STANLEY CUP 2013...

And so... it is that time of the year again.

The NHL Stanley Cup is about to start - with the last of the regular season games scheduled for Sunday 28 April. The Stanley Cup starts on April 30th - NHL Countdown Clock

This has been a strange and rapid season as the NHL didn't even get started this year until after Christmas (due to player/union/NHL disputes about the split of revenues). But, I am very happy to say that the Stanley Cup is on. We know the 12 teams that are now going through from the East and West coast teams. The top 6 of each are: 

Very happy to see both my teams I follow in the playoffs this year; Montreal Canadiens and New York Islanders (the latter for the first time since 2006/07).

It should be an interesting journey as hardly any of the NYI team have played in the Stanley Cup before as they have been building a strong new, young team for a few years. Nabokov, the netminder is a seasoned playoff guy but hardly any of the forwards have been there before.

I might even jump a plane to NY if they get through the first few rounds.

The atmosphere in some of the sports bars in Manhattan is going to be brilliant, even better still on Long Island (where I've never stayed before). 

More reports coming very soon...

THE BENEFITS OF SLOWING DOWN..

Benefit #1
So, today I have woken up to snow all around and the sight of my neghbours trying to get to work on a snowbound, 1-in-3 hill with bends! This makes me very happy that Polko and Mrs Polko decided to sloooow the f*ck down a few years ago, get sensible and restructure the way we lived (moving from town to country and working from home). Once they've all slivered their way down and off to their various concrete towers of babel to chatter incessantly into telephones about things that don't really matter to them we will have a whole hillside and dozens of acres to go out and have a massive snowball fight in. Cool.

Benefit #2
The slowdown has reduced our new work flow (though not ceased it altogether happily). So, the phones are not ringing so often and emails arriving at a slightly reduced pace. Giving me the time to get on my PS3 and Call of Duty: World At War having bought it and played it intensively for a week then finding myself swapping back to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare online - hits the mark with me more than stomping around Russia or Japan as part of the WWII effort!

Benefit #3
Related to the time I currently have - there are now signs that NASN television may well be starting to feature some of the better NHL team games on their channel, having attempted to buy in cheaper games by lesser teams than the Montreal Canadiens, NY Rangers and Islanders, Toronto Mapleleafs etc. So, I have more quality ice hockey to watch... and soon they promise they will even put Hockey Night in Canada back on each week. yay-hey!

Benefit #4
This came in the BBC News home page load-up this morning: Sales growth slows down at Tesco!

What a wonderful piece of news! Apparently like for like (which means they strip out the effects of opening new stores and extending existing ones in the last year) quarterly sales have grown by only 2% against 4.8% in the same period last year. Tesco are relatively exposed to swings in demand as they sell not only staple foodstuffs but also a large range of 'other items', luxury and spur of the moment purchases such as electronics, DVDs and clothing.

Factor in the effects that Woolworths keeping hold of their vast stocks of DVDs/CDs and other media to sell off at whatever price they can get for them this year (Woolworths are the largest distributors of said products to the supermarket chains and their administrators know that this stock is going to help them maximise cash in their winding up process) and things might just test the management Board at Tesco and the like a little more than they have been doing for the past five/six years or more. My guess is that some Directors of larger companies may well be asking themselves if slowing their life a little is in order in the coming few months. My advice would be: take the bonuses and golden pay-off's and get the hell out, learn to grow your own food, keep your own animals, reduce your consumption a little and regain some basic skills of being human. Anyone with a manual can operate a Blackberry, not everyone can grow them or make a Blackberry Trifle.

Which final thought reminds me of one of my favourite lines in a Braintax rap, when talking about a future world where energy lines break down and people are forced back into a simpler and more skilled way of living..

..holed up in the woods with my trusty rifle,
the rains rusted it up,
so now I'm living on snow and berry trifle.

Which then moves my mind onto Survivors - on TV tonight at 9p.m. Yay-hey times ten!

PRE-SEASON EXCITEMENT

Today is the first game for the Montreal Canadiens in their 100th year of NHL hockey playing. Not the first real game so to speak, but the first of their Pre-Season series, 9 games to warm them up starting with a Boston Bruins match up at home..

This year, all fans are hoping for their name on the Stanley Cup. It's been a while and it's a special year! Polko is aiming to attend a few games early in 2009.

The first game of the season proper is October 10th with their first test against ultra-rivals Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday October 11th.. Of one thing I am sure. You'll be hearing more about their progress from time to time during the year among my blog posts.


And onto something else...

I run two installs of Media Monkey and from time to time like to take a look at what I've been sub-consciously focusing on in my listening habits. This is my current top ten albums list from my work computer, which is always very different to my home PC given that I don't have access to my full mp3 drive at work and the fact that several other people have access to, and therefore mess with, my home PC mp3/Media Monkey playlist. It helps to juggle things up a bit and I get to listen to things I probably wouldn't otherwise.


No surprise to see a fair bit of hip hop (real hip hop that is, not shit-hop) in my daytime/work playlist. Rhythm based tracks tend to get me typing faster! Braintax is always lurking around there in the top three or four as are the Pet Shop Boys - their particular brand of gay-disco-pop works well when you are concentrating not on the music but on something else (sorry boys!).

One surprise though is the rapid ascent of Dub Pistols on my playlists of late. They are a brilliant example of how the best UK music takes a range of multi-cultural/multi-national influences and re-creates that form of music to a higher level. If you've not listened to any of their tracks take a peek at The Hype Machine or similar. Apart from 6 Million Ways To Live which is my personal favourite, they also produced some good cover tracks recently (2007?) including The Stranglers' Peaches (with Rodney P - one of the UK's finest rappers and Terry Hall of The Specials aka etc etc), Gangsters (again with help from Terry Hall) and even Blondie's groundbreaking white-rap Rapture.

They rent MySpace space at http://www.myspace.com/thedubpistols.

Soul shaking.

Oh yes.