Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Ask Mullet Mondays: Questions from the Mailbag


by Bonk's Mullet

As BonksMullet.com crawls through its infancy, I've decided to try to start implementing some regular features on the site. "Ask Mullet Mondays" has a nice ring to it, so I thought I'd give that a shot. I realize it's Tuesday now, but expect this to be a recurring feature during the regular season as long as you guys have questions for me. I received a ton of excellent questions on Twitter, so I'll have to stagger answering them over the next few weeks. Here we go!

Ask Mullet Mondays Tuesday


1. Mullet Origins

This is a good place to start. I signed up in about 2010. I was your classic "lurker" for about a year. I tweeted at an Alfie-like pace. I think my handle was @e_doty. I used to make fun of my sister during games: "How the hell are you supposed to enjoy the game if you're staring at your damn computer the whole time," I said, reaching for my cane. Haunting foreshadowing.

Fast forward to January 2012. When applying to graduate schools around North America, I decided it was not in my best interest not to have "AW FUCK COME ON CONDRA" pop up as the first hit on Google when you searched my name. I wanted a handle that was somewhat of an "in-joke" as a reference to the late 90's Senators, and it literally took me all of 10 seconds to decide on @BonksMullet. It haunts me to this day that I can't have an apostrophe in there.

I started burning a hole through my keyboard this year as I was a "lonely Sens fan in Philly." Philly sports fans aren't sports fans, they're Philly sports fans, so nobody had any interest in discussing the Sens with me. Twitter seemed like a good place to go.

2. Bonk's Buddies

I try not to "make fun of players" per se, but rather "encourage laughter at the expense of people just trying to do their jobs." For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I enjoyed taking liberties with Guillaume Latendresse and his physical fitness, but sadly he is no longer with us.

Outside of Twitter, I have been known to take shots at Antoine Vermette, Nick Foligno, and other players totally incapable of stopping in hockey skates.

I hate to make predictions, but I'd bet my fictional internet money on the ribbing of friends of the blog Matt Kassian and Marc Methot. (Taking bets now as to how long it takes for Matt Kassian to unfollow me.)

3. Burning Budget Question

From what I have seen, Ottawa Senators fans have already been fairly resourceful in recycling their #11 jerseys as a renewable energy source. At least that's why I think they were burning them.

4. Bro Science

Only your spirits, James.

5. Bonkler's List
This list will be ranked based on the peak of how much I loved the player at the time.
  1. He who must no longer be mulleted.
  2. Erik Karlsson (2011-Present): Given the rest of my list, his status as my favourite player worries me.
  3. Marian Hossa (2000-2004): You'll start to see a theme here.
  4. Alexei Yashin (1995-1999): 10 year old Mullet knew not what was coming.
  5. Daniel Alfredsson (2006-2013): R.I.P.
  6. Jason Spezza (2006-Present): Say goodbye to Spezza!

6. AFC Least

See upcoming answer to my favourite One Direction song.

7. Chronicles of Mullet

I'll answer this question in two different ways: specifically, and more generally.

Specifically, I just hacked away at stupid jokes for about a year. Eventually, I caught the attention of 6th Sens and Silver Seven bloggers, which was good for a healthy amount of retweets. I was sitting at around 500 followers this Christmas. The start of the season, combined with my slew of #Guyet jokes contributed to a moderate rise in followers. I hyped up my visit to the first Sens-Flyers game here in Philly quite heavily (I deemed it #RIPBonk), which gained a follow from pretty much every Sens blogger, and it kind of took off from there.

Joining Silver Seven combined with the media attention from #Rihannaing and #SensMotB ramped me up from about 1,000 to 3,810 as I'm writing this. If you didn't follow along at the time, I chronicled that journey here.

More generally, I get asked about how to gain followers more often than Zack Smith shoots wide. I typed up a fairly elaborate answer and decided it would better suited as its own post, so look out for that if you're trying to climb the Twitter ladder.

8. Directionless
No.

9. Bonk's Business


I have already answered this question in the press and therefore don't have time for your shenanigans, Mr. Lee. Fun fact: I'm actually a published author in multiple fields, but I don't recommend reading the papers, as they are what we in the field like to call "terrible". The second abstract is actually just a random combination of words I pulled from a dictionary.

So to answer your question, no.

10. Crandy Cones

Even the lactose intolerant love ice cream. Like Latendresse, I prefer my ice cream in a Crandy Cone:


I've still got a ton of good questions to answer, so be sure to tune in next week. Let me know what you think of my answers in the comments.
at Tuesday, July 30, 2013
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