the second ten games

christopher higgins of the new york rangers looks like kurt cobain of the living dead. he's only smiling because the RDSman asked him which of his former teammates trashed talked him most. ANS: gorges. couldn't have been all that much though, higgins sat on the bench for the entire third period.

—halak plays until he loses, which is four wins and a loss. since then CP#31 has won two anf YH#41 has won one. habs haven't won two in a row since the end of the first homestand
—george laraque has been on IR since the alcoholic energy drink controversy, he re-injured his back off-ice, somehow..
—halak's agent starts a twitter controversy when he (somewhat erroneously) suggests that CP#31 is 10-32. a disappointed and twitterless bob gainey thought it was a " 'My dad is bigger than your dad,’ kind of thing."
—SK#74 tries to bail on hamilton again, but somehow gainey talks him back into riding the bus. meanwhile, tom pyatt, ryan white, gregory stewart, maxime lapierre, guiaullme latendresse & andrei kostitsyn all can't score at all.
—hal gill is injured. suddenly, his play is missed.
—glen metropolit is a point-per-game player through his first eight games. his answer: "Well, it's an Olympic year!" GM#15 still gets nice slice of PP time, minutes more than AK#46 or GL#84
—plekanec and cammalleri are the best habs and aren't even scoring a point per game. SG#91 hasn't scored a goal in 11 games and is on course for a fifty-point season.
—brian gionta is injured. gomez's play is greatly effected.
—carey price stops 53 of 55 shots on a silly saturday night game in pheonix, two shots shy of the record for most shots ever faced by a montreal goaltender.
—the consensus from the talking heads is that CP#31 or YH#41 have to be MVP candidates in order for the habs to make the playoffs. the english radio is screaming for gainey's head. so is cyberpresse.
—maxime lapierre is on the fourth line, latendresse a healthy scratch. but then 30 minutes before game time GL#84 is told he'll play in phoenix. according to guy, he's still in bed at the hotel at this point.

if it's not BLEU BLANC ROUGE it's not a fucking habs jersey

1.
woah did the habs not look like the habs or what? what does this prove? that MTL thought of the MIN and original NJ uniforms in the 1910s? honestly: worse retro jersey ever. but man o' man: is that a wicked C.

good albums of 2009

in no particular order:

tim hecker // an imaginary country // kranky
at first i thought this album was soft but then i realized it's like a normal-looking guy on the bus who is actually muttering memorized manifestos to himself.

aidan baker & tim hecker // fantasma parastasie // alien8recordings
completely awesome. better than having a black mirror which shows the future.

current 93 // aleph at hallucinatory mountain // coptic cat
david tibet sings more like kevin spacey in se7en, which is a step-up from his tormented-zoomorphic-cartoon-minstrel-schtick.

nurse with wound // the surveillance lounge // united dairies
a soundtrack to a movie perhaps. nice spot varnish. a good one!

excepter // black beach // paw tracks
excepter does improv on the nudist beach. dvd included (true story.)

the no neck blues band // ...at 6 a.m. we become the police soundtrack // locust music
kinda like a comp, but of new material. so it's nnck's physical graffiti.


cold cave // love comes death // heartworm records & matador
at first it reminded me so much of joy division i turned it off and put on unknown pleasures instead, but then it hit me: a band that sounds like joy division enough to be awesome but not totally derivative and annoying is hard to find.. so i listened again, and it was good.

eddy current suppression ring // s/t & primary colors // goner records
no one but me thinks this band sounds like mclusky, but that doesn't mean they don't. but where mclusky was stupid, this band is clever (like the name!) check them out now before you hate them from their beer commercials and endless tours.

kurt vile // constant hitmaker & the hunchback // ugh...?
these two are pretty neat, and there were other good ones too. soft electric folk songs for the mellow-hippies of today. but the matador release sounds like devandra banhardt and once you make that neural connection it cannot be undone.

muslimgauze // cobra head soup // staalplat
all hail muslimgauze. ten years into death and his albums are still better than 95% of everything. (oh and 2009 also saw the release of four muslimgauze cds, two cds re-issued, another double LP of new material from staalplat and a 3xLP boxset re-issue of Uzi Mahmood.)

andrew liles & daniel menche // progeny of flies // betalactamring records
this might be my record of the year. i have to percolate on it s'more.

magik markers // balf quarry // dragcity
ugh yeah it was okay. shit sounds like shit falling apart, and i think i'm getting saturated.

richard pinhas & merzbow // keio line // dirter
this one is like "oh: i'm floating on some liquid, how nice. why, what's this bellow me in the liquid—half-crystal half-worm seacreatures, battling in perpetuity? well.. let's watch, just for a moment or so." also: this album is six LP sides long. or perhaps 5 sides and an etching of a bird. i do not recall. it may have come out in 2008, but i'm just finishing it now. (merzbow also put out at least 8 other CDs this year, as well as two LPs.)

throbbing gristle // third mind movements // industrial records
all TG albums since the reunion kinda sound like haunted museum exhibits, but that's okay.

zola jesus // the spoils // siltbreeze

think about life // family // alien8recordings

black feelings // alien8recordings

fever ray // rabid records
also a strong candidate for record of the year. will probably not place due to major-label connections. full pedigree audit pending final results.

mike komisarek doesn't really get it

1.

"I guess if they didn't love me when I was here they wouldn't be booing, so I must have done something right when I was here,"
—mike komisarek

2.

i wasn't at the game, but i would have booed my brains out if i was. my boos would represent a great many things, none of them being boos of appreciation for the things MK#8 did as a player here.

one loud boo for taking the money and ditching the team. another one for joining the hated leafs. but the majority of my boos are boos of disappointment, shock and disbelief: who do you think you are, mike komisarek?

you lost your edge somewhere between attacking XXX? in 2003 and "fighting" milan lucic in 2008 and gainey was Still willing to give you $4 mil+ a year. because you were part of the team, man. you could have been captain here one day. you've changed.

3.

the boo is the inverse wave of the cheer. for every cheer we have leveled at the exploits of mike komisarek we are now due one boo. our fandom and enthusiasm have been betrayed and we exposed as simpletons, fools who thought far too highly of a player who took the first paycheck out of town at the earliest possible instant like a frontier-town whore.

my years of cheers and HOPE embarrass me now, as if i was taken in on some bunco swindle, i was sold a bag of rough diamonds and was left with only charcoal. or not even: i was left with only the empty bag.

mike komisrarek is a selfish swindler and perhaps the biggest turn-coat in habs history. he had no known enemies on the team like corson or souray or patrick roy and no grand scandal dangling over him like kovalev or theodore or even chris higgins and still evacuated the island instantly that warm summer morning of july the first, 2000 & 9.

he deserves to be booed in montreal until the end of his time and beyond.

gump worsley is not a wimp

“How the hell can a mask protect you when it’s flush against the face? They say you don’t get cut, just bruised when a puck hits the mask. Well, sometimes it’s better to get cut than bruised.

“My objection to the mask is that it’s not necessary. Why all of a sudden after hockey has been played for 70 years do they decide we should wear masks? Aww, don’t tell me the game has changed. Besides, you don’t see college goalies wearing masks and they’re a careful bunch. Do boxers wear masks?

“Plante may make a pot full ‘o money on that mask idea. He can have it, I don’t want the thing.”
-GW, NYR, nov 1, 1959

no win streak, no sell out

1.

guy carbonneau should be hired as JM's director of fashion.

no plekanec, no sellout

1.

a funny thing happened to me on the way down to the BC with whistledog...

2.

the RDS broadcast of saturday night's Big Game against the NYR had a little kid doing pretty good play-action commentary for a powerplay. he was there to hype cancer research fundriving, which was all sqwashed up into 12 seconds by pierre houde mere moments before the NYR went up 4-2. the kid was cool, cancer is not cool. that the cool kid has cancer is a real bummer; but there's more: when asked who the kid's favourite player was, the kid snapped back, sans hesitation: "pleknec."

PLEKANEK?! you've got to fucking kidding. what have nos glorieus come to when a sick kid's—or any other kid's—favourite hab is TOMAS PLEKANEC?

the next day, in a shopping trip not completely unrelated to the win-streak or double-come-from-behind-overtime-hat-trick melee of the night before, i went down to the BC to get the 2010 media guide, being that there are so many new players with stats and birthplaces i have yet to peruse.

tomas fucking plekanec is the 2nd active hab after markov is all categories. actually, they were tied for goals, so #14 is getting his way-ups on non-captain AM. markov career is on temporary hold in the mid 560 GP, while tommy P. is at 320 and climbing.

why wouldn't the kid like plekanec, he's the only one left. who's he going to cheer for, glen metropolit? or josh gorges? or jaroslav halak?

higgins and komisarek were both hyped as future captains and they were both pretty thrilled to go play somewhere else. have markov and plekanec stayed because they're goofy europeans who don't know any better, that one's NHL career doesn't have to be lived in seven-column headlines like some gaudy, invasive reality show?

the habs ARE a reality show, and the ironman of the hour is tomas plekenec.

3.

why doesn't the NHL go to 3 digit jersey numbers and make sure everyone gets ONE number, like a barcode, when they enter the league. so that player will always be 888 or 123 or any of the boring numbers like 486 or 683.

4.

if i had a team in california i'd call it THE OTTERS.