Just Wide

Berlin Polar Bears on PRI's Marketplace

justwide — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:49:27 GMT

Marketplace, PRI's often-excellent economic news program, ran a piece last week on the Berlin Polar Bears, an East German team from the days before reunification. The Bears' erstwhile home rink, East Berlin's Sheet Metal Palace, had plenty of character but no luxury boxes — so they moved, inspiring mixed feelings among some of the team's faithful. Blackhawks fans can probably relate.

Ice hockey! Class issues! Ostalgie! Worth a listen.

Zambonis in NYC Tonight

justwide — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:31:52 GMT

This news from the Zambonis' mailing list:

"About two weeks ago, The Zambonis held our second band meeting in 15 years. We decided to really prioritize our gigs — only play those for big money or big exposure. A few hours later, we're contacted by a band with an indie-Irish flair that sings great songs about pirates! The moral of the story is: band meetings are stupid."

That unbeatable double bill — songs about hockey and pirates — makes up tonight's entertainment at Connelly's Rock 45 (121 West 45th Street in Manhattan). It's ten bucks to get in and the Zambonis go on at 22:00 so as not to preclude your enjoying the Rangers/Caps game first.

Even if you've no intention of attending, you might enjoy this promotional video of Zambonis frontman Dave Schneider trying to coax the (nude!) Hockey Monkey out of a tree.

JWFHL 2007-2008: Call for Participants

justwide — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:07:37 GMT

We're back for the new season, bringing glad tidings of the 2007/2008 Just Wide Fantasy Hockey League! To sign up, go to http://hockey.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/JustWide. The password is "gowings" (no quotation marks) and, if you need it, the League ID number is 82482.

Just like last year, it's a head-to-head league, where every team is pitted against one opponent per week. We'll draft our rosters automatically, so set up your player rankings right away. I'll set the draft settings to "ready" as soon as I see that we have enough teams signed up.

Looking forward to another great season!

WTF from the Past: Pro Stars

justwide — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:09:11 GMT

Sports fans throw the word "hero" around pretty carelessly. Sure, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and Bo Jackson were phenomenal athletes in their respective primes. (Boy, some primes are longer than others, hunh Bo?) But true heroism entails more than just excellence in sport. True heroes should fight crime, too.

That's just what the jocks did in "Pro Stars," a largely forgotten and wholly forgettable Saturday morning cartoon dating from 1991. As with any great team, each member of this triumvirate of sports titans had his own distinct part to play: Mike was the brains of the outfit, Bo was the muscle, and Wayne provided the comic relief — a role for which, as student columnist Mark Polishuk correctly observed in the University of Western Ontario Gazette, the real-life Great One would have been very poorly suited. He was also hungry all the time.

The Pro Stars lived in a gym with their mom, "a quasi-Yiddish and Jewish mother stereotype" who supplied them with strange inventions to help them on their adventures.

What was this all about? Well, it was "all about helping kids," as [the voice actor portraying] His Airness proclaimed at the end of the theme song. Ah, the theme song, that's another weird thing about this already weird-from-top-to-bottom show.

The original version — if you can call it that — was based closely on Queen's quintessential stadium anthem "We Will Rock You," with the refrain "we are, we are Pro Stars." Listen to it here. A revised version still used the stomp-stomp CLAP form, but didn't ape the Queen song note for note. You can hear that one over this video of the opening sequence. It seems the editor couldn't find good footage of a Gretzky slap shot: The lyric "Wayne's hot, slap shot!" instead accompanies a clip of the Great One flipping a little backhander into the goal.

No Gold Record for Shelly Looney, but a Gold Medal

justwide — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 05:45:08 GMT

Our friend Jason pointed us toward this weird bit of trivia from WFMU's excellent Beware of the Blog. In an article about bla bla Hyperpatriotic songs this past November, they featured a track called "Thank You Canada," performed by a little American schoolgirl named Shelly, who expresses a grateful nation's thanks to our northern neighbor for helping some of the hostages escape Iran in 1979. (Scroll down the WFMU page for the nauseating mp3.)

"In recounting the many glories of Canada," Jason says, "at one point she says 'I do love hockey.' And I'm like, well, that's nice, but come on — what are the chances that an eight-year-old American girl in 1979 was a big hockey fan?"

Well, in the case of this particular little girl, pretty good. Because that little girl was Trenton, Michigan's own Shelly Looney, the same Shelly Looney who'd go on to score the gold medal-winning goal for the US Women's National Team at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, the first time women's hockey was part of the games. Against Canada, naturally. Also a silver medalist in the '02 games, you can read all about Trenton's Pride at the bottom of this Detroit News page about Olympic Michiganders.

So it looks like she wasn't just blowing sunshine up Canada's ass with that hockey line after all. (Plus, her parents named her after Canada's dollar coin!)

Speaking of cringe-inducing performances of patriotic songs, here's a montage of various public executions of "The Star Spangled Banner." In fairness, it's a difficult number to perform. There's an argument to be made in favor of the challenging anthem, one that rises up to confront those who might hazard to sing it. But it's not an argument we'd make sincerely.

Chris Phillips Scores, To His Everlasting Regret

justwide — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 15:38:33 GMT

Watching Chris Phillips put the puck past his own goalie last night, I was reminded of an old joke:

A Scotsman is drinking in a pub and complaining to the bartender. "Say, you know that stone fence at the top of the village?" he asks. "I built that fence. Built it with my own hands. But no one calls me 'Duncan the Fence-Builder.'"

No, no one does, agrees the bartender.

"And I've made more chairs than I can remember — some of them are in this very pub! But no one ever calls me 'Duncan the Chairmaker."

Certainly not, says the bartender.

"And do you know that I've delivered milk and eggs to town every Monday for over thirty years without missing a single week? But no one calls me 'Duncan the Milk-and-Egg-Deliverer.'"

It's true, no one does, the bartender says.

"But you screw one lousy sheep..."

Chris Phillips's playoff performance, solid as granite right up until the end, will be remembered for that one gut-wrenching moment at 15:44 in the second period. That was the moment at which, as the Edmonton Sun put it, "Lady Luck elbowed him in the head."

"Now I know how Steve Smith felt," he told reporters. And — fighting back tears, according to TSN.ca — "I felt bad obviously, it was a mistake, not something I wanted to do obviously. We were right there in the second period until my screw-up seemed to take momentum away."

Which is true, it totally did. But it's not as if the Sens ever accumulated all that much momentum in the first place, so it was no huge loss. Daniel Alfredsson's 14 playoff goals led all scorers, so he could afford to be generous: "It's just a terrible break," Alfredsson said. "I feel bad for him. He's had an incredible year for us. Those things happen."

Phillips's own goal, the eventual Cup-winner, seemed (understandably) to really rattle him. Television viewers could see him muttering to himself on the ice immediately afterward, and he was still at it on the bench after the next commercial break. What was he saying? Maybe repeating some kind of positive-thinking mantra? Maybe just calmly lecturing himself about what he'd done wrong? Where's that stupid "Sounds of the Game" feature when we finally need it?

Why is Chris Pronger So Angry?

justwide — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:41:51 GMT

Chris Pronger is, in all likelihood, going to win his first Stanley Cup tonight. So why's he so dadgummed peevish? He's had two single-game suspensions in as many playoff series for dangerous hitting, and hasn't been too concerned with contrition. (Of course he nailed Tomas Holmstrom in the head, he told reporters — he's taller than Holmstrom; it's simple physics!)

The Globe and Mail says Pronger is subject to a "temper that he can't always keep under control, especially if things don't go his way." What's a three-time all-star in the Stanley Cup finals got to be so pissed off about? Well...

01. On the night the Blues honored Pronger's longtime defensive colleague Al MacInnis, Pronger was in town with the visiting Oilers. Pronger says he taped a video tribute to Chopper, but it never played on the big screen. Talking with reporters about the snub later, Pronger asked "did they lose it? I think they lost it."

02. If this off-key video parody was about you, you'd be annoyed, too.

03. Pronger arrived in Anaheim to find his number since always — number 44 — already in use by Rob Niedermayer. So now he's number 25. Did he make a stink about the switch? No, "I really haven't thought about it, the whole number deal," he said. "Im far enough along in my career that numbers don't really matter." Sure, Chris, just bottle that rage. It will burst free in a terrible explosion of wrath at some later time.

04. During the 1998 Stanley Cup Playoffs, facing Detroit, Pronger took a puck to the chest which briefly stopped his heartbeat. He recovered, but there are those who say his undead heart has lacked the capacity for compassion toward other humans ever since.

05. Growing up with the last name "Pronger" can't have been easy, even in Canada, land of many hilarious surnames. In 1984, Gedde Watanabe's unforgettable performance in Sixteen Candles made Long Duk Dong a household name. Pronger was just ten years old then, and you know there must have been kids in his fourth-grade class who called him "the Donger." Children can be so cruel.

06. After 13 years in the NHL, Chris Pronger's won the Norris Trophy, the Hart and the Plus/Minus Award, but never the Stanley Cup. Maybe that's frustrating for a player as competitive as he. Maybe he seethes with covetous rancor over hockey's ultimate prize. If so, you can expect Chris Pronger to be a whole lot mellower tomorrow.

More Sabres Songs

justwide — Wed, 23 May 2007 16:53:37 GMT

If you liked woot's podcast about the Buffalo Sabres, you may enjoy this extensive collection of Sabres tribute songs from WGR SportsRadio 550, radio home of the Buffalo Sabres. "Domo Arigato Tom Golisano" has to rank among the best sports-themed pop parodies of all time.

SCHLUBB 2007: Round Four

justwide — Wed, 23 May 2007 05:28:19 GMT

They say you can't win them all. But holy mackerel, did the magnificent Red Wings ever come heart-stoppingly close to winning tonight. In this year's S.C.H.L.U.B.B., mine was the last beard standing. Maybe that counts for something. It's a matter for history, anyway, as now it's been shorn (see above).

A beneficial side effect of participating in S.C.H.L.U.B.B.: You know the despair you feel when your team suffers a late-round defeat? Well, it's mitigated, if only a little, by the very pleasant thought that at last you can shave your scratchy, wooly mug.

Buffalo's Lament

justwide — Tue, 22 May 2007 04:53:28 GMT

Many Just Wide readers probably know there's some overlap between our editorial staff of one and the woot podcast team. The two worlds collide in today's podcast — a ditty about the Buffalo Sabres' untimely exit from the playoffs. Click the preceding link for the mp3 or listen by way of the easy-peasy player on the main page at woot.com.

For those of you who're unfamiliar with it, woot's podcast is a daily novelty recording available Monday through Friday, and is usually about whatever product woot's selling that day. Occasionally, like today, it's about something else.

It's not a masterpiece, but after all, these have been coming out five times a week since Hallowe'en of 2005, so they aren't all going to be instant classics. Here are the lyrics:

Well, the Senators' goaltender said
he'd've rather been in NYC
'cause up there in Buffalo there's almost nothing to do
And those Sabres fans wanted his head
for disparaging their fair city
But now that their season is over it's even more true

There's a feeling of dejection
as cold as the lake effect snow
The Stanley Cup Finals are coming around
but the Sabres are not going to go

Well, it sure seemed like this was their year
They were the regular season's best team
But the President's Trophy's cold comfort, if comfort at all
Now they'll probably trade Daniel Briere
and Buffalo's starting to seem
like their fortune in hockey's as good as their luck in football

There's a feeling of dejection
as cold as the lake effect snow
The Stanley Cup Finals are coming around
but the Sabres are not going to go

The Stanley Cup Finals are coming around
but they won't come to old Buffalo

Once again, here's a link to the mp3.