The_Admiral

Hey, Dean Lombardi is like a brother to his players, unless the player is Mike Richards.

BITCHES DON'T KNOW BOUT MY ESOTERIC BACCHANALIA

Starr and Elkin also had been working for months with Danialle Karmanos on plans for two other celebrations to honor Peter — a formal gala June 8 at Detroit City Airport and an employee event outside the downtown headquarters, possibly at Campus Martius.

Initial plans called for Compuware to pay for events. Paul had approved a combined budget of $1.5 million a few months earlier, after more expensive ideas, such as hiring pop stars Sheryl Crow or Kid Rock to perform, were discarded.

As time went on, Paul — aware of potential criticism — proposed spreading the $1.5 million in expenses over two fiscal quarters.

Only a handful of people inside Compuware knew about the cost of the parties or that Paul had approved the budget — at a time when activist investors were pressuring the firm to cut costs and share more cash with shareholders.

That included most board members. That is, until they received their invitations in the mail for the VIP event.

Board members Henderson and G. Scott Romney, (brother of Mitt Romney), would later say that Paul erred in authorizing company funding for a gala at City Airport.

The invites arrived in foot-long black envelopes with white cursive lettering, announcing "the pleasure of your company is requested at an Esoteric Bacchanalia for Peter Karmanos, Jr." The attire: "Gown & Gloves; White Jacket Tuxedo"

​Alarm bells went off for Henderson and others: "My wife received the invitation and when she opened it, she said, "You're never going to believe this,' " Henderson later recalled.

Henderson conferred with Compuware board chairman Bedi and another director. Bedi phoned Paul that morning in the Bahamas and said the company couldn't be financing such extravagance when employees were being laid off.

Henderson, who headed GM during the automaker's Chapter 11 bankruptcy and U.S. government control in 2009, immediately saw a potential problem in funding a pricey-looking party when Compuware was a takeover target, laying off workers, and drawing criticism from activist investors for spending too much money.

"I felt like it sent exactly the wrong message," he said. "You almost couldn't do anything worse if you're in an activist campaign but to have an event like this which would undoubtedly be covered publicly."

Board member Grabe, a former IBM executive, also was jarred by the party invitation, which he recalled was the size of a license plate.

"My reaction was, geez, it's over the top," Grabe said.

In fairness, I've never known an esoteric bacchanalia to be low-key.

That he's in Raleigh specifically to be their angel of death isn't wholly beyond the NHL's usual ridiculousness.

I'd rather see them go back to Hartford, but Hartford doesn't have its act together and probably never will. At least this would keep the same 16 teams in the East and thus keep the world from ending. The league doesn't need Raleigh; no league does.

That crappy ice is gonna make the Sharks 5% slower. Why don't they just make it a tripleheader with The World's Best Rec League while they're at it.

Why use Robo-Penguin as a secondary when you can use Pittsburgh's coat of arms?

My mileage varies like a Hummer and a Prius.

Yeah, all those bands like Chevelle and Shinedown and stuff are bilge.

I have listened to WLUP on and off my whole life. I like a lot of classic rock, but disliked the few times when the Loop went to a classic rock format and stopped playing anything made after the '80s. I mean, the Beatles are great, but I don't want to hear them (or Buffalo Springfield) on the Loop. I really liked Rock 103.5, and the Loop became my default radio station for a while after they changed formats. I dislike a lot of what they played on Q101, at least the softer stuff which they wouldn't have played on 103.5. And plenty of cynical people dislike Van Halen and claim their music is devoid of substance.

I always listened to either WLUP or The Drive. When I was a youngin' it was Wiil Rock out of Waukesha. Mandatory Metallica Mondays was my thing.

WIIL Rock is out of Kenosha and sucks. Music for high school weight rooms.

Well, when I listened, they didn't play much after the '80s other than Nirvana, Pearl Jam up through Vitalogy, and some U2, which was fine for a 16-year-old who thought that was when rock rocked. I think they went to more of a rock-for-scumbags format when I was in college, and then walked that back into playing Buffalo Springfield and Jackson Browne and all that stuff the high-revenue "adult" stations play. I just wanna Get The Led Out!

This tangent should probably get reassigned to a radio or music thread. Oh well.

I listened to WLUP all through high school, and who doesn't like Van Halen?

What about that other singer for Van Halen that we always forget about?

The current uniforms = Gary Cherone

Another one about the NFL:

I like the old Chargers jerseys better than the new ones. Something about how that lightning bolt looks on a darker background. I just think it's cool.

It is cool. I don't think it's unpopular to like the navy blue Chargers. The powder blue is really great, but the navy blue is still great, too. It's like Van Halen and Van Hagar.

The simpler Buffalo's uniforms, the better. Buffalo doesn't strike me as a very modern place. Why should their uniforms be? Let it forever be 1979 (cool tankjobs never have the time).

Is Canada considered a "large" country? Do they base that on population or geography?

Well, they're in the G7. A dual France-Germany bid would probably be frowned upon for more or less the same reason.

They have some steel mills, some urban decay, and a big hill. There's not that much to work with. "Hamilton Tigers" sounds good.

Have we gone over how Quebecor is already paying the freight on the TV deal and pissing them off wouldn't be a masterstroke of business?

Well, maybe you shouldn't have chased out the English and built a taxpayer-funded arena on spec.

Let's be fair: these are two very separate issues! There were never that many English to chase out of Quebec City in the first place. I think there are still some in the Eastern Townships, though. And yeah, it sucks that Quebecor didn't just build the spaceship themselves, but the Colisee was a public building and it was a piece of crap that no one wanted to use for anything. It's 66 years old and consists of a series of haphazard renovations (but possibly still no air conditioning). The spaceship somehow came in under budget, and now the city can run a full schedule of hockey and concerts and whatever else they were missing out on before. All things considered, the whole deal could have gone a hell of a lot worse for the city and province.

From my shoddy napkin math, Quebec City will actually be more valuable to the league than Winnipeg. Their arena is bigger and features more filthy-rich luxury suites, there are more people within a 50-mile radius of downtown QC than in Winnipeg, and presuming a broadcast region coterminous with Montreal's, Quebec's regional telecasts will reach more eyeballs than Winnipeg's: raw population of about 10.5 million people in the former, about 3.3 in the latter, which includes Nunavut, for Christ's sake. On top of that, I would expect TVA to program as many national games for the Nordiques as they can, much like the Canadiens did with RDS.

I don't care that Nordiques fans would have crappy sanctimonious attitudes. All hockey fans have crappy sanctimonious attitudes; it's what we do. Perds fans have crappy sanctimonious attitudes and all they've ever done is draft some defensemen and learn to chant "power play!" together.

Speaking of RSNs, that's an issue that no one seems to be addressing with Las Vegas. It'd probably end up being a subchannel of Fox Sports West, and would only cover Las Vegas, Reno, and the secret government FEMA camps. I don't think it would be a very hot property. God, even Hartford would thump Las Vegas in the RSN business (CSN-NE, presumably, delivering all of New England minus Fairfield).

The Wings fans who believe Atlantic Detroit must be preserved at all costs make it sound as if it would be permanent. Of course, what do they know.

You seem rather anti-Quebec as of late.

Separating Quebec City (which would be the easternmost city in the league) from Montreal and Boston because we can't hurt the Red Wings' delicate feelings is beyond geographic quirks and just flat-out dumb.

I'm still pissed about that Zosia Mamet crack.

Then they'll move the Coyotes to Las Vegas in 2017 and tell Quebec City to go screw itself. There's going to be an NHL team in Las Vegas; they've been obsessed with it for years. The only question left is whether we get sugar with our medicine.

You have got to be :censored:ing kidding me! Where is the compromise? What do the Coyotes give up?

Their subsidy in 2016-17, most likely. Also, the Coyotes had to fire the former Glendale employees as a condition of the agreement. lol.

This won't kill the team, of course, it'll just create a new brink for someone to pull them back from. This team makes the St. Louis Blues look like a model of stability.

Zosia Mamet will still be given free admission to "Bark in the Park" night.