News item: NEW YORK -- Brendan Shanahan is retiring from the NHL after 21 seasons and an almost certain Hall of Fame career.
Shanahan, who scored 656 career goals, decided to leave the Devils in October one day after he was told there was no spot for him on New Jersey's top three lines. He has not played this season.
Shanahan ranks 11th on the league's career goals list and is the only player with 600 goals and 2,000 penalty minutes. The eight-time All-Star also played for St. Louis, Hartford, Detroit and theNew York Rangers. He won three Stanley Cup titles with Detroit. Shanahan recorded 1,354 points and 2,489 penalty minutes in 1,524 NHL games.
OK, OSHL experts: Now that this five-category stud is out to pasture, who's the new Shanny?
In an effort to spell the hard-working Art Vandelay, I've decided to throw one out there.
OK, deep thinkers: You've got roughly three years to live. That, at least, according to the Mayan Calendar, I Ching, Discovery TV and the latest blockbuster movie release, 2012.
What do you do?
I've already spent the last two years in temporary early retirement, choosing to live like a pampered house cat. Aside from joining the OSHL and re-introducing myself to my wife and kids, which has been a complete lotto win in that regard, the rest has been quite boring, actually. (OK, having my first summer off since I was a kid and skiing and dirt-biking my a*s off in the Rockies has been pretty sweet). And this "lost weekend" has been a great way to recharge the batteries after 23 years of the mind-numbing, info raking I'd been doing for any of the feckless corporate stooges du jour minding the branch offices owned by Canada's felonious and near-felonious news-conglomerate mandarins.
So with two down and three to go, what have I got planned?
Writing a fiction novel (about the lives, loves and dark secrets of a small cabal of hockey nuts, perhaps) might work. But who'd be around to read it? I could try and convince Quebec to join Confederation (third time a charm, eat dirt Jacques Parizeau?) But, again, to what end? According to the "experts," it all blows up Dec. 21, 2012.
Anything constructive, for that matter, all goes for nought.
Let's say we get all altruistic; take in all the poor, starving, abused little Timmys and introduce them to the life every child should be so privileged to have. That's great . . . but . . . The minute they really get used to it -- poof! Gonzo.
So what's the point? Would doing all the good listed above make it better for you or me "after it's over?" Would it even make it better for you or me while we're doing it?
Or should we throw the entire weight of mankind's infantile knowledge into the research, development and construction a time-rending machine that can punch a crease into this inevitable demise lurking at the end of the time line. Sounds good. But I don't like our chances, unless that giant hadron-chucker in Switzerland coughs up something substantial in the next 12 months.
So given the options above, perhaps a sprint down the path of destruction is more in order? We're going out tonight, to kick out every light -- the world stops turning when we burn it to the ground tonight. I mean, if it's all going to blow up anyway, W. T. F.? Right?
Just imagine being that willfully-malevolent bastard you always wanted to be but couldn't because you weren't raised by wolves. Being
one of "them" for the last few years rather than being one of "us" sounds like fun, right? Or, at the very least, you could go all vigilante and cap every other malevolent bastard you could find to make life safer for the lambs to the end.
So what can I, or any of us, do over the next three years that would make the inevitable that much more acceptable/easier to face?
Discuss . . .
P.S. -- I propose we all convene at a beverage room of the commissioner's choice for Cohibas and Cognac Dec. 21, 2012.
Everyone's seen Heaven Can Wait, where the after-life functionary jumps the gun on hauling Rams QB Joe Pendleton up to heaven. And then they spend the rest of the movie trying to find a body for Joe to inhabit.
Flip it around and you have the premise of A Matter of Life and Death, the title as it airs on TCM (released as Stairway to Heaven in the U.S.). This 1946 film has master bomber Peter Carter jumping from his flaming Lancaster bomber to what should have been certain death; except the functionary loses track of Carter in the fog over the English Channel and next thing you know the after-life is missing someone at roll call. The after-life bureaucrats spend the rest of the movie trying to get Carter hauled upstairs to balance the books. Carter, naturally, has other ideas.
This is nominally a romantic movie. It's certainly got more quoted poetry than any movie I've ever seen other than one based on Shakespeare's work. But it's also got enough philosophizing to render it a credible muse on man's place in The Big Picture. And it features - surprisingly given it came on the heels of WWII - a trial sequence where the relative merits of England and the United States are frankly aired.
The after-life is shown in black & white, while life on Earth is shot in spectacular Technicolor. I believe the point is that "heaven" is being alive and in love. If you think that's a decent premise, you're going to enjoy this movie next time it rolls around on Turner Classic Movies.
Bruce Willis brings his cartoon acting to cartoon action. This time, he brings along the Mac guy as his sidekick.
The concept is that terrorists could shut down the grid by moving around a few 1s and 0s. But the guy who designed the entire grid (Oh-Kaaaay) is pissed off that nobody believed him when he said the system was vulnerable to a cyber attack. So he recruits, I dunno, 50 or 60 members of his bargaining unit - or the local chapter of Anarchists Anonymous - to help him prove his point. Just in case the keyboards jam or the hard drives freeze, they bring along a few hundred thousand rounds of ammo.
I get it. It's an action-movie franchise. I like adrenaline rushes as much as the next guy.
But can't you kids just be satisfied with your vidya games and your Red Bull and your ADD? Do the movies all have to be for you, too?
I mean, really...
And one more thing: Why couldn't they wrap this in 90 minutes? Did it take 130 minutes of moving pictures to tell this story?
We could only find one person who said he'd flat-out refuse to push the button at any price. Most people would do it a lot cheaper than a million.
When I said I couldn't push the button fast enough, the guy who posed the question kept reducing the payoff. I was all-in right down to $10K and finally caved at $5K. I mean, people die all the time, right?
That led to all sorts of variations, including:
If a family member were on the wrong end of the button, what would you pay to save them? Everything and then some, was my answer. That's obvious.
If it were an in-law? Less obvious.
If it were your best friend? Didn't hesitate: everything. But one guy said his friend would be a goner. That's some cold shit, right there.
If it were a co-worker? I figured it would depend on the co-worker. Pragmatic.
What if you pushed the button, collected the million, and then they told you the person catching the bullet was someone you knew - would you tell them? Most people said yes. Not sure they properly factored in the possibility the victim would try to take you with him/her.
What if you could push a button to save 500 starving Ethiopians, but someone in your community would die? The guy who I started the discussion with said yes, "one dies for the greater good, and all that." I congratulated him for being the model communist. And for being the perfect recruiting tool for the next war effort. The next guy we asked said no way, reasoning that the guy who dies has every right to continue living, has a family, etc. Model libertarian right there, and impressive given his youth.
What if the boss came in and said to you and your 14 co-workers, "I just got a call. Somebody's about to press a button. One of you is going to die. The only way to possibly avoid it is if we pay the guy to NOT press the button. We don't know how much it will take to convince him." How much would you pay? The libertarian was willing to cough up a paycheque. The communist, two paycheques. The guy who was unwilling to contribute a penny to save his friend's life earlier was similarly not willing to pony up to save his own or his co-workers' lives. I explained that he had a 1/15 chance of dying in this scenario. He was not swayed. I asked whether he had life insurance (yes) and how old he was (30). I said he was likely paying $300 a year to insure against a roughly 1/100 chance of dying this year (not even, it turns out), but he was unwilling to pay any money to avoid a 1/15 chance of dying imminently. Still not swayed.
What if an asteroid were a week away from destroying the earth and all its inhabitants. And the only way to avert disaster was to build an astronomically expensive asteroid diverter. What would you contribute? The communist said he'd contribute nothing, figuring if we all gotta go, we all gotta go. The libertarian kid similarly would contribute zero, reasoning that somebody sufficiently wealthy would be sufficiently motivated to fund the diverter, though I believe he was thinking along altruistic lines. I said I'd also not contribute anything, reasoning that someone would find enough potential for profit in building the diverter. The free rider problem cuts across ideologies, I guess.
The libertarian kid posed this next one: What if the victim were sitting across from you, staring right at you, while you pushed the button (and he simultaneously met his demise); could you do it for a million bucks? I said there'd be no amount of money that would help me escape the nightmares after that one; I've seen Deer Hunter. The guy who wouldn't pay a dime to save his best friend perhaps not surprisingly wouldn't hesitate pushing the button right across the table from the victim.
Somehow, John Cleese ended up in this moving picture abortion. I hope the backyard pool was worth it. Charlie's Angels: Full Vomit is so bad that by association he wipes out all the goodwill built up by the Python series and films. That's how bad it is. Bernie Mac's also in it, but he's dead so only his heirs have to feel embarrassed.
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From Rotten Tomatoes:
Well, at least the title is apt -- this aggravatingly incoherent series of subpar music videos did make me want to see someone fully throttled. - Joe Lozito, Big Picture Big Sound
And:
To paraphrase Steven Soderberg, if having fun on a set was an indication of how good the movie will be then Cannonball Run would be the greatest movie ever made. - Kevin Carr, Film Threat
Talk about truth in marketing. Watching it on Showcase right now. They're scheming to get liquor before some big party. Totally. Not. Funny. Do people laugh at this shit?
Not sure whether any statheads venture our way, but I'd like someone to empirically determine whether blocking shots is worth it.
My curiosity is prompted by Dubinsky losing a wing to a Bouwmeester shot tonight. But it's been on my mind since last year, when the world's worst coach not named Gretzky had Paul Stastny blocking shots on the PK. Stastny broke his arm blocking one point shot, healed, returned, and broke his foot blocking another shot.
OK, you invest $6M in a starting goalie, dress him up like the Michelin Man, and then you send your scantily clad FWs charging out to block shots. One of five PPs result in a goal, give or take. Would that percentage change appreciably if you didn't have to shoot through the pins of your opponents? Or would most of those shots be saved anyway?
Meanwhile, the price of saving hypothetical goals? The very unhypothetical GPs missed while your star FW recuperates on IR.
I could maybe see sending out some random Finn to block shots and occasionally create a SHG. Guy goes down, dip into the farm to grab a random WHL grad. But one of your quality players? Dubinsky is marginally sacrificeable. But losing Stastny to two blocked shots in one season. That's expensive penalty killing.
The Original Six Hockey League is a rotisserie hockey league based out of Edmonton.
We have no way to prove this, but we're pretty sure that the OSHL invented the whole concept of rotisserie hockey. Ask Blaine, he'll tell you all about it. (And if you're lucky, you'll get his Dave Babych story too.)
We've put together this site as an outlet for our wiseass observations, trash talk, and general hockey-related (well... mostly hockey-related) tomfoolery.
