news feeds nov 27 #2

Peep Show, season 8, has begun! The premiere aired on Sunday night. Season 7 aired in 2010 and there has been some changes! Jeremy looks older, Super Hans seems reputable (waiting for re-addiction to crack), and something really weird is going on with Mark's hair. Great episode though, with the Mark-Dobby-Gerrard heavy petting triangle in full swing. Mark is trying to get Dobby to move in with him but can't seem to get Jeremy to go, all the while getting a job interview(s) at the bathroom fixture company Super Hans works at. Great second act, won't spoil it. Oh, and Jeff is back! Son of a bitch. Anyways, the show airs Sunday nights in the UK and is available to stream state side by the next AM from your favourite streaming site!

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Sticking with the UK, this was voted the funniest Royal picture of all time. Prince Charles DJing with a guy who has a Daffy Duck tie on. Def news worthy.

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The 100th Grey Cup was played in Toronto over the past weekend with the hometown Argonauts defeating the Calgary Stampeders fairly handily to capture their first Cup since 2004. The trophy, handed out annually to the winner of the CFL's playoffs, was won by an Argonauts team that went 9-9 in the season before 50,000+ fans at the Rogers Centre. Argo quarterback Ricky Ray was key in defeating his former team, the Edmonton Eskimos before shocking the division champion Montreal Alouettes in a classic semi-final to advance to the big game on Sunday. It was the teams 14th Grey Cup. In a city with so much sports activity, we are starved for championships. We have a major league basketball and football teams, both of which are going nowhere, especially not to the playoffs. The Maple Leafs are hopeless and their league is on strike. The Blue Jays may provide some excitement in the coming year.. but a World Series team? Not so sure. Since the Toronto Maple Leafs thirteenth Stanley Cup in 1967, there have been two Blue Jays World Series championships (1992, 1993) and six Grey Cups (83, 91, 96, 97, 04, 12). 

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Despite both sides of the table being stubborn jerks something was finally agreed upon: they can't solve this. So the NHL and the NHL Players Association have decided to us the Federal Mediation and Concilliation Service with hopes of ending the lock out and salvaging some kind of season. The two sides are expected meet at an undisclosed location Wednesday with mediators, who at least should bore them into making a deal fast. "While we have no particular level of expectation going into this process, we welcome a new approach in trying to reach a resolution of the ongoing labor dispute at the earliest possible date," said NHL troll Gary Bettman's right hand manned, deputy commissioner Bill Daly. In old NHL game news, one year ago today the Leafs took on the Ducks on a Sunday and beat up on them 5-2, with Bozak scoring a pair, Joey Crabb, Clarke McArthur and Luke Schenn scoring singles, Schenn's on and empty new from his own end. Corey Perry and former Leaf Francois Beauchemin replied for Anaheim. Highlights below!

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Song.

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end transmission.

funny hockey

Well, the lockout is officially on. It happens. Check out this short "Clark the Canadian Hockey Goalie" from around the last lockout. It's about a goalie playing on a baseball team… Hilarious. And YouTube happens to have one of my favourite hockey videos from the late 80s, "NHL: The Lighter Side." Pretty funny stuff and sure brought back a lot of memories for me!

CLARK THE CANADIAN HOCKEY GOALIE

NHL: THE LIGHTER SIDE (1988)

bettman & fehr. you both suck

McDonald as captain of the Rockies

RE: The NHL lockout. The are enough reasons for any Maple Leafs fan, even the most optimistic, to be upset over the entire state of NHL hockey in Toronto.  The Maple Leafs haven't iced a quality team since before the lockout and have had a handful of decent teams (notably the early 2000s two final four appearances and a division title), and obviously the Dougie years which featured two straight final four appearances, but basically the team has been terrible since the they shipped star and fan favourite Lanny McDonald to the hapless Colorado Rockies in December 1979, also my birth year and month so I feel at least cosmically responsible (the deal also made Darryl Sittler turn in his captaincy and want out of T.O). But with the team failing to reach the playoffs between lockouts, I don't think the team has ever been in worse shape. No real identity and no direction. I stopped getting Leaf tickets two years ago since I was sick and tired of paying a couple thousand dollars for two seats 10-12 games in the upper bowl and then leave disappointed every time. Last year was the first season in years where I just said no to the prices, not that I'm being a cheap screw but if you aren't going to ice a decent team (or a downright embarrassing team sometimes) I don't know how you can justify raising the prices at the ACC that 1% every single season, especially when you easily lead the league in team revenue. Last year I got my puck fix at a handful of AHL games and not once did I come away feeling cheated. And that all I ask… you can lose, just don't be pathetic. Some Leaf analysts are insisting that the lockout may be a great thing for the team giving their core of younger talent another year of maturation. Well the lockout isn't good for anyone involved. The players, the fans, the workers at rinks all around the NHL, hell the parking lot guy. Oh and the perception that both the owners and players are greedy pigs isn't helping. The NHL has made great strides in the US market since the last lockout and all that good work could become undone since a lot of Americans are much more casual fan (speaking in generalities of course - check out the fans in Boston and Philly to name a couple hockey crazy cities) they will simply just tune into something else. It is the opposite to the baseball lockout in Canada, where casual fans turned away (two years removed from winning a World Series in Toronto no less) and haven't ever come back. The difference is baseball can survive without Canadian support, I'm just not sure that the NHL can survive without that of the United States... SO JUST PLAY HOCKEY

-Disgruntled NHL/Maple Leafs fan

Remember that time two shorts years ago when hockey was about perfect: