"Awards," a Lil Hockey, and a Lil Kultur

From the inimitable David Burge…

You May Already Be a Winner

Ah, January... when all the world's abuzz about the awards and nominees, and the nominators who nominate them, and the awarders who award them. Not to mention the inevitable celebrity feuds, catty backstabbing and shameless studio campaigns that provide another rich layer of drama to the spectacle. The Oscars? Of course not! I'm talking about the most coveted media prize on the planet: the Bloggie Award Thingy.

Unfortunately, there is a dark side to the Awards Week glitter of Pixeltown. For every winner of Best Canadian Pet Grooming Site, or Best Mid-Low-Major Blog With Moon in Scorpio, there will be millions of losers. After the gift baskets are distributed and the red carpet rolled up, you will find these broken souls in a private VIP booth at the Viper Club, face-down in mountain of cocaine, angrily muttering about the injustice of it all.

I hear you, tortured blogosphere artists. But take heart, for The International Center for Extreme Internet Excellence has just named your site as 2008 International Blog of the Year!

As a token of this prestigious honor, please accept this distinctive genuine synthetic golden jpeg proclaiming your site's historic achievement. Feel free to proudly display on your sidebar, print out as a handsome medallion, or perhaps tattoo it on your neck. And, as an official inductee into this elite club of winners, you have been officially deputized by the ICEIE to regift this fabulous award to any other blogger you deem worthy. You have been entrusted with an awesome power, so please exercise responsibly.

Hey! Cool! That’s me he’s talking about, Gentle Reader! Woo-hoo! (/sarcasm)

But, all kidding aside, Mr. Burge touches upon a subject that is near and dear to my curmudgeonly heart. By that I mean all these blog awards bestowed by one blogger on another… or five others, if not more. The award in question is always some sort of home-grown badge that proclaims to the world that you, Dear Blogger, are “Kreativ,” “Excellent,” a “Best Friend Forever,” you’re “Really, Really NICE!” or some such. Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate recognition as much as the next guy or gal (proof of which resides in my sidebar). But a mention (link) in the body of a post, including me on your blog-roll, or some such thing is entirely adequate. Unless you happen to the owner of some sort of blogging award determined by reader votes or some sort of panel or the like. In other words… the major league awards (Heh. Fat chance EIP has there.). An Instalanche would nice, too. Just once… but we digress.

But spare me the cutesy Photoshop creations. I don’t want to seem like The Mom of All Ingrates (or whatever the male equivalent is)… I just think it’s silly. And I’m simply not in to “silly.” YMMV, of course. And that’s OK with me.

Just one more digression and then we’ll MoveOn. OTOH… there’s a distinct lack of certain awards in the ‘sphere, as this commenter at IowaHawk notes:

It's all well and good to create awards for internationally established bloggers, but what about an award for those too lazy to create/host/maintain a blog of their own, but are skillful in dumbing the work of others down in the Comments section? We need a Blog Commenters award, dammit.

Most Annoying Troll
Most Posts while Intoxicated
Most Fearful of Punctuation
Greatest inability to use adverbs
Most dreadful fatality while posting a comment

I shall now nominate myself as Longest Post on this Thread with no Apparent Reason Other than to Amuse Myself.

Heh. I agree completely. I just might create a Blog Award in the highlighted category, as misuse of punctuation and general abuse of the Mother Tongue is one of my minor hot-buttons. I’m such a pedant in this space… always have been, always will be. But you know I won’t create that award for “Creative Punctuation Use,” Gentle Reader. Coz I’m just too nice, even though I don’t have one single badge proclaiming that fact to the world. So misuse the English language to your heart’s content. And please don’t remind me of my “comma problem” or my inability to write a simple declarative sentence. We’re working on those.

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Realignment talk:

Scott Burnside: Funny how your memories of our events together often vary dramatically from mine, or from reality in general. But you are right, my friend. When you see compelling games like the Flyers-Caps tilt the other night, it makes you pine for more. It brings us to the question of realignment, which pops up every now and then, and will likely continue to do so as we discuss the future of franchises in Phoenix, Atlanta and Nashville, among others.

The assumption has long been if the NHL ever gets to a point where it is serious about realigning the conferences, the first order of business will be to move Detroit into the Eastern Conference, which would set up some interesting rivalry possibilities with Toronto, Buffalo and Ottawa.

LeBrun: Scotty, I wouldn't be so sure about moving Detroit. I think Chicago, among others, would have serious issues with that. While I agree it's never made any sense to have the Wings in the Western Conference, the Original Six tie to the Blackhawks would be tough to break up. But this topic made me dig up one of my old notes from December 2006, when the NHL last floated realignment to its governors.

It’s just talk, though, albeit among two very knowledgeable hockey writers. I favor a realignment that puts Detroit in the East, because it’s ALL about the travel. Anyone who’s done any amount of business traveling knows it’s a bitch… a real bitch. Your body clock gets disrupted, you don’t sleep in your own bed, and you eat mediocre food… at best. I suspect it’s the same sort of situation for professional sports teams, even those with their own airplane. But… travel is especially onerous during the playoff run, and MOST especially for the Wings… whose likely opponents during the second and subsequent playoff rounds (Ins’hAllah!) are ALL on the West Coast… or way the Hell up in Alberta. The best Detroit can hope for in the current conference alignment (in terms of travel) would be early playoff series against Chicago, St. Louis, or Nashville. It’s still a long flight from Hockeytown to places like Dallas… never mind El Aay.

But… if Detroit were in the East the worst case scenario would involve travel to Florida (not much chance of that, given the pathetic state of both the Panthers and Lightning) or Carolina (fat chance, yet again). Otherwise? Montreal, Boston, Washington, Philly, Pittsburgh… all pieces of travel cake compared to shuttling back and forth to, say, Anaheim. And think of the renewed rivalry between Detroit and Toronto… not to mention the other Original Six teams in the East. Yeah, it would be sad to see the renewed rivalry between the Hawks and the Wings die on the vine and I’d most certainly miss watching the Wings beat up on Colorado. But we’ve made our point as far as the Avs go, and it’ll be years before that formerly proud franchise returns to something resembling its glory days. (Sorry, Andy… but it’s true.)

So… yeah. Speaking strictly from a Detroit perspective, the NHL should seriously consider realigning the conferences. It would be also good for the game all the way ‘round, methinks.

More hockey talk… Eric Duhatschek of the Globe and Mail gives us his mid-season review, the guys at SI do the same.

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Today’s Pics: A few shots taken at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, back at the turn of the century. The first two shots were taken in the Contemporary Gallery, the other two were taken in the statuary garden, including one of YrHmblScrb… who doesn’t know a whole helluva lot about art but definitely knows what he likes… examples of which abounded in the statuary garden.

More on my day at the MFAH here. The MFAH official web site is here. (The usual disclaimers/notices apply... such as "first-generation digital pics - apologies" and click to embiggen.)