The Cranberries

Sorry, I cannot figure out how to create paragraphs in this new blogger format. It keeps running all my paragraphs into one. Classic Blogger Boobie trap. I had a dream last night. I dreamt I had spent the last seven seasons falling in love with the NHL’s worst and most embarrassing franchise. To be fair, it is likely that the worst and most embarrassing franchise would, in fact, be the same franchise. I always assumed when people said they were living their dream, that it was a good thing. But now I know, “living your dream” is equal to being repetitively kicked in the beanbag by a little kid with very pointy shoes. You see, last Friday I was at the smooth new shady bar behind my apartment, which should be located in the arena district but was plopped right on Watermark’s collective lap. As I listened to the soulful beats of Juvenile’s Back that Azz up, for the second night in a row at the place, and watched Mark-Andre Fleury and Bryzgalov for the Pens and Flyers, respectively forget everything they knew about goaltending, I reached a critical point. And that point I’m referring to is when I’ve had the perfect amount of beers where I inevitably think the same two thoughts: ‘These bartenders are stunningly gorgeous’ and ‘I should just move to Chicago’. The strange thing was the next two thoughts, which usually don’t accompany the previous two: ‘How sweet would it be if the Blue Jackets were playing in this game? They could be playing two miles down the road in the playoffs! (of course, then I wouldn’t be at the bar two miles away, I’d be in fucking Nationwide Arena.)’ followed immediately by, ‘yeah right, that could never happen’. Sometimes I think inside parenthesis. And that’s the real tragedy about how the Columbus Blue Jackets have been able to alter my thinking, because the Pens and Flyers aren’t currently playing in the Stanley Cup Finals. No, they’re in the first round of the playoffs. “Well, is it like baseball,” you ask “where only eight of the 30 teams make the playoffs?” (that number is expanding to 10 this season.) “No, it’s not!” I would scream at you. “16 teams make the goddamn playoffs. Out of 30! Over fucking half of them and it still seems IMPOSSIBLE that we could ever make the playoffs. That’s how amazingly dreadful this organization is.” Boy, you really pissed me off. Then I would apologize. “I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself for allowing myself to be a die hard Blow Jackets Fan. I’m mad at the organization, but you’re great.” 53.33% of teams make the playoffs every year and I’m so confident the CBJ are at least five years from being part of that top 53.33%. And even though I inexplicably want to move to Chicago when I get tipsy, when I wake up the next morning I always think, ‘but I do love Columbus’. Unfortunately, I cannot be proud of my team. They are embarrassing. I didn’t reached the point, you know, the point where you want to write your annual blog post, until Wednesday. I was perusing recent facebook updates on my super high tech blackberry to see the Official Columbus Blue Jackets most recent post: “FILL IN THE BLANK: Our biggest TEAM NEED for next season is ___________!” First off, stop yelling that shit at me. Sweet use of the caps lock, bro. Now, I saw this post almost immediately and believed my CBJ brethren would follow my lead with more condescending and sarcastic responses, but unfortunately, most people kept it pretty civil. Mine actually wasn’t that bad either, but this is what I wrote up there: “Biggest need? I don’t know. I can’t think of anything. I’m pretty happy where we are.” Yeah, it wasn’t too bad, but it definitely wasn’t constructive! How does that taste, official CBJ facebook page?!!?!?!? But that question posed by the CBJ really torked me right off. Why would you ask that? I just got over the fact that I realized the previous Friday we could never make the playoffs even though 53.33% of the league does every year. They just had to rub it in. To me, the question the CBJ posted is the exact same thing as this, “okay, dudes. Y’all know we were by far the worst team in the NHL last year, right? Management is looking for something, anything to make this club better, but they can only do ONE THING. What should they do, because they are fucking clueless.” Is this how management gets its ideas? Asking the fans on Facebook what they would do? Another thing, why are you making me relive last season? Here is another version of the same question: “okay, dudes. Think back on how terrible we were last season. Surely, you’ve come up with dozens of memories in merely seconds. Okay, out of all the facets of the game where we were just god-awful, what were we the most god-awful at?” Don’t make me relive that shit! I reached the breaking point. Remember in A Christmas Story when Ralphie finally has had enough from that yellow-eyed bully and beats the shit out of him, while letting out a string of profanities even though his mother was present? I felt like that. I wonder what happened to that kid. Looks like I need to take a momentary pause to do some wikipediaing. Did you know Peter Billingsley and his four siblings all had acting careers when they were young? Well, I guess that pretty much ties up all the loose ends. See ya in 2013!