Bøger af Richard Neil Graham

From the foreword: My friend Rich wrote a book. Until he did, I wasn't sure he even had a command of the English language, what with him being born in Canada* and all, and the hockey thing. I hear you get hit in the face a lot. So imagine my surprise when he started posting some of these Graham Cracks for his Facebook friends to proofread... and laugh at, and we did. They were genuinely funny. And some of them were both wise and funny. A few were even true and funny, though to protect his pride, I won't tell you which those are. From the time I first met him I recognized that Rich Graham was a unique character: Intelligent, witty, soulful; a deep thinker, a horrible dresser, and the kind of real friend his own friends can count on to come through for them. But to actually sell a book of funny, one has to be creative as well, and damned if he wasn't. I started collecting my favorites from his very first posts, and was amazed at how clever many of them were. Reading them made me realize my friend Rich was practically brilliant; definitely way smarter than he looked. So instead of wincing inwardly when he said he was going to publish them, as one usually does when a friend announces he is about to make a horrible mistake, I was pleased for him and actually thought it was a great idea. So if you don't like this book, it's probably my fault. While I'm being honest, I should also tell you that I think he mostly wrote it to help him pick up girls, and I only agreed to write this foreword so I could get a bunch of free copies to show off to my family. Rich wanted it to be at least 800 words long, but I've run out of things to say, so just buy this book. You won't regret it, especially when you hear laughter coming from your guest bathroom, where you stashed it so your friends could read it while they were otherwise occupied. Karen Horne The Frozen North (Washington State) December, 2014 *As everybody knows, Canadians only speak Canadian. That's sort of like English, only you have to say "eh" after every sentence, and apologize a lot. And some Canadians only speak French. Don't get me started on that.

Murph, the Sports Entrepreneur Man and His Leagues, is the captivating autobiography of Dennis Arthur Murphy, Sr., the energetic sports promoter who helped to found such professional leagues as the World Hockey Association, the American Basketball Association, World Team Tennis and Roller Hockey International. Jeanie Buss, the vice president of the Los Angeles Lakers, said that Dennis Murphy has connections so strong he can gather the top 10 sports moguls in a room with a single phone call. Murphy used those connections to build leagues that competed head to head with the entrenched National Hockey League and National Basketball Association. Murphy and his cohorts enticed Bobby Hull to flee the NHL to the WHA with an unprecedented $1 million contract and Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe, soon followed. The list of people Murphy reminisces about in Murph reads like a Who's Who of Sports in the 20th century and into the 21st - Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Scotty Bowman, Frank Mahovlich, Wayne Gretzky, George Mikan, Julius Erving, Wilt Chamberlain, Rick Barry, George Gervin, Larry Brown and Bill Sharman. Murphy also hobnobbed with politicians and other celebrities. In 1967, Murphy and attorney Gary Davidson created the American Basketball Association, a league that eventually merged several teams into the NBA. Under Murphy's watch, the ABA became famous for its red, white and blue basketball, sideline cheerleaders, the 3-point shot and the slam dunk. The World Hockey Association debuted in 1972 and gave the more established National Hockey League fits by cannibalizing NHL rosters, placing teams in major cities that didn't host NHL teams, and successfully challenging the reserve clause that bound players to their teams. This victory gave NHL players the opportunity to split to the upstart league; 66 NHL players followed Bobby Hull's lead in the WHA's first year. The league disappeared in 1979, but not before four teams - the Edmonton Oilers, New England Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, and Winnipeg Jets - joined the NHL. Murphy co-founded World Team Tennis in 1973. League play began in 1974 with 16 teams, a four-color tennis court, and teams made up of two men and two women. This made WTT the first professional sports league to give equal weight to each man and woman competing for their teams. In 1992, Murphy, then 66 years old, was inspired to develop a new pro sport out of that decade's inline skating craze. RHI was the first pro full-contact league in which women played against men - Manon Rheaume, Kelly Dyer and Erin Whitten were RHI goalies. Murphy, now 86, is trying to create a new 6-foot-4 inches-and-under pro basketball league, a Women's Sports Walk of Fame and a new professional roller hockey league. Murphy might be the most unlikely, least known and most influential visionary in North American professional sports history, according to Richard Neil Graham, the editor of Murph. According to Graham, Murphy has a rather leprechaun-like stature, tall dreams, a gift of gab and the ability to bring together a diverse group of people to work toward a common goal. Humble and hilarious, with a touching and impressive old-school respect for women, an enduring love for his USC Trojans, and friendships lasting a half century and more, Dennis Arthur Murphy has extensive and illuminating sports memories. Read about Gordie Howe's hotel room being bugged by the Russians during the 1976-77 Super Series between WHA teams and teams from the USSR, how the WHA almost went with a red puck, how the owner of the Winnipeg Jets turned down Barbra Streisand as a singer at his nightclub, how Scotty Bowman kept Murphy and his Los Angeles Sharks from stealing Ken Dryden away from the Montreal Canadiens, and more. The 323-page book includes 20 pages of black and white photos and letters promoting Murphy to the Hockey and Basketball Halls of Fame.

Who won the first professional sports championship for the city of Anaheim? Which Roller Hockey International team owner posed for Playboy? Which RHI team's logo did Sports Illustrated describe as looking like "a malevolent vacuum-cleaner attachment?" Which coach won two championships for two different teams in RHI's first two seasons? Why were fans nearly ejected from the Oakland Skates' arena for celebrating a hat trick? All those questions and more are answered in "Wheelers, Dealers, Pucks & Bucks: A Rocking History of Roller Hockey International." Author Richard Graham takes you behind the scenes to show how Dennis Murphy created Roller Hockey International, and why Murphy might be the most unlikely, least known and most influential visionary in North American professional sports history. RHI was a professional league that ran from 1993-1999 and soared and then crashed much like the inline skating craze of the 1990s. Full of thrills, spills and body checks, along with an abundance of humor, "Wheelers, Dealers, Pucks & Bucks" is the story of a niche sport and a professional league that dared to dream big.

The second in a series of books standing against Trump, Trumpism, Trumpsters, Republicans, traitors, fascists and all configurations of the aforementioned.

The third in a series of joke books written by a guy I know very well. His name is Richard Neil Graham, and he'd be famous, but he shuns the spotlight. Fortunately, he is Rich. He's drunk right now, so he asked me to write this book description. Well, he didn't actually ask me, but he left his computer alone to go to the bathroom at the bar, and I'm a curious person, so I saw that this space was available. And I just felt like typing. So, there you go. I did check out some of the jokes, quickly, because he could return at any moment, and they're good... at least the ones I understood. I don't think that Graham writes down to people, mostly because he's not that tall. Anyway, you should buy this book, because I'm sure that he put a lot of work into it, and .... oh oh... here he comes. This could get awkward....

The second book in a series of at least three joke books.