Boston Bruin Zdeno Chara Auditions for New Version of 'Harvey'
DATELINE: HUMOR!
If you saw a giant pink rabbit in Boston on Halloween weekend, you were not turning into Elwood P. Dowd (played memorably by James Stewart), the luckless fellow who was haunted by a giant pookah named Harvey.
No, you likely saw Boston Bruins giant star and multi-lingual Renaissance man making a charity appearance, cheering up children in a hospital.
Harvey--the invisible giant rabbit--was, of course, according to Elwood, a pookah. That’s a kind of spirit, like a poltergeist.
Zdeno Chara is always a delight and a surprise, the pookah of hockey. His costume showed he is priceless in any of the seven languages he speaks: dobře koupit, horoshaya pokupka, dobry zakup, bra köp, guten kaufen, dobre kúpiť.
He speaks international hockey fluently, of course.
His towering claim as an international Zeitgeist is his proficiency in Slovak (his native tongue), Czech (his father’s tongue), Polish, Swedish, Russian, German, and English.
His English is easy, free flowing, without the trace of an accent to betray the fact he is not born in Southern California.
Now we learn that he may be ready for his closeup as the giant pink rabbit and title character in a new movie version of Harvey.
We have to admit our admiration for any defenseman who holds the hefty Stanley Cup over his head for most of the duckboat ride through the streets of Boston—and into Fenway Park to throw out a ceremonial group first pitch.
We never expected our admiration for his talent and courage would extend to seeing him with pink eye.
No one should question his masculine security in dressing up as a pink rabbit on Halloween. You always find a costume that is not what you are. It’s called irony.
Though we have not been avid as a hockey fan since Bobby Orr’s days, we may have drunk the elixir that makes us see giant pink rabbits in the tradition of Elwood P. Dowd.
Zdeno Chara has made the Stanley Cup the spigot for seeing pink rabbits.
William Russo's newest book is now out, ready for your tablet, your smartphone, your Kindle or Nook. Read RED SOX 2011: A WHIMSICAL AUTOPSY to find a month-by-month examination of the team, showing all the signs of trouble that most sports media missed. His other sports books are SEX, DRUGS, SPORTS & WHIMSY and RAJON RONDO: SUPERSTAR!
