Sunday's Handy Pocket Guide: Palinmania Edition

Every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday this season we'll take a look around the NHL with BMR's Handy Pocket Guide. Keep it with you when you go out. Sleep with it under your pillow. Just don't trust it to watch your kids. Remember, it's only a blog post... But is it really just a blog post? Or is it more than that? I digress...

[ Sarah Palin, Predictably, is Not Liked in Philadelphia ]

Do we really have to talk about this? Did anyone not see this coming? Ah, screw it. Let's just get it over with.

Sarah Palin -- AMERICAS #1 HOCKEY MOM WOOOO -- showed up, winky eye and all, to drop the puck for the Flyers game last night. And while BOOOOO she was BOOOO BOOOO BOOOO BOOO BOOO and then BOOO BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Palin: Hey, what're dey saying about me Anna?

Palin's Assistant: They're saying "Poooo-lin! Pooo-lin!"

Palin: Oh, gotcha. Someone should tell em how to pronounce my name don'tcha know.

Marty Biron was clearly rattled by all the pre-game fanfare. He was chased during the first intermission after giving up 4 goals on 14 shots. The Rangers failed to score on Antero Niittymaki and hung on to win, 4-3. Niittymaki is Finnish for "Rubberstopper" in case you were wondering.

[ Bruins Fans Find Cure for In-Game Boredom ]

Kudos to these folks who have started a new craze that is sweeping the nation. Teenagers everywhere are giving up drugs and video games to play, yes, Jack Edwards bingo.

There's no better way to spend your Saturday night than playing a bingo game modeled after a former Sportscenter anchor turned NESN play-by-play guy. Come for the mild sexual innuendos (Mid-air fungo job!), stay for the creepy high school yearbook smile!

Warning: If used as a drinking game, may result in loss of vision, liver, consciousness or wallet. Also may reminisce about time spent as Little League World Series announcer.

Batteries not included.

[ New HNIC Theme Involves No Babies, Sheep or Gunshots ]

Disappointment is abound now that it has become official that the new Hockey Night in Canada theme is not "Hockey Scores". This morning, a nation is in mourning (Ha!).

But, you know what, if they weren't going to pick "Hockey Scores", then "Canadian Gold" was a solid pick. In a few years, the nation's youth won't even remember that there ever was an old theme. You can also assume senile old people won't remember either.

Seriously though, can you get a classier piece of work than this? Certainly a solid choice to replace the old theme song. Dolores Claman can suck it.

[ Jaroslav Halak Wants to Play for Toronto ]

Credit goes to the guys at Four Habs Fans, who have posted an exclusive interview with Habs goaltender Jaroslav Halak. The Habs defeated the Leafs 6-1 last night, but that doesn't mean Halak is happy about playing in Montreal, or with Carey Price. As the saying goes, the grass is always greener on the other side.

Here's an excerpt:

Toronto pley like five guys who love play together. If I pley on Toronto teem I play hard with my teem, I would dance with my teem and sing with my teem. I just want to dance. Stupide refereee make game so difficult for Toronto teem and always give power pley to Mantreal and Mantreal always score becase so easy to make score when you have more people on ice then other teeem. Oh good for you Meantreal! You win wimbledon final becase you play alone and nobody in other side of net! So Mentreal make 3 alone Wimbledon goals and put champagne everywhere in room becase they win Toronto. So sad.

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(C) CBC

As you probably know by now, Hockey Night in Canada did an eight minute segment on hockey blogging during Saturday night's telecast. All in all, it was a pretty unbiased report and gave great information. They presented both sides and didn't appear to take one. That's some damn good journalism. Actually it was so encouraging, there's a lot of good news. You can read the good word here, over here or if you still need another link, here.

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It's all heart warming that a large media outlet such as the CBC had a nice segment on blogging. And then Kevin Allen, President of the Professional Hockey Writers Association (PHWA) makes a pretty ridiculous statement, a statement that I'll get to an a minute.

Allen started out with a negative, calling blogs the "wild, wild, west." There's some truth to that. I wouldn't go so far as to say all bloggers do is drink, shoot each other and kill Native Americans, but I understand his analogy. Unless he was comparing this all to a bad Will Smith movie. In that case, I'm just confused. I guess if it's fair, but I'm going to make a comparison of my own -- just to get you thinking. Today's mainstream media is like 19th century England. You know, the ship is sinking but everyone's too snobby to admit it.

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To Allen's credit, he then described bloggers very well; some are closer to being actual journalists, while some are plain fans and don't claim to be anything else, and there others at other points. Now that's an accurate description of the blogosphere-zone-world... Then we moved on to the ol' bloggers wearing jerseys in locker rooms argument. Please, people. I'm with Allen on this one. Now I know that we're more fan than journalist, but when a rich friend invites you over, you don't go there wearing a sweatshirt and socks with sandals. I won't go any further on this point to keep from beating a dead horse.

CLICK FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP WITH THE CLICK

OK, so finally we get to the ridiculous statement I was hinting at before. At the 3:20 mark of the video, Allen says that bloggers have no accountability. Sure, some of us don't. If you post anonymously, then you have no accountability, but the sacrifice is that people will take you with a grain of salt (cough, Eklund, cough). For the rest of us, there sure as hell is accountability. There's lots of it, in fact.

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For one, there's every other blogger in the world holding you accountable. As much as we all seem to get along, this isn't a utopia. Bloggers take shots at other bloggers. Bloggers debate with other bloggers. If you get your facts wrong, and boy do I have a nasty habit of doing that, your commenters will let you know you messed up if other bloggers don't. We don't all eat our young, but I'm not going to act like it doesn't happen -- bloggers do, believe it or not, go after other bloggers on occasion.

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Then, of course, there's the fact that just like journalists, we're putting our personal reputations on the line with every word we say. Let's take, for example, a blogger who has a day job that doesn't have the least bit to do with journalism. We will pretend that our imaginary blogger works as a manager of a large and somewhat prestigious hotel. Now, let's pretend that blogger makes racially insensitive comments on their blog, while not using a fake alias. Do you see where I'm going with this? You don't have to be named Don Imus to hurt your reputation if you say something dumb. And don't think that bloggers can't get fired, either. Those of us who are blogging self-employed can't, but if you write for DeadSpin, FanHouse, etc, then you've certainly got a job interest to hold onto.

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All in all, is there less accountability in the blogo-zone-o-matic? If anyone knows your real identity, absolutely not. You had better believe that there is accountability, for those who choose to take the responsibility of it... Oh, and the clips HNIC used for cut scenes, those were not the least bit annoying... As long as you think randomly loud and obnoxious mouse clicks are not annoying. Cause they're not. Definitely not annoying.