Hockey is for Hosers.
9:18 a.m. || 2004-07-26
I feel the need to post this morning because some of the people that I read on a regular basis are beginning to get credit for only posting semi-weekly, thereby enhancing their credibility and their 'journalistic' reputation. I on the other hand will continue to post as regularly as possible and everything I post will vaguely resemble crap in a bag. Somedays it will be on fire so that you can stomp on it in your house shoes, but most days it will simply look like the bag a high quality cheesesteak comes in. Kinda thin and greasy and lookin' like it could bust at any minute.
I might also need to post because someone just took the last of the coffee and I have a few minutes to kill while the new pot perks.
My google's suck. I'm very envious of people who have enough quality googles that they can make an entire page out of them. I, unfortunately, am not one of those people. I do realize that this is entirely my fault for: 1) Choosing a popular animated site as my diary name; and 2) for writing horrible drivel (aka. "crap in a bag") in said diary. However, I did get an "I'm a fuckin' alcoholic" to go with my "He who smokes hot chicks" from a few weeks ago. More and more though, every single day I rue ever having written about Alanis. Aside from the simple "Joe Cartoon" I probably get "Alanis loses her virginity to Dave Coulier" more than anything else. These people have got to get a life and stop giving me the naked Dave Coulier visual (try to get that out of your head, Alex!!). All I can say is Cut, It, Out!
I had the opportunity to go to a wedding this weekend over in Austin (Boy Dictionary: 'had the opportunity' - roughly translated means: I had to go because he begged and pleaded for me to attend, plus he once kept me from going to jail so I felt obligated to at least make an appearance). All in all, it was a beautiful ceremony and they had an open bar at the reception. To me, any event with an open bar immediately gains two points on a 1-10 scale. For example, I would have said that the event was a 6 because the food was only so-so, but since there was an open bar... DING! an 8! While at the wedding I ran into a guy that I haven't run into in probably 6 years. Appropriately enough, the last time I saw him I was literally running into him. You see, we played hockey against each other. Herein lies the story for today.
About eight years ago, my baby brother (who is 13 years younger than me) calls me up and announces that he is going to play hockey. I should probably point out again that we live in Texas. Texas currently has more hockey teams than any other state in the nation (take that yankee hockey purists!) but we know nothing about the game. I learned the rules simply because Dallas got (aka - 'stole from Minnesota') the Stars in the early 90's and I enjoyed it, but it wasn't about to supplant baseball or football in my everyday stream of consciousness. But, trying to be the supportive big brother that I am, I tell him that I'll come home during the summer and learn to play with him. We start out with roller hockey and gradually move on to the ice. My general understanding of the game as I begin goes something like this: Canadians can do it and anything those hosers can do, a Texan can do better (sorry Bingo, but you begin to see why Judd hates us so much). You get to carry a stick and hit things with it (this makes it seem like a violent baseball to me which is good). And finally, all of the guys that play hockey are teeny so I should rule these guys with sheer power alone.
Here is what I know about hockey after having played it for a very short time. 1) Canadians are born on skates. And by born, I really mean, I think they are hatched from eggs and they use the skates that are genetically attached to their feet to chip the egg open the way a baby bird uses an egg tooth. If you ever happen to get them on dry land you can outrun them or simply pummel them, but on ice they will make you look like the Down's Syndrome kid in that old Garth Brooks video. 2) You can hit people with your stick which does make hockey a violent form of baseball. This is still good. And 3) No one over 6'3" can really skate that well. I happen to be 6'4". Sucks to be me.
However, in spite of myself and my superior 'football is god' mentality, I fell in love with the game. I hated playing defense, and I wasn't very good at it, so I was moved to left wing. I started on a checking line but in a dramatic twist of fate against a demonic team that thought it was their destiny to destroy our center (hereafter referred to as SkateLikeTheWindAndScoresAMillionGoals) was moved up to our first line. In our defense, I should point out that we had such a thin roster no one really had much of a role on this team. We just tried to make sure we had the right number of guys on the ice at any given time so that we didn't get a penalty. However in this game after SkateLikeTheWindAndScoresAMillionGoals had scored twice and no one else on our team had more than weakly put a puck on net, our Demonic opponent decided the easiest way to win was to crush the 5'5", buck-forty SkateLikeTheWindAndScoresAMillionGoals, like Iceland did in MightyDucksII (send me $ Disney, I'm pimpin' your sorry ass movies). After he got cross-checked/boarded/slashed about a dozen times I decided to determine how hard it was to get kicked out of a game. Turns out, with crappy officials, it's pretty hard. It also turns out that assuming you can catch the little bastards, the "I'm way bigger than you therefore can crush you into a little greasy spot" theory holds true. It ended up being one of the most enjoyable sports memories I have. Mr SkateLikeTheWindAndScoresAMillionGoals would go into the corner to tie up the puck and would draw all kinds of traffic. They'd start hacking and whacking away on him but he had this marvelous sense of timing and could pull out of the pile just in time to get these assholes to face me right as I smashed into them with a full head of steam. I mean, geez, we didn't even know what Bertuzzi'ing someone was back then, but I didn't want to cheapshot anyone. Plus, I wanted them to see me as they realized it was too late to get out of the way. It was the first time I spent significant minutes in the penalty box (4 minors but what a nice rest that is!) but it was a blast. It didn't take long before they got their heads on a swivel, but it saved a lot of wear and tear on SkateLikeTheWindAndScoresAMillionGoals and we ended up winning 5-4. It was one of the few games we won that summer because most of our team were idjit Texans like me with no clue, but it officially hooked me on the game forever.
Damn... That was long, but I'm wistful and got caught in a memory. I'd bet my co-workers have had three more pots of coffee by now, so I'll probably have to brew a fresh pot.
Hey! You at Boeing!! Thanks for reading, but shouldn't you be doing a little work??
Wanna know how to scare your ex? - 2005-03-12
Maybe I am not the sickest person out there. - 2005-02-23
I'm out of my funk and I'm not talking about hygiene. - 2005-02-11
Ding Dong the Sports Season is Dead. - 2005-02-07
Wow, is this thing still on? - 2005-01-31
9:18 a.m. || 2004-07-26
