Summertime Rolls...June LIMIT LC Thread

[gobbledygeek]

Hey Frond, did you actually drink from the Stanley Cup?

GjealousG

[Frond]

Hey Ggeek, yes I did in fact get to drink from the Cup last Friday evening at Teemu Selanne's (from the Ducks) house here in So Cal. This is a bit long but may be worth reading to you hockey nuts.

I am a prof. musician. I play the Caribbean Steel Drums for a living. I am at home on Wed night talking to my Mom on my cell when my wife picks up our house phone and she starts to smile. She hangs up and interrupts me with my Mom and says to me "You need to call this lady back, it's about the Stanley Cup". So I get off my cell, call this lady back and she says that she was wondering if I could come out to one of the hockey players from the Duck's house on Friday night to play steel drums for a few hours for their party. She says that the cup will be there. I am pumping my fists like crazy. I inquire as to whose house it is and she says that is Teemu's house. I am just jumping up & down now but keeping a good "I flopped quads" tone to my to my voice. I give them a great price because I just have to do this gig no matter what. She puts me on hold, talks to the Selanne's and they say that sounds good. I ask if it is okay if I bring my camera. She says yes that they are really nice people. So I get to his house in the late afternoon on Friday, start unloading my gear and up he comes in some classic convertible with the Stanley Cup in the backseat with some friends!!! What a sureal event this was. I meet him and he is very nice. I set up in the backyard and eventually start playing(after I pinch myself some more). About 30 mins later he brings the cup out for all his friends to see. 30 mins later they bust out the bubbly and start pouring it into the cup. Everyone comes up to drink from the cup at this point. Mostly neighbors and friends. I wait a while and then when the time was right I grab my camera and wait in line. Someone offers to take a pic of me. I get up there and now I am touching the actual Stanley Cup, swigging champagne from it while high fiving Teemu Selanne as well! The most coveted trophy in all of sports right there and I get to sip from it! Unreal. They continue to drink from the cup for a while. A bit later they bust out some really good 18 yr old single malt scotch and they start drinking that from the cup as well. I didn't hesistate and got in line again and this time I took 2 hits of this great scotch from the cup. Not a huge scotch fan before this but now I am! I think it was called Macallan? Very smooth and not harsh at all. Had a lady take some additional shots of this as well. (I'll post the pics here if you guys want if I can figure out how to post them). Anyways, I am so happy at this point. At the end of the gig I want to get a pic of Teemu & myself. I do that as I am getting ready to leave. I tell him that his 2 rookie records for most goals in a season by a rook(76) and most points by a rook(132) will probably never be broken and he humbly agreed with me. What a night. My hockey-musician pals are green but happy to say the least. I got some enlargement made up for some friends and they are just floored by this whole thing as I was! I got to thinking that there were and are so many pro players who have neer touched nor drank from the Stanley Cup but A humble steel Drummer in So Cal got to sip from it!

[BigBadBabar]

wow frond, awesome story! [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[gobbledygeek]

Flopped quads indeed! Nice story Frond.

If I had to bet on one NHL record that will never be broken it would be Selanne's rookie goal scoring record; almost half again as many as Mike Bossy scored, unreal. I hope a team is eventually moved back to Winnipeg.

I don't think I've ever met an NHL star. Although right now the guy who sings the national anthem at the Canucks games is playing on my 3-on-3 hockey team. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Frond]

I honestly am still reeling over this event a whole week later. It was my first encounter with an NHLer. From what I hear, pro hockey players are some of the most approachable sports stars to just go up to and chat with etc. Most down to earth as well.

When I first started playing hockey it was around 1989 when there was still a ton of offense in the game. Gretz, Mario etc. 60, 70 80+ goal seasons were always happening. Gretzky's 92 goals(among others) prob won't be broken either I think. My pals and I used to go up the the GW Forum and wait till we'd hear the Anthem starting to be sung and then the scalpers would unload the ticks at a great $ reduction cause they didn't want to eat the ticks. Got to see a lot of great offensive games when the Kings would be playing whoever about 15 rows up from the ice in the center. Good times!

Other events-Also used to play at the LA Sports Arena for the Clippers games here and there. That was way cool cause we would play pregame and get to go in a watch the Clippers take on Boston, Chicago etc. I remember Bird just taking total control of a game and just scoring-passing with ease as usual. Amazing.

Angels-Played a few of their games when Winfield, Downing Blyleven etc were on the team. We got to hang out down near their workout room on our breaks pregame. Brian Downing had some huge biceps and Winfield was just flat out big. Both really nice guys. Blyleven was a really a funny guy.

If I can think of other encounters I'll post em here. Lots of movie stars but none compare to Teemu and Stanley Cup.

[Harv72b]

Dude. That rocks. I mean, wow...not only did you get to hang with Teemu and drink champagne & good scotch from the Stanley Frigging Cup, but you got paid to do it! I shoulda learned to play the guitar, I shoulda learned to play them drums...sorry.

I've been to one NHL game in my entire life (plus a couple minor league games in Baltimore). Washington Capitals vs. Pittsburgh, many many years back. The Caps won 6-0, and everyone in the crowd got a free pizza from a local joint; I still contend that we should've gotten two free pizzas, because the deal was that if the Caps win by 5 or win in a shutout you get the pizza, but whatever. Didn't seem worth the lawsuit.

We were literally in the very last row at the very top of the old Capital Centre. To the point that, when the Caps scored their 5th goal of the night, I skinned my knuckles on the roof of the building. Good times.

[James.]

frond,

pics would be awesome. what a great story. i'm not even an NHL fan but i know who Teemu is, and i also know how heralded the cup is in the sports world.

fwiw, you can host images online at places like imageshack.

[Frond]

The pics I took were with a reg slr not a digtal camera(speed purposes to get the moment). They are scanned and I have them as a jpg on my computer. Being somewhat comp ignorant, what is the next step in geting them on here?

[HoneyBadger]

You can try sites like: photobucket, imageshare, or even flickr

[Harv72b]

So like any normal, red-blooded American, I went to bed at around 5 PM yesterday and woke up at 1 AM. Not too unusual for me, as my body seems to be convinced that we live on a planet with a 26 hour day and thus my sleep pattern is constantly changing. And this isn't a problem because, once I fall asleep, I fall asleep--it basically takes a thermonuclear detonation to wake me up.

I offer as evidence the events which (apparently) transpired last night. I have a cat, and because she doesn't get along too well with the roommate's cat & I can't sleep with my bedroom door open, she spends the night (or whatever period of the day I'm sleeping) in the bedroom with me. I also happen to smoke a lot, especially when I'm pokering, so when it's not winter my bedroom window is always open a crack to let some fresh air circulate through. I only leave perhaps 2 inches of clearance between the window & sill, because at one point last summer my cat tore up the screen that covers that window & it would take some fire equipment to replace it.

So I wake up this morning, stagger out of bed, and walk around the foot of my bed to turn on the light. My foot brushes up against something but I don't pay that much mind because, hey, there's a cat in my bedroom and she loves to play things all over the floor. Turn on the light, turn back around & head over to the computer desk for a cigarette and to get the pc running while I take care of the morning ritual. Out of curiousity, I look down at the floor to see what I kicked, and sweet mother of pearl, there's a dead bird on my bedroom floor.

It wasn't mine, of this much I'm sure. I didn't bring any dead birds home last night, and if I had then I can assure you that I wouldn't have just left one lying on the floor. I'm also fairly sure that it didn't just walk through the door in order to keel over dead on my lovely hardwood; evidence of this could plainly be seen by the feathers which littered the rest of the room. No, this bird clearly met with foul play, and the only likely culprit was of course my cat, who was now sleeping peacefully in her house.

I'm not too surprised by the fact that my cat could kill a bird--she loves killing things, be they toys or insects or shadowy figures which only she can see, and she's met with great success in this pursuit over the years. While a bit surprised that it somehow found its way into my bedroom, I'm not really shocked; as I said, I leave the window open a crack, the screen is demolished, and the bird was small enough that it could have fit through the gap above the sill (probably with help from my cat). What really surprised me, a tad at least, was the fact that I slept through the entire event. And judging from the blast pattern of feathers all over the room, it was quite a battle. I can only assume that my cat employed some sort of ninja-esque moves complete with throwing stars and flying spin kicks to finish the poor thing off.

So I did what any normal person would do: grabbed an old t-shirt, picked up the dead bird, and deposited it in the trash can. I congratulated my cat on her successful defense of our territory, scratched my butt a couple times, sat down and got to pokering. Had a pretty decent session overall, too, which I guess proves the old saying that a dead bird on your bedroom floor is good luck.

I just pray that an elephant never gets in here.