Yokels

Ahhh, leave it to the Germans. God love em.

Mohan Mohan mentioned something newsworthy that I somehow missed. Mice have escaped from a lab in Newark. Good on ya, mice! Well, except for the fact that they're infected with the virus that causes the Bubonic Plague. Just another reason to stay out of Newark, I guess.

Okay, I hate Jeremy Roenick. A lot. But after watching this video, I hate him a little less. That's a great way to get the crowd into a game.

At a little after 8pm last night Griff called and said he needed a tenth for his ESPN Fantasy Hockey league. The league I was trying to put together was short five owners and we have a week before games begin, so I decided to screw that and I said yes. I had no time to prepare for the draft, but at 9:00 I logged onto the site and was instantly reminded why I hate ESPN's fantasy crap. I couldn't get into the draft room. I changed browsers and computers and still had trouble. Finally, at about round four, I logged in. Auto-draft had already selected Hasek, Giguere, Kovalchuk, and Lidstom. As my turn to pick came up, the power in my apartment went out. I lost a few more rounds to auto-pick.

Anyway, here is how the club came out.

Domanick Hasek
J.S. Giguere
Rick DiPietro

Ilya Kovalchuk
Jaromir Jagr
V. Lecavalier
Alexei Kovalev
Jason Blake
Scott Gomez
Mike Peca
Mike Fisher
Donald Brashear
Matthew Lombardi

Nicklas Lidstrom
Nick Boynton
Joni Pitkanen
Andrei Markov
Janne Niinimaa
Tomas Kaberle
Andy Sutton
Robyn Regehr

Lombardi is already on waivers for Ray Emery.
Peca is waiting to be dropped in favor of Joffrey Lupul.
And Markov will be hitting the road to be replaced by Jordan Leopold.

Any other recommendations? Any sleepers out there? Is Boynton playing this year? What about Kovalchuk? Is Fisher any good? I remember liking his play, but is he on a top line or stuck behind the other guys in Ottawa? And what about Sutton? His offensive totals are fringe to be sure, but the Thrashers should be better and he's a top pair guy.

Give me your thoughts... In email if you're worried about sharing secrets.

Japanese scientists win the giant squid race (w/pics).

He taught famous people to fly-fish, saved Brad Pitt's life, tied $1,200 flies, and gave away others for free. George Croonenberghs died this week. George Croonenberghs seems to have lived a good life.

Lara Flynn Boyle and Conan O'Brien on Late Night. Very funny.

The World's Biggest Dog doesn't hold with dudes doing handstands on his watch. Embedded video. Jesus, what kind of dog is that?

NERRRRRRRDS! Click on the text for more pics that will make you feel good about yourself.

Here's an idea for the new NHL ad campaign.

Darkened arena. An end view of a crisp, white, fresh sheet of ice bathed in bright light. It's empty, you know for the symbolism. Good music (Ninja, you pick it) comes up. We cut to a side, TV style view of the same ice, but now it has the lines on it... The new ones, you know, for more symbolism. The music is coming up getting your attention a little. We cut to a close view of a player on the ice practicing his offensive moves. It's quick shots showing his feet, his stick blade, and the puck doing a jig. It's Jarome Iginla. He's awesome. He's young. People like him. You can hear his blades grinding on the ice and that rattle of the stick and puck, even over our awesome music. You cut back to the fresh ice as the music slows just a little, only so briefly. Then it comes back as we switch angles and find Mario, wearing that 66, gliding gently just inside his own blue-line near the boards. He fires off a pass. Down at ice level, our camera switches just as a young, good-looking teammate of Mario's collects his pass at the other blue line and turns toward goal, and our camera. He looks up, just as he would if he was coming in for that one-on-one following the now-legal two line pass. For this skater we could use a no-name actor or maybe a chick in lingerie. Or we could use Sidney Crosby. Yeah, let's go with Crosby. That'll be like more symbolism as we pass from one generation to the next. Plus, the lingerie thing probably wouldn't go over too well with our female fans. We come back to the empty arena, but again only for a moment. When we switch again we find a semi-circle of players. Maybe they're Islanders or Flyers, but probably someone with a good, young goalie. They're out near the blue line and we're looking from high overhead. We cut down low and one (young star) player starts off at the far right with a shot on goal. He winds up and fires, full slapshot. We go close in, head on with the goalie. He gloves the shot with flare and edges left to face the next one. He's peppered with shots. Quick cuts. He stops them all. The last one rings off the crossbar, twirling in the air above our goalie. As the camera follows the puck up in slow motion, we go back to our empty arena and cut, with the music, to a new shot. It's a full arena, fans cheering as actions speeds on at ice level. We cut to an awesome offensive move by Iginla as he dances around a hopeless defenseman, a crisp pass play from Mario that makes people think he's not human, and just one helluva highlight reel pad-stacker by the goalie. Our music finishes off and we cut back to our empty arena and bring up some stupid line like, "It starts here..."... Followed by one more awe-inspiring clip of something good on hockey skates and another dark screen and "It starts October 2005."

As the year progresses, we can continue with this theme. Later, we can use the "It ends here" line as the play-offs come in. That ad would be fun to make.

Yes, this might be a little cliche, but give me a break... I came up with the ad while getting coffee this morning and I'm not getting paid for it.

____

Okay. We could do that... Or we could do this.

I encourage you to watch the ad before reading further, because I don't want to sway your opinion by saying...

It fucking sucks. It's terrible. Horrible. Awful. Brutal. Idiotic. Lame. Stupid. Dreadful. Ghastly. Lurid. Nightmarish. Foul. Unspeakable. Appalling.

Who are the marketing geniuses that came up with this one? Are they serious or were they getting revenge on Gary Bettman? Was it "Bring Your Mental Retard To Work Day" at the ad company?

"We wanted to get deep inside the soul of the game to reach the rabid fan who is starved for hockey and the casual fan who might have overlooked it," said Thomas C. Cotton, president of Conductor (the NHL's marketing company).

This is a classic example of something stupid people say to sound smart. Thomas C. Cotton is an idiot. Thomas C. Cotton has never seen a hockey game in his life. Thomas C. Cotton sucked Gary Bettman's asshole. Thomas C. Cotton was paid well for his efforts.

I defy anyone to explain to me how this ad helps hockey in any way. Not only does the ad just plain suck, but it doesn't have a single hockey player or a single hockey play. But wait, they'll tell me it has some hot chick!!! Everyone loves hot chicks. Well, almost everyone.

If you made an ad for hockey, would the player be wearing an "NHL" jersey? Does anyone you know cheer for that team? And they expect people to get excited by this? This is touching "the soul of the game?" This isn't even an actual part of the game, for fucks sake.

In the article linked to above Gary Bettman said, "When the season begins on Oct. 5, we will celebrate the return of hockey, and honour the values, tradition and emotion of the game we all love."

Apparently they're taking the unique approach of trying to do this without actually focusing on honour, values, tradition, emotion, or hockey.

I'd give them the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe they're just rusty. They have been out of work for a while. Maybe we should give them time before busting out the mental retard jokes.

Of course, the fact remains that they've never been any good at this. And when their new ad campaign makes long for the days of Denis Leary and Shania Twain explaining the rules of hockey, you know it's not getting better any time soon.

Does anyone else think Lydia from the new Survivor looks like a white, female version of Webster?

Time to play Pick your Survivor!

I'll take Danni, but only because she's a sports radio talk show host.

And I'll pick Judd as my winner. I'm picking him because he likes Donkey Kong.

The Captain has announced he is retiring. And while he was frustrating to watch the last few years, I will always remember him from better times.

So I'm guessing you cancelled the Comcast account. I'll save what I can from the front page while it's still in memory, and we can set it up somewhere when we find other storage space.

Rockin' the bloatee. Nice facial hair, fatty. I'm sure you can use this word at work to make fun of somebody.

The NHL has a video on their site regarding the new level of enforcement on obstruciton penalties. It's amazing. I never thought I'd say this, but it might be too much. Either way, I'm glad they're going to call too much rather than too little.

Jaromir Jagr will be amzaing in the new system. Mark Messier, if he decides to return, will have more than 200 PIMs in the first month of the season.

Today at work a guy who sits across from me asked me what I'd do if I won the MegaMillions Jackpot. I had plenty of answers, but none of them were really interesting. Travel, donate some cash to the World Wildlife Fund, try to start a career in writing, build a life-sized gold-plated facsimile of me punching a Tyranosaurus Rex in the ankle, etc.

Nice, but not terribly creative.

I've had time to think about it now, and I've got a new program. It takes place in a volleyball court. Me, Jessica Alba, and the re-animated corpse of Yokozuna are the players. Fuck it, I'm sure science can bring Yokozuna back with my millions of dollars, right? So I'm on one side of the court with Jessica Alba, and the Zombie Yokozuna is on the other. I have to stand at the line where they serve a volleyball in a regular volleyball game, Jessica has to stand within 4 feet of the net on my side, and Zombie Yokozuna has to stand 10 feet from the net on the other side of the court. Zombie Yokuzuna cannot move, Jessica Alba is allowed to move anywhere she wants as long as it's within 4 feet of the net, and I'm stuck at the server's spot. We're all playing to win, because the consequences of losing are ugly. Ugly like midget porn.



The game goes like this: I have 150 uncooked and still slightly frozen hot dogs. I have to throw them at Zombie Yokozuna. If I hit Z.Y. with an uncooked frank, he has to eat the hot dog. Jessica Alba can block my toss if she can do it without moving outside her 4-foot area. If Jessica catches the frank or I miss the Zombie Yokozuna, I eat the hot-dog. If Jessica moves outside her area, she eats a hot dog, and I get another free shot. If I decide to throw a hot dog at Jessica Alba and hit her, she has to eat the hot dog (of course, if she catches it, I eat the hot dog).

You get it?

At the end of the game, the two people who have eaten the most hot dogs have to fight. I think if I make Yokozuna eat enough hot dogs, Jessica Alba might have a chance against him. If I have to fight Jessica Alba, it doesn't matter who wins on paper, because really I win either way. If I end up fighting Yokozuna, I'm fucked, but I'm still a millionaire.

Also, this will be on Pay-Per-View. Some of the proceeds will go to the World Wildlife Fund, some of it will go to making a statue of me fighting a T.Rex, and some of it will go to getting Jessica Alba drunk enough to think I'm cute. The rest gets donated to science, so we can re-animate Yokozuna for next year's event.

You gotta dream, right?