Dear Lord, Please End This Hockey Season

I'm no Christian, and the last time I prayed I think I asked Jesus to give me the Star Wars Dagobah System set--shit, that was awesome--but I'm strappin' on the feedbag of old time religion to ask the Gods of Sport (aka these fellows) to please, pretty please, pretty please with a $100 bill soaked in Philip Rivers' blood on top, to end this hockey season. Like, last week.


Before I get to the prayer, lie down on your naptime mats and follow for a sec...

Imagine, if you will, a teen boy, loosed onto the internet by his loving parents for the very first time. Oh golly, he says to himself, finally! With the power of broadband at my fingertips, I can, at long last, immerse myself in the endless wonderment of the Worldwide Web!

But! Where does he go first? To search out funny photos of camels wearing hats? Images of underweight Thai housewives having sex with multiple partners? No, friends. He hies himself straight to the House of Georges. T see if what the kids in his neighborhood have been saying is true.

And what does he fucking see? Hockey coverage. Opinions on line changes. Youtube videos of gigantic goons from the '70s. Do you think that kid wants to ally himself with the roughly 6 percent of the sporting world that digs hockey? Fuck. To the. No.

He wants manly opinions about chest hair-having sports, like baseball and soccer. He wants to read about the vagaries of NFL free agency, about the criminal pasts of the Chefs' third-string long snapper, about the various authors' childhoods, political opinions and taste in collared shirts.

And yet, we give him hockey. Shame on us. Shame on all of us.

Now, I can't expect a lifelong puckhead like Bank to stop now, and I would never ask him to. So, Sport-Lords in your old timey baseballing suits, if you exist (maybe I won't go there just right now) and don't prefer the prayers emanating from Mecca, Mumbai and Americus, GA, then I humbly beseech thee to just end it, already.

If it takes a meteor, well...you know what they say about makin' an omelette.
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Putting the Gamma Radiation in Your Sportiverse

This is the slow period of the sporting calendar.

I could write that previous sentence literally every week of the year but 16, so it has the value of being both true and reliably cliched. All we've got is baseball--and the NHL finals and NBA semis and college Lacrosse tournament, but you know what I mean. Summer is almost here, the lilacs are beautiful, the girls wear short skirts, the cops circle-dance in moonlit meadows, but sports? Like an Ambien bender during a Rick Steves marathon.



It's not because I don't care about the NBA and the NHL--well, about the NBA anyway--but I simply can't be bothered to invest in these current series. Lakers versus the Spurs? I'm rooting for a double bus crash. Pistons against the Celtics? Hmmm...two of the most obnoxious fan bases in America and the most thoroughly bludgeoned story line in the league in KG and Pierce and Allen and their respective haloes. Think I'll sit that one out too.

And even if I was one of the 46 people in North America who regularly watched hockey regardless of whether or not the local squad is playing, I'd naturally shun Penguins versus the Red Wings. Not because of any particular animus toward the Pittsburgh team, I mean those crazy fuckers used to actually let a live penguin waddle out on the ice, but no one outside the rotting metropolis of Detroit or the historically insignificant country of Sweden cares about the Red Wings, and I hate being force-fed any player as a league savior, like those masterminds at Versus and the CBC have tried to do with Crosby.

So for now it's chuckling at the ineptitude of former Post writer Bill Williamson on ESPN's Hashmarks blog. That'll have to last me until minicamp at least.
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