Strawbs Kick Off Birthday Week in Grand Style

Strawberries 5 Mighty Piglets 1

Game Report
October 18, 2007

The annual self-administered and self-promoted “Rob the Torch’s Birthday Week” celebrations began with great fanfare last Thursday night at the beautiful Pete Palangio Arenas. To mark the kickoff, the Strawbs donned, for the first time ever, a full set of matching team socks, save for Gawdawful Gumby who, in his usual truculent style, refused to include himself in another “juvenile, conformist and frankly quite communistic undertaking”. Just imagine this kind of behaviour from a man who soils his own bed because it helps him to get up in the morning.

The new socks were not your mundane, run of the mill, plain Jane and vanilla socks. No sirree. The new hosiery was, by Executive Fiat, specially made by a local haberdashery, Socks to Be You, to honour those breathtaking red fishnet stockings favoured by the team’s most demanding fan, the wistful Miss White Go Go Boots. It is not often a professional sporting team honours inanimate objects (the stockings, not Miss WGGB) but, given the surreal motivating effect of Miss White Go Go Boots’ clothing choices upon the hormonal outputs of those fortunate enough to bask occasionally in her reflected glory, the honouring is fully understandable.

And honour the socks they did. Pyjama Man, in his first game of the season, single-handedly emasculated the Mighty Piglets, turning them into a million freeze dried bacon bits with four unanswered goals of a quality befitting both his new socks and the Birthday Week celebrations. Dr. Thug sprung himself from the clutches of his own moving phlegm pile to complete the team’s scoring…well almost. There was another goal scored. Shiny Shone McCabe, disoriented by the lights and intoxicated with the thrill of playing with his first real hockey team in 34 years, took it upon himself to ruin a fabulous outing by the rejuvenated Jesse The Leak, by brazenly depositing the puck into his own net. At his post-game debriefing in the Zamboni Room, Shiny Shone admitted he had always found that goaltenders are prone to become complacent when they record shutouts. All he was trying to do was ensure that that The Leak’s burgeoning ego did not impede his future performance. The Executive promptly excoriated the new boy for thinking thoughts not approved by management. The Executive also believes that the threat of a prolonged rehabilitation stint with the Bottom Feeding Blowfish (or worse, the bumbling Nasty Cupcakes) has cured Shiny of any further unauthorized actions.

There was one other disappointment, normally overlooked. On the basis of his rigorous summer training regimen, Archilles Perron, long suffering betrothed of Ms.Glasgow Glamour, was elevated to the first line alongside the team’s leaders in all departments which count. Buffed to a svelte 168 pounds by a diet of non-alcoholic beverages, tofu, seaweed and sugar-free gum, Archilles ought to have shone. He did not. In fact, he was a black hole of shininess, a dim shadow of amorphous inefficiency lost in a sea of ineptitude. One hopes he gets better soon.

Fortunately, nothing could take the shine off the end result. A big win is a big win, even more so when accomplished with the sartorial splendour afforded by new socks.

The celebrations surrounding Rob the Torch’s Birthday Week continued to the wee hours of the morning, with massive quantities of subsidized beverages being quaffed at Leo’s, Freight Train 444’s frequent pre-class imbibery. The festivities will end around next Wednesday when the Torch’s frail liver finally screams surrender.

21 jugs of liquid swill, most of it strained through a pair of red fishnet stockings found discarded on the floor of the Zamboni Room, were consumed.