Well, the New Year came in with a bang this year, particularly for those of you who happen to live in the general area surrounding Brown’s Court and Queen Street. For anyone who was not present that evening, I think a friend of mine described it best when he said “Oh my God. Brown’s Court is like Rwanda!” This was almost entirely true, except for the fact that Rwanda is not filled with drunken idiots. Yes, the large hordes of youth who chose to ring in the New Year by hanging around Brown’s clearly drank responsibly, as indicated by the hundreds of broken beer bottles on the ground the next morning, and to act in a civilized and mature manner, insomuch as ripping the door off building 17, throwing a mattress in the hallway and somehow causing a ceiling leak can be considered as mature and responsible behavior. As always, the wonderful long arm of the law, personified by the elite Charlottetown Police Department, acted valiantly in controlling the situation as the officers in the sole squad car on the scene opted to stay in their car and do absolutely nothing. Wonderful.
Christmastime on PEI was once again a joyous occasion, a time for love and joy and trees and turkeys and for relatives to tell you how bad they had it when they were kids. I heard some Baby-Boomer going on about it the week before Christmas: “Kids today get the Gameboys and the iPods and those cell phones. We only got oranges and socks. And we were damn happy to get it.” Well aren’t you all just paragons of virtue and unfettered selflessness? How can my generation ever possibly meet the impossibly high standards of your oh-so-wonderful and possibly greatest generation of all time? Give it a rest. We don’t care about your damn oranges. It sort of loses its’ quaintness after you whine about it for 40 or 50 years. Hey, at least you didn’t have to fight and die for your own freedom like the two generations did before you. And at least your parent’s generation didn’t totally screw you over by depleting pension plans and social programs to the point that there was no money left by the time you got to retiring age even though you had to pay for it through the nose for your entire career like we’re going to have to do. Phht. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.
Other than whining, the other great Canadian Christmas tradition continued this year. The World Juniors, were held in Vancouver, as Canada beat the snot out of every team they faced, with only 6 goals scored against them.
Of course all of this could not have been done without the gracious aid of the American coaching staff, who, when tied with Canada late in the third thought “I know! We can pull our goalie!” Uh huh. Good one. Canada of course scored an empty netter, clinching first place and a bye to the semis. Even though the US needed the win, it was still probably the stupidest move in modern sport as a) their goalie was by far the best US player on the ice, and b) they were playing Canada, the World Cup, Olympic, and World Junior Champions, who, believe it or not, are pretty good at scoring on a net that has no goalie in it. No wait, I take that back. The stupidest move in sports was during last year’s semi final in the World Juniors, when the US was losing 4-2 to Russia, and, (surprise, surprise) pulled their goalie. Russia scored two empty-netters, and then after the Americans had the sense to put him back in, the Russians scored on the powerplay with one second left. Final score: USA 2 - Russia 7. God Bless America.
This year’s series culminated in a 5-0 Canadian win over the Soviets, who before the game predicted that mother Russia would “dominate” Canada. Riiight. The Russians were pretty peeved that a goal they scored went uncalled because no one saw it, with their coach arguing that they would’ve probably won had it been called. Um no. Then it would’ve been 5-1. Idiots. Some people felt that Russia was cheated in the non-call and that it could’ve changed the game, but for myself, I consider it payback for the 2003 Gold Medal game that we lost, where the Russian netminder hit the net off its moorings with 10 seconds to go in the game, a move that should have resulted in a penalty shot for Canada. Of course the Russians and Canadians put this all behind them, shook hands after the game, and drank Smirnoff and beer late into the night while making fun of the goalie pull-happy Americans.
Well I was informed after my last rant that some people were offended by my attack on the efforts of the Charlottetown Transit busses to decorate for the holidays. In that article I commented that the trolley-busses looked ridiculous by saying, and I quote “Ding ding! Here comes the shit-mobile.” Well, I am sorry for anyone that offended, but that is exactly what the bus looked like. I was not attempting any sort of attack on the bus system as a whole, indeed I am well aware that Charlottetown needs a transit system, I know the schedule is getting better, and that more and more people are using it. Hell, I wasn’t even all that pissed off when the first time I tried to get on the bus that it drove right past me. Jerks. My question is more me wanting to know why the hell we had to get busses that look like trolleys. For once, could we please just get something normal? Not something named after Anne or Confederation or potatoes or any of that nonsense, nothing to do with history or heritage or tradition: just normal damn busses. It would be more environmentally friendly, they wouldn’t have to use pine benches for god’s sake, and we could actually ride them with a bit of dignity. For some reason, one model that has been decided on for our fair city is one that is supposed to look like trolleys from 1608. What in the hell? 1608? This has absolutely no historical basis in Charlottetown. First of all, I’m pretty sure we didn’t have a mass transit system in 1608, seeing as our first transit system was developed in, yes, you guessed it, 2005. Secondly 1608 is about the same time that Samuel Champlain founded a little village called Quebec, while Black Plague and scurvy is still killing off the Brits, and John Smith is getting his ass saved by Pocahontas. Seeing as nothing was established anywhere near Charlottetown for another 111 years, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say we didn’t have a fleet of trolleys messing about the forest in 1608. Maybe a few Co-op cabs, but that’s about it.
Have a good one!
1 comment:
whoo my building made it into Ryan Gallant's rant!
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