Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Still Joy in Mudville


OK, here is one of the pictures my camera, sans me, took at the hockey game last night. Today the web is full of pictures of the cup, blocked shots, good shots, people drinking gatorade like sports beverages out of the cup, referees skating into each other and breaking their orange tipped canes, etc. (I thought about going with a George W Bush/Sunglasses joke here, but that sentence was already too long - and why am I making fun of the refs after a win anyway? It was the hooking call actually). So here is one I haven't seen anywhere else that a co-worker I will just call "Matt" took ("Matt" is his actual name, I've yet to come up with a believable sounding rhyming fake name - and why bother? I'm pretty sure his wife knows he was at the game).

Eventually I will have to drop hockey as my main topic and go back to trying to be funny. There is very little pressure since nobody is actually reading. But for now, I'm still on the hockey kick.

When you fire a gun, it is very important to know what is behind your target. You can't just set a paper target on a box, set it in a field, and start shooting. You could accidentally eliminate some poor soul miles away - who would be operating some sort of large piece of farm equipment, and then drive it through several houses and across a highway. Which isn't normally humorous because of the tragedy of the accidental shooting. In this case however, the person operating the farm equipment lives and makes a full recovery... in fact the conversation he has with the insurance adjuster is a hoot. See - its funny now, right? I don't know what happens after that because I picture it as an 80's style sitcom where the credits roll right after a funny line between the farm equipment driver and the insurance adjuster.

Why do I bring this up? During game one of the Stanley Cup Finals, defenseman Marc-Andre Bergeron of the Edmonton Oilers hit Arron Ladd of the Carolina Hurricanes. Had he hit Ladd against the boards, it would have been a really hard hit that would have left Ladd rattled for a few minutes and a little sore the next day. Unfortunately what was behind him was Edmonton's number-one goalie Dwayne Roloson. Roloson was injured and unable to play the rest of the finals. Jussi Markkanen did a terrific job, eventually gaining a shutout. But the Oilers lost in seven games, and right now they're examining everything that went wrong.

Today Bergeron received several boxes - they contained all of the "Edmonton Oilers 2006 Stanley Cup Champion" hats, t-shirts, commemorative pucks, placemats, urinal screens, etc. that had been printed already. Also, there was a note "Please sell these items on eBay and buy everybody enough golf balls for the summer".

If you read this please leave an honest comment so I know somebody is paying attention - I might try harder next time.