Pet Peeves of 2022

Well I got a few. Some are probably more important than others. Most are ulcer-inducing.

To begin with all the people jumping on planes  and crowding airports during the past year. It was like people had never ever been on a plane before. Was it really that stifling to be cautious about the pandemic. When Martin Luther King Jr proclaimed free at last I doubt he meant a vacation in Europe or the Caribbean.

Next pandemic related issue is all the maskless people sneezing and coughing in public and zero regard for your fellow human. Must you really go out to sit in a coffeehouse when you are not feeling well and clearly have flulike or covidlike symptons. So many examples I encountered this year of the callousness of a good percentage of the population. There was the time the nurse was coughing non-stop as we sat in a small cubicle waiting for her to give me my flu shot. Then there was the masked lady at the hotel reception desk who the instant she was about to cough lowered the mask. Jesus Murphy thank you for spreading your virus.

Now for politics… I won’t even refer to the left or right but the emergence of extremists on either side and the lack or respect for democracy and election results. The people have spoken was supposed to mean something.  The trucker convoy  had a right to protest about covid restrictions but trying to overturn a democratically elected government was quite another thing. 

Can a democracy survive with the overindulgence in politics and strange causes by the filthy rich and name celebrities? Combined with this overindulgence is the preponderance of podcasts on YouTube and other mediums spreading counter views to the main stream media. Ultimately this leads to unqualified celebs spreading ill advised positions on complicated issues. Remind me when Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, or Russell Brand became public health experts. Celebrities have opinions on everything and their names carry weight. As an example if I am for banning guns and Carey Price is pro-guns who gets all the publicity? 

Related to this are fading icons who have been taking way too much space or have misused their celebrity status. These include the Royals and Harry and Meghan, the Trump clan and its hangers on and election deniers, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, Eric Clapton and Kanye Ye West,  Theo Fleury and Carey Price, etc. Finally, can we have a viable conservative alternative instead of the goober gun nuts or fossil fuel defenders or anti-vaxxers with narcissistic a-hole tendencies.

Elon Musk has been a particularly vexing and annoying celebrity this year. Twitter was never perfect and yes it might have become too liberal and left wing, but what it did not need was one of the richest men in the world purchasing it and making it his platform and his play-toy. Do I really care what Elon thinks about Fauci or Bernie Sanders or who he thinks I should vote for. The answer is nooooooooo.

Sports Peeves

The nauseating overuse of the word GOAT seriously. Ohh please… I do not think for an instant that Messi or Ronaldo are the GOAT. Messi has now been anointed the GOAT because he won the world cup. The only reason he won is because he was aided by a slew of good young argentinians. Messi is nowhere near the player he was 10 years ago. How can anybody pretend that Messi is so much better than Maradona or Pele or Di Stefano or Baggio or Zidane or the other Ronaldo etc. Each dominated in his era and Messi for one has mimicked most of Maradona’s moves. I would dare say that Pele was Michelangelo and Maradona was Picasso on the soccer field. 

And now for hockey… I am getting pretty tired of young people proclaiming Connor Mcdavid the greatest of all time or Alexander Ovechkin the greatest scorer of all time. Yes the equipment is better than in the past and the training and diet is better than in the past. However are statistics not important at all and we just accept all modern athletes to be better than anyone in the past? Beliveau with his 10 stanley cups and Gretzky far ahead of anyone in points year after year should be just ignored. What about Mario and Bossy and Howe and Orr and Lafleur? By the way all these players dominated and won multiple stanley cups unlike Mcdavid with none and Ovechkin with his one cup.

Another major peeve for me is the state of hockey broadcasting and especially the constipated voices of a majority of those hired. Also annoying are the sidekicks who think it is important to gab incessantly. Many times I just mute the broadcast because those announcing the game are unpleasant to the ear or impossible to comprehend. As well it seems these broadcasters think it is important to hear the crowd noise which makes it impossible to understand  what the announcer is saying over the din. God how I miss the tenor voice of Danny Gallivan and the insights of Dick Irvin. 

Now for some habs peeves. For all the tanktards I had no problem with habs tanking last year when they mathematically had zero probability of making the playoffs, but wanting a tank from day one or when they were a few points from a playoff spot was juvenile and irritating. As well every year all the discredited pundits proclaim it is the greatest draft of all time until we reach draft day and more sobering words are spoken by GMs and scouts.

My final habs peeve is just as a fan how productive players the instant they join the habs become non-productive and vice versa. Hoffman and Dadonov are examples of players that have produced everywhere until they joined the habs. The vice versa is true as well. Danault and Lehkonen were given a myriad of opportunities to produce for the habs and now the instant they leave they cannot stop scoring for their new team. Seriously and vafanculo. 

One final thing get off my lawn …and can we have a better 2023 it can’t get any worse than 2020, 2021, and 2022 …