Odd Bits - Holy Shit Follow-up and Team USA Edition

Cassie at Sisters from Different Misters has a post up anticipating tonight’s USA/Canada hockey match-up.  I had the following comment:

Before the game, I feel conflicted. I love my country. And I love my Penguins. How can I root against Sid and the Flower? Sid’s carrying the weight of his country on his back. If they fail, he’ll be dogged about it for the rest of his career.

I also remember the Miracle on Ice… live, and not the Disney version. That was a formative memory for me and possibly the most exhilarated I’ve ever been.

I have a feeling that this game will be like this time my brother was at Ohio State and entered a fraternity boxing tournament. (3 one-minute rounds)

My brother and I fought a lot before he went away to school… he was a constant irritant to my friends and I. So I thought it would be perfectly deserving if some other dude whooped his ass and served him a nice slice of humble pie. That’s what I said going down there, anyway.

As it turned out, the frat that was running the event liked to rig the fights in their favor, so they put my brother in the ring with a guy that should have been in a higher weight class. Not that I knew this going in… So I was sitting there with my parents, and all I know was that once the bell rang, all thoughts of humble pie were gone. I wanted my brother to take the other guy’s head off.

(My brother won in a decision. I’d never been so proud of him as I was that night.)

I figure that’s what tomorrow’s game is going to be like. Once I see that USA jersey out there, it won’t matter who the opponent is.  Can’t root against the USA.

So here’s what I want to see:  Sid opens the scoring with 2 quick goals, flying around the ice with a jump in his step.  US claws back with a goal.  Sid answers, giving him a hat trick.  The US goes on a run and pots the next 3, putting them up 4-3 and chasing Brodeur.  Fleury comes in and holds the fort, but the Canadians don’t score again.  USA wins, Sid and Flower play with honor and can hold their heads up high. 

Is that too much to ask for?

Holy Shit Redux

I had so much fun with Friday’s post and I thank everyone who participated and commented.  

One of the issues I always encounter is having too much material for a single post.  While I don’t really have anything else to say about it, I did have some more outside material that I thought would have been overkill in the original post.

This is a segment from one of my all time favorite George Carlin bits.  In it, he logically and carefully boils down the Ten Commandments to the Two Commandments, as only he can.  It’s brilliant.  Have a look:

The other thing I wanted to work in was this video of 50s/60’s musical satirist Tom Lehrer.  The video doesn’t include it usual explanatory introduction so let me handle that.  This song was done in 1965 after the Vatican II council, at which the Church stopped using Latin in the Mass and widened the range of music permissible.  Lehrer felt that if the “really want to sell the product, in this secular age, what they ought to do is to redo the music in popular song form.”  This “modest example” is called, The Vatican Rag.

I love what this guy does with a rhyme.  If you like this song, do look up more of his work on YouTube.  Tom Lehrer was a Harvard Math professor that side-lighted by performing satirical songs in clubs around Boston and eventually the world.  He also wrote music for the children’s show “The Electric Company.”  The guy was way ahead of his time.