It’s wet and stuff

On a Salary Dump Friday, a little bloggin’ while we wait out the raindrops down the hill from the Bowl:

Congrats to Chris Botta on his new gig.

The ECHL announced that the NHL has hired referee Francis Charron. Charron has worked five Bridgeport games, including the one against Portland Jan. 31 where he called two penalty shots in the first period. The first was the second game in Portland in March ’08, and he’s mentioned briefly in that extensive blog post. He has called 38 total power plays in those five games. So first impressions lean toward positive.

Jacques Demers’ fascinating life story rolls on: He has been appointed a Canadian Senator.

Interesting piece on how the Globe prepared its Ted Kennedy obit; the Washington Post‘s Post Mortem blog notes that the reporter who first wrote it isn’t with the paper anymore. When I first got to the Post, I learned that we had a massive obit package prepared for Joe DiMaggio. In late 1998 and early 1999, there were several times it appeared he might be on his deathbed; he fought back from the brink in all cases but, naturally, one . We joked, darkly though it was, that we might have to add taglines to the stories: “Joe Schmo now works for the Walla Walla Watchman.” “Abel Baker is now a teacher in Kalamazoo.” “John Doe died in 2005.”

And this might be even more inside-baseball for the media crowd than that obit story, but this Blogslot post cracked me up*.

Second Avenue Sagas pens an ode to the 9 train.

And RIP, John E. Carter.

*-If you need a cheat sheet: Many papers put columnists’ headshots next to their columns. See Chris Elsberry’s columns for us, for example.

Michael Fornabaio