Coaching is Easy!

We’ve heard a lot this season about how Lindy Ruff has been backing off from his normal routine of screaming and yelling.  He claims that he is letting the Sabres lead themselves.  After a bad game, he lets them work it out on their own.  After thinking about this for a bit, I developed an image of Craig Rivet and Mike Grier playing good cop/bad cop in the Sabres locker room.

Mike Grier is the tough task master.  He yells at the slackers, and if he gets really pissed, he roughs them up a bit.  Then, in swoops Craig Rivet and with a few soothing murmers and a bandaid to make it all better, he dries Roy-Z’s tears.  The next game, Roy-Z plays harder in an effort to avoid Grier’s wrath and to gain Rivet’s approval.

Meanwhile, during the time he used to spend coaching, Lindy can just eat bon-bons and waste his entire day checking out his ex-girlfriends on Facebook.

Complainy

If you ever want to read a snappy blog about the world of an orchestra musician, you should check out the wonderful Inside the Classics which is written by my friends Sam (that’s CrotchetyOriginal, FYI) and Sarah.  ItC is a friendly and informative blog that covers both the ins and outs of the orchestra biz (in this case the Minnesota Orchestra biz), and whatever fanciful little internet things that captures their attention.  Basically, Inside the Classics is just like The Willful Caboose only instead of hockey, they write about music, and instead of inane nonsense, their blog is full of smart ideas and keen observations.

Today I was visiting Inside the Classics when I was introduced to the Helsinki Complaints Choir.  The Helsinki Complaints choir is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.  It’s a choir that sings a laundry list of complaints.  I love them.

Because the song mentions hockey twice I think this clip belongs here, on my hockey blog.

The whole song has a very chipper tone in spite of the subject matter, and it is in this spirit that I would like to submit my own complaint to add to this song.

The last person who painted my house took ZERO care while painting around the windows, and as a result almost all of my windows look like this:

Many of the windows have paint like this on BOTH sides of the pane.  Inside and out.

The good news is that it’s an easy fix (I bought this little scrappy razor blade thingie at Home Despot), but honestly. Is it really THAT hard to paint a window?  I don’t have time for this kind of bullhonky, which is why this window still looks like this a month after moving into my new house.

Tomorrow we’ll resume our usual hockey yammering.  I promise.

From the Hotiary of Hot Hotfford

Dear Hotiary,

Things at work have been very unhotunate recently.  We’ve now lost 3 hots in a hot.  It’s totally unhot to continually lose hotckey games, and all this losing is giving me very low hot esteem.  To make matters even hotrse, I’ve suffered a “bone bruise” which is HOTVIOUSLY a totally fake hotjury.  “Bone bruise” is very funny to say (if you’re twelve, which I am), but it doesn’t hotsist, so who KNOWS when I’ll rehot to the ice.

Today at practice Paul Hotstad was all, “HONK HONK HONK,” so I had to be all, “Look dude.  My bone IS bruised, and I don’t hot what you hot.  Just HOT OFF, hothole.”  I hotally hot being hotjured.

Okay, hotta go.

Hot to you hoter, Hotiary.

Hot,

Hot Hotfford

Deep Thoughts, with Kate Handy

I made a little joke a few posts ago about the book “The Power of Now”.  I don’t know if you guys ever read that book, but it was one of those “meaning of life” books that caught on with the general populace (with a little help from Oprah, I believe) a few years ago.  I read it in 2005-ish, and since I was very young back then (a mere 30!), the book really left an impression on me.  The premise is that time is an illusion and that the only thing that is real is this exact moment that we are experiencing.  Everything besides “now” is just a construct of the mind.  We remember the past through a mental prism that supports the emotional reaction we are most comfortable experiencing, and we project dreams and nightmares into a future that is in reality, completely unwritten.   Both the past and the future are lies, and “now” is really the only truth in existence.

If we apply this concept to the Sabres, and we assume we can’t trust either the past or the future, here is what we arrive at: THE SABRES ARE ACTUALLY GOOD AT HOCKEY.  EVERYTHING IS WONDERFUL!  THOMAS VANEK IS A SLAG-FACED WHORE BUT IT DOESN’T EVEN MATTER BECAUSE THE TEAM IS SO EVENLY BALANCED.  AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, RYAN MILLER IS A SCRAWNY, WONKY-EYED GOD!

I don’t think about the concepts of “The Power of Now” very often anymore, but I like applying it to our current hockey situation.  It’s tempting to be all, “Oh, we’ve seen them be good for stretches before, but they’ll find a way to start sucking again” or “The Sabres are GOING ALL THE WAY, ” but the ONLY reality-based, “now” is a fairly steady state of simple “WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Right now, the SABRES KICK ASS and we should experience it fully, because it is the only truth.  Amen.

He’s a Sabres fan.

5 MORE Surprises of the New Season

1. This is actually Drew Stafford. Everyone assumed this was a fake account until Staffy went and broke the news of the Paille trade on Twitter.  Staffy’s current habit of calling every city “Hot[name of city]” in the style of Hotlanta amuses me.   My favorite so far is Hotronto, but Long Hotsland is pretty good too.  Staffy is a weirdo.

2. Lindy Ruff should NOT be fired (yet).  I’ll admit that I was fully prepared to pick up where I left off last season with the constant “IDON’TCAREIFHE’SAGOODGUY,HISTEAMSUCKS” ranting, but as far as I’m concerned, Lindy can keep his job for now.  Before the season started I was getting annoyed with all the talk about how Lindy went to Canada’s Olympic camp and came back refreshed and full of new ideas, but perhaps there is something to that theory.  Sure, the power play still blows, but Lindy does seem to be enjoying the mojo of renewed inspiration this season.  Maybe he’s been watching lots of Oprah and keeping a journal.  If we could just get Babcock to teach Lindy how to manage a goalie rotation, we might be good to go this year!  Woo!

3. Raking is a LOT harder than I thought it was.  Actually, raking is not that hard, but getting the dumb leaves in the bag is SUPREMELY annoying.  I wish I could just go in the back yard, open a lawn bag and say, “All you leaves, GET IN HERE.”  Yes, I’ve been reduced to wishing for a magic lawn bag.  I’m not ashamed.

4. Jason Pominville has a baby! – actually he has several (pommerdoodles have litters).  TWC has obtained exclusive rights to the first picture of the twins.  I think there were five babies in all, but the family has been referring to these two as “the twins” because they both like beef jerky and watching Mad Men.

I’m not sure which is the evil twin, but the one on the right looks pretty shifty.

5. Like you, I never bothered to look up the definition of “truculence,” but one thing we know for SURE is that it doesn’t mean, “capable of playing hockey”.  Heh, heh, a THOUSAND times, heh.

Surly

I am a Surl-a-saurus Rex.

Terrifying, I know.

Right before I moved, I said to myself, “Self, this is going to suck.  The house is not move in ready, and there is no way around the fact that you’ll be living in chaos for a few weeks. There is nothing to be done but grin and bear it.”  So, with the knowledge that everything would certainly suck for a while, I took pains to ensure that I had a few comforts so that I could relax in my new house, even in the midst of chaos.  One of those comforts was DirecTV (so far I don’t miss Versus, but ask me again in a few weeks when the Sabres are on and I can’t see them), the other was DSL.  Well, the DirecTV is humming along quite nicely, but the internet is NOT.  What I’m trying to tell you is that even though I called Verizon THREE WEEKS ago to set up DSL service “as soon as possible” I still have no interwebs at my house.

Now, ordinarily I’m a “roll with the punches” kind of gal, but I’m having a difficult time recovering from this setback because today was supposed to ROCK.  You see, today was the day I had circled on my calendar as the first Sabres game I could watch in my new house with both my television and internet operating at full tilt.  Tonight was the night when I was going to ignore the chaos all around me, put down the paint roller, and blog my ass off while watching my favorite slug-clad heroes play hockey.

But nooOOoooOOoooOOoo.  There will be no live blog tonight.

The good news is that even though it’s a crazy scene right now, homeownership is kind of a hoot.

Home Sweet Disgusting Home.

The other good news is that as soon as I get the interwebs, I will return to blogging about hockey and stop droning on and on about my death trap house.

The OTHER good news is that the Sabres have been extremely sassy lately.  They’ve been so sassy that I have almost nothing to say about them.  Tim Kennedy’s roster photo pretty much sums up my feeling about the Sabres of late.

Adorable little angels.

In closing: I have no interwebs, my house is strangely lovable despite being filthy, unpainted, and most likely about to fall down, and the Sabres are so good at hockey that I have nothing to bitch about as far as they go.

According to Verizon, the interwebs should be up at and running at Casa de Katebits on Friday, but they’ve made promises before.  We’ll see.

No Blogging Required

I know that this blog has been total donkey butts lately, but I’m busy and sore, and most often covered in paint.  I promise to pick it back up around here once my furniture in is the same place as my internet access.  Until then, I’ll just keep doing the “This made me laugh” style of blogging that is the hallmark of busy and lazy people.

This made me laugh:

So much to love.

Thanks Empty Netters for bringing this to my attention.

(While you’re gazing in awe at Darth Vader dropping the puck, and laughing outright at Craig Rivet’s expression, don’t forget to notice that the Panthers appear to have a BABY PANTHER mascot.  I really want a baby Sabretooth now.  [Please do not confuse that with "I want to have Sabretooth's baby," because I assure you, that is not the case.])

In Depth Analysis

I’m watching the game on DVR delay this afternoon and I have to say, all of the pushing and shoving is downright comical.  My favorite part so far (I’m through the first two periods) was seeing Jason Pominville with his arms wrapped around Hal Gill from behind during the big scrum in front of Miller’s net.  I mean, honestly.  That’s just silly.

Wear Your Teeth

Now listen up.  The ruggedness of hockey players is one of the things I love most about them.  I love how they’re all messy, and scarred, and overall kind of gross.  Black eyes?  Love ‘em.  Stitches?  Hottttttt.

But, I am sorry to say, there is nothing sexy about not having teeth.  Nothing. at. all.

I have many times mused that I LOVE the Sabres for managing to keep their teeth, or at the very least, wearing their dentures at all times.  (I can hear some of you screeching at home, “THEY’RE SOFT!  The Sabres have all of their teeth because they’re PANSIES and THEY NEVER HIT ANYONE!”  Now, calm down, you people.  This may be true- the Sabres ARE soft- but it’s beside the point in this case.)  I don’t know if all the Sabres just happen to have all have their teeth, or if at some point Darcy Regier was like, “Look, you little jerks.  If you can’t be good at hockey, you have to at LEAST be attractive.  Wear your dentures at all times or you’re fired,” and I don’t care.  All I know is that I like my Sabres with teeth, and until recently, they were able to satisfy my tooth needs.

Tim Kennedy, congratulations on making the team.  I’m super excited about you.  Please buy a new tooth.

Sabretooth Needs a Better Lawyer

Kevin Snow (Sabres PR director) confirmed that this is, in fact, the real Sabretooth.  Sabretooth has a twitter account, you guys.

While this is obviously a very exciting development, it also raises all sorts of issues, not the least of which is the shocking knowledge that Sabretooth CAN READ AND WRITE!   Now, I know for a fact that he cannot speak (or perhaps he choose not to?), so the fact that he apparently can read and write in English is AMAZING.

I really think that the Sabres organization should provide him with some sort of computer (or chalkboard) so he can communicate while working at the arena.  He’s compensated for his muteness by becoming a fantastic physical comedian, but, now that we know Sabretooth CAN read and write, I feel we have a moral obligation to give him the tools to do so.  Sabretooth has given us so much, it’s time that his voice was heard!   He should have a little computer with him at ALL TIMES so that he can express himself when banging on the glass, and shooting t-shirts out of a gun is not enough.

For all we know, Sabretooth is a poet.