How to Beat a Dead Horse by the NHL and it's broadcasters

Tell me more about your dead mom, Marty...

First, let's assume that everybody who is still interested in the Stanley Cup are one of four types of people;

1) New York Rangers Fans
2) Los Angeles Kings Fans
3) Network Hockey Analysts
4) Hockey Nut Whose Team is Now Out But Has Nothing Else To Do While Waiting for the Next Game of Thrones Episode.

I think we can all agree that there is a lot of interest regarding the Stanley Cup in NY and LA. Not like 'Brad Pitt making out With Jen Aniston' interest but more 'Woody Allen marrying his adopted daughter' interest. These 'new' fans of the game are the ones the rest of us hate, the ones who will only follow 'winners' and when asked who their favourite player is would say 'number 23?' and read your face for approval and/or correct number selection.

Congratulations to Alain Vigneault

No, I'm not expecting a Congratulations call from Mike. Why? 

It's hard to believe that it's been 20 years since the New York Rangers have been in the Stanley Cup Finals. It's been so long hardly anyone remembers what happened way back in 1994. Except this.

And now they are heading back there, having replaced hard-nosed, awesome-goatee'd John Tortorella with all-time winningest Canucks coach Alain Vigneault, so you can bet this guy feels like a bit of a douche.

The NHL media can only milk Marty St.Louis' mother's death for so long and the amazing commitment to the Cup it symbolizes. Now prepare to be inundated with images and reflections of twenty years ago as a litany of players who played for the NHL's largest US North American market (per capita) magically materialize out of where ever former NHL players go after they retire.

The Final Four 2014

After a rousing, self-esteem building 7 of 8 correct playoff predictions, Ogie found himself a little sadder this evening, despite going 3 for 4 in the semi-finals. Not Teemu Selanne sad or even Milan Lucic 'I'm going to Kill You' sad. Just... more grounded. Maybe because I'm not a betting man but I would have made some pretty good coin in Vegas this year. It's just that Ogie's go-to contender Eastern contender the Bruins, and therefore Jarome Iginla, are out. In the West, the Ducks succumbed to the charismatic Darryl Sutter-led LA Kings. So no Stanley Cup being handed off to either Iginla or Selanne one last time as they fade out into hockey hall of fame sunset, which would have made for a nice 'Ray Bourque crying' 15 years later retrospective on TSN.

So the final four comes down to 'Conspiracy Alley'. Perhaps the four biggest hockey markets in all of NHL-land - New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Canada. True, Canada  would have been there anyways but now, to the chagrin of most of English-speaking Canada, the Montreal Canadians are in the mix.

But yeaaaaa NHL public relations! We'll skip over the plethora of conspiracy theories out there. And by out there I mean on my notepad by the TV. Let's skip that LA goal that moved them past a stunned but consistently disappointing Joe Thornton-led San Jose Sharks. These anonymous refs that either let them play like they are in the 80's again or make them play like they are in the regular season again. I'm lucky to remember that in the 80-90's Hockey Referee Hall of Fame (if there is such a thing) legends Andy Van Hellemond, Bruce Hood, Terry Gregson, and even Kerry 'hair-helmet' Fraser wouldn't even bring their whistle out of the dressing room after the 2nd period intermission.  Man... those were the days...

But that's neither here nor there. Here is the Final Four! There is the golf course and summer cottages that so many NHL'rs now have to suffer in as these Final Four teams vy for Ogie's glory.

2014 Hockey Playoffs - The Year of Iggy

We get it, you're Canadian. You're bummed out because your name is Greg and the Montreal Canadians are the only Canadian team to make the playoffs and you know that you will have to suffer the pain of defeat eventually. You will have to maintain a sliver of hope that the Habs will overcome being the Habs but deep in your heart you know you are destined for heartbreak, as if you were no better than a Canuck fan.

To make matters worse, if the NHL had kept their same format as last year all the other Canadian teams still wouldn't have made the playoffs.

So to everyone besides Greg, let's just forget that we have any type of local geographic or childhood allegiance to our sports teams and let's pick another team to pin all your hopes and dreams on as you avoid all other issues in my life. So for that, let's pick the Boston Bruins, President's Cup winners, all-star and Theon Greyjoy look-a-like Tukka Rask in net and Alberta's other favourite son, Jarome Iginla, on a quest to cap off his career with the Stanley Cup.

One is Lilly Allen's brother, the other is
named Tuukka. 

   
Someone (@ionthesparrow12) has already done a lot of the grunt work for you by making this handy flowchart, making it easier to make that selection;

But Ogie is here to review our 1st round match-ups and boldly predict what everyone else already predicts...

House of Canuckles

I started working on this awhile ago but seeing as how Mike Gillis has been fired, it seems more relevant today.

TL;DR - I tried to present the Canuck organization is in a classic circular dysfunctional relationship. Gillis hired Tortorella to bring a defensive toughness to a team that relied on offensive skill to win. It was bound to fail as Torts brought a Joe Lunchbox mentality to a Brand built on Star Power. Meanwhile Vigneault's style would work great in NY, as they have the star power to become Brand Power. Watch for the Rangers to go deep in the playoffs now that the players are used to AV's way of doing things, as he brings the 'fun' back in Rangers hockey.  


Once upon a time in a land far to the west, there was a family called the Canuckles.  This is their story.

Theirs was what appeared to be a happy marriage; Mike Gillis, the father figure; aloof and controlling of the bank account. He liked to watch Mad Men and believed in pin-up calendars where the women still covered their private parts. The mother was played by Alain Vigneault, from a foreign land, a touch of exotic to his knowing smirk and winning ways. Together they had 20+ kids; confident, talented, every one of them proud to be in the Canuckle family and they were the pride of the entire neighbourhood. If you were a Canuckle, you were the talk of the town, even if most didn't know exactly which one you were.

I saw the guy on the left at Toys R' Us. Or it could have been the one on the right.

Then something happened. A favourite son was designated. Daddy thought he was the answer to everything and the parents treated him as such and treated him well. He got all the C's; The Family car, the Company Credit Card, the Captaincy. It was all his. And all Daddy Canuckle and the entire neighbourhood asked of him was to stop every motherfucking puck that was motherfucking shot at him. Mother Canuckle knew that a careful balance was needed to keep all of the family happy. Those nice quiet ones that nobody paid attention to, the ones that needed a little attention or would wind up in jail one day, the youngest ones that clamored for Daddy Canuckle's attention. The first round picks playing on the third line.

Wayne Gretzky IS Luke Skywalker...

While this was already published by the UK webzine, Whatculture this is also part of my ongoing attempt to catalog/save/remember past articles. However, for this special blog post, I've added my own photos for the most part as I don't think the UK editors really knew who i was talking about. 

Enjoy the read... 

NHL 8 Reasons Hockey is Perfect for Star Wars Geeks

or

How I learned to stop worrying and just rip off other people...

Being given an opportunity to introduce the world of the great sport of ice hockey into the WhatCulture’s vast canon of subjects didn’t come without its own set of problems. Specifically, how do you start? With an explanation of the rules? Boring. Perhaps an overview of the top players and teams? Only if you already knew the game. The best fights in one of the only professional sports that condones fighting? Potentially next time… How about the way that Hollywood has portrayed the sport? Now, we are getting somewhere.

Now to associate it with Star Wars in some way…

Being a predominantly UK-based pop-culture website, it can be understandable that most of our sports coverage discusses football, what with its rabid fan base, history of passion, the occasional riot and world-wide acceptance. In North America there is a sport that has many of those characteristics and it’s not American football or professional baseball.

The one sport that parallels football, at least in countries in where it snows, is hockey.

First lesson; hockey is not referred to as ‘ice hockey’ by those that know the game, much as football is not referred to as ‘foot-soccer’. Just getting that out of the way.

Simply stated, the goal in hockey is to beat your opponent’s team by getting an object (the puck) into their net more times than they do in yours. To make the game move faster, the puck is propelled forward by a stick, the surface is covered in ice and players strap blades of steel to their feet called skates.

Basically, it’s football on meth, as designed by people with short tempers and limited attention spans. Due to the high rates of speed, players can either turn quickly in a circle (if they are European) or hit into each other and start again (if they are North American).

As a primer to the introduction of this great game and the dysfunctional league under which the top athletes of the world come to make vast (or little) amounts of money (depending on who you talk to) a comparison of hockey’s modern day history to the greatest movie franchise of all time seems as good as way as any to its introduction to WhatCulture’s readership.

Star Wars is a movie steeped in tradition, with heroic figures, interesting side characters, evil shadowy villains and run by a large unknown group of marketing executives who would do anything to make a buck, hiding behind the public face of the franchise, George Lucas. The National Hockey League (or NHL herewith) is a league steeped in tradition, heroic figures, interesting side characters, evil shadowy villains and run by a large group of team owners who would do anything to make a buck, hiding behind the public face of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.

For example, just last year, after declaring record league-wide revenue hockey team owners unanimously decided to lock out their own players from training camp because they felt the players were making too much money, which would eventually destroy the league. This is like saying making too many Star Wars ‘collectibles’ would ultimately result in no more Star Wars movies. Yet Disney just bought the entire Star Wars franchise for all the money in the known world because anything with a Star Wars logo on it seems to make more money. The NHL team owners claimed to be on the cusp of bankruptcy, despite the same owners recently beginning to shell out decade-long contracts for decent players that have little collectible value, like a present day David Beckham jersey.

If you look at the history of hockey compared to the original Star Wars trilogy that’s not where the similarities end. Here are 8 more ways hockey is the perfect sport for Star Wars geeks, in particular because of a certain Wayne Gretzky…

What's a Deadline? the Metropolitan Division

Yes, it's nearly 15 games into the season and some sports shows/reporters/bloggers are starting to talk about the 'playoff picture' as if we were going to jump 4 months into the future and forget that ever since Bettman instituted that 1 point OTL rule (the Bettman rule) all games are pretty much meaningless in terms of a 'playoff picture' until after the all-star break. Recent past history has shown that by the time the All-Star break rolls around (this year postponed for the excessive elitist tournament of nothingness called the Olympics) there are only usually the Edmonton Oilers and perhaps two other teams that are already out of playoff contention.

So, to start talking playoff picture is ridiculous, especially since I haven't even blogged my season opening predictions of this new god-awful named Metropolitan Division which should eventually lose the 'politan' portion of that and be shortened to the 'New Metro' Division or more appropriately the 'non-travel' division, with most all teams being within a couple hours drive of each other.

But let's just get this over with so the season can officially start with Ogie's permission.

The Metro Division

So then I said, well there has to be a Metropolitan Division and they agreed!

 

New York Rangers - I know that the Rangers have surprised everyone by getting off to such a shitty start despite Alain Vigneault being behind the bench. The reason is simple. AV's a nice guy. Just think of the Rangers as that woman who finally got rid of that abusive, tough love asshole and are now dating that nice guy who everyone praises as being the perfect guy for her. She's used to the tough love and isn't used to this easy-going approach. She's still afraid that if she steps up into the neutral zone she's going to get verbally abused and therefore is still playing the game out of fear. Once she realizes that this AV guy is genuinely a nice guy and just wants her to go out and play the best hockey she can, that he's proud of her no matter what the score, the points and wins will pile up.  He just has to get Rick Nash to stop pouting in his room and come play. Then it's all going to be good in the Stinky Apple.

New Jersey Devils - the Devils surprised everyone by acknowledging that Martin Brodeur may one day retire and so went out and picked up the Canucks goalie of the present and Roberto Luongo nemesis Cory Schneider. Then they also surprised everyone again by announcing that Ilya Kovalchuk determined there was more to hockey than just money, which caused his agent's head to explode and mass panic among other agents as they rushed to remind their clients that it is all about the money.



 

Pittsburgh Penguins - the Penguins are just waiting for the Trade deadline so that they can once again destroy team chemistry and Stanley Cup hopes by looking for that Ray Bourque of deadline deals. After Iginla's botched stay, the pickings are getting slimmer on finding that career player who has never won the Cup and therefore should forgo his present team to come torpedo the Penguins. Joe Thornton, Daniel Alfreddson, and the always popular deadline day rental player Jaromir Jagr. Then again, the Penguins may have to suffer through Marc Andre Fleury's playoff meltdowns and the media analysis that will happen for the week before the first game of the playoffs as to why he's the Penguins weak link.

Philadelphia Flyers - the Flyers are an enigmatic team that are always good for a Stanley Cup appearance once every 5 or 6 years, unlike the Canucks. It is said their biggest problem is goaltending so they decided to commit years and millions on an ok Russian goalie only to drop him after a year of typical Flyer-like goaltending'. They then went picked up Steve Mason and Ray Emery leaving Brian Boucher once again on the corner of Heartbreak Lane and When the Fuck Will He Learn Street. Brian will back again in a few months as one or the other goes down to a chronic hip injury or in the case of Emery, being suspended for going mental.

New York Islanders - the Edmonton Oilers of the East Coast, look for them to occasionally pop up in the sports highlights, primarily when they are playing any of the top 10 teams that usually get the press coverage. Almost a carbon copy of the Oilers, the Islanders are a good young team on paper with a defense that would be hard to pick out at a Keg salad bar and a goalie that sounds familiar so that means he must have been good once, right?





Washington Capitals - Ovechkin is now under the tutelage of Adam Oates and much has been made of his amazing scoring since switching from left to right wing, or vice versa. Remember Mike Green? Neither does he. And Brandon Holtby surprised everyone by agreeing to be one of the goalies that will be cut for the Canadian Olympic team. Mikhail Grabvoski is a nice addition to the team and should complement Ovie nicely.

Carolina Hurricanes - Well, they have 2 Staal brothers on their team, which should cut down a bit on their parents' travel schedule. So they have that going for them.






Columbus Blue Jackets - Columbus is one of those teams on the cusp of being forgotten as continually vying with the Oilers for last place. The team seems to now win as many games as they lose since the departure of Rick Nash. so, I'm not saying Rick Nash was a problem in Columbus but Rick Nash might have been a problem in Columbus. One of these days I will have to try to find Columbus on a map but Google search keeps redirecting me to Quebec City.

The Vancouver Canucks Off-Season Analysis

Shhh...everything is so quiet nowadays on the hockey front that it feels like a Florida Panther pre-season game.

Zing! Not even 12 hours old, a topical reference!

It almost seems a shame to rock me out of my summer siesta and start thinking about my hockey pools again. It almost shames me to think that while I was doing normal every day summer things (like becoming a new dad again) some young kids (and a lot of old ones) were busting their asses at the gym (aka dryland training) keeping in shape for the training camp microscope that has begun in a somewhat small chance of living their dream of playing in the NHL. I had that dream too, kids and look at me now!

So let's take start my season of Dad-related hockey thoughts and look at what the Canucks/Mike Gillis has done during the off-season, starting with Draft Day's biggest surprise;

Seth Green's new rush mock-up of Cory Schneider
figurine for a Robot Chicken sketch

Cory Schneider is dealt, Luongo wins/loses.

Cory Schneider is traded to New Jersey; so the year-long plague that was the goaltending controversy is over in Vancouver. Unless for some reason Luongo goes public a la Patrick Roy and demands out. I don't see that happening.
I think Gillis did well on this one; Luongo always was the Canucks #1 starter and will continue to be. Schneider was great in a back up role, average in the playoffs and he was playing with a stellar team in front of him. He will not be the next coming of Marty Brodeur in New Jersey, but he will be capable.

Team owner Francis Aquavelva-something went down to Florida to meet with Luongo personally, followed by Mike Gillis. He then came back and filed for divorce in which he wants his financial assets sealed as 'protection for his children'.

Rangers/Canucks switch coaching personalities. Predictable results will follow.

Recently John Tortorella was announced as the Vancouver Canucks 17th head coach, replacing their winning-est coach ever and causing the collective 'brain trust' of Vancouver hockey reporters to smash their heads against their laptops and mutter 'fuckyfuckyfuckyfuck'.

John Tortorella in a classic pose, telling NY reporters to back
their shit up and ask to yell their questions at him.

This may all sound familiar because it is. Remember when the Vancouver Canuck organization went and hired the ex-head coach of the New York Rangers, a move that turned out wildly successful and popular for the first 2 hours after it was announced?

Mark? Mark? Mark?  Can anyone hear me over that goal horn?

In fact, even their personal mottoes are oddly familiar....

"I am not a good loser. I think if you are a good loser you are a loser." - John Tortorella.

"I am not a good loser. I think if you are a good loser you are Trevor Linden and should get the fuck out of my dressing room. Right Mark?" - Mike Keenan

Retro Post; The Greatest Canuck Stanley Cup Run

Ahhh, Vancouver.  If Montreal is to the NHL what the Yankees are to MLB, then Vancouver Canucks are the NFL's Buffalo Bills.  They've been to the Big Show three times, only to each time come away empty.  Unless you happen to be in downtown Vancouver after the final game, then you are probably coming away with quite a few things unpaid for.

While 1983 was perhaps an anomaly in that nobody truly expected the Canucks to defeat the 2x defending champion New York Islanders (yes, you read that right), 1994 was the year when believers were made.  A strong core of forwards led by Pavel Bure, Trevor Linden, and Gino Odjick. Jyrki Lumme, Dave Babych and Dana Murzyn on defence and the last of the great stand up goaltenders in Kirk McLean, before everybody started adopting the Patrick Roy butterfly followed by hip surgery in your 30's style.  The Canucks provided an amazing playoff run full of drama, emotion and continuous highlight reel moments, courtesy of Pavel Bure. While the 2011 Canucks had the diving, the biting, the LUongoing nothing can beat 1994's team for sheer Hollywood drama.

First the dramatics of the come from behind 1st round seven game defeat of the Calgary Flames after being behind 3 games to 1 in the series, featuring Kirk McLean in 'The Save'

which led to the perhaps the biggest moment in Canuck playoff history up to that time, Pavel Bure and 'The Goal';

NHL Playoffs 2013 - The Final Eight

Western Conference First Round Recap

Biggest Surprise; The Chicago Blackhawks allowed the Minnesota Wild to actually beat them once on the way to their 5 game victory. Showing what $200 million in off-season acquisitions can get you, besides a league-wide lockout, the Wild put on a daring display of ferocity and puck-moving while in practice scrimmages but were unable to translate that at game time, which to be fair at times would be best to visualize as flock of starlings going up against an Apache helicopter.

Biggest letdown; The Vancouver Canucks who apparently were in the finals 2 years ago but looked like it would have trouble beating the Edmonton Oilers' mothers in a pick-up game. Lacking any sense of passion, scoring or a true #1 goaltender, the Vancouver Canucks rode the apathy train to Sweeptown in losing 4 straight to San Torres Sharks with the only fight from the Canucks appearing in who could get to the team bus quickest in what should have been a much closer series than it was. However, for fans of the Canucks, they have lots to look forward to in the upcoming months as they continually read about potential trade rumors involving Roberto Luongo and discuss in fan forums how the referees, the league and Raffi Torres were out to get them.

The 2nd Round Match ups;

Chicago vs. Detroit 

                         vs         

On one side you have the Blackhawks, an unstoppable hockey force that plays with it's opponents the way Mike Tyson played with that guy's face in The Hangover. On the other side you have the other Original Six team, the Detroit Red Wings, who have absolutely nothing going for them other than their decades long tradition of being in the playoffs, their incredible depth of European talent and a guy named Jimmy Howard in net who at times has looked somewhat mortal.

Chicago in six because it's Detroit and every sports show loves showing a clip of someone picking up an octopus off the ice. 

NHL Playoffs 2013 - The Eastern teams (aka the runner uppers)

Give me my precioussssss, wraith riderrrr. 

Finally, after nearly three minutes of highlight worthy drama, the compacted season has ended for most teams quite early in the East, especially down in Florida where it ended back on the 2nd week of the truncated NHL season.  Yet, due to Owner flunky and league commissioner Gary Bettman the entire Southwestern division still had to play out the year to give hockey and Winnipeg Jet fans the chance to see if Coach Claude Noel could usurp John Tortorella as the NHL's worst interview.

Here are some completely uneducated and unfounded playoff predictions for the 1st round eastern match ups.

#1 Pittsburgh Penguins 

scarf optional

Analyzing the team - they are runaway favourite to come in 2nd for the Stanley Cup. Are known for having the second least intimidating team name after the Ducks and stocked up an already pretty stacked team with some character players at the deadline.

Come on, we dare you...

Analyzing the team name- the penguins are large, flightless, clumsy-moving birds that live in desolation and isolation in an inhospitable environment, so...Pittsburgh. They are known for their inability to take a puck to the teeth.

VS

#8 New York Islanders

Analyzing the team - Wait? What? The islanders are in the playoffs? How did that happen you ask? Remember the Southeast division? This is what happens.  Blame GARY BETTMAN.  The fact that they are in the playoffs makes a mockery of all that Rick DiPietro, Alexi Yashin, Mike Milbury and Charles Wang have worked years to destroy.

To be fair, the Islander management did get something right

Analyzing the team name - Another team based on their geographical location and which will seem utterly stupid next year when they move from Manhattan Island inland to Brooklyn. Thankfully, they are not the first team to suffer like this, as basketball's LA Lakers were originally named for the lakes of Minnesota before their move, NFL's Phoenix Cardinals shared the name of the state bird of the MLB's St. Louis Cardinals and  the Montreal Canadiens were once named for the amount of Canadiens on their team.


Playoff Prediction; This is the type of series that every Penguin lover sees as proof almighty that they were meant to win the Cup. For the Islanders, this series just reminds them that they have a lot of work still ahead of them to be considered contenders.  Penguins in four straight.

Who looks like the 2013 Trade Geniuses; 1st Day on the New Job

It's always important to judge a trade by the very first game that the recent victims/rental players participate in with their new team. After all, they don't know anybody yet, nobody has tried to hit on their girlfriends and reporters are madly trying to get their first angle for a news story on the 'new guy'. So here's the immediate winners from the NHL trade deadline day;

Tampa Bay Lightning;

the O on his jersey could be called 'fore-shadowing'or 
amount of Lightning fans who had heard of Ben Bishop.

Ben Bishop earns a shut out with his first game of the Bolts, the first in new Coach Cooper's career with a 5-0 rout over the always dangerous Carolina Hurricanes, champion of both North and South Carolina.
Bishop stopped 45 shots for his first win for Tampa Bay which unfortunately means that unless he continues to post a 1000 save % for the rest of the season, there is nowhere to go but down.

I am extremely happy with you guys right now,
don't confuse this with my mad face.

New York Rangers

This team looks like geniuses right now (yes, tortorella is still their coach). Ryan Clowe gets 2 goals and an assist, Derek Brassard formerly of Columbus gets 1G 3A and John Moore also scores a goal in their first showing in Rangers uniforms. Clowe gets calls from Mark Messier asking to be in on the next photo op, but Clowe wisely declines.

The 2013 NHL Trade Deadline Recap (for realsies too)

so much hockey bullshit to feast on...

After a testosterone-laden 8 hours, the NHL trade deadline has passed with only one surprise to me; that  an old-fashioned real trade that could easily be emulated in certain hockey pools run by competent, efficient team managers that understand it takes something to get something. Unfortunately, I'm not in one of those types of pools so i will just have to sit back and wait for Edmonton to return to it's former glory.
Thankfully, Columbus and the New York Rangers did something that made waiting 6 hours for TSN updates worth it.

It was a busy morning as sports anchors and analysts tried to look busy in finding something to say about the deadline, as per annual tradition and it wasn't until near the end of the day that things apparently heated up. By then, GM's finally had responded to all their emails that had accumulated from various opinionated arm-chair coaches and did their thing.

Here's my few worthy observations;

Biggest Surprise of the Day; Marian Gaborik would waive his no-trade clause to go to Columbus
Maybe he just doesn't know where Columbus is (technically, neither do I) but it's a good fit; Gaborik can go score goals somewhere nobody has heard of him and Columbus gets that potential goal scorer to replace Rick Nash. Plus, Columbus is doing surprisingly okay this year with Bobrovsky in net, making Steve Mason expendable, which i will get to later.

Finally, the Columbus hockey fan can now weep openly...

In the lamest block buster trade of the year, Rick Nash who is probably the only 'bona-fide' superstar to have never played in a playoff game (apparently he did drive to 4) is heading to the New York Rangers and in return, Columbus doesn't have to answer any more of Nash's emails. So it's a win-win-win.

If you have a Rick Nash playing card you can get one indistinguishable Russian, one funny-named guy, a young defenceman that couldn't make the Calgary Flames and a first pick next year which will most likely be somewhere in the top 20.

Columbus moves someone who showed all the leadership potential of a young Alexandre Daigle and the scoring ability of Alexei Yashin (or vice versa).   New York moves The Dube and New York potheads have to try and find some drug-related nickname for Nash.

And exactly 4 seconds after the trade was announced, all nhl pundits turned to the Roberto Luongo situation and tried to pinpoint exactly where Mike Gillis was for a reaction.  He was found somewhere between 'don't-give-a-shit lane' and 'seriously, go-get-laid avenue'.