Number 1 is 2 Sexy: Roberto Luongo

2011-10-08

Last Notes

I don’t update this crazy blog anymore. It’s a bit of a time capsule now. It represents the summer, the off-season, how hockey-starved I was, and how relatively little I knew about the Canucks.

It’s different now. I’ve seen Luongo, on ice and off, in real life. Games, practices, more times than I can even remember. He signed my jersey that one time, scribbling directly onto my back with a sharpie pen. I’ve been spoiled. I’ll happily admit it. But the side effect is, while I can’t ever really know the guy, (despite what this blog suggests, I’m not actually delusional) he’s more-or-less a real person to me now, and not some fictional character in a television show called the NHL.

Hockey, and the Canucks specifically, are no longer just amusing things I’ve recently become interested in. It’s part of my whole deal now. And by “whole deal” I mean life. It keeps me entertained and it takes my mind off the serious stuff. I don’t have to make jokes about it to get a pass from my bookish friends. They’re used to it now. I’m a fan. No turning back.

I guess what I’m trying to get across is that I’d rather show up in my jersey cheering for my goalie, win or lose, than critique pictures of him online like some wildly unprofessional private investigator. Don’t get me wrong, I still post the occasional photo on my main tumblr, but all (or most) drooling is to be inferred. Because, you know, he doesn’t do what he does to be drooled over by strangers. I get that. It’s also kind of creepy, and I get that too.

To anyone who read this blog in its, er, prime, thanks for putting up with me. I worry that much of my early sarcasm probably came across as too legit (to quit) but what the hell. It was fun.

Here’s to a great season. And Louuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

2011-09-09

See that expression? That’s the expression I’m going to be walking around with all day today. I just bought my first ticket to a Canucks game. Granted, it’s an exhibition game, but it’s a CANUCKS GAME GUYS.

A CANUCKS GAME.

I picked the last game before the seasons starts, against the Oilers. I was going to go with the Sharks game before that, but the seat they gave me wasn’t great. I figured the Sharks game might be more popular. Because, you know, Sharks.

Who will be in net for Vancouver on October 1st? Let me add a few more question marks to that: ???????? This will, no doubt, be my every waking thought until the day arrives. That said, ultimately it doesn’t matter. I’m planning to bankrupt myself buying tickets this season, so eventually I’ll be able to scream LUUUUUUU at the top of my lungs, and at the appropriate time for once!

And, you know, I like Schneider too. I feel I should probably point that out once and a while.

Oh yeah, and the rest of the team. Love those guys. For serious.

Right then, I’m off to sell some of my less-important organs on the black market. Canucks ticket for a kidney? Take two!

2011-09-08

I hate that I’ve had to do this twice.

Here’s Luongo and Demitra. Everyone knows where and when this was taken. Watching the post-game handshakes, it’s easy to see that Demo is genuinely happy for Lu, even though the goalie’s save robbed him of the biggest potential goal of his career. Demo puts his arms around his friend right away. No bitterness. All heart.

Rest in peace Pavol Demitra, and every member of team Lokomotiv that was lost.

I’ve sat here for five minutes now, wondering what else I could possibly add, but I’ve no more words right now. Not one.

2011-09-04

It’s 4:14 AM and here’s a screenshot I grabbed of post-game Lu and his floppy hair.

I really like his floppy hair.

That is all.

2011-09-02

I’ve been taking a break. It’s summer. Or it was until yesterday, and it still feels like summer, if I ignore the growing apprehension and sad nostalgia that autumn reliably delivers. “Reliably delivers”? I just made Seasonal Affective Disorder sound like FedEx. GO ME.

But yeah, I’ve been taking a break from the grueling sweatshop-esque labour of choosing from my one billion saved pictures of Roberto Too-Sexy Luongo, and typing some bullshit (hard science) underneath. Even the president needs a break sometimes, guys. Even the president.

That important point now made, I can assure you that while I’ve let some internet moss gather here, I have not been idle in my obsession. Oh no. There have been things occurring. THINGS I SAY.

And now, a list (I do love lists):

- I watched some classic, “baby Lu” games, including his first game with the Islanders (he won it) and his first NHL shut-out, (in the record books, though actually a puck tore a hole in the net and Toronto never caught it, so I’d have rather seen his second NHL shut-out). It’s fascinating to see how relatively unpolished his style was then, though the groundwork was definitely there. He didn’t used to hug the post nearly as well, and he was still so gangly. I may have nicknamed him “Baby Gangles” while I watched these games, but I’d be hard-pressed to admit it, because that sounds incredibly stupid. And the back of his neck. His hair was so short then. No curls. I couldn’t get over it. I made a screenshot. See above.

- My friend Jacob, from Seattle, came to stay for a week or so and had to suffer through my constant hockey chatter and re-watching of games. I’m on a tight schedule now to finish re-watching the 2010-2011 season before the new season begins, so Jacob got to overhear a lot of hockey games and a lot of swearing (and the occasional “WHAT A GOD”). Luckily, he knows how to make his own fun. I like to think he’s almost a Canucks fan now. I mean, he’s from Seattle. There’s no competition for his hockey heart. What’s he going to do? Watch baseball? Cue so much laughter and wiping of eyes.

- While I never actually succeeded in dragging Jacob to the team store to dress him up in Canucks jerseys, I did buy a giant Luongo poster during his visit, and put it up in my bathroom. I feel it works well there since Lu, as all goalies do in stressed-out goalie mode, looks a bit like he’s crapping himself. But, you know, in a stalwart way. I’m very fond of it and talk to it occasionally, but not nearly as much as I talk to my dog. That would be crazy.

- I bought my very first hockey jersey (and possibly last, as those shits are expensive), delighted that it was the last numbered jersey in the Gate 6 team store, (Luongo on the back, obviously) and realized once I got home that it said VANCUUVER on the front. Shock horror. Much twitter hilarity ensued, (probably more hilarious for me than my followers), the Team Store was suitably concerned and willing to make up for it, and eventually I grew so fond of my jersey foul that I refused to give it up. They gave me 20% off, though. If I ever want to walk around in a jersey that isn’t an obvious gaff, I think I’ll stick a piece of white tape (hockey tape?) over the top of the first U. Spellcheck camouflage, you know?

- I had a minor personal crisis when I realized that the game I’d most been looking forward to re-watching, the December 3rd, 2010 game against Chicago in which Luongo stood on his head for a shut-out win, is the ONLY game missing from the entire season on the NHL Vault player (to which, I remind you bitterly, I pay a monthly fee). I had to watch a condensed version. I’m still sad about this. Sad and angry. Who do I write to? The NHL? UM EXCUSE ME NHL YOU FUCKED UP, GUYS. UM FIX IT.

What else? So much else. Serious else and decidedly un-serious else. Like I’ve said before, whenever the autumn gets me down, I know that Hocktober is right around the corner. Maybe that’s why Canadians love hockey so much. We need it. Like the stoic fictional fantasy character intoned, winter is coming. Soon it will be here. Pucks will fly.

2011-08-16

There’s been a bit of hiatus, I know, and I’m sorry to have to break it now for this reason.

Tonight, hours before I learned that Rick Rypien had died, I watched the last game of the 2009-2010 regular season. Rypien was a large part of that year. Since learning of his “personal issues”, I’d always paid particular attention to Rypien when re-watching games. I’d heard a number of rumors, but it didn’t really matter what those “personal issues” were. He seemed unhappy, and he seemed lost. I could relate.

Mental illness, particularly depression, is not unfamiliar to me. When I hear that somebody’s taken their own life, as Rypien reportedly did, I tend to take it hard.

Tonight, after hearing the news, I walked the fifteen-minute walk to Rogers Arena to see the memorial, and pay my respects. I wrote a note, and watched reporters film a young guy setting up candles. Then one of them asked me if I felt like answering some questions about why I was there.

“Uh… sure.”

I started to say something about how I’d loved watching Rypien, and that I’d hoped he would get better, and then I started crying. The guy kept filming. I wish I hadn’t agreed to talk to him, because I didn’t like the whole spectacle of the thing - a girl wearing a Canucks t-shirt crying next to a shrine. I’d been holding off a big cry since I heard the news, but crying on television (or the internet, or wherever that footage might end up) is not my bag. I wish I could have been sad privately.

But if I had to weep in public for a hockey player, Ryp, you earned it. You were a fighter. There are fights you won and fights you lost. You were a year younger than me, and you’ll never be as old as I am tonight. I’m going to miss rooting for you. Rest in peace.

2011-08-04

Yeah, it’s that iconic shot of Lu sitting in the bleachers holding his stick and staring soulfully at it as though he’s reenacting the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, and he’s Romeo. Or maybe he’s little Tim from Jurassic Park and his stick is a curious Brachiosaurus! Or maybe he’s an average-sized human man and his stick is Roberto Luongo. Who’s to say.

He’s rocking the pregame pants again. I know I’ve bitched and moaned about the pregame pants a lot, but guess what? If I had a pair of those pregame pants I would wear the hell out of them. I mean, mainly in my apartment with the curtains drawn, but still. I’ve developed a fascination with them. Not what’s inside them, mind you, THEM.

Like, they must be so damn comfortable, with their unattractive saggy bits and ability to stretch out like a well-chewed piece of bubblegum if needed. And I’m no less convinced that the pregame shirt, with it’s outright REFUSAL to reveal the upper body of its wearer to the prying eyes of internet perverts - okay, pervert. Singular. Me. - must be one of the more light and airy articles of clothing ever invented. If it wasn’t, Lu wouldn’t wear it under all his gear, right? So where’s my floppy pregame shirt and too-short saggy-tight pregame pants? They should sell that shit at the team store instead of those pink jerseys.

Also colouring books. I’ve got a real urge to colour some Sedins. Like now.

2011-08-03

Tonight, for reasons I won’t go into, has been alternately weird, boring, and really scary. Luckily, when I wasn’t being bored or scared or weirded the heck out, I was watching a glorious archived hockey game from February 6th, 2010. The Canucks (well dur) vs. the Evil Wasp Brigade, a.k.a. the Bruins or whatever. Those guys.

Too soon? Not soon enough, as far as I’m concerned. Since I’m being all “no spoilers” about my full-season re-cap quest, I didn’t know (or couldn’t remember) if Vancouver had won that particular game. Was I ready to watch the Bruins potentially beat us in the regular season, even if T. Thomas wasn’t in net?

Cue deep, shuddering inhalation of breath, bulging of eyeballs, and quavering of lip.

I WAS.

But we TOTALLY FUCKING WON, so it all worked out in the end. Be bold, they say, and mighty forces will come to your aid. Am I suggesting my boldness in the present retroactively led the Canucks to victory that night in February, 2010? I’m actually not. I’m saying that the Canucks were bold and brassy and brazen all over TD Gardens, so much so that mighty forces propelled them to come back from a two goal deficit, send it to overtime, to a shootout, and then win it.

And who was the first star of the game? Who else? Mr Too Sexy a.k.a. Luuuuuu. He kept making ridiculous saves all night, bailing out his team when the going got rough, and the announcers were falling all over themselves to describe his mad prowess. Two seconds before overtime ended there was a face-off in the Canucks zone. Bang, a slap-shot straight towards the net! And Lu gloves it like it’s no big deal, thus ensuring its status as an inconsequential deal, if a deal it ever was. Oh that? Was that a shot at goal? I thought you were lobbing me an Oreo ice cream sandwich. MY B.

On to the shootout.

There, see? I provided a link so you don’t have to rely on my biased crazy-person testimony. He rocked that shit. What’s better, he swaggered the whole time he was rocking it.

Now, I love my Luongo win or lose, down and out, or up and at ‘em. I love him when he’s prickly in media scrums, and I love him when he’s shrugging off the greatest highlights of his career. I can’t even tell you how I love him when he’s relaxed and goofy, laughing at his own imperfection. But dang it all, I do so love to see him swagger.

Dudes that swagger all the time are not my thing. Dudes that can project pathos to the rafters of an arena and swagger when they’ve earned it? They are my thing.

Note to dudes: Be more this. And if you happen to look like the above photo while doing so, I would like to make out with you. You could do better, but I’m just throwing it out there. Congratulations.

2011-07-27

Yeah, no big deal, guys. Just another photo of Lu being sweet and kind and making a kid’s day and what is it with this man? Why does he make me want to go around being sweet and kind to children? Not that I’m unkind or particularly sour, generally, but you know what I mean right? He makes it look so goddamn GOOD. Not just sexy, (though yes, too sexy) but fulfilling, fun, and like what the hell am I doing with all of my free time? I could be making some kid who’s got it rough have a better day! Maybe not by being a hockey superstar… but uh… somehow…

Speaking of my free time, all I do these days is watch hockey. Canucks hockey. How many games a day? Many. I don’t want to put the number down here, because admitting you have a problem is the first step of recovery, and to quote Doc Holliday in one seminal 1993 Western, I have not yet begun to defile myself.

But yeah, no, actually I have. I’m completely addicted. I try to watch something else, like say a movie, and five seconds in I’m thinking, “What’s the score? There is no score. I could be watching a game with a score. I wonder what the score is in the game I’m not watching? And why is Luongo not starting in this movie? He should start in every movie. And who’s this guy? Is that LaBarbera?!” It’s actually not. It’s Brad Pitt or something. So I hit stop, breathe a shaky sigh of relief, and watch another Canucks game.

And lately I have hockey announcers in the back of my head, providing play-by-play for every mundane action. And she’s awake, looking sharp… she heads to the kettle! She’s going to want this water to boil quickly, Jim, to make this tea… and it does! And she pours it! AND OH WHAT A CUP OF TEA BY HER! SWEET PG TIPS, SHE MADE THAT LOOK EASY!

And I’m not going to pretend that’s not gratifying, but nonetheless, a cause for concern? No?

Well, try this one on for size: at night, when I close my eyes, I see little men passing the puck back and forth and slamming into each other. I hear the sound of skates on ice, the F-bombs accidentally picked up by microphone, the frantic clacking of stick on stick as D-men battle in the corners. I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not. It makes it hard to sleep, and you know what I do when I can’t sleep?

Watch more hockey.

But: I’m leaving for a cabin in the Gulf Islands tomorrow. For a week. With no high-speed internet. AND NO HOCKEY IN ANY SHAPE OR FORM. Unless you count the voices and pictures in my head.

Oh god.

Wish me luck.

2011-07-24

So I’m watching (and in some cases re-watching) every Canucks game since October 1st, 2009. It’s going swimmingly. I’m now mid-way through January 10 and creeping up on the Olympic break. Last night I watched Alex Burrows get hat tricks in back-to-back games, (which no Canucks player had pulled off since 1986). The second hat trick coincided with Lu winning his 50th career shutout, so that was FUCKING PERFECT. Sorry Phoenix!

Today I watched Jerome Iginla pitch a hissy fit on the ice and shove Lu, who skates by at the end of a period and coolly nudges the Flames captain with his paddle like, “Hey, take it easy man. Have a Kit Kat.”

What a boss.

I know Lu hated the position his captaincy put him into with the media, but there are constant examples of him rocking it in 2009. Should goalies be captains? Probably not. But Lu was and is a great leader, nonetheless.

So without further ado:

EVERY SINGLE GAME, PART DEUX: HULU HOW DARE YOU

Once I ran out of full games archived on the CBC media player, which was pretty fast, I had to go deeper. I used this list and realized there were some full games available on Hulu, as well as a decent amount of condensed games.

But as everyone in Canada knows, Hulu is off limits, which is where subterfuge comes in. I downloaded a free program that assigns me a new ip address when activated. It’s a terrible program, so I won’t link to it. For all I know it’s riddled with viruses, and it has a tendency to throw up screens loaded with sex ads at the worst possible time. It also likes to give me a German identity, for some reason, and apparently Germans are just as screwed as Canadians when it comes to online restrictions.

None of this deterred me. I had to have more hockey.

One good thing about watching old games on Hulu is that they don’t show you the final score ahead of time. And instead of the lengthy musical interludes of CBC, they give you one or two short commercials every break, along with a choice (or the illusion of choice) of which commercial you want to see. Once I watched a full-length movie trailer instead of a bunch of shorter commercials! Unfortunately, it was trailer for Conan the Barbarian.

But Hulu has even less full games available than CBC. And condensed games, while much better than game highlights, just aren’t satisfying enough.

So what did I do? I paid my way into the official NHL Vault, where for a monthly fee (five bucks) I can access a 4-year complete game archive for every team in the league.

The Vault application is pretty slick. At first I found it endlessly frustrating that I couldn’t fast forward or rewind by tweaking a scroll bar, but now I’ve got the hang of the “10-seconds-back” button for whenever Luongo takes his mask off. I can’t count how many times I’ve hit that button to see him grimacing and drinking Gatorade, or spitting, or chatting with teammates. Oh, also the play of the game! That too!

The lack of commercials is incredible. I mean, I realize it’s a simple thing, but I’d gotten so used to that god-awful CBC music that I couldn’t believe what a difference its absence made. The player also features an option to toggle the final scores on or off, which struck me as the pinnacle of thoughtful design. There’s an annoying feature where if you pause the game for more than a minute, it locks, but I found a way to work around that by starting another game and then restarting the first, which gets you back to the point it was at when you paused.

Basically, I recommend this thing if you’re as hockey starved and obsessive as I am. It sucks to spend money, but it RULES to have the last four years of the Canucks at your fingertips. Plus, you can also re-watch “classic games.” I haven’t even looked at those.

I know how I’m spending the rest of my summer.