Hey, party people. So, funny story: a couple weeks ago, I was watching old episodes of Passions on YouTube and bumped my laptop. Not like, super hard, but hard enough to make it crap its pants. The hard drive is still shipshape, but Sheridan and Luis suddenly had crazy green and purple lines all over their faces and a big black box covered a solid fifth of the screen. Not only did the replacement part cost $800 that I do not have, but the part is now stuck indefinitely at the border, presumably due to some NAFTA bullshit.  The result is that A) I cannot record my podcast until further notice, B) I am profoundly broke, and C) I had to watch the entire “Sheridan falls in a river” arc on my phone LIKE A PEASANT. 

I’m not going to give you the whole “plz halp me i am disabled uwu” speech, but I am going to try to write little blurbs on my lunch break for the next little while and link to my Ko.fi page because it’s hard out here for a girl, especially one who enjoys things like “using electricity” and “living indoors.”

—

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or you’re like, European), chances are that over the last week, you’ve become extremely familiar with Gritty.

It him.

Gritty, the recently unveiled mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers, appears to be the demented lovechild of Youppi! and Sweetums from The Muppets. He wriggles, he jiggles, he does the Macarena, he falls down – you know, normal stuff. We stan a #Relatable legend. He is beautiful and terrible, an exquisite abomination. Naturally, the Internet fell immediately, irrevocably in love.

Gritty is our best friend. Gritty is the Alpha and the Omega. We would die for Gritty. We would kill for Gritty. Gritty is our God now.

An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.”

In all seriousness, Gritty, in all his lunatic glory, is probably the best thing that’s happened to the Philadelphia Flyers in ages. I mean, really. When was the last time you thought about the Philadelphia Flyers B.G.? (B.G stands for Before Gritty. This is how we measure time now. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules.)

The correct answer, unless you are a Flyers fan, is “Uh, I don’t know? I guess whenever we played them last season?” Which, you know, fair. They are the Philadelphia Flyers. But now Gritty is here and the Flyers are suddenly the rulers of Hockey Twitter, uniting players and fans from across the sports world in pure meme bliss. Gritty is such a perfect distillation of neo-Dadaist Millennial internet humour that the Flyers have gone from being the Binky Barnes of the NHL to the really cool rabbit chick with the denim vest. Everybody wants to be, if not outright followed by Gritty, at least Gritty-adjacent. He is social media currency in its purest form.

Most importantly. he’s goofy. In the self-important, super-serious world of NHL marketing, Gritty is a necessary breath of fresh air. Hockey, at its best, is big dumb fun, and no team has ever epitomized big dumb fun quite like the Philadelphia Flyers. Gritty is 100% industrial-grade Big Dumb Fun. It’s the Age of Gritty, y’all. Better get on board because this train is bound for glory.

Same.

If you’d like to see more quality Gritty content in future, you can donate to my blog here.