NHL, WTF? No DIY?

Once upon a way-back-when, I was asked to make a baby blanket for a newborn whose parents were about the most rabid Raiders fans the world has ever had to bear the weight of knowing. The task was simple enough; I found some licensed NFL fabric, a gray striped baby-friendly cotton for the backing, satin quilt binding in pale gray, threw a layer of quilt batting in the middle and Bob, as the kids say, was somebody’s uncle. Not this kid’s, his uncle was Chet. Or something like Chet. I don’t remember.

And Bob is my cousin, for the record. But I digress.

Flash forward a few years, and one of my favorite fellow Sharks fans was having a baby. Well, his wife was, but he helped. And I thought “Hey, Sharks blanket, nifty!” and was out the door to the fabric store before you could say “babies are non-self-aware creatures who don’t care what they’re wearing or wrapped in”, already picturing my masterpiece in its completed state.

Except. There was no Sharks fabric.

I go to this particular fabric store pretty often, so I knew the lady at the cutting table. In response to my query, she said yes, they’d had some a while back but it sold and they never got any more.

Because, really, why would anyone restock a product that sold?

Flash forward a few more years, and another Sharks fan was having a baby. Same scenario, same disappointing end.

I’ve looked for Sharks fabric on a few other occasions over the years, and always with the same lack of result. Today, I received an email from another fabric store, saying it is not too late for me to make gifts and they have the perfect sports fabric not only available but ON SALE! To say my manner when I opened the email was blasé would be an insult to blasé. My cursory scan of the email’s content and subsequent clicking of the sale link made hipsters look exuberant. Because I already knew what was waiting for me at the other end of that click.

Licensed NFL and MLB fabric. The only licensed sports-related fabric that anyone seems to make.

And I know it isn’t just that I haven’t been looking in the right places. My search has not been limited to fabric stores to whose email lists I happen to subscribe. I have scoured the Internet in vain. The fabric does not exist.

A search for “San Jose Sharks fabric” on eBay brings us this:

Not only is it not fabric, it is not even close to what springs to mind when I put “my shower” and “the San Jose Sharks” together in the same thought. Although I suppose I could get a couple of them and make myself a pretty spectacular cape.

That same search phrase on Google unearthed this little gem:

Which, while just about fantastic enough to make me want to get married tomorrow, is still not fabric. Which begs the question, why?

Why, NHL? Why do you hate helpless infants and seamstresses? Why can’t we have licensed fabric of our very own? We’d make you proud, we’d make really super ultra mega awesome things, you wouldn’t be sorry, we promise.

Just give us a chance.

Hockey, My Little Pony & Filthy Instantly Regrettable Lies

The other day, I found myself in a conversation about sports with a cashier at Costco. A moment before, he had been engaged in a conversation with some guy in a San Jose Sharks sweatshirt, and I overheard mention of an injured player. Now, my dear boys had had a difficult game the night before but to my knowledge no one had gotten hurt, so needless to say I was concerned that I might have missed something. When it was my turn to check out, I asked about what I had overheard, and it turns out Cashier & Friend had been talking about one of the Oakland Raiders. I replied “Oh, I thought you were talking about-“ and caught myself before I finished the sentence with “something important”, choosing instead “I saw the Sharks sweatshirt, I just thought...”

After telling me which specific player had been injured and receiving a negative reply to his query as to whether or not I was a Raider fan, Cashier asked me “So who’s your favorite Shark?”

To which I replied... with a blank stare. Favorite? I said I didn’t have one. He insisted that I must. When pressed, I told him the closest I could get to picking a favorite was a three-way tie between... and even then I had to pause before I said Thornton, Niemi and Murray. (Douglas, that is. No offense, Andrew.)

Thornton for being such an enthusiastic leader by example,

Niemi for reasons I have detailed before,

and Murray because, really, how can you not have a soft spot for this?



Or, frankly, this.

As soon as I walked out of the store, my mind started throwing out snippy little guilt-laden tidbits like you forgot Marleau, how could you forget Marleau? What, Clowe isn’t good enough for you now? Pavelski hasn’t done anything for you lately? Nice “favorites” list, if you don’t mind that you neglected to mention... and on and on until I had no choice but to head straight to the nearest mall and spend an hour looking at nothing but My Little Pony displays and layered pastel clothing with ruffles, to drive the very idea of the existence of hockey as far from my mind as possible. I was a terrible fan, and I had no right to pretend otherwise.

It wasn’t until later, when I’d had enough wine to chase the My Little Ponies from my thoughts, that I recognized the source of my original dilemma. The reason I had been so hard-pressed to name a favorite player is the very same reason I like hockey so much in the first place. It’s never about the individuals. It is, more than any other "team" sport, all about the team, both in the way the game is played and in the attitudes of the players themselves. There will always be highlights, there will always be standouts and great nights for certain players and things you will always associate with one particular guy, but at the end of the day, hockey isn’t just a bunch of people in the same game at the same time. It’s about a group acting as a single unit toward a specific goal (no pun intended, unless you cracked up in which case I totally planned that).

So, Costco Cashier, if you’re reading this, I apologize for the lie, and would now like to come clean and introduce you to my favorite Shark.

Guys I Would Not Instantly Not Leave My Guy For

There are moments in our household when I have occasion to say “You should be aware that if Suchandsuch McSoandso were to ever show up on our doorstep and ask me to run away with him, I would pause a moment before I said no”. Because I’m honest like that. And, contrariwise, I know if Cameron Diaz were to ever show up on our doorstep with a similar question, I would see The Guy do some pausing of his own. Fair’s fair.

So now that you know who my real competition is, I present to you...

The Guys I Would Not Instantly Not Leave My Guy For

The Blecha Brothers, Jake & Justin

(aka “the totally hot plaid-wearing bearded carpenters from Cupcake Wars”)

 

If you watch Cupcake Wars, you already know what I’m talking about. If not, allow me to elucidate. The final battle of the cupcake war requires each contestant to design a display that is thematically relevant, stylish, and able to hold a thousand cupcakes. In two hours. That’s where Jake and Justin come in. Using hastily scribbled outlines of grandiose concepts from the minds of bakers whose understanding of carpentry seems at times barely equal to the task of building a rectangle out of squares, Jake and Justin build miracles. Ever encouraging and optimistic in the face of even the most unreasonable of requests, they listen patiently to what people say they want, glean from it the truth of what people really want, take that truth to the place where what you want meets what you can have, and not only make if happen but make it happen in time for the paint to dry. In two hours.

This is like the workshop equivalent of a guy asking you what’s wrong, you saying “nothing”, and him figuring out on his own what is actually wrong, saying all the right things without being prompted, repeatedly refilling your wineglass without being asked, stenciling Hello Kitty graphics on your bathroom walls to cheer you up, doing the dishes, picking up the dry cleaning, feeding the cat, screening calls from your mother and bringing you Chinese food, all the while reassuring you that absolutely nothing about anything in your life is making your ass look fat. And all the while continuing to wear plaid, have a beard, and be totally hot.

In two hours.

David Caruso

It speaks to not only the uniqueness but magnitude of his charisma that I am willing to continually overlook the forensic absurdities, forced dialogue, inexplicable insistence on the use of 5 SUVs to transport 6 people from a single office to a single crime scene, blatant emotional manipulation, complete disregard for the basics of investigative procedure, and fantastically over-engineered technical displays that are CSI: Miami, for the simple pleasure of seeing David Caruso for an hour.

Even if most of that hour is spent watching him peer cryptically through his sunglasses in darkened rooms only to remove said sunglasses when going outdoors to better convey, as only squinting cryptically in full sunlight can, what it is to be Horatio Caine, just a man, one man doing what little one man can against all the evil that Miami can spew, it is an hour well spent.

Actually, because of that it’s an hour well spent. Because he is David Caruso, and no matter what he does, he will be David Caruso doing it, and that will make whatever it is instantly and vastly superior to anyone else’s feeble attempt at performing the same action.

And like Miss Turkey’s bikini and The Rembrandts’ oft pined-for lost love, that’s just the way it is.

San Jose Sharks Goaltender Antti Niemi

Do I even need to explain the appeal of a large man who spends his work hours carrying a stick and determinedly deflecting dense objects hurled across slick surfaces at dangerously high speeds by other equally large stick-carrying men while thousands of people scream in the background?

Okay, I will. The appeal is, your worst day has nothing on that. Some guys get pissy if you so much as snap at them to get their feet off the coffee table and stop leaving their boxers on the bathroom floor. A guy like Niemi? Your most banshee-like rants are cool waters burbling softly over age-smoothed rocks on tree-lined banks in a land that time forgot compared to what he just came from. He doesn’t need 40 pounds of gear to protect himself from stories of how much you hate Sheila in HR. You could throw a blender at his face and he’d just bat it away without even looking up from his video game.

“But”, the quibblers among you may protest, “surely you could say the same about many NHL goaltenders?”

Perhaps I could. But I do not, for two reasons. First, I am a San Jose girl loyal to my local boys. And second, Antti Niemi has a really really cute nose.



And the guy I would have to pause the longest before refusing to run away with should he ever ask...

Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto

“Because he’s frikkin’ Morimoto.” –Alton Brown, in response to having witnessed yet another feat of unmitigated awesomeness on 'Iron Chef America'

There’s really not much I can say that Alton Brown hasn’t already summed up in that single quote. Masaharu Morimoto is, quite simply, cooler than most human beings realize it is even possible to be, much less stand a chance of ever being.

Give him a jar of Skippy, some Smuckers and a loaf of Bimbo Pan Blanco, he can make a five-course meal out of them before you can even finish making a sandwich, even if you don’t bother taking the time to cut the crust off.

He looks better breaking kitchen equipment than the rest of us do when using it properly.

Oh, and he can sing, too.

Yeah, Alton. What you said.