Fire in The Heart, Ice in The Veins…

So…. Euro 2012 is underway in Poland. Ireland are out. Beaten by Croatia and then by Spain. We will likely be beaten by Italy tomorrow night, just as a final kick us in the balls when we’re already on our knees, sealing our place as one of the most embarrassing countries to be from in Europe. Cheers for that one. The Irish fans and their vocal support long past the final whistle at the Spain match are having their praises sung by all and sundy, except for Roy Keane, who said something about coming along for a sing-song not being enough. Personally, I could give a shit about any of it.

Here’s what I know about football: 

I tried to be into football for a while when I was younger. My brother and cousin were all about it, so I joined ’em, deciding my favourite team was Manchester United and my favourite player was Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. My cousin and I, creatively, called him “Curly Boy” because of his curly, black hair, and, man, we thought we were THE SHIT for coming up with such a hilarious and original nickname. So… that’s embarrassing for me. Anyways my affair with the beautiful game was short lived owing to the fact that I found it boring as hell and didn’t understand any of the rules. Any of ’em. None. Except that a red card meant “get off, you naughty little scamp!”

That was it. In the years since my foray into soccer fandom, I’ve dallied with other sports. I played handball for a while in National School (I even made in on to the BOYS doubles team! WHAT! WHAT!). But handball, as it turns out, is a pathetic sport and nobody plays it. Then I was an avid horse-rider for years. The highlight of my year used to be going to the Dublin Horse Show every August. And I’d always buy a pile of junk that I didn’t need; grooming brushes, pony treats, coloured whips, helmet covers, books, you name it! Alas, you don’t see much of equestrian competitions on the big screens down the local. Then I fell in with motorsport for a good while. There was a good two years where I repeatedly found myself awake at some ridiculous hour of a Sunday morning so I could watch the live coverage of whatever Formula 1 race was on (I was a Raikkonen fan.) Nothing stuck. Rugby? Too violent. Golf? Too boring. Cricket? Too British. GAA? Too familiar.

I gave up. I quit like a great big quitter. I informed the tomboy lurking inside me that she was bound to stay where she was, to be freed only by occasional splurges on Military Channel documentaries and Man Vs Wild. I dedicated my life to celebrity gossip instead. I was in an Irish Bar in Newcastle with some family last April, when our home province team, Ulster, beat Edinburgh to make it through to the 2012 Heineken Cup Final. The place was jammed with excited, chanting, raucous men, my own relations included. The buzz was electric. I couldn’t tell you what the score was. I could, however tell you that that was the day after Barack Obama made fun of Kim Kardashian at the White House Correspondents dinner. Or that Beyonce called her fake pregnancy rumours “crazy” that day. Or that LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian had just renewed their wedding vows. That’s what I can tell ya.

So, it was somewhat a bolt from the blue when, in June of last year, I discovered….. HOCKEY!!!

I was a latecomer to the 2011 NHL race for the Stanley Cup, not witnessing anything before the opening game of the finals. I was introduced to the game by my best-friend and serial cohort, who happens to be Vancouver born. The season culminated in June for a series of seven playoff games between the Boston Bruins and the Vancouver Canucks. So my best friend is a ‘Couv native. But then, I have an uncle who’s lived in Boston for the past twenty-odd years. Who was I gonna root for? I ultimately went with the Canucks after coming to the realisation that they were ruthlessly vicious, hard-as-nails and hell bent on fighting for that cup. The Canucks fought dirty throughout the playoffs and we fucking loved it. We downloaded every game the night after it had aired (because where were we gonna watch it live?) and we sat, enthralled, involved and committed.

It came down to the wire. When game seven rolled around on June 15, the Canucks had three wins and the Bruins had three wins. Game seven was the decider. And the Bruins destroyed the Canucks 4-0 at Rogers Arena, taking the Stanley Cup back home to Massachusetts and out of the reach of the devastated Canucks. Ryan Kesler bawled his wee eyes out right there on the ice. The people of Vancouver responded decidedly badly to the loss. Suffice to say, they went fucking apeshit and rioted the shit out of the city!

Canucks fan in Vancouver in the aftermath of the 2011 Stanley Cup Riot

I didn’t mind all that much. I was happy enough. Because I’d discovered a sport I could get down with. I faacking laaaaved hockey!!!

Agus is anseo an fath…

The Insanse “WHERETHEFUCKISTHEPUCK?!” Speed

Hockey moves fast. The players skim across the ice at lightening speed and send the puck even faster. The average speed of a player is around 25mph. The average speed of the puck is around 97mph. Pretty nifty. Games are three periods, each twenty minutes in duration, and there’s zero let up. I mostly learned to forget trying to keep and eye on the puck and just watch the players. Go where they go. All the glory of goals, as far as I’m concerned, has to be absorbed in the replay, seeing as I’m never actually paying close enough attention to see it do down in the first place.

Here’s Canuck centre, Ryan Kesler, goin’ hella fast at the 2011 NHL Skills Competition: 

The Violence

Listen okay, I know I said that I can’t watch rugby because it’s too violent, BUUUUT, for absolutely no justifiable reason whatsoever, the violence in hockey is kind of what makes it for me. So we know these guys move fast. But they also go hard.

There’s a tactic used in play called “checking”. Without going into an condescending and unnecessary explanation, checking, or more specifically, body-checking, involves slamming oneself into an opponent, usually the dude with the puck, and forcing him into the ringside boards. It’s fucking brutal lads.

This one time, in 1996, Detroit Red Wings player, Kris Draper, was checked from behind by Colorado Avalanche player, Claude Lemieux. He hit the boards face first. Broke his jaw, his nose and his cheekbone. Draper’s teammate, Darren McCarty was behind the board and later said he “could hear his face crack”. Noice. McCarty would later go on to launch an EPIC retaliation attack on Lemieux the following year when the Red Wings faced the Avalanches again.

A Subheading For Violence… THE FIGHTING!

Oh man, the fighting. You know, I’ve long held the opinion that soccer players are nothing but over-paid, over-pampered, helpless little paaaaansies. This I maintain. You know that  guy, Didier Drogba? Plays for Chelsea. Isn’t he notorious for faking injuries? I think I read that… Anyways, you don’t get that shit in hockey. These guys are HARD. AS. NAILS.

Fighting, in the NHL, is not only legal, it is openly encouraged and viewed as tradition. Heck, it is tradition. Fights are usually the role of the enforcers. It’s their job to aggravate the fuck out of the other guys. Some fights are premeditated by the players, some  erupt suddenly out of nowhere, some involve two guys, some involve two teams, some are professional, some are personal. But all are ferocious. Sticks are thrown down, gloves are usually discarded and players descend into a melee of fists and fury on the ice, watched by the refs, who decide when enough is enough.

This is a good ‘un: 

Hockey teams are close knit and more often than not, players are not afraid to jump into a fight on behalf of a teammate slighted. Blood is shed and the crowds go clayne ballistic for it! Decent fighters are valued by their team and revered by fans.

Hell, the Canucks won me over last year because of their infamous bad behaviour on the ice. I loved it.

The Fans

Michael Buble, of Vancouver, British Columbia, is so dedicated to hockey that he requests a local team hockey puck in his dressing room everywhere he performs. Michael Buble (who’s marriage won’t last, by the way), is so devoted to hockey that he bought part of the Vancouver Giants team.

Hockey fans are loyal and committed. And they’re involved. Part of the beauty of a hockey game is that the fans are separated from the game by just a glass board, which the players are slammed up against continually throughout a game. There seems to be a certain level of intimacy at a hockey game. Thousands of people, supporting their side and going pure wild at the very inclination that a fight might go down.

I digress again to the Vancouver riots. The second time Canucks fans had a less than docile response to a Stanley Cup loss. Yes it was a pretty substantial overreaction. Things got a bit cray, people got hurt, it wasn’t cool. But if anything marked the kinship that the fans feel for their teams, that was it. Vancouver was a city devastated. They had come so close. And they reacted, in true Canuck style; ridiculously violently.

Skill

So you want to be a hockey player? Okay, well first you’re gonna have to learn to skate. Then you’re gonna have to learn to skate backwards. Then fast. You’re gonna have to be able to stop suddenly or you’ll get busted into the boards. Now you’ve gotta learn how to use a stick, how to hold it, how to maneuver the puck. Then learn all the various types of shots; slapshot, wristshot, snapshot, backhand slapshot, sheesh. Okay, then learn how to “deke”, or trick your opponent with decoy moves. Evasive skating. Toughen up for some checking. Lose some teeth, perhaps. Learning to fight wouldn’t be the worse decision.

I just… Like, it’s definitely more than I know I’d be able to handle! Yeah, yeah, footballers are skilled too. Aye, but they’re also great big paaaansies, remember!

Shootouts

In 2005, the NHL made a controversial decision; to make tied games obsolete. The shootout was born.

It’s pretty straight-forward, if the game runs it’s time and the scores are tied, then it goes to shootouts. Each team has three players take a shot. The best of three wins the game. But what if both teams score 2 out of 3? Then it’s shootouts until one team scores and the other misses.  Simples.

It means every game ends with a clear winner. It means that tensions run high and games often come right down to it!

The Stanley Cup Itself

First of all, all the players on a Stanley Cup winning team get their names engraved on the cup. So that’s awesome.

Second of all, every player on the winning team gets a day with the cup, and he can do whatever the heck he likes with it. In 1996, Sylvain Lefebvre , of the Colorado Avalanches, used the cup as a baptismal font for his daughter. Creeeeepy. Okay. In 1994, New York Rangers forward, Ed Olczyk, took the cup to the stable of  Kentucky Derby winner, Go For Gin, where the horse ate out it. The horse… Ate… Out of the Stanley Cup. Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks took the cup to Niagara Falls in 2010. Mark Messier, Edmonton Oilers, took it to a strip club. It’s even been to Kandahar, Afghanistan. I mean, you know?! That’s aces!

Los Angeles Kings captain, Dustin Brown, with The Stanley Cup. June 2012.

Celebrities

I had to get it in there! As I said Mickey Buble is a massive hockey fan. Corey Monteith, of Glee fame, has been spotted at several Canucks games. Vince Vaughn is a huge Chicago Blackhawks fan. Snoop Dogg supports the Anaheim Ducks. Carrie Underwood is married to Mike Fisher of the Nashville Predators. Mike Myers, Justin Bieber and Drake are all Toronto Maple Leaf fans. Trey Parker (South Park) is a Colorado Avalanches supporter. Kevin Smith, of Mallrats, Clerks, Jay and Silent Bob, fame, supports the New Jersey Devils. Kid Rock, Detroit Red Wings. All the names, yo. All the names.

 

I could go on but I feel I’ve started rambling so I’mma go ahead and curtail myself ‘fore I go cross-eyed. You get the gist of what I’m sayin’ though, right? That hockey is gosh-darned awesome and I wish it was more available to us Paddys. Sure we love a bit of violence, no?

Look, Kanye West knows… 

Lewd, Crude, Nude and Tweeting Some Dude…

Last week I read a story that, for no reason I can put my finger on, shook me to my core (lie). I was horrified (lie). It was one of those stories that you hear and then it lingers in the back of your mind for days after, discreetly bothering you at random interludes throughout the day.

The story was about Melanie Sykes and her new toyboy lover, Jack Cockings. They’ve been doing some very racy and public talking about their relationship via Twitter.

We’ve known Melanie for years. She used to do ‘The Big Breakfast’ on Channel 4 way back when. She did ‘Today With Des and Mel’ and ‘Let’s Do Lunch With Gino and Mel’. She did ‘The Vault’ on ITV. She did ads for ‘Head and Shoulders’. She’s done loads of crap. You know, the kinds of shows that tired, slightly overweight housewives watch at 12:30 on a Tuesday afternoon with a cup of tea and a packet of Bourbons while the kids are at school and before the washing machine finishes. Melanie is one of those people that have just always been there. She’s always been around on the telly, smiling, laughing and generally being far too hot to be someone we can all relate to (in the same vein as Myleene Klass). We know her. We like her. She’s a successful television presenter. She has two young boys aged 10 and 8.  Her physique is riDONKulous.

Awww look, it’s Des and Mel! We know them!

Except now Mel has gone and forever tarnished her lovely image by being a cheap, filthy, over-sharing tart on Twitter.

After going through a divorce in 2009, Melanie soldiered on. She got herself a Radio2 show with Alan Carr. She landed a gig hosting ‘Missing Millions’ on ITV. She posed nudey, nude, nude for Esquire magazine in December 2011. And then, in May this year, Melanie did something no self-respecting (and incredibly good-looking) celebrity should ever do. She hooked up with some nobody that she met on Twitter! WHATADUMBBUTT!

The guy is a 26-year-old investment, finance something-or-other whose Twitter handle is @bespokespartan. He’s 15 years her junior. So, what’s that rule for dating younger?  They say that the lowest age you can date is someone half your age plus seven. So Melanie is 41. Half of 41 is 20.5. 20.5 plus 7 is 27.5. Melanie can, therefore, unashamedly date someone who is 27.5 years old. Uh Oh…

Anyways, Melanie clearly is not familiar with this rule and is flagrantly parading her new love on the social media website.

Right, the dirt…

So they met on Twitter in April when Jack, having failed to attract the attention of either Jodie Marsh (“Do you need a boyfriend?”) or Cheryl Cole (“Love you.x”) with his tweets, turned his focus to our Mel. He tweeted her saying, “No way are you 41. Marry me?” He then proceeded, mortifyingly, to barrage her with photos of his kid and pictures of himself working out (awesome. How cool is he?!) until Mel, idiotically, started replying. She followed him. She told him he was “adorable” despite the volume of evidence pointing to him being a cocky, arrogant little prick who was chancing his arm with a celebrity, likely for the amusement of his equally pompous mates.

Jack Cocky, sorry, Cockings… What a stud!

Long story short, they’re now boyfriend and girlfriend and appallingly crude for all to see on Twitter. She’s calling it an incredible modern day romance. I’m calling bullshit. I’m also calling a decidedly short relationship lifespan.

Here’s one exchange:

@MsMelanieSykes: ‘Jack the rabbit I need some bunny love so hop to it!! Xxx boing boing!!! Loooooool xxxxxxx’…@bespokespartan: Only if I can bounce into your face! Xxx’ … @MsMelanieSykes: ‘Will you fill mine? Xxx’

Good. God.

Ahem, I continue…

@bespokespartan: ‘I’m ready and very hard! Bouncy bouncy xxx’… @MsMelanieSykes: ‘Me nips are up! tweak tweak!! Xxx’

@MsMelanieSykes: ‘Get off Twitter and get back in bed! Xxx’ God you are insatiable! I love it! Xxx.’

@MsMelanie Sykes: ‘My white jeans can’t take it anymore gonna have to rip these babies off! X’ and ‘my throat is inflamed can you help? : )’

I mean, you know what I’m sayin’? Tone it the fuck down you guys! I’m delighted that yiz are havin’ great sex and all but some of us are Catholics up in here! All evidence points to Ms Sykes not doing very well free from the constrictions of a daytime watershed.

I have drawn one main conclusion about their relationship…

Poor Melanie Sykes must having some kind of mid-life crisis. She’s the wrong side of 40 now, her kids are getting older, she’s been through a divorce, her career hasn’t panned out quite as well as Holly Willoughby’s and she’s decided “fuck it. Despite having the rockin’ body of an athlete, Melanie lapped up the attention of the brash banker, who, let the records show, has a tattoo on his ass of his mate’s name that he got for “banter” (well done on your life, son). She’s all consumed and flattered by the interest of a “hot” younger man and wants the world to know. She might as well hijack BBC News and announce, “I may not be Claudia Winkleman but I’m hot and young men still want me!” . I mean, I’m assuming that she’s just loving the notoriety that comes with having a toyboy and all the attention that her personal (public) exploits have garnered. Damn it, if she can’t be Kate Thornton then she’s gonna be a whole new Melanie Sykes. Fuck to being a responsible mother. Fuck to being a family-friendly TV personality. Fuck to being in any way respectable. Fuck to dignity. She’s gonna have at it!

See though, the thing is, I’m not saying that she’s out and out wrong. On one hand I’m thinking, good for you. Why not? If she wants to have a toyboy then have one. She’s clearly very satisfied. But Jesus Christ would ya shut the heck up about it on Twitter?!

Her older son is ten years old. No messin’, I know ten-year-olds who are on Twitter. Ten-year-olds today are not like ten-year-olds ten years ago. When I was ten I got on the ol’ dial-up very occasionally and when I did, I was looking up shit like, “horse grooming brush”. These days I’ve got eight-year-old kids telling me about the referendum and saying that Wayne Rooney is a bad man “because he kissed someone else that was wasn’t his wife.” Kids know stuff. They’ve got access yo.

In the days since the media picked up on her smut, Melanie has apparently gained something like 15,000 new followers (I’m one of ‘em!). Perhaps that’s all part of the plan. I don’t know.  What I will say though, is that if she continues down this line, destroying her respectability as a daytime TV figure, unconscientiously producing cripplingly embarrassing ammo for playground bullies to use against her children for years to come and categorically abandoning her sense of morality through her lewd messages, then that’s gonna be 15,000 horrified yet highly entertained individuals.

HOLY. SWEET. JAYSUS!!! She posted this in between bouts of “giddy knickers”.. Like, ya can almost see her.. YIKES!

By all accounts it would seems that @MsMelanieSykes is under the impression that this is a real relationship. This week she tweeted, “‘I’d like to formally announce that @bespokespartan is my boyfriend.” She is evidently oblivious to just how, ahem, whorey, she is actually coming across. See, it’s great to have a full and active sex life and all but there are certain things that just shouldn’t be said on a social networking site to thousands of people. You know, things like, “I’ve got the raging horn, please take me.”

All said and done, the fact is that any dude who tweets,”tweeting while hanging out the back of @MsMelanieSykes”  (yeah… I know) is probably not the man that you’re going to share a long and happy life with. He’s not likely going to be an honourable father figure to your two sons who, in just a few short years, will probably be big enough to give him the slap they’d be entitled to give him.

@bespokespartan: “Should I take @MsMelanieSykes in the ass tonight???” – Oh God! I dunno brother! Maybe just ask her! I don’t… Like, I just can’t… Ugh!

Sigh, and like, the fing is, yeah? I’m sure Melanie Sykes is a very nice person. Despite my scornful mockery, I do really believe that she’s probably as happy and fun as she comes across on-screen. And I s’pose I better also say that ’m sure she’s a great mother. She’s happy with this guy. Maybe he’s decent behind the swag (I said maybe).Maybe the whole sordid thing will do wonders for her career. Get her a spot on Celebrity Juice or something.  I mean, who the fuck am I to have an opinion, right?

But I just… STOP IT MELANIE SYKES! GO BE EROTIC IN PRIVATE!

Note: I began this piece without thinking. I subsequently got carried away. I have since come to realise how utterly irrelevant and fluffy it is… And I’m so very sorry.