billso.com

Sports: Playoff Hockey Gets Hairy: ““I’m pretty sure we started that because the Canadiens won the four Cups before that and [Canadiens President Sam Pollock] had a rule that [prohibited] their players from wearing beards,” former Islanders assistant general manager Jim Devellano said. “We didn’t care if they wore a beard or wore their hair down to their [rear ends]. So we had a bunch of guys with beards.”
So do the Tampa Bay Lightning. Of the 25 players on their roster, 18 are sporting beards of one kind or another. Most say they began growing them when the playoffs started and will shave them once the playoffs finish, which could be tonight with the Lightning down 3-2 to the Calgary Flames in the best-of-seven series. ”

Sports: Yahoo! News - Year-round warmth no drag on Lightning in their march toward the Stanley Cup: “An editorial in the Tampa Tribune on Thursday, responding to reports in what it called the ‘foreign’ media that Tampa is not a hockey town, insisted ‘the Bolts are the talk of the town.

‘So yes, we in Tampa may not be quite as obsessed with hockey as Canadians are, but don’t tell us - especially the 22,000 screaming fans attending each game - we don’t have spirit.’ ”

Music: Yahoo! News - Rock Band Creed Breaks Up After 3 Albums.Thank God the pain is over! Creed is a lousy band. Why do they have to keep making more music, however?

USA: Yahoo! News - Robert Ariail. How appropriate. Sooner or later, this baby’s gonna blow. Tenet went yesterday, maybe Cheney will step aside next. He can always blame his “heart problems”, although the Halliburton connections don’t help their cause.

Tech: Yahoo! News - Complaints Over Cell Phone Service Abound: “Consumers complain of frequently dropped calls, lousy customer service and exorbitant penalties for exiting a contract. Then there are the fees - Verizon Wireless plans to collectively charge customers more than $173 million a year in fees for number portability alone.

The complaints range from mundane to dramatic.

After Julie McMurry’s husband died last summer, Verizon Wireless told the Enumclaw, Wash. woman that she would have to pay an early termination fee on his cell phone contract. ‘I said, ‘This isn’t an arbitrary thing, I’d be glad to fax you a copy of the death certificate. The man’s dead.”

The Verizon rep said McMurry could either pay the fee or give the phone to another family member.

She called Carl Hilliard, president of the Wireless Consumers Alliance. “I just happened to be in a meeting with Verizon Wireless’s attorney and mentioned it to him,” Hilliard said. “It was reversed.”
 ”