Behind the Blog: Sweet Tea, Barbecue, and Bodychecks
Today’s Behind the Blog features the always opinionated Acid Queen at Sweet Tea, Barbecue, and Bodychecks. She is a dedicated Carolina Hurricanes fan who always speaks her mind whether it’s about Carolina bashers, happenings around the NHL, or Carolina’s rise to the top of the NHL.
Q.1 – You’ve been blogging since August 2005. Why did you create Sweet Tea, Barbecue, and Bodychecks?
I’d created a Blogspot ID for the sole purpose of commenting on Jes Golbez’s blog, and just called my little space “This Is Not A Used Blog†(and pretty much had a note in there to that effect). I have my own livejournal which I’ve used for personal and hockey-related journaling purposes over the last 3 years, but never really gave much thought to actually having a blog where I could rant about hockey until Jes put the bug in my ear earlier in the summer of 2005. I finally decided to take the plunge on what really amounted to a lark—I changed the name, changed the layout, started posting, and here we are..
Q.2 – What do you hope to achieve over the next few years with your blog?
Lots of ranting about injustices, tilting at windmills, generally pissing people off—y’know, the usual.
Actually, that’s not really true. One of the things that I’d like to see come from STB2 is the realization by the general fandom that there are increasing numbers of people down here in Mayberry that do know and love the Sport of the Gods, and that the sport is steadily growing here despite the worst efforts of the Hurricanes’ lackluster marketing department and the slackards in most of the Triangle media outlets. I also want to provide people with a perspective on the Hurricanes from a local’s point of view, which is something that you can’t get from some talking head in Bristol or Toronto who doesn’t know the Brickyard from Franklin Street from Krzyzewskiville.
Q.3 – I visit your blog because you say what you’re thinking. I may not agree with you on a certain topic, but at least I know where you stand. Have you always been this opinionated? Are you very opinionated on other topics or just hockey?
I think my family (and people on several message boards) can vouch for my always having had strong opinions on everything. I certainly don’t expect people to agree with everything I say—such an expectation would of course be quite foolish—but I’ve never been shy about speaking my mind.
Q.4 – When did you attend your first hockey game and who was playing?
The first NHL game I ever attended was actually Game 2 of the 1999 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, when the Bruins played the Hurricanes at the Greensboro Coliseum. Before that I was only ever able to attend various youth hockey games and a game by the Minot Maple Leafs of the Continental Hockey League (now the All-American Hockey League), back home in North Dakota, and a couple of high school games when I lived in southern Minnesota.
Q.5 – Where do you see the Carolina Hurricanes finishing this season (ie. what seed in the conference, making it to the Stanley Cup finals, etc.)?
I don’t want to jinx anything, so all that I’ll say is that the Hurricanes will finish where they finish—hopefully it’s winning the Cup in anywhere from 4 to 6 games (so that they can once again have Finals Scoreboard on the rest of the Division); but given the fact that the pundits thought they’d finish down in my mother’s basement with the catbox and the cockroaches, everything is gravy. Mmmmm, gravy.
Q.6 – Do you really hate the Detroit Red Wings as much as you wrote in this post? And which do you hate more: Red Wing fans or the Red Wings organization?
1) Yes—but I was grossly exaggerating when I said that I’d laugh at the fans if the Wings go plummeting to the basement. I’m far more sportsmanlike than that, I promise.
2) The organization, I have a great deal of respect for —they built a three-time Cup winner through smart drafting, smart trades, and a smart signing or two, and that deserves respect. But my personal interactions with a lot of Wings fans have been pretty uniformly crappy—especially because the Asshat Value of the fanbase has increased exponentially with each Cup. Every time the Red Wings have played at the RBC, it’s like the assiest of the assy show up and feel that they have the right to be screamingly arrogant (and aggressive) jerks in another team’s house just because it’s the Detroit Red Wings—and nothing gets a body on my bad side faster than coming into my house and taking a dump on my living-room rug.
Q.7 – How long have you been a Hurricane fan and where do you see the organization going over the next 5 years?
Long story short: I grew up as a fan of the Edmonton Oilers—they were the first team I ever saw play (back on 4 October 1980), and I liked their style, so I decided that they’d be my team. By the time the Whalers came to town and became the Hurricanes, I’d graduated high school and lost touch with hockey (and the Oilers), so I was effectively a blank slate. Of course, if you took a look at my collection of hockey cards and Panini sticker albums, you’d think that I’d always been a Whalercanes fan because I have way more Hartford cards/stickers than I do any other team. Go figure.
As for where I see the organization going in the next 5 years, it’s hard to say for sure. The hiring of Marshall Johnston as head of pro scouting and Peter Laviolette as coach are very encouraging signs, considering the current ownership’s history of “promotion from within‖but at the same time there’s a refusal to give European talent more than the most cursory of glances and a dearth of what one would consider even halfway decent prospects in the Hurricanes’ system. If something isn’t done to fix that, then this team could easily find itself right back where they were before Ragnarok.
Q.8 – Who would you pick to win the Calder trophy?
Alexander Ovechkin, no question. Of the current Top 4 Calder candidates (Crosby, Ovechkin, Phaneuf, Lundqvist), no one has done more with less than Alexander the (so far) Great.
Q.9 – What did you do to pass the time during the lockout?
I paid more attention to the NFL and my beloved Washington Redskins, and got into baseball again. I also followed the Euro leagues, particularly the Czech Extraliga (largely thanks to Golbez, since Czech isn’t one of my languages) and the German Hockey League, and got some writing done.
Q.10 – Who is your favorite hockey player? Why?
Marek Malik is and always will be my boy—unless he becomes a Red Wing, in which case I’m liable to light myself on fire and fling myself off the top of the RBC Center (just kidding). I’ve always been quite fond of his keen sense of humour, serene demeanour, and the fact that he does his best every time he gets out on the ice–and I also love his uncanny ability to pull some wild-ass move out of thin air when everybody least expects it. Mostly because of the reactions he gets.
Q.11 – Which NHL division do you think is the most competitive this season? Why?
The Central is pretty much a two-team race between Detroit and Nashville, the Atlantic is all Philly with a smidge of the Rangers, the Pacific is kinda meh, the Southeast had a nice little three-way going between the ‘Canes, Thrashers, and Lightning until the Lightning went pfft, and until the Canucks decided to take a little nosedive I would have said the Northwest (which is now down to Calgary and Colorado). So that leaves us with the Northeast—which is a spirited three-team brawl between Ottawa, Buffalo, and Toronto. That’s the division I think is the most competitive to this point of the season.
Q. 12 – Which player has had the biggest impact on the Hurricanes this season?
Without a doubt, it would have to be the Warchief, Rod Brind’amour. Eric Staal’s strong performance so far has been nice, the goaltending has been a very pleasant surprise, and the contribution of the offseason acquisitions has been quite bomb-ass—but I don’t think it would have been entirely possible without the renaissance of Rod Brind’amour.
Q.13 – Why do you refer to yourself as the Acid Queen?
The Acid Queen was a character I used to run in the pen-and-paper RPG Shadowrun. AcidQueen is also my IRC nickname on a small network that I and several BattleTech fans hang out on, and I use it on a couple of hockey boards. And it’s easier to explain than any other nickname I’ve ever had, so there you go.
Q. 14 – Which team has surprised you the most by their performance thus far? Disappointed you?
The team that’s surprised me the most is the Flames. I seriously expected them to fall flat on their faces a la the Hurricanes in 02-03 and the Ducks in 03-04, but they’ve actually done quite well so far.
The team that’s disappointed me the most? Columbus. Most expansion franchises usually have their act together and have stopped pissing around by the time they reach the five-year mark, but the Blue Jackets seem to continue to hope for Top 10 pick after Top 10 pick season after season—and that’s no way to build a team. The sooner the Jackets clean house and fire Doug Mclean’s sorry carcass, the better.
Q. 15 – Is there a hockey blog or website that you look up to for inspiration?
Jes Golbez, no question. I wish I was even half as funny as that lovable nutbar.
Any additional comments?
Go Canes!
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One Response to “Behind the Blog: Sweet Tea, Barbecue, and Bodychecks”
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January 31st, 2006 at 5:05 pm
And of course, after I send that interview in the Canucks get their act together and start playing better and turn the NW into a more competitive division–and the Leafs go into le tanque.
D’oh!