By Guest Moe, Krasna

See KoKo's OTHER Moe's

• The Newly Redesigned Moe's Tavern Shopper
  
• When you can't subdue the competition with news, change your fonts.
  
• Some guy just jumped off Tribune Tower. So, actually, my Monday's going pretty well in comparison.

Part One: The Comparing
In the case of both Moe's Tavern games and Shane MacGowan shows, there's a 20% chance that key members of the team won't show. Although our truancy rates have shown marked improvement this season, we still have a long and storied history of absentees, particularly of the female variety. Of course, with Shane MacGowan, you also have a 40% chance that he'll show up, mumble his way through a couple of songs, and then leave. And you might be better off for that.

On both Saturday and Sunday I witnessed the wheels coming off the wagon of a seemingly well-oiled machine. Maybe that's the wrong mixed metaphor; while Shane MacGowan is pretty much always well-oiled, I really doubt he's ever been near the wagon. Anyway, in our case, we suffered a momentary lapse of concentration where we allowed that bunch of freaks to not only tie us at 7 a piece, but actually go up 8-7. In the case of Shane MacGowan, he suffered a momentary lapse of stomach control and vomitted all over the stage. Then some roadie wiped it up with an Irish flag and threw it into the crowd. Then people fought over it. But what happened next, in each case, is where the real lesson lies. Shane MacGowan shook his shaggy head and kept right on singing. We took a time out, shook our shaggy heads, and snapped in two goals to salvage a win. Both events were definite crowd pleasers, even if both made you feel a little queazy.

A Shane MacGowan show also smells remarkably similar to Marty's skanky hockey gloves. Shane MacGowan looks dizzy a lot and does stupid things on stage. We have a guy called Dizzy who does stupid things from time to time as well. And finally, at the end of both events a lot of the participants had no idea what had happened.

Part Two: The Contrasting
First of all, Shane MacGowan is a chronically self-destructive Irish musician who actually got booted from the Pogues for drinking too much. We're a multi-ethnic floor hockey team that has never consciously tried to self-destruct. Shane MacGowan swears a lot in his songs; Ellen swore when that big guy ran over her, but it wasn't really part of the fabric of the game. Shane MacGowan drinks more in one night than all of us combined in a week. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever passed out or thrown up during a Moe's Tavern game. We may have blacked out a few times, but that's not the same thing. Shane MacGowan's new band is kind of weak. Our new players kick ass: Eric needed only a few minutes to notch his first career Moe's goal. Jen Casey tried to tell us all she didn't know what she was doing, but her performance told a different story. Also, I've never heard anyone on Moe's Tavern yelp "I love Cleveland" repeatedly, like Shane MacGowan did. And finally, Shane MacGowan's best days are most decidedly behind him, whereas ours are no doubt still to come.

Part Three: Filler
Am I at 750 words yet? Crap. Well, I have to say that it was really satisfying to beat a good team for once, and not a bunch of hacks. Although that team, similar to cute Kelly's team, really needs to put down the old crack pipe before they kill someone. What was up with funny-head-gear man? And it's a lot harder to deal with sneaky bald guy when you can't just pin him up against the boards like we could at Windy City.

Game time next week is 3:30. We're playing some team called "Friends of Willow". Please, that's almost as bad as the "Mother Puckers". We will be missing Cate and Jen T., and will be activating Monica. If you have not paid Moe yet, please do. Otherwise, he may puke on you disdainfully. The end.

-nj