Stay classy Vancouver

I'm sure you've heard all about the riots that took place after game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals in Vancouver. If you haven't, then:

The Canucks lost.

People rioted.

Please note that I don't think the latter happened because of the former. I think the winds of a riot were in the air no matter what the outcome of the game. It was so palatable, I could feel it all the way down here in Texas. Let's review:

There was a huge gathering of people in the streets.

There was alcohol.

Probably drugs.

Testosterone.

Stupid teenagers with no supervision and nary a brain cell in sight.

And I'm guessing there wasn't enough police presence to keep people in line. Because let's face it... mix all the above ingredients together and something is going to happen.

I actually got caught up in the riot that happened in '94. At the beginning, the whole gathering was rather positive. It all turned ugly when some jerkwad decided to climb up and traverse the overhead bus wires. He fell, and as the police tried to escort the paramedics into the crowd, the shoving began and the rest is history.

At least my 16 year old brain had the good sense to get the hell out of there.

I was very sad to read about the riots. Disgusted. I feel for all the store owners and businesses that were damaged that night.

But unlike some people, this incident did not make me want to revoke my Canadian citizenship. Nor am I ashamed about being from Vancouver. I recognize that a few (hundred) incredibly, stupid, horrible eggs does not a city or country make.

Did you know that the night of the riots, a facebook group was started? Its aim was to get people out to clean up the city the next day. There are reports that over 13,000 people signed up to help (although the actual number of people who showed up is not known), and almost all the damage was cleaned up by 11:00 am the day after the riots.

That's the Vancouver I know and love. Let's hope the people that tried to destroy it get exactly what they deserve.

National Boston Company

Dear NBC,

This is not the first time I've written about your ineptitude as a broadcasting company. You may remember my letter about the Olympics.

My beef this time is with the dimwits you have hired as hockey commentators. And yes, this post was written after my beloved Canucks lost game seven to the bunch of hooligans (or angels, in your commentators eyes) from Boston, so you'll have to excuse the heavy dose of sarcasm.

So much was made of the Rome hit on Horton by your "people", that one would have thought Horton was a puppy. And Rome had tried to drown him. But it wasn't until well after game 7 had started that one of your commentators thought to mention the Canucks player, Raymond, who had his vertebrae broken by a Boston player. Actually, the hit wasn't even mentioned. Just the fact that Raymond was injured.

One hit resulted in a concussion. The other an almost career-ending injury. You showed the hit on Horton over and over again... ad nauseam. The Raymond injury was given very little coverage.

This just illustrates the extreme bias shown by your team of commentators (never mind that Mike Milbury used to COACH the freaking Bruins). The whole series could be summed up like this:

The Canucks sucked and the Bruins were the team of goodness and light. Good hell, one of your commentators even compared their goalie to Jesus.

I was unaware that the "B" in your name now stands for "Boston", because that is what anyone would have thought, had they tuned into your coverage of the finals.

When you show the Super Bowl, do your commentators favour one team over another? When you show Federer playing Nadal, are your guys all, "Federer, good. Nadal, bad."?

No? Then why the bias towards the American team? Look, I get that a Canadian team winning the cup is a bad thing for you and your ratings. But really, you're just trying to shove a game down a nation's throat that doesn't want it. Some of us watching down here actually understand the game, and it is annoying to no end to listen to what is supposed to be an unbiased call of the game.

At the end of the first period, your guys had already awarded the cup and named the MVP. That is just shoddy broadcasting. As is cutting the Canucks down every chance they got. I seriously think my 9 month old and my dog would have done a better job.

In closing, my advice is to fire the whole lot of them (except Pierre McGuire, who does a pretty good job - if they would only let him talk more), and hire a braying donkey and a foghorn to call all future games. At least that way it would be less painful to listen to.

Yours very truly,
Joanne

Nitwit Broadcasting Company

Dear NBC,

I wanted to say a most sarcastic thank you for your decision to not air Sunday's Canada vs. USA hockey game on the broadcast network; instead relegating it to the lesser, cable network, MSNBC.

But why were you not able to watch it, you ask? Because I am one of the minority 11% in this country that doesn't have cable. I have seen what is offered on cable, and I refuse to pay good money for pure crap in its highest form. And yes, I consider shows like Keith Olbermann, Mad Money with Jim Kramer, The Real Housewives of [insert county/city here] and the like, pure crap.

Apparently, your programming department is made up of 8-year old girls, because in place of showing the clash between two hockey giants, you decided to show ice dancing instead. Really NBC? Ice dancing? It hardly qualifies as a sport. More like a hobby. Or a reality TV show.

Let's also not forget that one of the pairs competing in the ice dancing competition are brother and sister. That's a little icky if you ask me. I'm just sayin'.

And yes, I've read your reasons for why the game did not air on NBC... blah, blah, blah. I still think you're a bunch of weenies.

Although I do owe you some thanks, I suppose. Apparently, my team forgot to show up and play, so by not airing the game on a channel I could watch, you spared me three hours of pain and suffering.

In closing, I would like to recommend you pull your heads out of your bums, and perhaps you need to send your programming department to their rooms.

Oh, and no dessert for one week.

Most sincerely,
Joanne

How cute are we?

Last night we took Elise to her either her 5th or 6th hockey game. Unfortunately the best team (a.k.a the Canucks) lost, but we still had a blast. Elise had been so excited all week about going (she would ask every day, "we go to hockey game today?"), even more so when she found out dinner was going to be at Chick-fil-a, and we were going to take the train to get to the arena... pretty much the BEST DAY EVER in her book.

She did so well considering she didn't nap very well earlier in the day, and we kept her up until 11:00 pm. She kept cheering, "Go Canucks, boo Stars!" during the game.

I am so proud of my girl!

Hey Time Warner Cable? You suck!

Everyone says that there are two givens in life; death and taxes. I know of a third. Cable/satellite companies and their employees/contractors being mindless idiots.

When Fred and I committed to getting out of debt in 2001, the first thing to go was cable. It was a bit hard at first, but after I realized that real-life can be far more interesting than watching pretty people act it out on TV, I was okay. Plus I don't need to pay some idiot company money to rot my brain; I can do that all by myself for free.

But the only time I do miss it is during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Especially when my 'nucks are playing. Fred did some research and found that it wasn't too expensive to get cable for a month, so we went ahead and took the plunge. I felt dirty just thinking about it.

So yesterday was to be installation day. Time Warner gave us a relatively small window of 2 - 5 pm for the appointment time, so we sat home and waited. And waited. And well... you get the picture.

So at 5:00, with our afternoon wasted, Fred called Time Warner and they told us somebody had been by, but we didn't answer the door. This is quite impossible. If you've ever met Seven, our dog, you know that she starts barking the minute someone walks by our house and even looks at it. There was no way the guy got within 20 feet of our front door. To prove their point, the person gave a description of our house; "Yeah, it had a door, and like, some windows, a roof, and there might have been a chimney too." Okay, they didn't say that, but what does a description of our house prove, that you have Google Street View?

Methinks that Mr. Cable Guy drove by our house, saw that there were no cars in the driveway (because we keep them in the garage), didn't like the inclement weather, and kept driving.

So Fred gets on the phone with the idiot-contracted company, who gives him mega-attitude and argues that their guy WAS there, and WE were the ones who weren't home. Because apparently, we've been watching too much TV, and are too stupid to know whether or not we are in our house.

They finally arrange a guy to come back and do the job he was supposed to do in the first place. Of course he said that it wasn't him that was the one who "knocked on our door", it must have been someone else. Yeah. Right.

When the guy goes to set-up the box, Fred asks him where the HD cable is. They guys answers that Time Warner doesn't supply him with those, and we'd have to make do with an SD cable. Apparently, Time Warner is the "Home of free HD", without the HD cables. So we had to pay $25 of our own money to get "free" HD.

When Fred called Time Warner today to figure out the cable issue, the guy snotted at him, "we don't supply the cables or the TV." Niiiice... a wiseguy and an idiot! Fred also mentioned that the box didn't support HDMI, and the guy said that not all their boxes do and if we wanted one that did, they could send another cable guy with a new box, but they would charge us $40 for it, and there was no guarantee the new box would support HDMI either (so we'd be paying $40 to sit around and wait for another idiot cable guy to show up, and possibly the right box?). Or we could spend our valuable time driving to the nearest payment center and exchange boxes. We don't have time for that; we have cable now!

(by the way, I really don't understand a single thing I wrote in that last paragraph, but Fred assures me it's important)

So now we have cable. And it's just as crap-tastic as I remember it. 200+ channels, and nothing on.

Except when there's a hockey game, of course.

Go Canucks Go!

Thanks to our friends Gerald and Amber, we were able to see our second Canucks vs. Stars game this season. Although they had four tickets, they weren't all together, but both sets of seats were AMAZING! One set, which we sat in for periods one and three, were in the lower section, right behind the Stars net... perfect location to boo Turco from!

The second set were again in the lower section, right behind the Canucks bench. We sat in these seats during period two and were so close to the players you could smell the sweat. No, you really couldn't. Because hockey sweat is gross and I would never voluntarily sit that close to it.

It was fun to switch seats with Amber and Gerald each period because it confused the crap out of people. One guy thought he was in the wrong section because as he put it, "the people who were here before looked totally different than you and had two boy babies with them instead of one girl." As ridiculous as that statement was, I have to give him credit for noticing at all.

Anyway, it was a great game, with the good guys (Canucks) winning 5 - 2. Lots of hitting, great plays and even some rough stuff. I even remembered to take a few pictures.

Enough posing, I want to watch the game!

Our vantage point during the second period

Happy fans!

This one was taken by Elise... kinda artistic, don't you think? I call it "Hockey Reflections"

He Shoots, he... Touchdown!

If you were in a Mcdonalds, would you go up to the counter and try to order a Whopper? I mean, you're in a restaurant. And they serve burgers. Why not give it a try? But you wouldn't, because as hard as you try, you are not going to find a Whopper at a Mcdonalds.

Then why-oh-why do people insist on going to sporting events wearing jerseys of teams that aren't even playing? If you are at a hockey game where the Stars are playing the Canucks, then you really have two choices... A Dallas Stars jersey, or a Vancouver Canucks jersey. That's it. An old Minnesota Northstars jersey would be okay, and I'll even give a thumbs-up to a Team Canada (if one of the teams playing is indeed from Canada), or a Team U.S.A. jersey. But if you show up wearing a Wings jersey, then either you mixed up the date on your ticket, or you need to head north for a few hours and hang a right somewhere in Nebraska.

And don't get me started on people that wear jerseys from other sports. I saw a guy wearing an Eagles jersey at a Stars/Canucks game and I wanted to go up to him and let him know that in hockey there's this really cold stuff called ice, and... never mind, if you're dumb enough to wear a football jersey to a hockey game I might as well just save my breath.

I get what you're trying to do. By wearing a Texas Longhorns jersey (and yes, I saw these at the game on Friday), you're saying, "hey, I'm from Texas, and I support any and all Texas teams." But it makes you look stupid. Spend the $10 and buy yourself a Stars shirt if you choose to root for sub-par teams.

And Mr. Oklahoma Sooners Jersey? I'm not sure what you were trying to say at all.

The Good Old Hockey Game

Come on, everybody sing it with me... "The good old hockey game, is the best game you can name. And the best game you can name, is the good old hockey game." Ahh, you've got to love Stompin' Tom Conners. Anyway, onto the rest of my post.

Last night we took Elise to see the Vancouver Canucks (woo!) play the Stars (boo!). This was actually her third hockey game that she's been to (the other two were when she was 5 and 6 months old), but her first one where she was aware of her surroundings.

The game itself was not well played. Pretty sloppy, with a lot of miscues and errors by both teams, but it was so fun to watch Elise's face as she took it all in. I think her favourite part might have been the Zamboni. But she was well-behaved the entire time we were there, and had people gushing over how cute she was.

For me it was sad to see the Canucks without Trevor Linden. I guess most Canuck fans back home are used to not seeing #16 out there, but it was like there was a giant hole on the ice. For those who are unfamiliar with Trevor Linden, he was the heart and soul of the Canucks since he was drafted in '88 (not counting the three years that that jerk-off Mike Keenan traded him away). I can still remember how excited I was when I found out he was being traded back to the Canucks in 2001. He retired at the end of last season and was not only gifted player, but an amazing person who devoted a lot of time to charity work. Okay, hockey lesson over.

Unfortunately, the Canucks didn't win, mostly because the Stars goalie played decently for a change (usually he is pretty good, but he's had a rough season this year). Actually, since both teams kind of stunk it up, I think the refs deserved to win this one. Oh well, we'll get them next time when Luongo is in goal!