And big kudos to the fans down at the HSBC who were there to rumble.

YES!!!!!!!!!!


OH MY GOD!! DANIEL BRIERE!!!! DANIEL BRIERE JOINS THE LIST OF ALL TIME GREAT SABRES HEROES!!!


GAME 7 THURSDAY NIGHT!!!! LINDY RUFF WILL PICK UP HIS CELLPHONE CHARGER IN PERSON!!!!! PJ KEEPS THAT DAMNED BEARD A WHILE LONGER!!!

Ay Dios mio! Fitzpatrick the Fool had no stick for the last minute of regulation as time seemed to slow down during the chaos that ruled the last gasp of regular time.

Now it's overtime. Katie Burd called from the HSBC and she said it: THIS IS IT.

Let's Go Buffalo. Let's Go Buffalo!

No! Focus! It's not over.

Hold your breath. Clutch your chicken bones or Sacred Relics tightly. Purify your thoughts and intentions. Focus your chi. Ponder your karma. Love unconditionally. Keep the faith.

Right now we're just warding off the evil spirits. 9:10 second period.

Glorious Suspension of Disbelief

Chuck at the comics store read the blog and came through big time Thursday when I ran in the store after work and out of the store on my way to the wedding rehearsal: 2 DVDs of vintage Doctor Who and they are a hoot. I can see why I could never have tolerated them as a child being a child of and ruined by Star Wars, but now I can appreciate this sort of stuff. The apparently classic 1972 Carnvial of Monsters featuring Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning (LOVE THOSE BOOTS!) is absolutely cheesy and they knew it but they didn't care: they cooked it up with a wink and a straight face and everybody disbelieved and therefore believed it into art for an English audience at home glad to suspend their disbelief with a nod and wink themselves. The half hour episodes digest well and I can't wait to finish them off. I actually regret not giving them some time when they used to show them on Channel 17. And why are they not on all the time now? On BBC America or SciFi? A bloody disgrace.

The Tom Baker disc I haven't finished yet but that doesn't appear to be THAT cheesy at all and appears to be a Sherlock Holmes riff of the highest order, and as a Holmes reader in my youth I can't wait to finish The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Update!

I am an Anglophile. I like Radiohead. The BBC. 2000 AD. Monty Python. Pink Floyd. The Beatles. Zeppelin. The Stones. JRR Tolkien. The Office. Bass. Harry Potter. Fish and chips. Judge Dredd. English soccer. Sky Sports. Luther Arkwright. Black Sabbath. The Police. The Beach Boys were huge in England for years after America deserted them and Brian Wilson is venerated over there the way I venerate him myself. James Bond. The new Doctor Who. The old Doctor Who as portrayed by Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention it but I caught the season finale of Lost yesterday morning with my coffee and internet, not because it was forgettable, but because it blew my mind in so many ways that it's just not funny, a culmination of not one but two seasons of TV and a classic tossing up of the pieces to see which and where they will fall next season. Satisfying.

When ABC splices together another Peter Coyote narrated clip show before next season I strenuougly recommend you give it a shot for shits and giggles.

I am golfed out. I am partied out. I have sweat more sweat in the last three days than you could possibly imagine. They had no food anywhere at Tan Tara today so I had to golf on an empty stomach and I'm pretty sure I was almost hallucinating out there in the sun. I can still smile at the memory of being introduced at the reception Saturday (God did I sweat) to the glorious strains of the Sabres Dance. It's been a weird week, but everybody is where they are supposed to be and all is well.

Happy Memorial Day! And to all our servicemen and women, thanks*.


* Except for the ones who don't deserve it. Read the papers.

Another Fine Shindig

Congratulations and thanks to the Higgins family of Kettering Ohio, yes my relatives from Ohio, for the swell shindig yesterday at the Higgins/Parks casa up in Canada. The food was excellent and everything was great. It was a good wind-down from the big wedding and another fine excuse for the Parks/McElroy/Higgins/Fry clan to party down.

The Schnide

We're on it folks. But think about people... this is the FIRST TIME we've been in this situation throughout 3 rounds of playoffs. It was a heartbreak, but they played well and that's the way it goes sometimes.

But we've gotta persevere and go for it. The fans at the arena tomorrow night will have a Herculean challenge before them, but they too will have to do what they will have to do. Go Sabres. Go Sabres fans.

Happy Day

Brother Kevin and Mary's wedding was very nice: the ceremony was lovely and the reception a righteous shindig with probably the best wedding DJ I've ever seen (I don't think any of the music was MY music but I didn't mind), the food was excellent, and the bars multiple. The food was great, the booze plentiful, and instead of clinking glasses for newlywed smooching we made everybody chant "Let's Go Sabres" or "Let's Go Buffalo" and clap the clap we all know. One table of cousins even got up and did the Sabres dance. All very nice. Hopefully that mojo does something.

The reception also featured the best Chicken Dance and Hooky Pooky's I've been gotten down to in a long time. Congratulations Kevin and Mary, and on behalf of Brother Tim and myself I apologize for fucking up the runner. What a cock up that was.


Now if only my GODDAMNED neighbor wasn't running all of his yard tools at 9 AM today...

You've got to love the ballsy talk coming out of the battered but unbowed Sabres lockerroom.

Go Sabres.

And what does this say about American Idol's audience? To heck with the 15 year old girls- apparently this show also caters overwhelmingly to middle class white women burning up their phone lines to vote for roly poly gray haired 30 year old men.

Yikes.

Sweet victory. Buffalo 2 up to Carolina's 1, and it is good. Alternately a humdinger and nail-biter it was a great game, the crowd was in excellent form (we shook off Carolina scoring first, and so did the Sabres), and all is well. Let's go Buffalo!

The season finale of 24 was awesome, sweet, shocking. An awesome show, with the best cliffhanger I've seen in a long time. Keiffer deserves another Emmy and Jean Smart deserves one too.

"The next game's at home and that's a whole new gear for the Sabres to play in."
- Bob DiCesare (I think) on 550 AM this morning.



"I love singing and frequently, and cheerfully, on my own, too frequently and too cheerfully for those who live with me. But from age fifteen on I had lost the ability to lose myself in the spell of a group song. For me every meeting was revivalist, and hence impossible.
What pleasure then, at the Bentigodi, to rediscover the crowd and it's choral pandemonium. I could, even, after a while raise my hands at the appropriate moments. Like church, the curva (curve of stadium) embraces all comers. In particular, I love the ragged end to almost all the songs and chants; you launch with great gusto unto something inanely repetitive- nella pioggia e sottio il sole, nello stadio ci sarooooo ('in rain or sine, I'll be there' - the tune is 'La Marseillaise'). You sing it once, you sing it twice, then all of a sudden it breaks off, there is predetermined end, you can never know when it is going to stop, so that someone will be left with his arms in the air when all the others have sunk away. That person looks round, amazed, faintly embarrased. I remember one time in particular a man in his forties on the station platform when we arrived in Vicenza. Bundling out of the train, the fans were yelling Vicenza Vicenza vaffanculo! and so taken with the excitment of yelling fuck off into the faces of people he didn't know, that he went on a good thirty seconds after all the others stopped. His voice at last trailed away. His face was the picture of embarrasment. Then he burst out laughing. In the football crowd one moves constantly in and out of the spell, in and out of the group, in and out of the law. Singing together you are all-powerful, singing alone you are a fool. People are aware of this. And however stupid they may be, at least the songs are not addressed to God. They are not that stupid. Then, once in the stadium, they have a definite purpose: to incite the team, to raise these mercenaries' adrenaline levels. Dark eyed, sharp-nosed, chinless and turkey necked, Captain Leo Colucci says: "For us the fans are like the motor in a car, without them we wouldn't get any mileage. It's they who give us the drive when things get tough, and if it wasn't for them I don't know how we would manage."

- Tim Parks (no relation), from A Season With Verona: Travels Around Italy In Search Of Illusion, National Character and... Goals!



Our work is cut out for us tomorrow night people: in bars, in your car, in your homes and at the game itself- we gotta make some noise. This is what we do.

The Breaks

That's the way it goes. Carolina was tighter and kept Buffalo from getting their game going, and hey that's what happens after all in the EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS. Jon Davidson is right: this series is going the distance, and so will us fans if we're worth anything. The only thing I will say is that Buffalo needs to win the games when the other guy scores first because too much karma and mojo has been attached to the "when Buffalo scores first..." mantra and we need to get beyond that.

Go Sabres.

Dreams Continue, Dreams Die, and Dreams Begin Again

Of course the real dream continues... you know what I am talking about people. Unfortunately my PS2 FIFA World Cup* dreams ended in bitter penalty kick defeat at the hands of the Netherlands (yes, the Netherlands) in my first and only knockout stage game. After seemingly endless qualifying matches and a dodgy group stage (draw + win + loss = group stage advancement miracle) it ended because the computer outwitted me. Call me crazy but you kinda get invested in these things, especially because I was doing it with and for THE STARS AND BARS, and to have it end like that, without even getting to the quarter finals is a damn shame, and shameworthy.

Now let's see what the Republic of Ireland can do...



* One of the best videogames ever. Seriously.