"He's got longer arms than I thought..."

Yes, yes he does.  So the Hawks are two for two against the Kings so far this year.  This is much more important than it initially sounds because, as a displaced Chicago sports fan, I can generally only watch Blackhawks Hockey when they play the L.A. Kings.  National television will get me the Cubs, Bears and Bulls once in a while but not the Hawks.  In fact, unless you're in Canada you're not going to get to see any hockey without also having to endure Sidney Crosby's face which is annoying at best and has also been undeniably linked to some forms of personality disorder at worst.

With that said, the Hawks and Kings meet at the Staples Center (aka: the house that Kobe and gang riots built).  I was planning to meet up with Ducatti to watch the game at our favorite Chicago-esque bar in Hollywood.  As an aside, I know what you're thinking, and no there is nothing about this bar or its patrons that remind me of Chicago.  You can't have anything Chicago-esque in Los Angeles, the time-space continuum would collapse in on itself if anyone ever succeeded at that.  In any event, that was all before Uncle 3 of 5 (who has made other appearances in this space for being generally awesome) came through with his four Kings season tickets for me and the three LA based but Chicago-born Hawks fans I met during the course of the Stanley Cup run last year.

This is probably the perfect place to pause and remind everyone that the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup last year.  Oh, and that 2 million people showed up to the victory parade.  Did I mention that they managed not to riot or burn any taxi cabs during said celebration?  Amazeballs.

I digress, back to the real point of all of this:  I am the beneficiary of fortune a lot in life and I should probably be more constantly aware of that.  Uncle 3 of 5 got a leg up early in his adult life due to some brotherly charity from The Legend and now feels the need to repay me for something that I had absolutely no hand in.  I trounce around LA Country Club playing free rounds of golf and sit six rows behind the Blackhawks bench without any real effort on my part.  I am allowed all of these things because I happened to be lucky enough to grow up the son of The Legend.  Now that doesn't mean for a second I'm not going to be putting on my Bobby Hull signed B'Hawks hat (thank you Boondock) and rooting for John Scott to break an LA Kings' jaw, but it does mean that I will know I don't inherently deserve to be there.  I will be toasting to The Legend for the rest of my life, I just hope he's lifting his drink in return.

Slainte.

Da na na na na na...

-I Heart Palindromes