NHL Mega-Mock Draft Reboot - Discussion / Draft Thread – DDU-DU DDU-DU PHASE TWENTY-TWO!

[GKJ]

@Young Sandwich can go since we’re not picking the same thing.

I had someone in mind a few days ago and I’ve spent that time trying to remember who it was.

 

[ajgoal]

I didn't realize I had been sniped years ago until I finished my write up. And yet, I am happy with my fallback, who is also British. She's probably a better actress, too.

With over 100 roles on stage and screen to her credit, we think she'll be able to entertain everyone on this trip with us.

Team Actress II: Dame Maggie Smith

 

[Young Sandwich]

I planned to have a nice long heartfelt write-up on this band based around myself and my wife and our shared love of them and how it makes no sense since we are about as far apart on music interests as you can get. Then add in the fact that this is one of those bands that doesn't fit my perceived musical tastes whatsoever, which means there must be some kind of story involved. Alas, it was not meant to be since work is really pounding my ass this week. So instead, here are a few songs you can listen to while I ride off into the sunset known as bullshit deadlines.

Coincidentally, they are playing the Filmore tonight. This pick just makes sense all around.












Team Band II - Dawes

Your time has come @BiggE

 

[BiggE]

I will post a little later today, I’m a bit busy right now.

 

[BiggE]

Looks like I have a little time after all, so here goes.

You can’t make meth without a working knowledge of chemistry. Hmm, this probably explains why so many meth labs end up like

But anyways, our next college course will be, from that fine institution of at home, “higher” learning, the Internet University of Juarez Mexico, ADVANCED CHEMISTRY!

And with that, the Methgators are out! Young @Striiker , it’s time to cook!

 

[BernieParent]

I want you to beat up his fever. He's back to normal now but he was at 103 for a bit there the other day.

Pick will be coming after I eat dinner.

Wouldn't you want him to beat it down?

 

[pit]

I didn't realize I had been sniped years ago

What's truly impressive about the Quackverse is we can actually say that now without it being hyperbole.

Also, she was under serious consideration for my pick as well.

 

[mja]

Never tell me which Almodovar picture this was. I'm enjoying guessing far too much.

It wasn't The Skin I Live In. My wife complained to her sister about how silly I had been about the whole thing. That's when my sister-in-law reminded my wife about the time she took me to see The Skin I Live In, based on my SiL's recommendation. Dear reader, I went into this film cold, not having a clue as to what it was about, only that it starred frequent Almodovar collaborator Antonio Banderas. A brief spoilery overview: Banderas plays something of a mad scientist character who has lost both his wife and daughter to suicide. In his rage and grief, he kidnaps the young man he blames for his daughter's suicide, forces him to undergo sexual reassignment surgery, uses extensive plastic surgery testing out a new skin he's developed to transform the young man into a beautiful woman, and then becomes infatuated with her/him. They start to have sex and but it turns out to be a trick and she/he kills him. She/he goes home. The end.

My wife apologized for giving me shit over it.

 

[Captain Dave Poulin]

I shouldn't have read that post above this early in the morning. It makes me miss Thailand.

We start the day with @Striiker on the clock, @pit on deck, @Magua on the lido deck, and CelsiusWeirdo88 on the lido afterdeck. My brother and his goofy mod colleague GKJ have to make up picks as well. The dumbest of them all is at the bottom of the order. If we get through all of that this weekend somehow, I will launch the new phase on Monday. Probably. Possibly.

You know how we have to play the Sabres tonight? That is one of several franchises which has lapped us in rebuilding. Not only have they lapped us to get somewhat on track - they failed about four or five times in the past 13 years while we f***ed around, and they still managed to come out ahead. The Kings got ahead of us as well. The Devils flailed about and then suddenly started doing everything right. I know we ostensibly have a chance now to clean house and get it right, but seriously, how in the f***ing world can they be planning to keep Blech Blah around? We desperately need an anti-Flahr crusade now, and we need it to be loud.

The one bit of good news is that we are so close to the finish line of this ridiculous season that we no longer have to dread the schedule - the end is nigh, thank f*** almighty.

 

[Striiker]

Book II -

@pit

 

[pit]

I've put this one off to last because picking a favourite album is like picking a favourite child (if I had more than one child). There were so many classics I couldn't decide between them and then I decided to do what I never do: rely on recency bias.

Is this one of the best albums of my whole life? Not yet, maybe, don't know? But it's certainly been the right album at the right time for me - contents that lyrically deal with the pandemic, being a new father, f@#king it all up... it's been on repeat quite a bit for me.

Oh, and hey, they're Philly boys. So there's that too.

Team Album II - The Wonder Years - The Hum Goes On Forever







@Magua , what if what if what if the magic's gone?

 

[ajgoal]

Book II -

@pit

Does that include the ones from Hobbes and Shaw?

 

[Striiker]

Does that include the ones from Hobbes and Shaw?

Perhaps the literal worst movie I’ve seen in my life.

 

[GKJ]

I’m picking Olivia Cooke as my actress II. couldn’t remember who I wanted with everyone who was taken. She was my safety. And now she is a Philadelphia Villain

 

[Beef Invictus]

I've put this one off to last because picking a favourite album is like picking a favourite child (if I had more than one child). There were so many classics I couldn't decide between them and then I decided to do what I never do: rely on recency bias.

Is this one of the best albums of my whole life? Not yet, maybe, don't know? But it's certainly been the right album at the right time for me - contents that lyrically deal with the pandemic, being a new father, f@#king it all up... it's been on repeat quite a bit for me.

Oh, and hey, they're Philly boys. So there's that too.

Team Album II - The Wonder Years - The Hum Goes On Forever







@Magua , what if what if what if the magic's gone?

This gives me an awesome opportunity to remind you all that The Wonder Years TV show sucked goat choads.

 

[Magua]

I've always been a sucker for the Southern Gothic. Maybe it's some vestige of being born in Louisiana. So, let's take a little trip to Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi with our next pick......

The Honolulu Ghibli name as our Team Author II: William Faulkner

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. Knows remembers believes a corridor in a big long garbled cold echoing building of dark red brick sootbleakened by more chimneys than its own, set in a grassless cinderstrewnpacked compound surrounded by smoking factory purlieus and enclosed by a ten foot steel-and-wire fence like a penitentiary or a zoo, where in random erratic surges, with sparrowlike childtrebling, orphans in identical and uniform blue denim in and out of remembering but in knowing constant as the bleak walls, the bleak windows where in rain soot from the yearly adjacenting chimneys streaked like black tears.

The Hieronymus Bosch of Southern Gothic. I think I respect Faulkner's writing so much because I shouldn't like his writings -- not based on what I know about myself. At times, he can be maddeningly dense, with sprawling endless sentences and a near biblical weightiness. That's modernism for you. But when he's at his best, he presents you a fever dream. A choking-thick, humid miasma of grotesqueness, both of the highbrow and lowbrow. He's one slight push away from being an out-and-out horror writer.

I've read my share of stream of consciousness writings, but I'd place Faulkner's at the top. He's dizzying with how he inhabits characters. As acclaimed as Benjy Compson's part (a 1st person perspective from a man with mental disabilities) is from The Sound and the Fury, I think Quentin Compson's part is what blew my mind, as his brain begins to melt on the page on the day of his suicide. My favorite Faulkner novel is Light in August though. It's in his Goldilocks zone (we'll grade on a curve) of theme, language, and readability.


*****

@CanadianFlyer88 -- what would the Pacific Northwestern Gothic be like? Salmon and leather?

 

[Magua]

I just now remembered about the Academy Awards, and I saw that "Everything Everywhere All at Once" won for Best Picture. I haven't seen all the nominees, so I have no context established which I can use to get upset. It's just not at all the kind of thing that should be winning Best Picture. The plot is typically "Asian Fantasy" (for lack of a better term) in the sense that they make up enough of the backstory to carry the story forward, but not quite enough for it to make sense. The plot isn't the point of the film, of course - it's about family, and Chinese families in particular (and Chinese American families in even more particular), and especially the relationship between a husband and wife. It's about sacrifice, and love. In those aspects, it is great. But a "great" film should be great in every aspect. I have seen "The Banshees of Inisherin," and that is unquestionably a great film.

I feel like the multiverse conceit, the action sequences, and the maximalist humor are really entertaining on the initial watch but don’t hold up as well on repeat viewings. Once the element of surprise is gone, it all becomes a bit much. The family drama emotional core of the story does hold up though. I absolutely adore that aspect of the film, and Waymond in particular, but it’s a relatively small part of the running time even if it's what the film is really about.

Banshees was phenomenal. A film you can watch again and pick apart and see a different way each time. I saw 3 of the others as well but I don’t even think they should have been nominated. Was I the only one annoyed at All Quiet on the Western Front’s heavy-handed (and needlessly changed) ending? I’m ok with EEAAO taking home the prize, if only to encourage more inventiveness out of Hollywood. I just hope that they don't take the wrong lesson and start making nothing but whacked-out multiverse action movies, which already felt like it was happening anyway.

I back-read the last few days here, and I just wanted to say that I'm in TOTAL agreement with both of you. Every word. Everyone seemed ecstatic about the results last weekend, but my feelings were more mixed, and I didn't feel like bringing that up elsewhere to be Debbie Downer.

I finally got around to Everything Everywhere All at Once the other week, and the first thing I told my sister (with whom who I watched a few of these) was: "I thought The Banshees of Inisherin was better." I came away from that thinking I watched a quote unquote Great Film. It was contemplative and re-watchable (the next day I actually went back and re-watched a handful of scenes) and masterfully constructed. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed EEAAO -- and I also agree that the quieter family moments were by far the highlight -- but I can't say my feelings went beyond thinking I watched an entertaining good movie, instead of a pantheon level one. Not that the Academy Awards are ever a good arbiter for that. It was positively batshit creative, but I think it's thematically a bit shallower than it appears beyond the spectacle. I don't have that feeling of obligation to re-watch it, or much brain churning afterwards. But the actors deserve everything that came their way (well, except for one supporting actress).

 

[mja]

I back-read the last few days here, and I just wanted to say that I'm in TOTAL agreement with both of you. Every word. Everyone seemed ecstatic about the results last weekend, but my feelings were more mixed, and I didn't feel like bringing that up elsewhere to be Debbie Downer.

I finally got around to Everything Everywhere All at Once the other week, and the first thing I told my sister (with whom who I watched a few of these) was: "I thought The Banshees of Inisherin was better." I came away from that thinking I watched a quote unquote Great Film. It was contemplative and re-watchable (the next day I actually went back and re-watched a handful of scenes) and masterfully constructed. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed EEAAO -- and I also agree that the quieter family moments were by far the highlight -- but I can't say my feelings went beyond thinking I watched an entertaining good movie, instead of a pantheon level one. Not that the Academy Awards are ever a good arbiter for that. It was positively batshit creative, but I think it's thematically a bit shallower than it appears beyond the spectacle. I don't have that feeling of obligation to re-watch it, or much brain churning afterwards. But the actors deserve everything that came their way (well, except for one supporting actress).

I had Jamie Lee Curtis a distant third, with the caveat that I haven't seen The Whale and so I can't judge Hong Chau's performance - although she absolutely steals The Menu. I think Stephane Hsu should have won, then Kerry Condon, and then Jamie Lee Curtis, with Basset fourth. Don't get me wrong, Basset's great in the role, but it's the role that I have an issue with. It wasn't really anything we haven't seen before and it's not terribly relatable. I will also admit that I have full-blown Marvel fatigue. Meanwhile, Curtis managed to evoke genuine pathos with hot dog fingers and that's where her performance was deserving. She beautifully captured the desperate confusion, loneliness and longing one partner has when a relationship starts to falter, and then the sheer joy when the loved one finally reciprocates, and with the added difficulty of doing so while performing a comically bizarre mating dance / sex act. At least I think it was a sex act?

 

[Striiker]

Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi

 

[CanadianFlyer88]

In my pre-teen to teen years, I read a lot of spy novels. I think it was something I picked up from my grandfather, but I can't recall who or what got the ball rolling there. Around this time, my dad was also moving around every couple of years and, while helping him pack up for one of those moves, I happened to come across a book I hadn't heard of before but it had "spy" in its title. I borrowed this book, returned it to him, but he lost it during another move. He isn't much for keeping "stuff", so it was understandable, but annoyed me nonetheless.

Fast forward to a few years ago and I'm in Portland in their world famous mega bookstore that takes up an entire city block. I had been told that they have literally everything and, while the print run wasn't huge for this book, there's a chance they may have it. I throw it in the search engine and they have a copy. Huzzah. Better yet, I found it, despite it not being where it was supposed to be (it really is a gigantic bookstore).

This is a non-fiction book, an account by Peter Wright, who was tasked with uncovering a senior level MI5 mole for Russia in one of Britain's biggest ever scandals. Multiple high level MI5/MI6 agents defected to Russia in the 1960s and Kim Philby's defection aroused suspicion that perhaps the most senior members of MI5 were facilitating these defections instead of arresting those suspected of being double agents.

Wright's book was published in the 1980s after years of litigation from the British government trying to prevent its release. When it was finally published, it was a humongous scandal because, while it's meant to be an autobiography of sorts, Wright accused the Director General of MI5, Roger Hollis, of being the person who helped the double agents defect. Suspicions of Hollis were never proven, and Wright's book is a bit sensationalist, but it's a thrilling read and I am forever grateful that I was able to track down a copy again.

The Seattle Sockeyes are thrilled to select Spycatcher as our Team Book II.

Somewhat fittingly, we now throw to @Lord Defect.

 

[Captain Dave Poulin]

Member when I got trashed in a bar, threw up on my friends' shoes and was kicked out and then waited in the parking lot playing Tom Clancy, talking into my wrist as if I had a communicator there, telling passersby to "Move along, sir"? I member. Barely.

We start the day and end the phase with one moronic idiot on the clock. @Lord Defect - it is all down to you. Pick already.

My grandpa read a lot of Westerns - that was his jam. I read some of them, but I didn't like to borrow his copies. Don't get me wrong, he was the cool grandpa, but I still didn't want the responsibility of taking care of his books (even though I took good care of mine generally). Part of the reason is that I borrowed "The Fellowship of the Ring" from my uncle (his son) when I was in fifth grade and left it on the back of the toilet one morning, and one of my idiot sisters put a curling iron on top of it. The curling iron was still hot, so it left a burn mark across the cover. My uncle was cool enough about it (and everything else), but I was really embarrassed.

When I did read Westerns, I liked them more than I thought I would - there was less boring cowboy shit (a la "Yellowstone") and more good cowboy shit than I expected, which was nice. Most of them were by Louis L'Amour, and he's a decent writer. Still, I didn't read that many Westerns in total. The best thing that came of it was leading me to L'Amour's "The Walking Drum," a novel about the Crusades. I don't know how it holds up, because I only read it that one time, but it was awesome. I had already read "Ivanhoe," and that f***ing thing rules, too, so it was right in my wheelhouse.

Speaking of crusades, we have an enormously obese bastard to oust, so get on your bikes.

 

[Lord Defect]

I gotta figure out what I have left and then figure out what I have left

 

[Lord Defect]

This album ruled, so the Pufts will be taking Candyass, by Orgy as our team album 2

@endofthisphaseithink

 

[Captain Dave Poulin]

Now we just need @Hollywood Cannon to wrap up his four-day dinner and make up his pick.

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

I haven't looked to see if this is overlapping anywhere but... we would like to select Toy Story as our Team "Movie Franchise" II.

This pick is a Thatcher Venmo approved one.