Sweet Tea, Barbecue, and Bodychecks

Courtesy of Kukla’s NHL Korner:

I had enough of the same or typical question syndrome and decided to do something about it. Recently I approached the Washington Capitals with a propostion — Would AO be able to answer some questions from the hockey fans worldwide? Their response was “certainly”, with one stipulation. The questions must be unique, not the “typical” questions we have heard over and over.

This is like giving me entree into a china shop and saying “Mow ‘em down, sweetie.” Seriously–asking me to come up with unique questions?  Oh man, what I could ask…..
But I decided that it might be a wise idea to not be TOO unique, so I dove into the fray with these little family-friendly pearls of wiseassery wisdom:

Alex,

You’ve scored on your feet. You’ve scored flat on your back. When are you going to try winning a shootout with a goal scored from between your legs?

And when you play the Devils next, are you planning to hang a five-spot or so on Martin Brodeur as payback for him whining about your Robocop-visor and getting it banned?

Honestly, I don’t think he’ll answer that second one–he doesn’t strike me as a spiteful chap, so I’m pretty sure he won’t be personally giving Brodeur a case of sunburn on the back of his neck and then laughing in his face saying “HA HA, CRY MORE NOOB”. Of course, I’m sure that the kid might try a little harder to score on the guy for the sake of “just because.” Nothin’ personal, of course–’s just hockey.

Happy Halloween/Samhain/All Saint’s/whatever, kids. Don’t take any funky-smelling popcorn balls and look out for those Blue Star tattoos.

Darren McCarty to auction off everything but his soul.

There are no words to describe how I feel about being smacked in the face with the realization that I’ve got more money than an NHL player, even though I only make $8.55 an hour.

What the Hel, man?

Some cat on thescoreboards.com’s Canes board who goes by the name “NCFlyer” (i.e. he’s one of those 78-games-a-year Canes fans) posted the following:

A guy I work with went to the Stormtrackers luncheon this past week when JR was the speaker. He said that JR mentioned that he was late due to working on a trade. He went on to say that this player was a very popular player, but sometimes trades are needed. I have looked at a couple websites and have not seen anything mentioned. Any idea out there? There was speculation in our office that it may be K. Adams.

WELL. I’m going to give this….nothing, really–cos I’m not a Sooper Sekrit Insydar. But at this point it wouldn’t surprise me if a trade of some flavor was in the works. The team needs something to spark them.

Personally, I’d trade Tanabe to the Rangers for a different defenseman, but that is, of course, just me.

And boy, do I feel like death on a cracker. /rimshot

ANYWAY! Last night the ‘Canes took on their bitches errr the Atlanta Thrashers at the RBC–and I, of course, was at work poppin’ DayQuil and spreading my Cold From Hel to half of Raleigh because I couldn’t find anyone to work for me.
Go figure.

So I flopped on the couch with the DVR remote and three of four Chancellors, and watched the game. After a pretty slack fight between Hands of Feet and Shane Hnidy, and a goal by Eric Boulton, the ‘Canes roared out to a 3-1 lead to end the first period. It would have been 3-0 had Brad Larsen not whiffed on a shot and had that whiff drift over to Boulton (who potted the opportunity), but shit happens.

Then the team went to the locker room, Cory Stillman joined Fearless Leader and The Mighty Forslund in the broadcast booth to talk about his and Frankie Kaberle’s rehab progress (Stiller’s due back around Yule or so, from what I understand), and things kinda went to Hel after that.

What in the name of Freyr’s left nut was that second and third period all about? Seriously, that was some of the most slack-ass slackassitude that I’ve seen since the reign of Chairman Mo. Two nice highlights were Cam Ward’s OMGWTFBBQ save in the second (where the boy just reached up and snatched the puck away from Marian Hossa (I think it was Hossa–I’d become distracted by Chancellor Jasmine Liao deciding she wanted some attention, so I didn’t get a good look at who shot the puck)), and My Man Ryan Bayda’s goal to make it 4-3, and Remo Williams was his usual Sinanju-using kickass self, but that was it. Hedican looked like total ass out there–actually, it looked more like he was skating in pain. If you want some of my Happy Fun Pain Meds, Bret, let me know. Seriously mang, I can get you the hookup.
And then there was OT. Wow.

Anton Babchuk scored this goal that was….well here, look at it for yourself:

Click me–and make sure that you have Windows Media Player installed!

That was positively Glenn Anderson-esque, if you ask me. The interview afterwards was kinda funny–for a minute I thought I was listening to an Alex Ovechkin interview, when Fearless Leader asked Babs a question about the defense and his answer indicated that he didn’t totally understand the question. It was amusing.

The Good: Hutchinson looked good, Commodore stayed out the box, and Remo Wiliams just keeps making that trade look better and better all the time (though I miss Joe, Lord of Evil–call me nostalgic)

The Bad: Second and third period.

The Ugly: Bobby Holik.

And now I’m going to go back to being sick.

Well whaddaya know, the Favored of Comcast actually decided to make some change near the top.

I’d have some biting commentary on this and talk about how the Flyers can now find a GM who knows how to do something other than trade for barely-mobile tree stumps and treat cancer patients like shit, but my head’s swimming like Ian Thorpe and I’m burning up thanks to something that one of my co-workers has been passing around Stop-n-Rob like a dollar blunt.
So after I get off work tonight, I’ll be on the couch being miserable for a few days and will probably have even less to say than I usually do.

(starting this with a work rant)

Item the first:

Dear NC Education Lottery:

YOU ARE A BIG FAT THROBBING PAIN IN MY BIG FAT HEATHEN ASS.

No love,

AQ

Now, I am all for the lottery–when my home state of North Dakota got one, I knew it was but a matter of time before North Carolina got one too. But for the love of Tyr, it is SUCH a pain in the ass dealing with it–especially at my store, which chain is all et up with the paperwork-mania. As the Germans say (when talking about their governmental bureaucracy), “es ist der Inbegriff von Papierkrieg” (the epitome of red-tape). I mean, fook me in the arse-end sideways with a corn cob–it might be more pleasurable than all the paperwork and crap that I have to deal with because of the frickin’ lottery.

And on top of that, we’re not allowed to touch the “quick pick” buttons on our cute little touch-screen terminals–if a customer wants lottery picks, he’s gotta fill out a sheet…even if he wants a quick-pick. Why?  Because, some of the people that come into our store apparently feel that they just have to fuck with the clerk and ask for a bunch of lottery picks–and then say “I wanted POWER PLAY!  Can’t you listen?”, when they didn’t ask for the Power Play option on their Powerball tickets. So now we make them fill out a playslip–which leads to all kinds of fun, as we get stuff like:

“Can’t you just enter them yourself?  I don’t want to fill this out!”  I’m sorry, but we have to have everyone fill out a playslip.

“Why I gotta fill this out?  I just want quick picks!” Then please mark the “QP” boxes on the sheet.

And, of course, you get the people that fill out their slips WRONG and then don’t want to fix them–they expect you to fix them, even after you explain what they did wrong.

AND THEN…we have the people who come in at like ten minutes to 11 PM (which is when my store’s door locks–and our chain’s stores stop paying on lottery tickets at this time) and expect us to scan and pay out 40 scratch cards that they’ve won with, even though there’s a line of people at the counter already. Do they care?  NO!  They expect you to tell everyone else at the counter who’s trying to get their shit bought and paid for before the doors are locked at 11 to just step off, and do nothing but pay out their winning scratch tickets. If you people think I get mean in this space, just you come into my store at 5 to 11 with a huge-ass stack of winning scratch tickets and tell me to cash them all out in 5 minutes–not even I can do it, and I’m the fastest clerk in the store when it comes to getting lotto stuff processed and paid out.

But my favorite is when the terminal at the store decides that it doesn’t want to connect to the servers at Lotto HQ down on Yonkers Road–and it’s 9:45 PM on a Powerball night, and I have a line of people at the counter with sheafs and sheafs of Powerball playslips in their hands. Fuck you, GTECH, fuck you and your “we’re aware of the problem and our engineers are working on it, thank you have a nice night and don’t call cos I don’t know jack shit about what’s going on” bulldada right in your collective ear. *I* could get a headset on and bullshit callers better than the yobbos you’ve hired–and it’ll have at least some grain of truth to it!

“It seems that a BellSouth work crew decided to be stupid and cut our fiber line out of the building that houses our servers, and we’ve dispatched the Narn Bat Squad to deal with the miscreants, but unfortunately we have no estimated uptime” sounds about 500 times better than “Uhhh, we’re aware of the problem, and our engineers are working on it. Thank you for calling GTECH.” I had to actually tell the dude on the other end of the phone “So you have no idea if the problem is an internal or external network issue, and you have no estimated uptime?” in order to get a straight answer–which is that a BellSouth (or Progress Energy, the guy wasn’t sure which) work crew decided to be stupid and cut the fiber line out of Lotto HQ on Yonkers Road, amd the Narn Bat Squad had been dispatched to deal with the miscreants and get them to repair the damage.

Item the second:

NOW THAT I’M HOME FROM WORK and now that they’re done with that errant work crew, the Narn Bat Squad is being dispatched to gilooly Maxim Afinogenov before the next Buffalo-Carolina game. Love the guy when he’s humiliating Bobby Clarke’s Barely-Mobile Tree Stumps, hate him to smithereens when he pots the game-winner against us. And that’s the whack-ass thing about the Sabres. They’re a great team and I have a feeling that the Buffalo-Carolina games over the rest of the season are going to be some amazing frickin’ hockey. But I’m totally not feeling the love for the fans as a whole (except for Tom L., who is cool). It’s the reverse of how I feel about Washington. Love the fans, hate the whole team except for Alex Ovechkin (well OK, and Olie Kolzig). Go figure. It’s like the ones that are actually secure in their fandom are the rational ones that I can actually talk with–but unfortunately, they’re overshadowed by all the loudmouthed wankstains with a collective case of Small Penis Syndrome.

There. I’m officially done talking/bitching about SabresFan. That line of commentary is now exiled to join a certain unnamed “Sooper Sekrit Inzydar” on the “Don’t know WTF you’re talking about, doesn’t exist” list, and I shall speak of it no more. The horse is dead, I’m trying to keep it from rising as a Revenant, so let’s move on to the game (which I managed to watch part of on the DVR after I got home, before the hubby pitched a bitch and I had to delete it so he could record a re-showing of a Buffy re-run that he’s watched 234892742 times. Fuck you Joss Whedon, fuck you right in your left ear).

Can we trade David Tanabe again?  Please?  Seriously, I don’t want him here anymore. Mike Commodore, on the other hand…keeper. Definite keeper. Thank you, Flames, for giving him to us. This makes up for you bastards breaking my heart (with help from Steve Smith) in 1986. And Chancellor Jasmine Liao (the latest addition to the household) approves of him too, so there you go. Cat approval = good thing.
Thank you also to Nashville for Remo Williams–though I had to do a double-take. Sorry Joe, Lord of Evil got broked, guys. I swear, we didn’t break him before we sent him over the Blue Ridge Mountains to you.

The score aside, it was a goalie deathmatch and a frickin’ coin-toss of a game. I think I got another grey hair or three just watching what little I was able to watch.

Item the third:

There’s a new site I’m adding to Ye Olde Blogrolle: Southeast Shootout. Come for the weather, stay for the hockey (though I am a little disturbed at being compared to G. Gordon Liddy–I mean, the man is amusing in his own fanatical dude-switch-to-decaf-and-drop-the-assault-rifle-before-you-hurt-somebody way, but I’m greatly disappointed (heartbroken, even!) that I apparently don’t have enough Fun to be considered the Hunter S. Thompson of the Caniac Nation).

OK, so it was three things. Sue me.

Bobby Clarke waives three after last-place Favored of Comcast get pwnt by the Sabres on national TV

That a Euro was waived isn’t a shock–Bobby Clarke would run a completely Euro-free organization if he could. What is, however, surprising to me is that he decided to scapegoat two guys that are serviceable (though not great) along with that Euro (who is arguably the worst one on the whole Flyers roster)…and left Derian Hatcher and Mike Rathje alone.

I’m sorry, but who thought that those two tree-stumps were worth the money and length of contract that Bobby the Brainless gave them?  Chancellor Franco Liao could skate faster and play better defense than those two lugs (not to mention put the claws to the asses of the forwards when they’re doggin’ it), and he’s been dead and cremated for two years! Even my husband, who hates hockey and pitches a holy fit every time I even so much as look at a pair of skates, can play better than the two anchors that Bobby Clarke has draggin’ down the Good Ship Philadelphia.

Memo to Comcast: Fire Bobby and get a GM in there who actually knows what he’s doing. Just sayin’.

Yeah, I of the Patented Playoff Meltdown really one to be talking about class. Whatever.

There’s this customer that comes into Stop-n-Rob a lot. He’s a Buffalo fan, and not exactly one of my favorite people ever since the night he decided it would be funny to send me running all over the store to get a buncha stuff for him*, then change his mind and send me running all over the store to get different stuff for him, lather, rinse, repeat.

Anyway. Last May, I decided that I would be classy after the Conference Finals and tell him how impressed I was with the Sabres (and I was) and how they were a damn good team (and they were)–and the response I got was….well, let’s just say it was a lot like the garbage that a lot of Sabres fans dropped on XM last season after their team got bounced and this morning after they humiliated the Flyers. Southern team, don’t know shit about hockey, can’t fill the building, don’t deserve to win anything, stole our Cup, yadda yadda.

You know, the usual load of garbage that tends to get expelled by such festering pustules of assholery. I about laughed at their complete lack of understanding of our wonderful weather down here, though. That was funny as hell.

But anyway, back to asshat customer. The only thing I said to him after the Hurricanes won the Cup was “Go Canes!”, because he’d pretty much made it clear that he wasn’t ever interested in talking hockey unless his team wins–unlike his significant other, who is tres cool and was more than happy to talk puck with me.

So on Friday, the ‘Canes venture in to Buffalo to play the Sabres and have crap thrown at them by the fans, and attempt to finish what they started on Opening Night.

Somebody’s gotta end their little streak. Might as well be us.

*:My store locks the doors and does all business through a service window after 11 PM. If you were in our neighbourhood, you’d do that too–trust me.

I once told Chris! from Covered In Oil that when the playoffs were over I’d give him the explanation I felt I owed him for the meltdowns I had every round (especially the Finals). My only issue was how to phrase it, how to put things into terms that people who don’t know me can understand–kind of like a “don’t let the surface blind you to what lies beneath” sort of thing. So I let this post sit and ferment in a cool dry corner of my mind before decanting it for those six or seven of y’all that are still with me after the insanity that was the 2006 playoffs.

Pardon any lingering sediment. This is also a little involved, but trust me, there is a point.

Fred Shero once said, “We know that hockey is where we live, where we can best meet and overcome pain and wrong and death. Life is just a place where we spend time between games.”

It’s so very true, especially for me. I touched on it a little in my post about finally getting to lay hands on the Cup. Hockey’s fun, no doubt. It’s always a lot of fun, it’s always a great time, and I’ve met so many wonderful people and made several very good friends because of it. But for me, hockey is so much more than that. It’s more than a way for me to express my belief system, it’s more than social time, it’s more than something that’s gotten me and my sister talking again.

Hockey is where–and how–I finally managed to find myself.

The 2006 playoffs were a personal αποκαλυψις for me, a personal bloodletting. Da Chief was right when he said that my posts during the playoffs read like a personal catharsis, because that’s about what they were (though I didn’t fully realize it at the time). It just felt to me like things had to happen the way they did, like it needed to go down the way that it went down–because my life has never been easy all the way through. When the Oilers swatted down the Wings, it resonated with me as a personal allegory; Yeah, I was still carrying some lingering hate from 2002, but in the grand scheme of things it was like that series was kinda like the Universe letting me know that I had bigger fish to fry. I would have to face and finally deal with all the old personal baggage I’d been carrying around for nigh on 30 years, and finally close that circle and get that burden off my shoulders if I wanted to become a whole person and finally move forward with my life.

Thus, my scattered comments (and an old post) about the “Unity of Rings”–the idea that what starts in one place ends in the same place, with a hefty dash of “what goes around comes around”.

“I know the pieces fit cos I watched them fall away”, in other words.

I can talk about hockey on a technical, statisical, geeky level when I’m so moved, but for me the ritualized warfare that is hockey is something that I just plain “get”, something that I understand on a very visceral, very emotional, very spiritual level. It’s something that I just know, and sometimes it’s hard for me to put it into concrete terms that the vast majority of folks can relate to.

I mean, if your gut told you that something bad was about to happen in the convenience store you’re shopping in courtesy of the shifty-eyed looking dude that just walked in with a curiously-bulging coat, and that you need to GTFO before you wind up with a nine-gram migraine, how do you explain that to the clerk without looking like a complete raving nutter?

The superstitions, the meltdowns, all that stuff was–is–more or less window-dressing. It was my blue blankie that was really more formality than safety-net. The Forms Must Be Obeyed.

When the Warchief lifted the Cup, it was like I’d finally reached my perfect moment of clarity, where I realized that I could finally shut the door on the past and everything that I was allowing to drag me down, and just let it stay in the past while I finally move the hell forward with my life. What I felt was relief, more than anything. Now it’s like I’m steadily putting all the pieces back together–sure, there are some bumps in the road; but I finally feel like I’m really fully in charge of myself now, much like the Hurricanes are finally fully in charge of themselves and their destinies and not held down or held back by the ghost of Whalercanes past.

I really can’t say I have the hate–the cold, life-draining, soul-burning, distracting, I hate you plz die kkthx, withering hate–that I used to have for some other teams…and I never really realized it until I watched the Hurricanes championship DVD the other day. I may not care for some fans of certain teams, and there may be particular players that I loathe for some reason, but on the whole the way I now feel toward the teams themselves is “Nothing personal, ’s just hockey.”

The paradigm has officially shifted, and it feels pretty damn liberating.

There’s your explanation, Chris. Hope it made some sense.

Good thing I work third shift on Monday night.

Unlike the Cole hit, I didn’t see anything dirty about the hit on Trevor Letowski. It was bad, it knocked him out, and he’ll be down for a while. But there was no elbow involved and there wasn’t any criminal intent (this hasn’t stopped a few random mouthbreathers from popping up and screaming that, for example, Sid Crosby should get taken out with a flying elbow or whatever).

It was, however, interference and should have been called as such–but then I’m a rules-lawyer, so there you go.

Next up: Tampa. Word round the campfire is that Crackers will be ‘twixt the pipes for this one–it’ll be nice to see how he does against his old team.

Apparently I have to sleep through every game now–good thing I work first shift today.

But finally, finally the Hurricanes have won one. The Warchief had three assists and Ray Whitney scored the game-winner with .5 seconds left on the clock.

But at long last, the ‘Canes have gotten off the schneid–and really? This is a lot like last season. Our defense was paper, the goaltenders weren’t getting a lot of help, and the guys who were expected to be the scoring machines just weren’t able to hit anything. This is why I wasn’t getting upset right off the hop (unlike the toolbag who–after the second game of the season–posted “I’m glad I didn’t waste my money on season tickets” on Teh LGC).

Tonight, the ‘Canes are in Pittsburgh to take on the Pens. There will be no Cole-Orpik rematch, since Orpik is out with a busted hand, and there will be no Egvenii Malkin (since he’s out with a shoulder injury). Crackers is likely to be in the net tonight, which frankly doesn’t make me a happy camper–but what can you do, right?

Thread is, once again, open for comments.

I was going to post this big pithy philosophical thing about the ‘Canes and their luck and so on–but unfortunately my mind is a little fried after an all-nighter making sure the hubby wouldn’t have to be rushed to the hospital for an emergency nebulizer treatment, so I’ve decided to just open the floor up to the readership for discussion of tonight’s game and meander off to bed for a few hours.

Three things:

1) What do the ‘Canes need to do to get back on track?

2) Who’s impressed you so far among the New D00ds?

3) Babs out. Snuggles in. Thoughts?

Behave yourselves.

Aside to the Buffalo folks (even the moron that trolls from ECMC): Heard about the weather issues, hope you’re all OK and the damage to your homes is/was minimal.

What the hell–being at the game didn’t help, listening to the game on the radio didn’t help, and getting score updates from customers at the Stop-n-Rob sure as Hel didn’t help, so we might as well try ignoring the game completely and see what that does.

Overall I’m not that worried about the ‘Canes–but it would be nice to get at least one win this month. Just sayin’. We’ll work on the “winning when AQ watches or listens” thing later, mmkay?

Anyway. Tonight Your Stanley Cup Champion Carolina Hurricanes visit the Cat Box in Florida to play the Panthers and Alex Bald Auld. Our defense is still kinda thin and papery, our power play has reached Maurice Era-like levels of futility, and Kevyn Adams has TWO cuts on his face from where Hedican-can-can clocked him in practice the other day.

On the bright side, it’s only the first week and the fourth game of the Hurricanes’ season–and really, Howard Jones was right when he said “things can only get better”.

Fuckin’ Mets. *reaches for kleenex*

Hedican wins…Flawless Victory!

So yeah–Bret Hedican and Kevyn Adams dropped the gloves and went at each other at yesterday’s bag skate. At first I was a little wigged, but then I slept on it. When I woke up, I gave the situation some more thought and realized “Duh AQ, this isn’t the Season From Hell and Chairman Mo isn’t the coach anymore. Things will get fixed that need fixin’.”

So now I can joke about it, because I’m irreverent like that, and I’m honestly not worried.

Still crying my eyes out about the Dodgers, though. Fuckin’ Mets.

I can honestly say that I’m not bothered by the ‘Canes desultory play and disappointing start to the season–to illustrate this, I point out that I cried my eyes outwhen the Mets bounced the Dodgers from the playoffs last night. But did I get upset over the ‘Canes being 0-2-1?

Nope.

Am I upset now?

Nope. Well actually I am upset, but it’s more at the toolbags and n00blets that are screaming “OH NOEZ TEH CANEZ R TEH LOSING!!!!1″ than I am at the ‘Canes themselves. I have complete faith in Lavi and my team–I think they’ll get it turned around soon.
We’ll see.

No really, it will.

I’m sure the motards on the Devils boards are having a fun little virtual wankfest right now (I know the shitbag who’s decided to flood my inbox sure is–and I hope he enjoys his account for the short time he’ll still have it), but I really don’t care.

I swore I would wait until the quarter mark of the season to say anything, and I am. So if you’re expecting me to excoriate the team, the fans, or even Holly freakin’ Wilver you might as well just move on and get back to me in about December or so.

Oh yeah–and we still have our names on the Cup. Have a nice day.

OK, so I’m late. What do you expect when I work all the damn time?

Anyway. I’m at work last night, and this customer pulls up to Pump 1 wearing a Pens jersey (cos the Pens played their season opener last night). She comes in to throw some cash on the pump, and I said “Congratulations!”

“Do what?”

You didn’t hear the news? The Pens are getting a new owner.

“REALLY?! YES!”

This lady about launched herself over the counter and gave me a huge hug, she was that excited–and can you blame her? The Pens are getting a new owner, and now people can STFU about moving them to Winnipeg or Hamilton or wherever.

Congratulations, Pens fans. Y’all have suffered through this ownership nightmare for far too long.