1-2-3 Hockey: 42 of 45
Here is the spot our beloved black locust tree used to grow. After it got struck by lightning and had to be cut down we decided to make its spot into an herb wheel. So almost two months ago we asked our yard service guys to deliver some bricks for us to line the circle with, but suggested we were in no hurry because we didn’t want to work on it until it was cooler. They delivered the bricks immediately, and also helpfully cut the circle’s border… not really at all near where we wanted it. Thanks to the brutally hot weather, we didn’t get around to doing anything about it for quite a while, and we bet one particular neighbor of ours was probably fretting about her property value or shit like that the longer we left that pile of bricks in the front yard. Well, today we set to it, and after a few hours of laboring in the perfect October weather, our project was complete. It’s no longer an herb wheel, though — it’s now a specimen folly. We moved the little decorative pillar from our backyard folly (read: the pillar was plunked down under a small tree at the very back of our property), and declared this the new folly of Maple Hoo. Soon enough we’ll be planting all kinds of bulbs and whatnot, and come Spring, our folly will be surrounded by a lush forest of specimen flowers. Or, um, something. Until then, we’ll just have to bask in the glory of our high-quality bricklaying work.
NOW, KEEP READING FOR A NEW, BONUS IPB POST!!!
As you may remember, Gentle Reader, we spent the early part of our summer watching the entire series of “Walker, Texas Ranger” on DVD. The entire series, that is, but one episode. In the dead of summertime, with its interminably long, sunlit, hot days, and total lack of skate-y sports involving pucks and icing and the like, we started in on an episode called “In God’s Hands” and found ourselves immediately confronted by hockey. HOCKEY!!! EEEE! We hastily turned the DVD off and vowed that rather than wasting a hockey-themed Walker on the middle of the off-season, we’d watch it on the eve of the new season, and, because we’re that kind of friend, we’d diarize it for you. Of course, after the 100,000-word debacle that was our last attempt at diarizing Walker, we learned our lesson. We’re not going to diarize the whole episode – we’ll just do the hockey parts. So sit back, put on your cowboy hat with russet wig attached, and loosen your karate belt. It’s Walker time, and the eyes of the Ranger are upon you.
The episode opens with the sound of a horn, then an exterior view of Reunion Arena (our favorite road location of a Devils Stanley Cup celebration), and then… sweet, sweet hockey action. We turned this off so quickly the first time around that all we registered was the sport, but shockingly, this looks like… NHL hockey? Are those the Stars? Is this for real? Whatever the case, after a quick, jerky sweep of the camera across the action, we swoop to the corner where a player is inexplicably throwing himself against the glass so as to approximate a hit. Why would someone do that?
Oh right! Because Walker and Trivette are sitting a few rows off the glass (in what we’ve recently discovered is the “celebrity” section of the Stars’ newer arena). Trivette is psyched. He explicates for us what exotic sport we’re watching when he gushes, “I love hockey!” Wow! So do we!
As the scene unfolds, it gets confusing who’s playing. In the footage of the “action” we see these colors:
But in the “guy hitting himself against the glass while we watch Trivette react” footage, the player is clearly in a Stars sweater. We had no idea the Stars were such cheaters. They have a whole second team playing on their side against that poor visiting team in red, white and blue.
So anyway, a fight breaks out, with whip-crack Walker punching sound effects, and Trivette continues to enthuse about the awesomeness of the sport. The punching is meaty and wet-sounding. “Man, those guys are tough,” Walker says blandly. Trivette is agog, “You’re one to talk!” (Pookie: “The alternate take for this scene was them watching that Laraque/Chara ‘fight’ a few years ago where they both just got called for delay of game. Walker would be like, ‘Man, this fight is interestingly paced,’ and Trivette would be all, ‘You’re one to talk!’” Have we ever mentioned that Walker, Texas Ranger has some staggeringly bad pacing issues?)
After the fight, the team in blue scores a quick, shitty goal. We are shown the jumbotron, where the visitors’ tally flips to 7. Walker looks as disgusted as a red-wigged block of wood can as he explains to us, “Ugh. Another goal.”
We pan back to the jumbotron:
Pookie: “The Stars really were a Mickey Mouse organization back then.” Pause. “Of course, Waverly Polytech was stacked, so it’s not really that surprising.”
Walker is concerned that Trivette doesn’t know how to read a jumbotron, or to understand what has, presumably happened right in front of him for the last two and a half periods of hockey. “They’re trailing by six goals,” he exposits, “with under eight minutes to go.”
Of course, the sloppy scriptwriting quickly gives way to the classic Walker/Trivette witty banter we all know and love so well. “They can’t win,” Walker concludes. “Let’s go.” Trivette is even more agog than before, “No! No no no. We gotta stay.” “Well, I’m leaving,” Walker wants to beat the traffic to head home for a wholesome night of being terrified of Alex’s girl parts. “Are you coming?” “Whaaa?” Trivette asks, not tearing his eyes from the action. “I’m going,” Walker repeats. “Whaaa?” Trivette says again. “I’m going. There’s no way they can win.” “Whaaa?” “I’m going.” “Well, what choice do I have?” Trivette finally finds his tongue. “None that I can think of,” Walker quips cleverly, “unless you want to walk home.” And then he just gets up and walks out, from the middle of the row where they’re sitting, while Trivette desperately wants to see the last 7:58 of the game, and everyone around them is also still watching intently, but now they all get their views blocked by Walker storming out. Ohohohoho! This show is so funny. Trivette is left to splutter his inchoate frustration at Walker’s hockey cretinism while the game goes on mere feet away from his awesome celebrity seats. Pookie: “Walker is such a douche. That’s really the theme of this show. He never compromises on anything… he’s just a total douche to all of his friends.” She thinks for another moment about what we just saw and concludes, “You know what? He’s not even a douche. He’s just a total fucking dickwad. Walker is just a dick.”
The next scene has them striding out of the arena, Trivette bitching about what a mistake it was to let Walker drive, and Walker’s all, “Am I going to hear about this all the way home? Complain, complain!” Then they round a corner, and it’s all, “WATCH OUT!” Oh no! They’ve just stumbled onto a bunch of men standing around a van, holding assault weapons, apparently holding up an armored truck. As one does at hockey games. Thank heavens Walker was able to park right next to the arena, and suddenly the parking lot really resembles a small, strip-mall sized lot, and, well, here ends the hockey content for now, at the two-minute mark, as Walker and Trivette embark on a high-speed explosive chase.
The rest of the episode involves a little kid getting shot, and Trivette thinking he was responsible, and him almost losing his badge, and a vindictive police detective trying to take him down, and blah blah blah, and we spend most of it hoping that the coda will involve the team taking the little kid, miraculously recovered, to a hockey game. Alas, that doesn’t happen. The coda instead involves a throwaway conclusion to the armored car situation, with a raid on a weapons cache, and assault weapons, and meaty, wet-sounding fist-fights. And then, as they’re cuffing the bad guys to the roll bar of Walker’s truck (not a euphemism), Trivette says, “Hey Walker. Remember that Stars hockey game we went to? The one where you made me leave early?” (It was, like, two days ago, but whatever.) Walker nods stoically, “Yeah, what about it?” Trivette looks smug, “They won.” Walker is gobsmacked, or as gobsmacked as a red-wigged block of wood can be. “No kidding,” he marvels at the greatest comeback in NHL history. Then he walks off. Trivette follows him, and they climb into the truck (still not a euphemism). “They scored seven goals in the last seven minutes,” Trivette explains (Pookie: “That’s because Waverly Polytechnic kept Zach, Travis, Langer, Whitey and Marty out on the ice that whole time.”), “They said it was the greatest comeback in the history of hockey. Insane.” Some har-har banter ensues, and they drive off into the lens-flare-y sunset. Literally. “Wow,” says Pookie, “It’s in God’s hands now.”
There. Aren’t you glad we waited all summer to share this with you?
NOW, KEEP READING FOR SOME BONUS SEMI-HO!!!
You know what we did today? We made a recipe from Semi-Ho immediately after watching an episode.
It was a combination of bacon, pecans and brown sugar, so you can’t blame us.
