@Jynx:
1. We're living vicariously through a team by rooting for them to win? Well, I'm relatively sure most of the rest of us here have actual LIVES--I'll pause for a moment for all the "X has no life!" jokes to be made...and now all the specific "YOU have no life, eh, obi?" jokes possible...and a moment for mapleleaf, especially...alright, moving on--so it's not living vicariously, it's two hours of entertainment, UNLESS they go to OT...then it's 2 and a half or maybe 3 hours of entertainment.
2. It doesn't "matter," so it can't be fun? While I'm sure someday we'll have some great discussion of what, philosophically, "matters"--and when that day comes, God have mercy on us all...unless he's dead and life is intrinsically meaningless, of course--today is not that day, and this is rhetorical nonsense, as for something to be enjoyable, it doesn't have to have a long-lasting impact, ie, it doesn't have to "matter," case in point, if you have a bit of candy, that will allow for endorphines and the pleasure center of your brain to fire, and while that candy AND your eating it is an entirely unimportant five seconds in the whole of eternity--unless you're a world leader who is poisoned by a Deadly Assasination M&M or something--it is nevertheless a moment of PLEASURE, and thus we may safely say pleasure is not wholly dependant upon importance; by that same stretch, a hockey game now might matter for nothing in two hundred years, but for NOW it's enjoyable, and so it has worth NOW insofar as it's fun NOW.
3.To play devil's advocate on behalf of the NHL players...can YOU do waht they do, shoot a puck 90 mph+ at a small goal while skating on the ice at fast speeds and avoiding 180 lb. men trying to ram you into boards? It isn't IMPORTANT, no, Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky aren't exactly Caesar and Washington in terms of centuries-on importance--though mention that to a Canadian and you may have a different answer, and perhaps in the form of a puck to the face--but they still possessed skills you, we don't, and watching them exercise those skills provides momentary pleasure...and that goes for ANY special skill, really. Do you play an instrument? I can't--so I'm all the more entertained to hear a pianist or a rock group. Do you write? I hope to do so (well) someday, and so those who have written well and told great stories are all them more entertaining to read (FINALLY finished "Paradise Lost, great work, though at 12 books long I'll say 10 would have, in my opinion, made it even better..Book V is only really enjoyable if you love Miltonic imagery to death and want to hear it repeated over and over, and XI is an anti-climax of sorts after the Fall before XII wraps things up, cut those and an odd line here or there, maybe don't make every last thing Eve says eitehr stupid or something that feeds Milton's mysoginist ego, and it'd be even better...now reading "Women In Love" by D.H, Lawrence, and all I can say is...WOW! That. Is. AMAZING...no wonder overly-Puritanica Americans kept that work banned in the USA for so long! Where was I? Oh, right--if you can't perform the skill, don't knock those who can and entertain others by doings o, bringing me to...)
4. WHY knock the NHL players? I know highly-paid atheletes are easy targets, especially in a recession, but most of these guys seem really great; I'll go so far as to say the NHL might ahe the most exemplary citizens playing in it today (MLB next, and then the NBA and NFL, for as much as I love the latter, at least, have plenty of rape, robbery, assault, and so-on cases...the worst I hear from the NHL is the Todd Bertuzzi Incident a few years ago and the robbery of the Winnipeg Jets, which--fingers crossed, that was the ONLY time I ever rooted for a Red Wings win!--is about to be fixed.)
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Will you be my friend? (For real this time)
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