A Tour Of The Palms Hotel And Of The Inner Workings Of Our Shared Brain

Gentle Reader, we have a confession to make. This past season, we felt that we left most of our best material as bloggers off IPB, because most of it wasn’t about the Devils. During the dog days of the March swoon, we wailed to our closest friends that we’d let our blog get bogged down with our repetitive complaints about a team that didn’t interest us much, while we were riffing in endless, giggling fashion about things unrelated to the team we were supposed to care most about. We frequently told ourselves, on evenings when we couldn’t think of a thing to say, “If only we could write about [a certain other team we got accused of writing about too much anyway]!” So today we discovered this extravagantly awkward and wooden tour of the Palms hotel by Mike “Beaker” “Beaks” Richards and his nurse shoes.

And the floodgates opened, as we gchatted away while Pookie was at work. As you can see from the transcript below, we were probably smart to keep this all to ourselves all season.

(Now, we have been planning for months to go to Montreal for the Draft, but our plans have been derailed in the last few days thanks to our inability to obtain tickets. We were considering becoming bitter about or jealous of the bloggers at SB Nation who are going to be fully credentialed at the Draft, but, well… If we were the kinds of bloggers who get to go to the Draft, we’d never be able to indulge ourselves with posts like this. And surely the world is a better place for us hitting “publish” on this.)

Schnookie: I’m watching Beaks now.

Pookie: Ooh, I won’t interrupt.

Schnookie: Beaks is such a whore!

His tourguide style was hilarious!

“Hi. I’m Beaks. For $25,000 a night.” *Looks awkward* “You get the master suite jacuzzi.”

Pookie: Yup!

Schnookie: He looked so chunky, though. He looked dumpy. Hippy.

Pookie: I KNOW! I didn’t want to say anything but I was like, “His outfit is NOT flattering.”

Schnookie: No, he looked shaped like Greg Maddux. I think it was the nurse shoes. Poor Beaks.

Pookie: And how about the faux I-don’t-know-what “peace out” at the end?

Schnookie: What the fuck was that???? And he’s a REALLY shitty bowler.

Pookie: I assumed his bowling was affected by his shoulder surgery. That video was filmed like four weeks ago.

Schnookie: Oh, right. Beaks is normally a champion bowler.

I loved that his approach to bowling was as stiff and weak as his line delivery. “Now I am. Going to bowl.” *Stiffly tosses ball with a minimum of bodily movement* Pause *Cracks up* “Not good.”

Pookie: Yeah. The whole thing was….

But hey! It’s Beaks!

Schnookie: I better watch it again.

Pookie: That’s what I said.

Schnookie: The hockey highlights are making me sad. I miss it!

Pookie: I thought the same thing. Sigh.

Schnookie: I love that for $25,000 a night, my five closest friends can sleep in murphy beds in Vegas.

Pookie: I KNOW! And “play hoops with [their] boys”.

Schnookie: I’m sorry he didn’t try to dunk. Paulie: “Me too.”

I would have DIED laughing if they’d made him try sinking a shot.

Pookie: [Busy doing work stuff, being at work and all.]

Schnookie: They probably did. Ten hours later, he’s like, “I just had shoulder surgery! I swear when I’m healthy I can do this!”

Or better yet, he was like, “Oh, I’d love to take a shot! That’ll be a nice bit to add to the clip!” *Goes to throw a two-handed underhand shot* Director: “Cut! Cut! What are you DOING?” Beaks: “I’m not cleared to throw overhand yet.”

Pookie: Don’t make me crack up here!

Schnookie: Paulie, popping up from behind one of the murphy beds: “Also, he learned everything he knows about ballin’ from me.”

Pause.

“Ifyouknowwhatimean”

Pookie: “Like that the hoop is called a ‘net’.”

Schnookie: Beaks: “What he means is that he throws two-handed underhand.”

Paulie: “And that I ball a lot.”

Pookie: DON’T make me laugh!

Schnookie: Beaks: “That’s not a euphemism.”

Paulie: “No. It’s not. What else WOULD it mean?”

Beaks: *SMIRK* “I don’t need a two-handed underhand to win at THAT kind of ballin’.” Pause. “Unless she wants it.”

Loops: “Or he. Unless he wants it.”

Beaks: “You are NOT invited to be one of my ballin’ boys.”

Loops: “Peace out, yo.”

Paulie: “Quit making b-ball sound dirty! It’s pure and good!”

Beaks: “If that’s the case, why aren’t you wearing shorts?”

Paulie: “I never said the Golden Gopher was pure and good.” DUNK!

AAAAND… scene.

Pookie: I… don’t have enough “:”s in the world.

Although now I’m scared of the Golden Gopher.

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Brian Rolston Puts All His Eggs In One Basket

Today saw yet another thrilling installment of “As The Devils’ Search For A New Coach Turns”, this time starring Brian Rolston. Devils beat writer Rich Chere picked the brain of last summer’s big Devils UFA signing about the possibility of Jacques Lemaire returning to NJ. After snarking about how Sutter didn’t give him a “fair shake”, Rolston made the bold assertion that Lemaire would be an excellent choice to coach the finally-no-longer-trapping-quite-so-much team. His thesis? That all the other coaches suck. No really, Gentle Reader, his exact quote was: “I think you have to look at the candidates out there. Who is a good coach? I don’t think there are any candidates out there as good a coach as Jacques. That’s my opinion.” Our guess? Lemaire goes to Montreal and Rolston doesn’t see a lick of PP time under Coach Laviolette.

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Project Bicycle Screenshot: Episode 3

What, Gentle Reader, is going on in this picture?

a) Triumphant Sid unveils his next 87 line for Reebok, “Dare to Win”. After hours spent around the family dining room table, Sid and his handlers decided that white suits and red vests are “in” and branded athletic gear is “out”. Reebok was really not sure this was a good direction to take the company in, but the instant Sid got his grubby hands on the Cup, there was no stopping Sid’s wild plans. One can only wonder how Ovie will step up his endorsements with the discount hair cut business to keep pace.

b) This is a vision of the future, namely of the Devils first-day-of-training-camp seminar. The new (surely awesome and foxy) head coach will bring in this extravagantly stylish speaker, whose white suit and red vest will deeply underscore how much elan is needed when you dare to win. The Devils will sit, slack-jawed in amazement, as this motivational speaker’s message resonates in the furthest recesses of their hearts (even though they’re very small and they don’t remember the last time they used them). Then they will leap to their feet in a roaring ovation at the end of the seminar, ready to race into the season full of an insurmountable daring to win. They will be so irrevocably in the thrall of the Dare To Win speaker that they will adopt his style of dress away from the rink — we can’t wait for next season now! Because now that the playoffs are (finally) over, it’s officially the new year. Anything can happen! Even the Devils daring to win! Right? Right? Please tell us we’re right. Yes. We’re right. And that’s why we’re fully confident that Vinny Lecavalier and Jay Bouwmeester are going to look fantastic in their white suits and red vests.

c) The Ookies host a training session on the power of positive thought. As you can see, it’s very well attended. We’re renowned far and wide for our positivity and optimism.

d) Jim Rockford has a huckster motivational-speaker adopted brother??? Who’s running a Ponzi scheme and neck-deep in “Syndicate” problems? Really?

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38 Things You Don’t Know About Tomorrow’s Game 7

A while back we published a shocking list of 38 things you don’t know about Sid Crosby. In order to drum up a bit more interest in this godforsaken Stanley Cup Finals, we decided to do some investigating and come up with a similarly shocking and similarly numbered list of things you don’t know about tomorrow’s Game 7. We’re not trying to start any kind of trouble or ensnare anyone in any scandals — we’re just trying to bring the truth to light.

(Unrelated to this list, but related to Game 7, we’d like to thank Tyler from The Triple Deke for asking us to pen a guest post about our experiences with SCF Game 7s. The Triple Deke is a wonderful blog, and if you’d like to read our post, you can find it here.)

1. If you rub a balloon on Zetterberg’s beard for five minutes, you can use the ensuing static electricity to power a 75 watt lightbulb for the length of the first intermission.

2. There are only 39 things you don’t know about Sid Crosby, and we’ve already told you 38 of them.

3. Kirk Maltby revs himself up for games by reading the Oconee County phone book.

4. Joe Sakic contacted a lawyer in the hopes of suing the Red Wings over the term “Joe Vision”; Sakic had been planning to unveil a brand of signature glasses frames under the name “Joe Vision” in July.

5. Bill Guerin is quite literally a “pea-brain”. His brain stem terminates in a pea. The rest of his cranial cavity is filled with sawdust.

6. Prior to stepping in late in the season to guide an NHL team to the Stanley Cup Finals, Dan Bylsma’s greatest accomplishment was successfully inventing device to keep bananas from bruising in brown bag lunches.

7. Brian Rafalski stole a Scott Stevens sweater from the dressing room before leaving NJ. He keeps it in a mahogany box hidden under his bed, and whenever he’s feeling down in the mouth, he puts the sweater on, poses in front of the mirror, and asks his reflection, “Who’s a pretty boy? Who’s a pretty boy?”

8. Whenever Doc Emrick’s mic is turned off, he silently weeps for what hockey broadcasting has become.

9. Darren Helm is hot. No really, you probably don’t know this, because you’re so tired of hearing him lauded as being the greatest hockey player to ever breathe that you instinctively ascribe entirely negative attributes to him.

10. When Troy Crosby heard Rob Scuderi’s new nickname, he used his superstar son’s money to purchase every jigsaw puzzle for sale in the greater Pittsburgh metro area. He then arranged them in the shape of the Rbk logo, set it alight, and giggled as the bonfire burned.

11. Hal Gill has an actual medical condition that prevents him from ever doing anything right. He caught it from Marc-Andre Fleury, who has a rare intermittent case of it.

12. When asked, none of the players involved in the Stanley Cup Finals could correctly locate Chile on a world map.

13. It’s all a conspiracy against both teams. All of it.

14. Maxime Talbot hopes to quit his day job as soon as he can make a decent living off his Etsy shop.

15. The Devils played cribbage during their playoff “run”, the Hawks let loose with Wii MarioKart, and the Wings spent their downtime playing Trouble. That is, until Kronwell obliterated the little plastic dome that houses the dice. Lidstrom suggested they simply roll the dice to continue the game, but at that point, the spell was broken.

16. Kris Letang has a fillet of penguin in his freezer.

17. Ray Shero is terrified of ice.

18. Chris Chelios has also forgotten that he exists.

19. NBC is losing considerable amounts of money on this game because their permit to use Mike Milbury in public expired on Wednesday; the extension fees for a Milbury permit are designed to be exorbitant enough to discourage anyone from applying for one. This is one of very few financial burdens the network failed to shunt onto the NHL in the fine print of their broadcast agreement.

20. Win or lose, Henry and Linda Staal still love Jordan third-best of all their sons.

21. Miro Satan doesn’t think it would be at all funny to play for the Devils, but sadly, most of his teammates do. There have been no less than 45 man games lost by the Penguins this season as a result of injuries he has inflicted on teammates who have made the mistake of saying, “You know what would be funny? If you played for the Devils.” Satan’s explanation for his short temper is always a terse, “It’s pronounced differently, jackass.”

22. Nick Lidstrom’s testicle has long wished that it was the center of attention, so it’s delighted at the recent media kerfuffle about it.

23. There are concerns in the Pittsburgh front offices that Sid Crosby will not be able to play well, as he’s announced behind closed doors that he’s “waiting for Game 87 to make [his] statement.” No amount of explanation of how the playoff format works seems to have made a dent.

24. That giant cartoon-esque octopus’s arms are getting very sore from holding that pose all season. It can’t wait for the series to end so it can just go out behind the Joe to stretch and smoke a cigarette.

25. Evgeni Malkin spends six hours every day having extensive, life-like make applied to give him his trademark lumpen potato face; in actuality, he is strikingly handsome but has always been insecure about imagined flaws in his visage.

26. Pierre McGuire plans to get invited to as many of the winning players’ days with the Stanley as possible, in the hope that one of them will let him sit naked in the bowl of the Cup so he can poop in it.

27. Mike Babcock keeps a list of all the names of every pro athlete he thinks never should have been drafted. The joke’s on him, though, because several of the names on there — including, surprisingly, Brian Rafalski — weren’t drafted at all.

28. Marian Hossa can’t wait to eat that monkey.

29. Ed Olczyk has petitioned the League to allow his name to be included on the Cup if the Pens win. His grounds for inclusion are that he was “responsible for making Marc-Andre Fleury awesome.” The League hasn’t responded because they’re still not sure whether the petition was a joke.

30. The NBA has petitioned the League to allow LeBron James’s name to be included on the Cup if either team wins. If not LeBron proper, they will be satisfied with Puppet LeBron.

31. Mike Babcock has petitioned the League to allow only his name be engraved on the Cup if either team wins. If the League won’t comply, Babcock is prepared to whine his way to victory.

32. Pavel Datsyuk doesn’t know what this “candy corn” is that you speak of.

33. The GMs of both teams are beginning to believe that every rule in the CBA was devised specifically to keep them from succeeding by a cabal of shadowy League officials. Only one of those GMs is right.

34. Chris Osgood credits his surprising playoff success to his new yoga and meditation regimen. “I had literally forgotten how to play hockey,” he says in a testimonial for a Detroit-area chain of yoga schools, “but now my mind is open again and the hockey has flooded back in.” The Red Wings’ defensive system has plans to file a lawsuit against the chain of yoga schools, because it believes it deserves the credit more than the yoga does.

35. In a further attempt to have himself declared the next Scott Stevens, Brooks Orpik challenged Petr Sykora after Game 6 about the veracity of his alleged foot injury. Further proving that Orpik is no Scott Stevens, Sykora ignored him.

36. The Stanley Cup doesn’t think the whole “Mario’s swimming pool” thing was very funny, because it can’t swim.

37. The series is fixed.

38. We aren’t going to like either one of these teams more for winning. Oh, wait. You already knew that.

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Another Devils Season, Another Devils Coach

After an afternoon of contemplating the news out of Newark today, here’s our official stance on Sutter’s decision to step down as head coach of the Devils: Meh. A big, fat, hairy “meh”. Or, since it’s Sutter we’re talking about, a “meh” that looks like Edward Gorey’s Beastly Baby. In any event, the whole thing is just another chapter of our lives as Devils fans when the team didn’t win shit. We can’t get too worked up over losing a coach that led the team to two straight first-round losses. We can, however, start day-dreaming about who Lou will bring in to replace him. No, we’re not talking Carbonneau, or Nolan, or Johnny Mac (now that would be the stuff of nightmares) — we’re talking some newbie AHL hidden treasure like Pete DeBoer or Dan Bylsma. Youngish, bookish-looking, more likely to appreciate Pando more than Rupp, and maybe even willing to strip to Langer of his C. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

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Project Bicycle Screenshot: Episode 2

Once again we find ourselves wondering, what’s going on in this picture:

A. At the Devils rookie dinner, Zach (right. Her?) insists that he is not, in fact, a rookie anymore, and consequently shouldn’t be on the hook for the tab. But Travis (left), ever the prankster, is adamant that he has never seen Zach before, thereby proving he’s a rookie. It’s a fight Zach will never win, and once again he finds himself stuck paying for his teammates’ nearly insatiable desire for delicious Medieval Times dinners. (Off screen, under the table, Travis is also installing the latest step in his most recent taffy-in-the-shoes strike. Zach will never know what hit him.)

B. While they refuse to wear visors during play, Jamie Langenbrunner, left, and Mike Mottau, right, insist on wearing sunglasses indoors at all times, no matter how dark the restaurant.

C. Patty Elias, right, is the Devils appointed social secretary for entertaining prospective free agents or trade targets, giving them a glimpse of what life in Newark has to offer. Here, VincentLecavalier, left, finds the Ironbound to be far hipper than he had been led to believe. “In Tampa,” he will later say, “we don’t get served maraschino cherries out of footed silver bowls alongside dinner rolls and goblets of genuine Newark tap water!!”

D. Jim Rockford charms a young woman on the lam in Vegas in the hopes of getting a percentage of the reward for the money she’s absconded with.

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Project Bicycle Screenshot: Episode 1

Last summer we introduced Project Bicycle Spoke, where we were drawing hockey cards at random out of a box and writing about them. This summer we’re excited to add to our stable of off-season programming “Project Bicycle Screenshot”, a series wherein we will suss out the hockey-related screenshots from our non-hockey TV watching and share them with you. Sadly, we’re losing our touch as hockey bloggers — when confronted with pure hockey-blogging gold, we’re freezing up. So it’s up to you, Gentle Reader, to tell us the true story behind the hockey-themed images we’re bringing to you.

What is really going on in this scene?

A. Paulie Martin (center) is meeting with a sportswear designer (left) and the head of Reebok’s clothing marketing (right) at Reebok’s corporate headquarters. They are in discussions to launch Paulie’s own line of stylish merchandise, Gopher7. The line will offer head-to-toe clothing and style choices for today’s hip hockey fan, all inspired by Paulie’s unparalleled fashion tastes. Here he is modeling the prototypes for Gopher7′s top-of-the-line wig, unique poufy tight-cuffed shirt, and snug, snug pants. Paulie looks concerned that the colors (and medallion) don’t have enough flair. The Reebok executive, however, thinks the line needs more Devils red and black, since nothing sells quite as well as the Devils.

B. Photographs of the GM’s office are rare, but here you can see Lou, left, as he joins Jim Dowd, center, and Sergei Brylin, right, (her?), in a discussion of a possible future return of the dynamic duo. Note the widely-reported lack of personal effects around the office and the dedication shown to cutting costs — the silver cylinder on the desk doubles as a pencil-holder and as a string-can telephone for communicating with the coaching staff on the other side of the office.

C. Pando (left), Travis (center), and Andy Greene (right) get caught by a surveillance camera stealing from the Devils’ office supply cabinet. That’s not going to sit well. If there’s one thing Lou’s protective of, it’s the team’s paper clips.

D. Columbo and Roddy McDowell listen intently as the secretary to the recently-murdered business tycoon explains who packed the deadly exploding cigars in the limo. (Hint — Columbo didn’t do it! And Roddy McDowell did!)

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