Weekend Update

The weekend wasn't the best o' times here at  El Casa Inmóvil De Pennington, but it was far from the worst.  Saturday was almost a complete bust, what with the Wings getting blown out in Toronto, the Irish losing yet another game they prolly should have won (and that makes four losses out of the last five games), and Florida State winning yet again in a squeaker against a scrappy Boston College team.  (I won't link the FSU game coz I hate actively dislike those prats.)  Saturday's only saving grace was near 70 degree temps, which enabled us to take an early Happy Hour on the verandah before the UCR all-day football orgy.

Sunday?  We hit our high o' 52 degrees before noon.  A miserable cold front blew in right after that and just before Happy Hour, dropping the temps into the 40s with a wind chill in the 30s.  That meant we took Happy Hour indoors, what with us being of sound mind and lacking a sufficient insulating layer o' fat to brave the verandah in that sort o' weather.  We used that time to finish off the book we were currently reading, took a short nap, and fixed dinner... consisting of leftover spaghetti and a salad... after which we watched at least four episodes of "Eat: The Story of Food" on the NatGeo channel.  The absolute BEST parts o' that show were the frequent appearances of Nigella Lawson.  Ooooh... what a hottie she is!  The second best part was the segment on beer, which you can see here (Blogger doesn't like NatGeo's embed code).  Ah, yes.  Beer is life, innit?

And then there's this...

Occasional Reader and Constant Correspondent Rob sent that along this weekend.  I suppose you have to be of a certain age to get that.  And I AM.

Onward and upward...

MOST Excellent

Keith Olbermann on Gordie Howe:



I used to hate, Hate, HATE Olbermann when he was doing politics on MSNBC.  Sports is quite another thing altogether and this video is a fitting... even elegant... tribute to the great Number Nine.  Olbermann  notes that Mr. Howe has taken a turn for the worse; The Freep has details about his condition and it doesn't look good.  Our best thoughts go out to Mr. Howe and the family.

Saturday: They Love Him In Hockeytown

From last night's game at The Joe:



That demonstration brought a tear to my eye.  We love him here in P-Ville, as well.

Oh, yeah... there was a game, too.  The Wings beat the reigning Stanley Cup champions like a step-child, winning 5-2.

LGRW!

Thoughts and Prayers...

... go out to Gordie Howe and his family.  From the Detroit Free Press:

Gordie Howe — the hockey legend and giant among Detroit sports figures — has suffered a severe stroke that has his family rushing to his bedside in Lubbock, Texas.

"I feel like this is his final lap around the rink," Murray Howe, one of Gordie's three sons, told the Free Press tonight. "I'm guessing that he's not going to recover ... but then again, he's about as strong as they get. If anybody can do it he can."

[...]

Gordie Howe, the Detroit Red Wings legend so synonymous with his sport he became known as Mr. Hockey, suffered a stroke Sunday morning, one day after enjoying a pleasant stroll in Lubbock with Azia and Lahna. Gordie has been staying in Lubbock with his daughter, Cathy, and sons Mark, Marty and Murray started hurrying Tuesday to join their sister, and in all likelihood say good-bye to their famous dad.

More details at the link above.  Get well soon, Mr. Howe.

All's Well That Ends Well

So, there I was... watching the Beloved Wings play the Hated Flightless Birds last evening with about four minutes left in the game and the Wings down, 3-1.  I was THIS close (imagine my thumb and forefinger about a millimeter apart) to switching off the teevee and doing something more interesting... like the dinner dishes... but I decide to hang in there.  Why?  I dunno.  But The Deity At Hand had plans; watch below.



SN1 rings me up after The Captain put it in the net with a lil over two minutes left to get the Wings within one.  "Well," sez I (speaking about the Zetterberg goal), "at least we'll go out on a minor high."  And then, wonder of wonders, Number 55 TIES the game with 39 seconds left, so it's off to OT we go.  You know the outcome if you watched the highlights above... Justin Abdelkader put it in the net with less than a minute left in OT for the win.

I would have been SERIOUSLY pissed if I'd read the score this morning after switching the game off.  Or, to put it another way: O, me of little faith!

Story Book Endings

We almost had two such endings yesterday... one worked out and one didn't.  Here's the one that worked:



The game was a 0-0 tie until nearly the last possible moment in OT when The Captain brought home the win.  It doesn't get a whole lot better than that, Gentle Reader.  I was semi-upset when it came time to tune into the game last evening and found The Powers That Be mandated US coverage of the game would be provided by Hockey Night In Canada.  This wouldn't upset me normally but last night?  Yes, and that's mainly coz the HNIC guys are such homers.  It gave me GREAT pleasure when the Wings won the game, if only because it shut the HNIC guys right the Hell up.  Well, that and back-to-back wins over the Hated Leafs.  The fact the Wings took a home and home over Toronto... in very convincing fashion... is sweet, indeed.

I was conflicted last evening, given the Wings and ND were playing at nearly the same time.  I got to watch all of the hockey game's first period without interruption but the remote sure got a work out after that.  Remote workouts ended with Number 40's OT goal; I watched the second half of the ND game in its entirety and that game certainly lived up to its billing, to the point where I think it was prolly the best football game I've seen this year... except for the ending.  I jumped up off the couch shouting "Yes! YES!!" when Golson completed a pass into FSU's end zone with 14 seconds left for an apparent game-winning TD.  But, no.  The play was negated by a VERY dubious pass interference call and FSU squeaked out a win.  From the linked article:

Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly was not happy with the call.

"We execute that play every day," Kelly said "And we do it legally and that's the way we coach it. We don't coach illegal plays."

I can vouch for the fact Mr. Kelly wasn't the only one who wasn't happy with that call.  A couple o' thoughts come to mind here... (1) "Sometimes it bees that way" and (2) "It's always sumthin'!"  It was a great game, even if the Irish were robbed.

Is It October Yet?

Department of Redundancy Department:

Sigh.  Our teevee is getting a LOT of rest this summer.  Which ain't new or different from summers past.

H/T for the image: Rummy.

The Sunday Re-Run

What?  It's June already?  Why, yes... yes it IS.  And here's what we were on about exactly six years ago today:

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Detroit 2, Pittsburgh 1

Detroit's Henrik Zetterberg splits the defense of Pittsburgh's Evgeni Malkin and Ryan Malone during 3rd period action between the Detroit Red Wings and the Pittsburgh Penguins in game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals at Mellon Arena, Saturday, May 31, 2008.
(JULIAN H. GONZALEZ/DFP)

One more win—three more chances. And then the 2008 Stanley Cup Final will be history. The Wings can hoist the Cup on home ice tomorrow night, and the chances…statistically… of them doing just that are better than good.

I might have seen a more exciting, harder-fought game than last night’s masterpiece in Pittsburgh, but I don’t think so. The only possible candidate might be the Wings’ Game Four win in the sweep of the Flyers in 1997…but that would be for entirely different reasons, like ending a 42-year Stanley Cup drought. So yeah, that game in Philly was memorable (ed: played in DETROIT. So much for your memory.). But last night? Indescribably Delicious. It began with the Pens scoring their lone goal less than three minutes into the game and ended with the usual desperate, empty-net play of the team…that would be the Penguins… that’s down by a single goal with less than a minute to go. And I was on the edge of my chair for the whole 60 minutes of play… “exciting” is a woefully inadequate term to describe the intensity of this game. And it might have been a little bit too exciting, at times.

For instance: my “Heart In Mouth” Moment… a Pittsburgh 5-on-3 power play that lasted an eternity (1:26 —or 27— depending on who you read), described by Damien Cox in the Toronto Star:

Three days of insistent whining by Michel Therrien about alleged obstruction and a well-timed dive by Sidney Crosby combined to put the Pittsburgh Penguins in a wonderful position to keep their Stanley Cup hopes alive.

But the Detroit Red Wings would have none of it.

Instead, they absorbed an interference call produced by Crosby's clever lunge that gave the Penguins a long, 5-on-3 power play in the third period last night, grimly fended off every second of it without allowing a single shot on goal and rode that tremendous effort to a 2-1 victory in a hard-fought, bruising Game 4 of the 2008 Cup final.

[…]

Henrik Zetterberg, Nicklas Lidstrom and Niklas Kronwall combined to kill the critical two-man disadvantage, preventing Penguin snipers Marian Hossa, Evgeni Malkin and Crosby from getting a truly top-notch chance.

Zetterberg made the play of the game during the penalty kill, saving a sure goal for Crosby into an open net by quickly reading the play and tying up the Pittsburgh captain's stick.

A frustrated Crosby was grudging in his praise of Zetterberg's critical effort.

"He just got my stick," said Crosby. "I don't think he did anything out of the ordinary that somebody else wouldn't do on a 5-on-3."

In Zetterberg's defensive play, of course, lies the brilliance of the Wings, and why they can capture their fourth Cup in 11 years tomorrow night in Motown.

The Detroit Red Wings Henrik Zetterberg kicks away a puck delivered up by Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby during a 5 on 3 penalty play in the third period that goalie Chris Osgood helped kill helping to defeat Pittsburgh 2-1 in game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals Saturday, May 31, 2008 at the Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh, PA.
(MANDI WRIGHT/DFP)

 

Yes. Zetterberg definitely saved the game with that play on Crosby. But there’s something else Mr. Cox doesn’t mention… Here’s Ron Cook, writing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

A goal by Detroit center Jiri Hudler at 2:26 of the third period went down as the winner. But that's not what beat the Penguins.

The Penguins' power play beat the Penguins.

Everybody is talking today about the 5-on-3 advantage the Penguins had for 1:26 midway through the third period, an advantage they thoroughly wasted. Detroit's Henrik Zetterberg -- of all players -- had the best scoring chance. The Penguins didn't even come close to getting a goal.

If Detroit does go on to win the Cup, that 86-second span will be remembered as the time when the series ended.

Think about that for a moment. Pittsburgh is on a 5-on-3 power play and Zetterberg has the best scoring chance? That should tell you a few things: (a) the Pens’ stars either didn’t or couldn’t execute, (b) Detroit’s penalty-killers —including Ozzie— were god-like, and (c) Zetterberg should be wearing a big red “Z” enclosed in a diamond on his chest instead of The Winged Wheel. A cape wouldn’t be out of place, either, because Zetterberg can almost literally fly. And I think I know how the citizens of Metropolis felt when that guy with the big red “S” on his chest swooped in to save the day. Yep…it was just like that. Only it was on ice. Every single article and column in today’s hockey pages, no matter where they’re written, talks about what NHL.com calls “A Penalty Kill for the Ages.” And that’s not hyperbole, Gentle Reader.

Don Cherry predicts this series will be history tomorrow night. And I gotta agree. It’s in the cards. And this is what I hope we’ll see:

“The Red Wings' Tomas Holmstrom hoists the Stanley Cup…”
AP Photo from 1998.

Suh-weet.

Well... June 1st, 2008, was among the last of Former Happy (Hockey) Days and all was well that ended well, even if those Flightless Birds managed to win one more game before losing to the Beloved Wings before a disappointed home crowd in Game Six.  And speaking of losing at home... today... tonight, actually... we'll just have to content ourselves with watching the Hated 'Hawks lose Game Seven of the Western Conference Final at home.  Which will be almost as pleasing and fulfilling.  Yup, "Schadenfreude Я Us," and we just love watching the enemy shed bitter tears o' frustration and woe.

Saturday: The Magic Man!

Final score, Game One: Datsyuk 1, Boston 0.

That's the way to start, Boys.  Don't let up and keep on as you've begun coz Boston ain't gonna roll over and die.

LGRW!

Updated, somewhat later:  Are ya confused about the post title?  Well, there's an app for that:

Friday, November 08, 2013

Cheesy Videos XXX (That Would Be 30, Not Some Kinda Pr0n Clip)

Wherein we ask Siri a question...



Who'd a thunk it?

Heh. 

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Rodney Crowell...

Tired ol' story, sad but true
We mama's boys have got it in for you
Our faults are many, our virtues nil
We never loved you and we never will
Ah, come on now girl, it's time we both come clean
This mean old world runs on sex and gasoline

The lyrics to this tune made me laugh, but I suppose they WOULD.  I like the way Rodney skewers a number o' subjects here and his words ring TRUE, in that tongue-in-cheek sorta way.  The tune itself is pretty bouncy and catchy, as well.  That doesn't hurt.

In other news...  We went out on a beer run to our Local Likker Locker (no, there's no broadening to be had here... it was all new favorites, like 90 Shilling Ale and Snapshot) but the first thing we did before making the beer run was to affix the playoff flag to The Tart, like this:

That's last year's pic but ya get the ideer, right?  Yes, we're a day early since the Beloved Wings don't play until tomorrow evening.  OTOH, we're right on time coz one can't ever be TOO early, yanno?

LGRW!

So Very F*cking WRONG

By way of Puck Daddy, yet another FBFU*...

And there's this about that:

All that said, this map may not be that accurate. Lots of fans may like their NHL team without "Liking" their NHL team. Which would mean Facebook's information is woefully incomplete. It could be that there's just one NHL fan in New Mexico, and he bleeds burgundy and steel blue, for instance.

Nope.  Not even.  I know for a freakin' FACT that there are a lot o' New Mexicans who bleed red.  "Burgundy and steel blue?"  Not around HERE, Gentle Reader, not around here. We see more than a few Wings jerseys in our travels around THPoNM, most especially out at Cannon Airplane Patch.  Do we see Avs jerseys?  Well, mebbe... it's possible, I suppose... but we ignore the unpleasant things in life most of the time.

So.  The playoffs begin tonight with three games on tap.  I'll likely watch the Flightless Birds play Columbus (and root for the BJs) followed by the Anaheim - Dallas game.  The REAL action begins tomorrow and there's this about that:

Not every team that succeeds in the playoffs is the favorite, right? These three teams stand the best chance of being this year's dark horse.
...

Detroit Red Wings

When was the last time you heard "Detroit Red Wings" and "dark horse" in the same breath? Still, that's what they are, as they will face the NHL's top regular-season team, the Boston Bruins, in the first round. This has been a difficult season for the Red Wings, who have gone long stretches without top players Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Johan Franzen and Jimmy Howard. But a new generation of Red Wings has emerged, led by scoring sensation Gustav Nyquist, Tomas Tatar, Tomas Jurco and Riley Sheahan, which has more than picked up the slack. With Datsyuk back in the lineup and Howard back to form after a rocky season, the Wings don't look like a wild-card team. And they're not. The culture of winning is strong, and coach Mike Babcock is as good a tactician as there is in the game when it comes to making adjustments on the fly and planning for the rigors of a playoff series. Throw in the experience of guys such as Daniel Alfredsson (who's still searching for his first championship) and the under-appreciated Niklas Kronwall and would it surprise anyone to see the Red Wings make a run? The almost universal answer across the hockey world is a resounding "No."

That would be Scott Burnside, writing at ESPN.  Most of the "experts" are predicting a short series with Boston quickly eliminating the Beloved Wings.  Those experts said the same sorts of things about the Wings last year, who eliminated Anaheim (the West's Number Two seed) in the first round and took the (ultimate) Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks to OT in a game seven before falling.  I'm not predicting the same sort of thing this year, mind you.  But it WOULD be nice.

*FBFU: Facebook F*ck Up.

Re-Run, With a Purpose

Last year I put this up around this time...

Sunday, April 28, 2013

It's 22, Bitchez*!

From NHL.com...

The Detroit Red Wings and Minnesota Wild completed the playoff field on Saturday by winning their regular-season finales on the road. The Red Wings beat the Dallas Stars 3-0, while the Wild defeated the Colorado Avalanche 3-1.

That left the Red Wings in seventh place with 56 points and the Wild in eighth with 55. Both teams needed the victories because the Columbus Blue Jackets won their final game by rallying past the Nashville Predators 3-1. The Blue Jackets and Wild both finished with 55 points, but Minnesota finished eighth and Columbus ninth because the Wild had more non-shootout wins.

It sucks to be a Columbus fan today and I say that with all the respect I can muster.  The BJs had the second best record in the league during the month of April and could have really done some damage in the playoffs; I'd have been jes a lil bit worried if I were Chicago and had to face them in the first round.  Minnesota, OTOH, finished the season on a downward spiral.

As for our Wings?  We can beat Anaheim, easily.  We took two from them... on THEIR home ice... in back-to-back fashion in March and we're a lot healthier now than we were then.  Yes, this can be done.  Wings in six or less.

LGRW!

* "Bitchez" is a term of endearment among The 19.

Well.  Now it's 23.  And those poor ol' BJs made the playoffs this year, as well.  You'll note some people got on the bandwagon pretty early...

I've been telling SN1 the number on my next jersey just might be 14.  He's prolly the main reason the broken, battered, and bruised Wings limped into the playoffs this year.  I don't expect the team will do much in the playoffs given the number of key players that are still out, but at least we made it.

LGRW!

Happy Birthday, Number Nine

Gordie Howe turns 86 today.  That's the good news.  The bad news is he's battling dementia and we all know that's a losing fight.  Helene St. James, hockey writer for the Detroit Free Press, has a great article celebrating Mr. Hockey on his birthday.  An excerpt:

Gordie Howe never was one to sit around, and that hasn’t changed even as dementia roils his health. He turns 86 today, an event that will appropriately be celebrated in Detroit, because no city ever has celebrated Howe more. He reigned here as a local hockey folk hero for three decades, defining what it meant to be talented and tough.

Howe doesn’t come to Detroit a whole lot any more, because he cannot be on his own. He has spent the past four months in Lubbock, Texas — staying with his daughter, Cathy, and her husband, Bob — escaping the harsh winter that would have impeded his physical activity. The man who six decades ago dominated opponents in hockey remains a man who doesn’t like to be still.

I never got to see Gordie play... except on The Tube o' You... but I have a special kind of love for the man, like Wings fans, hockey fans, and most all Detroiters do.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Howe.

Time Change

Meh.  OK, we sprung forward.  In so doing we slept until well after noon MDT and missed the first two and a half periods of the Wings game, which we immediately turned off almost as soon as we turned it on, seeing as how they were down 3-0 with something like seven minutes left.  It looks like "springing forward" hurt the Wings, too, as they fell out of the last wild card slot in the East with this loss.  Things don't look good.

And then there's this...

I dunno whether to laugh or cry about that.

High Five

High in The Joe Louis Arena rafters, that is.  Here's the full Lidstrom Number Retirement ceremony from last evening, courtesy of YouTube user xXxCrosby87Xx:





Hockeytown really knows how to celebrate its heroes, no?  You should note I'm posting the whole ceremony... and that's mainly for ME, Gentle Reader, because this is something I'll watch more than once and EIP is a convenient place to stash it.

There's this from NHL:

RED WINGS RETIRE LIDSTROM’S JERSEY

The Red Wings retired Nicklas Lidstrom’s No. 5 jersey prior to their game against the Avalanche. Lidstrom spent his entire 20-season NHL career in the Motor City, capturing the Stanley Cup four times, winning the Norris Trophy as the League’s best defenseman seven times and earning 10 selections as an NHL First Team All-Star. He never missed the playoffs during his career and in 2002 became the first European-born captain to win the Stanley Cup and first European-born player to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as postseason MVP.

Watching the ceremony made me a lil bit misty last night, watching it again this morning only made me smile.  That said, I got even mistier last evening when the Wings lost to the Hated Avalanche in OT.   Oh, well.  That's life... and hockey.

Upside

There's an upside to gettin' up at oh-dark-thirty to watch hockey.  Today we watched the Swedes... our second favorite team in the tournament, after Team USA... beat a surprisingly tough Swiss team, 1-0.  The game was scoreless through two periods and was always in doubt, right up until the final seconds.  Daniel Alfredsson scored in the third to bring it on home for the Tre Kronor team.  And why are the Swedes our second-favorite team, you might ask?  Simply because of the number of Red Wings... five... on the roster, including captain Henrik Zetterberg, who is also the Red Wings' captain.  We heard this morning that Zetterberg will miss the rest of the Olympics due to a recurring back injury.  This does not bode well for the Swedes' gold medal hopes and most certainly will affect the Wings' playoff run.  Zetterberg is suffering from a herniated disc (or discs), a condition that rarely gets better with time*.  NOT good news.

But we digress.  We began by talkin' about an upside to gettin' up early, and that's this: we found ourselves with a strange amount o' energy after the game was over.  So we vacuumed and dusted the whole house, changed the bed, and did three loads o' laundry... for we were perilously close to dippin' into the emergency tee shirt supply, aka "vintage tees."  A further upside: the bed gets made when I change the sheets, like this:

Oh, well.  Once a week is enough to make the bed, eh?  And now it's back out to the verandah to continue to laze around in the sun, drink beer, and smoke cigars.  We've earned it today.

* I know from whence I speak.  I went through a year o' Hell back in 1998-99 with herniated discs, which resulted in surgery followed by six months of excruciating rehabilitation physical therapy.  Not fun, at all.

Amazing

I love macro photography and NatGeo sent along a link to some astounding examples of that sort of work in a weekly e-mail I receive from them.  A couple of examples:

Click to embiggen... REALLY embiggen

All of the images are of bees and they are truly astounding in their clarity and composition.  Macro photography isn't easy, especially when you're shooting living subjects.  Here's how they did it, in part:

Four years ago, Gutierrez came up with a system that consisted of a camera fitted with a macro lens, a mount with a slider, and digital software suitable for stitching pictures together.

Taking images at the level of magnification needed for bees or mosquitoes meant that there was absolutely no depth of field, says Droege. Only portions of an insect would be in focus at any one time.

So if researchers or Army personnel wanted a picture of an insect that was completely in focus, they would have to take several pictures—each one focused at different points—of the specimen and combine the photographs for one in-focus image.

The entire article is here.  You should go look.

In other news... we stayed abed waaay too long this morning, rolling out at 1130 hrs.  Which meant we missed the first two periods of the Wings - Caps game, which was one of the best I've seen the Wings play this year even if they did lose on a power play goal in OT.  Oh, well.  We got the loser point, anyhoo.

And now it's on to answer the overnight mail while I finish off the remainder of the morning coffee.  It's a lazy Sunday.

Puck Luck

That's an old hockey term and the Wings have been decidedly short o' said luck for the past ten games or so, snake-bit, even.  Until last night...



That's the El-Eh call on the goal, you can see the way the Dee-troit broadcast team saw the goal here (I'd post Mickey Redmond's call but the NHL's embed code is hosed).

Key words: "non-reviewable."  The puck was clearly out o' play when it hit the netting but somehow BOTH refs missed it.  I'd be pretty pissed if I was an El-Eh fan but I'll take it as a Wings fan.  The Wings went on to win the shoot-out, 3-2.

As We Speak...

The third period o' the Winter Classic is just under way... and speakin' o' which:



It's a great, great game so far... all tied up at one apiece... and being witnessed by 105,000 cheering idiots fans at The Big House.  It's 12 degrees in Ann Arbor, with a wind chill of -1 Fahrenheit and snowing rather heavily.  I'm warm and toasty (and gettin' toastier as we speak: third beer) here in P-Ville, though.

Wow, just WOW.

LGRW!

In Less Than An Hour...

That's when the first o' TWO Winter Classic Alumni games today between the Beloved Wings and the Hated Leafs begins, where we'll see these guys:

Hey!  I'll be wearing 25 today, too!

So... Hockey Day In Portales, Part One.  Part Two will be the Winter Classic from The Big House tomorrow at 1300 hrs EST.  Yeah, Buddy!

LGRW!