HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-01-10, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2013. PAGE 5.
My friend Arnie is an investment
speculator. Every time he buys a
pack of Marlboros he scoops up a
handful of lottery tickets as well. “I figure it’s
only a matter of time,” he says.
Did I mention my friend Arnie is an
optimist? Sub-species delusional? Any Vegas
gambler could tell him he’s got a better chance
of dying from cigarette-induced lung cancer
than winning a lottery jackpot, but Arnie isn’t
looking for reality; he’s dreaming the dream.
Still, chasing moonbeams is better than
catching one. Buying lottery tickets is a
harmless enough waste of time, the real
trouble starts when you win. Ask Jack
Whittaker.
Unfortunately it would cost Arnie $15,000
just to ask Jack Whittaker the time of day.
That’s what Whittaker charges now to talk
publicly to anyone. Not that anyone’s lining up
to pay.
Jack Whittaker doesn’t need the money. He
knows all about winning lotteries. He’s the
king. On Christmas Eve back in 2002 he
bought a one-dollar Powerball ticket at a
convenience store in West Virginia. He woke
up the next morning to discover he had won
just won the jackpot: $315 million.
Followed by six zeroes.
Did it change his life? Well, I guess. He was
already a moderately wealthy man with a
plumbing business and over 100 employees,
but still. Three hundred and fifteen million
dollars....
Actually, after taxes and opting for a one-
time payout rather than 30 years of
installments, Whittaker’s take withered to
about $93 million – but hey!
First thing, Whittaker gave $100,000 to the
owner of the convenience store where he
bought the ticket. Then he bought a brand new
Jeep for the clerk who sold him the ticket. And
what the hell? He wrote her a cheque for
$123,000 so she could buy a house too.
Ninety-three million dollars? Whoo-ee! He
donated $7 million to build two churches;
another $14 million to the Jack Whittaker
Foundation, to help the needy. He paid for a
little league park to be built. He bought
himself a helicopter; sent his wife on a trip to
the Holy Land and bought his beloved
granddaughter Bragg not just one new car but
five of them.
The money brought a lot of changes to Jack
Whittaker’s life. It also fostered attitudinal
changes. Whittaker had always been a
flamboyant party guy in his trademark Stetson
and braying laugh. Ninety-three million
dollars ramped ‘flamboyant’ up to ‘obnoxious’
and ‘party guy’ to ‘troublesome drunk’. He got
arrested. A lot. Mostly for drunk driving but
also for disorderly conduct and unlawful
possession of firearms. His reaction was
always the same. “It doesn’t bother me
because I can tell everyone to kiss off. I won
the lottery.”
His wife of 42 years did kiss off, filing for
divorce after Whittaker had been exposed too
many times in too many strip clubs next to
women who weren’t Mrs. Whittaker. His
former friends drifted away too, replaced by
foxy ladies, good-time Charlies and other riff
raff of the leech persuasion.
For Jack Whittaker, everything went south
after he won the lottery. Even his beloved
granddaughter Bragg turned sullen and bitter.
As the favourite relative of the biggest lottery
winner in history, she also became a magnet
for opportunistic low-lifes. At 16 Bragg went
into rehab to treat her addiction to Hillbilly
heroin – Oxycontin. In 2004, barely two years
after Whittaker’s win, Bragg’s drug-riddled
body was discovered wrapped in a plastic tarp
and stuffed behind a junk car.
Jack heard about it over the phone. He was
in rehab for alcohol addiction at the time.
Now it’s 10 years later and Whittaker,
surveying the ruins of his life, says he wishes
he could travel back in time to tear up that
ticket and throw away the pieces.
Good deal for the folks who run the
Powerball Lottery though. They made sure the
papers and TV stations got good photos of
Jack receiving the monster cheque; and of Jack
riding through New York in a stretch limo; and
of Jack and his wife Jewel being interviewed
on The Today Show the morning after. That’s
the kind of publicity that sells a lot of lottery
tickets.
As for Jack’s business, his marriage, his
health, his dead granddaughter, well... What
was that phrase the U.S. Military used to use
when they accidentally bombed a few
Vietnamese or Afghan or Iraqi civilians? Oh,
right: collateral damage.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Can’t lose if you don’t buy a ticket
It was my girlfriend Jess’s dream that “Fans
Lockout the NHL” be a headline if and
when the lockout was settled. Well, here we
are and now it’s a headline, but is it a true
headline? I fear that it isn’t.
Over 100 days were spent talking tough. The
players said the owners didn’t care about the
game of hockey, the owners said the players
weren’t playing fair. However, the majority of
the talk came from fans.
One of the most memorable moments of the
past three months was during a press
conference conducted by NHL Commissioner
Gary Bettman. Bettman dutifully answered
questions from members of the media when
the scrum was interrupted by some hockey fan
with nothing better to do than stand in front of
some New York City hotel and beg Bettman to
talk to a “fan” as opposed to the players or the
owners. This, unfortunately, is the problem:
fans who need hockey to function.
The NHL has proven to be like an absentee
father. For a few years he might be great, but
then, without any warning, he’ll just take off
for a year, leaving you without all of the every-
day wonders that a father can provide.
But when he returns, what does he come
equipped with? Presents.
So the NHL, both the players and the
owners, have treated their fans like monkey
meat for nearly four months. They’ve blown
through deadlines like the All-Star Game and
the Winter Classic (the latter was of particular
interest to those in southwestern Ontario
thanks to the inclusion of the Toronto Maple
Leafs and, for those in the western portion of
the province, the Detroit Red Wings).
But they’re back now and with them they’ve
brought presents. The present, of course, is
hockey. And we’re meant to forget all that the
last four months have given us. Not bloody
likely, right? Wrong.
Everyone is over the moon about hockey and
unfortunately it seems like hockey will feel no
residual effects from this four-month stand-off.
Every single one of my friends who had been
talking tough, saying they didn’t even miss
hockey and that when it comes back they
wouldn’t watch were the first ones to trumpet
the news of the lockout’s end. They’re just
happy to see the puck back on the ice they say,
but they don’t see the bigger picture and the
message that they’re sending to the NHL.
Forget that a 48-game schedule seriously
compromises the integrity of the competition
for the Stanley Cup, players are now whining
that this is too quick of a turnaround for them
to prepare for a season. What exactly have they
been doing for the last four months? And if our
hearts are supposed to bleed for them when
they’re not playing, and now they’re supposed
to bleed for them now that they are playing,
when can we stop feeling sorry for them?
There’s a great Seinfeld analogy from a
conversation between Jerry and George talking
about “hand” in a relationship, referring of
course to the “upper” hand. George wants the
hand, because he’s never had it before.
Well in the relationship between sport and
fan, fan always has the hand, too often I think
we forget that.
Perhaps if fans didn’t rush back to arenas to
watch what the NHL is going to pass off as
hockey for the next four months, the league
would learn that constant labour negotiations
and work stoppages damage its image, and
ultimately, their product, but like the absentee
dad, both sides of the NHL walk away with
their heads held high, ready to clear a spot on
their mantle for the forthcoming Father of the
Year trophy.
Fans lockout the NHL
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
So, reliable readers of The Citizen,
where were you in the wee hours of
Jan. 3? Were you, like me, sitting
agape in front of your televisions (or
computer) wondering just how Team Canada,
with a lockout in effect, could play so poorly
that they would let our southern neighbours
trounce them 5-1?
I stared at my computer in disbelief as the
final minutes played out. I wondered how, with
all that talent, we could fail at playing our
game.
Then I realized, the lockout isn’t Canadian.
The lockout may hit Canadien... er Canadian
fans and businesses the hardest, it may have
the biggest effect on Canadians, but it isn’t a
situation bred by Canadians and it isn’t one
that any true Canadian would want to
continue.
I know Canadians. I read countless news
stories about Canadians every week and the
majority of them like being at work I think.
They probably wouldn’t know what to do with
themselves if they couldn’t do their job.
So this strike, it isn’t a Canadian thing, and
that means that all the teams had an advantage.
Does it matter that our southern neighbours
beat us? In the short term I guess it does. They
like it when they win, they think it puts them
one up on us for beating us at our game. It may
sting, but look at that sentence, even if we lost,
its still our game. Regardless of who we face
off against and the result of the game, it will
always be our game and that’s not because
we’re consistently the best at it.
It’s our game because we breathe it, we eat
it and we live it and that’s why we’re the best
at it when we are. Sure, we may lose every
now and again, and sure, kids these days seem
to be gravitating to broomball... the virtues of
which I will not spend time debating, but it
doesn’t matter. Until my generation doesn’t
exist anymore, hockey will still be the domain
of Canada, even if we get drummed out of
every World Juniors Championship from now
until I’m pushing up daisies.
Every team in the World Juniors benefitted
from the fact that those primadona players,
whiny coaches and that troll of a man Gary
Bettman were holding up yet another season of
the National Hockey League so it should be
expected that there will be more competition at
the event.
Regardless of where you want to place the
blame, the United States team on the ice that
morning was completely different than the
team Canada handily defeated earlier in the
tournament.
Like last year, we were left hanging our
heads in disappointment. Unlike last year,
there was no rallying cry to make the game
exciting.
One might read that and think that I’m down
on the game. I’m not. Until the NHL season
starts, any higher calibre hockey is good, even
if it is 4 a.m. Sure, I would’ve loved to see a
win, but, like I said, none of the headlines or
pundits will ever say “The United States takes
over as the nation of hockey,” the worst they
will say is that they beat us at our own game.
That’s fine. I can handle being beat at my own
game in an annual tournament because there
will always be another one. I can handle the
few friends I have from south of the border
poking fun at me because I was so excited to
watch Canada sweep all the way to the gold
medal round. What I can’t handle are the
people berating these junior players.
Let’s face it, even before the NHL lockout,
hockey was on a descending slope. It’s a world
where the antics and accolades of people like
Paul Henderson and the Hanson Brothers
(somewhat fictional as they may be) are
unknown to many youngsters, and that’s a
dangerous world for the pastime.
One only needs to look at how the fans
identify the players to know that the
involvement just isn’t there anymore. Instead
of the nicknames of my childhood (and a little
bit before) like The Great One, Number Four,
The Rocket, Super Mario, Mr. Hockey, Satan’s
Wallpaper, Saint Patrick, The ‘Bulin Wall,
Mario Jr., The Golden Jet, the Golden Brett,
Grapes, Captain Canuck and Stevie Wonder
(and that list could go on and on), we now have
The Kid and Alexander the Great... really,
those are the only nicknames that come to
mind (and I prefer Sydney Crosby’s other
moniker, Criesby).
So what I’m getting at here is beggars can’t
be choosers. I may say I’m unhappy that we
lost, but I certainly won’t berate the players for
their performance.
I have read the various reviews of the game
from Canadian hockey analysts and that’s
exactly what they did; talked about what every
single player did wrong. It’s in human nature
to believe you can do something better, but,
unless we’re talking about St. Patrick
critiquing Subban or Super Mario giving a few
pointers to Criesby, I don’t think anyone can
know how it feels, beyond the members of the
2013 Canadian IHF Junior team, to step on to
the ice against a perennial rival with the hopes,
fears and, if the worst-case scenario is
realized, the apparent scorn of an entire nation
on the line.
I can’t say I wouldn’t crack under that kind
of pressure, then again I can’t say I’ve ever had
the opportunity. If I was out there, I’d do what
I do whenever I play hockey; dump, chase,
hope to catch some fool with his head down
and pray for the best. That’s all any of us can
ask of the gods of hockey.
Good job Juniors, even if only I think so
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den