It’s June and you know what that means? HOCKEY! Well, at least here in Canada it does. The media has been all a flutter about the playoffs, especially when Montreal made it through a few rounds before being eliminated. As it turns out they lost in the end and its down to two American teams…again, the New York Rangers and the Los Angeles Kings. I have to admit that this has left me very conflicted. On one hand I normally cheer for the western most team, regardless of the sport, which in this case would be Los Angeles. Except of course it IS Los Angeles which I have no attachment to whatsoever. Plus Los Angeles just won the cup a few years ago. On the other hand there are the New York Rangers. It’s been like 20 years since the Rangers won it so they are definitely the underdogs and I normally root for the underdog. Except it IS New York and I have even less attachment to New York than I have for Los Angeles. Plus of course years of the Twins getting eliminated by the Yankees has left a bad feeling toward the city. On the OTHER, other hand this IS hockey they’re talking about and I don’t actually give a tinkers damn about hockey. Seriously, my disinterest in hockey is almost limitless. I know it’s Canada’s sport and Minnesota has a strong Hockey culture but I just never got into it. Maybe if I grew up around it but I didn’t. I grew up in Oregon where losing at baseball, football and basketball were the major pastimes. I literally never even saw an ice rink until my senior year in high school, and then only once on a field trip to Portland. To this day I have never been on skates and I don’t think I could tell a hockey puck from a cow patty even if you let me smell each one before guessing.

So,  I think I’ll spend the next week cheering for Bugs over Yosemite Sam.

I did hear something on the CBC this week though, that I found amusing. They were talking on the radio about how the Stanley Cup was “the most prized, cherished, and desired, trophy in all of sports”. I kinda wonder if they ever talked to some of the people that work so hard to win the Borg-Warner trophy (Indy 500) or The Vince Lombardi Trophy (Super Bowl), or the Commissioner's Trophy (World Series), or the Larry O'Brien Trophy (NBA Playoffs) or the Grey Cup (CFL) or The Ashes Urn (Cricket). Now there’s a disturbing name. Yes, The Ashes Urn does contain actual ashes … of a cricket ball. Brits are a bit strange at times. Anyway,  might have a thing or two to say about how much they’d prefer to get the Stanley Cup. But I’ll cut the CBC a bit of slack, they are Canadian after all.

And of course the FIFA World Cup futball playoffs are starting this week in Brazil (that’s soccer for those of us in North America). The whole world will be following who beats whom, and what groups the home team is in, and what underdog team beats what established former champion. This year I’m rooting for Bosnia-Herzegovina. The reason is simple, you see, each time an event like this comes up I pick the most unknown team to root for. The rational being the quicker my team is eliminated the sooner I can get on with other things.

I guess I’m just not a good sports fan.

Actually, that’s not quite true. I do avidly try to follow some sports. I love rally racing. It’s never televised. I also really enjoy The Red Bull Air Race Series. The last few were televised in time delay on Monday at 1:00 in the afternoon with a rerun at 2:00 the following morning. I haven’t been catching much of that either. Seriously there’s more Uruguayan League Soccer on in prime time than anything I might actually want to watch. So you see, I’ve not had much luck following the sports I actually like, and the ones I can follow I really don’t care about.  

So, now for something completely different.

At work we were getting things together for a trade show. One of the displays consists of a base with a one foot dimeter clear plexiglass cylinder rising some eight feet above the ground. We have a robot that climbs up and down the outside and another that runs up and down on the inside. When it’s all set up it’s really quite impressive. This time though there was a problem. We didn’t have the robot for the inside. (Somebody was so impressed at a show that they actually bought it, so I guess it worked.) We were discussing what, if anything to do with the inside. Various suggestions were made, Christmas lights, jelly beans, (guess the number of beans and win a prize, the prize being they get to take the bloody things home instead of us) and such. Then one of the people suggested that we “put some of those multicoloured fish in there like they do in Chinese Restaurants”. “ I replied “Well, we don’t want to be Koy about this.” And with that, everyone groaned and left the room.

So you see, word play is really my favourite sport.