Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Whoa, double feature!

Sooooo the excuse I'm using for my lack of writing is that my laptop was out of commission for about 3 weeks. I hadn't even touched it really because one day it shut off and wouldn't turn back on. I figured I would wait until I got my next paycheck, take it to the Geek Squad and say "Hey! Boy! Make this work again!"

So on Sunday morning I actually took it over there and, of course, it instantly turned on. The Geek looked at me like I was a moron. I sheepishly took my laptop home and it has worked ever since. Then I found $5.

So I'm far too tired to research and write something real right now. Plus there's no NHL so I have nothing new to say so I decided to talk about Herm 2 Hockeytown. Now, with the money that I saved by not having to fix or replace my laptop, I took that money and purchased tickets to H2H for myself, Schmegan and SB. (I also bought a fancy H2H shirt that I'm ecstatic about!)

The majority of people reading this are probably going to know what I'm talking about but for the 5% of you that don't. Here's the deal: Herm is a Red Wings fan and hockey blogger who has never seen a live hockey game. I know, what? Really. That's because he lives in Brazil. Freakin' South America! Do you know how far away that is from here? Really effing far. Oh yeah, and apparently he's never even met another hockey fan. So the plan is to bring Herm to Hockeytown to meet many hockey fans all at once! It's genius, I tell you!

So money is being collected to bring him to the game on March 26th. Since we already have enough money for Herm, all proceeds above and beyond his expenses are donated to the Children's Hospital of Michigan. So seriously, even if you don't support Red Wings fandom, you should at least support helping sick kids.

If you're interested, everything you need to know is found here: Herm 2 Hockeytown. I'm pretty much overwhelmed at how much fun we're going to have that night. I have been to hundreds of NHL games. I was a season ticket holder through the 2008 Stanley Cup season and I can honestly say this is second most excited I've ever been for a hockey game in my life. (Second most? Yes. I was unbelievably and uncontrollably excited for the Stanley Cup Finals Game 5 in 2008. Hmmmmmmm, I'm thinking I should tell this story...)

So this is the story of how I almost quit loving hockey. Lower bowl season tickets. My family put in for 4 season tickets in 1996 and forgot about it. The waiting list was so long and it was just never a thought. One day, in 2004, I checked the mail and received a letter from the Red Wings. It was stating that we were to attend magical seat choosing day. I FLIPPED OUT. Long story short, we somehow got lower bowl season tickets in our first year as ticket holders. (Thank you, lockout!) So I've seen my fair share of Wings games and I'm always excited but that 2008 team made me so nervous and excited at the same time that I couldn't stand it.

So it's Game 5. I know that the Cup is in the building. I know it's somewhere downstairs in a room being shined up. It's the third period and I'm terrified but confident at the same time. I'm thinking, "This is it. I'm here. I'm about to see the Stanley Cup presented to Mr. Nick in person. OH MY GOD." Suddenly I hear the call that it's the last minute of play. We're all standing up and just dying of anticipation. I look up above me and I see tons of people on the catwalks by the ceiling. They have garbage bags full of confetti! A real celebration is about to begin and I'm going to be a part of it! A brown-haired man situates himself right over me on the catwalk and as I'm preparing for my glitter confetti bath... FUCKING MAX TALBOT.

I sat down and I cried a little. Just a little. So the game continues... and continues... and continues. Marc-Andre Fleury did have a phenomenal game and I will never forgive him for that. I teared up during each intermission. My stomach was in knots. People were pacing around and no one knew what to do. Triple overtime. Jiri Hudler gets called on a DOUBLE MINOR penalty. Then I knew it was over. Sykora scores. BAM.

It takes about an hour and 15 minutes to get from Joe Louis Arena to my driveway so it was damn near 3am when I got home. I just sulked and moped around. The next morning I woke up and hoped that it wasn't real, that it was all a bad dream. That's when I got some snacks and I holed up in the basement, the only place in the house with a VCR. First, I watched the 1997 Game 4 tape against the Flyers. I smiled at Shanny and Stevie and I cried when they won. I even found my box of old newspaper clippings and old hockey posters and looked through them. But I wasn't any happier because I had convinced myself that this 2008 team WAS NOT and COULD NOT BE that special 1997 team.

So then I popped in the Return to Hockeytown: 1997-1998 Championship video. I cried about Vladdy. I laughed at Ron Wilson talking about "Hombla-chay-a-pee" or whatever the hell he was talking about. ("It's a good day to die." No, Ron, it was a good day to lose. Is it sad that I've watched that tape so many times that I almost have his entire speech memorized?) But then I got sad again because I was thinking about how the 1998 team was also very special and had a real reason to prove something.

By this time, my best friend Zeus had come over to try to drag me out into the sunshine. Instead, I enticed him to join me in the basement and mope because not only did I have hockey tapes, but I also had snack mix. No one can resist snack mix. So next I put in the tape of Wayne Gretzky's last game. What does that have to do with the Red Wings? Absolutely nothing except I was already being all emotional and dramatic and that's always the best time to watch a little 99 montage accompanied by Sarah McLachlan music, right? I sat and tried to explain to Zeus why this was a big deal but he was still learning about hockey at the time so he didn't fully appreciate it.

The next video was the Red Alert : Hockeytown 3 : 2002 Stanley Cup tape. I just love this one because it's literally a collection of the greatest players of the modern era all on one team. I don't think they were appreciated enough at the time but that team is the most stacked team in history and will continue to be because we are now in the salary cap era. My point being that by this time, I had been locked in the basement for over 7 hours and was still dreading my next decision: Do I attend JoeVision to watch Game 6 or was I just done? Could I handle it? Honestly, I realize that my 2 day depression might sound a little crazy but I just didn't think I could handle them losing that series.

I looked at 1997 and saw a team with a 42 year old monkey on their back. I looked at 1998 and saw a team playing for a fallen teammate. I looked at 2002 and saw so many players going for one last hurrah toward the end of their monumental careers. I could no longer see the great things about 2008. I couldn't see the story of Dallas Drake. I couldn't see the resurgence of "Playoff Ozzie". I couldn't see the return of DMac.

All I saw was a man on a catwalk with a bag of glitter, his disappointed face, and him walking away. That's it.

Eventually, Zeus did talk me into driving up to JLA for Game 6. We went. We had a fantastic time. Everyone knows how the story ends. But that, my friends, is the story of how I almost quit loving hockey. They broke my heart and won me back all in under 48 hours and I'll never ever forget that.





So...
1- What's the closest you've come to quitting? How frustrated have you been? What'd you do?
2- Every season has a story. What's the story of 2009-10? (And don't say injuries. I hate the injuries. I'm saying if the Wings make the Finals, why? How? What makes them special this year?)
3- Didja donate to H2H yet? See, I distracted you with that story but don't think I forgot!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Dear DC, You Win.

Today while commenting on one of my favorite Red Wings blogs, The Production Line, I was reminded that maybe one day, I will have a 300th post. And I realized that that could never happen if I didn't get off my ass and write about my trip to Washington DC.

So, first of all, let me provide a list of reasons why I haven't written anything in over 2 weeks:

1 - I started a new job and I've been tired from adapting to a new sleep schedule.
2 - My laptop is broken.
3 - I'm still hungover from the DC trip.

Pick any reason and it's partially to blame. Yes, I have a new job. Yes, I'm sleepy. Yes, my laptop is DEAD. Yes, I think I'm still dehydrated. I have the dreaded 2 week hangover.

How did I get so hungover, you ask? Well kids, this will be a tale of what not to do when traveling and drinking. There's a reason that SB's photo album on Facebook is called, "Nobody roadtrips like we roadtrip." Because nobody roadtrips like we roadtrip.

I left Ohio around noon on Friday to end up in DC around 8pm. I was heckled for driving slow the entire damn time but I wasn't in a rush because SB's bus wouldn't even be getting to town until like 10pm. So I made it, SB then made it in town and we ordered a ton of room service. We got in a fight with the room service lady over a cup of bleu cheese dressing. We take our bleu cheese very seriously. It was a staple in our apartment last year and it's almost like a food group for us. After our cheese fix, we called it a night with a small glass of Jameson and some crappy reality tv.

The next morning, we decided to walk the National Mall. Our hotel was right by the Capitol Building so we started there, walked past the Washington Monument and all the way down to the Lincoln Memorial. Then we walked over to the White House, past the Verizon Center and back to the hotel. On the way, we stopped at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. It is rumored that I cried a little bit. I can neither confirm or deny this but I will say that space is the most terrifying thing EVER and it makes me incredibly uncomfortable to think about. Maybe even so uncomfortable that I would cry. (Think about it: it's so freaking big and we don't even understand so much about it. It's like mind-boggling huge and there are people that routinely go up in space, say goodbye to their families and not know if they're ever going to return. On top of that, I started thinking about the Cold War and how the astronauts of the 60s were really American heroes and OHMYGOD SPACE IS OVERWHELMING!!!!)

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Some shuttle-y thingy. It was TINY and SCARY.

After a small lunch at 11:30am (trust me, this is important) consisting of McDonald's small fries and a few chicken nuggets, we continued on our journey. After a stop at a Starbucks and a stop at H&M, we headed back to the hotel for drinking. It was 4pm. The plan was to leave for the game at 5:15 so that left 75 minutes to begin drinking our faces off.

Now, I'm not new to heavy drinking (heyyyyyyy, that sounds bad) so I should know that Jameson should not be a "pre-gaming" drink but when you're on vacation in another town, who cares about smart decisions, right? So we drank and drank and drank...

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Canada Dry is the best chaser. Trust me.

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This picture should be hint #1 that we're drunk.

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Yes, that's a pillow fort. Why do you ask?

...for 75 minutes. In that time, we consumed a total of a half liter of Jameson. Keep in mind, we had only eaten a few chicken nuggets and small fries. We did some shots and walked over to the Verizon Center. On the way, SB suggested that we have a Leslie Hat Trick at the game. For those of you that don't know, which is 95% of you, a Leslie Hat Trick is something terrible that I invented. At some point in time when I was drunk, I thought, "Hey, there are 3 periods in a hockey game. If I drink 3 large beers during this time, it'll be a hat trick of beer. A Leslie Hat Trick." I tried and tried to convince SB that this was a bad plan. I was still saying no even as I was purchasing the beer.

The beer vendor at the VC asked if I wanted lids for the beer. I found this hilarious (hint #2 that I was already wasted) so of course I said yes. I then spent the next 10 minutes running around trying to find a straw because that would make it even better, right? Apparently drinking alcohol out of a straw makes your body absorb it faster? This is what I've heard. With the amount of alcohol I drank, it's hard to tell.

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In the first, we each drank a large beer. In the second, we each drank a large beer. Halfway through the third, SB said, "Dude, I need the assist!" and hit my leg. At this time she handed me her beer and I apparently drank it. Drink count at the end of the game: SB had 2 glasses of Jameson, 1 shot of Jameson and 90 oz of beer. I had 2 glasses of Jameson, 2 shots of Jameson and 126 oz. of beer.

The game ended. Caps won. A good time was had by all. We got up and stopped at the bathroom on our way out of the arena. When I emerged from the bathroom, I found SB really confused standing on the concourse. She then tells me that she has lost her jacket and just asked a random stranger with brown hair where her coat was. We went back to the seats to look for it; we went back in the bathroom to look for it. We ended up at Guest Services who told us to go back upstairs because they had it there. Then we ended up fighting with a guy who wouldn't let us up the escalator and we FREAKED out. Eventually, we got the coat back and headed to the bar.

We were beyond wasted and, once outside, SB asked the cops where to find the bar. They were very nice and told us and then warned us not to jaywalk because they would write us tickets. In retrospect, they probably should have arrested us for public intoxication rather than warning us about jaywalking but whatevs.

We went to Rocket Bar because it was recommended to us. What I remember of it was good, although I really only remember doing horrible at skee-ball. When we went in, I immediately bought us more beer for some reason. Then, before we left, I thought it would be BRILLIANT to do a shot of my absolute favorite, Liquid Cocaine.

Luckily, we ended up at a Ruby Tuesday's 5 minutes later and ended up ordering half of the appetizer menu. This helped us not completely die. The rest of the night is pretty hazy. I do know that we took most of the appetizers back to the hotel in boxes. Once back in the hotel, SB laid down on the floor in the bathroom while I removed my shirt and began "cleaning" the hotel room. (I use the word "cleaning" loosely because the room was a complete mess in the morning.) This is also when I left many drunk voicemails for my friends, including screaming for 2 minutes and using a "Canadian accent" and referring to myself as Mike Babcock. (When I drink, I turn Canadian!)

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The next morning was ROUGH. Honestly, I hadn't been that hungover since freshman year of college. We were able to get an extended checkout from the front desk and if we hadn't, I think I would've died.

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We spent most of the morning putting together the pieces of the previous night via tweets, texts, phone calls, receipts and random items we found in our hotel room. I guess I should have prefaced this story by saying that this is just what I believe happened but who really knows?

And you're probably wondering where all of the really important hockey pictures are. They're right here!

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If you click on the pictures, it'll take you to the album on photobucket. It's not organized and it's not pretty but there are more pictures there. So my goal for this week is to actually write more and maybe even have a HBOTW sometime this weekend. See, I slacked so much that now it's time for another hockey game already. SB is flying here on Saturday and we're taking in a Red Wings game on Saturday night. It will be the first time she's ever been to Joe Louis Arena.

I will repeat that because it's such a strange fact: This Saturday will be the first time little SB has ever been to Joe Louis Arena. I just can't fathom that. I'm honored to accompany her to her first game in Detroit and I'm even more excited that I got lower bowl seats for under face value! Seriously, I promise to update about it and it won't take 2 weeks!

PS- The title refers to a short hungover verbal letter that I wrote to Washington DC that Sunday morning. "Dear DC, You kicked my ass but you were fun and totally worth it. I promise I'll be back but for now, you win. Love, ME!"