Are We Sure We Can't Just Shoot These People? Really?

On the one hand, why do I give a fuck about the idiots of Vancouver turning their city into Beirut over a stupid hockey game?

On the other hand, the scene following Game 7 has some very troubling implications for sports and society as a whole.

Because this year it was Vancouver. Next year, it could easily be Chicago or Philly.

When you see people gleefully posing for photos shot on their cell phones in front of burning cop cars, you just know that a widespread viral infection of "stupid" has metasticized amongst modern society.

Likely fatal, too.

But let's hope I'm dead by then.

Violent group actions in the wake of sporting events - both wins AND losses - is nothing new.

But the current cell phone/twitter/facebook generation has simply poured gas on the fire - figuratively speaking. If you don't have a cell phone to take a picture, are you as likely to be part of the hooligans torching cop cars? If you don't have Facebook to "brag" about it, are you as likely to throw a rock through a store window?

You know the answer to that. Right or wrong has no chance in a day and age of "hey, look at me, and look at THIS!"

It would be nice if Vancouver police and prosecutors can arrest and charge every thug, moron, and wanna-be anarchist with the stiffest crimes possible.

If that doesn't work, how about we devote some billboards to these idiots and their photos, blow them up for everybody in the real world to see, and print their full name on their, um, "handiwork." Don't you think it would be a bit unsettling, for "Jimmy Vanderdunce" to have the above photo with your name on it, on a prominent downtown billboard for a year?

To be a known local pariah - by people who don't have to go searching for your facebook page to see it, they just have to lift up their heads while driving to work - would be so sweet.

Either that, or just equip a dozen or so "riot vans" with a phalanx of high-def cameras that can sweep chaotic scenes and capture detailed facial features. Review the footage, cut up some highlight reels of the hooliganism, and send out the summons.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And now, if I may step off my high horse for just a moment. This pic of the "Riot Lovers" of Vancouver is truly something else. It looks so clean, so well framed, so perfectly lit, that the initial reaction was that it SURELY had to be photoshopped.

Um, no. It wasn't. This chick was just a freak who gets off on getting down with her man in the middle of a street riot.

Big props to her.