We Are Hot Chicks Wednesday: Conference Finals

Seeing as how we're neck deep in playoffs this time of year, this would normally be the venue in which I take great liberties to bag on the National Basketball Association and offer a mutiny of praises for the National Hockey League. But I won't. I'll take the higher ground and throw the both of 'em a bone.

No. I haven't had a leap of faith. I've turned over exactly zero new leaves. I'm a little irritated, actually, at the notion that I way more appreciate the matchups in the NBA's Conference Finals versus those played atop frozen water. It would be so much easier if the never-tiresome allegations of fixes and rigs in the NBA were obvious right now, and the Lakers and Cavaliers were handshakes and airline tickets away from playing for a championship, but that's far from the truth, and the NHL meanwhile, saw both of last year's Finals contestants destroy their this-year's opponents, and are locked in for a rematch, which is totally and completely lame.

Jennifer Denise



In any other season, I would've laid out my soap box, and adorned it with jewels.



Circumstances, however, have forced me to turn my views, at least for now.



The NHL will likely crown the Red Wings again, while in hoops, we're all shrugging at who the champs might be.



Though I've barely watched much of either NBA series, I've embraced these playoffs a bit.



I'd love for the Magic to give Cleveland an ole in the East;



all the King James hype is a bit silly to me.



And I couldn't be more pleased that the Nuggets have stood up to Phil Jackson's crew.



Few expected Denver to show their swagger, but they've done so with confidence.



Orlando, on the other hand, has established a novella of braggin' rights all their own.

Joanna Prus



Call me what you will, but I can't stand Kobe Bryant.



This is not to say I don't recognize his talent. I just can't freaking stand him.



And really, the whole Lakers squad has never meant anything to me, even though I admired their old-school look with Worthy, Jabbar, and Johnson.



But a breath of fresh air is always good for a professional sport,



and if you can do so, and shed the Ass in the same breath, well durn tootin'.



Same goes for James. Not that I dislike him. I just refuse to pretend that he walks on water.



For all I can tell, Cleveland has laid down and let Orlando have their way with them,



which doesn't give the they're-not-a-one-man-team theory much upon which to lean.



I think the Cavs have just found themselves dazzled;



they brought their black-and-white game to a color court,



and if the Magic were a coloring book, I'd pull out my Fervor crayon.



I'm hoping that the Nuggets and Magic can square shoulders for the championship.



Over in hockey, though, we're gettin' a look we've seen before, and too soon at that.



Sometimes it's nice to see the same gig, but Detroit is perennially that stubborn-willed woman that just won't budge.

Ursula Vargues



Having met just last year, Detroit and Pittsburgh are again the identified beacons.



They'll come out of their corners swingin', no doubt.



I just hope we get different angles on this series,



like this seemingly plain Pittsburgh crew has proved themselves not to be.



They've ravished opponents with their two stars certainly not disappointing.



Like any fan, I hope it's a backyard brawl, a basement slugfest,



not a senior stuffing a freshman in the latter's locker.



One thing about the series, though, is that it will definitely be classy.



Detroit's long-established as the best of the American originals,



but this showy young Penguins club has a chance to steal their throne.



I'll be tuned in to see how this talent will, if they can, compete.

That's it for this week. Thanks to the Bettmans and the Sterns for keeping their hands out of the cookie jar.
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I'd Rather Drink Pepsi Than Eat Staples

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We Are All Witnesses

Your Eastern Conference Final update:





I suppose my prediction of a Cavs sweep was wrong. Cleveland in 5? Is it too late to switch?

Don't worry, it's only one game. It's still "our" year. "We" will overcome. "My boy" is still the greatest. A little worrisome when "our" Coach Of The Year got schooled by Stan Ron Van Jeremy, though.
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A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Finals

I'm not trying to usurp Cecil's pozish as the HoG's lead NBA analyst, and I'm certainly not going to try and break down last night's sweet beatdown of the overmatched and classless Mavericks. I've never pretended to be a big hoops fan, and I don't watch a whole lot of NBA ball.

I am, however, a Nuggets fan, and I have been my whole life. Back when I was a kid I went ape shit over the run-and-gun teams of Doug Moe, Alex English and Fat Lever. I've always followed the Nuggets, and of course I was fired up when they landed the No. 3 pick in 2003 and landed Carmelo. Denver has steadily improved since then--adding the parts necessary to build an elite team. They've taken hotheaded, me-first thugs (Cuban's word, not mine) like J.R. Smith and Kenyon Martin and coaxed them into playing vital supporting parts. They've added role players like Birdman and Anthony Carter. And most important they brought The Chauncey home where he belongs, to make the whole thing work.

But I am not, again, here to analyze the X's and O's of this particular playoff run. I just want to tell a story about a stranger and a T-shirt.

I threw on a Nuggets shirt yesterday and went to work. I'd planned on meeting some friends later to watch the game, and I wasn't sure if I'd have a chance to make it home to change before tip-off. All day I had folks saying "Go Nugs" and stopping to talk about the game, Dirk and Cuban, The Chauncey, the Lakers, the whatever. I must have had ten interactions based on my choice of wardrobe.

It occurred to me last night that in my entire life this had never happened even once. I have never had a random conversation about the Nuggets with anyone, ever. Now I live in the hinterlands of Colorado, and I'm sure that Nuggets fandom runs stronger the closer one gravitates toward the City of Denver. I'll bet Cecil has these kinds of chats at the coffee shop or the lingerie store all the time. I just never had, before yesterday.

I've talked to approximately every resident of this state about the Denver Broncos on Monday Mornings and Friday afternoons. I've talked about CU football, Avalanche hockey and Kobe rape. These are just the kinds of things that come up between two random dudes who need something to rap about before the porn store opens. It would be great if the Denver Nuggets became a casual topic of conversation around here, instead of a reason to cover your eyes in the winter.

It's hard to say what a Nuggets championship would mean here. I'll be the first to admit, we're spoiled as Colorado sports fans. We've witnessed two Super Bowl wins in the last dozen years, as well as four other title games in my lifetime. The Avs have been around less than 15 years and have two Stanley Cups. My alma mater, the CSU Rams, captured three Mountain West titles under Sonny Lubick. Our hated rivals, the CU Buffs, won a fake national championship in 1990.

Hell, the Colorado Rockies went to a World Series less than two years ago. I attended a World Series game in the state of Colorado. That is, frankly, insane. Present that fact to a long-suffering fan from any of a dozen cities in this country and I'm sure they'd want to punch me in the nuts.

For these reasons, seeing George Karl and these Nuggets hoist the Larry O'Brien Trophy in June would be really, really neat but not life-changing. Not like This One's For John. Not even like that first Avalanche Cup (because it was our first title that did not involve a fifth-down play, and we got to get drunk and have a parade).

Part of me--a very tiny little part--would rather have Cleveland win it, just so they could win something. But I'll be watching, casual half-bandwagon fair-weather non-basketball fan that I am, and praying for that victory. Because fuck everybody else, that's why. And Jesus hates Cleveland.
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Your Denver Nuggets Playoff Update

Uh, they won by a lot of points last night. Let's celebrate!



Game 5 is like later this week or something.
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Obligatory Crammage 2008

There was a time last year when things around this House were slightly shamblish, and we've just gone through a similar period this year. Must be a bit of an October bug that we unsuspectingly catch, but we've managed to restore things, if only temporarily, long enough to put together a collection post. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so jump into the can and help us root around for what's been going on while the House was vacated.

Tradition Tuesday



Had Old No. 7 not left the iron on last Monday, our "office" might not've burned down, and we would've been available to pretend to update you on the state of the AFC West. This actually leaves us feeling lucky because it's not good, and by "not good," I mean a total fucking gay-rodeo embarrassment. Yes, the gloriousness of a week in which the Oakland Raiders are the only victorious team remains undefinable. It really does. Via a handful of 86-yard Sebastien Janikowski last-minute field goals, Oakland was able to beat the Jets at the Meadowlands. San Diego was also in New York, but they preferred to have a serving of Buffalo Billwursts delivered straight to their damn-near-killed-ems, a 23-14 loss. And then, then there were the Chiefs and Broncos. Let's just say these two clubs were in solitary for a week, and the Patriots and Titans were the woman-deprived prison guards in charge of "bringing them bread and water." In a cumulative HoG effort, they were outscored 75-17, which in most competitive types of measuring standards, is a few notches below not good. Nevertheless, we must move onward, Crispin Glover, whoever in the hell that is.

We Are Hot Chicks Wednesday

If I had remembered to pay the electric bill last week, we would've had some juice to put together our midweek feature, and it may or may not've included the following examples of talent:

Stephanie Strong



Jessica Canizales



Carolina Ardohain



Ariadne Artiles



Alley Baggett



Thursday ThumbTubes & YouNails

This one I gotta hang on Cecil. We left him in charge of waiting around for the locksmith, which he did, but then forgot to collect the new sets of keys for each of us, so he's now footing the bill for keys and the flu shots we had to get after spending the night in a wet-and-chilly dumpster. Had we not've been under the weather, we might've been like:



Whoa, dude. Check it out: Kevin Smith's got a new movie coming out and it has hockey in it. No. Way. Or, we might've been like:

Hey, look: Stolen bases in the World Series = free tacos.



Suh-weet! Or, we might've linked to a post with lots of cheerleaders representing the two World Series teams.

We could've even linked to Free Darko, who has pretty much spent the entire month of October previewing every single NBA game for the 2008 season.



No kidding.

But most likely, we would've taken advantage of the opportunity to make fun of Emmitt Smith trying to say the phrase "rite of passage":



Friday Fiction Fix

When the end of the week rolled around, we had cleared considerable smoke damage, had the power restored, gotten semi-healthy, and had new sets of keys made and distributed. But it was Friday, so we did what every slackingly irresponsible American should do on a Friday: get drunk. Had we maintained some sense of moderacy, we might've been able to put together some Friday fiction, like say some Charles Bukowski for good measure. That would've ruled, and it might've gone a little something like this:

Bukowski lived to be 73 years old and I've never studied a ton about him, but if his writings are any indication of how he lived his life, then it is amazing that his body held out that long. He was born in Germany and his folks moved to the states around the time of the end of World War I, living in Baltimore, then L.A. If two things are to be remembered about his life, they are these: 1) He wrote perhaps more prolificly than anyone in the last century, ultimately generating upwards of 110 published pieces of work. 2) He was not afraid to write about anything, ever.

Now, the presidential election happens in one week, so fittingly, our selection comes from a story of Bukowski's called "Politics is Like Trying to Screw a Cat in the Ass." On this particular occasion, this story comes from the collection The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories, originally published in 1967 by City Lights Books. It can be purchased here.

I'm well aware of the fact that it is 2008 and not 1967, but oh the timelessness of literature...

"are there good guys and bad guys? some that always lie, some that never lie? are there good governments and bad governments? no, there are only bad governments



and worse governments.



will there be the flash of light and heat that rips us apart one night while we are screwing or crapping or reading the comic strips or pasting blue-chip stamps into a book? instant death is nothing new, nor is mass instant death new. but we've improved the product; we've had these centuries of knowledge and culture and discovery to work with; the libraries are fat and crawling and overcrowded with books; great paintings sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars; medical science is transplanting the human heart; you can't tell a madman from a sane one upon the streets, and suddenly we find our lives, again (Editor's Note: Hopefully not, of course.), in the hands of the idiots.



the bombs may never drop; the bombs might drop. eeney, meeney, miney, mo.....

now if you'll forgive me, dear readers, I'll get back to the whores and the horses and the booze, while there's time. if these contain certain death, then, to me, it seems far less offensive to be responsible for your own death than the other kind which is brought to you fringed with phrases of Freedom and Democracy and Humanity and/or any or all of that Bullshit."

The ultimate Bukowski checklist can be found here.
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