Free Drinks After Deadline

I'm going to hand out two awards, one for best quote of the day and one for best lead of the day.

The award for best lead of the day goes out to Todd Venezia of the New York Post for his story of the mother accused of child abuse involving a tanning bed.

The lead?

She's taken tanning too far -- even for New Jersey.

Get that man a cold one and a shot on the house for that lead.

The quote is from the Capitals' Brooks Laich, who was talking to the Washington Post's Tracee Hamilton after a triple-overtime loss to the Rangers Thursday morning when he said:

Half the players on the ice had blood on their uniforms before it was over. It’s a grinding game.

Laich said more about the game than anyone assigned to offer 700 words or more on it. He summed it up perfectly and not a single indeed, of course, know this or punctuation trick that are often employed by today's mainstream dead-tree edition writers. Good thing he isn't working one of those publications.

I've seen layout editors go crazy when a writer came up 40 words short of 1,000 on a topic. Laich filed only 19. Time to redraw the page.

Laich, you stretched deadline a bit, but it was worth the effort. Have a free cold one on the Lounge.

And after hearing this tune on the Marek vs. Wyshynski radio show, I say Jess Goldey is worthy of being sponsored for an evening of refreshments in the Lounge. Here is "Orange G-Sus, I'd Cook You Grilled Cheeses." She shoots and scores.