Sunday, March 12, 2006

Hockey Hangover

Hi All!

As I write, am all puckered out.

Had a seat right behind the Cretin/Grand Rapids bench for Friday's semi-finals.

Rapids totally upset "evil" Hill Murray, but at great cost. Lots of barfing as the kids got back to the bench after a line change. Rumour had it that half the players had the flu."

They gave everything they had. I really admired them. Not sure about the bleached blond hair to signify "Team Solidarity" but I'm old fashioned that way. Heck, I have longer hair than any of them, but it's never been anything but black...with a bit of grey sneaking in. In my genetics, the beard greys first, but having reunited with my classmates, I can see what's coming.

I cheered for Grand Rapids HS. I have loved underdogs from "Up Nort" Since the hated Edina "Cake Eaters" mugged Warroad's superstar, Henry Boucha and still had to go to overtime to finally knock the "stump jumpers "off.

I knew that they would have nothing left for the title game against my dear old alma mater. The Rapids fans were loaded for bear. After Friday's upset, I got a free ticket from a devastated Hill hockey mom. What was supposed to be the Hill Murray end of the ice was saturated with Orange/blonde people who knew in their hearts that there were no miracles on ice to be performed Saturday night.

I had a first row "club" seat. Special access, fawning X employees. Oh, to live like the other half. Well, I guess I did for about 90 minutes. I had to use my natural good natured charm to convince the Rapids Rabids in our little seating community that despite the hat I wore with old buttons from my own Cretin career with captions like "Massacre Hill", "Cretin Boosters" and "Foam on the Range, 1974", not to mention the purple and gold hankey that was stuffed in my pocket and came out over the edge of the deck after every goal.

"Foam on the Range?" That'd be the traditional kegger held every year in the far reaches of Crosby Park where the cops were too lazy to walk from the end of the access road to the scene of the crimes. Probably were all Catholic School graduates.

Ah, different times Not quite so Young and Innocent Days, but society was quite a bit more laid back than since. (Ironic, as the late 60's radical is likely to be 10 times more puritan (PC) and anal retentive (PC) than your average conservative. Note "Average." extremists are not "Average." and they exist on all levels of religion and politics. Just seems to me like average conservatives are seemingly imbued with more common sense than today's average liberal.

Sorry -- that edit was supposed to be a new post. Back to the story. Thanks for your forbearance.

The poor Rapids kids came out looking like they were skating on slush with dull blades and flat sticks.

Thankfully, I guess, Cretin went up 2-0 in the first 9 minutes and took the Rapids supporters (75% of the 18,000 ticket holders) out of it. Very quiet the rest of the way, except noise from the Cretin end as they went on to a record-tying margin of victory of 7-0.

Read the story.

The only thing about Friday that annoyed me somewhat were the chants :

"Catholics Suck";

"Private Schools Suck";

"Public Schools!";

"Public Schools Rule!"

One would have thought that "The Taliban Suicides" hockey squad would have been treated with sensitivity by these young, people who have been taught every which type of "diversity and Global Understanding at their Government Schools -- Christians in general, Catholics in particular, are still fair game for hate.

Ah well, Y2K, Global Warming, Save the Whales, Elect Kerry crowd runs the show and I guaranty that this young heads full of mush could speak eloquently on those subjects.

Unfortunately, I doubt any single one could find Iowa on a map, let alone the Middle East.

"It's only a few Muslims who want to kill us" said a guy in line with me in line outside of the pisser.

Sure. Out of a billion Muslims, only a million or so want to kill us. Reassuring?

Had to get this rant out to get my blood pressure out of "Puck" range. Pun intended.
What a great weekend.

Cheers!

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