Random Thoughts On A Quiet Saturday Night

– For a variety of uninteresting reasons, Pookie arrived at work this morning with about 20 minutes to spare and a hankering to find videos about Beaks on YouTube. She found this:

When she sent the link to Schnookie this exchange ensued:

Pookie: I found a HILARIOUS video of Beaks and CoreyPerry CoreyPerry. Fighting in Juniors. At the end of a playoff game.
Schnookie: Oh my god.
Pookie: I was laughing out loud in my car. It was Muppet Baby Douchebags.
Schnookie: I’m honestly not sure who I’d think wins that. Of course, we’re ALL winners here.
Pookie: It was like what I imagine baby peacocks would be like if they were chimpanzees learning life skills by copying their parents.
Schnookie: (After watching the video) Oh my god. That’s a beauty. I love Beaks tossing his head. Like, I’m sure he thought, a wild stallion. He looked like Beaks of Chincoteague there. A little wild pony.

– For a variety of uninteresting reasons we ended up discussing Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers during dinner tonight, which, of course, spiraled into an exchange of Simpsons quotes. When Schnookie pulled out the “how will anyone know it’s a Honda without the H?” scene, Pookie suddenly declared that Looch had eaten the H off all the Hondas he’s ever seen. Schnookie agreed, because Looch just loves to eat the letter H. Pookie then remarked, “That’s why that Bruins/Habs game was such a melee. Looch just sees all those little H’s on the sweaters…”

– Boomer made us all laugh really hard after dinner when she tried to read aloud the blurb about Nora Roberts’s upcoming release, Catching Fire, a romance novel about smokejumpers. Boomer launched into the first sentence of the blurb, “There’s little as thrilling as firefighting…” but said instead, “There’s little as thrilling as firefarting.” We still haven’t stopped shrieking with laughter. Being a grownup is grand.

– We got a crazy new fisheye lens for our camera today. VE Mats loves it.

So does Rollie.

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The 2010-2011 Devils Team Bonding Playbook

If there’s one thing a strugging hockey team can be counted on, it’s a chorus of “we just need to get on a roadtrip so we can do some team bonding to get us all on the same page”. We’re not hockey players, so we don’t understand why “getting everyone on the same page” can’t be accomplished in, we don’t know… practice. We are, however, crack reporters. So we do know exactly what team bonding the Devils are up to on this long road trip.

Day One: The boys head over to San Jose’s hottest karaoke bar where Hedberg is encouraged to take the stage first. He cues up “Dancing Queen”, and proceeds to put on a worse performance than Roseanne Barr singing the National Anthem. The audience predictably and understandably boos lustily. Langer grows inexplicably upset; “He deserves better, people,” he shouts at the crowd. “Don’t boo him — he’s trying.” The crowd rolls its eyes. Langer then takes the mic and launches into “When A Man Loves A Woman”… only he doesn’t bother actually singing any of the words. The crowd boos more. The remaining players get on the same page by agreeing to leave the karaoke bar immediately, because all this booing is hurting their feelings.

Day Two: Marty insists that the team should engage in an activity he has been historically great at — bowling. The boys all eagerly line up to hop on the team bus, but John MacLean, without warning, informs Kovalchuk, who had no fewer than 15 perfect games under his belt during his tenure in Atlanta, that he’s not welcome on this particular trip. When the bus driver asks why Johnny Mac just made his star bowler stay at the hotel, Johnny just snarls, “He knows what he did.” The remaining players power through their bafflement and continue on to Anaheim’s finest laser bowling joint. They figure it’ll still be a great outing without Kovalchuk’s rolling prowess, because they still have Marty to knock down a ton of strikes. Except Marty suddenly appears to not know how to bowl anymore.

Day Three: With some time to kill in the morning before gametime, the team bus heads over to Disneyland, a trip that has historically been reliably cheap, satisfying Lou while still being fun for the players. Except things go horribly awry… now that most of the boys are tall enough to ride the rides. Lou spends the morning cursing the day he ever let Gionta and Rafalski leave.

Day Four: Patrik Elias leads the team on a walking tour of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Hank Tallinder wonders later what everyone was talking about. He’s a little bit abashed (but not a lot) later when told he was supposed to be looking at the sidewalk, not the sky. After the Walk of Fame tour, Zach picks up a Star Homes map and insists the team bus make some celebrity stops. Sadly, Kovalchuk doesn’t get to go, because MacLean wordlessly orders him off the bus before they set out.

Day Five: Langer gleefully toasts the previous night’s Kovalchukless flight from LA to Vancouver with a champagne brunch in the team hotel. The boys spend the rest of the day lolling around the hotel spa, waiting for Kovalchuk’s Greyhound to arrive. They make a game of it, trying to guess why MacLean kicked him off the flight.

Day Six: In a repeat of a Vancouver-area team-bonding trip from two years ago (which, incidentally, did not lead to the team winning a Stanley Cup) (or even a playoff round), the team heads back out to a neighborhood curling rink. The team of Zach, Travis, Zubrus, and Taormina goes out to an early lead, and is looking to easily beat the team of Langer, Arnott, Egg Pelley, and Vasyunov (Kovalchuk is asked to leave the rink for wearing inappropriate curling slippers by a rink attendant who looks suspiciously like John MacLean). Langer then decides he will be replacing Zubrus on the other team, causing them to lose their lead and then the match. Taormina learns an important lesson about “playing the Devils way”. “ZZ Pops,” Langer gruffly says to the kid on his way out to a “curling winners only” celebration at a hot nightspot, “That’s what gets us where we’re going. All ZZ Pops.”

Day Seven: Travis requests that team revisit one of his favorite activities — cake baking. MacLean just goes to the nearest grocery store and buys a cake. Travis spends the rest of the day trying not to cry.

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Good Uses For A Case Of Tastykakes

By now everyone has seen the brilliant Tastykake Stanley Cup pictures coming out of Philly. After long thought on a lazy Saturday, we have come up with a list of other things that we’d like to see constructed out of those tastymeats.

– Beaks

– Independence Hall

– Legoland

– The Atlantic Ocean

– Mars

– The Spectrum

– Kate Smith

– The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition

– The Lombardi Trophy

– The 2000 Eastern Conference Final

– A potato that looks like Abraham Lincoln

– Dogs Playing Poker

– Our tree

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The Devils’ Gym

So today we watched an episode of “Walker, Texas (New York) Ranger” called Devil’s Turf. In it, an evil bodybuilder/trainer dude, proprietor of the titular Devil’s Gym, introduces a group of high school football players to their one-way ticket to Div I scholarships — “powerball”: a combination of steroids and speed. This prompted this exchange:

Schnookie: The Devils take the opposite of that. They get together before games and gobble down handfuls of quaaludes.

Boomer: Yeah. They take Human Shrink Hormone.

Pookie: Absolutely. Their powerball is a cocktail of Human Shrink Hormone and Ambien.

Whatever the actual chemistry of it, be forewarned — if you stop by at the notorious Devils’ Gym after hours, you’re going to end up like the kid before the opening credits of this episode of Walker. You’ll be so overcome by the effects of the Powerball that you’ll drive your motorcycle into an explosive wreck with a big-rig. Only instead of enjoying the ride like the Walker kid did, you’ll be sound asleep and getting smaller by the minute.

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“Dispatches” “From” “Vancouver” “From” “Sid” “Crosby”

Olympics are fun. That’s what they want me to say. Actually, I’m not winning. That’s not fun. I wanted to go home. I had a great idea to get sent home. I was going to do kinda lewd things with a medal and have pictures put in the internets of it, but I don’t know how to do lewd things. Unkie Mario won’t let me. Also, I don’t have a medal. Then I thought I could get thrown out by wearing offensive aboriginal outfits all the time. But that didn’t work. All it did is that now Pierre McGuire is wearing one too. Olympics aren’t fun at all.

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IPB’s Newest Web-Footed Friend

Way back on December 18 the brilliant and talented Gentle Reader Jarhead_SGT blew our minds with this homemade Chuck the Duck. After we recovered from the staggering sense of awe, we wondered, “How did we not think of that?” Really, how could we not have our own Chuck the Duck? Especially when we already knew exactly how to make a felt duck. All we would need is the felt duck, a hockey sweater for it, a hockey helmet, and a cigar. It would be a piece of cake!

We started with a prototype, just to hammer out the logistics. Using craft-store felt, we constructed a shockingly cute little duck, then draped him for his Reebok slim-fit-style sweater. There was no small sense of thrilling accomplishment when we realized it was going to work.

Our prototype was so cute, we hated just to think of it as a mere step in the construction process. But when we talked about it, we couldn’t call it “Chuck” because “Chuck” was going to be the real duck. Chuck proper was going to made out of fancier materials, and dressed, and his beak was going to be stuffed the way the pattern called for (a step we forgot to do on the prototype). We named the model MiniChuck. And MiniChuck has been a boon companion lo these weeks while awaiting the arrival in the mail of the fancy wool felt we ordered online.

Yesterday, though, the pieces were all in place. The duck-making factory swung into action. And after hours of trimming and sewing and stuffing and fluffing, our masterpiece was complete.

Behold, Gentle Reader: MAXIMUM CHUCK!

None! None more Chuck!

Chuck likes to bask in the glory of our free giveaway Stanley Cup banners.

Chuck wears the very cutting edge of concussion-proof ping pong ball helmets.

Chuck is a brawny manly-man, whose chest measures a whopping entire inch across.

Because we’re very proud of cutting out such a small felt Devils logo, here’s another picture of it!

Chuck smokes only the finest hand-rolled construction-paper cigars.

A Canada goose can break a human’s shinbone with the force of its wings. For Chuck, that kind of damage is child’s play.

Chuck can fight with the best of them, but he’s also got soft hands. He’s everything a hockey fan could ask for.

This Chuck might not have the glamorous lifestyle of the real Chuck, with his speedboats and his exotic travels and his poutine, but he has one decided advantage over his namesake: no Stan.

Fischler-free since February 2010.

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The State Of The Devils

We feel like we’ve been very divorced from the Devils lately, what with missing the Islanders game on MLK Day, then being out late this Friday and Saturday for the Montreal and Islanders (redux) games. Maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder, though? Probably not. Anyway, here’s our take on the state of the Devils, as seen from far, far away.

1. EJGRgunner made the great point after last night’s game that Zach has apparently taken the Fuck This Shit torch from Langer. And Langer has given it up without a fight. The “C” might still be on Langer’s sweater, but the true Captain Fuck This Shit of the Devils is now Zach. This doesn’t really come as a surprise, considering that Zach is ten times the player Langer is, but still. It merits mention that, from a million miles away where we’re standing, it seems to have happened this week.

2. We may or may not have mentioned in this space that we are participating in a group project on Flickr called sixty-four colors, where the assignment is to take pictures of a specific color every week, as chosen by random draw from a box of 64 Crayola crayons. This week (our first in the project), the color was sea green. Now, we assumed we’d fail, because who the hell ever sees anything that’s sea green? As it turns out, though, as soon as you start looking, there’s sea green everywhere. Likewise, ever since Zubrus got hurt we’ve moved Mike Mottau to the top of our list of guys we are most likely to forget are Devils. We never, ever, ever noticed him. Then, a couple weeks ago, Pam mentioned in the comments here that he was the player she was most eagerly anticipating getting to the end of his contract. Since then, the only thing we can ever see about the Devils is how much he sucks. Mike Mottau being a terrible hockey player is like the sea green of the NHL.

3. As has been well-documented here, we’re pretty down on the whole NHL-involvment-in-the-Olympics thing. One of the reasons why is we’re always very sure a key Devil is going to get hurt playing in what is essentially an all-star exhibition tournament.* This year we were getting big time vibes that Elias was going to be the one to pull a groin or get a high ankle sprain or break a forearm (which in our experience is the most horrible, unhealable hockey injury ever). So what do the hockey gods do? They go and give Patty a concussion well before the all-star exhibition tournament even starts so we can’t even blame it on the stupid old Olympics. (*We’re all about all-star exhibition tournaments, just not when they interrupt the regular NHL season; if the NHL brought back the World Cup we’d be first in line to buy tickets. OK, maybe not buy tickets, but we’d be all over watching it. Think about it, NHL. You know you want us being all over watching hockey in the summertime.)

4. Speaking of the most horrible, unhealable hockey injuries ever, we miss Paulie Martin. The Devils are pretty good at initially recovering from going down a key player, but it’s like everyone’s decided Paulie is never, ever walking through that door ever again, so it’s not worth trying to play well until he comes back.

5. Is anyone even sure Yann Danis is still alive? Because it seems to us like maybe he died by accident a month or so ago, and the Devils just don’t want anyone to know. They’re being all like, “Oh, he’s still with the team. He’s still an important part of the team! He’s totally alive and a key player on our roster. He’s gonna play tonight, in fact. That’s how alive and part of this team he is. Playing tonight. For reals. Totally.” Then, an hour later, they’re like, “Uh, he, uh… got stuck in traffic. He’s not gonna be able to play tonight. Um… *shifty eyes*… he’ll be back tomorrow. Or the day after. Something like that.”

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