Plenty of Nothing

HV71 Wins Swedish Playoffs

In the SM-Slutspel final, HV71 from Jönköping came back from a two-game deficit to take four straight against Linköping and win the cup.  Ron: Which just goes to show, when it comes to köping, it never hurts to have a chainsaw.  Don: Huh? What?

Swordfightin' Milk Carton

Playoff Champions

Austria: Red Bulls Salzburg.

Czech Republic: Slavia Praha.

Finland: Kärpät.  Go weasels!

Italy: HC Bolzano.  Foxes!

Latvia: HK Liepājas Metalurgs.

Norway: Storhamar Dragons.

Russia: Salavat Yulaev Ufa.

Slovakia: Slovan Brataslava.

Switzerland: ZSC Lions.  Schweizermeister!

United Kingdom: Sheffield Steelers.

Flowers Make a Room

Baggins

Hobbits like to snack.  In the Prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring Tolkien writes, "And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them)."  In "An Unexpected Party", the first chapter of The Hobbit, a dozen uninvited dwarfs strain but fail to defeat Bilbo's abilities as host, and still leave enough food in the larder for Bilbo's breakfast the next morning after they've left.  In all, the meals tea, supper, breakfast and second breakfast are mentioned.  The screenwriters of the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring supply the following piece of dialogue, nudging the daily total of meals to seven:

Aragorn:  Gentlemen, we do not stop till nightfall.
Pippin:   What about breakfast?
Aragorn:   You've already had it.
Pippin:   We've had one, yes. What about second breakfast?
[Aragorn turns and walks off in disgust]
Merry:   I don't think he knows about second breakfast, Pip.
Pippin:   What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper? He knows about them, doesn't he?
Merry:   I wouldn't count on it.

Bilbo Baggins, the first of Tolkien's hobbits, provided the template for the rest of his hobbit protagonists, all of them homesick though venturesome, and food-obsessed.  Even his name encodes who he is and what he's doing.  A bilbo is a small sword, like his weapon Sting.  Baggins suggests a burglar's bag, and is also associated with his home at Bag End, Tolkien's pun on cul-de-sac.  But Baggins also carries the sense of snack.  Map L56a of The Linguistic Atlas of England illustrates the variety of English dialect words for snack.  In much of Lancashire and Cheshire the predominant word is bagging or baggings.  (Other English dialect words are biting on, crib, crust, elevenses, lunch, nammet and ten o'clock).  Did Tolkien hear the word baggings as a child in Evesham, a county or so south in Worchestershire?  Evesham falls in the lunch zone, on the far side of elevenses from bagging, but perhaps.  Food for thought.  Douglas

Early Warning Sign of a New Obsession

First the books started appearing and now this:

Rögle!

The Kval till Elitserien closed in a nailbiter this year.  (To reiterate, it's the year-end tournament to determine relegation from and promotion to the top tier of Swedish men's hockey.  The two bottom Elitserien clubs and four teams from the Allsvenskan each play ten games in a mini season that runs simultaneous to the playoffs.)  With one round of play remaining there were four clubs tied for first.  Perennial Elitserien member Brynäs decisively claimed first spot by shutting out Västerås 7 to 0, and Rögle slipped into the second by beating Mora, who are consequently relegated after four seasons in the Elitserien.  Malmö and Leksand will just have to try again next year.  Rögle played four seasons in the Elitserien in the mid-1990s.  That's ex-Leaf Kenny Jönsson in the picture.  Douglas

Namesake

We need might just need to hunt out this live version of Blossom Dearie singing "Everything I've Got", though I think I still prefer the 1956 version. Ondaatje fans will recognize a possible source for one of his collections of poetry.

powered by ODEO

Heather

Japanese Word of the Day: Otaku

Otaku, n. fanboy.  "Even if you weren't an otaku ... you'd still be totally repulsive."  (Genshiken 1, p. 104)

Canadian Stanley Cup Finals

A hockey-playing country should have an annual national championship, and if Canadian hockey were run by the IIHF instead of the NHL we would.  Here's a list of the years since 1927, when the NHL assumed control of the Stanley Cup, that two Canadian teams have accidentally met for the hockey championship of Canada:

1989 Calgary Flames 4, Montreal Canadiens 2
1986 Montreal Canadiens 4, Calgary Flames 1
1967 Toronto Maple Leafs 4, Montreal Canadiens 2
1960 Montreal Canadiens 4, Toronto Maple Leafs 0
1959 Montreal Canadiens 4, Toronto Maple Leafs 1
1951 Toronto Maple Leafs 4, Montreal Canadiens 1
1947 Toronto Maple Leafs 4, Montreal Canadiens 2
1935 Montreal Maroons 3, Toronto Maple Leafs 0

Plus there's:

1979 Winnipeg Jets 4, Edmonton Oilers 2
1977 Quebec Nordiques 4, Winnipeg Jets 2