It's the Move

It must be the Move. The Move, as any true Chicago Wolves fan knows, is the dancing guy who has dominated the dance competition at Wolves games since he was first noticed dancing the YMCA about two years ago. Only the cutest and best moving young woman can beat the Move when the time comes to dance for your supper, a competition in which two fans try to earn the approval of the crowd.

My wife and I pondered the picture on our television screen. It has to be the Move we agreed. There were other candidates. There was Sockboy, Chickenman, Hockey Hank and others. But we agreed, we believe it is the Move. What was the Move doing on our television set?

He was there for about six frames in the opening credits of HBO’s summer hit "The Entourage." Watch for him. He’s the guy with the blow-up hockey helmet on, standing on a Los Angeles street corner. What is the Move doing in LA and in the opening credits of the Entourage?

Probably even more disturbing is the thought of two sane people dissecting a television show frame by frame in order to verify that someone in LA is wearing a minor league hockey sweater from our favorite team. (Actually, far more will be pondering this question once my wife gets onto the fan boards.)

Hockey isn’t watched by normal people. Unless you’re visiting this blog from a reference in a post at Wolfkeeper, you may not know that. We, and by that I mean hockey fans, are slightly insane. How else can you explain the fascination of Americans for a game populated by Franco-phonic and bacon loving people?

We may appear normal during the summer, but come winter and we are hockey people. Did you see "Fever Pitch"? Drew Barrymore falls for Jimmy Fallon during the off season. But when baseball season starts, he becomes Mr. Red Sox. He’s completely different.

That’s the way hockey fans are. We’ve spent the summer debating the future of the NHL. The only sport more obscure is, well European team handball and curling, another Canadian dominated sport.

How else can you explain the intimate dissection of the opening credits and the creation of a list of suspects? How else to explain the calendar, populated by notes "V. Milw"?
My wife, who is the real hockey fan in the house, compared to the ersatz fan—me, has told people we can’t visit due to a game being scheduled on a particular date. She went so far as to take her 89 year-old mother to her first hockey game on Mother’s Day. And, when she learned that there was hockey in Ireland, well, she is the first among Americans on the fan site for the Belfast Giants.

This has all been great for my social life, in a limiting way.

We know the Canadian national anthem by heart. That’s weird. Most Americans, including the new US ambassador to Canada, have only a passing idea that Canada is somewhere north of here.

Anyway, there he is, some guy, right now I think it’s the Move, standing on an LA corner and singing into a mike during the opening credits of Entourage. It’s about as nuts as Woo-Woo walking down Clark during the baseball playoffs pumping his fist in the air: "Go Cubs."