A Day In The Life Of A Leafs Fan

The NHL regular season is about to begin, and the Toronto Maple Leafs, that hopeless and hapless story in dashed expectations, will be hosting Montreal on Wednesday. Perhaps the game will go in this fashion, from the point of view of a die hard fan we haven't heard from in awhile. Oh, and in case you're wondering, Punch Imlach was the coach of the last Maple Leafs team to win a Stanley Cup. Fifty one years ago. It seemed a fitting substitution for a Leafs fan curse word.

10:12 AM. Awake at home. Got the day off work. Big day today! Big! We’re talking huge, infinity plus one gigantic. Because it’s not just any day. It’s the NHL season opener for our boys. Montreal’s in town, and this year is gonna be the big year! The year the Leafs finally bring the Stanley Cup home where it belongs. Fifty one years without a Cup is a crime! And this is the year it’s gotta happen!

10:50 AM. Watchin’ some of Don Cherry’s Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em videos to get myself in a fighting mindset. Not that I’m gonna be fightin’ or anything. Unless some jackass Habs fan picks a fight, because if that happens, it’s go time, buddy! Hell yeah! Don’s a genius, man. My mentor, my guide to life. Tells it like it is, pisses off a buncha losers who think he dresses funny. I don’t know why anyone would think that. 

1:32 PM. Had myself a good lunch. That’ll tide me over til burgers at the bar before game time. Okay, time for the Leafs Fan Prayer. Changes by the year, dependin’ on who’s been traded. O Father, who art in heaven with those members of the 1967 roster who have passed on, hallowed be the Leafs, their kingdom come, on Earth as it is in Leafs Nation…

1:33 PM. … and forgive us when we give into despair, for it has been five long decades of dashed hopes and expectations, but this is the year, baby! This is the year, because Tavares has come to join us. So give us the Stanley Cup for the next hundred years, because our fans are really loyal. The Blue and the White is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever plus one, amen.

2:47 PM. Another part of the preparations. Call it superstition, call it whatever the **** you want, but we gotta do the stab the voodoo doll thing. I’ve got a doll sized Carey Price sweater, so that’s the one going on it right now. Jabbing it with pins to bring bad luck to the Habs. You know, I do this a lot with visitin’ teams, and it never seems to work. Maybe I should stop or somethin’, maybe I’m bringin’ bad luck to my boys… no, that’s just silly. Gotta work sometime, right?

4:10 PM. Harry and Jack show up at the house. Hey boys! Big night tonight!

4:26 PM. Me and Harry and Jack are all excited, talkin’ about the big game. Sure, the playoffs were a disappointment, getting’ kicked out in the first round by those Bruins. Man, I hate the Bruins. Almost as much as I hate the Sens. Half as much as I hate the Habs, because let’s face it, hatin’ the Habs is in the lifeblood of every Leafs fan. I tell you boys, our guys have been disrespected and tossed around by the League for too long. But this is the year it’s all gonna change. We’re gonna have Tavares out there with the boys, and he’s gonna show everyone what’s what and who’s who. And this is gonna be the season where the Leafs break all the records and win every single game and claim the Stanley Cup and bring it back home! Because it’s gotta happen! It’s just gotta!

5:03 PM. Me and Harry and Jack meet the cab that’s come to pick us up. ‘Cause we’re gettin’ hammered tonight, and you can’t drive drunk. At least that’s what the law says. You ask me, I’m perfectly fine behind the wheel when I’ve had a few, but my insurance company told me that they’ll cancel my policy the next time. They also think I might have a problem with booze. **** ‘em, the only time I’ve got a problem with booze is when I don’t have any booze.

5:28 PM. Me and Jack and Harry are busy talkin’ while this cabbie drives us downtown. Hey, who gives a **** about rush hour traffic, drive on the sidewalk if you have to! We got some drinkin’ to get in before the game! Me and the boys talk about the Cup and the fact that we’re not allowed anywhere near it since we’re still on probation. Geez, boys, all we did was steal the Cup and hold it for ransom, you’d think we killed the Pope or somethin’ by the way we’ve been punished for it.

5:42 PM. We finally get into the bar after that stupid ass cabbie drops us off. You ask me, boys, he was a Sens fan. What’s the problem with drivin’ on the sidewalks? The place is busy. Hey, Max! Beer here!

6:39 PM. Comin’ into the arena before the game. Gotta get to our seats. Had a couple beers with our burgers at the bar. Hell, we’ll catch up to that after the game. Hey, Jack, you notice they changed the name of the arena again? Jesus, Punch Imlach, and Mary, why not just keep it as one name? The Maple Leafs Victory Arena? Sounds good, right? Right, boys?

7:03 PM. The teams are on the ice. The anthem is being sung. Me and Harry and Jack are singin’ along. With glowing hearts, the Leafs are best, the true north strong and Leafs…

7:08 PM. Openin’ face off, and here we go, yeeeeeeaaaaaaaah baby, kill ‘em! Kill… wait, what the ****??? Did Drouin just score on us???

7:19 PM. Totally baffled. First period ain’t even half done and Montreal is ahead of us by ten to zero. Come on, Tavares! Score on that SOB Price already!

7:51 PM. First period over. Me and Harry and Jack are in shock. Eighteen to nothing?? Boys, you gotta tell me. Is this a bad dream?

8:28 PM. Busy yellin’ at the Leafs to rally. Come on, boys! It’s only a thirty goal deficit! You can score thirty one goals in a row, right? Right? Move already! No, not like that! Jesus, Punch Imlach, and Mary! Now we’re down thirty one to nothing! Dammit, are you guys blind??? The net’s right there!

9:41 PM. Last two minutes of regulation. Habs, forty two, Toronto, zero. Boys? This is a humiliation. This is… this is… this is the last straw. You know what? This is us, wastin’ our lives, rooting for a team that’s always going to **** up and break our hearts. You know that? That’s what this is. But **** that, I’m done. You hear me? I’m done! Yeah, Babcock, I’m yellin’ at you! Your team sucks! I’m done!

9:56 PM. Me and Harry and Jack come into the bar after leavin’ the arena. Max greets us with the bad news. Turns out the Habs scored four more goals in the last minute of play after we left. Final score Montreal 46, Toronto 0. **** it, Max, a night like this, I need some ****in’ booze to make the ****in’ pain go away. So beer here!

10:49 PM. Drownin’ our sorrows with a buncha Leafs fans, feelin’ the pain. Fifty years, boys! Fifty years of dashed hopes and dreams and watchin’ it all fall apart. My old man would puke if he saw how long it would take! Speakin’ of pukin’, I think I’m gonna throw up.

12:28 AM. Me and Harry and Jack have gotten ourselves totally wasted over the last two and a half hours, and we’ve been talkin’. Okay. So this was one bad ****in’ night. It happens. Okay? But whatever we mighta said two hours ago about **** the Maple Leafs and burnin’ our jerseys, **** that. Because a true ****in’ fan sticks with his team through thick and thin, am I right, boys? So that’s what we do. One bad game does not a season make, or however the **** that sayin’ goes. So from here out, it’s gonna be one win after another. Because this is the ****in’ year our Leafs win the ****in’ Stanley Cup! Yeah, baby, yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

1:36 AM. Staggerin’ in the front door at home. Threw up on the porch. **** it, I’ll clean it up in the mornin’ before work. Maybe call in sick to work. Good idea. Collapsin’ on the couch. Geez, I’m gonna have the hangover from hell in the mornin’. Maybe I oughtta cut back on the drinkin’.

No, that don’t make no sense.

I love drinkin’.

Almost as much as I love the Leafs.

Wake up tomorrow, bud. It’ll be a better day. Every game from here out, our boys make up for tonight. And who knows, maybe I’ll wake up in the morning and find out that it’s yesterday and that whole thing was just a bad dream. That’d be great, right? Of course right. Go Leafs go, baby! Yeaaaaaahhhhh!

Oh, ****, my head….

An Egomaniac And A Drunken Bastard

Explosion Prone Director Returns To Music Videos, Annoys Anyone With Taste And Refinement

Nashville (CP) Reporters were summoned to the offices of Show Dog/ Universal Music in the country music capital this week for a press conference. This included real reporters, as well as entertainment reporters and a subset of that latter group: country music entertainment reporters, who brought cowboy hats and boots to the mix. The real reporters, outnumbered by knuckle dragging slow witted entertainment reporters, wondered what this was all about. It turned out that the studio is the label for country singer Toby Keith, who ended up being one half of the two obnoxious irritants we were all here to see.

A spokesman came out on stage, calling for the attention of all. “Ladies and gentlemen, Show Dog/ Universal has gathered you all here for a big announcement about our founder Toby Keith, who by the way is backstage waiting.” The real reporters glanced at each other, wondering why, in a world with so many serious news stories, we had been subjected to covering an announcement by a country music singing slob who looked like he was hit by an ugly stick. Were we all on the outs with our editors? (editor: you damned well know why you’re on the outs with me, you smirking punk)

The spokesman carried on. “Mr. Keith has a new album in the works, which he’ll be speaking about, and he’s kicking it all off with news about a music video... and the director of that video, who’s here today. Ladies and gentlemen, give a big welcome to Toby Keith and Michael Bay!”

The two men came out on stage. Keith was dressed much as you’d expect- jeans, cowboy boots, denim shirt, and cowboy hat, a dumb grin plastered over his bearded face, waving to the crowd. Bay was, as always, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a blazer, with his hair in its usual slightly dishevelled look, three or four days of stubble on his face. A full length mirror was quickly brought out on stage, placed beside the podium, and Bay took a look at himself, grinning and winking at himself. The egomaniacal movie director, given to endless amounts of explosions in films, actually started out in the music video genre. Was this a sign that the hack was going away at last, even with the many films he had in the works (editor: stop making fun of Michael Bay! He’s a great auteur!)

“Welcome to Nashville!” Keith called out, still smiling in that dumb way. This reporter couldn’t stop looking at his beat up hat, wondering idly if Keith was wearing it to hide a receding hairline in the same fashion that Garth Brooks did (editor: Hey! Don’t make fun of Garth!). “You know, I’m a real big fan of this man’s work as a director. I don’t know why he hasn’t gotten Oscars for every single film he’s ever made.”

Bay shrugged. “It must be one big conspiracy. Or the Academy voters aren’t fans of explosions, hot babes waxing cars, and more explosions.”

Keith shook his head. “How can anyone not be fans of that? Which is what brings us to what we’re all here for. See, I’ve done a lot of music videos with me bein’ in the middle of big parties with girls half my age and actin’ like I’m still in college... but I’ve never done a video that needed any Michael Bay explosions.”

Bay smiled. “And trust me, I know explosions.” This reporter sighed, wishing one of those pyrotechnic monstrosities would backfire on set and rid the world of Michael Bay once and for all.... (editor: I already told you, stop making fun of Michael Bay!) This reporter sighed again, wishing his editor would stop being such a cranky crank with horrible tastes in movies and music.

Keith nodded. “Absolutely! Which brings me to this announcement. My next album is going to be called Taking Out The Chicks. Now that might come across at first like the usual country music guys and gals down at the bar after drivin’ their pickup trucks and hangin’ out and gettin’ lucky, but that’s not what it’s meant to be. The whole album is fifteen songs of me takin’ shots at the Dixie Chicks.”

The feud goes back over twelve years, after the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, Natalie Maines, made remarks during a concert deriding George W. Bush, as well as personal clashes between Keith and the Chicks. They’ve characterized him as ignorant, while he spent time posting doctored images of Maines with the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein at his concerts. Apparently after all this time the singer persists in his loathing of the trio.

Bay carried on. “Toby asked if I’d direct the first video off the album, for his song Ignorant This! Great title, by the way, Toby. And so it’s going to be a ten minute short movie, with Toby singing, pool parties with scantily clad young women running around, a few dozen explosions, and three women who we’ve cast who look rather like the Dixie Chicks. For the purposes of the video, they’re going to be the villains of the whole piece. You’ll know they’re the villains by the way they sneer.”

Entertainment reporters were abuzz. Country music reporters let out an unanimous “yeeeeeehaaaaw!” Real reporters collectively sighed in dismay and wished they could be anywhere else but covering a press conference held by a drunken hillbilly and an egomaniac. (editor: hey! Stop making fun of Michael Bay! And Toby Keith’s a great singer, so don’t insult him!) This reporter, shackled with an editor with horrific movie and music tastes... (editor: I am going to have you drawn and quartered, I swear to God!)

“Does it occur to you that the Dixie Chicks might not like being cast as the villains in a Michael Bay music video?” another reporter asked.

Bay looked confused. “Why wouldn’t they?”

Keith shrugged. “Look, they don’t have much of no sense of humour. While I do. Nothin’ I love more than havin’ a good time and goin’ out to a party and gettin’ hammered and havin’ a laugh. So what if I’m spendin’ a whole album pickin’ a fight with them? Country music loves me, and that’s all that matters.”

Bay smiled. “So we’re gonna be busy for a couple of weeks gettin’ this video together, having fun with pool parties and drinking and having hot babes wax cars and go swiming, and of course explosions. You’ll love what we’ve got in store! Trust me, I know what I’m doing!” This reporter watched Bay and Keith step off stage, seriously doubting Bay had ever in his life known what he was doing... (editor: damn you to hell, you smirking bastard!)

As a post script, the Dixie Chicks- Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire, and Emily Robison- took questions from reporters on the matter at hand. “That’s fine with us,” Maines confirmed.

“Yes, we’ve got a song coming up on the next album meant just for Toby,” Maguire added.

Robison finished up by saying, “We’re calling it Legend Of The Drunken Bastard.”