i have to be straight up here: i could give two shits & a piss about hockey. i've never really understood the game & i think i could never get over the fact that it's played on ice. ice implies cold. i hate the cold.
oddly enough, hearing that the pittsburg penguins had won the stanley cup did strike a chord w/me. i'm ashamed to say i have no idea what day george pryor died. i do know that THIS day would have made him very happy. against all odds(& his own personal demons that a lot of us know so well), at one point he was the semi-toast of the town of pittsburg, producing & directing an incredibly popular sports show there. for some reason, he cathected to the penguins. i have no idea why. it's true, the steelers sucked when he was there but the pirates had the "killer b's"(bonds & bonilla)& they had leyland. they lost that incredible game in the nl finals to the braves.
george died alone & way too soon for the most part, which was all his fault. i always thought that george had nine lives & that he'd finally run through them. busted for holding 100 hits of acid at 17yo, he got sent to a halfway house. getting thrown out of university of tennessee for an absurd episode of racist tomfoolery. being fired from channel 3 when they found out he had no idea about tv engineering(which was his job). getting fired from his "marketing & pr" job when they found out he didn't know anything about marketing or pr & then, bringing the company down w/him. skipping town owing various people(including our buddy stanley)money for a ridiculous real estate cable show. there's more, i'm just getting tired remembering. he bounced back from all of that & even more. there was the online trading & the magic kiosk in the mall. there was his loony involvement w/that nut job that writes "conversations w/god." there was congestive heart failure & a tiny one room garage apartment. this was one crazy roller coaster life that added up, finally, to nothing.
i can't say he was a best friend because friendship involves qualities like reliability & trust & compatibility & shared interests & mutual respect & things like that. mike & philip have always had those qualities for me(it's an open debate whether i've had the same for them). georgie was lacking for the most part. on the other hand, george always seemed like a brother to me. he didn't have one & mine were way too old, so i think we kind of worked that way for each other. we shared(literally)women & surf & mindless good times. i remember dona hated george & couldn't understand why i'd have such a "pig"(her word)as a friend. i never really had much of an answer for her, tho i remember when we were visiting george in pittsburg at the height of his "fame," she saw pictures of him as a young man & was flabbergasted. "that's him!!!," she gasped incredulously. at the time, looks meant a LOT to dona. "yep," i replied. i could actually hear her brain recalibrating her opinion of georgie.
george was a golden boy, a real beauty. that's what probably accounts for his nine lives. i actually hate not knowing when he died but hearing that the penguins had upset detroit & won the stanley cup made me miss him, the stupid mindless good times. hell, even sharing women. ok, maybe that most of all.
post scriptum: michael writes, "George died on Tuesday 22 November 2005. Anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, that's how I remember it."
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