The NHL Color Scale: Blue

Don't forget to check out the rest of the series: Red, Yellow, and Orange and Purple, Green, Gray, and Natural

I broke my furious blogging pace to work on a project that's actually taking some serious time.  I happen to really love color.  I spent a decent amount of my time in psychology consuming and analyzing all I could about how we process and are effected by color.  You look at the hockey world and the NHL is ablaze with more color than even many hardcore hockey fans would admit.  In the spirit I set out to create color scales for all of the major colors that we see on NHL jerseys.

All of the colors I used were extracted from the galleries over at one of the best, and possibly my favorite, hockey jersey resources NHLUniforms.com.  To do the extraction I used a Google Chrome extension called Color Pick.  The colors that I'm looking at ignore those found in crests and patches and focus only on the body of the jersey.  And below I present a break down of the use of the most popular color in the entire NHL, blue.  A few things to note: Nashville's third jersey and New York Rangers's third jersey use a navy blue that is barely different another blue that is actually the most popular shade in the entire league.  If you've got good eyes or a good monitor then you can likely zoom in and see the line between the two Navies.  What I also found interesting is huge differences between all the light blues found on the various third jerseys.

This is just the first of color scales that I produced.  I choose to post the blue scale by itself due to its size.  As the week goes on I'll post more of the scales.

Feature Friday #1

Here is my first "Feature Friday" where I'm going to present some of the music to which I've been listening.  Typically The band and album will link to the bands website or store and I'll provide a second link that should take you to iTunes if that's your thing.

Today we've got two very different bands in the indie pop sounds of Washington and the punk fueled rock and roll of the Blacklist Royals.

Washington - I Believe You Liar (iTunes link)

Washington is a one woman indie pop project that works really hard to be an indie pop project.  Dense, upbeat instrumentation and interesting musical arrangement carry the fun lyrics and genre adequate singing.  Not to say that Ms. Washington does have vocal talent, its just not exemplary in the world of female indie rockers.  Overall its a good album, except things get a little dull starting with track nine.  The first eight tracks are either incredibly fun numbers or stripped down, soft pieces that are shocking beautiful in their simple nature.  After that the album gains an "already done that, and done it better" feel.

One of the best things I can say about this debut album is that Washington is totally honest about what she's presenting you, an unabashed indie pop album.  That being said it feels kind of pretentious at times, but seeing that she made this album on her own I think she earned that right.  In the end I've got high hopes for her future work because there is potential for Washington to stake out her own little indie pop corner in the world.

Blacklist Royals - Semper Liberi (iTunes link)

I discovered these Nashville boys earlier this year in my never ending quest for un-distilled rock music. Blacklist Royals occupy a broad genre of punk-and-roll that was really popularized by the instant classic Gaslight Anthem. The band definitely falls more on the punk end of the spectrum with the crunchy guitar, gruff vocals, and occasional cursing and sneering. Oh, and these boys definitely have some Nashville country/southern rock flavor that lets everyone know that they as know as much about Springsteen as they do about the sounds that define their city.

One of my favorite things about this album is the seamless integration of a piano instead of you know… more guitars. When a punk band throws in a novel instrument I always get concerned that it will either turn into a gimmick or it will be lost in the cacophony, distortion, and reverb. BR step right around there and just allow the whole thing to work and add a refreshing flair to the album. Tennessee Blues is a stand out track on the album since it not only features the wonderful piano work, but also some fun fiddling that fits right into the heart of the band's sound 

And since some will wonder, Semper Liberi translates to Always Free.

The Current State of Fans and Body Contact in the NHL

Watching and listening to Predators games this season I've noticed a common topic that frequently crops up between play-by-play man Pete Weber and color commentator Terry Crisp.  Crispy was consistently noted the strong fan reaction when the home town crowd sees one of their boys leveled with a hit.  The gist of Crispy's comments are along the lines of current NHL fans believing that any body contact between two players should result in penalties or retaliation.  Further, he believes that the NHL hockey culture as cultivated by the central NHL officers are, at least in part, to blame for current fan-reactions to body contact.  As with most things there is a grain of truth in what Terry Crisp has been saying recently, but as always I'd like to spend some time thinking about what may actually be gone on in the minds of fans.

Whether for better or worse every hockey fan can agree that the game has changed since the league entered the post-lockout world.  Grappling and constant body crippling hits have either decreased or been totally eliminated from the game and as fans we're now experiencing traditional North American hockey with some added European style flavors.  The NHL have also placed a greater emphasis on player safety with rules that try and protect players from head shots and other plays that result in high probability of injury.  The easiest thing to say about the fans is that when you and your friends or family are sitting in the stands all you can see is the hit.  Like with many potential penalties, the fans can't see every detail.  Sometimes the fans see a trip, but the hometown guy just stepped on a stick.  The same thing happens to referees.  Predators fans may recall a penalty last year called against (I think) Kevin Klein.  He was called for a slash after Klein's opponent broke his stick by clashing Klein's.  The same thing can happen with hits of all types, but I don't think that is the essence of the issue nor what Crispy has noted in his commentary.

I think the fan unrest that we're see when it comes from hits stems from two things: perceived inconsistency of rule enforcement and sensitization.  As always this isn't a commentary on how people are doing their jobs, but rather a hopefully objective exploration of a hypothesis.  With the NHL's closed door, window, and vent policy fans know little to nothing about injuries, rule making, and rule enforcement outside of what is directly observable in public settings.  It is therefore difficult to neigh impossible to comprehend how the NHL deals with supplemental punishment.  After several seasons of confusion on the parts of fans as to why and how certain suspensions and fines are doled out we're becoming acutely aware inconsistencies.  Its tough when you see a fan favorite penalty killer and fourth line grinder go into the boards face first and watch the guilty party skate away and face no consequences, then days later see a player get suspended for two games after trying to squeeze an opposition player through the cracks in the glass.  I could illustrate more instances, but if you're a hockey fan I'm sure you're aware of a dozen examples on your own.

What you're see is the perceived inconsistencies in enforced discipline is causing fans to become hyper-sensitive to hits and any other type of body contact.  Fans have started to look at and mentally break down each and every hit trying to determine not if its clean or dirty, but rather to what degree of dirty was that hit.  The problem is then only compounded as similar hits are treated differently and further complicated by fans trying to figure out what the equation that is used to determine how justice is doled out, or not doled out as the case may be, based off an equation whose variables are the very players involved.  At some point fans might as well boo any hit because no one really knows when or if a hit will be considered dirty by the NHL.

As a final note, the whole Crosby/slew-foot topic could also be included in the above blog, but I won't be addressing that topic.

UTC Mocs Inline Hockey Jerseys

I hope to expand on this post in the future after interviewing my semi-stepbrother and founder of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga inline hockey team.  2010 is the club's first year in existence and from what I've heard they are off to a great a start.  In the next couple of weeks I'd like to provide some more in-depth information about the club's origins, goals, and players.  Until that happens I wanted to post a couple pictures of the official team jerseys.  I apologize for the poor image quality because all I have to take photos with is my phone's crappy camera.

The front of the jersey uses UTC's newer version Scrappy the mocking bird (UTC's mascot).  The shoulders are home to the ever popular UTC "C" that can also be found on the UTC football team's helmets.  Many have probably noticed that the base for the jersey is the Nashville Predators current away uniforms.  Its nice when your school's colors match perfectly with a product already being sold.

Here's a shot of the back where you can see the screen printed name and number.

These sweaters look pretty sharp, and the UTC team is going to look good out there this season.  Here's a link to a blog written by an individual involved in the recent rebranding of the UTC Mocs:

http://www.uncommontaries.com/?m=201002

Amazing Amounts of Pointless Effort

I openly admit to being obsessed with music consumption.  I also admit to fanatically loving anything that has to do with the whole Scott Pilgrim franchise.  Due to bad timing and my distaste for going to movie theaters alone I didn't get to see Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World until the home video release of the film.  Since then I've been rapidly consuming the deliciously deep contents of the Blu-Ray version of the movie.  But that's more of an aside than anything else, so I'll head back on topic.

Before I was able to see the film I'd already beaten the Scott Pilgrim video game and listened through the soundtrack for the film and the video game and I had of course been buying up the books since just before the sixth book was published.  The movie soundtrack featured a fantastic song by the Canadian indie pop band Metric.  I'd loved Metric's first release Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? but have completely failed to follow the group since that album way back in 2003.  It was great to be pulled back in and I already ran out (to iTunes) to get their most recent release Fantasies, which went platinum in Canada. Now, we've established my love of the song, but what I'm working towards is the song's placement in the film.

The soundtrack is a mixture of original compositions for the bands within the film, songs repurposed for the film, and original music for the soundtrack... pretty typical stuff there.  Metric's sole contribution was the previously unreleased "Black Sheep."  Interestingly enough, the singer of Metric Emily Haines was actually the inspiration upon which creator Brian Lee O'Malley drew to create Envy Adams  As it turns out when I heard the song being played I had the answer to two questions. 

 The only band in the Scott Pilgrim world that I didn't have a handle on was The Clash at Demonhead.  From the book art, you can tell that the band is made up of a bassist, drummer and vocalist/keyboardist.  But still, I couldn't get a real feel for the sound they would make.  I'm sure at this point you can clearly see where I'm going with all of this endless typing; Black Sheep is the song preformed by The Clash at Demonhead in the film.  Marrying the real and fictional band was perfect and I felt like my mental construct of the Scott Pilgrim world was complete, yet there was still a problem.

The version of Black Sheep on the official soundtrack was quite different from the film version.  Metric performs the album version whereas in the film the song is preformed by the folks we see up on stage, Brie Larson (vocals, keys), Tennessee Thomas (drums), and former Clark Kent Brandon Routh (bass).   Well, I'm me so I have to both versions of the song.  My immediate thought was the rip the song straight off the DVD using the wonderful Audio Hijack pro from the wonderful folks at Rogue Amoeba, but that didn't have the complete song.  Next, I found an official music video that features the complete performance, hurrah!  Still, the audio quality was crap and there were jumps in the audio tracks.  Failure seemed imminent, until....

I discovered, while scouring all the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World audio tracks on iTunes, a band called The Evil Exes.  The band only had one song titled Black Sheep (from "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World").  Bam!  All that time I spent running around and I had the track just sitting metaphorical inches away from fingers.

Anyways, that's that.  I'm going to do the best I can to post audio/video for both song versions so you can know that it was totally worth it all.

First here is Metric's version:

And now the film version

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - 'Black Sheep' Music Video from Louis S on Vimeo.

The Misunderstood Nature of the Common Cannibals, And Caramel

I don't have anything hockey or music related that I would publish at the moment, so here's just some humor.

I admit that I would try human meat given the right set of circumstances; I wouldn't want to harm someone or have someone harmed nor would I be likely to actively seek out the opportunity.  Still, its an intriguing thought.  Ultimately its not something that one gets a chance to do all that often.

But I honestly think most people have the wrong idea about cannibals.  Its not like you grab a coat out of your closet, throw on a hat, and take a walk down the street so that you can slaughter some nice person every time you feel like grilling up a few burgers.  No, see, you slaughter that person and eat them to absorb their virility and soul so that you can impregnate your wife with the male child that the gods have denied you ever since the village shaman caught you telling lewd jokes about his mother to your friends.

I'd also like to share what I consider to be one of the best Internet based insults of all time.  While involved, it is easily adaptable to situations outside of Internet forums and comment sections.

When you speak I often find myself waiting in an extra beat or two for the gravity of what you said to sink into my brain. Often during this period I maintain a listless expression that is tinged with a flicker of crackling whimsy. My eyes narrow and then soften while I lean in towards the screen on my computer. With my head resting against the back of my hand I read and re-read your post, sorting the words and punctuation in much the same way one attempts to tie a cherry stem in his or her mouth. I feel a pressure in my chest because I want to write something and express how I feel but the apprehension at the often ineffectual nature of words posted on the Internet prevents me even publishing that which I have written.

Sitting on the desk I have a box of Japanese milk caramels given to me by a friend. They are delicious little candies that have a pleasant flavor and texture. In fact I find that just holding and unwrapping each little cube is a simple experience that only further enhances my enjoyment of the candy. Each element of the milk caramels lend to a wholly pleasurable experience with I can find no true flaw. Even when there are no more caramels remaining I feel satisfied and pleased with the quantity and the stack of silver papers that I've tossed back into the small yellow box.

You are not caramel.

Determination

It seems that every three to four months I decide that it is once again time to start up the blog that I've always wanted. As always the primary subjects would be music, hockey, and then whatever happens to catch my interest at the time. Maybe at some point I'll have formatting with pictures and stuff... maybe I'll learn something about all of this blog formatting. Ok, probably not but it could happen.

I'm currently gearing up for my Best Music of 2010 list, but that won't get publish until 2011.

I'd like to take images of all the current third and alternate jerseys in the NHL and poke fun at the surprising similarities between all of them.  Granted its something that's been done before, but I'd like to take a crack at it and put my personal touch on the thing.

I'm also looking forward to posting my knee-jerk reactions to things going on in the hockey world.  Often you get a really bad read on what happened and are thinking clearly, but the results can certainly be amusing and some people can get really worked up.

Finally I think it'll be nice when I post another blog in three to four months about how much I really want to write a blog on a fairly regular basis.  But, ah ha!  I already have a short something to post on here tomorrow, so that is a single step in the right direction.

Otherwise here is a animated .gif from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Video Game