Apparently, there was a bit of freezing rain last night. I wish I’d known that before I tried to hop a curb onto a sidewalk on my bike this morning; both wheels found no purchase on a surface that was glazed like a donut. After I picked myself up off of the ground I could barely stand without sliding around, let along walk.
Eight hours later, I’ve still got a charley horse in the thigh muscle I smashed down on.
Ouch.
For the first time in, oh, six weeks or so, Sue and I got to leave the house together last night. My in-laws came over to babysit Dean so we could go to dinner and catch the Buffalo Bandits home opener.
The Bandits are a professional indoor lacrosse team and one of the oldest franchises in the NLL. Professional lacrosse is not among the more lucrative sports — two more franchises, the Arizona Sting and the stupidly named Chicago Shamrox failed before this season — but the Bandits manage to draw a huge crowd. Last night, in fact, they sold out the HSBC arena with nearly nineteen thousand attendees. I bet the Sabres wish they could do that this season.
Last year, the Bandits won the league championship game and were awarded the Champion’s Cup. Last night, as their first home game, they hung their fourth championship banner from the rafters of the arena before the game. There was also a tribute to Tom Borelli, the sports reporter for the News who covered them for years and died in an accident this summer.
The game itself was great. Most of the championship team from last year came back; the only major losses were “Speedy” Pat McCready, who injured his shoulder in the offseason, and Kyle Laverty, who was picked by the Boston expansion team in their expansion draft and then traded to Rochester. They soundly thumped the Philadelphia Wings, 15-11, after getting off to a slow start. Mark Steenhuis, one of my favorite players to watch in any sport, had a three goal game.
One change this season is that the video screen shows player stats after a goal is scored; a picture of the player, their position, their date of birth, how they were acquired by the team, and so on. Interesting stuff. It really highlights how many teams have vanished over the years. “Acquired in 2004 from Columbus.” “Acquired in 1991 from Detroit.” “Acquired in 2005 from Vancouver.”
If you haven’t been to an NLL game, it’s a great time. I honestly enjoy the Bandits games live more than Sabres games. The action is faster, and I can actually afford decent seats. I think everyone who normally reads this site has a nearby franchise, whether its the Bandits, the Rochester Knighthawks, or the Boston Blazers. Pitt, there’s nothing near you, but I suppose that’s what you get when people in your area still kill Indians. I just wish they’d get a TV contract so I don’t have to listen to the games on the radio.
Like a lot of people, I spent yesterday afternoon watching the NHL Winter Classic. This year, the Blackhawks and the Red Wings faced off in an outdoor game in Wrigley Field.
Finally, finally, the NHL managed to put together something useful from a marketing standpoint. It amazes me how hamfisted they are when it comes to getting their product to potential audiences. Whether it’s blowing the TV contract (what other sport can only be viewed on Versus, and not on any local stations?) or overexpanding the league (you know where they love hockey enough for two teams? Florida.), it seems like everything they do to try and make the game more popular fails in a spectacular fashion.
But an outdoor game, on New Year’s Day, on NBC, as a new tradition? That’s genius.
The game last year was in Buffalo, and this year was Chicago. I wonder who’s going to get it next year? I’m hoping for somewhere out west — Minneapolis, maybe, or Vancouver. One nice thing is that the sort of climate that you need to have an outdoor rink tends to also instill a greater hockey fan base. I don’t think you’d get this sort of excitement and turnout for a Phoenix Coyotes game, and thankfully, we’ll never have to find out.
Toga! Toga! Toga!
Every year, our friends Alex and Erica throw a killer New Year’s Eve bash. This year, the theme was (as you may have guessed) a toga party. Togas are always cool.
Here’s wishing everyone a wonderful new year.
As of tomorrow, sex offenders in Georgia will be subject to a new law that requires them to register their online accounts and passwords with the state government.
From the article:
“State Sen. Cecil Staton, who wrote the bill, said the measure is designed to keep the Internet safe for children. Authorities could use the passwords and other information to make sure offenders aren’t stalking children online or chatting with them about off-limits topics.
Staton said although the measure may violate the privacy of sex offenders, the need to protect children “outweighs a lot of the rights of these individuals.”"
What. The. Hell.
For one thing, I continue to be disturbed by the ease with which government and the media manage to conflate “sex offender” with “child molester”. This means that someone with a public urination charge on their record could have their email monitored in order to “protect children”. A minority of sex offenders have a history of child molestation, but so far as the grandstanding buffoons in government are concerned, they all do.
Second, to ask something I know I’ve asked on here before, why are sex offenders the only people who are tracked and vilified like this after they’re paid for their crimes? I’d really like to know if there are any convicted burglars in my neighborhood, but there’s no registry for that. It sure would be handy if I could find out whether my neighbor beat someone to death with a rake twenty years ago, but that would be a violation of his privacy. But if someone across the street got caught having sex in a car, they’d be marked for life and subject to this sort of scarlet letter legislation.
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” - H L Mencken
Every year, Lake Superior State University, which must have pretty much no other claim to fame, posts a list of the top overused words and phrases of the past year. I feel like I’ve heard of this list before, but it feels especially appropriate this year.
http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php
I’m so glad that “Green” made the list. This used to be my favorite color; lately I feel like choking on my own vomit whenever I hear someone utter this word. A green car used to be one that was painted green, preferably with a nice, ozone-depleting urethane laquer paint. Now, not only does it imply a whole host of things that have no relation whatsoever to that particular wavelength of radiation that is visible to the human eye, but it has been overused so much that even this second meaning has become incredibly vague. Green, go fornicate with yourself.
As we all know, a big slice of the price of gasoline is taxes that are intended to be used to fund the maintenance of roads and highways. As vehicles become more and more fuel-efficient, though, the amount of revenue that each individual motorist is putting into the pot is decreasing. If you’re only buying two thirds as much gas because you bought a car with a smaller engine, then you’re going to pay two thirds as much tax as you did before.
The governor of Oregon has an idea. Rather than using the idea of tax-per-gallon, he wants to work with auto manufacturers so that people have to pay tax-per-mile instead. So, if you trade in your H2 on some pansy little Prius, you’ll use less gas but still pay the same amount in taxes.
The current proposal is a tax of 1.2 cents per mile, rather than 24 cents per gallon. In essence, cars that get more than 20 miles per gallon (which should be almost everything on the road) will pay more.
Excellent. I can’t think of any way that this could go wrong. I wonder if the gov would want me to equip my bicycle with a transponder as well?
A public service announcement from roadflares.org: several popular digital photo frame products, including this Wal-Mart Photo Keychain and this desktop frame from Samsung were sold with malicious software and viruses preloaded on them, or included with the device software. As always, make sure that your Windows antivirus is up to date before plugging anything new into your computer.
Merry Christmas.
The end of another season; the Bills just dropped their eleventh straight game against the Pats, this one a 13-0 shutout at home. Some thoughts:
For the third season in a row, the Bills finish 7-9 and out of the playoffs. As for me, I’m 38% (6/16) on my predictions from the start of the season. I assumed that New England would have their playoff spot all locked up and be resting some starters for this game, so I thought we had a shot. Whoops.
So, in a year when we play the two worst divisions in football (the AFC West and NFC West), and come away with 6 wins against them, we can only manage to beat one other team and got swept by our entire division. This does not fill me with optimism for next year. But I suppose that’s my lot in life for being a Bills fan in the first place.
This is a niche category that Nintendo has decided to market to hyper allergic agoraphobic frolf players. There is a reason why this game was in the please steal me discount bin and not locked behind glass in Target. Just a gem from my holiday shopping This and $50 drinking fountains for cats(thems the cheap ones).
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