Clubindustry

Sometimes you do your best work after 11 p.m.

I was just about to shut down the home computer and head to bed the other night before someone or something inside me suggested I should check out ESPNEWS one more time, in case I missed anything from the sports world. On the bottom of the screen, there was some breaking news that Drew Bledsoe had retired from the Dallas Cowboys.

This wasn‘t earth-shattering news, but I at least wanted to check out The Dallas Morning News‘ Web site and see what it had on the story. When I got there, I saw this front-page story on the passing of a bill by the Texas Senate that would require all children in kindergarten through eighth grade to have 30 minutes of physical activity every day.

Aha! Finally, my thirst for all things sports has actually helped me in my day job. The next morning, we put the Texas bill story on our Web site. The story had a short run as our “Hot News” before it was bumped the next day for another update on the Bally situation.

As I crawled into bed after my Internet find, I flipped to Conan O‘Brien. For some reason, Fabio was there to carry Conan from his monologue to his desk. You might remember our Fabio sighting at the IHRSA show last month in San Francisco, where he was promoting our new competition‘s first issue. That guy–and his long, flowing hair–really gets around.

So my late-night craving for news led to two Club Industry-related items of interest. And all before midnight. –Stuart

It seems like we‘re still talking about the IHRSA show that ended last month in San Francisco. I guess we just can‘t get over how much fun we had there.

The subject of the IHRSA show came up again in our meeting this afternoon, and in particular the speech made by Frank Abagnale. As you‘ll recall, he‘s the guy featured in the movie “Catch Me If You Can” who lived part of his life as a forger and imposter and is now one of the leading experts in the field of forgery and secure documents. He‘s also had a distinguished career with the FBI.

Well, our colleague who works for another magazine in our office (let‘s just call her “Katie”) couldn‘t help overhearing that we were talking about Frank Abagnale. Not only is she a fan of the movie, for a brief time in her life, she actually dated one of his sons!

Katie graduated from the University of Kansas, and I remember when Abagnale mentioned that two of his three sons graduated from KU (the other went to UNLV). I thought that KU was the main connection here, but Katie actually started dating Frank‘s son in high school growing up in Tulsa, OK. They continued to see each other at KU but have gone their separate ways. He‘s married, and Katie will be married this summer.

Katie couldn‘t say enough nice things about Abagnale and what a caring, loving man he is. With an eye toward journalism in her future, Katie even asked Abagnale if she could do a story on him for the high school newspaper. Not only that, but he later came to her class and gave the speech that we heard in San Francisco. The speech to Katie‘s class was free of charge, but I learned from a story posted on Abagnale‘s Web site (www.abagnale.com) that he commands $27,000 a speech, plus expenses. Makes me want to start leading a life of fraud and forgery, too.

Sadly, Katie will be leaving us soon, but she won‘t be going far (just one floor down). The only time we‘ll catch Katie now is if we bump into her going in or out of elevators.

I suppose, if the mood strikes, that we could actually make a trip to see her once in a while, too. -Stuart