Andrew, thanks for the Playstation hockey encouragment. I would be so game to give it a try but… I have no Playstation. I think the plan at IPB Manor was to be all wholesome and pass the off-season reading, but now I’m just going to gaze forelornly at the TV where a Playstation should be. Oh, and I totally would have taken wine-making classes, too! We’re trying to grow grapes in our backyard. If we ever get actual grapes, we’ll know who to go to get vinting advice (or at least B- level vinting advice… hee hee!)

Heather, the made-up hockey season was so much fun, but I agree with Schnookie in that I wish we knew you all when we wrote it! We’re hoping to put some of it up on IPB this summer. I personally think the world needs to read Schnookie’s short story about Brian “Tiny PI” Gionta investigating the who killed hockey, featuring cameo appearences by Peter Forsberg, Gary Bettman and Thunderbug.

This nearly happened, actually, but then Jagr decided he still would rather play forward.

As for our imaginary hockey season, man oh man do I wish we’d known the HLOGers back then. Things stagnated really quickly writing with a bunch of Devils fans, because while it sounds fun, like “Oh, I’m going to write 82 Devils games!” what happens is you look at the games you’ve been assigned for the week and there’s nothing but Blue Jackets and Coyotes on it. I had one memorable 8-week stretch without a single Devils game. I have to say, because this was pre-New NHL, the Sabres did not fare well in our Fantasy Season. I failed to anticipate Crunchy, among other things! (Because we all dried up, hockey-wise, so quickly, the Fantasy Season became very surreal very quickly, with lots of outlandish stuff involving time travel, a soft-serve ice cream machine playing goal for the Rangers, a bit of an out-of-control mascot obsession on my part, and Jason Arnott suffering increasingly creative and gruesome injuries in each game he played.)

I have to admit, until this comment – not the first comment about this issue you’ll notice – I thought we were talking about Orgasm Moments. Which was confusing. Because while it can be amusing to watch certain animals mate, I never really thought of it as calming.

Andrew, I admire your… uh, devotion… but video games don’t work for me. They piss me off too much. I don’t know how it happens but I keep getting broken controllers! They screw me every time! I end up throwing things which scares Mr. B. He won’t let me play with him anymore.

An imaginary hockey season sounds AWESOME and I’m sorry we weren’t friends then. I would’ve loved to have had a Sabres-Devils Finals (the entire Western Conference was wiped out by various natural disasters and plagues) in which Marty and Crunchy make crazy save after crazy save and Drury wins the whole shebang by leaping to block a shot with his face, going temporarily blind, but using his other super senses to carry the puck down the ice to score on Marty, frozen in awe of the Hockey God before him. I’m sure it would’ve been beautiful.