Hockey Season Heating Up

Been getting back into hockey more and more, post-lockout. I've started playing once a week again, for the first time in a couple years. The first week went surprisingly well, physically. This week....well, I felt like someone who hadn't played in two years or so. It doesn't help that I'm playing against kids from the local high school team. These kids are in great shape, for starters, they're young. They've never put on the "Freshmen Fifty" or taken it off or put a good portion of it back on. Secondly, they just finished their season up. So they've been practicing and playing several times a week for about six months now.

Conditioning aside, the speed is the most noticeable difference since I was a senior ten years ago. Back then, the game was more physical. The rink here was brand new and most of the guys playing in the league were fairly new to ice hockey. Sure, there are other local rinks, but it hadn't caught on as widespread yet. Each team had a handful of guys who had been playing for years, and it showed. The rest of us were lesser skilled but more physical. Nowadays, the rink has been here for years, these kids grew up playing hockey. The overall skill level is much higher across the board. And the conditioning of skating regularly throughout the year shows.

It's also fantasy hockey playoff season. This was the first year I played fantasy hockey. It was a small league, and not all that competitive, but even factoring that in, I think my performance was impressive. It helped having the #1 overall pick and nabbing Alexander Ovechkin.

There's the standings (click to enlarge pics). I ran away with things, clinching my playoff spot about four or five weeks ago. And I was pretty consistent, losing only twice in 23 weeks of matchups. Here's the weekly splits:

My first-round bye ends tomorrow and my march to a little gold trophy resumes.

Organized Religion is Fun

I was driving from the girlfriend's house out to my folks this morning and drove by the church we used to go to. The parking lot was full, parked four rows deep in spots. Cars in the front were facing out. Cars in the back were backed in, facing out. Parking around the side of the church was full, parking around the school was full too. The majority of the vehicles parked there were backed into their spaces. Facing out. If going to church is so fun, how come everyone seems to park as if they can't wait to get out when it's over?

When I go to a Cardinals or a Blues game, I pull in front first. I can't wait to get there. I don't care about after the game, it doesn't concern me. I'll sit in traffic for twenty minutes, backing out, waiting for police to manually direct traffic. But these church goers, who love their weekly praise offerings, their mouths say one thing about loving church and throwing away an hour or two of their weekends, but the body language of their vehicles tells a different story. Seems like they don't want to spend any more time at church than absolutely necessary.

The Camels Are Unhappy

Like Eminem...

I too, am back from exile. Only I'm not going to rap about rubbers and beer and......hmmm. Ok, scratch that. I'm definitely not going to wrap about fromunda cheese. Everything else could be in play.

I took the advice everyone who's ever made fun of anyone with a blog and went out and got myself a girlfriend. So I've been a little too preoccupied with "other things" to worry about blogging about nonsense on here.

Fantasy Baseball
It's that time of year. Hope springs eternal for 30 major league baseball clubs. And fantasy dorks eagerly line up to wait for services to open this year's installment of the fantasy game. I've got two teams already. Posts regarding draft results may or may not follow. I normally play upwards of 4 or 5 teams, so if you've got a league you want me to kick your ass in, send me an invite.

St. Louis Rams
Gotta love the new regime. Their new GM, Billy Delvaney is an old-school football person, not a lawyer masquerading as a football man, and he's off to an impressive start. First, he landed my favorite choice as coach, Steve Spagnuolo, then they cleaned house - cut were Corey Chavous, Drew Bennett, and Trent Green, and 11 free agents look like they're going to be allowed to walk. There's more people on the chopping block too. In the first day of free agency, the Rams snared the best lineman available this year, Ravens center/guard Jason Brown. He's still a young free agent (25 years old) and he's just what the doctor ordered for our offensive line.

At 6'3" and about 320 pounds, Brown fills a longtime position of need, center, while just now entering his prime. He's big enough to move a massive nose tackle in a 3-4 defense out of the way and he has the nasty disposition to abuse the tackles in a 4-3 defense mercilessly.

I could go on and on, by my point is this. This was a great signing by the Rams, and the new regime is saying and doing all the right things. The only downside is that the old regime should have locked up emerging young cornerback Ron Bartell last year. Instead, they let him have a career year, one where was the best corner in the NFC West, and now, at 26 years old, in his prime, he walks out the door (not yet, but soon) with a crazy deal we can't match.

The Postal Service
I find it perplexing and amusing that UPS uses a song in their commercials ("Such Great Heights") from a band called The Postal Service. I know it's just a band, and there's no competition between USP and the band The Postal Service, but c'mon, it's one of those "life is too funny" ironies.

Anyways, I had my iTunes on Party Shuffle and it dialed up an old favorite, The Postal Service's song "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight." I always loved this song. I'm not a big fan of much electronic music, but this was a solid little album they put out, 2003's Give Up.



I remember discovering this song. I bought two pairs of shorts at American Eagle and I got a sampler cd with my purchase. This song was one of the seven or eight tunes on the disc. Every time I see that weird mulleted spokesman in the UPS commercials I think of The Postal Service and this album.

The Departed
I watched this yesterday and damn, is it one of Scorcese's best. Perhaps the best. My god, it's just phenomenal. I would babble on and on here, but I'll spare you any more praise. I had forgotten that a version of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" was in the movie. I went and looked it up, it's a 1990 live version Roger Waters did with The Band and Van Morrison. Another phenomenal element in a much larger phenomenal masterpiece.



Weather
Alright, enough already. I'm sick of this shit. I can deal with the piercing cold when it's cold all the time. But the roller coaster we've had the last two weeks is silly. Sixty degrees one day, and two days later its fallen to the twenties. The yo-yoing of the mercury is the hardest part. That kind of adjusting just fucks with your body.

Other Musical Notes:



I always liked Catherine Wheel. Rob Dickinson has a unique enough voice that I'm surprised he's not a little more famous in rock music. He is the nephew of well-known Iron Maiden front man Bruce Dickinson. Catherine Wheel had a cup of coffee here in the States in the early '90's. There was this song, "Black Metallic," from their 1992 album Ferment. And there was "Waydown" and "Judy Staring At The Sun" from their 1995 album Happy Days.

Every few months I get this incredible itch to hear "Black Metallic". I finally bought it the other day, and while purchasing the song, I noticed that there's an acoustic version done by Rob alone. Apparently Catherine Wheel broke up in the late '90's and Rob Dickinson is doing a solo thing now, mostly acoustic stuff. He throws in his old Catherine Wheel hits I guess. I'm surprised this song translated to acoustic so well. The original version is a seven minute spacy, reverb drenched electric guitar piece. The acoustic version has been trimmed to just over five and it plays well on acoustic. The album is called Fresh Wine for the Horses.

Minor announcement: I'm done buying music through iTunes. I'm using Amazon's mp3 store. I hate the DRM rights on iTunes stuff. If I want to back it up so I can play a song I've paid good dough for, I have to burn it to a disc and rip the disc back into my library, thus removing the digital rights management from the file. This "unlocked" file can then be played on any media player on any machine. Amazon's music downloads have none of this and I haven't noticed much in the way of a difference regarding the selection available at the store.