Yes, yes, I know. I’ve been neglecting you for a few days. Aside from the occasional tale of nocturnal chaos, it’s been pretty slim pickin’s around here.
As usual, it’s been busy , but I’m not going to rely on that old excuse for my postFAILage. I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing over the last week or so, just not for this site. For starters, I have finally completed the script I mentioned some time ago. Tough slogging for me; not the kind of writing I’m used to doing at all – it needed to be informative and authentic, but youthful, was based primarily around dialog and I was pretty much completely unable to use any profanity – so I found it very difficult. Anyway, that’s one project finished (sort of*) which is something I am going to choose to be proud of, seeing as I am still laughably “working” away at NaNoReMo 2008.
In addition, I’ve been working on a piece about the NHL trade deadline and the reasonable expectations that Toronto Maple Leaf fans should have of their angry Irish overlord Mr. Burke over the next few days as the rebuild begins in earnest and – perhaps – various pieces of the team are dispersed across the continent in an effort to re-stock the MLSE cupboards. It’s not finished yet; I am hoping that a good night’s sleep, a hearty breakfast and a nice pot of tea will do the trick in that regard early tomorrow morning. I will post that as soon as I am finished; hopefully BEFORE the trade deadline actually passes…
I’ve also been moved to put virtual pen to paper on a few occasions over at Leaf-fan uber-site Pension Plan Puppets. It’s been a busy week over there; first, there was the return of Mats Sundin to the Air Canada Centre last Saturday night, an emotional evening for all Leafs fans and an event that had us strangely and bitterly divided about how to receive our former Captain. I spent quite a bit of time defending Sundin and encouraging anyone who would listen to take the longer view and give Mats his due when he stepped on the ice (and I’m pleased to report that Leafs fans chose to do exactly that when Sundin was feted with a tribute video at the first TV timeout during that game. Then there was the whole “Brian Burke” controversy, during which Down Goes Brown nearly broke the Internets by continuing to tweet as “Brian Burke”, making humourous and insulting observations about various people around the NHL in a tour de force of parody; the problem was that some people didn’t get the point of the joke and couldn’t find their ass with a map and a flashlight, never mind grasp the nature of DGB’s jest. There were also three game threads to enjoy in the virtual company of my homies the Triple P peeps. The last of these games – versus the Islanders on Thursday night – also produced the outrageous Brendan Witt elbow to Niklas Hagman’s head. I wrote a quick piece last night (posted at PPP) about the usefulness of the Tie Domi/Scott Niedermayer incident in the 2001 playoffs as a useful comparator for measuring the appropriate suspension that Leafs fans were sure had to inevitably be coming.
Although the NHL maintains that it is cracking down on disgraceful and gratuitous cheap shots like this, the kind that endangers the health and safety of the players that put the bread on the suits’ feasting table, there was nary a mention of this incident in the press coverage early this morning. What mention there was in the papers was only as necessarily incidental to explaining how it came to pass that both the Leafs and Isles scored in the course of a major penalty imposed upon Witt in the 3rd period. In fact, there was virtually no discussion of the incident at all until after the NHL imposed – in its infinite wisdom – a 5 game suspension on Witt.
I spent much of this evening writing about this last decision; as it happens, Witt will serve his suspension just in time to return for the rematch festivities in Toronto on March 10th. I refuse to believe this is a mere coincidence, and I am appalled by the league’s ridiculous decision to arrange things so as to enable Witt to play in this game. That, as they say, has put the cat among the pigeons indeed.
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*of course, there’s the inevitable re-write to do now. And filming. And editing. So…..more projects.