#OH ANOTHER STORY... i remember when i found out segments is actually capitalized in game like Segments

[fatuismooches]

If Zandik really loved his spouse he would have set a rotating roster of Segments to ensure that they are never alone for too long. All those Segments and no schedule? How dare!

Ciao, anyways so. Several Dadtorre fluffs.

First idea: Dottore having a crisis and thinking that he is a horrible father, Shinji pose and everything on the chair, contemplating the perceived mistakes he did. Meanwhile, his Segments are staring and him judgy *including* his spouse with a dry stare because their child is literally his biggest fan.

Dottore had taken their child up a summit to point out stars, even told the child how they could tell the skies are false. The stars on that direction are suspiciously repeating like the ones behind them - there was a strange thin clearing between the twinkling stars like there were seams going across the sky.

Once you see them, you will never remember what the false sky had looked like before. The child had been fixated on it since, excitedly chattering that they will be the first one to explore those strange seams in the sky after father had showed it to them. They will discover many things like him, just you wait!

Second idea: Dottore insisting that he is NOT spoiling their child—

Omega drags in the 50th custom toy Dottore has made behind him as he says this.

Never in all his centuries of life did Dottore ever see himself becoming a father - it was something so ludicrous that it never once crossed his mind for very obvious reasons, he knew the kind of man he was. It was you who had to gently convince and reassure him that he could be a good father if he truly tried, and you'd be there every step of the way with him. He had doubts, but he decided to listen to your soothing words - you always seemed to be right in these situations anyway. It really is a great thing that he has you... because sometimes he needs some sense put into that stupidly smart yet foolish brain of his.

Sure, Dottore can be awkward and surprisingly clumsy at times when dealing with his child, but his love for his kid is abundantly clear. He's even surprised you quite a few times by taking the initiative, although in the beginning, he was admittedly a bit closed off (perhaps unsure of if he deserved this, or even if his kid deserved a father like him, if he would unwittingly end up rewriting his own childhood of loneliness.) Despite this, your heart swells at how he continues to get closer and closer to his kid, protecting them from the world.

...Which is why it simultaneously upsets and saddens you when Dottore doubts himself. Like... he's one of the smartest people in Teyvat! How is it so hard to see something that's right in front of him?! His child adores him, constantly looking up at him with pleading eyes when he's supposed to be working (he has to pass them to you otherwise he'll give in.) The kid always clings to him and repeats "I love you" like it's as easy as breathing! What does he not get! The segments giving him looks too are especially amusing... he's literally judging himself.

Dottore doesn't go many places in general, and that extends to his kid, but he does like taking them out, otherwise they'd find some way to get out anyway. He'd rather not have them try to trudge through the snow. (Sometimes, he'd wonder if they'd prefer the warmth of Sumeru like he did.) Unsurprisingly he has a tendency to jump at the opportunity to teach his child anything, loving their expression when he passes on knowledge.

The wide eyes, the round 'o' of their mouth in shock, tiny hands grabbing his sleeve for him to go on. It's no surprise his kid's stupefaction is more intense when he drops that the sky they gaze upon every day is fake. No one in their right mind would ever believe that, but his kid trusts him enough to entertain the thought. They have the same thirst for the unknown just like him. He'll make sure they have the space to flourish, even though he does want them to struggle and stumble to discover the answer. Needless to say, he's extremely proud of his kid.

You and the segments don't listen much to Dottore's vehement defenses anymore. It just goes in and out of the ears. Yeah, sure old man, you're not spoiling your kid but every time they have a request or desired upgrade for a toy, you suddenly disappear into your lab and don't come out until it's finished. He swears he doesn't spoil them but sometimes he sneaks them candy from his stash... (Pantalone lets the misuse of funds slide, only because he thinks it's entertaining to see the Doctor soften up a bit, and he gets to be the cool uncle.)

(Also! You're so right about the schedule of segments! He's such an inefficient man! The segments spending time with you = you're happy = a nice rest and recharge for them = more motivation for everyone = more productivity for them all! A fool, truly, he must see that before it's too late! The schedule is posted every month in the lab, the segments are itching for their turn! Do they make bets for each other to steal time slots? ... Maybe.)

[unproduciblesmackdown]

i can’t be fucked to find the last reblog from like last week where i was talking about watching along w/ an amnesia rebirth playthru......was talking about how the atmosphere / environments ruled and i was intrigued re: the story/mystery, and how the sort of combat?ish? stuff was Something, like, idk it’s just very funny to fire a tank in an amnesia game even though that was to like, solve a “puzzle” vs taking out an enemy. no further thoughts on that really, it seems to be much more difficult to die in this game? so far there’ve been no deaths in the playthrough i’m watching and i’m wondering if you even Can die, which, from a gameplay mechanic, tbh maybe they don’t even need to have it be possible for the player to die for everyone to like, react as though a death will happen if they’re being chased and shit. and seems like maybe there will be a Story Explanation for the fact that tasi seems to be like infused with vitae or something, i didn’t forget the “wow i thought my legs were broken after i fired the tank and it flipped over like 9 times, but now they’re not. weird” moment.

realized quickly this is just like a rambling diary entry Musings On The 2 Hours Segment Of Amnesia Rebirth I Just Watched so a cut for everyone unless odds are you’re specifically interested in that game. also at the end i throw in a gif of a Monster Design Moment i thought was creepy and no one wants to see that

anyways re: the Lore bits of this story, i guess i’m sort of interested like. so we’re in the same place that daniel and co were fucking around in finding orbs? daniel’s name was mentioned once in a letter, alexander’s also, herbert or whoever leaving diaries or something, brennenburg apparently a person who alexander must’ve named the castle after, and i forget the dead person who you first encounter in The Other World who is like “remember me as the first human to Travel to this place” and i’m like yeah i forgot. the Other World sure is interesting, not sure if it’s like oh this is alexander’s place, or is it an in-between world that all Travellers go through from one world to another?? liminal space??? i didn’t even mention last time what i thought about the amulets and portals and teleporting between worlds like. interesting mechanic, i like the effects, the other world is pretty Fucked Up and now that we’re getting into some sort of mechanized vitae-extracting place talking about factories and harvesting it’s like wow first of all, pretty fucked up, second of all, are we making like vitae-harvesting something like capitalism......word

the Shadow being back is fun as well, still not sure i get what exactly its deal is, or the orbs’s deal, or etc, and we sure keep talking about some like divine beings like okay uh having trouble keeping track of all that but seems like someone else is like Latent Within Tasi rn helping her read other languages in tablets and i’ve gotten to the bit where she like hulk kills richard and she’s not supposed to get mad or she starts channeling....whomst?? guess we’ll find out. lore-wise though i do not care about all these babies and this extremely abstract Maternity thing of Have Baby.......i also don’t really super care about the less abstract maternity aka these little pieces re: alys. probably going to be plot relevant but idc. alys died or something right like let’s just get to that. whatever’s up with amari, i don’t care. i guess the memories are super drawn out b/c there’s just all these loading screens but like let’s goooooo i don’t care about the 23rd 4-sec clip about a baby existing. kinda fun that you can just like Have an orb in this game. jaunting around with it solving puzzles

sort of intrigued i guess about like. whatever was going on with leon all Become Monster b/c of being scared and in the dark all the time like, probably tied in with lore we got in the beginning or something, and how tasi’s all like “uh oh that could happen to me” and like, leon was having a real I Must Remember classic amnesia the dark descent moment in one letter, so like, now i’m wondering where the Alchemy Amnesia Elixir comes from, since that’s probably vitae-tech related Knowledge or something.....although daniel used it to Stop being murderous in a certain way and become murderous in another way, and oswald just like, had Amnesia times b/c he split more literally into two selves?? but both times the Better Self was the one who couldn’t remember......and feels like tasi sure might’ve done something to Contribute To The Problems around here, this might be her better self running around now too, but leon Forgetting as he becomes one of these hunting guys......different.....but ig the implication in atdd seemed to be that the monsters (except the kaernk) like, come from people?? iirc but i also think that implication was v Vague / tenuous

there was the bit with like a crapton of Sleeping monsters you had to get through and that sure was fun......also got some radio call from yasmin where the doctor like intervenes immediately so like, what’s THAT guy up to. nothing good i don’t think. don’t trust that guy either and who knows what tasi’s been up to. let’s all be antagonists and fight, that’s sort of how amnesia games go i guess. the protagonist has to confront an antagonist they forgot, and along the way remember the fucked up shit they both did......daniel vs alexander, oswald vs oswald, could be tasi vs the doctor, except that has not come up

gay rights!! at tasi fondly reminscing about how alex (i think was his name) and richard were in love, right after finding alex’s fucked up corpse. oh for literal bury your gays, love that we then go find richard and save him and kill him and harvest his vitae and neither of them having any kind of proper burial. nobody’s getting that in this game. also where is hank!!!! the good nice leader guy. hate that i care what has happened to him and we haven’t found out yet but keep being reminded about how cool and noble hank is and i’m so sure he’s Just Fine out there. like, it’s already both Fun like, from an abstract game sense, to keep running into actual people whose stories are involved with ours, but it’s like, oh no you have to leave behind leon who’s all fucked up but everyone hated him and he like is mad at you for having a husband already and friendzoning him like that? but it’s still like, messed up leaving him behind in the darkness sewers forever regardless of what his personality is, i’m sure that sort of scenario wouldn’t be even more fucked up coming from everyone’s fave, hank.......also, interested at finding out what the passage of time is doing around here and if we’re keeping things like, linear or what

uhhhhh i wanna see more of the fucked up Other World and whatever problems it has going on OH YEAH epic soma moment when you disconnect someone from the vitae??? like how long has this person been there!! what’s going on around here. interested to find out. interested to see some more big fucked up mechanized stuff, i always think that’s creepy. like one of my fave bits from machine for pigs was just whenever you take the elevator and it’s like whoooaa that’s a BIG machine. like, yikes!!!

and i wanna confront this doctor like what’s he doing. i know tasi is a bit Untrustworthy Perhaps on top of unreliable but like, him too.

also i like this body horror from leon monster. like hey the design isn’t wild n weird like atdd style but going the Very Weird Posture Route is a solid approach like, i see this and i went like ooo creepy

oh right and it was fun that like, leon fluctuates between maybe sort of his normal self and his um. hunter self or whatever like either pissed off and intent to Getcha or like seeming to want to warn tasi to leave / get away. rip i guess

meanwhile i found this re my own jokes about atdd

rip to daniel, we’re a hot minute in the future. i cherish that silly protag still

[engl699readingjournal-blog]

my first month in Berlin was really fucking lonely and pathetic. I had surely by then been tending to a few friendship-seedlings, a few of which ended up as fully realized friendships that I still do not know how I managed to cultivate. these people I would hang out with periodically throughout my first weeks, but I’ve always been one of those people who can’t understand why anyone would want to hang out with me, so when people actually did want to hang out with me I was clunky and awkward and navigated meeting their friends and then their friends-of-friends as if a there’d been whole trading-card set of Berlin scenesters laid out in front of me and someone was just chucking cards at my forehead frisbee-style. most of them I missed, they bounced off my forehead and spun off into the abyss of some Neukölln bar or weird fetish club and I never spoke to them again. there was a lot of that, just these one-off conversations of intense interest followed by a mutual agreement of continued contact followed by nothing. then I’d see them again months later at some event that drew the whole scene, from the bullseye (see: Peaches) on outward to the fringes, the acknowledgment would be nonexistent and if it happened it was weird, the next thing I knew they were a suggested friend on Facebook with fourteen mutual friends. was there anyone who didn’t know everyone else already? did some of these people charge you fifteen Euro for revealing that they recognize you in public?

some of these people, I took entirely too long to realize, had never been interested in being my friend at all. I was apparently stupid enough to forget, or to never know in the first place, that some people only talked to you if they wanted to sleep with you or if they thought you might have connections they could take advantage of. I had nothing to offer in either department. I spent the latter half of my teenage years putting so much effort into being unattractive, never making eye contact, and deflecting That Kind Of Attention that I hadn’t even considered the possibility that no one would know or care about any of that in a new environment. when people watched or smiled at me, I glared. when people asked me questions about my clothes or hair or what I was doing in the city, I gave monosyllabic answers in a flat voice. when people moved close to me, I got up and walked away. when they touched me, I hit them or otherwise raised cain before disappearing. that’s always easy to do when you’re tiny and wear dark clothes. being pursued as an object of sexual interest was not something I planned for because I didn’t pursue other people as objects of sexual interest. I considered myself outside of the dating and sex game and for whatever reason assumed everyone could figure that out immediately.

but they couldn’t, and that produced some awkward-ass situations. via social media I met a filmmaker, American by way of Israel, who made a documentary on William S. Burroughs that I had probably illegally downloaded and watched at least five times. we talked about Burroughs briefly, but ultimately he did not seem interested in talking about Burroughs. see, I was interested in talking about Burroughs. I wanted to know what interviewing Iggy Pop was like. I wanted to know what it was like to talk with John Waters for more than thirty seconds at a book-signing. by chance, we met two days later at a Drag Race viewing party in a bar I never set foot in anymore for different reasons. we recognized each other and he seemed genuinely interested in meeting me – we shook hands, he was drunk, I was probably running off of fruit and quark and an U-Bahn platform vending-machine diet coke. my handshake probably felt like a wet towel and I apologized for that, made some self-deprecating comment about how creepy my hands probably were. within five seconds the conversation was over. the next time I saw him, he was surrounded by an entourage at another club with no shirt on, perfectly sober. by then I knew better than to say hello, but he saw me and said nothing (which I can’t be salty about because I did the exact same thing). it wasn’t until then that I mentioned the earlier encounter to a friend, who said quite simply that he probably was just looking for sex and had lost interest.

I had not thought of this, obviously. what gave him the impression that I was interested in sex to begin with? I wanted to talk Burroughs, and interviewing Patti Smith. I was expressly not interested in what it was like to meet Peter Weller because when Weller brought up Pier Paolo Pasolini in one of his interview segments I think my hairline receded a little bit. at any rate, I was baffled. then I got angry even though I knew that sex would not have been a thing that ever would have happened anyway. what was the problem with me? my giant head and stick body? did my face look more or less cadaverous than in pictures and was that a deal-breaker? was I short, bad-postured, sickly, monotone, behaving strangely, shy, and not an established cosmopolite and freelance artist raising the rents in Kreuzkölln? yes to all of the above. this was one of a few lessons I had on the value of both sexual capital and artistic clout in the Berlin scenester circle. who were you fucking and what kind of art were you making? well, I wasn’t fucking anybody and I wasn’t making any art. luckily I was to make friends who also weren’t fucking anybody and ended up making art with them. they’re the reason I still go back. 

(as a side note, this past April I met John Waters again at a book-signing – I was somewhat far back in the line and Waters had been pounding some brown liquor to get him through the evening. much to my and my friends’ delight, this meant that by the time we got to the table he was so in the mood to chat that the event organizers had to move him along. I brought up this filmmaker and said that I had met him and found him shallow and that the new feature film he had made was distasteful in a number of ways. Waters barely remembered the guy, and when I tried to jog his memory by saying that he’d directed a Burroughs documentary that largely featured Waters’s commentary, Waters responded: ‘oh, god, which one? there’s, like, five of those.’)

I also did some bold shit during my first month in Berlin, before I had people to necessarily call friends and before I realized that many of the people I was corresponding with existed on a plane very different from mine. my usual routine was to wear the same outfit and sit in the corner of a bar drinking a club mate until somebody talked to me, inevitably making a really fatuous comparison to David Bowie or, like, Gary Numan. or Kraftwerk. I moved from bar to bar that way, inciting some interest in people and then eventually leaving the bar and leaving them with no contact information because I wanted to go to bed and my throat was sore from secondhand smoke. this isn’t to say that I didn’t also take interest in people I saw, because I certainly did, but I guess I was prepared to make no attempts at talking to them and had resigned myself to the idea that any friends I would make would come to me. I apparently would have rather existed in complete isolation and misery for seven months than start conversations with strangers.

but sometimes I didn’t just sit in the corners of establishments hoping for friendships to strike up. sometimes I went to the parts of bars and clubs where I had no business being, as a trans person, as a person who looked feminine, as a person existing outside of the sexual market. I would take my drink and plop myself down in the middle of a fuckdungeon or a darkroom and just watch people. I was simultaneously interested in what drove cis gay men to seek out anonymous sex and horrified at the way the floor squelched under my shoes. I lit cigarettes and just held them so I looked more like I had my own purpose there, thinking that somehow let everyone else know that I was exempt from participating in the generally-expected activity but nevertheless allowed to be there. in my head I called this “taking up space” and sometimes accomplished just that. sometimes I sat, I fake-smoked, I drank a coke, I watched a man get spit-roasted in the corner like someone watches Animal Planet. then I would get up and walk out. other times I sat, I fake-smoked, I drank a coke, a fifty-year-old man would walk up to me mouth-breathing and rubbing his junk and I would get up and haul ass out. other times a young man would approach me and say loudly in English that this was a space for gay men to have sex and that I should go back upstairs to the main dance floor and bar instead of staring at everyone and “ruining the vibe,” and I would loudly tell him he was ruining his own vibe by bothering me instead of servicing the glory hole, and I would get up and get brow-beaten out. 

my first month living in Berlin was, much like Isherwood’s descriptors of his early Berlin experiences – Bradshaw’s first Silvester celebration during which he walks in on Mr. Norris being flogged between two women while polishing one’s boots, or his brief glimpse of a shitfaced Baron von Pregnitz having a beer dumped down his throat while pinned on a couch by a “powerful youth in a boxer’s sweater” – the beginning of a series of dreamlike impressions that have been rewritten in my head numerous times. the places I frequent reorient themselves in my mind as soon as I leave Berlin again and I describe them slightly differently to people each time I retell a story. of course, there were times that were not necessarily dreamlike; buying rolls and water at an aldi is not that different in Berlin except that you really have to make sure the bottles are on their sides or they’ll topple over on the conveyor belt. in a way the aldi was a non-space all its own, though, as was the ausländerbehörde, the bürgeramt, the endless stretch of S-Bahn between Nikolassee and Grünewald that was so long and godforsaken that I was convinced all manner of time and molecular structure at its most fundamental had been suspended and no one was breathing. buying a Kinder bar for dinner from a spätkauf at 3AM alone at Görlitzer Bahnhof: did that actually happen? was I ever actually there?

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: Hossa's Contract, the Draft, and Drake

Welcome to Sean McIndoe's weekly grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter. Check out the Biscuits podcast with Sean and Dave Lozo as they discuss the events of the week.

Three stars of comedy

The third star: Chad Johnson is back – The former NFL star went and got his hopes up over the Mike Smith trade.

The second star: The NHL trolls Capitals fans – Which is good to see, because I think we all agree that those guys have been riding high for too long.

The first star: Marc-Edouard Vlasic is afraid of bees – But it's cool everyone, he has a plan.

Outrage of the week

The issue: Marian Hossa will miss all of next season, and his career may be over due to a skin disorder. The outrage: Not only is the league losing a wonderful player, but the Blackhawks are going to get off the hook for the rest of Hossa's massive contract. Is it justified: We don't know exactly how Hossa's situation will play out. Maybe he makes a comeback and plays again for the Blackhawks or someone else. Or maybe he retires, at which point Chicago would be on the hook for a portion of his cap hit. But the most likely outcome is that he simply goes on the long-term injured reserve for the remaining four years on his deal, the Hawks largely avoid any cap repercussions, and the league just shrugs and moves on while fans of other teams scream about how unfair it all is.

Here's the thing: That's just how the system functions. It's not a bug, it's a feature. To be clear, Hossa's situation isn't some sort of scam being run by the Blackhawks. From everything we've seen, it's a legitimate condition that could have become life-threatening. Just like Chris Pronger or Marc Savard before him, Hossa is a victim here. Save your conspiracy theories.

But this is how it works in the NHL. Certain players sign long-term contracts, including some under the old CBA that were for 10 years or more. Those contracts start to look ugly as time goes on. There's lots of hand-wringing about whether the team will be on the hook for a major cap hit on a declining player.

And then, just in time, the problem goes away. The player gets hurt, or hurt enough. Maybe they head for the KHL. Or sometimes they just vanish without any explanation at all. Then their cap hit winds up on LTIR, or maybe it gets traded to some team that needs to artificially reach the floor. But at some point, somehow, it all just… goes away.

And everyone is fine with it.

Oh, inevitably, fans complain. It doesn't seem fair. The system is supposed to punish teams that sign contracts that go bad. The Blackhawks won three Cups largely on the strength of back-diving deals to Hossa and Duncan Keith, and they were supposed to pay a price. Now they're going to wriggle off the hook, and probably spend that newfound cap space on some new star players who'll help them beat up your favorite team.

But the NHL knows this. And they've been very clear that they're OK with it. They may pretend they don't know how Hossa's situation will play out just yet, but we all know where this is headed. Once the league allowed Chris Pronger to take a new job and enter the Hall of Fame while his playing contract was still on the books, the message was clear. They don't really want to punish anyone for this stuff.

And yes, the same goes for cap recapture, the ridiculous after-the-fact rule the league enacted in 2013 to penalize teams for deals that had already been reviewed and approved. It's been applied to players like Ilya Kovalchuk and Mike Richards, in relatively small amounts. But will you ever see it applied in a way that could really hurt a team like the Predators? Put it this way: Remember to act surprised when the rule quietly disappears with the next CBA.

This is just how it works in this league. Whether it's the referees, the Department of Player Safety or contract loopholes, you're supposed to think that there's a chance that somebody will get punished in some meaningful way even though it almost never happens. We should all be used to it by now.

Feel bad for Hossa, and for fans who won't get to see him play anymore. But if you thought this contract was going to come back and bite the Blackhawks someday, feel bad for yourself too, because you haven't been paying attention.

Obscure former player of the week

The big news in the NHL right now is the entry draft, with the first round being held tonight. But another important story slipped a bit under the radar this week, with the announcement that the Coyotes were parting ways with captain Shane Doan. That ends a 21-year relationship, dating back to the 1995-96 season. Doan has actually been with the franchise longer than the Coyotes have even existed; he pre-dates the move from Winnipeg by a year.

So today, let's combine those two stories by bestowing obscure player honors on Steve Kelly. I'll explain.

Kelly was a speedy center who put up decent points and PIMs with the WHL's Prince Albert Raiders in the early 90s. That earned him a first-round selection, sixth overall, by the Oilers in the 1995 draft. He made his debut in Edmonton with eight games in 1997, scoring once, and played six more in the playoffs as the Oilers upset the Stars.

Kelly opened the 1997-98 season with the Oilers, but was traded to the Lightning in December as part of the Roman Hamrlik deal. He'd stick around for two years before being traded to the Devils and then to Los Angeles. He'd spend four seasons with the Kings, but only suit up for 37 games. He'd eventually head to Europe, briefly returning to the NHL to play two games for the Wild in 2008.

All in all, Kelly's NHL career spanned nine seasons but just 149 games, and he scored only nine goals. That's not bad, but as far as number six overall picks go, it qualifies him as a bust. But that's where things get worse for the Oilers. When they took Kelly back in 1995, they passed on an Alberta kid who many had expected them to take. Instead, that player went to the Jets with the very next pick. Yes, good old Shane Doan. To make matter even worse, that year's draft was held in Edmonton, and roughly 10,000 fans were chanting Doan's name when the Oilers made their way to the podium.

Hockey history probably looks a lot different for one franchise and maybe two if the Oilers had just picked the local kid. But we'll never know for sure, thanks to Steve Kelly. (By the way, another kid from Edmonton went 11th overall that year. But this has already been painful enough for Oilers fans, so we won't mention that other guy.)

The NHL actually got something right

… twenty years ago. We think. Nobody's quite sure. But stick with me, because we kind of started all this so we need to clean it up.

Last week, our YouTube section featured a series of comedy sketches from the 1997 NHL Awards. They weren't exactly knee-slappers, but some were better than others, and they were all funnier than whatever that Penn and Teller thing was on Wednesday. The best of the bunch was this one, in which the NHL had some fun with a pair of star goaltenders who'd also scored goals

I liked it. I even made a point of applauding the "better pull your goalie" kid. I liked his enthusiasm. He probably went on to great things.

Well, hold on. As several readers immediately pointed out, that kid looked kind of familiar.

Is that… is that Drake?

It certainly looks like him. And as all good Canadians know, before he found fame as a rapper, Drake was a child actor. He would have been ten years old when this piece was filmed in his hometown of Toronto. A few years later, he was playing Jimmy Brooks on Degrassi and looking like this.

Others were wondering the same thing. In one of those crazy coincidences that seems to happen on the internet, news outlets started randomly discovering the eight-year-old YouTube clip on their own just days after we'd mentioned it here. Message boards and Reddit groups debated the question. Literally everyone made some variation of the same "I guess he really did start at the bottom" joke. And eventually, experts started concluding that it's definitely him.

I think that's all good enough for me. It sure seems like this obscure NHL awards sketch was indeed Drake's introduction to a worldwide audience. And if so, that means two things. One, I clearly owe all of you an apology for missing this last week, since pointing out obscure details from old and forgotten NHL moments is pretty much my job description.

And more importantly, the NHL Awards have officially had a real live celebrity on them! We did it! Step aside, Kevin Smith. You too, Beverly Hills housewives. Better luck next time, vaguely hammered Cuba Gooding Jr. Hit the bricks, literally dozens of people who probably really were legitimately famous but whose names I didn't recognize because I'm old.

If anybody asks, the list of genuinely famous celebrities who've appeared on an NHL Awards broadcast is officially now Jon Hamm and Drake. (Just make sure to change the subject before they start trying to nail down dates.)

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

This year's NHL Awards took place on Wednesday, and as usual, everyone complained about them. That's pretty much become an annual tradition; hockey fans gather around the TV, watch the hardware get handed out, and mumble about how the celebrities aren't famous enough, the musical acts aren't good enough and the jokes aren't funny enough.

Well, all of that may be true. But look on the bright side. At least the NHL didn't do this.

It's June 4, 1984 and Alan Thicke is hosting the NHL Awards from Toronto, and beyond that I swear to you I don't have one damn clue about how to explain what you're about to see.

"Fitness shows are big this year," Thicke informs us, and we'll just agree to take his word for it. He launches into the setup for the next segment, which will apparently involve something called "The Canadian Brass" performing a three-minute workout.

Thicke, of course, is no stranger to this section. He made his first appearance in one of the very first Grab Bags ever, when he sang "Hockey Sock Rock" with Phil Esposito, Buck Rogers and the Unknown Comic in a performance that's even weirder than I just made it sound.

While that was good, Thicke hit his hockey-related peak at the 1988 NHL Awards when he performed a song about Canada. That was the segment that gave is the immortal "Second Row Guy", the perpetually flustered extra whose live TV meltdown got progressively more painful as the song went on. And Thicke somehow still stayed cool through the whole thing.

We lost Thicke late last year, of course, when he passed away playing a game of (what else) hockey. The NHL paid tribute to him at this year's all-star game. He also wrote the theme songs for a bunch of hit sitcoms like Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life. Did you know that? Not many people know that. What an interesting fact.

Why yes, I am stalling now. Was it that obvious?

Fine, here we go. Bring out the Canadian Brass. Hey, how bad can it be, right?

So it turns out that "Canadian Brass" is a bunch of Canadian dudes playing brass instruments. Not much of a twist there, I guess, although it's nice to see that they broke out the white tuxedos and red cummerbunds. They perform a nice enough little number, even mixing in some light choreography. It's also perfectly pleasant in a very Canadian sort of way, and we all agree to ignore the fact that there seems to be a synthesizer playing somewhere.

And then, 30 seconds in, it happens: A half-dozen ladies in leotards trot out onto the stage, shout out a countdown, and start doing aerobics.

Look, I know that some people read this stuff at work and can't watch the YouTube clips, and right now those people are very confused. They think that last line was some kind of metaphor. I can assure you it is not.

It's easy to miss, but my very favorite part of the whole video comes right as the workout women appear, and the Canadian Brass guys are supposed to momentarily act confused. Trombone Guy really sells it for like half a second before going right back into his music.

At this point we're 1:15 into the clip. The next three minutes is basically just brass and… uh… exercise. And no, I'm not going to make any GIFs of the workout women miming like they're playing the trumpet. This is a classy operation we're running here, dammit.

They really bring it down about halfway through. That's smart. If you're going to ask an audience of hockey players to sit through three minutes of jazzercise, pacing is key.

By the way, do Americans know what the 20 Minute Workout was? I know it was a Canadian show, but it feels like the sort of thing that would have trickled over the border. Anyways, if you're confused, watch this. You'll still be confused, but you'll be healthier for it.

Also, according to the internet (so it can't be wrong), Canadian Brass is "the world's most famous brass music quintet" and is still a going concern to this day. I'm still not sure why they didn't do a hockey-themed song here, like the Hockey Night theme or Brass Bonanza. Ah well. Let's get back to the video, which I'm sure has wrapped up by now.

Oh good lord, it's still going on. This is the longest three minutes in hockey history, narrowly beating out the Oilers defending a 3-0 lead against the Ducks in this year's playoffs.

The whole thing finally ends with a lovely shot of the ladies bending over while the guys raise their horns. Everyone bows, at which point it becomes clear that they didn't rehearse exiting the stage because nobody's sure when to leave and they start bumping into each other.

Thicke knows that was awful but is way too much of a pro to ever say so, so instead he soldiers on with a joke about Dave Semenko attacking one of the performers, because nobody's watching at this point anyway.

And with that, we're done. Somehow, trombones and leotards didn't become a regular feature of the NHL awards, which is too bad. I bet little Drake would have gone out and killed that performance.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com .

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