deaths of a sniper and a swine, this time...

BUT NOT ONLY - death comes in threes, after all - READ ON...
Left: Boom-Boom in action. Yeah, just like the Rocket, he seemed possessed by a demon when he was playing! Must be some adverse side-effect of wearing that scarlet letter, the CH... Boom-Boom had joked, in a press conference once, that he always had had it backwards (he had shown his folded CH jersey upside down) and backwards is the devil's way all right... Note that they also nicknamed Guy Lafleur "le démon blond"... so maybe there's something to it all, eh? Anything is pôssible - as Boom Boom himself would have said! Bring out the exorcist with the hearse...

How strange is it that Bernard "Boom-Boom" Geoffrion passes away on the very day that the damn Montréal Canadiens were to honor him -finally - and retire his jersey (to be placed next to his fellow Canadiens hero and in-law too, #7 Howie Morenz!) And how doubly strange that, on the day that Bernard "Boom-Boom" Geoffrion passed away at the age of 75 (while battling a cancer) an apartment building on Ste-Catherine Street burned to a crisp? St.Cath is the street where he used to play hockey, in the old Montreal Forum, now a Cineplex I do believe... Corner of Atwater and Ste. Catherine, to be very specific, is where Boom-Boom and the gang would play - and down St.Cath they would parade with the Cup, on each year that they'd win it. The Forum was always, reputedly, chock-full of ghosts; "les fantômes du Forum" that usually haunted the visiting clubs. And a building there burns to a crisp today... What can it mean? Will Boom-Boom be incinerated? Or is his ghost so mad that he will be missing -in corporeal form anyhow he will- the ceremonial retiring of his jersey number 5...?  He did have what they call down there "un tempérament bouillant'' for darn sure!  And this was something he had wished for ever since the first time he had retired from the game (and certainly the second and final time, in the late 60s). Boom-Boom was known to have quite a tempestuous character all throughout his career and long after it too; no one wanted to make him mad! Yes, he had quite the vicious streak (though not as vicious as the Rocket, who got way out of line once and paid the price with a lengthy suspension that only foolish biased French-Canadian fans decried as "unfair"...)

Boom-Boom's biographer, on the other hand, says that the Canadiens organization messed up "a little bit" by not honoring Boom-Boom months ago... when they could have and HE could've shown up (he resided -and passed away- in Atlanta, where he had coached the lowly Atlanta Flames, see? He was also the coach of the Canadiens in 1979 - a disappointing experience that saw him resign after only 20 games. No Canadiens coaches like to lose a single game to the Bruins, it seems... As if the "CH" should be allowed to steal them all... But I digress...)
I say that the Canadiens organization messed up, yet again, BIG TIME. Since 1972, Boom-Boom has been in the Hall of Fame (hmm... '72... the year the Bruins won the Cup! Also the year that Boom-Boom got to start coaching the Flames - and to become rooted in Atlanta, despite his thick French-Canadian accent - il faut le faire!) Hence, the Canadiens' sorry excuse for an organization had over 30 years to retire his jersey... and only now will they do it - ON THE DAY HE DIED! Really, they should have retired the #5 jersey a long time ago, when Boom-Boom was still in top shape and cracking jokes! Boom-Boom was the life of the party - so much so that one could even forget which execrable organization he belonged to and, in his own words, "gave his life to" (although he made his comeback in the sixties as a player with the NY Rangers - the first team he coached in the NHL too! Another Canadiens "icon" [term very loosely used here] Guy Lafleur, old Flower Power himself, followed his footsteps in that he also made a comeback [as a pale shadow of himself] in a Rangers uniform... and in a Quebec Nordiques uniform too! Boom-Boom's very first coaching experience, after retiring from the Canadiens line-up, had been in Quebec too - in the AHL. Conclusion: Lafleur is a Boom-Boom wannabee. With only a tenth of the personality! But that's another story...)

In many ways, Boom-Boom reminded me of my uncle Gil. A bit loud, a bit sarcastic... but with a heart of gold. A gregarious gatherer. All about the team, the family first - not selfish one iota, and yet proud! Quite the character, in other words... One of his old chums said about him, on the very day that he died too, that Boom-Boom had a big mouth and didn't know when to shut it! He made a lot of enemies that way - as much as he made friends with his sense of humor! Boom-Boom, he added, was also a very vulnerable guy and his "protector" in that (to help him block out criticism and go forth with the task at hand; which was a no-brainer since it was simply one thing - score goals!) was one Jean Béliveau. Throughout his career, Boom-Boom was a target. Especially the year that he won the scoring championship while "the Rocket" Maurice Richard was suspended. The Rocket, of course, was an idol of millions of feeble-minded Québécois...

Boom-Boom was to the Rocket what Barney Rubble is to Fred Flintstone. (Hmm... maybe I should use the Honeymooners characters for this analogy here... I always was an Art Carney fan! But then I could not logically lead this piece into my next point, which is...) Makes me wonder if Boom-Boom did not inspire the Bam-Bam character...! Another question that will likely never have an answer...

As for the swine who died on the very same day as Boom-Boom Geoffrion, a world away... it is Slobodan Milosevic, of course. Hence, the Serbian Monster escapes justice, for his trial cannot go ahead now, evidently. One can be honored post-humously (when it doesn't even matter anymore for the chief concerned party...), but no one will be found guilty of anything after they've just kicked the bucket! Slobo here will therefore go six feet under officiously as an "innocent" of all charges laid against him, for no court of "law" was able to find him guilty... They must have procrastinated a bit far too long, just as the Montreal organization did whether to honor Boom-Boom or not, whether to dishonor Slobo or not...? Well, we already knew that our earthly judicial system was flawed...
Ironically enough, I see more parallels elsewhere... as Slobodan escaped justice through the backdoor, so did one Gourgen (don't wonder why the name isn't familiar - he's a nobody!)
I only wish it had been the exact same door... if you get what I am screaming!
Oopsy-do... am I going too far? Just like my Boston Bruins' defenseman Nick Boynton, who made a throat-slashing gesture in the face of one Canadiens punk Mike Ribeiro (a Portuguese-descent, much to Portugal's shame. There are greater shames in Portugal and around the globe though... darker ones too.) Gee - Nick wanted to spark his team by killing off a punk! What's so wrong with that? The WCW Four Horsemen's own Enforcer, Arn Anderson, used to make the exact same gesture all the damn time - and he had no shame at all! It's more like a trademark, really! And Nick Boynton gets suspended today, without pay, for THAT? Oh well... he will watch the long-overdue jersey-retiring ceremony for Boom-Boom on a giant screen while quietly sipping a beer, instead of helping his team defeat the Islanders - that's all!

I would be remiss if I did not make mention of another modern martyr, Tom Fox, who was found to be dead indeed officially today. He had been killed days prior to that though - at the very least. I will get back to that sad story, either here or on The Luminous Blog. The Christian Peacemakers are admirable... and their efforts are as if for nothing.

And to think that there are idiots out there who think that Christians are not being killed TODAY - and that they only cause harm actually! 

Tom Fox died for PEACE - try doing at least that on your way out, atheistic a-holes!