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I promised some folks on the San Jose Sharks mailing list that I’d take a picture of my office corkboard with all of my Sharks paraphenelia on it, and my new playoff towel arrived in the mail today (thanks again to the sender, you know who you are), so I brought in the camera and did so, and I figure I’ll post ’em here for everyone to enjoy.
There are two, actually: one is of my corkboard which has the towels up on it, and the other is my whiteboard upon which I am tracking all of the series as they play out. (Sorry about the whiteboard being a little dark – the flash was creating a glare.)
…tonight’s NHL Playoff update:
| Western Conference Semifinal |
| Colorado Avalanche |
0 |
| San Jose Sharks |
1 |
| (Sharks lead best-of-seven series 3-0) |
The Sharks have never enjoyed a 3-0 lead in a playoff series, and are now a single win away from their first Conference Finals appearance in franchise history.
Game Four is Wednesday night in Denver.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to continue dancing around my apartment like a madman.
‘CUZ THE AVALANCHE JUST GOT SCHOOLED:
| Western Conference Semifinal |
| Colorado Avalanche |
1 |
| San Jose Sharks |
4 |
| (Sharks lead best-of-seven series 2-0) |
Game Three is Monday night in Denver.
It’s raining like hell outside. Not so much as a drop about twenty minutes ago when I was out fetching lunch. Welcome to Seattle in the springtime.
Here’s a quick San Jose Sharks update for you:
| Western Conference Semifinal |
| Colorado Avalanche |
2 |
| San Jose Sharks |
5 |
| (Sharks lead best-of-seven series 1-0) |
About as great of a Game One as I could have expected. Vinny Damphousse had a goal, Patrick “El Capitan” Marleau had his second set of hats in the playoffs, and the Avs are already on tilt and taking stupid selfish goonery penalties. (I expected better from a Tony Granato-coached team.)
Game Two is Saturday at high noon (and if you’re reading me on the left side of the country, your local ABC affiliate will have the game), and it will be very interesting to see if the Avs stay on tilt. If they do, this series could be over in less than the six or seven games most people seem to think it’s gonna go.
We haven’t talked Survivor for a while. so here’s the
S
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As much as I don’t think Shii-Ann has played a particularly brilliant game, I was thrilled to see her stick it in the face of the Chapearans (I refuse to acknowledge the Tribal Swap That Wasn’t), who are so secure and audacious in their alliance that they feel they can tell someone openly that they’re Next To Go.
Mixed feelings about the ejection, though. Alicia immediately pissed me off when she started to get snippy and wouldn’t let Shii-Ann enjoy her hard-fought victory. “You gotta live with us, you know,” she warned. Yeah. Like the living was easy the previous couple days, being told around every turn her game was going to end, and even getting stuck with the crappy bowl of rice at Rupert’s Last Supper.
At the same time, I can’t believe that they didn’t take that opportunity to break up Ambuh and Rob, since that is the only way anyone else is gonna make the final two. And based on the promos, the loveable castaways don’t sound like they’re planning on getting a clue anytime soon, as the women start with the infighting.
Disappointing. All-Stars started so strong, but the gaffes of these supposive “master” players is ruining the show.
Postscript: Rain stopped. It’s totally bright outside again. Freakin’ Seattle.
So I apologize to everyone for not having posted in a while, but I fear I just haven’t had all that much to say. So we’re gonna try one of those bits-and-pieces Larry King-type posts. I’m just gonna talk about the little things that come to mind. Here goes:
Blogger needs the ability to give individual titles to posts . LiveJournal lets you do it, Blogger should too. (I suppose you could always title it in the first line, and then boldface it and give it a HEADER tag, maybe. I should play around with that.)
I got a new cellphone last week. It’s pretty neat. I’ve always wanted one with a color screen and the ability to modify it with my own graphics and ringtones and such, and Costco had a deal, so I took the plunge. So of course the first thing I did was upload into it a boatload of game show themes for the ringers, and a San Jose Sharks graphic for the wallpaper.
Speaking of the Sharks, round two of the playoffs starts tonight! They handled the Blues with dispatch…I don’t think Colorado will be so easy, but I think we can beat them if we stick to our game. It would also help if Peter Forsberg were to suddenly drop dead.
We haven’t talked about Survivor lately. I’m disappointed that Lex is out, but he dug his own grave. Looks GOOD sporting the Mohawk on the jury. though. Unless someone grows a brain and makes a move SOON, it’s gonna be Rawb v. Ambuh for all the marbles, and even then it’s entirely possible that Rawb can run the table on immunity. Certainly he’s favored as long as the challenge is physical. There’s a chance if we have a mental challenge soon, Alicia wins it, and strikes while the iron is hot.
Man, I do NOT know how I lived without TiVo. I used my old-skool VCR to record Survivor last week (‘cuz it was on opposite the Sharks), and I was amazed at what a pain in the ass it was to program (and mine’s pretty easy). You just get spoiled clicking one button and having it be done. Now if I can just work up the sack to put a second drive in it and figure out how to Monte it so I can extract video.
I need to decide whether I’m gonna record Survivor tonight on the VCR or off my PC. The PC just got a new hard drive, but the TV card doesn’t record the audio as loud as I would like. (I might be able to leave it on the Tivo, if I’m stuck watching the game on ESPN2 and the Center Ice local feed is blacked out. We’ll see.)
I hope this problem with my MP3 player is confined to the battery. I plugged it into a power strip to recharge, but I didn’t realize I was plugging it in between two seperate outlets instead of into an isolated one. I’m sure this fucks up polarity or grounding or something, and now the thing doesn’t realize when the battery is full. If I killed the battery, I can probably obtain another one, but I need a special one to use the contact in the player to rechange it, which is much more convenient than a seperate charger. If I killed the circuitry on the MP3 player, I’ll be pissed.
I’m jazzed about this Iron Chef America thing FoodTV has coming up this weekend. They clearly have their ducks in a row far straighter than UPN ever did…but I liked Chairman Shatner. I dunno about this new kid. But Alton Brown is in the Hattori chair, and that is Jack Nicholson / Joker-style casting, as far as I’m concerned. Should be fun.
In the last year, TV has cancelled Mister Sterling, Ed, Boston Public, and the Drew Carey version of Who’s Line. What show that I liked will they shitcan next? You folks better hope I don’t get into Joan Of Arcadia. (I have some stuff to say about her, but I’d like to watch one more episode to make sure my opinion still holds.)
Well, it’s just about time for me to pack up and get out of here, so I’ll wrap this for now. Perhaps I’ll have some Survivor thoughts in the morning, if something remotely interesting happens.
Something occurred to me this morning, about this whole Super Bowl / Janet Jackson’s nipple thing.
They ran ads for no less than three different drugs designed to aid in the heartbreak of erectile disfunction during the game.
So it seems that if the NFL and CBS want me to get a hard-on through pharmaceutical means, that’s no problem. But if I want to do it NATURALLY, well, ahem, we can’t have THAT!
Seattle sports fans did me proud yesterday.
The Seahawks were tied with the Packers at 20 yesterday at the end of regulation of their NFC Wildcard playoff game, and Seattle won the coin toss for possession. And Seattle QB Matt Hasselbeck said, and I quote, “We went the ball, and we’re going to score!”
What he DIDN’T say was “Unless, of course, I throw a dumb-ass pass on 3rd and 11 that Al Harris picks off and runs back for a touchdown to win the game for the Packers.”
Now, one of the IRC channels I hang out on is #seattle, made up mostly of locals. And because the intelligence level of the average IRC denizen is right up there with, well, the average intelligence level of most of the country, any local channel whose sports team just lost an important game is usually flooded with idiots from The Other City come to brag about their perceived dominance.
And, lo, it was the same on this day. A few Packer fans (I refuse to believe a #greenbay exists, it would have been annexed by #milwaukee years ago) came in and bellowed the oh-so-intelligent analysis of “SEAHAWKS SUCK!” Never mind that the game went to overtime, or that Seattle never really should have been in the playoffs anyhow, only having won two road games. “SEAHAWKS SUCK!”
And nobody so much as blinked. “Yeah, tell us something we don’t know.” And it hit me: The last playoff game this team won was in 1983. Being told that the Seahawks suck is roughly akin to calling Out! Magazine and telling them to stop the presses for an emergency news item: Richard Simmons is gay!
So, good on the good people of #seattle, sports fans though they by and large may not be, for not feeding the trolls. Oh, and I wasn’t that heartbroken over the loss either. So even though I’ve only lived here for 5 years now, maybe I’m learning.
So I guess Washington beat WSU and won the Apple Cup this weekend. Being as I hate college football, I could really care less. But I thought football was supposed to be a manly sport.
“Apple Cup”? Could there BE a faggier name for a rivalry game? I come from a state where Stanford and Cal (and UCLA and USC, but screw ’em) play in the “Big Game”. Oregon takes a lot of shit for, well, being Oregon, but at least Oregon and OSU play in the “Civil War”. That sounds manly to me. “Apple Cup” sounds like something manufactured by a bunch of Oompa-Loompas.
Well, we’re into the thick of hockey season, now, and last Saturday, the Toronto Maple Leafs came to town. I’ll explain why this is notable in a second, but first, a few words about Ed Belfour:
The Four Of You who read this page should know by now that I am a rampant San Jose Sharks fan. And the Sharks have seen some lean times in the eleven-plus years they have been in the NHL. Then, in 1997, the Sharks finally made The Move, we finally got our All-Star player, when we traded for goaltender Ed Belfour.
Now, Eds was in a contract year, so we knew we were running the risk of him leaving the team at the end of the season, leaving us completely empty handed in return for the players we had traded for him. But everyone was certain that Ed was going to re-sign, as Ed himself had repeatedly told the media how much he liked San Jose, how he thought the team was going places, and how he was looking forward to working out a contract so he could stay.
The season ends, and still no contract. Ed wants to see what he’s worth on the open market, but he’s still 99% sure that he’s going to re-sign with the Sharks. So the Sharks plan accordingly.
July 1 is the first day of free agency, the first day it’s even LEGAL for other teams to talk to players without contracts. And the sun had barely risen on the West Coast before we find out that Ed Belfour had signed a multi-year deal with the Dallas Stars for less than we were offering him. He obvioiusly never had any intention of staying, and had played the Sharks for fools.
Ed Belfour was, and continues to be for many Shark fans, the most hated player in the National Hockey League.
The following year, Ed managed to avoid both of Dallas’s trips into San Jose, and it turns out that the first time he had to face his former team (and the fans he had screwed) was Game Three of the first round of the playoffs. And the fans were not kind. We won that game :)
Over the years, Eds has come back to San Jose Arena, but not frequently…his ability to come up with an injury or illness the night of a game in San Jose against the Sharks has been uncanny. His fear of playing in this building is both obvious and laughable.
After his tenure in Dallas, he signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs, a team who had made a deal with the league that they wouldn’t have to go on West Coast road trips for several years in return for switching to the Eastern Conference. Which includes road games in San Jose. What a coincidence.
This brings us to Saturday night: after five years, the Leafs are finally playing in San Jose again. And the night before, in Los Angeles, Mikael Tellqvist was in net for Toronto. So there’s no excuse, we’re gonna get a shot at The Weasel.
Saturday comes, and it’s time for starting lineups. And who’s in goal for the Leafs? Mikael Tellqvist, again. Eddie supposively has the “flu”. Fans on hand have reported that he looked perfectly healthy to them during warmups. Unbelievable.
So, Ed Belfour, if you’re reading this: You’re a PUSSY. P-U-S-S-Y. A she-male. A man-gina. May you rot in hell.
The 2003-2004 San Jose Sharks season tickets are out, or so I’m told. The marketing slogan for this season is:
“Sharks Hockey: It’ll Swallow You Whole”
Hmph. At any rate, this is a vast improvement on the slogan used when the season ticket renewal packets went out, which read “Somebody’s Gonna Pay For Last Year”.
After last season, what many people don’t know is that the two rejected slogans were:
“Sharks Hockey: It’ll Eat You Up Inside”
and
“Sharks Hockey: It’ll Suck
You Down In One Bite”
(Of course, some have suggested that if the Sharks are going to suck, then it’s good to know in advance that they swallow, too. :))
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