Woolgathering In July: We're Getting Punchy

Gentle Reader, it’s like a switch has been flipped here at stately IPB Manor, and we’ve now entered the second phase of the off-season. Phase One involves a lot of grumbling about how much we hate hockey and hope to never see it again, and any mention of any Devils players prompts us all to screech, “TOO SOON! TOO SOON!!” But Phase Two is completely different. Phase Two is when we can’t stop whining about how much we wish hockey would just come back, and we start being able to laugh about the Devils again. That’s right, Gentle Reader — the holes where our hearts should be have warmed a bit, and we’ve been able to find mirth in our misbegotten favorite team again. Here are the stories:

– We are huge fans of HGTV’s House Hunters, and like to tivo it so we can watch a handful of episodes on Sunday nights to end our weekends. This past Sunday our minds were completely blown thanks to an international episode set in the Czech Republic. In it, an American ex-pat was looking for a flat in some unnamed city outside of Prague, but he was also shown a “rustic” 200-year-old farmhouse. And that farmhouse literally didn’t have indoor plumbing. At all. The only toilet on the property was in the barn. The bathtub had a hose run into it from the garden. The sink in the kitchen was just a basin with no faucet and no drain. And the realtor just shrugged and said that was normal in Czech. Needless to say, Gentle Reader, we have spent the last few days rambling in our Patty Elias voices about how difficult it was for Patty to have all the indoor plumbing taken out of his house in Jersey so he could feel more at home. Frankly, we feel like he makes a lot more sense now.

– We couldn’t help but notice that the Devils’ new twitter feed features an awful lot of information about how all our Minnesota-based players are eating walleye that they’ve caught themselves. We refuse to believe, though, that Zach can catch his own fish. No, we’re convinced that he hops into his little 13-foot fishing boat to be the dreaded Walleye Pirate of Lake of the Woods. He putters up to successful fishermen and fires a musketshot across their bows, then drops a boarding plank that Boxworthy, clad in an eyepatch and wearing a billowing sash of a belt with a cutlass hooked in it, slowly crawls across to relieve their targets of their catches. Perhaps he even carries a basket with him that has a carefully-calligraphied sign on it, “Please hand over your walleye to the turtle”.

– We were also discussing the other day about how sad it is that whenever we see pictures of NHLers clutching bottles of beer, it’s always crappy beer:

Pookie: I bet Travis fills his Coors Light bottles with malt liquor. It’s a trick he learned from Paulie.

Schnookie: Zach fills his Coors Light bottles with butterscotch schnapps.

Pookie: Yup. Buttschlager.

Schnookie: No, Buttschlager is the cheap brand. The top-shelf stuff is Butterschlager.

Pookie: Absolutely. And instead of gold flakes in it, it’s studded with Werther’s candies.

Schnookie: After a successful day on the high seas pirating walleyes, Zach and Boxworthy kick back on their pirate dinghy and do shots of Butterschlager until one of them either passes out or chokes on a Werther’s.

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