Insolence!

Like any good Canadian sporting youth, I have been playing hockey since I was 5. By the time I was in elementary school, I was a fairly strong skater and was playing on the local Atom and Bantam A teams. I had the build and core strength of an anorexic teen waif, and my shot was about as hard as a lightly-tossed whiffleball - but neither of these things really affect one's ability to succeed in pre-teen, non-contact minor hockey. I don't like to think that I was an arrogant kid, or particularly bratty, but embarrassing evidence seems to suggest otherwise.

Example: one weekend afternoon in grade 6ish I attended the local public skate with a handful of friends who were not hockey players, nor particularly strong skaters. Some of whom were female. Anxious to demonstrate to my friends (and teh ladies) and the community at large that I was pretty good at something - I could do backwards fucking crossovers - I spent the first few minutes of the skate burning around the ice, demonstrating said backwards crossovers while maintaining small-talk with folks, and generally getting in people's way and raising the ire of the older kids. I may or may not have knocked the support pylon out from a kid's desperate lean, but I certainly skated backwards straight into the arena manager, spilling his coffee all over his jacket. Shit. One stern warning later and I was back doing my loopty-loops and power strides, etc, etc.

Long story short, the day ended with an older dude throwing my ball cap high into the netting that surrounds the ice, and the arena manager refusing to help me get it down - leaving me to slowly and sullenly circle the ice with my friends, ashamed beneath my matted hat head. Unsurprisingly, I did not leave the rink with a lady on each arm.

Look at that picture down there. Look at those exhausted, sweaty (gross), smiling, half-crazy (Derek) faces. Those are the faces of your friends and teammates who were collectively run ragged by the "douchey" nubile legs of Ethyl - led by some kid who was the inspiration for the above story. We get it, punk, you can play. You are on the touring team. You can do fancy, no-look, backwards, overhead flick things. Why are you playing on Thursday? Oh how I wanted to throw your hat into the trees and laugh at your pimply forehead, spirit points be damned. But I did not, and Ethyl beat us handily - although we did make it respectable, thanks to some sound defensive strategy and, potentially, their creeping fatigue…

But look again at those shiny, wet faces. Collectively, them folks rallied together for the second game of our double-header, inspired by Derek's highway driving analogy, and fought through the muscle pain and the humid air and the flying grass clippings and the suppressed vomit... and the mud and the blood and the beer - netting an immensely satisfying tie against a team that has a recent history of bitch-making re: us. Here here!

Bag Of Hammers "Dry Island" player of the game(s) - the Mr. Jason Flinn for his continued hard cuts, boundless energy and uncanny ability to always be open. But, hell, everyone played well!

Look at those faces!

Kisses,
-AA

PS: best out-of-context quote of the game, Marcie - "yay - way to beat up that little girl!"

Sexy Faces

Courtesy of Cruddick's fancy phone:

PS: I'll make with the silly photoshopping over the weekend. This pic needs more mustaches!

What makes a comedy "romantic"?

Seriously. Somebody help a brother out.

Discussion at Freeman's revolved around movies. We were to name the best rom-coms we'd individually seen. While Michelle tried her best to draw the line between romantic comedy and just plain comedy, I'm hoping someone else can explain the true dividing line. For example - My Best Friend's Wedding is always classified as a romantic comedy due to the setting at a wedding, etc., but Julia Roberts is a solitary lady scorned in the end. Romantic?

On the other side is High Fidelity, which is very romantic and very, very funny... but no one felt comfortable last night classifying it as a romantic comedy. I guessed it was because it was from a guy's point of view. True? But Say Anything and Singles are also from a guy's point of view, and very funny throughout. And I think people classify both as romantic comedies.

Who can help with the definition?

Oh yeah - the Hammers won by default when Random Fling had only one girl as of 6:45. A couple Hammerettes joined the Flingers for a scrimmage which was marked by good-natured laziness and the teams taking turns throwing deep bombs with the wind at their backs. Good times. The game officially goes in the books as a 7-0 win.

Orange Crush

After several weeks of Ultimate-less gluttony and sloth (at least for me), the Hammers took to the field last night just in time for the clouds to break and expose their (our) rustiness. Three quick ho-hum points later, and things were looking pretty dire - cue Captain Tim "Lamorello-Lombardi", defensive specialist, who seethed angrily at the sky and in a deep, guttural growl uttered what would be the key to our success: "zooooooooone".

And so it was.

Confused by our aggressive defense and the super-swatting hands of deep Dan, the orange team never really recovered - dropping easy passes and hucking many-a-random hammer to the out of bounds. Our mids mid'd and our cup cupped, and Cruddick further demoralized them with a few Matt Cooke-ian blind side attacks (kidding).

But the real story of the night was our female contingent, namely Becky and Aimee, the Freeman's Shitty Fries co-players of the game, whose quick cuts and sticky fingers nabbed us the bulk of our points. Derek was an offensive juggernaut last night as well, and Erin is proving to be a great addition despite my inability to get the disc to her on her fast break(s). Once we got rolling, things were going so swimmingly that we apparently lost sight of the score and began to act counter to the kissy huggy spirit of The Game - or so we were told after Cruddick (again!) made a stealthily-contested end-zone snag. But whatever. Victory was ours!

Great game, all. See you's next week.

Kisses,
-AA

Arcade Fire Take Two

I didn't go to the AF show at Alderney Landing for one reason - I didn't want to ruin the experience of seeing them open for U2 on the claw stage. I should have went to Alderney Landing. Seeing AF with 80,000 people is not as fun as you would think. Mostly because I was insanely far away, forced to watch them on the big screens to see anything worthwhile, but also because everyone around me had no idea who they were. As I belted out - KEEP THE CAR RUNNING or even LIES, LIES, people looked at me in disbelief. Who were these people you ask? Well they were older (they likely prefer mature or aged) die hard U2 fans. But AF was still awesome, still entertained me and overall were just really, really cool. I just wished I had of been closer. And the drummer chick's gold sequins dress was kick ass.

U2? They friggin rocked. They played and played. Great song after great song - even doing a version of Cohen's Hallelujah (this did in fact give me chills but I absolutely love that song). But the best part of the night for me was when Bono started talking about how much he missed and loved his wife (as the Edge and Clayton strummed chords to Bowie's Space Oddity). Fade to the big screen (have I mentioned how cool this claw stage was?) where astronaut Mark Kelly appears - FROM SPACE. He has cue cards about imagination and freedom and what a beautiful day it will be when we all have some version of being free and then he tells the crowd how much he loves his wife - but she knows. Then he sings (more like says) the chorus to a Beautiful Day and then the band rocks out to it. Brilliant. Seriously. Brilliant.

So although I was absolutely covered in mud (it was so thick and sticky that is actually pulled the sole off my sneaker on a visit to the porta potty) I loved every minute of the 6 hours spent on Magnetic Hill.

And in other news, I went to the New Glasgow Jubilee and was transported back in time to 1985. Platinum Blonde was kick ass ridiculous. Good in the sense that I enjoyed every minute of CRYING...CRYING OVER YOU. ALL I EVER WANTED TO DO...but ridiculous in the sense that this man still believed it was 1985 and therefore appropriate to move his hips in that fashion and take off his shirt. So all in all - quite an entertaining and enjoyable weekend.

Miss you all.