through the years.