June 08, 2004

THE MORNING AFTER

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My god. So this is what a hockey hangover feels like...

I can't explain the depth of knuckle dragging I feel at this moment. It's like someone poured motor oil in my veins.

If I'm going to feel this bad, I'd better take up drinking so I can at least have the party with the pain.

That said, watching the Tampa Bay Lightning win the Stanley Cup last night was an infinite amount of fun. It's just not something I'm real verbal about at the moment.

Instead, I'll share with you some of my pics from hanging out last night at the Forum plaza outside Game 7. (I'll add more later.) I only stayed for one period - the cocktail of body odor and frat boy testosterone got to be a bit much for my middle-age sensibilities - but it was a blast all the same.

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I was stunned by how tightly packed the crowd was. Must have been at least 10,000 people. And all of them were drinking cannon-sized beers.

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As the sun set, the crowd grew considerably. People moved in inches at a time, not feet. It was like a packed subway car in Japan. Only more so in the 98 percent humidity.

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The humanity spilled over everything. Trucks, fences. Other people.

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I can only imagine how pleased the TV folks were that their mobile newsrooms were glorified orange crates for hockey-crazed drunks.

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Not even the wearing of a makeshift trophy on your head gaines you any currency of mobility in this mob.

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A rolling pillar of beer, however, was an immediate passport to free passage. Who knows what crisis might occur if this man is not allowed to pass!

Considering the crowd and the level of public inebriation and the reckless-tension in the air, this might be the bravest person on the face of the planet.

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We again had flawless weather. By flawless, I mean, of course, that it wasn't raining. Had it been, there would have been an atomic level of bedlam. Think of Carnival in Rio with hockey pucks. I have no idea what it's like to have a festival inside an arm pit, but it would have to have been very close to what it was like Monday evening. It smelled like everyone was going through puberty at the same time on that very night.

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There was almost an angry, I'm-gonna-kick-your-boyfriend's-ass-if-he-doesn't-shut-up atmosphere outside after the Lightning scored the game's first goal. Arms thrust into the air, verbal atrocities were uttered and a gutteral growl came from deep within the bowels of drunken sods.

It was not exactly a Disney crowd.

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That's not cigarette smoke.

That's the hopes and prayers of an entire Canadian nation being snuffed.

Good riddance, I say. I don't want to call the Calgary Flames a bunch of fleet-footed thugs, but the Lightning was starting to run out of skin on their faces for Iginla and company to scrape against the boards, glass and ice. Martin St. Louis took a stick beating so bad, he might as well have been Rodney King.

That's not hockey. It's certainly not the hockey that the Tampa Bay Lightning practice.

And it's not the type of hockey that won the 2004 Stanley Cup last night.
But all that blood is worth it, I guess, to attain a dream.

Posted by Jeff at June 8, 2004 08:24 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Congrats! Now you know how I felt when Agassi won Wimbledon.

I'm not sure the Crapitals will ever bring this sensation you describe here to the Fortified City on the Hill.

Posted by: JD at June 8, 2004 10:25 AM

So what's the scoop on how the wrong editorial ended up in the paper?
Who proofed the page (and is he or she Canadian?)

http://tampatrib.com/News/MGBPAJIF7VD.html

Posted by: eh at June 8, 2004 12:01 PM

That cracked me up when I read that this morning. My issue of the Trib must really be a collector's item now!

Posted by: Mike at June 8, 2004 12:20 PM

We're working on a head for November: It's Nader!!!

Posted by: Jeff at June 8, 2004 01:56 PM

It's big news now: The Smoking Gun!!!

http://thesmokinggun.com/archive/0608041tampa1.html

Posted by: Meg at June 8, 2004 09:07 PM

I couldn't be more proud.

Posted by: Jeff at June 8, 2004 09:08 PM