Fall Out

We fell asleep on the couch earlier this evening sometime between 1900 and 2000 hrs and awoke just after 0100 hrs this morning.  Such are the benefits of the unstructured life of an elderly geezer.  But Hey!  Six hours of sleep are enough for most people, right?  The only "problem" I have with this concept is... Dr. Pepper?  Or coffee?  We've had enough beer for awhile, so that's right out.  We opted for Dr. Pepper to start and will move to coffee around 0400 hrs, unless we decide to head back to bed.

So.  What does one do in the dead of a winter's night?  Here's a clue:

 

Click for larger, of course.  This is what immediately caught our attention:  "Beery gold-medal celebration could get Canada's women's team in trouble."  (That link is mostly photos; story here.)

More than half an hour after they clinched their third consecutive Olympic title, they came back onto the ice. Beer was involved in their festivities.

The International Olympic Committee plans to investigate the matter and whether the players' celebration outside the locker room is harmful to their image and the game's.

Oh, for cryin' out loud. The IOC and its Canadian subsidiary need to get a damned life.  Of COURSE the women were gonna celebrate and of COURSE they were gonna knock back a couple.  As for me?  I wanna party with these girls:

More than half an hour after they beat the United States 2-0 on Thursday, the players came back from the locker room and staged a party on ice — swigging from bottles of champagne, guzzling beer and smoking cigars.

 I wanna party with Gillian Apps. She looks like my kinda gal.

And ride the Zamboni with Colleen!

"Swigging from bottles of champagne" is all well and good, but it's the guzzling beer part that I like.  And driving the Zamboni.  But not at the same time, of course.

The PC madness has begun:

VANCOUVER - Hockey Canada apologized Thursday for an impromptu party the Olympic women's hockey team threw for itself on the Canada Hockey Place ice after winning the gold medal.

Canadian players, still wearing their uniforms and with gold medals draped around their necks, celebrated their victory by drinking champagne and beer at centre ice following a 2-0 win over the United States.

The International Olympic Committee said it will investigate the celebration, which included drinking by one of Canada's underage players.

The underage drinking accusation?  The woman in question is 18, the legal drinking age in Alberta but not in BC (where the age is 19).  OK, letter of the law and all that.  But still... if anything offends me about all this it ain't the partying, it's the IOC.  Shut the Hell up and go do something productive, like importing snow or sumthin'.

In other comment... here's a blurb from the WaPo:

In front of a raucous Vancouver crowd ringing cowbells and frantically waving thousands of maple leaf flags, Canada thrived on its home fans' relentless cheers. The Canadians dominated every aspect of the game, earning their 15th straight Olympic victory.

Playing with a consistency and passion its men's team can only hope to emulate this weekend, Canada hasn't lost at the Olympics since 1998, when the Americans won their sport's first gold.

Don Cherry has a few words in that space:

Cherry, the Hockey Night In Canada commentator and radio show personality, appeared on the Jim Rome show this week during which U.S. commentators ragged him about Canada’s loss to the Americans.

“They were giving it to us (Canadians) pretty good,” he said. It was, ‘This is your game. How goes it feel? And you’re going to lose again.’ They were kidding, but they weren’t kidding, if you know what I mean.”

“I said we are going to win the gold. This was before the game against Russia. I said, we’re going to meet your guys in the final and we’re going to kick your ass.”

Ol' Don always has "a few words" when it comes to Canadian hockey players, all of 'em good, never bad.  He saves the bad-mouthing for the Europeans mostly, but Americans certainly aren't exempt.  He's the homer's homer, in every aspect... and anyone who has ever watched Hockey Night In Canada knows exactly what I'm on about here.  Cherry is most definitely one of those guys you either love or hate... and I fall into the former category.  But he's wrong this time.  Are you listening, Team USA?  Don't be lettin' us down.

And now back to reading more of those 4,578 articles about the wonderfulness of Canadian wimmen hockey players.

Update, later that same morning:  Gregg Krupa, writing for The Detroit News:

The Canada Women's Ice Hockey team returned to the ice long after almost all of the spectators had left Canada Hockey Place -- and, boy, did they party!

It was fun to see, and it reminded me of celebrations after winning the Stanley Cup, especially back in the old days, when Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay and Alex Delvecchio and the boys used to douse each other with champagne, drink beer and whip out the stogies, at the old Olympia.

We do not see too many cigars involved in the latter day versions.

[...]

Steve Keough, a spokesman for the COC pointed out something that most of us in Metro Detroit know about our Canadian neighbors.

"In terms of the actual celebration, it's not exactly something uncommon in Canada," Keogh said.

Do you think so, eh?

I wonder where this all will lead?

But, to be perfectly candid, I am a little bit more interested in whether the cigars were Cubans, and if there is any way, at all, of me driving a Zamboni, before I leave.

Heh.  Read the whole thing.  I know from whence Mr. Krupa speaks.