POOL UPDATE: BRING ON THE BIG KINDLE

 

How long is it going to take for the people who make newspapers to realize you can’t read them on a plane anymore?

They offer stacks of them for free when you park your car, check in at the airline and go through the gate. Which is all well and good if you’ve got a couple of hours to kill before your flight. But once you’re in the air -- forget it.

Airline seats are now so crammed together, it’s almost impossible not to be in a sexually compromising position with the people sitting next to you, let alone open and/or even try to fold back the normal sized broadsheet.

Put two people in adjoining seats with the Globe and Mail or the National Post and there’s more elbow work than you get from Chris Pronger.

I mean, do I really need an 8x10 front page color glossy of Manny Ramirez like I got this morning? The man’s just another juiced baseball doofus. Why does he need to be on the front page, let alone that big? Or have the steroids made an 8x10 the smallest photo you can take of him?

And speaking of this morning’s Globe and Post – is it too much to ask for the score from a game that ended 8 hours before I got to the airport? I know you guys pride yourself on being more “in-depth” than other media. But hey, there’s no “in-depth” when you don’t have the story in the first place.

What’s the point of being big, wide, unwieldy – AND – empty?

You could shrink your paper, save a few trees, save some ink, save gas on the delivery trucks, and still have room for all those car ads with print too small to read in even the VistaVision version.

I’m also thinking these newspaper guys have picked up the studio script fetish for white space.

Today’s Globe column by Dave Shoalts (who, credit due, said the Coyotes were going bankrupt months ago) is six columns wide, including one column of white space featuring a two line internet poll on who’ll win that battle, Jim Balsillie  or Gary Bettman.

How can any sane editor type person read the comment thread of any Globe article and then decide it’s imperative to print how those dough heads voted in a poll!!??!!

So, big newspapers – thanks for the free copies this morning. But I’ll get my news in a more timely and convenient manner from here on.

And the first airline to supply their passengers with a Kindle gets my business for life.

Anyway – back to the important white space – the ice.

We’re halfway through the Marathon. the games this week have been nothing short of breathtaking in all four series.

This week’s standings in the pool:

1 Brian Stockton 106

1 Michael Foster 106
3 Barry Keifl 102

4 Moviequill 101

4 Will Pascoe 101

6 John Callaghan 97

7 Peter Mitchell 96

8 Wil Zmak 94

9 Mark Wilson 91

10 Larry Raskin 88

11 Scotty William 86
12 Allan Eastman 85
13 David Kinahan 84
14 Jim Henshaw 78

15 Will Dixon 72
16 Denis McGrath 67

16 Daryl Davis 67

18 Jeff Martel 66

Don’t forget to check your early week update from Willis. We might have a couple of victors by then, but something tells me all of the 2nd round series are going the distance.