Day 11: 18,500 Words of Cheers, Jeers, and Beers

I feel compelled to post two fairly long excerpts today, because they are both really important to me. First, I had so much fun writing about the Kitsch/Boreanaz feud. Thank you all EsNoWriMers for the inspiration, I hope you will find my combination of bits of all of your excerpts pleasing. I was also inspired by some pictures I found while doing a Google image search of 'Taylor Kitsch David Boreanaz hockey'. To give some context to this excerpt, the New Jersey Devils fan club meeting has only three items on the agenda for each day of the three day meeting. Cheers, Jeers, and Beers. This excerpt takes place during the 'Jeers' portion of the agenda:

A tall, brooding handsome man with dark hair and a strong jaw stood as he inexplicably shouted “What is this Kitscher, the Stanley Cup Playoffs?“ He appeared to be directing this at a man across the room, who was equally attractive, but in a completely different way. This man, whose shoulder length hair flowed to his shoulders in a manner that perfectly complemented his chiseled good looks wasted no time in responding. “Jeez, Bor-e-ANUS, I’ve seen softer hands on a rock!” The crowd winced. The jeer was as clever as it was devastating.

Ethan realized with glee that he was witnessing firsthand one of the most famous celebrity hockey rivalries of all time. ‘Kitscher’ was none other than Taylor Kitsch, an actor known for his role as Tim Riggins, a drunken, bored model who played football on the side in the teen drama ‘Friday Night Lights.’ He was perhaps better known for the incendiary decade long feud that had been going on between him and David Boreanaz (Bor-e-ANUS), an actor best known for his love of charity celebrity hockey, his hatred of Taylor Kitsch, and his portrayal of the brooding, handsome, sensitive vampire Angel in the teen drama ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and its spinoff ‘Angel’. It was well known in hockey circles that the two had once been friends, but following a bitter dispute over an icing call at the 2010 Celebrities Against Children’s Cancer charity hockey tournament, the two had called it quits. The enmity had been simmering between the two for years, despite the attempted intervention by the beloved hockey diplomat Wayne Gretzky. Wayne, in a fruitless attempt to mend the rift, had sat down for separate televised interviews with each man, in which he explained the icing call, using graphs, a white board, and when those failed, hand gestures. It came to nothing as neither man was willing to give an inch. By all appearances, the rift was reaching a fever pitch at the 2019 New Jersey Devils Fan Club Meeting.

brian j. Pickles could only watch with mounting dismay as the two continued to trade jeers. The crowd grew quiet, tensely observing the duel.

“I’ve seen better wheels on a canoe!” Kitsch roared. The crowd gasped. Then Boreanaz delivered the coup de grace.

“I would rather have a hundred flies in my mouth than have you on my wing!” It was a stinging rebuke, since it was well known that Taylor Kitsch was not even a winger.

“Yeah?” Kitsch responded. “Well no one has ever made you that offer, since it doesn’t make any sense!” The crowd burst into applause, which seemed to diffuse the tension enough for brian j. Pickles to intervene.

Next, an excerpt that I am including because something really shocking happened today when I was writing, and I have apparently plunged headlong into some action (quite unintentionally). I knew this was going to happen, but thought it would come later closer to the halfway mark. I'm sure tomorrow I will find a way to grind the action to a halt, but until then, enjoy!

He was disappointed, if unsurprised, to find that there was much less interesting debate taking place among the academics, who seemed to have taken up the familiar refrain of complaining about how impossible it is to dedicate time and energy to teaching, when one has so many research and publishing responsibilities. Ethan wondered what the hell these people were doing at a teaching conference if it was so impossible, but he was unshocked when zero people made that point, but instead began arguing bitterly about the relative pressures of non-tenure, tenure-track, and tenured positions. Ethan silently wondered (not for the first time) why conservative politicians felt so threatened by academics, when it was clear to anyone who spent any time around any of them that there wasn’t a group of people less likely to initiate a class revolution, since they all had such vested interest in protecting status quo. 

All of this might have been easier to take had the blonde, caped man not continued to follow him while trying to engage him in conversation. The man was toting around copies of his dissertation, trying to read lengthy passages to Ethan. He was undeterred by Ethan’s complete lack of interest, and seemed to be operating under the assumption that Ethan was an attendee of the academic conference. Also, he kept calling him Doogie Howser, which was annoying, because although Ethan had VIP wifi access, which was working perfectly, the Google search function seemed to have been disabled, which meant that he had no way of making sense of the ancient cultural reference. He therefore had no idea whether it was a cheer or a jeer, meaning he had no way of knowing how to appropriately respond. If he wasn’t so bored, he probably would have felt impotent with rage.

As he sat stewing, something began to tug at a corner of his mind. At least, that was how it felt to Ethan. It meant that his brain was working on something, was observing a pattern emerging from the chaos. He thought about his observation about sports Twitter on the day of their arrival, how it had been moving around something, something big. He thought about P.K. Subban in the hotel lobby, his smile frozen as he awaited Ethan’s password guess. He thought about Lisa MacLeod, Minister of Tourism, Culture, and Sport yelling obscenities at Eugene Melnyck, owner of the Ottawa Senators at the LOUD AS HELL music festival. He thought about the chaos created by double-booked conferences. He thought about the suspicious nature of how implausibly terrible the public access wifi was at the hotel. He thought about how the google search function appeared to have been disabled. Images and memories flashed through Ethan’s mind in rapid fire. Phyllis Kessel, Bad Medicine, kawhactus, Goatwhore, the Ottawa Senators, Lisa MacLeod, P.K. Subban, wheels on a canoe, Wayne Gretzky. The images circled and circled, picking up speed until they blurred together and he could no longer distinguish one from the next, and he arrived at a final, terrible conclusion he knew to be true with every fibre of his being.

The cloaked man had continued to babble inanely throughout the entirety of Ethan’s epiphany, but Ethan brushed him aside as easily as a hundred flies as he rose to his feet, terror raising the hackles on the back of his neck.

“Mom!” he yelled over the din of disgruntled academics. “MOM!” he yelled again when he heard no response. Across the room, Annalise rose to her feet, colour draining from her face. Ethan began to move toward her, desperate to reach her. “Mom! They’re going to kill P.K. Subban!” he screamed. And just then, all of the lights went out.