Calder Cup Finals, etc.

"YOU! AH! HORRRRIBLE!"

The Mayor reported in last night with this picture from the Calder Cup Finals. The Mayor, a Section 311 ex-pat, has landed in Austin, TX where he has become a drooling, spastic fan of the local AHL team, the Texas Stars. They are in the Calder Cup Finals against the Hershey Bears (Washington Capitals - not only is their parent club pretty good, but their farm team as well? Bullshit!), where the Bears have a 3-2 series lead after last night's game.
The above picture is supposedly of Chris Bourque, son of hockey god Ray Bourque.
The Calder Cup finals are being aired on the NHL Network. If there's another game in Austin, the guy flipping out against the glass with the local paper rolled up and tucked in his back pocket wearing a beer-and-burrito-stained yellow shirt, green ballcap...that's our boy. He's either offended everyone in his section and they've all left for the balcony, or he's whipped his section up into a tremendous frenzy and they are all buying him food, beers, etc.

Today, USA plays England in the World Cup. I've been waiting for this all week. Sure, I only know, like, 4 players on the USA squad (Clint Dempsey, who used to play for the Revs), and I can barely figure out why all the players fall onto the grass holding onto their shins in writhing I-just-got-shot-by-a-howitzer pain despite their, uh, shin guards...but I'm still watching. Here's ESPN's modus operandi for the World Cup: American announcer that we all know, like, say Mike Tirico, who pretend to talk about players and a game they know nothing about - with a guy from Europe, usually some guy from the UK who has just retarded soccer credentials with like 400 games played for his home nation or something ("caps"?). The American announcer brings it home for us fairweather fans ("Look, Kornheiser!"), and the Euro guy is there to actually drop some legitimate futbol science on our Yank asses. Yup, I have a startling grasp of the obvious.

I guess Don Orsillo is under the weather or something, so NESN had local lackey Eric Frede fill in. It was like listening to a really bad date, as Frede was trying to keep things light and Remy wanted no part of it. Remy was just sulking, arms folded defiantly across his chest, and not saying anything for the first, say, 4 innings. Actually, the game was in hand at that point, so I hit the mute button and went to sporcle and did this week's latest quizzes, so maybe Remy softened and Frede ended up getting lucky.