IPB Looks To Fill A Gaping Hole

It’s no secret that we recently whored ourselves out to a certain cable network which shall not be named (we’ll call them “Blersus” to protect the innocent) because they offered us a magnetic playoff tracker board in exchange for some facetime on our widely-read and hugely well-respected blog. As soon as we heard those musical words — “magnetic” “playoff” “tracker” and “board” — we knew our lives would never be complete without one. We happily complied, turning the sacred pages of IPB into a veritable Times Square, stuffed to the gills with flashing neon signs advertising Blersus’ cheap wares. And then… nothing. All of our fellow swag-faced whores reported gleefully of the emails they received from Blersus showering them with lavish gift baskets of magnety goodness. And our inbox? Well, it remained a desolate wasteland, filled only with the occasional tumbleweed spamming by. Nothing. Increasingly panicky and desperate, we finally swallowed what little pride we had left and prostrated ourselves to Blersus, emailing them ourselves, pointing frantically to the scads of posts we wrote about them, begging to know what we’d done wrong, demanding to know how we could be better, imploring them that it’s not too late — we can change! And still, there was nothing but a stony, magnetless silence from our former suitor. The cut direct. We had been well and truly spurned.

After staggering drunkenly through the seedy side of town and trying to attract other cable networks with our used-up, tawdry wiles (TRIO? Noggin? DIY?), we finally had to admit defeat. There will be no magnetic playoff tracker board for us. Unless… Unless we make our own. Yes! That’s the ticket! We’ve got the gumption! We’ve got the elbow grease! And best of all, we’ve got the magnet:

Of course, we can’t use our fridge as a playoff tracker — it’s not a board! It’s a fridge! Duh. So we tried the first board we saw we had on hand:

The scale seemed right, it could hold all the teams, and the convenient handle meant it could travel wherever we did. But it lacked a certain… something. Magneticness, perhaps? It was time to try something else.

And so we turned to the next board-like object on hand:

It did have the portability we admired in the first board, but this one was too small, and again, not magnetic enough. We had to find something bigger, perhaps even the biggest board in the house:

Our front door was not, it turned out, magnetic. But the little windows across the top held the magnet almost as well. However, we doubted the NHL would shrink its playoff format to just four teams solely to make our Playoff Tracker Board more accurate. Moving on, then.

Boards were clearly not working. They were, frankly, making us bored. (See what we did there?) So we decided to consider other mundane, everyday, and dare we say it, boring objects to see how they might fare as Playoff Trackers. And yes, we were giving up on our dream of “magnetic”. We’re obviously not good enough for magnetic.

Our first step at boring was, perhaps, too boring:

There wasn’t room for any other teams. It might suffice as a “Stanley Cup Winner Offseason Tracker Potato”, but was totally unequipped for the job of tracking 16 teams.

Next up:

Dude, this is so boring. It made us long for the thrilling days of the Tracker Potato. NEXT!

While we knew Abe could be relied on for a completely honest perspective on the playoff scene, after a few minutes we started to suspect he was going to call us “classless”.

Boring wasn’t cutting it. It was, to be perfectly frank, boring. We wanted something that would be fun while it tracked the playoffs. And what’s more fun than this?:

Actually, we can think of what’s more fun than Guitar Hero — that’s right, Katamari. But Katamari won’t track our playoffs. Fun is definitely not the way to go. What about beauty?

Hm. This looked like a good solution. 16 team logos could easily be arranged among those stems, and yellow tulips seemed like a magnificent way to celebrate that the stretch run coincides with the wonders of Springtime. That said, there’s not enough of those little powder packets florists give you to add to the vase water to make these babies last until June. No, this beauty was simply too fleeting. Time to find something more timeless.

Yeah, no.

Beauty wasn’t going to cut it. We decided to make a complete 180, and tried to find the ugliest things on hand in hopes of finding the perfect Playoff Tracker.

This frozen bag of corn was certainly unattractive. And it was flat, which made it well-suited for Tracking Playoffs, but seriously, it was crazy cold! After a few minutes of Tracking the Playoffs, our hands really stung. We were going to have to find something else that was ugly.

EEK! Too ugly! Too ugly! Can’t Track Playoffs — squirrel will eat me.

Okay. Inanimate objects were failing us. As we sagged with defeat, a chirping little “mew” at our feet encouraged us to buck up, and turn to the living objects that populate stately IPB Manor.

We felt confident that with Matsui in charge, the Playoffs would be well Tracked, but no sooner had we left the magnet in her care than she wandered off, distracted by a dustbunny fluttering over the heating vent. She was less durable than the tulips. This sucked.

Despondent, we considered trying to turn tricks for C-SPAN2, but at the last minute, just as we were tarting ourselves up and heading out the door, something caught our eyes. How could we have forgotten? He is always there for us, stolid, upright, aesthetically pleasing, and armed with an avian sidekick: Augustus.

At last! We found our Playoff Tracker! He may not be magnetic, but fuck that. We don’t want a stupid magnet board. We’re going to Track the Playoffs with Augustus and Shrieky, and if Blersus doesn’t like it, well they can suck it. They should have answered our emails.

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