Front seat view of Bettman's Empire

It takes the same amount of time to drive to Myrtle Beach as it does to drive to Sault-Ste-Marie.

I have one more day to fry upon the sandy shores of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, while the Pens and Wings fight to the not-death for Lord Stanley's glorious silverware. And as I try to reconnect myself with the Northern portion of this hemisphere for some relevant news, I've learned a few things about The South.

For one, apparently there's a lot of Pittsburgh Steelers merchandise around and this is confusing me.

But as I stand just South of 'Canes Country (even though I'm pretty sure South Carolina has way more hurricane activity than North Carolina), I can count on one hand the things I've seen related to hockey. And TV isn't one of them.
- A kid in the lobby was wearing a Crosby shirt.
- A guy seated in the chinese restaurent was wearing a Red Wings jersey (and I think it was his own name too).
- A car had a lame attempt to decal itself with a painted Go Redwings (sic) on it.
- A guy working at some Surf and Board shop in a fancy new marketplace was apparently a Caps fan.
- A car parked at the Cracker Barrel had one of those Hurricanes fan plates on for the front of the car.

When the finals kicked off, Versus was showing rodeo. Television sets were tuned to football or baseball, hell I even saw soccer, while the Pens made a series out of the series. By the time I even find NBC's awful feed the games are already over. (Nevermind it took me the entire week to find a decent radio station). The "sports" section at the local Barnes and Noble doesn't even have The Game let alone anything that related to the legends or history of hockey but there sure was plenty of baseball. I have no idea what the newspapers are like. They're mostly about Obama's day anyway, which is a step up from last year being mostly about Britney Spears I guess.

Bravo, Gary Bettman. You're plan to expose and convert the Southern sun-fried bible-thumping masses was apparently a smash hit!

I'm kind of sad to be leaving on Sunday, as I hear the weather is beyond shit back home and the seperatists are starting up yet again with more stupidity, and Mario Tremblay is rumoured to be coming to the Habs as assistant-coach-gag-me-with-a-spork... but school's out finally around here and the kids have all gone insane. Kids apparently have a curfew too, so they try to go insane just before it's time for bed. So in a way, I'm thankful to be heading home soon before some idiot launches a firecracker from the beach into my room. Also this humidity is ruining my hair.

Jacques' Town

I am officially beach fried.

But while I was frying, Bob was working. I keep the faith, Bob. You know what you're doing, I just get to watch the outcome. So while I headed south to fry on a beach, Jacques Martin headed north to fry in Montreal's media spotlight. And Rollie the Goalie was fried.

All I gotta say is, Jacques? Better start fixing that record against the Leafs or you'll be fried...

Fuck you, Leafs of Maple.

Unsecured networks connect me to reality

This is the view from my room. Apparently my hotel has free wireless internet in a cafe, but I was sitting in my room thinking "well, it's wireless and free, so maybe I can sneak on from my room". Sure enough, it doesn't work... but the internet from the hotel next door is wide open thank you very much.

So here I am, south of Hurricanes country, watching the Pens fail and I'm guessing Crosby's not going to like being in that picture again. Can they really come back from a 2-0 deficit against the Hockey Robots? Will this season really just repeat itself and feel like it never really happened? (Isn't that a good thing? To some, probably). Will Fleury stop flailing and play his stinking angles right? Do I really care? Not really. The beach looks lovely and I'm going to set myself up permanently upon it for a week.

One thing I've learned in South Carolina: road signs mean absolutely nothing.