Screen capture via YouTube
Three Stars of Comedy
And Johansen appeared to reply, even offering to chip in a few bucks to make it happen.
It's always nice to see a friendship in bloom. Here's hoping whatever sort of street festivities they have in mind are fun for everyone involved.
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Debating the Issues
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Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown
- I'm not actually sure where or when this clip is from, but it starts off with an old school "We interrupt this program" alert. For you youngsters out there, this is how we used to get our breaking news back in the day, before we could just log onto social media and wonder why everyone was angry about and try to figure out what had happened based on who was yelling about what. Back then, a scary guy would just shut off whatever show you were watching and make you think you were about to die for a few seconds. Honestly, it was a better system.
- In this case, nobody is dying unless you count Peter Pocklington's reputation. Instead, we get footage of Wayne Gretzky trying on his new Kings' jersey. This is of course the second press conference from that day, following the infamous "I promised Mess I wouldn't do this" tear-jerker.
- Random question: What do you think happened to that striped shirt Gretzky was wearing at those press conferences? It was an interesting choice. Very slimming. I think I kind of want to buy it.
- The press conference leads into a quick montage of Gretzky arriving in Los Angeles, highlighted by an appearance by a teenaged Gord Miller. We're told that the trade is a big deal in L.A., and you can tell it's true because that one photographer has sprung for like six balloons. Gretzky was never more than a three-balloon guy in Edmonton, I tell you.
- I'll admit I got way too excited at 1:15 when the beat drops and they show Bruce McNall nodding in the back of a limo and for about two seconds I thought he was about to drop the most fire rap track of 1988. There's probably a "99 Problems" joke here but I'm not finding it.
- We get a montage of Gretzky being introduced to an adoring L.A. crowd, as we get to play a fun game of "spot the late-80s celebrity." There's John Candy, Magic Johnson, Goldie Hawn and (I think) a young Kate Hudson. We also get Luc Robitaille explaining how nobody cared about the Kings until Gretzky showed up. He seems thrilled about that, by the way.
- "Wayne Gretzky… a definite plus." Typical dumb Kings fans, evaluating players using plus-minus instead of more advanced stats.
- We hear McNall tell us about how the Kings went from having 5,000 fans a night to being sold out every game. That's not actually true, although attendance did jump by about 3,000 fans per game. Look, cut McNall a break, he didn't turn out to be all that great with accurate numbers.
- More celebrity sightings, including Tom Hanks, Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Costner, and even Ronald Reagan. We also get a shot of Michael J. Fox, even though he's supposed to be a diehard Bruins fan, so apparently there were some sellouts in L.A. (But I'm going to easy on him, because he's going to provide us with some fun next week.)
- We hear from Marty McSorley before cutting back to Robitaille, who talks about being a star-struck Canadian. A few years later, he was dropping f-bombs in Van Damme movies. Fame will do that to a kid.
- The highlight of the video comes around 3:05, as a lady points out that "the only hockey player anybody in Los Angeles has ever heard of is this Wayne guy" while dropping the kind of eye-roll my pre-teen daughter would be proud of. We don't find out who she is, but I'm going to ahead and assume she's the embittered president of the Tim Tookey fan club.
- At this point our clip suddenly changes direction, with darker tones and somber music. You're half expecting to hear the narrator say "And that's when it all went wrong," followed by the story of Gretzky accidentally killing a cameraman during one of those "Take a slap shot directly at the camera" clips they made him do for absolutely everything back then.
- Nope, it's just more bragging about how many tickets they sold. Man, they make it sound like nobody in Los Angeles could take their eyes of Wayne Gretzky. Of course, as we'd later find out, that wasn't quite true.
- And with that, our clip is done. We don't even get to the awkward SNL hosting stint, or the Saturday morning cartoon, or the time McNall and Candy convinced him to buy the NFL's top draft pick. Man, the Gretzky-in-L.A. era was a weird but fascinating time. Too bad Roman Vopat had to come along and ruin it.
- Needless to say, we'll never see another trade like this one, mainly because this is the modern-day NHL and we'll never see another trade, period. Still, hockey fans can always hold out hope. Keep an eye on those breaking news bulletins, just in case.