me no blog long time

I haven't blogged in a while - ever since the project from hell took over my life (it was like the Hotel California - you could check out, but you could never leave). Now that that's over with, I've got a couple things to post about...

1) I'm really, really glad that Tom Renney didn't pull a Willie Randolph and let Henrik Lundqvist rot on the bench until it was too late. It's still too early to proclaim him as having arrived, but given his background, the scouting reports coming into this season and his performance thus far, he's certainly close. He's given the Rangers strong games in each of his appearances, and he basically won them a game on Thursday night against the Islanders at the Garden. He doesn't give off that Dan Blackburn "confident-but-still-in-over-his-head" vibe, which makes him the first Rangers rookie goalie since Mike Richter to instill some confidence in the faithful.

1a) If the Rangers' penalty killing is as good as it's looked thus far, the Blueshirts could go a long way in this new NHL.

1b) Speaking of Blueshirts, can we go back to the white jerseys at home and leave the away jerseys for, well, away? I know it makes laundry slightly easier for the teams, and the league loves the fact that the dark jerseys at home and the light on the road harkens back to the NHL of the 1960s and earlier, but it's just not the NHL I grew up with.

Now, I love the away jerseys - when I dropped $300 on a Messier jersey back in 10th grade, I went with blue. But, without having seen any Rangers games in HD, I must say the blueshirts have never, ever been able to convey their bluey goodness on TV. And the home whites look crisp on TV at the Garden.

And that's my selfish opinion.

2) If anybody knows of a way to get tickets to Ben Folds at the Electric Factory on Wednesday night (without sucking or selling any body parts), lemme know. I'm equal parts hard worker and lazy idiot, so I waited waaaay too long to try to get tickets to this.

3) I'm still holding out hope for the Karl Rove perp walk one of these days here (soon).

4) I found a weird magazine on the ground yesterday outside of the Rite Aid at 23rd and Walnut called "Libations" (I think it's an insert in Citypaper). It's basically a thinly-veiled marketing attempt for certain beermakers to position premium and semi-premium beer as the "new wine" - something to be savored, collected, and consumed with fine foods. And while it is thinly-veiled, I was hooked. But really, it didn't make me want to go out and by cases of Blue Moon (especially when you could go out and buy Hoegaarden) so much as it made me want to try microbrewing.

And really, microbrewing is something I've been thinking about long before I found a weird magazine on the ground and decided to pick it up. If I ever have a basement, I'm turning part of it into a microbrewery, and another part of it into a black and white darkroom.

5) I'm in my PJs right now, blogging from the couch as Kris plays with Pandora. XPN is playing from the surprisingly good laptop speakers. I don't have to work today. Life is good.