After My Own Heart

This week was really a topic dear to my heart, hockey in popular culture! So Kevin and Phil started off the class talking about hockey music, movies, books, stamps and various collectibles, which was cool! I learned that Jean Claude Van Damme was in a hockey movie ("Sudden Death" 1995), and that Keanu Reeves played a goalie in another one ("Youngblood" 1986). Really got to get myself copies of those! Oh, and John Wayne was even in a hockey movie in 1931 called "Idol of the Crowds" and apparently he really couldn't skate and was crashing into the boards all the time! LOL

So yes, lots of interesting things! Oh, I also learned that Phil collects hockey stamps! His collection's pretty neat, I mean, even countries that you wouldn't think of as playing hockey (and sometimes actually don't play hockey) like Tchad or Guyana have hockey stamps! Really, who knew?

The guests were fun too. Rey Sandre had a lot of interesting insights on the way collecting hockey stuff (cards, memorabilia, etc.) has changed. It was kind of ironic actually, because he brought up the issue of card companies chopping up jerseys or goalie pads and stuff to make cards, and what that means from a museum's (like the HHOF)point of view, and then I talked to Kevin later about bringing by my Kaberle cards so he could get a better look at them, and of course I've got jersey cards! Not only do I have them, I really like to get jersey cards! Not to mention I've got that Terry Sawchuk jersey card, which is kind of different from having a modern/current player's jersey card, because players nowadays know about the collectors market and kind of help it by wearing multiple jerseys for special games (think of Lemiuex or Gretzky on his retirement night) but in the old days, players had to make their stuff last, so memorabilia from "legends" is a lot more scarce! ^^;; It's a tough issue for me, as a collector.

Anyway, Darrin Pfeiffer was a pretty entertaining guest as well. Apparently the real title of his "Wayne Gretzky song" is "The Only Man I'd Ever Have Sex With." =P Isn't that crazy? Apparently Gretzky's wife really loves the song. Oh, but when he (Darrin) actually met Gretzky and he introduced himself, he was reassuring Gretzky that he wasn't a crazy stalker or anything, and he just thought it was a funny song, and wouldn't really want to have sex with him or anything (well, maybe). I mean, he didn't want to have his hero afraid of him! LOL

Oh, and Darrin's a McDonald's hockey card collector too! It was great because he was talking about how he'd try to find that nice manager who'd let him buy like 20 packs without getting food first, and how he'd buy like a hundred packs and end up with stack of doubles just to get that one card, and I could totally understand! ^_^