Daniel J. Hogan's Blog

Yes, the Stanley Cup visited the Michigan Capitol Building last week and thankfully I was able to get a picture of us together--without me having to wait hours in line. I first saw the cup during a trip to the Hockey Hall of Fame many years ago and then once again during the Stanley Cup parade in 2002.


Stanley's Wrangler--sadly it wasn't the dude you see in all the commercials and such.


Stanley on camera in the secret video room (aka "The Bat Cave") where I work.


Stanley on another monitor. You can really see how bent up the top part of the Cup is--it just doesn't look right.


Stanley on public display in the rotunda of the Capitol.


The end of the line to see The Cup. It snaked around a bunch of times inside too (which made getting around for my daily duties interesting), it was very lengthy--which made me happy. I didn't really expect too many people. Sadly, not everyone got to get their picture taken with it. Stanley is on a tight schedule and they packed him up promptly when the time came. I had a friend in line who was only about ten people away from seeing it and spent easily over an hour in line and didn't get a picture taken with the Cup--but I did hear that they lined everyone up on either side of the hallway and slowly walked the Cup down so everyone could at least see it.

In other news, I went to Wizard World over the weekend in Chicago--and well it didn't go as well as I'd hoped. Catching a cold on Day One of a five day trip ain't fun. Details later.

Yesterday was fun:
Found out two copies of The Magic of Eyri were sold. This puts me at 123 sold with 205 copies in print (includes freebies, donations, copies I ain't sold -- don't worry, I don't have 80 copies in my closet, I think only about 5). I've sold six copies online since April (so since my stint at Penguicon), not too shabby. I may not sell a bunch of copies at once, but sales have been pretty steady. I'm still hovering around my ten copies a month average.

I think these two copies were bought on Amazon, because I noticed my ranking changing a bit here and there over the past couple weeks. I really wish Lulu specified who was buying copies from where. Sales that are through non-Lulu channels are all lumped together, be it Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a store buying copies for their shelves through a distributor. I'd really like to know how people are buying copies, especially if a store is buying copies to sell.

Finally got Juno on DVD from Netflix. My only real complaint about Netflix is the difficulty in getting popular new releases right when they come out. Juno has been out on DVD for at least a couple months (or close to it) and it has been at the top of my queue since before its street date. Oh well, regardless I'm excited to watch it.

Oh, and the Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup. Now it is time for my obligatory "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"-and I didn't even have to use my AK."

I had the extreme fortune of going to game one of the Stanley Cup Finals two weekends ago and here are my promised pictures.


a FanFoto of Jon and I (he's the one who gave me the ticket to go). I can't believe (well, yes I can) that they charge you to get these photos from them. I got my curtousy of my screen capture software. Ha! Anyway, we're posing in front of the Gordie Howe statue with Jon's homemade Stanley Cup. I'm wearing my  Vlad Konstantiov jersey from his team in Russia. Jon is wearing a Chris Chelios jersey I think.


Inside the Joe, pre-game. LOTS of Penguin fans. It was a sea of red, white and black. Sorry for the blurry picture, I only have a point and shoot camera.


In our seats, pre-game. We got there kind of early. When asking the usher where our seats were, she added "And be LOUD, there are a lot of Penguin fans up there." That was an understatement.


Lots of Crosbys.


Crosby. Lemieux. Crosby. Lemieux. Crosby.


During game play, 19:10 to go in the first period. It was good to see all the seats filled again. And was it LOUD. Yowza.


Bonus Picture: The girlfriend and I outside Comerica Park this past Saturday. We volunteered at the Detroit Race For the Cure (hence the matching t-shirts. We don't normally dress alike. Honest.).

I read yesterday that Drew Lane, part of the popular Drew and Mike morning radio show on WRIF in Detroit, is leaving. I haven't thought about Drew and Mike that much since moving to Lansing, where WRIF is but a distant memory but I realized yesterday just how sad I was to hear he was leaving.

All through middle school and high school I listened to Drew and MIke in morning, enjoying their silly banter and skits--specfically Cliff Notes Theater (their compressed versions of Titanic and The People vs. Larry Flynt were amazing). And they had the local edge that Howard Stern did not. They would call up the Red Wings and talk to them on the air or Mickey Redmond or the famous prank calls during the playoffs to donut shops in cities we were playing against ("I'm looking for Mr. Royblows? Could you just yell that out please?")

Drew was my favorite and the more talented of the two in my opinon. Mike's 'Butt Mike' and sex jokes got old fast for me, although I did like the 'Don't Stump Mike' game a lot.

Still, this will greatly change the dynamic of early morning radio in Detroit. Drew and Mike have been a powerhouse in my hometown since the mid-90's and I really wonder what is going to happen next. The article I read said that Drew wants to do a syndicated show that is in the afternoon or evening--the early morning routine for him was getting to be too much. I can totally understand that. They were on air at six in the morning, which means they were at the station pretty dang early.

The article also pointed out how Drew and Mike made the WRIF a more popular station and greatly increased its value. They made a ton of money on advertising because the two ruled that spot for the much sought after demographic of males 18 to 54.

As I said this doesn't affect me too much because I'm in Lansing now, but I would try and catch their show whenever I was visiting the D. Listening to their goofy banter reminded me of the simpler days of my life that are long gone.

But don't get me wrong--even with funny radio shows, high school sucked. Srsly. 

I went home to Detroit for the weekend for a family shindig - and it was at a realtive who owns a couple stand up arcade machines (Ms. Pac-Man and a 100 in 1 machine that has a lot of great stuff).
Dad has a trio of machines of his own (original Pac-Man, Golden Tee and some space shooter) that he got for "future considerations" from this guy.

I spent most of the time playing Ms. Pac-Man, because it is one of my favorite games and it had been tweaked so that the li'l yellow lady moves super fast - which is my preferred way to play. One of my younger cousins, didn't get the same joy out of the machine as I did:

Me: "Ha! I almost hit 60,000 [points]! Beat that!"

Cousin: "Big deal...it's only Ms. Pac-Man, who cares?"

Me: "...Oh NO you DIDN'T."

I tell ya, these kids today with their Halos and their Guitar Heroes and their Dance Dance Revolutions...

The high point was watching one of my uncles relive his youth by playing Robotron: 2084 on the 100 in 1 machine. It was a hoot. The machine also had, to my enjoyment, Street Fighter II. It was like riding a bike when it came to SFII - I still remembered all the moves, although my sister - as she always did in the old days -  kept using Chun Li's Lightning Kick. Lame.

Saturday night the Detroit area was blanketed by a bunch of snow, thus putting off my return trip to Lansing until Monday morning. I'm glad I waited, the roads were much better. Someone did get into an accident not too far from me when I was on 696 heading by Royal Oak - they were in the far left lane and spun out, smashing into the barrier wall. Pretty scary.

I made it back to Lansing unscathed, but I hope the people in the accident are OK.