Having some beers at my buddy's place watching the Oilers facing off against the Nashville Predators. A few topics of conversation come to mind:
- Talking about Troy Glaus playing for the Blue Jays. I hate the Blue Jays with a white-hot passion (its an Alberta Separatist thing, see entry above), and this pisses me off because I always take a perverse pleasure in watching the Jays suck monkey balls. However, for me the thing I will always remember about Glaus' Blue Jays run is that TSN.ca screwed up the headline for his announcement. "Corner Glaus" was to be the +7-fonted link splashed across the top of the page -- connecting CTV's top hit Corner Gas with the third baseman who hit 37 homers and 97 RBIs last season. Instead, the headline read "Corner Gas" instead, which really lost a lot of its punch. That's why TSN.ca's editors don't work for the SUN newspaper chain, I guess.
- This "successful Blue Jays" thing is really going to hurt me in our baseball pool next season -- I have this "no Canadian team rule" that last year didn't mean much: Josh Towers and Alex Rios weren't hot properties even if I was in a deep AL-only league. Next year I'm going to be out Lyle Overbay, Glaus, A.J. Burnett, and B.J. Ryan. Getting Batista and Orlando Hudson as available players just doesn't help me -- both suck.
- Quotes from my buddy while talking baseball (he's a Jays fan) "They have to go out into the middle of Saskatchewan and dump fucking [Eric] Hinske". Ha ha, reminds me of laughing about the Jays defeats -- and crying about having to watch more incidents like when they scored nine runs in a single inning against the Yankees. Other quotes, from his proposed 2-month trip to South America: "I've already accepted that I'm gonna get robbed, I just hope I won't get kidnapped"
- Speaking of my fantasy hockey pool, I went from 11/11 to 9/11 in a week. What did I do? Nothing. I ignored it for a full week and went up in points (slightly) and in the standings (considerably). I should keep at not looking at it. Except I've tried that before, it doesn't work.
- So one of my buddies posted a big rant on the message board of our hockey pool, on topics like Sean Avery and Manny Fernandez. He then puts in a followup comment: "After this sudden desire to express some random opinions, I am starting to think this is how ______ lives his life 24/7." (what, you think I'm too lazy to edit out my own name on a cut and paste?) Oddly enough, he never knew about this blog until now.
- I was talking at work today to somebody who's a hard core dipper I knew back from my university days: he's stuck working for the Conservative candidate in his Edmonton riding due to a church-based friendship commitment: nothing's funner than taunting him regularly about it.
- This NHL schedule blows monkey balls almost as much as the instigator rule. Yeah its nice to see Calgary and Vancouver, but we could play them 5 times a season (2 home, 3 away one season; 3 home, 2 away the next would be fine) freeing up 4x3=12 games a year that can be used to play Eastern teams. Yeah, games against Buffalo and Florida might seem shitty now, but what if next season the Panthers draft a nobody who instantly clicks in the NHL to be the Next Big Thing(TM)? We might not like the idea of not seeing him for another 4-5 years.
- "A juicy rebound left there" says Chris Cuthbert a minute after Ryan's Smyth's penalty-shot goal -- isn't "Jussi Rebound" the name of the starting goalie?
- Is there no more freakish sight than Craig MacTavish smiling? He almost never does. Of course, I quickly answered my own question: you don't even have to leave Alberta, let alone leave hockey: this guy. (He never smiles, almost: when he does, its eerie. The Flames beat San Jose to win the Smythe Conference -- yes, I'm old school -- and he's dour-faced in the post-game press conference talking about how he's proud of his team, they played a good game, and they're happy to go to the Stanley Cup finals, but they didn't play a good game on the penalty kill and the 3rd and 4th lines need to step up offensively. YOU'RE GOING TO THE FINALS! BE HAPPY, YOU PSYCHO NUTBAR!)
- Watching highlights from the San Jose-Colorado game during a scoring break and wondering: whats with crappy production qualities in some of these modern games. I've never seen it in CFL or MLB or NBA highlights, yet some NFL or NHL games I see on highlight reels have such low-grain resolution that at first I think I'm watching hilights from 1983 or something. NCAA football is bad for this too. It's not because the games aren't given TV coverage, especially NFL or NCAA games. These games are all broadcasted, yet I've never watched a live game and seen this film quality. Something's fishy, and I can't figure out why.
