Sent from my man on the inside at the NHL who loves the arrogance of the subhead. As do I.

That winning streak that was snapped was five straight gold medals by the Canadians, or by my calculations, nearly 30 straight wins in World Championship competition.

Oh, did I forget to mention this momentous feat happened yesterday? Some of the hockey community is pretty enraged that we didn’t pay more attention to this. Personally, I’m surprised we didn’t get a plug for the junior team from the 1980′s Olympic heroes during the Winter Classic last weekend – you’d think Eruzione and friends would take an interest in a bunch of 20-somethings taking out a powerhouse in dramatic fashion. I guess there wasn’t time during the segment…possibly because they had to clear up the fact that the game against the Soviets wasn’t actually the gold medal game.

Regardless, hats off and reign victorious to John Carlson, pictured above scoring the game winner in OT, and the rest of the U.S.A. Juniors. The Steady Burn nation commends you.

USA beats Canada for gold at the 2010 World Junior Hockey Championships (Raw Charge)

Because I’m a stand-up dude, I check almost every profile of everyone who follows me on twitter. Not saying I like everything I see, it’s just a nice thing to do. And so, when I got the in-box indication that @landoftalk had decided to subscribe to the perpetual asinine stumblings of @mikehayes19, I dutifully perused their profile page on Twitter. I found out they were a band (who or what else posts a link to a MySpace page anywhere, anymore), fantastic for them I suppose. Still, I probably would not have checked out the tunes if not for this fantastic twitter bio:

Fronted by the daughter of North America’s first female alligator wrestler. Backed by Montreal’s skinniest drummer and fattest bass player.

The daughter of North America’s first female alligator wrestler is 27-year old Ontario-native Elizabeth Powell. Her mom hung it up – presumably, before she got did like Chubbs – in favor of becoming a psycho-geriatric consultant (kids, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t follow your dreams). Here’s Powell on her mom:

“She just had this placating technique with alligators that turned into a bit of a sideshow,” explains Powell. “She just tickled its belly and it went to sleep. It wasn’t like she was in the ring in a bikini, wrestling it to the floor!” ( The Independent )

Placating? Tickling an alligator to sleep seems downright puttying.

In terms of the music, you might think it sucks, but I think they’re great. Check out Land of Talk here: http://www.myspace.com/landoftalk

Gotta tip my hat, and twittersource J.E. Skeets (Balls Don’t Lie), a man who shares my affinity for the Obama throwback.

The Scarebear, clever in concept…

…Awesome in t-shirt.

Link:

Snorgtees.com

This was once again not your prepubescent self’s kickball…

In the second game I watched during yesterday’s Third Annual International Kickball Invitational in Brooklyn, N.Y., a girl playing first base was brought to the ground by an opposing player barreling down the base line. His tackling technique was nothing if not textbook. She bounced back remarkably well from the bear hug take down, as her team’s second baseman ran to cover her up – as one of her boobs had freed itself from her bikini top.

Along with All-Star teams assembled from the Brooklyn League, there were squads in attendance from Canada (read: International!), the deep South (Atlanta), and the midwest (Hoboken, NJ).

The eventual champions – one of the four Brooklyn teams – notched a mercy rule victory in their second game of the day, against a team that came all the way from Toronto.

So did you guys rent a church van or something? I asked some the Canadians. No, gas is stupid, we took the bus…it took 11 hours. That’s a long ways to come to get throttled like that.

The tournament ran all day Saturday from 1 – 11 p.m. – which by my estimation is the longest recorded kickball tournament since Jesus coined the term balls in 15 A.D. (Quote: Get these balls, sucka sayeth the Lord to Judas; Corinthian 21:12)

McCarron Park in BK provided the ultimate self-indulgent backdrop for an organized group of several hundred adults playing an elementary school game. Like most hot, humid days in New York, the park was overrun with beautiful people laying on beach towels, just sort of looking at each other. Also, there was not one, but dueling Mister Softee trucks – which will be getting my business, I wonder?

Prior to the start of the tournament, I spent a good amount of time sitting on a bench drinking a 32-ounce Budweiser out of styrofoam cup watching these Polish kids pelt each other with water balloons. A little girl about five flanked me, and hit me square in the junk with one. Miraculously, it didn’t pop; she was so mad it didn’t explode all over me. I was relieved, I didn’t need to walk around the rest of the day with wet junk.

Even though they didn’t play particularly well, the Canadians did show up with Maple Leaf umbrella hats, an apparent traveling mascot dressed as Dionysus, and ketchup flavored potato chips.

Luckily I had the 32-ounce King of Beers or I never would have gotten the taste of those putrid chips out of my mouth.

See some more photos of the tournament below, as well as one of the more clever trash cans I’ve seen in my day. Check out more at BrooklynKickball.com as well.