:-:-:-:-: Oops! This link appears broken. :-:-:-:-: [el-blog-de-clay-mcdaniel]

Seattle – it’s not just about football (whatevs Seagulls), it’s not just about shutouts, it’s not just about winning…. now it’s also about alterna-civic-pride. So says the old grey lady.

My wife and I went to Vancouver last weekend for some eating (well), drinking (a little, well), walking (lots), gelato (fig-and-almond, yeeeeah), relaxing (kidless), and general get-away time. Biggest surprise: sort-of-disappointment about the lack of edge/zip. Also the inability to escape televised hockey. Yes, yes, “the mountains, the ocean”. Indeed. Too many new glass condos, though, and not enough people milling about. During a walk east of Gastown and through old Chinatown, however, we wandered into a large four-wall with a grillion baskets of dried oceanic objects and long walls occupied by big jars of dried, pickled, preserved, or otherwise hanging-out-until-you-buy-5-kilos-worth stuff. [Helpful illustrative photo below. In row two, you will find 4 jars of cordyceps.]  In one lower cabinet, “Deer Horn” – thin round slices of what looked – to  me – like dried velvety deer horns. My wife said, “no, those are not deer horns.” Really, I said. Go ahead and ask her. “What is that?”, inquired my wife. “Horn…. (gestures upwards and outwards from head)… deer”. Uh huh.

# of references to death: >20

# of references to love: >100

# of BPB references to “poor man’s speedball”: 1

Approximate % of beards among all men in audience: 25

Songs performed from “I See a Darkness”: 0

Yelling-between-set D-Bags in audience: 2

Spring Creek Group employees seated in rows M –>T: 2

We have one Subaru in my fam, and love it. However, I do NOT understand their latest greeny badge: “PZEV: partial zero emissions vehicle”. How can you have a “partial zero” anything? Doesn’t that violate some kind of math (confidential to the English, “maths”) law or something?

Your Sports Teams results are all j’d up. One of these goes with this page. And also, um, how about some love for the newest, baddest, coolest, winningest team in town? Scarves up.

Oh Timothy Egan, you have captured our collective national ennui and the pressing need for a 65 64-team single-elimination amateur athletic tournament. Go Jayhawks (and Dayton Fliers, and North Dakota State, and sponsor-of-my-long-ago-Australian-exchange-semester-and-subsequent-walkabout Butler).

And I don’t even like Syracuse. Or any of the Big East teams, for that matter. But 6OT? I mean, come on, how does that happen?!  http://bit.ly/GNpHf

WIN.

And not without some drama. Good, because they may be sitting out next year if Villa improves form and the Gunners don’t win out through the final stretch of Prem games :-(.