It’s Hockey not Baseball and we’re in D.C. NOT Baltimore

Dear Retarded Assholes sitting behind me in Sections 412 and 413 at the Verizon Center during last night’s Washington Capitals game against the Carolina Hurricanes,

First off, let me thank you for the effort you put in hauling yourself to your feet when the nice lady who’d won the ESPN Zone Star Spangled Sing-Off started in on her not-too-bad rendition of our country’s National Anthem. This shows you have at least some of the basic motor skills necessary to maintain rudimentary control over the lower functions of your barely evolved primate-like bodies.

Personally, I generally don’t sing along with whoever is chosen to perform the Star Spangled Banner, but will sometimes do so in the absolute privacy of my own home when I’m sure there’s no one around. This is mainly because it is a tough song to sing, and my singing has been known to cause birds to drop dead and fall from the sky and young children to run screaming for their mothers.

I don’t like to subject the general public to this kind of abuse, so I refrain.

You retarded assholes, on the other hand, did join in, which is fine since you obviously don’t care about what others think of your singing voices. But, if you’re going to sing it, sing the whole song not just the single syllable you think makes you cool and allows you to giggle like a tweener touching herself for the first time.

I’ll start this off simply so your cretinous, pre-anthropoid walnut-sized brains can absorb it without bursting into flame and turning into a teaspoon of ash.

No matter what you’ve been told by the people you believe are your natural, biological parents as you’ve grown up, it is never, ever OK or cute or supportive of the team or whatever to shout out the “O!” in the line “O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave” of the national anthem.

I can even spell that out for you if you’re having trouble with the concept: N-E-V-E-R. NEVER.

And here’s why you warthog-faced buffoons:

1. First and foremost it’s disrespectful. We’ll leave aside for a moment the person singing it for real won the ESPN Zone Star Spangled Sing-Off, but she sang it well, so that’s a push. Most people can barely deal with the actual singers mangling the song; do not aid and abet these singers in their crimes.

2. We were at a friggin’ hockey game, not a mid-summer contest at Camden Yards fercrissakes. Yes, yes, I know you were deprived of local baseball growing up and were forced to root for the Orioles and I’m truly very, very sorry for that (and for your having to live with a jackass of an owner like Peter Angelos). Trust me, I know about sorry, I grew up a Pirate fan.

But guess what? Good news. In case you haven’t heard, we (my hands are circling around in an inclusive motion) have a local team now, the Nationals, who are getting ready to start their second season in their lovely, if somewhat horrendously overpriced park in Southeast. Even better news: You can trade in all of that ugly black and orange Orioles’ gear at least, for Godsakes, on hockey nights. (I’d never ask someone to switch team allegiances just because a pro team moved to your city.)

3. Take a look at this map from the good folks at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (they’re pretty smart). Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to catch up.

See that yellow rectangle with a little something dangling off it in the bottom left corner of the map? That’s Washington, D.C. Extra bonus information: The D.C. stands for District of Columbia. Now you can impress all your friends and win bets at your local watering hole.

Now, up there in the top right corner of the map? That yellow Nevada-looking polygon? (I won’t even try to define that, just trust me) that’s Baltimore, Maryland. I’ll say that again sloooowly: Bal-ti-more, Mary-land.

Quick quiz: Where were you when you shouted out the “O!” in the Star Spangled Banner? Correct! Slow, but correct nonetheless. You were at a HOCKEY GAME in WASHINGTON, D.C.!! Not a baseball game in Baltimore, Maryland.

Shouting out the “O!” at a sporting event in Baltimore, let alone Washington, isn’t cute. It isn’t funny. All it does is make you look and sound even more like the retarded assholes you actually are.

Thanks so much for your time, you can now return to your daily drooling. (Of course, the drooling thing only applies to the actual retarded assholes who do this, everyone else, thanks for reading.)

The Foggy Dew

(And don’t think I don’t have my eye on you Atlanta fans who, for years, have been singing the last word of the first verse as “Braves” rather than “brave.” That’s even worse than the jackasses this post is directed toward.)

Carry on my wayward son...

I'm headed out to the hills and wilds of Maryland, Virginy and West "By God" Virginia this weekend with some friends to get a look at what I hope will be some decent color in the trees.

We're headed up to Harpers Ferry, site of John Brown's famous, but ultimately unsuccessful raid. Brown and his men, 20 including himself, attacked the federal arsenal (which was guarded by one guy) at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers hoping to liberate some of the 100,000 rifles and muskets there. The weapons were intended to arm slaves during the coming insurrection.

As I was reading a copy of the Express I found in the bathroom, I noticed the "Today in History" column. Turns out, today is the 149th anniversary of the failed raid. (As is our wont here in America, I'm guessing there's going to be some kind of party or ceremony in Harpers Ferry a year from today.)

Happy Anniversary Mr. Brown.

The raiders were eventually surrounded and routed by U.S. Marines led by U.S. Army Col. Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart. Turns out, also according to Wikipedia, John Wilkes Booth borrowed a uniform less than two months later to attend Brown's hanging in Charles Town (which was then in Virginia).

Isn't it interesting how the same names come up again and again? Lee was there at what was one of the very first explosions that would become the Civil War (aka The War of Northern Aggression or "the Recent Unpleasantness") as a Union colonel. A few years later, as general-in-chief of the the Confederate Army, he rode his faithful Traveller to a meeting with Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House to end the war. (Incidentally, this meeting took place in Wilbur McLean's parlor. The First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) was fought in July 1861 on McLean's farm.)

Booth, who would interrupt the president's night out at the theatre, would later be shot to death by Union troops down-abouts Port Royal five and a half years after watching Brown swing.

Well, I could go on making conspiracy theorist-like connections all day long, but I'll stop now. All that said, I'm looking forward to seeing Harpers Ferry and the leaves this weekend.