Parallax

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PHILADELPHIA - APRIL 21: The Washington Capitals combine to stop R.J.Umberger #20 of the Philadelphia Flyers in game six of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals of the 2008 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs on April21, 2008 at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

Bwah. Combine. Yes. If you stuff all six on-ice Capitals into the crease, they turn into a giant robot. Ovechkin, of course, gets to be the head. He shouts WOOHOOO YEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH a lot, but in a robot voice.

So, they lost tonight, and Philly-who-took-my-crazy Czech-from-me won. I am done with the east until October. It's Detroit or nobody, now.

I love how oregoonie and I can never just call each other, make a plan, and be done with things.

She phoned me to wake me up today - WE PLAN FOR SEEING THE OVECHKIN - and we wound up yapping for an hour and a half, about all kinds of stuff, while I woke up and found pants and made and ingested my morning cuppa.

(Then I took two showers; halfway through rinsing the conditioner off Riley started the ZOMG PERIMETER BREACH! barking, so I slip-slided my way out of the loo and into a bathrobe and dripped all across the house to see the big oaf sitting there quietly at the door, staring at me, with a "You humans are weird" face. Rotten dog. Thus, two showers.)

So after that mishap I called Goonie back to say, yo, I'm clean and presentable, let's get to gettin' -- and when we hung up it was half an hour later and there had been much discussion of dogs. The conclusion of which was, 1, we like pit bulls, and, 2, it doesn't matter what breed your beast is, but if you tell us it's something it clearly isn't we will mock you mercilessly. Hell, mine are Labrador/Chihuahua and Boxer/Moose/Garbage Truck, and I'm honest about it.

Today: hockey. Got some time to kill between tickets and game, but.. hockey. Caps. OVIE! Vera will be in attendance, of course. Works out great too, because out of all the games we could've seen while Goonie was here, I wanted to take her to a Caps game the most. "GIRLS! WHERE ARE YOU?" "We try to make filet mignon but get.. there is fire." "I'M SICK!"

h1joly, I never did see a Caps, uh, recap from ya. How was Ovie?

(Note that the love I have for my home team does not mean I can't love players from other teams. Ovie and Bryzgalov, especially. And that increasing pile of charismatic and/or crazy ex-Bolts our lousy managerial staff keeps laying off, which means, respectively, Fedotenko and Khabibulin.)

Katie, this one's for you: Ovechkin On A Segway.


"I'm from Russia," he said. "So, well, have fun."

"No, you have fun," she said, adding something about saving humanity.

"I don't have any money," he said.

"She said 'humanity,' " Green said.

"What does it mean," Ovechkin said.

Ovechkin was easily the loudest Segway rider. He rode the thing backward until it started making grinding noises; "when it makes that noise it's telling you it's not happy," one of the guides told him. He loudly shouted out "anybody wanna ride with us????" to a crowd waiting at a bus stop. He said "Whooooo hooooo" and variations thereof maybe 50 or 60 times. He rocked back and forth incessantly when we stopped to regroup. He yelped "Let's Go Caps" at random businessmen. He attempted to ride without the use of his hands, wrapping his legs around the steering column.

Ovie is mangled-English reckless love.

Alex Ovechkin: hockey player, ar-teest.

"It's Drinking Man, Fat Man, Man Who Have Legs, and this is Girl," he said, pointing to the last stick on the right. He said that he does the artwork himself, and that the order is, in fact, significant: the Drinking Man is his first stick, the Fat Man is his second stick, and so on.

For all I know he was making this up, but he explained that each drawing had numerical significance. Drinking Man's holding a stick in his left hand that looks like the number one. Fat Man has two eyes. Girl (i.e. No. 4) has two hands and two eyes. And Man Who Have Legs...well, how exactly do you get the number three out of Man Who Have Legs?

"I don't know," Ovie said. "Maybe third leg."

Ovie = Alex from Everything Is Illuminated. May his English never improve.