Tag Archives: humor
National Hockey League to address shoot-out debacle
Florida Panthers centre Nick Bjugstad celebrates after scoring the game-winning goal (Alan Diaz/AP)
New York–The National Hockey League governors have initiated emergency talks in wake of last night’s game between the Florida Panthers and the Washington Capitals that took an unprecedented 20 shootout rounds to be settled.
“This is completely unacceptable,” said one league official who refused to be named. “Had this happened on a Saturday night, we might have been able to simply shrug off the length of this contest, but it happened on a Tuesday night, when fans need to work the next morning. To have a game go this late into the evening just won’t work for today’s fans.”
Thus, the governors are meeting to discuss ways to further hasten the end of regular season games and reduce the likelihood of such events happening again.
While an official list of possible tactics has not been released, sources close to the central office of the NHL suggest the following are being considered for games that fail to resolve after 5 shootout rounds:
- Removing the goaltenders and turning the net toward the boards.
- Strapping the goaltender’s hands and feet to the posts to prevent potential blocking motions.
- Allowing two shooters to skate on the goaltender at the same time.
- Resolving the tie on the basis of overall shots on goal, followed by fewest penalty minutes.
- Awarding the win on the basis of whose fans cheer loudest.
- Awarding both teams 1.5 points and going home.
The NHL has not set a timeline for resolution of this problem, but they hope to have a solution in place and activated before the 2015 NHL All-Star Weekend, which takes place January 24-25 in Columbus, Ohio.
For more on the game between the Florida Panthers and the Washington Capitals, please see:
NHL record for shootouts set as Panthers outlast Capitals after 20 rounds (!)
Hump Wednesday?
Closing the book on bookstores
I am a troglodyte…a knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing dinosaur who will shortly find myself extinct for my inability to evolve with the world in which I live. You see, I like to read books.
So, what’s wrong with that, you may ask, lots of people read books. I have several dozen on my e-reader.
There’s the rub. I did not say novels, plays, short stories, historical or scientific treatises—all of which I do enjoy. Rather I said “books”. Those folded paper constructions across which are scribbled black serif or sans serif typefaces and maybe a few photos or illustrations.
This past week in Toronto, yet another bookstore (brick & morter, not Xena warrior princess type) met its demise. The self-described World’s Biggest Bookstore was a staple in downtown Toronto, a place to visit when you were trying to kill some time or perhaps even to purchase books, magazines, school supplies or those kitschy little items that no one ever thought they wanted but can’t seem to live without.
This past spring, about a dozen blocks away from the WBB, another bookstore met its demise and is in the process of becoming a craft store (because what erudite urbanite doesn’t want more Styrofoam cones and sewing notions?).
The reasons for these closures are many and varied, although the loudest one in downtown Toronto is the cost of renting or owning the space. Why house 10,000 hard and soft copies of books when you can house just as many Torontonians in roughly the same space?
I know there are other bookstores in Toronto. My concern is for how much longer.
They came for the mom’n’pop shops, and I said nothing.
They came for the specialty stores, and I looked the other way.
Then they came for the big box stores, and I was forced to buy an e-reader.
Despite the number of items I have purchased from e-tailers like Amazon and Indigo, there is still nothing better to me than the tangible feel of a book in my hands. There is a vibe in books that I cannot get electronically, unless I wet my fingers first, but that’s more of a shock than a vibe.
I am a junkie for second-hand bookstores.
I love that musty smell that I am confident is a mould infection waiting to take root in my olfactory or pulmonary system. The crick of a book spine as you fold it back for the first time (my own spine makes a similar noise in the morning).
And the gentle signs of previous love, whether a notation from giver to receiver, random dog-ears suggesting the previous owner had ADHD or the odd tacky material sticking several pages together that we are all best not to think too much about.
As a side note: I find it ironic that I will pay $20 to $50 for a book in an antiquarian bookstore that I wouldn’t spend more than $3 on in a second-hand store. Apparently, signage works.
I watch people in airports and on buses scrolling through their e-readers and wonder, where is the fun in that?
Don’t you miss the excitement of flipping ahead to determine whether you can stay awake long enough to reach the next chapter break? Or anxiously getting to the bottom of the page only to realize that the sentence finishes on the next page (don’t judge me, I live alone)?
Or knowing that in the coming apocalypse, you’ll be able to keep a fire going for several days? You try cooking squirrel over a burning e-reader and see how far that gets you.
(Note to self: Buy extra reading glasses. Learn the lessons Burgess Meredith did not.)
But alas, I am a vanishing breed and like the thunder lizards that came before me, I will have to make way for those annoying little rodents that scurry around under desks and floors and through the walls…yes, the guys from I.T.
But until that day comes, I shall continue to hunker in my apartment, surrounded by my beloved paper friends and learn a bit more about modern squirrel trapping techniques.
Food that (actively) disagrees with me
The Clucking Dead
Centuries ago, a Chinese friend of mine invited me to a family dinner where, among the many delicious items, he served chickens’ feet (I guess if he’ll serve me, he’ll serve anybody).
For the uninitiated, chickens’ feet is not a delightful nickname for some exotic construction of bamboo shoots and gelatin powder (ironically, horse’s feet), but rather the feet of chickens.
Now, I already have problems eating chicken wings…so much work for so little meat. Well, chickens’ feet are all the agony of a chicken wing sans the meat. So, I already was unimpressed.
Just doesn’t add up to food
Making matters worse, however, was the chickens were just as disinclined to be eaten as I was to eat them, for as I looked down upon the bowl, I was presented with a dozen or so clawed fists, talons extended to scratch my eyes out or anything else that approached the bowl.
And when I say talons, I’m not talking the beautifully manicured hands of a lovely woman (which can inflict plenty of damage). No, I’m talking the rapier claws tested on the set of Jurassic Park that caused Spielberg to blanch and say from under his director’s chair: ”Nah, too scary for the kids.”
Physical or emotional, scars are scars
Despite watching my friends take great pleasure in popping the chickens’ feet into their mouths and spitting out an archaeologist’s Erector Set (can only imagine what they’d do with a fully assembled book shelf from Ikea), I made a vow that day.
I will never eat a food that is still actively defending itself! (So keep fighting the good fight, calamari and octopus.)
NOTE: This post was prompted by a post from Ned Hickson and his recent run in with rampantly randy turkeys (no relation).
RIP, Master Yoda
Gotta laugh (seriously, I mean that)
I am so amused by your humours
I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to stand-up comedy. Not in the performance of it, you understand—been there, done that, bear the scars—but rather in simply being an audience member.
For the uninitiated, stand-up is best described as stripping naked, slathering your body in hot sauce and dragging small razor blades across your skin while being judged by a room full of your parents. And your only salve is laughter.
Which is where my problem starts.
LOL Classic
Hi. My name is Randy, and I don’t laugh at stand-up comedians. Okay, perhaps rarely laugh is more accurate.
It’s not that I can’t laugh. Get me together with the right group of friends, and I become a giggling gibbon. Hit me with the right joke or observation at the right time, and you’ll turn me into a hyperventilating tear factory. But for the most part, I only LOL when texting.
If I get where you’re going, I will nod. If I like what you said, I’ll smile. If I really like it, the smile will show teeth. But the laugh is elusive.
At a stand-up comedy show several years ago, a colleague accused me of being a comedy snob, suggesting that I refused to laugh to make myself look cool. Ironically, this made me laugh.
If my name were ever to appear in Roget’s Thesaurus, I can promise you that “cool” would only ever appear as an antonym. (Case in point, I just referenced Roget’s Thesaurus.)
So I knew I was in trouble a couple of weeks ago when the host of The Comedy Store in Los Angeles decided to sit me dead centre in front row, literally at the shins of the comedians.
The Comedy Store
I sat there. A long-torsoed beacon of attention. I was the Lighthouse of Alexandria (yet another cool reference) to those rolling on the oft-stormy seas of stand-up.
Comedian #1 takes the stage. She’s quickly warming the audience and then, “So, where you from?”. Toronto, says I. Cue the Canada jokes.
No problem. I come from a funny country with a funny reputation. Ask me a question, I’ll answer it best I can. I am more than happy to participate to help the comedian.
[Side note: I do not heckle, anyone. Comedy is hard enough without the drunken asshole. Likewise, I do not interject into someone’s set. The audience is there to enjoy the comedian’s wit, not mine.]
When engaged by the comedian, I will play along and maintain the game. I will not (or at least try not to) be funnier than the comedian.
Only one of the three A-list comedians (Argus Hamilton, Bobby Lee, Marc Maron) paid me more than passing attention, each one more than capable of holding their sets to their own material, addressing the audience with little more than a passing “You know what I mean?” or “How many of you…”
Bobby Lee, Angus Hamilton, Marc Maron
They talked to the whole audience, not just those of us they could see.
Then came the B-listers.
Like any artist, comedians at this stage are less able to roll with failing bits. And even when a bit is working, the big guy in the front row who refuses to laugh becomes the focus of attention.
After the third B-lister, I started to feel sorry for the audience, who quickly learned everything about me and Canada, the information oft repeated as no two comedians paid much attention to anything that happened five minutes before they hit the stage.
Over the five hours I watched the show—I arrived at 8:30 and didn’t leave until 2:00—I swear I was being spoken to or about or was on the microphone for one hour. I literally had more air time than all but one comedian. (Part of my air time included a rousing rendition of Oh, Canada and a duet of Tie a Yellow Ribbon.)
In five hours, I was told that I had an abnormally long torso (I do), I dress like Steve Irwin (I was), I work in maintenance or engineering (I don’t), I have beautiful hair (it is nice), and was asked twice to mimic cunnilingus (I respectfully refused). [Side note: Don Barris is a very very very strange man.]
Don Barris (his cunnilingus face)
And all, I am confident, because I refused to be the giggling gibbon.
I wasn’t defiant (except for the cunnilingus part). I never crossed my arms. I tried to be positive and supportive in my eye contact (perhaps that was mistaken as a challenge). And yet, I received a pretty good workout.
So, I think my choices are: laugh despite my personal opinions or ask to be seated in the shadowiest corner of the bar.
Either way, it will be a while before I attend another stand-up comedy show.
Sitting in back of the bar
The Beasts of the Nature
Nature doesn’t like me. I don’t know why. It just doesn’t.
I try to be respectful. I not only recycle, but I also reduce…or, at least, I’ve never thrown food away.
I barely leave my apartment, so my literal footprint is pretty small—9-1/2 wide, for those of you keeping track. And other than my laptop and coffee maker, I barely use any electricity. Nor do I use the heat, so if you come over for a visit, bring a sweater.
And I believe that all life is sacred…which is why my apartment is filled with four types of spiders, two varieties of sow bugs, and one rather large species of house centipede. As an aside, if any of you ladies are entomologists or just like to get your arachnid freak on, call me.
Hard to tell how the spider is fairing in this fight, but I’m not holding out hope
Hell, I barely wear any clothes at home, preferring to wander au naturel…again, call first before visiting.
And yet, for all this benign behaviour, Nature wants me dead.
Every Spring, 10,000 species of plants gather around my apartment in a massive botanic circle jerk, spraying me and my immune system with a dazzling array of ejaculates green, gold and white. And they do this knowing full well that in another life, my white cells worked for Al Qaeda. For me, the months immediately following March are Anaphylaxis and Can’t.
You know when you make pancakes and first pour the batter into the scorching pan? Within moments, the batter bubbles up and bursts? That was me as a kid on a cloudy day. On a sunny day, I could watch Enola Gay footage and jealously think, “At least they had a breeze.”
And the water’s no better. Pond, stream, lake, ocean, they all think of me as chum, and not in the friendly sense. I’ve yet to find a boat I cannot fall out of. A canoe? An outdoor bathtub. A kayak? A restraining device designed to pin me underwater. A rowboat? Topless submersible.
Currents. Waves. Tides. All mechanisms to keep me from remembering where I left the air. I once went body surfing in Oahu and got so disoriented by the swirling currents that I flew home from San Francisco. You worry about an undertow? I’ve never experienced anything smaller than an underfoot.
And regardless of my home BioDome project, all of that goodwill is forgotten the moment I emerge from my apartment and become a blood bank for what must otherwise be the most anemic bugs on the planet. Even the vegan insects view my flesh as hyper-ripe banana paste.
And despite the most astringent soap and strongest deodorant, I apparently offer flies the personal banquet of a 6-week-old corpse vacationing in the Louisiana Bayou. I am the no-pest strip of the bed bug world.
Red-winged black birds strafe me. Squirrels can’t tell walnut meat from finger meat. And wasps see themselves as my personal EpiPen.
I tell you all this because I am travelling to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks, and so I would like to pre-emptively apologize for the events that will finally bring beachfront charm to the Vegas strip.
NOTE: This piece is written as my contribution to a wonderful creative assembly called “Tell Me A Story” organized by my friend Will Ennis, a lovely actor in the city of Toronto. You can see his acting reel below.
BoJack-sh!t (a review)
Unless this is a satire about satires, I don’t get the new Netflix Original Series BoJack Horseman.
Ostensibly, the zany life of a washed up sitcom star from the 90s, who also happens to be a horse, who is trying to find meaning in a life of idle emptiness, the show is instead an endless string of really bad puns and lame jokes about anthropomorphic animals and Hollywood, punctuated with long speeches to highlight the irony of a scene or episode.
I am surprised the character giving the speech doesn’t hold up a sign reading “Ironic part” or “Satirical condemnation of status quo” just in case the audience was too stoned to realize that’s what the speech was about.
Episode 3 starts with an establishing shot of a bar called The Pelican. We then cut to BoJack sitting at the bar which is being tended by a…wait for it…pelican. Or in Episode 2, BoJack has a run-in with a Navy Seal who is a…here it comes…actual seal. Oh, and at the apex of humour, whenever BoJack’s girlfriend/agent puts him on hold, he listens to music from Cats…oh, did I mention his girlfriend/agent is a cat? Them’s the animal jokes, my friends.
There are attempts at social commentary, of course. In Episode 3, BoJack’s memoir ghost writer tries to make him feel better about a friend by claiming she was a victim of her circumstances and the pressures of society. But silly BoJack…he misunderstands this to mean that no one is responsible for their actions and that the fault universally lies with society, so he can act like a jerk and it’s not his fault. Silly BoJack.
The voice talent is, well, talented. Alison Brie (Madmen, Community), Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), Amy Sedaris (Strangers with Candy), Paul F. Thompkins (No You Shut Up!) and Will Arnett (everything else)…these people can act.
Show creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg is a mystery to me. An actor and writer, all I can really find out about him is he a member of a sketch comedy group called Olde English.
And the more I read about him, the more I wonder if my original comment wasn’t dead on…this may just be an amazing meta joke perpetrated by a very funny man. Or it’s just not very good.
Because I only lose 25 minutes of my life at a go, I will continue to watch to see if it gets better…dear God, let it get better…or let me in on the divine joke of this comedy.
GoT irony?
createdbyrcw 