Hey! Hold That Band Wagon!

Forgive me, friends, for I was unable to resist the latest gimmick for increasing my blog traffic. I know, I know... If I'd just post a little more often (and, perhaps, a little more interestingly), the traffic would increase on its own. Well, I am a man who is at One with his shortcomings, and I know that my caffeinated little blog needs all the help it can get. Hence, BlogMad.



It hasn't been launched yet, but BlogMad is letting bloggers sign-up early. Once the official launch comes, membership will be by referral only.

Seriously, who doesn't want more traffic? So, do yourself (and me, admittedly) a favor by clicking on the graphic above and sign up before it's too late.

Photo of the Week: Final Approach

The days of flying through the clouds are long past for these two (look close and you'll see the frame of a helicopter beside the plane).
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Today's Not-So-Funny

Hey, gang! I've just thought of the most clever riddle...

Q: What do you get when you cross some of the best Canadian NHL talent with the coaching skills of Pat Quinn?

A: Nothing.

Ha! I kill me!

But seriously... Finally, the rest of the country can now experience that exquisite, pit-of-your-stomach disappointment that Toronto Maple Leaf fans have come to refer to as "the usual". That's right, in case you haven't heard (seriously, who the heck hasn't heard?), Team Canada has been eliminated from Men's Olympic Hockey in the quarter-finals by Russia.

Not that I'm surprised.

Leading up to the Olympics, all you heard on TV or the radio was how talented Canada's Men's team was... How, with the depth available to us, we could have put together two medal contending teams... How they were going to bring home the gold for the second time in a row.

Ouch. Missed it by that much.

Everybody went nuts when Canada won their first two games, out-scoring their opponents 11 goals to 3... But I think we forgot that these games were against Italy and Germany. Come on! Italy and Germany? What did we expect? It wasn't until the Swiss beat them in a 2-0 shutout that eyebrows started to raise. Switzerland? Better known for bank accounts and army knives than hockey? Huh. Must have been an off day.

Yeah, I wish.

The loss to the Swiss (and the subsequent losses that have landed the team in the same embarrassing boat as our American counterparts) pointed out the one glaring flaw in Canada's quest for the gold: There is no "Team" in "Team Canada".

Plain and simple, the boys never gelled. Instead of looking like the powerhouse they were professed to be, they looked more like a bunch of NHL Alumni playing an impromptu exhibition game. No cohesion, no jump, no fire.

Some will say that it was the absence of guys like Lemieux or Stevie Y... Some will say it was the distraction of the controversy surrounding Gretzky... Some will say it was the tough NHL schedule leading up to the Games. Whatever. These were all things they knew about before they even left for the Olympics. It wasn't like they got to Italy, looked around and said, "Hey! Where's Mario?" or "We have to play Olympic hockey? But I just played 2 months of gruelling NHL hockey!" or "I'm so upset and distracted by this whole Gretzky scandal... I'm not sure I can concentrate on my game. Did you even know you could bet on sporting events?" No, they knew it all going in and I doubt any of these things had anything to do with their, shall we say, less than admirable performance.

So, I stand by my belief that the blame lies on Pat Quinn's shoulders, and his shoulders alone. As the coach, it was his job to take this group of All-Stars and mold them into an All-Star team. It was his responsibility to put together lines with players who complimented each other ("My, those are lovely shin guards you have on today, Joe.", "Why, thank you, Iggy!"). And it was his responsibility to motivate those players to bring their "A" games... as a team. He can't point the finger at anyone, unless he's facing a mirror. Period.

Oh well. You lose some, you lose some, eh Quinn?

Thanks for nothin'.

SpongeBob Says: Canadian Girls Kick Ass!

Way to go Canadian Women's Ice Hockey Team! Good job bringing home some more of those gold CD-lookin' thingies!

Wanted: Coach for Team Canada

I'm pretty steamed about this subject, so I'm going to keep it short, irrational, and based on as little actual knowledge of the situation as possible...

If you're anything like me, you've got a healthy self-esteem (read as "ego"), an infrequently updated blog, and piercing headaches when you go more than 24 hours without a coffee. You also would have been up early this Saturday morning to have the pleasure of watching the highly-touted Team Canada get shutout by Switzerland, hockey powerhouse that they are, in Olympic Men's Ice Hockey. Moreover, you would have shaken that dismal performance off as a "bad day", an "anomoly", a "momentary lapse", as it were... And then you would have watched with a sickening sense of deja vu (which, I believe, is French for "I don't speak French") as they got shutout by Team Finland today.

Enough is enough already.

I don't blame the guys for this... I don't blame the jetlag, either... I don't even blame the gruelling NHL schedule leading up to the Olympic break. I blame Pat Quinn. And I blame whoever it was that named Pat Quinn coach of Team Canada, even if that someone is The Great One himself (I'm referring to Wayne Gretzky this time, not me).

There are 6 Canadian teams in the NHL, all but 2 of them who have been having great seasons of late. Among those 2 is the Toronto Maple Leafs, coached by Quinn. This guy can't get the Leafs out of the basement of the League, and yet we expect him to take a bunch of guys who don't normally play together and lead them to Gold at the Olympics? Ridiculous!

I just hope that we see a real coach like Darryl Sutter or Marc Crawford behind the bench when Vancouver 2010 rolls around...

Really Stupid Mistakes Are Often the Most Obvious

Your girlfriend should never have to call you on Valentine's Day to find out why you haven't called to wish her a Happy Valentine's Day yet.

Dummy.

10 Things That Bug Me in the Kitchen

1. That stepped-on piece of cooked macaroni that fuses with the bottom of my sock and forces me to drag my heal in vain for 10 minutes before I give up and finish cooking one-side barefoot.

2. The last raviolli that clings to the inside of the can while I shake little bits of sauce all over the stove-top.

3. Plastic wrap that refuses to stick to any of my containers, but will happily fold over in a heartbeat and become inseparable from itself.

4. Trying to get peanut butter from the bottom of the jar and getting more on the knife handle and my knuckles than on the blade.

5. Rice Krispies that, having been previously soaked in milk, bond with super-glue-like strength to the side of the cereal bowl and must be chiseled free.

6. Any recipe that involves boiling milk and water. It's a timebomb concoction that waits until my back is turned before instantly frothing over the top of the pot and coating the burner.

7. Cleaning burnt milk from under the burners on my stove.

8. Smoking burners that haven't been properly exorcised of their burnt milk.

9. The bags inside cereal boxes that have obviously been sealed too well. The ones that, no matter how careful I am, end up tearing open jaggedly, ensuring that every pour will include 9 pieces of cereal skittering across the counter and down beside the fridge.

10. Sinks that aren't big enough to handle a 4-day backlog of dishes... What's up with that?

Not the Way it Should Be Played

16-0.

That's the humiliating score Canada posted over Italy in the first round of Women's Ice Hockey at Torino 2006. And I say "humiliating" not from the perspective of the Italians, but from that of hockey in general.

No team should lose a hockey game by 16 goals.

Fine, the Italian team wasn't as good as Canada... That was expected. In all fairness, this year's Women's Ice Hockey is being called a "two-team tournament" because of the dominance of Canada and the U.S. Okay, so we can pretty much bank on those two teams facing each other for the gold... But we still have to play the tournament and get past all of the other teams who have put so much time and effort (not to mention blood, sweat, and tears) to get to the Olympics.

But do we really need to crush them? To flaunt in their faces how much better we are than them? To make them feel as if they wasted their time in showing up?

Sadly, yes.

The Olympic Ice Hockey rules dictate that the team with the most goals in the tournament will have Home Ice Advantage in the Gold Medal game. This means that Canada and the U.S. (who are assuming they will be facing each other) are not only playing each game of the tournament to win, but also to stack up as many goals as possible along the way. It's the most classic case of adding insult to injury.

This isn't the way hockey is normally played, and it's not the way it should be played when the world is watching. The good sportsmanship these players have had instilled in them since they first laced up their skates has been thrown out the window. Where they were previously encouraged to "let up a bit" on a team they were beating handily, they are now being told to "show no mercy". Pathetic.

Apparently, a simple coin toss to determine Home Ice is out of the question...

I'm not a hockey player, and definitely not a woman, but I'd like to apologize to the world in advance, on behalf of the Canadian and the U.S. teams for the misery they will be forced to inflict on the rest of the teams. Let's just hope the Olympic Committee realizes what a gong show they've created with this rule and that they get it sorted out before Vancouver 2010.

There's "In a Rut", and Then There's This

Man, am I in a slump lately... Yeah, with regards to this blog, sure, but personally, too. I feel like my life of late has been a test pattern interrupted only occasionally by infomercials for obscure and mundane products. And not the cool infomercials either... Remember back in the late 80's and early 90's when they weren't even full-motion commercials, more like slideshows of real commercials? And the "slides" updated based on a set interval, so you didn't always get great shots... If it refreshed during a part of the infomercial where there was lots of motion, all you got to see for 5 seconds was a frozen blur.

That's me lately: Boring, blurry, and hard to watch.

I doesn't help that everything around me is conspiring to ensure I remain as unexcited as possible, either. Take TV, for example... This is one of the longest dry spells for entertainment that I can recall. Sure, lots of stuff to see, but very little of it worth the time. I don't care to watch celebrities dance or figure skate... Whether or not somebody can be the best singer out of 8 or 10 other people and still not make anything of themselves doesn't interest me in the least... And how many police/crime/trauma shows do we need to have on the air before we consider it "enough"?

Even the programs that show promise are ending up as disappointments... "Lost"? Great idea, but milking the suspense ever-so-slowly over the weeks gets too tedious to bother with. "Arrested Development"? Classic example of, "Smart, witty, and entertaining... Let's cancel it." (Anybody else having "Dead Like Me" flashbacks?) Even my personal favorite, the one shining star in the darkness that is network television, "Scrubs" got held back for half a season to allow room for crappier, destined-to-fail shows in the Fall Schedule. And now that it's back (Hooray!), what do they do? Constantly put it up against specials and award shows so it can't help but fail in the Nielsen ratings. Brilliant.

Big Screen Hollywood hasn't been much better, either. I don't think there have been more than a couple movies worth spending the $12 per ticket to see (not to mention the $30 for popcorn and soda). And believe me, I've tried! Although, "King Kong" was awesome, I could have waited for "Fun with Dick and Jane" to hit Blockbuster, and "Munich" was simply 3 tedious hours of predictability and repetitiveness that I'll never get back. Maybe there was a deeper political or social agenda at play there, but you need a more recent event and a lot more action if you want to flog it over 180 minutes (Take note, Spielberg).

What's left, then, to keep me from nodding off and drooling on my chest? It's winter in Canada, the sun goes down by 4:30 in the freaking afternoon, and I work until 5! And don't even get me started about the weekends... Winter in Calgary means one of two things: Bone-chilling cold, or howling wind, both of which drive me nuts. I could do without ever seeing snow again in my lifetime, and the migraine headaches brought on by the infamous chinook winds are no picnic, let me tell you. So, I either get to wander the malls that are 90% women's clothing stores, full of people who are oblivious to the fact that you exist or that they have just cut you off in their determination to get to that prized sweater that's just gone on sale, or I can sit in my home, staring at the walls until I'm ready to climb them.

I'm telling you, summer better get here quick or you might end up reading "Cuppojoe's Psychotic Mind"...