Patrick and the Playoffs

(A month away from the blog?!? Credit the volunteer work and two weeks of practicums (and the up until 2, 2 and 3:20 in the morning work that went with it) which all made me like Jack in "The Shining" (without the ax and the "Here's Johnny!" attitude). The playoff reminder for the team looked like this...)

- Where am I?
In the village
- What do you want?
Information.
-Whose side are you on?
That would be telling. We want information... information... information.
- You won't get it.
By hook or by crook, we will.
- Who are you?
The new Number Two.
- Who is Number One?
You are Number Six.
- I AM NOT A NUMBER. I AM A FREE MAN!

My Fellow Dragons:

Congratulations on the regular season and ending up as Patrick McGoohan in "The Prisoner" because in the end we ranked number six in our division.

But, let's be honest, the regular season results means sweet f.a. as we head into the playoffs cuz come the playoffs it's a whole new thang.

Two losses will mean a team is eliminated. Get to the end with no losses and you are not only crowned the winner, you also get an hour-long conservation debating the necessity of tax increases in the United States with Sarah Palin while wearing a two piece bikini. But to be clear: *you* will be wearing the bikini, cuz to picture Ms Palin in a bikini is disrespectful and sexist. But, yes, she will be keeping her hot librarian glasses on during the entire encounter. And you will be allowed to drink as many diet ginger ales as you'd like.

The playoffs start on Tuesday at 8:30 down at the MC Centre -- the site of our awesome and inspiring victory last week. And as Brent so eloquently said to my e-mail that read "victory rocks my little world," he replied "I like victory. It beats defeat ever time!"

And hence the new Dragons motto: "Victory Beats Defeat Every Time!" As a motto it states an absolute truth, but also conveys the passion and drive towards excellence that the entire team strives for. And thus it will replace the functional but slightly less inspiring former motto of "We could probably defeat Helen Keller, but no farm animals will be accepted as payment."

Gentlemen! The playoffs! Get your game face on! Bring you i.d.! And if it helps, go take 20 kids to The Smurfs movie this weekend and get angry about how you could have gone to see a good film by yourself and then spent the remaining money on beer!

Game face! Game Face!! GAME FACE!!!

Tuesday night 8:30 against the Penguins. We've tied them twice and have yet to beat them. So they're due for a beatin' Tuesday night.

Gentlemen, it's the playoffs: separating the men from the boys, the winners from the losers, and the debonair drinkers from the disgusting drunks for generations!

Sarah Palin and an unlimited quantity of diet ginger ale await!

Hope to see you at the first game,
Kevin.

GAME FACE!!!!

Dragons Attack Penguins

(When team rep's away, the team still has to play...)

My Fellow Dragons:

So, I ain't gonna be there tomorrow night.

Therefore on someone else's shoulders will lay heavy the responsibilities of making the lines, motivating the team, risk offending the entire squad with some only moderately acceptable swearing, while keeping all of it in-check with some obscure literary reference.

As a warm-up for the game and perhaps as a cheat sheet should someone need it...

Alex will be on defence with Veeg. We're tied in points with the Penguins so there's no reason not to beat them but we have to watch #29. I want to apologize for the funny way your mom was walking after the Canada Day firework excitement (if you know what I mean!). And did anyone else catch Christopher Hitchen's analysis of David Mamet's newly discovered right-wing leanings? -- American Buffalo Gets Slapped Down!

There you go. At least that'll get you started.

9:00 in # 3 against the Penguins.

And don't think of that cute little cuddly penguin from the Bugs Bunny cartoons when you take to the ice. No-no-no!

Think instead of the vicious penguins from Garth Ennis and John McCrea's "Hitman" comic book story entitled "Zombie Night at the Gotham Aquarium". And remember: zombie penguins -- they deserve no mercy.

Have fun tomorrow night. I'll be thinking of y'all taking a spiritual and symbolic bat to those red-eyed brain-hungry fiends.

Best of luck,
Kevin.

The Smell of Stinking Palms in the Morning

I had a rude awakening last Wednesday morning when my wife asked me why I smelled so foul.

“You smell bad,” she said.

“’Bad’? What do you mean ‘bad’?”

“You’ve got a stench. And you usually don’t smell. Did you shower after your hockey game?”

“Of course I did.”

“Really?!? Did you win last night?”

“No. We lost. Three-nothing.”

“Ahhhh. That must be it.”

“What? ‘That must be’ what?” I could see her immediately back away from the conversation, hesitant to say anything more. “What’s the game got to do with it?” I asked.

She at least had the decency to frown as she told me. She shrugged as she said it, as if it were no big deal. “You smell a little bit like defeat. You kind of stink of loss.”

“Oh.” I had no idea what else to say. “Oh. I see.”

“It’s okay,” she assured me. "I’m sure it will get better.”

But gone was my morning smile, my top of the morning joie de vie.

Because at that moment I realized that I had become the Lady Macbeth of hockey and no matter how much I washed and cleaned and scrubbed, it was going to be near impossible to get out this damned spot. Something more drastic would have to be done.

Never one to admit defeat (or at least not until the buzzer goes and the game is over) I have taken certain steps to help rid myself of the stench.

First thing I did, I went and bought myself a new sports shirt. Granted, the shirt was on special for $6.99, but I’m sure that even King Arthur must have thought he got a deal when he found the free sword that was stuck in the stone.

The shirt is ‘moisture wicking’, has ‘fabric breathability’ and ‘good looks on the go’. It goes by the monicker of Rec Tech Performance Gear. How could I argue with all of that? And it is brand spanking new. In other words, there is no stink on this shirt. It may not have been dipped in an oasis of victory, but it most certainly has not been dunked in a stagnant cesspool of defeat.

After buying the shirt I contemplated incinerating my old shirt. But then I realized that I might accidentally inhale some of its ashes. And ingesting some of that foul, ignoble stench seems entirely counter-productive.

So I’m keeping the old shirt in the hope that the new shirt will act an inspiration, a beacon of hope, for the old shirt and help remind it of how good it once smelled. Maybe through its clean-smelling example the new shirt will help its older counterpart find its way back down the righteous path towards victory. By doing good deeds, the new shirt will help the old one correct its ways.

As for my hockey sticks – they of the 'can’t receive a pass, can only hit the goalie in the crest and can’t put the puck in the back of the net' – I was going to throw them out or donate them to the Vancouver Canucks where they would feel right at home with all of the other sticks.

But when I mentioned this idea to my wife and asked her what she thought the shipping costs would be out to Vancouver, she commented “You mean those super-nice, very expensive hockey sticks that I got you as Christmas and birthday presents? Do you mean those sticks?”

I love my wife. And I also love receiving presents. Not being a complete doofus, I quickly realized that throwing out the sticks would be like throwing out the baby (that’s holding a gift in its chubby little hands) with the bathwater as it bites the very hand that gave it the gift. I therefore decided to re-think my strategy and instead re-taped the sticks and then cut the old tape (which had become worn and tired due to the despairing dissatisfaction of defeat) into dozens of pieces and scattered them in garbage cans all across town.

New shirt and new tape. They were definitely steps in the right direction, but they didn’t seem like quite enough.

And so, after much thought, I have decided to go the anti-REM path. I am un-losing my religion. I am going to revert to Catholicism.

Unfortunately I personally have never actually been Catholic, but I figure for this one I can tap into my ancestral roots. Somewhere back there one of my great-great-great Italian-dwelling relatives must have been Catholic. So I figure with my last name and the fact that the church is always looking for new flockers (flockees?) to join their ranks, that they will welcome me and embrace me in their pious arms.

My hope is that, after an hour or two in the church, I will then be able to approach the priest and have him exorcise the curse off of my freshly re-taped hockey sticks.

If by some unfortunate chain of events he’s one of those non-specialty priests who has to call the Vatican in order to approve an exorcism or needs to arrange with a specialist to rid my rods of their demonic demeanour, I'm hoping that the least he can do is bless the sticks, have me say a few “Hale Maries” and then send me on my merry way. If I get some wine and some cookies out of the deal, all the better for me.

But I look at it this way: the Catholic church gets me as a member for a couple of hours; and in return I get to have some holy water tossed on my sticks which will make them great for both generating goals *and* killing vampires. I figure it’s a win-win.

All right, I'm not completely ignorant. I realize that this temporary pilgrimage towards Catholicism may earn me a non-refundable coach class ticket to aitch-ee-double toothpicks, but at least it should help my team's game. And if that’s what it takes, I’ll take the risk and joyously enjoy my time on this beautiful, beautiful earth and walk in blissful, ignorant denial of my eventual fate.

It'll be worth it. Because I’ll be doing it for the team.

Dragons, beer and coffee

(Pity my team that gets these greetings every week. Pity them as you envy the verbacious joy they so unnecessarily receive!)

My fellow Dragons:

Listening to CBC Radio this morning, I was treated to a Bay Street businessman talking about his daily bike ride to work.

(This was after an interview with a bike store owner who basically told potential new-fangled biking-to-work cyclists to watch other cyclists in order to see how many rules of the road they should observe.

In other words: watch other cyclists to see how rude you can act and how much you can get away with.)

All of this in honour of Bike to Work Day.

So this Bay Street dude is talking about his daily two-wheeled commute and the show's host asks why he enjoys his self-propelled voyage. And this banking big-wig big shot replies, "It's good for the body, the mind and the soul."

And I thought, "You schmuck. Did you really say that? You better pray that your boss isn't listening.

"Cuz you need to make up your mind: either you're a Bay Street master of the universe or you're a car-hating hippie. You can't be a friggin' cow-killing meat-munching carnivore and an airy-fairy tree-hugging vegetarian at the same bloody time. Pick one and stick with it, you dick!"

This was my reaction without having a cup of super-caffeinated extra-large espresso coursing through my veins.

Oh, and as a side note to this side note, I also wonder this...

Has there been a study into the effects of coffee on the male libido vis-a-vis how incredibly horny my mid-afternoon coffee makes me?

And if no such study has been done, how do I go about getting a research grant so I can have electrodes attached to both my brain and to my willy so I can drink lattes and watch attractive women walk by?

Because I'm pretty sure some that at some point some Harvard grad has been given the cash to study the effects of beer on your average girl-watching guy, but what about coffee? -- Will two cups of coffee have the same shagadelic-inducing effect as a couple of beers?

Surely I'm not the only one curious about the results. Give me the money and I will find the answers to these unanswered questions! In cash there is truth!!

Hockey-hockey-hockey.

Tuesday night at 9:30 down at rink 3.

We play Very Tired who have won some and lost some but have tied none so we are tied with them in points. One could argue that because we're tied with them and they're tied with the Huskies, that they do in fact have wins, losses and ties -- but since they have more penalty minutes than we do, they are actually below us.

And below us they should stay. After last week's stunning -- I say *stunning* -- victory I figure we're on a roll upwards toward greatness...

("Can anyone 'roll upwards towards greatness'?" asks Dave. "Shhh, you know how volatile he can be," replies Darcy.)

... and I figure humiliating these Tired puppies should be a delicious cake walk.

("'Delicious cake walk'? How can he write crap like that?" inquires Dave. "I don't know," says Darcy, "but his use of punctuation is excellent!")

Tuesday night. Rink 3 at 9:30.

And now, time to do the census. I'm so cheesed that it's not the long-form format that I'm thinking of watching an old Marx Bros. movie as I do it. I shot an elephant in my pajamas! Three on a midget! Yeah, that'll show 'em!

Hope to see you Tuesday night,
Kevin.

A British Block

It's always interesting seeing a film that has yet to build any buzz.

I don't mean a film that is lying there like a flopping fish that everyone has expressed dazzling disinterest in, but a movie that has yet to tickle anyone's fancy, has yet to become the twinkle in a moviegoer's eye, and has not yet started the publicity machine of the tv spots and the trailers and the appearances on Entertainment Tonight, Letterman, Leno or Oprah.

"Attack the Block" has yet to make its way to our shores in a wide multi-theatre way and is still somewhere on the horizon with its release date. It was therefore interesting seeing it last night without any major expectations or pre-conceptions.

I knew it was British, I knew it involved teenagers who battle aliens, and -- well, that was about it. The rest of it was going to be a surprise.

After seeing the movie I can tell you this without spoiling anything: if 'Shaun of the Dead' had its DNA mixed with 'Trainspotting' and 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels', was then transported to the original British setting of Clive Barker's 'Candyman' and was all stirred together with the deadly addition of a vicious 'Doctor Who' / 'X-Files' type monster -- it's offspring would be this film.

One challenge the film may face over here is that the British council housing accents that the young actors employ can be incredibly difficult to follow. I was often thinking "What the heck did he just say?" but you don't expect the king's speech to be roll off the tongues of these characters. And, having said that, the movie rolls along at such a quick speed that the dialogue rarely matters.

At times the pacing of the movie is a little choppy and uneven, and, like "Shaun of the Dead" I thought it occasionally went a little overboard with its gruesomeness, but the audience I was with had a great time.

It will be interesting to see if other North American audiences are as receptive to the movie's charms. Perhaps the appeal of teenagers taking on an evil extraterrestrial will prove to be international no matter where the story is set.

Dragons return!!! Mothers rejoice!!!!

Oh I have been oh-so naughty in my abstinences. (Hmm, that doesn't sound right.)

Oh I have been oh-so delinquent in my do-me's. (Nope, not right either.)

I've been bad and I need to make amends (There. That'll do it.)

So, in order to return with a spurt of energy that would make a rabid rabbit revel in wacky wonder, I'm going to post the team reminder I sent out for Mother's Day. Then I can play catch-up (or, as we say in Canada, ketchup) and talk about Doctor Who, The Sex Talk, Xombi, Attack the Block, Thor's day and other all-over-the-place kind of stuff.

Here's what my teammates read the evening of Mother's Day as we started our summer season of Tuesday night hockey.

Ahh Mother's Day: a salute to the women who bring so much joy to the world, while always keeping in mind that you should never be too Norman Bates about the whole thing.

My Fellow Dragons:

I truly and sincerely hope that you've done you're best to ensure that your most beloved ones of the opposite sex have had a terrific Mother's Day. But having said that, I also hope that you've kept in mind that you're playing hockey this Tuesday night.

Preparing an extra special and supremely fancy-schmancy meal for your mom as a surprise treat so she doesn't have to cook -- that's fine.

Doing a special load of laundry for your wife in cold water and set on 'delicate' so that her naughty knickers are properly cleaned -- that's fine.

Wearing the special slave girl outfit so your honey can be the gladiator for a change -- hell, that's fine too.

But I pray to the gods of hockey that no Dragon was out there doing too much gardening and has therefore hurt his back -- because that would be truly unacceptable.

Remember remember remember and repeat after me: "Honey, you know I love you and I will do the dishes, paint your toenails and happily wear the blindfold on this most special of days -- but I gotta play me some hockey on Tuesday and you know I can't risk straining my back! So, woman, I am telling you and I am begging you -- tie me up, tie me down, flip me over and spank me like a naughty teenager from the 1950s, but do not make me overdo the gardening cuz that sweet-sweet siren named "Dragons" is calling my name and I cannot resist her gloriously beckoning song!"

Of course it would have helped if I had sent this e-mail *before* today's gorgeous and potentially hazardous gardening weather, but between my wife receiving her Canadian citizenship, having to supervise my niece as well as my two boys for the weekend and ensuring that today was memorable and relatively hassle-free for my lovely wife -- well, my plate was full to the point of overflowing.

So, I hope your back is not suffering due to this e-mail's relative tardiness.

HOCKEY!!!

Tuesday night we return at the oh so very late hour of eleven o'clock. We're playing Wolfpack 2 -- and I have to figure these guys are inferior sequels to the original Wolfpack. These guys are no Godfathers or Dark Knights; much more likely they're like Charlie's Angels, Lara Croft or, dare I say it, The Matrix and they're merely a poorly carbon copied repeat of a more glorious and awe-inspiring original concept.

I don't always hate sequels, but I already hate these guys. So let's play film critic to their tedious, tired concepts and tear them to shreds.

Hockey. Tuesday late at night.

Hope to see you there,
Kevin.

p.s. - And nary a "mother joke" in the whole e-mail. Shocking. Simply shocking.

Goodbye Bloc

My favourite desperate last-minute political appeal came from Quebec.

Duceppe's question to all of the Quebecois voters was: "How could we accept putting our confidence in people who don’t even speak our language?”

And I think that statement was incredibly indicative of the whole campaign from the parties: it's us versus them, us versus the feared outsider, us versus anyone who doesn't agree with us.

Because for Mr. Duceppe it seems that only French-speaking people should vote in Quebec. Other votes do not, or at least *should not*, count.

And perhaps he's paying the price for that attitude as he resigns after today's election's results.