Clear The Crease

or… Why Can’t Johnny Get a Day-Job: The Final Solution to the Colorful Language Problem

Reading JC’s last post, almost makes my blood boil. Almost—because, well, I value my linguistic freedom, and lets just say I that I’m not looking forward to the day when our “fairly” elected representatives trade their junkets for jackboots and stomp all over my beloved and much abused Bill O’ Rights. Almost—because I can understand why our collective patois here at clearthecrease Central might raise a few hackles. Will I change my evil ways? Not fuckin’ likely. Will jefcanuk learn to spell McAmmond? About as likely as the Kings in a Cup final. Will Chris Collision get a haircut? Never.

I’m not saying that a link-share denied is tantamount to facism, because it ain’t. I’m just a little sad.

I’m a dick when I’m sad. Ask anyone—but none of this has anything to do with hockey—yet.

Without a fully-salted vocabulary at my disposal, I find it awfully difficult to serenade you with a well-deserved limerick about Darcy Tucker.

If a kid is stone stupid, he might not be able to read Lindy Ruff’s lips when he’s tearing Bryan Murray a brand new asshole.

The way I figure it y’all just oughta start teaching your kids how to use those dirty words now, so they don’t embarass themselves later. You can’t use the word “fuck” in proper context at 5 years old without a primer—even though you’ve seen AND heard Pop let fly at a myopic linesman’s shitty call at least once a day from early October ’til Late May of every single one of your formative years.

When it really comes down to it, it seems to me that hockey is the only sport fast and savage enough to be indescribable without using a little “local color”—and I’ll stop watching when the fist-fuckers who keep trying to neuter the NHL finally manage to turn hockey into the empty puck-bag that will appeal to their squeaky-clean progeny. I reckon I could stick to flowery victorian prose to describe that nightmare—and with any luck, I’ll be long dead by the time that happens.

Anyone who has ever listened to a game on the radio knows that the play-by-play guy has it tough—the wear and tear on the stimulus-response portion of his brain must be obscene—and I’d have trouble strapping on my own goddamn dick in the morning if I had to make that many lightning-quick calls.

I’d rather drink smuggled bourbon in the cheap-seats and hurl invective at the (obviously) blind officials.

Enter the color guy. We all know and need the play-by-play guy, but without that extra oxygen the color guy provides in between the action, he’d be about as lively as the bloated corpse of Bill Wirtz.

Turns out that we count on you straight-and-narrow-type bloggers to bring us the play-by-play from the press box, so we can provide the color—from the bin.

Keep your head up.