tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5868516504455794242024-02-20T02:38:23.166-08:00Clear the Creasehockey, HEAVY TUNES, & jerks telling you to fuck offpierre idiot trudeauhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03099900067777319421noreply@blogger.comBlogger189125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-85712390199484809872020-09-03T11:15:00.002-07:002020-09-03T11:15:30.161-07:00Cale Makar Never Skips Leg Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8iCdBtrs1Il4-ZBgN7sjNHm3X8RT1ViK4czNhVrNyM8szhWY9G6SaoDIS1Zt8AtGzChW_b28q7D0DfCcWfwATFEMoyFv5pgi-RCbvpdJBLkI_h3c7sruApM6OrQgOH29wqnbsxsaHl1U/s648/Cale.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="584" data-original-width="648" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8iCdBtrs1Il4-ZBgN7sjNHm3X8RT1ViK4czNhVrNyM8szhWY9G6SaoDIS1Zt8AtGzChW_b28q7D0DfCcWfwATFEMoyFv5pgi-RCbvpdJBLkI_h3c7sruApM6OrQgOH29wqnbsxsaHl1U/s600/Cale.png"/></a></div>Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-79313340098494701912014-11-09T16:28:00.000-08:002014-11-09T16:28:26.253-08:00Arturs Irbe Has a Posse <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRNymOD5xQT4tyMWmrmlXhrTykmkC7qdm3Km5dl_DAy1MRe10dIvpdn5mLrbYga5PX3hr3Mo93Oe_mbuyqBw8JTrh0YZjHrO8dJMahBBAAnNEtPEDWc4Sw3Zb6EUZhrpjHpStrHZi_00s/s1600/Arturs_Irbe.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRNymOD5xQT4tyMWmrmlXhrTykmkC7qdm3Km5dl_DAy1MRe10dIvpdn5mLrbYga5PX3hr3Mo93Oe_mbuyqBw8JTrh0YZjHrO8dJMahBBAAnNEtPEDWc4Sw3Zb6EUZhrpjHpStrHZi_00s/s400/Arturs_Irbe.png" /></a></div><p align=right><em>I thought I was gonna be better than I am. <br>—Harry Crews</em> </p><p>Arturs Irbe came into my life in a deeply mediated way. In the aftermath of <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2014/05/patrick-roy-has-posse.html">Patrick Roy's Statue of Liberty play</a>, a monumental gaffe in which he attempted to showboat after making a save, accidentally allowing a goal instead and then absolutely collapsing the next game, I was in the mood for a lower-stakes, more alienated relationship with hockey, and three things stood ready to satisfy me: <ol><li>the Playoff Fling, in which a sports fan gets excited about a strange team for the duration of their run </li><li>ESPN's reliable human-interest-narrative machine </li><li>video games </li></ol> </p><p>In 2002, the Carolina Hurricanes (an actual NHL team, yes) made a difficult-to-explain run to the Cup Finals. I enjoyed this run well enough without thinking or feeling too hard about it, at least until they ran up against the nemesis Red Wings in the final round, and proceeded to absorb a world-class thumping. My own trajectory around then was similar: I made a stirring run out of college before running up against the iron cage of a job. Deciding/desperate to mitigate my depression, I bought a TV and a Nintendo. (The irony of attempting to reduce depression by means of video games would remain lost on me until roughly 2009.) Among the first games I bought was an NHL game; its default teams, if you just turned it on, were the previous year's Cup finalists: Hurricanes/Wings. Pick one, the computer plays the other, so I played the Hurricanes. A lot. Somewhere in there, I bought a magazine to read at work, and got to read the ballad of the Canes' goalies: Arturs "Archie" Irbe and Kevin Weekes. In retrospect, the most interesting thing about the piece is how relentless <a href="http://espn.go.com/magazine/vol5no25hurricanes.html" target=_blank>Eric Adelson's racial dogwhistling</a> is—Irbe is white, small, thrifty, hard-working, proud; Weekes is black, large, intimidating, talented, vain—but at the time, the sentimentality worked for me: <blockquote>In his locker, Arturs Irbe has a red bag filled with scissors, tape, thread, needles and a lighter. This is Archie's tool kit. He takes it wherever he goes. On team flights, he'll restitch his trapper. In hotel rooms, he'll fix a broken strap. At home, he'll re-cover his pads. On the bench, during games when he's not playing, he'll retape his stick. Irbe used the same ratty pads for his entire NHL career until they became heavy as logs from all the triage. The typical NHL goaltender costs his team $10,000 per season in equipment. Arturs Irbe has never dented the Canes' annual budget by more than $500. <br><br>Archie's tool kit is an emblem for a way of life. He is the youngest son of an engineer and a seamstress who raised him in impoverished Latvia. Arturs started playing hockey at age 9 with a broken shaft nailed to a broken blade. He could hardly skate after severely injuring both his ankles in a game when he was 13. (He still tapes them heavily and walks pigeon-toed.) "The poor kid has no chance," Arturs once overheard his mother saying. But Arturs was so good at blocking shots, his team put him in goal. "Somehow," Irbe recalls in near-perfect English, "the coach notices the kid who never gives up." Arturs outworked his competition, and soon the Soviets were asking about the small goalie with the worn-out equipment. "You can tell," Archie says, smiling, "how I became how I am." </blockquote></p><p>Arturs Irbe had a <a href="http://alcindorblock.blogspot.com/2011/08/whats-good-in-life.html">DIY ethos</a> I both share and struggle with: <blockquote>An aging rocker dude of the DIY persuasion once had a long, frustrating couple of weeks. His enjoyment of doing hobbies had palled somewhat. In part because DIY practices can infect all processes/products with what Kipling termed the "rather more-or-less" and what everybody else calls the "half-assed". In part because DIY techniques often focus on the accessible or attainable at the expense of the (task-) appropriate and specialized.<br><br>Anyway, in his badly-patched skinny jeans the aging rocker dude making nachos in his filthy ruin of a kitchen spat to no-one (not even the chair): <em>I'm DONE using shoddy shit, I'm done half-assing it, I'm done fucking around and doing things badly just for the sake of doing them myself. Life's too short. Here on out, I'm using good things, I'm sticking to what I'm good at, & I'm insisting on high quality in myself, my activities, and my surroundings. </em></blockquote></p> <p>As the years went on, Irbe revealed himself to be a man of character, <a href="http://www.russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2011/08/04/arturs-irbe-talks-about-why-he-left-the-washington-capitals/" target=_blank>quitting a job he felt had become beneath him</a>: <blockquote>Arturs Irbe: It’s very interesting and entertaining to be a goaltending coach, but it’s a thing of the past for me. Two years of that was enough for me, and I don’t see myself in that role anymore — though I have offers, including long-term ones. I want to grow professionally, I want to move on, I want to earn more. <br><br>Kristaps Drikis: What kind of promotion did you expect? Did you want to become a head coach?<br><br>Arturs Irbe: Absolutely not. I asked George McPhee if I can get some kind of promotion in the future, maybe one day become an assistant coach to increase my responsibilities, and he replied that the goalie coach is the most stable job. Assistants and managers come and go, goalie coaches stay for years or even decades. They thought that I would work with the Caps’ goalies for many years to come and I would be satisfied with that. But I didn’t think so. I want to set some new goals for myself. </blockquote></p><p>But he isn't—wasn't—just a symbol of interesting and admirable traits, he was also a player of <a href="http://hockeygoalies.org/bio/irbe.html" target=_blank>legitimate and enduring achievement</a>. In 1993-4, he established the league's record for most minutes played in a season. He led the league in appearances in 1993-4, 1999-2000, and 2000-1. He was an All-Star in 1993-4 and 1998-9. Internationally, he was the Soviet league's rookie of the year in 1987-8, and is in the International Ice Hockey Federation's Hall of Fame. These achievements and stories point to important lessons: Show Up. Be Prepared. Fix Your Shit. Stick with It. Don't Quit. </p><p>It's true that these are prosaic, boosterish slogans/lessons. It's one of the limitations of sports that what it has to teach is so often so shallow and cheery; but when the stakes are so low, the wisdom payloads can only be so heavy.</p><p>But there is something more there, something to be gained by studying the path of a journeyman—a proud one, who insisted on being treated as equal to anybody, as a figure with dignity that wouldn't be negotiated away or compromised on. I think a lot about Arturs Irbe. About working doggedly. About demanding to be treated with respect. About showing up for what's likely to be a loss, and what's sure to be a lot of work. About limitation and what it's like when you realize who you really are, and just how far you can go. </p><p>In the words of another lifer, another one who never quit,<blockquote><a href="http://www.harrycrews.org/Features/Interviews/KnipfelJ-StoriesToldInBlood.html" target=_blank>And I'll tell you something else.</a> I'm old enough now . . . I thought, back 30 years ago when I started—well, I didn't start 30 years ago, but that's when The Gospel Singer came out, 30 years ago this year—and I thought I was gonna be better than I am. I mean, I'm all right, and I'm not whining, but I thought I was going to be better than I am. </blockquote></p><p>Arturs Irbe has a posse, maybe as small and limited as our lives, as our possibilities. But in the teeth of those brutal lacks, it's not a superstar we should look to, it's just a guy. We can set new goals, we can spit in the faces of those who would disdain or restrain us, we can carry on. </p> <p><em>Download your own <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/n7dvyqhzdrm59q6/Irbe_9up_051114.pdf?dl=0">Arturs Irbe Has a Posse sticker sheet</a> here, and check out all the <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/p/posse-up.html">Clear the Crease Posse Members</a> while you're at it! </em></p>
Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-90484636587664714682014-10-12T14:42:00.000-07:002014-10-12T14:58:33.043-07:00Chris Pronger Has a Posse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizhV2vNHZqXpDNBdC6_00lhPX2DNTDMKZjRvPcLMGoa4m814eF78ixWgOIHhYKzs2RyKNoQkyVBH5pFN8GUzXiSWKSxmJ1_BynozVVO-XjNVJfzxx21ipo7Y07GOT85RZtrbj7-5tf9T4/s1600/Fucking_Pronger.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizhV2vNHZqXpDNBdC6_00lhPX2DNTDMKZjRvPcLMGoa4m814eF78ixWgOIHhYKzs2RyKNoQkyVBH5pFN8GUzXiSWKSxmJ1_BynozVVO-XjNVJfzxx21ipo7Y07GOT85RZtrbj7-5tf9T4/s640/Fucking_Pronger.png" /></a></div><p>It was a surprise to me to discover that the first-ever post here on Clear the Crease Mark II concerned <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2010/06/chris-pronger-is-funnier-than-bob.html">Chris Pronger</a>. It wasn't a surprise that that post revolved around Chris Pronger's words, as Pronger has long been one of the most quotable athletes anywhere. Having had the worst game of his remarkable playoff career, and having to discuss it with <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/search/label/too%20dumb%20to%20play%20with%20themselves">angle-hungry press release junkies</a> (known to you and me as <a href="http://cfcollision.tumblr.com/post/5017783177/re-grantland">the sporting press</a>), he declared himself "day to day with hurt feelings". </p> <p>Not just a good line, this deflection revealed both the pro's ability to move past a setback without undue agonizing (<a href="http://alcindorblock.blogspot.com/2014/09/i-have-complicated-thoughts-about.html">ahem</a>) and a lightness of touch that suggested a reasonable man's assessment of the overall importance of one man's performance in one team's playoff game. It was sure a fur piece from self-describing as A Warrior or A Soldier or such such shit, anyway. </p> <p>Other words than his own come to mind re: Pronger—maybe none more perfect than Down Goes Brown's crack about a Pronger dick move: <blockquote> <a href="http://www.downgoesbrown.com/2010/06/chris-prongers-other-jerk-moves.html">Has been known to slack off and go up to two full years without single-handedly dragging a team to the Stanley Cup finals.</a> </blockquote>This is both funny and a more than fair, accurate, and comprehensive account of Pronger's career.</p> <p>Pronger's career, 1993-4 through 2011-12, was entirely contained within that of Swedish wizard Nicklas Lidström, 1991-2 through 2011-12, and Pronger was generally overshadowed by the Red Wing: Lidström won some seven Norris trophies as the season's best defenseman, which didn't leave a lot left for Pronger's plate. Pronger did, however, manage one Norris, in 1999-2000, which he paired with the Hart, for the most valuable player overall. (That pairing had happened to exactly one other player, to a gentleman named Bobby Orr, who was probably the greatest hockey player of all time.) And, as Down Goes Brown noted above, Pronger's squads routinely went damn deep in the playoffs: in the five seasons between 2005-6 and 2009-10, he made the finals with three different teams, winning once, in 2006-7. (In the 2005-6 run to the finals, I learned more about defense than I had known to that point, simply by watching the way he'd position his 6-6 frame and long-ass stick: time after time, whoever was trying to get the puck into the offensive zone would see where he was and what he was doing and just retreat and regroup and wait for a better opportunity. Given that Pronger was playing 30+ minutes a night, the beleaguered puckcarrier generally had to wait quite a while for that more promising chance.) </p> <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Gmkec-QRqvk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p> <p>So. Pronger has a Cup, some major hardware, massive team success, a metric heap of all-star game selectins—so far, we could more or less be talking about second-tier nonentities like <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2011/01/too-dumb-to-play-with-themselves.html">Rob (nee Rod) Blake</a>, who couldn't form a posse if he watched Ike Clanton's gang kidnap the mayor's daughter while robbing a bank and slapping the town priest with a Koran bound in babyskin. What gives Pronger his posse is that he's got <em>style</em>. Not just a good quote and a great player, Pronger was a nasty goon, a hatchet man who worked with brutality that was never compromised by but often garnished with a little flair. Among his eight suspensions were one for using his razor-sharp skate blade to stomp on Ryan Kesler's leg, two for kicking (with those skates again), one for a nasty elbow <em>in the finals</em>, and so on. </p> <p>Chris Pronger introduced a lot of us to body horror by undergoing a wrist surgery that involved having some <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/chris-pronger-has-successful-wrist-surgery-1.306099">bone removed</a> from his arm. How much? How about <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/columns/story?id=1617695"><em>an inch of bone</em></a>? He was <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/columns/story?id=1617695">"notorious for laying the lumber on teammates in practice"</a> and was a locker-room presence that got sarcastically nicknamed <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/columns/story?id=1617695">"Captain Happy"</a> by <a href="http://www.upthepucks.com/blog/obey-patrick.html">Jamie McLennan</a> when things started to go pear-shaped with one team. He demanded a trade out of Edmonton after a single, highly successful, year, and he currently refuses to retire from the Flyers, enabling him to collect an unmolested guaranteed salary while the team avoids having to have that salary on the books, as he's "injured", not "retired": he could come back any day now. Except his name is <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/stop-whining-about-chris-pronger-s-conflict-of-interest--the-f-a-q-143738560.html">not present on the employee list</a>. And he's got a <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/stop-whining-about-chris-pronger-s-conflict-of-interest--the-f-a-q-143738560.html">new job, working for the NHL Department of Player Safety</a>. Presumably the theory is that the pot is uniquely qualified to judge and understand the blackness of the kettle. If nothing else, we should get some primo quotage out of the situation, and some good gap-toothed smirks, which should only increase the size of his posse. </p>Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-8343647405346899632014-10-11T21:58:00.000-07:002015-01-23T18:00:29.559-08:00Punk Song for Every Owner: Lou Lamoriello, My Dad's a Fucking Alcoholic<p>One of the worst things about life—or about consciousness, anyway—is the pervasive mystification in and of our thoughts. Because the human brain works largely by means of operations of <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/visualarts/r4100/jacobson.html" target=_blank>metaphor and metonymy</a>, we constantly mistake one thing for another. The famous example is of course Marx noting that "the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family"—to oversimplify, this means that religious authority works on the model of familial authority, and to oversimplify the oversimplification, the fundamental model for god is a father. </p> <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dXWQZexzW9c" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p> <p>Your feelings about god being an imaginary all-powerful daddy in the sky likely have a lot to do with your feelings about your own personal daddy. Without getting hung up on on bummer vibes or details of biography, I think it's worth acknowledging at least the utility in making sense of a deity who, insofar as he's responsible for life as experienced, is obviously arbitrary, unpredictable, blinkered, hostile, and occasionally abusive. However, to note that religious power is a blurry metaphor for some stomping drunk asshole's because-I-said-so-isms is <em>not</em> to claim that <em>all</em> power should be held to work this way. These caveats arise because political power is all too often misconstrued as located in a unitary (daddy/god-like) figure. Another mystification. (Where political power is in fact located and where it should be located I leave as an exercise for the reader.) </p> <p>These considerations lead us ineluctably to Lou Lamoriello, the president and general manager of, the unitary image of power over, the New Jersey Devils, for what feels like and is decades. Nearly three of them. Not the owner, not (usually) the coach, Lamoriello is the figure atop the mountain, hurling the odd thunderbolt at a lesser being, issuing pronunciamentoes dutifully handed down unchallenged by fawning priest weenie types, and crafting idiotic rules for people to follow. </p> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZlz3YFb-jVZUoGrQEYR74iC549sGm9iY3V36wUHe-ewvEbrKVsc3-LgltIddZ2BCXh2hkDB22WFzPZspNKFwWFuMGZbr7fUOgvnN6Kd5fmY9kZU1kMMH8Q0GlKfBm5qfk01UCobbajVw/s1600/night-on-bald-mountain-ave-maria-192.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZlz3YFb-jVZUoGrQEYR74iC549sGm9iY3V36wUHe-ewvEbrKVsc3-LgltIddZ2BCXh2hkDB22WFzPZspNKFwWFuMGZbr7fUOgvnN6Kd5fmY9kZU1kMMH8Q0GlKfBm5qfk01UCobbajVw/s400/night-on-bald-mountain-ave-maria-192.jpg" /></a></div><p align=center><em>(Lou Lamoriello inspecting the waiver wire.)</em></p> <p>Interestingly, Lamoriello has maintained his position and his power across multiple regimes of Devils ownership. Viewed from another angle, he has more or less spuriously continued to manifest and exercise power while the actual sources of power have come and gone.</p> <p>As Marx points out, all these weird mysteries have a solution: pay attention to what is actually happening; do things better. (You may prefer the rendering of one or another translator: <blockquote><em>Thus for instance, after the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must then itself be destroyed in theory and in practice.</em><br>Or, in the formulation I prefer: <br><em>Thus, for instance, after the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must then itself be criticized in theory and revolutionized in practice.</em></blockquote>)</p> <p>One of these days, somebody will pay enough attention to Lou Lamoriello and his (?) New Jersey Devils to notice a long history of malfeasance, of power exercised in the service of goals small, mean, and selfish: a nepotist, Lamoriello's two sons work for him (just as Jesus, Mars, and Hephaestus all went into the family business); a chisler, he has alienated many players who wanted fair market value for their labor (Ken Daneyko, Pat Verbeek, Kirk Muller, Bill Guerin) and bullied others into accepting lowball offers because they are in the (holy?) "family" (Patrick Elias, Martin Brodeur); a cheat, he signed Ilya Kovalchuk to an illegal contract, and a couple disappointing years later, he benefited enormously first from Kovalchuk's convenient decision to "retire"* and subsequently from the league's inexplicable decision to reduce their penalties for that illegal contact to what legal analysts are unanimous in describing as: "fuckall". A tyrannical dickhead of a martinet, Lamoriello insists his players comport to his dress sense (suits) and facial hair preferences (none), even as YHWH frowns and shakes his head at your bacon cheeseburger and shrimp cocktail. </p> <p>If the mystification be removed, Lou Lamoriello and god both suck. God's a simple construct attempting to explain the capricious universe and mask the cruelty of humanity and the institutions it has created. Lamoriello is a snivelling tyrant who lucked into a world-historically good goalie/system at the only time in history they would have been successful. With luck, one day both god and Lamoriello will be but dusty memories with no active influence on my life. On that day, I might actually be able to like—or at least love—that Devils franchise, which, like me, started in Kansas City, then had a couple shitty years in Denver before hieing out to the relative bliss of a coast. After all, we can free ourselves of what we only imagine is power; but we never can escape our history.</p> <p><em>—Collision, interested in devils, if not Devils</em></p> <p>*N.B.: Ilya Kovalchuk is currently playing professional hockey in Russia. His "retirement" from the NHL served simply to allow him to live and work where he wanted to. Completely coincidentally, it did a major solid for the Devils franchise, who desperately needed out from under the vast stacks of cash they still owed him.** </p> <p>**That metaphor doesn't work, dude; if they wanted out from under the vast stacks of cash they owed him, they should have paid him the money, because then the stacks would be gone.*** </p> <p>***Fuck off.</p>Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-43302235363391730972014-06-01T15:09:00.000-07:002014-06-01T15:09:17.202-07:00Mike Ricci Has a Posse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz4zn44asj5p9KRNA8DtM_KRyMujr-1Z_XhwXkKUImkib4cSiZLlSEdMf6nweyET6i7mVX_3bYAl7MuWYN7_yC0T0DBcQ4Mulp6L9vTfsYTkM0TRiSiUWaP2Ik2gaWJ2xLSQ9sGwvO9AY/s1600/Mike_Ricci.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz4zn44asj5p9KRNA8DtM_KRyMujr-1Z_XhwXkKUImkib4cSiZLlSEdMf6nweyET6i7mVX_3bYAl7MuWYN7_yC0T0DBcQ4Mulp6L9vTfsYTkM0TRiSiUWaP2Ik2gaWJ2xLSQ9sGwvO9AY/s1600/Mike_Ricci.png" /></a></div><p align=right><em>"I wish I had a good man for a lover<br> who knew the sharp tongues and just rage of men."</em><br>--<em>The Iliad</em>, Book 6, Fitzgerald translation</p> <p>When <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2013/10/punk-song-for-every-owner-stan-kroenke.html">Denver heisted the Quebec Nordiques</a>, the local media had the immediate task of teaching an ignorant populace innocent of puck how to watch, how to root, and how to appreciate the game and the stick-and-blade-wielding white guys who played it. Denver's two dailies set their passionate and thorough <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/search/label/too%20dumb%20to%20play%20with%20themselves">business-PR writers</a> to the task. And thus did the Rocky Mountain News (RIP) publish a Rick Morrissey piece that began like so: <blockquote> OH, THAT FACE <br>RICCI'S MYSTIQUE MELTS WOMEN, LEAVES MEN SCRATCHING THEIR HEADS <br><br> This is a story about men and women and their inability to see eye to eye. <br><br> This is about a serious threat to whatever harmony might exist between the sexes. <br><br> This is about Mike Ricci, the Colorado Avalanche center with the untamed hair and the picket-fence mouth. Unless men and women can reach some common ground on Ricci, we're doomed to a future of mistrust and misunderstanding. <br><br> Women look at the 24-year-old Colorado Avalanche center, see that dark, cascading hair and what... </blockquote><p> <p> The piece ran to 2,159 words. Mike Ricci's face was, and is, Mike Ricci's face. One immediately searches for words like "hard-hitting" to describe Mr. Morrissey's work; and thus was Denver informed that: it was okay to have sex with these new athletes, in addition to watching them play of hockey. (This would prove <a href=" http://theclassical.org/articles/losing-at-hockey" target=_blank>untrue, for at least some Denver residents</a>.) I don't remember the hockey content of the article after all these years -- though the "Mike Ricci is having sex with women" hook has certainly stuck with me since that fateful October day -- but I assume it called attention to his somewhat frenzied approach to the game, his defensive prowess, his ability to get the puck behind the goalie now and again... But, the rich, thick work of Mr. Morrissey aside, I don't remember that Mike Ricci really resonated in Denver -- certainly he was never the powerful combination of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBwS66EBUcY" target=_blank>I Need a Hero</a> for the fellas and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QFu8SD4sqE" target=_blank>I Need a Man</a> for the ladies that Morrissey envisioned slash seemed to be trying to sell. Mostly I remember debates about "is he good enough to have been the fourth pick in the draft a few years back?" (Answer: yeah, unless you're an idiot.) Eventually Ricci was banished to San Jose and I literally never thought about him again. </p> <p>To my surprise, however, Ricci did seem to attain totemic power there, in the South Bay, clad in raiments of teal, moving his stick with just rage on the ice, and, one gathers, moving his stick and his sharp tongue with potent effect off the ice. In the words of our own Bogdan Von Pylon, answering the eternal question "Why Ricci?": <blockquote> <em>~ Irresponsible Hyperbole Ahead ~</em><br> Ricci because he's legendarily hideous and effective—and gives not a fuck about anything but the biscuit—Like a meat-seeking robot-weasel in search of a hot meal, everything between him and the puck goes into the blades and comes out bleeding ... and the mullet. </blockquote></p> <p>It's safe to say that the ever-battered Mike Ricci knew the "sharp tongues and just rage of men" throughout his career. In Denver, he may not have satisfied, leaving the team -- and city! -- continuing to search for a good man to love; in San Jose, however, he attained his destiny, and found his posse.</p> <p><em>Download your own Mike Ricci Has a Posse <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/taa92w2613bpd6r/Ricci_9up_050714.pdf">sticker sheet</a> here, and check out <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/p/posse-up.html"> all the Clear the Crease Posse Members</a> while you're at it!</em></p>
Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-89407680074922047162014-05-26T16:59:00.000-07:002014-05-26T17:16:47.276-07:00Teemu Selanne Has a Posse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMf36Sz5ReS3Y-konf4DuzT15GkE2q8S_xg_kEzZciUkmxDnLHNuqpD-DSK8GL2q7dwgbqVboTm5uxNPE9MPY9nuIb31vBXX_jkeg0NCv2VrQuaTcCK99yMOG0XhR89V9uCQRmlnLxNwQ/s1600/Teemu_Selanne.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMf36Sz5ReS3Y-konf4DuzT15GkE2q8S_xg_kEzZciUkmxDnLHNuqpD-DSK8GL2q7dwgbqVboTm5uxNPE9MPY9nuIb31vBXX_jkeg0NCv2VrQuaTcCK99yMOG0XhR89V9uCQRmlnLxNwQ/s1600/Teemu_Selanne.png" /></a></div><p>Like everything else, hockey is mostly about doom. Decay and death are inevitable, omnipresent, omnipotent -- and sometimes, hockey men transcend these with speed and power and grace and skill and will. And, sometimes, they embody them, and initiate us into the mysteries of limitation, decline, and lack. </p> <p>In 2004, the Colorado Avalanche franchise was coming off a couple consecutive disappointments, and was mourning the loss of its <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2014/05/patrick-roy-has-posse.html">iconic goaltender</a>, so it was time to rebuild. Or reload. Or something. Anyway with furrowed brow did the Avs survey the available free agents, and with money did they entice a magnificent pair to the cosy environs of the Front Range: brilliant skaters by the names of Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne, 16 all-star games, 736 goals, a pile of awards between them. ESPN commissioned a documentary series on the team, drawn by the stars' charisma and the prospect of a world-historical kind of season. </p> <p>Selanne had long been known as one of hockey's fastest skaters, with the hand and brain skills to match his unequalled feet. He came to the Avs with 436 goals in his 901 games, and zero evidence of decline, having played all 82 games each of the previous two seasons, scoring nearly 30 each year. Not quite the point-a-game man he had been in each of his first ten seasons, but he was, after all, 33: no longer a young kid, but still a powerful, productive skater with adorable tousled hair and a firm jaw line. </p> <p>It was a disaster. </p> <p>While he did manage to appear in 78 games, his speed and strength on his skates were obviously completely gone. A bad knee reduced him to fourth-line duty, and he proved unable to finish or distribute at a high level, notching a paltry 16 goals and the same number of assists. He'd once been impossibly swift, and the end of his career had, clearly, come equally swiftly. </p> <p>The next season was taken from us all by powerful men who decided the existing economic order displeased, and so they did decree that in their stately pleasure domes would obtain a "salary" "cap" -- really a "salaries" cap -- such that each team would have the same maximum amount to spend on player payroll. </p> <p>Thus it was that Selanne mounted a thoroughly hopeless comeback campaign, back with his old team for a mere one million dollars, a far cry from his 5-million-plus season in Colorado. The well-regarded Finn would, no doubt, take a bit of a victory lap, and everyone could enjoy watching him end his career in a familiar uniform. Any actual hockey performance would of course be impossible: the end had come, and all that was left was to face it with some dignity and class. </p> <p>That was nine full seasons ago. Over those nine seasons -- or, to put it another way, over a second full career, for most players -- Teemu Selanne played another 572 games, and piled up another 232 goals, including two more 40-goal years, and won a championship. He has just retired, as close to a universally beloved figure as the game has known. </p> <p>Hockey, like everything else, is shadowed by and susceptible to doom. But life often finds a way and rebirth is inextricable from death. Teemu Selanne has a posse.</p> <p><em>Download your own Teemu Selanne Has a Posse <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/cl10x3zks8r1cak/Selanne_9up_033114.pdf">sticker sheet</a> here, and check out <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/p/posse-up.html"> all the Clear the Crease Posse Members</a> while you're at it!</em></p>Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-68646677881395430092014-05-18T17:00:00.001-07:002014-05-18T17:08:31.859-07:00Patrick Roy Has a Posse<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCNP5BAPr5tHeGkIwYkzDMBfgnIRBOCH-tpDKGs6iP1SrfC27OwjChC23OnRxffjUuw09iJGWvXdeCPGOqahSviUEQMHE3NsPMFcLvyp0R-1FVFo-fLJCNozMkHxjQQjX5XsAgGddjM3s/s1600/Patrick_Roy_GS_SM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCNP5BAPr5tHeGkIwYkzDMBfgnIRBOCH-tpDKGs6iP1SrfC27OwjChC23OnRxffjUuw09iJGWvXdeCPGOqahSviUEQMHE3NsPMFcLvyp0R-1FVFo-fLJCNozMkHxjQQjX5XsAgGddjM3s/s320/Patrick_Roy_GS_SM.jpg" /></a></div> <p>Patrick Roy is <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/colorado-avalanche-national-hockey-league-nations-203859762.html#remaining-content" target=_blank>in the conversation for best-ever at his position</a>, the <a href="http://www.upthepucks.com/blog/obey-patrick.html" target=_blank>beginning and end of the conversation about "pissed-off goalies"</a>, a likely winner of the award for 2013-14's best NHL coach, and the definite winner of an award for great coach-dad for that tremendous moment a few years back when he signaled his goalie son to join in a line brawl, resulting in matching <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/patrick-roy-s-son-faces-assault-trial-in-july-1.790153" target=_blank>father-son suspensions</a> and an assault charge for the younger Roy, after the dutiful son skated the length of the ice to whale on a guy for 15 seconds while the dude didn't fight back. Patrick Roy is, then, one Hall of Famer who is also a cult figure. And so he gets a posse. </p> <p>The cult was founded in 1986, when the Montreal Canadiens installed the rookie as their starting goalie for the playoffs. (There's an interesting echo here, as the team had previously pulled the rookie-goalie-as-playoff-starter maneuver in 1971, with a legendary goalie/big white guy/<a href="http://www.thestar.com/sports/hockey/2014/05/09/montreal_canadiens_carey_price_pk_subban_study_in_contrasts.bb.html" target=_blank>increasingly senile politician</a> named Ken Dryden. It worked, in 1971.) Fifteen playoff wins and one championship later, Roy was named the 1986 playoffs' most valuable player, and stories began to be told about the insane teenager who talked to his goalposts. Three years later, in 1989, Roy and the Canadiens would play for the Cup again, losing to the Calgary Flames in six games. And in 1993, Roy's Canadiens squad won a ridiculous 11 straight playoff games, and a completely implausible 10 consecutive overtime games--including three in the finals. Unsurprisingly, this magic trick was rewarded with another shiny trophy recognizing Roy as the playoffs' best. So far, so good: excellence is an <em>excellent</em> reason to posse up for somebody. </p> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_cyO271GChk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>A few years later, Roy was having a shitty night--hey, it happens to the best of us--and his (rookie) coach hung him out to dry, leaving him in a game to allow 9 goals on 26 shots. The legendarily competitive Roy was embarrassed and enraged, so he naturally said "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cyO271GChk" target=_blank>trade me right fucking now!</a>", and the team's novice GM promptly shipped him off to play in Colorado, where, as I can attest, nobody had ever heard of him.</p> <p>After two more championships (1996 and 2001), another playoff MVP, and a few more records here and there, Roy retired from the NHL. He rather quickly went into public service, becoming a coach widely believed to be barking mad, with the aforementioned Son Issue and a moment in his first game as an NHL coach when he appeared to try to knock down a wall to fist-fight an opposing coach.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>So... Patrick Roy is back. VIDEO: <a href="http://t.co/JJVjUa6R3Q">http://t.co/JJVjUa6R3Q</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23TSN&src=hash">#TSN</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23NHL&src=hash">#NHL</a> <a href="http://t.co/UZtVBBtTgs">pic.twitter.com/UZtVBBtTgs</a></p>— NHL on TSN (@NHLonTSN) <a href="https://twitter.com/NHLonTSN/statuses/385750535531290624">October 3, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <p>What's great is that this was a moment that was <a href="http://altitudesports.typepad.com/avalanche_podcasts/2013/10/audio-coach-roy-talks-after-the-regular-season-opener-.html" target=_blank>all but forgotten after the game</a>, when Roy demonstrated that he's actually not a screaming, violent lunatic. He's actually a great, great boss, even-keeled, generous with praise and careful to balance including everybody while singling out some for specific kudos, willing to be accountable. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/3y2OOc6WTrg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <blockquote> <strong>On knocking down walls </strong><br> It's just a normal night. I mean, this is the way I was in the junior level. [...] I guess if I'm asking my players to be intense, I guess I have to be as well. <br> <strong>On winning 6-1 </strong><br> I think we played a good game. I think we could be better defensively. I feel that we have given a little bit too many shots. At the same time, I think we could be better, but one thing I like is that they're backchecking <em>hard</em>. They're coming back, everybody works extremely hard. I thought it was great intensity out there. [...]<br> Honestly I thought everybody played well. Everybody worked hard, and that's what we said before the game: let's play hard, and that's what our guys did. [...] <br> Okay, it's only one game. It's a good start. But that's <em>it</em>. [...] Like I said to the guys, we need to remain humble tonight. There's another game coming up on Friday, we're going to have to repeat. The best way to repeat is to stay humble, make sure that they enjoy tonight, but tomorrow come and be ready for a good practice. This is the test--tomorrow morning is the test. If we come in and we're mellow, that means we don't get it. If we come tomorrow ready to work again, and then we bring it on the ice the next night, then I can say that hey, we're in the right direction. <br> <strong>On his goalie </strong><br> He was outstanding. He was outstanding. I think he's the reason why, the first five minutes I think he kept us in the game, and he made some great saves. [...] Varly was outstanding, at every moment in that game where we had made some mistakes, he was there for us. There's no doubt in my mind he was the first star for our team tonight. <br> <strong>On the end of the game and the fight between the coaches </strong><br> That should have been a penalty, in my opinion. It's 6-nothing, I don't think this game needs that kind of cheap shot. After that obviously there was some talk from the coaches I guess. But at the same time, what should I do? He put his fourth line on the ice, then I'm not gonna go with my first line, I went with my fourth line. That's it. I'd been matching [lines] all night long, by the way. <br> </blockquote> And <em>those</em> are traits that get a man a posse: excellence, a hot head, unwillingness to dodge responsibility.</p> <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/1lTkNE1z8ss" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <p>That said, my loyalty to the man is rooted equally in his failings. A showboater with a taste for the spectacular, he singlehandedly cost his team a decisive goal in a playoff game against their nemeses: thinking he had the puck in his glove after he'd gone down on the ice, he raised his glove high, to show everybody "I got this--you can't score on this". The puck, not in his glove at all, ended up in the back of the net. The Avs lost the game, and the next one, a 7-0 blowout that ended the series (and nearly got me in a drunken fist-fight with a coked-up Red-Wings-fan acquaintance who wouldn't stop talking shit that night). </p> <p>Two years later, the indestructible OT hero, the best playoff, big-money guy in the game's history, lost two straight OT games to lose a playoff series to second-tier franchise the Minnesota Wild. The Avs had been up 3-1 in the series, needing only a single win to close it out and move on. Defeat was plucked, crumb by bloody crumb, from the slavering jaws of victory. (Somehow, a Roy-related playoff loss to the Wild seems particularly relevant, even now. <em>Sigh.</em>)</p> <p>In the end, Patrick Roy has a posse--and I'm in it--because he's an exemplary human, which is to say that he exemplifies humanity. Wins, losses, rage, telling your boss to go fuck himself, being a good boss yourself, rising to the occasion, completely failing to rise to the occasion, being better than you are, being worse. Being a person. I keep Patrick Roy in mind, and I keep his jersey in my closet, as a reminder that we can all, maybe, earn a posse. We can all end up in the conversation. We can all be the best we can be.</p> <p><em>Download your own Patrick Roy Has a Posse <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/qow0gb7dwiedlwi/Roy_9up_011714.pdf">sticker sheet</a> here, and check out <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/p/posse-up.html"> all the Clear the Crease Posse Members</a> while you're at it!</em></p>Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-37885783466654872152014-05-06T09:46:00.000-07:002014-05-18T17:01:32.871-07:00prove me wrong<p align=right><i>Everybody's writing about pro wrestling. Nobody's doing it well. </i></p> <p>Everything's TV now. At one time, this seemed to represent progress: we simpleton wanderers through sports had only the crude tools of rooting with which to appreciate and understand what we saw. We each were bequeathed teams to pull for--usually in some father-to-son transaction--so the story ran--and we watched them and became happy when they won, sad when they lost. For the bookish or studious or strivers there were records to memorize and brandish, a style of history comprising great men and counted things and very little else. We continued on in this fashion, we now understand, with each man his team, with their wins and looses, and an undisturbed shared sense of great plays, as when a Shot was heard 'round the World, and worthy Achievements, whether Wilt going for 100 or Maris for 61 or whichever other wonder of our blissfully unasterixed antiquity. And then one day a man did eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad Art. The truth is complicated but the metonym is simple: Bill Simmons noticed that sports were on TV, which made them TV shows, and he decided a fun way to make a nice living would be to write about TV as though it were a sport and sports as though they were TV. </p> <p>This added to our understanding. Please do not allow me to avoid or underplay this point. Adding a semi-robusticated system of aesthetic angles to our WIN:LOSS::YAY:BOO rooting system for assessing sports was, for serious consumers, actually transformative, from fans to connoisseurs. Wins and losses, piles of achievement, history and greatness all had a new accompaniment, the murky metrics and swampy subjectivities of taste. (It's probably a bad idea to imagine this as a Cartesian plane, with Yay/Boo on one axis and Good/Bad on the other.) </p> <p>And it was good, for a couple of years. </p> <p>The problem arose when a generalized lack obtained. The conversation can't just be "taste" manifested as an endless series of "well...I like it" statements. The first step past that stage is developing the capacity to distinguish "I like this" from "this is (therefore) good". It is not clear that anyone has yet taken this step with respect to television--"we're in a Golden Age", I hear a lot, apparently because torture sequences and breasts abound, not even in distinct scenes, and there's even swears! </p> <p>The addition of taste, then, stopped being a success because it did not come with any discipline. Taste became a shield to avoid attack--"well...I like it"--rather than a tool for analysis (pace the <a href="http://theclassical.org/tags/why-we-watch" target=_blank>Why We Watch</a> initiative and its twin, Deadspin's <a href="http://deadspin.com/tag/nba-shit-list" target=_blank>NBA Shit List</a> series) and eventually resulted in the self-indulgent wallowing we see everywhere today. I'm talking, now, about writing about pro wrestling. </p> <p>Not here to debate the merits or analyze the complexity of pro wrestling itself, I will mention only that its basic structure is both reasonably simple and a good lens through which to examine politics. It's an enterprise which sells fake fights between characters embedded in stories. In the stories, the characters are usually recognizably "good" or "bad". In the commercial aspect, the characters can be popular and unpopular, and this is, of course, the most important thing (cf "commercial enterprise"). There is also a small subset of watchers which judges itself capable of assessing the quality of work it is being presented with, adding "good worker" to "good/bad guy in a story", "popular", etc. Most are still kind of reeling that "bad guy in a story" can be "popular", if you're looking for a quick and dirty idea of the overall quality of these assessments. That is, the rooting and aesthetics are here so hopelessly muddled that no two writers can reliably agree on just who exactly is doing good work: without the objective anchor point of wins and losses, and with popularity requiring actual research to determine, and also seeming somewhat unsavory as an index of quality (cf McDonald's), all the observers are at sea, unable to do more than recount what did happen vis-a-vis what they thought would happen--as if that could possibly be of any interest whatsoever--or what they wanted to happen--ditto, plus infinitely infantile: imagine imposing this review process on any other art form! "I really expected Cordelia to rise to the occasion--everything pointed to it--and it was really disappointing to see her unable to tell her dad how she felt." </p> <p>The extant writing about wrestling is, then, a failure on every available level. It fails to be either reasonably objective or rigorously subjective. It makes use of no aesthetic judgments beyond "satisfying narrative"--which means, so far as I can tell, "outcome I found palatable after being entertained for some period of time". It appears to be wholly inextricable from nostalgia for the intellect and emotions of pre-adolescence. It exhibits a galling technical ignorance, given that the form is beyond obviously best interpreted as a form of dance, and tends toward the breathlessly conversational and typo-riddled. The extant writing about wrestling is lazy and unilluminative even on its own modest recap-and-rehash terms. It has as much place on a sports site as my uninformed ballet descriptions would, and it has as much place on a good-writing site as fan fiction does. </p> <p><i>--Chris Collision, hater</i></p>
Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-21114398772195007402013-11-08T15:19:00.000-08:002013-11-08T15:19:12.433-08:00Punk Song for Every Owner: Phoenix Coyotes, Seattle<p>Sorry, everybody. The CtC Punk Songs for Every Owner project marches on, but the work that the Phoenix Coyotes entry requires to do the topic justice is incredible. It's really the whole story of capitalism's uneasy alliance with governmental bureaucracy, <em>plus</em> the post-national aspects of sports fandom <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2013/10/punk-song-for-every-owner-geoff-molson.html">we discussed the other week</a>, <em>plus</em> the weird disconnect certain capitalist enterprises impose between the quality of their ostensible purposes (making phones, or whatever) and their actual purposes (making profits). </p> <p>So there's a lot going on, and it's actually, factually, requiring substantial research, and careful thought, and in lieu of those things, Clear the Crease would like to present this weird CtC Punk Song for Every Owner <em>Special (very non-punk) Remix</em>! Listen close and <em>thrill</em> to the incredibly weirdly appropriate first verse of this mediocre song that occasionally gets stuck in my head!! </p> <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/bFOjktDN0IA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p> <p>That first verse, for the <a href="http://sharedhousing.blogspot.com/2008/12/no-3-cold-beer-war.html">schoolmen and brutal pedants</a>:<blockquote><em>don't like the look of this town <br>what goes up, must come down<br>character is lost and found <br>on an unfamiliar playing ground</em> </blockquote></p> <p>Or, to make it more pedestrian and clear and to explain the jokes and explain why I called that verse "weirdly appropriate" and everything...<blockquote><em>don't like the look of this town </em><br>Phoenix is a self-evidently odd place to play a game that requires vast quantities of ice. Anybody sane who wanted to own this team would want to move them. A city in the Pacific Northwest has long been rumored as a good candidate for a hockey team, if one should need to be relocated, and the song is called, ahem, "Seattle".<br><br><em>what goes up, must come down<br></em>I got nothing<br><br><em>character is lost and found <br></em>Phoenix has one iconic player: Shane Doan. He has been with the team for longer than they've been playing in Phoenix. He's generally considered a good-to-excellent player and a so-called <b>character guy</b>.<br><br><em>on an unfamiliar playing ground</em><br>Back to "anybody sane who wanted to own this team would want to move them...to unfamiliar playing ground. </blockquote></p> <p><em>—Collision, who is sorry this project is dragging on so awfully long</em></p> Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-36569028867641383352013-10-30T07:29:00.000-07:002013-10-30T07:29:00.634-07:00Punk Song for Every Owner: Ted Leonsis, Small Man, Big Mouth<p>The Washington Capitals are a hockey team that plies their trade in America's broken and asinine capital. Sadly for that city and its <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_home_rule">unrepresented citizenry</a>, it is run by the same <a href="http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/democrats-and-affordable-care-act-glitches-102413">clownshoe twerps</a> who have happily set the nation's controls for the heart of the sun. And, sadly for the hockey team we were talking about, it is run by a pompous weenie with, apparently, nothing better to do than <a href="http://tedstake.monumentalnetwork.com/2013/10/29/where-did-all-the-blogs-go"> blog about</a> <a href="http://districtsportspage.com/washington-capitals-blogging-the-caps-where-did-all-the-blogs-go/20511">blogs about blogs</a>. </p> <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/pYx1ey5UzTc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> </p> <p>When people pay attention to the team, which is not infrequently, as the team is what passes for a glamour team in the increasingly second-rate NHL, they tend to pull stunts like the following: <blockquote><a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/phwa-ovechkin-star-vote-controversy-know-got-wrong-210535864.html">On Wednesday, it was revealed that Professional Hockey Writers Association votes gave Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin two spots on the NHL All-Star Team roster: As a first-team right wing, a position he played throughout the 2012-13 season, and as a second-team left wing, a position he had played throughout his career.</a></blockquote>(Click through and read the whole article, it's great. "We know we got this wrong".)</p> <p>It's all too on the nose. A star-driven team, run by a self-centered and -satisfied rich dude, getting media coverage that is easily demonstrated to be factually incorrect. The Capitals are the Democratic Party; Leonsis is Reince Priebus; the media is the media. And we? We are all doomed. </p> <p><em>—Collision, not fucking joking</em></p> Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-34057582959808868412013-10-29T07:00:00.000-07:002013-10-29T07:00:11.200-07:00Punk Song for Every Owner: Francesco Aquilini, No Wishes, No Prayers<p>Clear the Crease co-founder and Chris Collision heterosexual life partner <a href="https://twitter.com/jefcanuk" target=_blank>Pierre Idiot Trudeau</a> is An Actual Canadian, and In Fact From Vancouver, so my initial impulse was to turn this entry over to him. <blockquote><strong>Pierre Idiot Trudeau</strong>: I don't know. The Aquilini Brothers, man, I don't get 'em. Can't really hate on the guys, they opened the checkbook and produced a shit-ton of wins, but no Cups and none in sight. Yeah, this sums up our near future.</blockquote></p> <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Zt6u70LXK-M?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> </p> <p><blockquote><strong>Pierre Idiot Trudeau</strong>: But maybe not. That song is about atheism. Not about no hope. Hmmm.</blockquote></p> <p><blockquote><strong>Pierre Idiot Trudeau</strong>: I guess as a retort to evangelical owners...it's a good angle. One of the brothers <em>is</em> born again.</blockquote></p> <p><blockquote><strong>Collision</strong>: Well. The secret about this project is that <em>it's actually not about the owners</em>.</blockquote></p> <p>Some years back, Pierre Idiot Trudeau and I heaved ourselves off the couch and betook ourselves to Vancouver. His team was in the playoffs, and I was white-knuckling against a deep depression and desperate for anything that would pull me out of Portland for a couple days. So we drove up, and found P.I.T. a scathingly expensive ticket, but only just the one. We were fed outstandingly by his delightful parents, we drank preposterously, and, in time, soundly mocked a gentleman named "Rob"—who we were careful to call "Rod"—who kept making the NWO Wolfpack hand sign and howling "I just drove up from Kelowna, eh?"... </p><p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8ODaheAGISXYK01SDetu9B4Oc9jJkVmbBJTkrKdXiu4DTmbFDm3yU1OIgLeH0zr6xZTBIpG0CEUE0-vOUkHVu44jMln3vx8nR53dJUqo4uQqsha_cGYdgukG1u5Sn_OUguV0y94tkc28/s1600/nwo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8ODaheAGISXYK01SDetu9B4Oc9jJkVmbBJTkrKdXiu4DTmbFDm3yU1OIgLeH0zr6xZTBIpG0CEUE0-vOUkHVu44jMln3vx8nR53dJUqo4uQqsha_cGYdgukG1u5Sn_OUguV0y94tkc28/s1600/nwo.jpg" /></a></div></p> <p>Eventually P.I.T. went to the game. I wandered around, looking for something cheap to do. Eventually, I found a coffee shop and listened to the game on AM radio. It was a rough night: the Canucks absorbed the full litany of ways to describe a loss that you probably remember from Infinite Jest, up to and including the St. Louis Blues—them <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2013/10/punk-song-for-every-owner-st-louis.html" target=_blank><em>again!</em></a>—going back in time to prevent their parents from meeting...0-6 at home, first game of the playoffs; make up your own comparison, I guess, but you certainly wouldn't want that to happen to your sister. My own beloved Avs endured a similar fate, losing to the desperately mediocre Minnesota Wild in a game that would prove to pretty much mark the end of the Avs' status as a first-tier franchise. Sigh. Losing sucks. These are the things I was thinking as I trudged up the entrance ramp to GM Place. </p> <p>I didn't mention that that 10apr evening, I happened to be wearing my favorite magic garment: a bizarre short-sleeved Patrick Roy jersey that is the only thing that survived my <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2012/11/fuck-you-i-quit-part-one-of-two.html" target=_blank>purge of</a> <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2012/11/fuck-you-i-quit-part-two-of-three.html" target=_blank>Avs merch</a>. I was wearing this as I salmoned against a neverending stream of exiting Canucks fans. A certain moeity of those fans took some notice of my jerkin and commented on it. For maybe a hundred feet I tried to laugh it off—"Haha, yeah, my guys lost too...rough night, right?" </p> <p>As I pressed on, drawing closer to the wellspring that would eventually disgorge my friend, the frequency and intensity of the comments increased. I bethought myself...self...if you're going to get your ass kicked for a <em>shirt</em>...let it not be a shirt about hockey...in Vancouver, the Nicest City In The Land.</p> <p>I zipped up my shitty windbreaker and kept beating on up against the tide. Eventually we went back to the Cambie to get obliterated. In honor of Vancouver, and my pal <a href="http://invisiblepublishing.com/?p=32" target=_blank>Mark Black, who wrote a book about Nomeansno</a> that you should <em>absolutely</em> buy and read, here is a song about limitation by probably the best band Canada has ever produced. </p> <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/SIUmApXqJAk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p> <p><em>—Collision, who didn't get his ass kicked (that night) but who knows one or two things about limitation...as do the Canucks <strong>SICK BURN</strong></em></p>Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-69656833044667568652013-10-28T14:07:00.000-07:002013-10-28T14:07:54.027-07:00Punk Song for Every Owner: Geoff Molson, Alcohol<p>Nobody is really sure what exactly sports are <em>for</em>. <em>Spectator</em> sports, anyway—<a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/a-chronicle-of-doing-it" target=_blank>participation is</a> <a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/a-world-of-flying-discs" target=_blank>its own</a> <a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/a-girl-named-lexistential-crisis-meditations-on-roller-derby" target=_blank>reward</a>, of course.</p> <p>My best guess has always been that (spectator, team) sports are essentially metaphors for society; they're our society modelling itself for itself, probably mostly for the purposes of explaining social facts to people slash breaking people to the harsh realities that they must live under, if they are to live. This is, naturally, me essentially appropriating and redeploying Marx' <u>Theses on Fuerbach</u> in a fairly ham-fisted fashion. <blockquote>...<a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm" target=_blank>the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family</a>...</blockquote></p> <p>That is, Marx noted that organized religions were (power-) structured in a way entirely analogous to families, and then went on to insist that both power structures should be dismantled and rebuilt.** And I'm claiming that our antagonism-riddled societies, brutally cleaved into Winners and Losers, are more or less modeled by the big spectacles we throw ourselves, with their own Winners and Losers, their own rules and enforcements, their economies and meanings, etc. The quickest way to limn this position might just be: as patriotism is to countries, so fandom is sports teams.</p> <p>Anyway, I used to think that. Now I think that that's what watching sports is supposed to do—and what it maybe once did—but mostly now I think it's just another version of self-annihilation, another <a href="http://alcindorblock.blogspot.com/2006/07/plastic-forms-of-escape_21.html" target=_blank>plastic form of escape</a> like "T.V. and relentless masturbation"*, or excessive reading, or a purely aesthetics-driven life, or video games or model trains or men's fashion or any other micro-scale endeavor with lots of rules and moving parts and room for misdirected energies and passions and opinions... They're all great replacements for embedding oneself deeply and vividly into a community. They all offer tiny bursts of reward for minimal effort, and thus corrode our interest in the large-effort, little-reward parts of life; which is to say, the important parts. If you think I'm talking about a combination of bread and circuses on one hand and a craven and pathetic abandonment of everything that makes human, therefore social, life worth living, on the other...then you're right.*** </p> <p>Plus, all of those things are kind of easy, but...you know what? Getting fucked up is 'way easier than any of 'em.</p> <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Cz3GmHferlQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br><em>(Song suggestion by Major Dude <a href="https://twitter.com/samsreiss" target=_blank>Sam Reiss</a>)</em></p> <p>Which brings us to an interesting fact: Molson Beer and the Montreal Canadiens are owned by the same people. It all comes together.</p> <p>So, for Geoff Molson and the entire Molson family, Clear the Crease salutes the beer you brew and the team you own. May your be-numbing products always enhance the experience of consuming each other. May the curdled and rancid low-stakes form of patriotic fervor known as "rooting for the Canadiens" continue to satisfy, and may it never spill over into the weirdo patriotic fervor known as "Quebecois Separatism". May your Coors-like beer be ever available for those dark, damp moments when real life sucks just a little bit too hard to take sober. </p> <p><em>—Collision, who likes Gang Green a little more than he should</em></p> <p>*From Hunter S. Thompson's introduction to <u>Generation of Swine</u>. <p>**I'm leaving some parts out.</p> <p>***Another part of the decay I see in sports fandom is paralleled by the decay from "patriotism" to "nationalism". This seems essentially total, at this point: see for example the lengthy <em>cri</em> about <a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/cheering-and-the-st-louis-cardinals" target=_blank>the essential exceptionalism of the St. Louis Cardinals</a>. Not every nationalist movement need be violent, it seems; some can just be endlessly self-congratulatory and quietly superior. It's the nobler approach—just ask them. </p>
Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-59128520142828377872013-10-27T13:14:00.002-07:002013-10-27T13:14:27.085-07:00Punk Song for Every Owner: Jeremy Jacobs, Argh Fuck Kill<p>Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs is proof positive that savage, chiseling, union-busting nightmares sometimes finish first. This viper followed seasons of all-conquering team success by being one of the prime movers behind a lockout that annihilated half an entire season, thereby effortlessly obliterating the line between "hardliner" and "complete dipshit". Fuck him. </p> <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/jlwBJmQ2JDE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br><em>(Song Choice by Our Own Bogdan von Pylon)</em></p> <p>Bruins' Achievements That Weren't Important Enough for Jeremy Jacobs to Refrain from Nuking a Season, in His Billionaire's Wisdom<ul><li><strong>2008-2009</strong> Vezina + Jennings Trophies for best goaltender + lowest goals-against average for a season </li><li><strong>2008-2009</strong> Jack Adams award for best coach </li><li><strong>2008-2009</strong> Norris Trophy for best defenseman </li><li><strong>2010-2011</strong> Stanley Cup </li><li><strong>2010-2011</strong> Vezina Trophy for best goaltender</li><li><strong>2010-2011</strong> Conn Smythe Trophy for best player in the playoffs</li><li><strong>2011-2012</strong> Selke Trophy for best defensive forward</li></ul></p> <p>Exactly how successful do these masters of the universe have to be before they stop fighting for the rules to be changed ever more in their favor? Exactly how much do you have to win before you stop cheating? </p> <p><em>—Collision, who probably shouldn't've told his boss to eat shit</em></p>Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-4356855034309408612013-10-08T16:13:00.000-07:002013-10-08T17:54:41.503-07:00Punk Song for Every Owner: St. Louis Blues, I Don't Know What I AmI didn't grow up knowing much about St Louis. For my first two and a half decades, though, it was relatively near, easy access to its charms afforded by my location somewhat to the west on the I-70 corridor, a not particularly delightful stretch of scenery created by the military industrial complex' simple desire to have some nation-spanning infrastructure suitable for shoving portable nukes around the countryside.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4-0D8SFLqNY" width="420"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
I have only one firsthand memory of the city, from my younger, dumber days. I was on a Greyhound trip, going...somewhere, in some summer after 1997. I was young, and unhappy, and in possession of no excess of ready cash, so my layover in St. Louis offered no options more enticing / available than sitting behind the terminal, vaguely staring at the police station I remember there. No option that I took, anyway. I just sat, and smoked, and took hits off my one-hitter, and sipped the occasional bit of GHB I'd made from a kit I bought off the Internet. Vile, poisonous stuff. Hard to keep down. I probably made it wrong from those mispurposed industrial chemicals, and I always choked on the foul taste, even before the inevitable nausea struck, and I never shared, because I didn't believe in poisoning people, even then. Other people, anyway. <br />
<br />
It would pass for water, though, if nobody looked too close, and its primary effects were things I badly needed then: an hour or so of a drifty drunk / stoned feeling; about five hours of impenetrable unconsciousness; a hard transition back into awareness. A good mix for travel. Thick insulation against the press of humanity, the deluge of psychic stimulation, the spiraling and painful mind that always results from a confined body. (As <a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/the-archetype-duncan-siemens-rides-the-bus">I've mentioned before, punk zines by Aaron Cometbus & Al Burian told me to travel and go crazy</a>, and (so) I did.) So I sat by my backpack, and I smoked, and I smoked pot, and I sipped GHB, and I stared through a couple humid hours of one St. Louis summer night. That's it. That's all I know. First-hand, anyway. <br />
<br />
If I open up a little, and allow knowledge and feelings that are mediated by sports, instead of punk rock, drugs, and zines, I realize I always felt like I was supposed to hate St. Louis. I was—<a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/royals-nation">and am—a Royals man</a>; thus from Kansas City must I oppose the Cardinals from St. Louis. And now I roll with <a href="http://deadspin.com/5853503/tony-la-russas-illusion-of-genius">a crew of sports smarks</a>, who can't let any perceived conventional wisdom go un-snarked, and thus must Cardinals fans get demoted from "Best Fans in the Game" to "Intolerably Smug and Suspiciously White", and their uncontroversially excellent manager is reassessed as "Unpleasant Meddler, Possibly a Mean Drunk". All of which is fine. It's a big world, and knowledge of it must needs come from manifold sources far exceeding my firsthand experience; so, fine: sucks to St. Louis, sucks to the Cardinals, sucks to their satisfied fans, and sucks to Tony La Russa. I don't really give a shit. <br />
<br />
Which brings us to the St. Louis Blues. This is truly a beautifully established franchise. Rich history, despite being founded as a way for savage chisler Bill Wirtz, <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2013/10/punk-song-for-every-owner-rocky-wirtz.html">who we met earlier in our series</a>, to monetize an arena he happened to own in St. Louis, the team has a lot to brag about. Great goalies like Jacques Plante and Glenn Hall had tremendous success there. Brilliant pure scorer Brett Hull put up shocking totals in a Blues uniform. The team made the playoffs 25 straight years, an inarguable skein of mid-tier achievement. <br />
<br />
I have to list these things because they probably don't come immediately to mind when someone says "St. Louis Blues". Indeed nothing probably comes to mind when someone says "St. Louis Blues". While the possession may be somewhat anonymous and more or less mediocre, the owner is far from a lightweight. His efforts may not have received enough attention, but when he's not busy being a <a href="http://prohockeytalk.nbcsports.com/2012/05/12/who-is-this-tom-stillman-character-anyway/">union-busting booze-profiteer</a>, he's fighting to make his beloved toy a success. Invisibly, he strives for the Blues to escape, to shed the insulation of their geographic isolation and historical lack of achievement. Unfortunately, his plan seems to be "be the New Jersey Devils of the Central Division". This means slow, boring hockey. And the Blues rather obviously lack the uniquely gifted goaltender who made it all possible all those years in Jersey...but, hey. Maybe overwhelmingly avuncular Dr. Phil life-alike John Davidson can craft a real winner in St. Louis, not just a team but a franchise with a perduring identity, stable and trans-individual, and qualitatively different than what came before. <br />
<br />
It could happen. There's precedent: identities can change. That man who sat in St. Louis, desperate and numb, isn't the guy who's writing this. I'm no longer cut up by what's around me and what's inside me. I don't reflexively reach for something to blunt...everything anymore, and I don't read punk fanzines to make sense of my stupid life. I quit doing drugs, and I definitely quit punishing myself with cross-<br />
country trips via Greyhound. <br />
<br />
Or maybe things don't change that much. I wrote this on a plane, after chugging a bloody mary & a Yuengling. I'm carrying the same backpack I had on that trip through St. Louis a decade and a half ago. And the words that make the most sense of St. Louis still come from a punk fanzine by Aaron Cometbus. Anyway, good luck, St. Louis. Good luck, St. Louis owner. Good luck, me.<br />
<blockquote>
Little Johnny approaches with a big smile on his face. "To old-school St. Louis punk," he says. "Drink up. This round is on me."
<br />
And that's when I start to feel sick, though Little Johnny is a guy I've always liked...<br />
I start to lose it. Fifteen years of frustration well up inside me and threaten to break.<br />
Why even try to put a positive spin on the story of our lives? Everyone we've ever loved has been wounded, and everything we've ever cared about has been turned into a joke.<br />
I'm not bitter about it, I'm pissed.<br />
Fuck old school St. Louis punk.<br />
Fuck life.</blockquote>
Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-3987423805311540272013-10-06T15:35:00.000-07:002013-10-06T15:35:00.008-07:00Punk Song for Every NHL Owner, corpse pose for the Jackets<p>Presumably, someone owns the Columbus Blue Jackets. It seems almost certain, in fact. We do, after all, live in a world with walls, and on those walls stand men with guns, and the job of those men is, of course, to keep other—lesser—men, with fewer things, away from the things of greater men, with more—and better—things. </p><p>Not that the Blue Jackets are necessarily such a great thing. On the black side of the ledger, they:<ul><li>Are a team with some indisputable charm </li><li>Have some quite good players, including the reigning Vezina winner for league's best goaltender, former 40-goal man Marian Gaborik, and solid pros like former Portland Winterhawk (and awful dresser) <a href="http://www.essentialhommemag.com/tag/brandon-dubinsky/" target=_blank>Brandon Dubinsky</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/Aportzline" target=_blank>Boast a shockingly well-regarded beat writer</a></li><li>Sport perhaps <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/five-nhl-teams-start-wearing-third-jerseys-full-145951002--nhl.html" target=-blank>my favorite jerseys in the game</a></li></ul></p><p>In honor of hope, and perseverance, and work, Clear the Crease hereby dedicates the following HEAVY TUNE to the owner of the Blue Jackets...whoever that is. The song is a slice of High Energy music from my all-time hero, Mike Watt, a man who has long since earned a MacArthur genius grant, tho' he has yet to receive it. Alas.</p>
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/h1IOdI26wog" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><p>And, less kindly, a classic slice of horrifying noise, in honor of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_Arena" target=_blank>323 dead people</a> associated with the building where the Blue Jackets ply their trade. </p><p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/NdeKqqw40nE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p><p><em>—Collision, who got badly fucked over by Evernote several different times while writing this on a plane to Columbus </em></p>
Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-20739415141687214142013-10-03T17:03:00.000-07:002013-10-03T17:03:10.774-07:00Punk Song for Every Owner: Rocky Wirtz, Budd<p>The man who used to own the Chicago Blackhawks was named Bill Wirtz, and Bill Wirtz was one of the most hated men in both hockey and Chicago for decades. A strident believer in ticket sales, he notoriously refused to allow his team to be shown on TV, apparently reasoning <blockquote>"why would anybody leave their house to go have an amazing live experience if they could sit in the fetid squalor of their Midwestern hovels filling the emptiness inside them with beer and drowning out their howls of anguish with the Tube?"</blockquote></p> <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4r3fnXoPoC4?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> </p> <p>Eventually, however, his terrifying portrait was found in the attic, each of his terrible sins written upon the disfigured face hidden away there. At the age of 77, "Dollar" Bill's claw-like grip on life finally failed. </p><p>Because Wirtz was, though a terrible businessman, very very rich, his possessions naturally went straight to his son, "Rocky" Wirtz. Rocky, in the way of sons everywhere, proceeded to make his life's work undoing that of his father. Free TV for everybody! Championships! A sometimes shaky grasp on the workings of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement! </p> <p>In honor of Chicago, TV, and rich guys doing things for money, we dedicate to you, "Rocky" Wirtz, a tune celebrating <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budd_Dwyer">the power of live television</a>, performed by Chicago's greatest musical exponent, Mr. Steve Albini. </p>
Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-88700679170590700672013-10-02T20:05:00.001-07:002013-10-02T20:05:52.262-07:00 Punk Song for Every Owner: Stan Kroenke, Slack Motherfucker<P>The story of the Avs is a pretty simple one: a team gets stolen from Canada and relocated to a second-tier American city. The new town is aggressively proud of its sporting credentials: when I was there (roughly 1986 to 1997), they missed no available opportunity to tout their status as the smallest city with all four major sports represented. The hijacked team responded well to its new digs, winning a championship in their first season in town. This further embittered Canadians, and endeared the franchise to its new Denver fans, who had never seen a team win it all before (unless it was an opposing team beating the Broncos in the Super Bowl, which happened more or less yearly throughout the 80s). </p><p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/OxgnsuUQKnE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</p> <p>Four years later, Stan Kroenke took ownership, and a year later, his team won it all. History, as we know, repeats. </p><p>The most repeating thing about history? Bosses gonna boss. As today's song for an owner puts it, perfectly: <blockquote>you haven't moved from that spot all night 'cept to ask for a light <br>you damn' smokestack <br>you've wasted my time, I'd like to see you try to give it back <br>I'm working...I'm not working for you <br>slack motherfucker </blockquote> Stan Kroenke has been bossing away for a decade and a half now, largely without success or an apparent plan, recent massive, sudden, and decisive public relations moves notwithstanding. (While bringing back team legends may well work, it remains a transparent sop to nitwit fans pining for their glory days...) </p> <p>In the spirit of bad bosses, Clear the Crease hereby dedicates to Stan Kroenke my favorite version of "Slack Motherfucker", a song that's "about working for an asshole". Stan: I'm watching—but I'm not watching for you, slack motherfucker. </p>Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-35397032326791335352013-09-29T17:45:00.000-07:002013-09-29T17:45:06.936-07:00season preview: another year of a crappy per diem<p>It has been a long summer, but the season of heat and pleasure has come to an end, and now we must confront the shortness of day which mirrors the shortness of our own days; yes, it is fall, and every <a href="http://www.torontosun.com/2013/09/29/maple-leafs-place-john-michael-liles-on-waivers" target=_blank>dying leaf</a> failing now and earthbound is like you, withering, dying, eventually to decay and rot. </p> <p>Also it's hockey season.</p> <p>At Clear the Crease, hockey season means just one thing: <strike><a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/colorado-avalanche-national-hockey-league-nations-203859762.html#remaining-content">gimmicky listicles Puck Daddy runs as filler during the August doldrums</a></strike> <a href="http://powertripsl.bandcamp.com/" target=_blank>HEAVY</a> <a href="http://lorddying.bandcamp.com/" target=_blank>TUNES</a> and a hell of a lot of angst. We convened hockey's angriest men to look at the season of decline and death to come. </p> <p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/a80xU0XUbSE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p> <p><blockquote><b>Pierre Idiot Trudeau:</b></blockquote></p> <p>New Divisions! Yay! </p> <p>West: <ul><li>Canucks are the Sharks. </li> <li>Sharks are probably still the Sharks, a sad and over team. </li> <li>Ducks are still Selanne'd, so better than I give them credit for. </li> <li>Flames are 5 years away from being a good team, but probably 3 months away from being likable. </li> <li>Oilers are playoffs. </li> <li>Avalanche are middling. </li> <li>Wild still suck. </li> <li>Chicago still owns. </li> <li>L.A. is back to contending. </li> <li>Phoenix is still Phoenix, still some confusing combination of both under- and over-achieving. </li> <li>Jets are sniffs playoffs, crashes, burns. </li> <li>Blues are continuing to exploit <a href="http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esau">the birthright Colorado sold to them for a bowl of lentil soup</a>. </li></ul></p> <p>Is there still a team in Dallas?</p> <p><blockquote><b>Bogdan von Pylon:</b></blockquote></p> <p>I'm gonna watch this fucking season—even if it kills me.</p> <p><blockquote><b>Collision:</b></blockquote></p> <p><b>Avs:</b> The Avs were the second-worst team in the league last year. There are 30 teams in that league: Last year, the Avs had the 27th-worst defense, and it felt like it. What I hadn't realized until I started researching the season<sup>1</sup> is that they'd had the 26th-worst <em>offense</em> in the league! This is puzzling, a little, as most observers seem reasonably complimentary about the Avs' forwards, and fairly dismissive of the Avs' defensemen. The assessments given to the Avs' goalies are more complicated: <ul><li>Some observers are enthusiastic about the potential and leadership of the Avs' 'tenders; </li><li>Other observers are acquainted with the performances and #s put up by the Avs' goalies for the past few years, and are therefore inclined to use language like "bottom of the barrel" and "masked nightmares". </li></ul>In case you think I perhaps exaggerate a little: There exists a made-up statistic for goaltenders called the "Quality Start". This metric grants a QS to a goaltender who finishes a game with either a save percentage above league average (.917 right now) <b>or</b> fewer than 3 goals given up. (More or less.) Semyon Varlamov last year had a Quality Start percentage of 33.3% (worst among goalies with 30+ appearances). Meaning in 2 of every 3 games he started, he ended up with more than 3 goals against, or a sub-average save percentage... For a team that gave up 31 shots a game, and only scored 2.38 goals a game...either of those outcomes was obviously pretty difficult to overcome.</p> <p>Oh, and well-respected backup J-S Giguere? 21.4%. </p> <p><blockquote><em>[Editorial Interlude: Say, friend: did you know Chris Collision wrote a short rock opera about J-S Giguere? He did! You Can Read It! Just mosey on over to <a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/losing-again-a-puck-opera">The Classical</a>! Tell 'em Clear the Crease sent ya! Or don't, and be forever damned.]</em></blockquote></p> <p>Fans were rewarded for sticking with this bottom-feeding franchise for the last half-decade of bad decisions poorly executed, as the Avs put together a <em>huge</em> off-season! <ul><li>Giant new scoreboard.</li><li>Old players = new front office management types.</li><li>Goodbye David "Nickname" Jones, you semi-reliable winger coming off a world-historically shitty shooting percentage; hello, Alex Tanguay, best described as: skilled; moderately productive; pillow-soft; deathly dull! </li><li>First pick in the draft! Hello, <strike>doughy-faced young guy</strike> exciting new center Nathan MacKinnon! What's that you say, new coach Patrick Roy? You are so enamored of this <strike>doughy-faced young guy</strike> exciting new center that you are going to take arguably your best young player Ryan O'Reilly and play him out of position so you can play this new kid? Great! </strike></ul></p> <p>The defense and goaltending, so notably solid last year, needed no attention, and therefore got none.</p> <p>Wait, that's not quite true. Two veteran defensemen were cut loose: Greg Zanon, who was never good, and Matt Hunwick, who actually saw 21:31 of ice time per game over 43 games... On one hand, this move made sense, because the worst thing a team can do, personnel-wise, is to fall in love with major contributors to bad teams, and Hunwick certainly was that (and so was David "Nickname" Jones). Still, though: I have a feeling that this is a team that could use some professional-grade mediocrity along the blue line, and I have little to no faith that the defense is any less of a glaring weakness than it was last year.<sup>2</sup> </p> <p>To sum up, it is not simply my own hackishness and desire for attention that leads me to suggest that this year for the Avs will be like the piece I wrote for <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-classical/id622578328?ls=1&mt=8">The Classical's Being There</a> issue, a piece called "The Old Ways of Defeat". It's gonna be a long year. </p> <p><em>—Collision, starting the season in the minors</em></p> <p><sup>1</sup>Partially to prepare for the year, partially to prepare for the fantasy hockey league I'm in with <a href="http://invisiblepublishing.com/?p=32">Mark Black</a>. Is fantasy hockey stupid? Indubitably. Is <em>studying for</em> fantasy hockey a colossal waste of time? But of course! But when I'm socializing with the guy who literally <a href="http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/a-posi-review-of-nomeansno-going-nowhere" target=_blank>wrote the book</a> on one of the greatest bands of all time, I'm going to do a little homework to avoid embarrassing myself. </p> <p><sup>2</sup>Hunwick cleared waivers, I think, and is thus still with the team, but one suspects the team's brain trust doesn't plan to deploy him particularly robustly. </p>
Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-77301538934934529302013-08-05T09:56:00.001-07:002013-08-05T09:56:44.083-07:00these guys are a fuckin' disgraceBeing an introduction to the Clear the Crease bloggers.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW0bKn5ovOfm2b0Cn8tvMKFPft80zn5Y2sa6xG-2hYEXI3kEkOToJBMvExotJwV9ruQ6fzHZV_f6BbeL7WWVfNzc-3N6rQl5dJgTSFBeLO-r5njMeiKj08_5R6G6hw7MTOoZ11CKS9RO4/s1600/canuk(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW0bKn5ovOfm2b0Cn8tvMKFPft80zn5Y2sa6xG-2hYEXI3kEkOToJBMvExotJwV9ruQ6fzHZV_f6BbeL7WWVfNzc-3N6rQl5dJgTSFBeLO-r5njMeiKj08_5R6G6hw7MTOoZ11CKS9RO4/s1600/canuk(2).jpg" /></a></div> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/jefcanuk">Pierre Idiot Trudeau</a> (AKA JeffCanuck): <br>Canadian. Canucks fan. Loather of all Canadian media. Deep opinions about early Def Leppard. </p> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjQjtKrDbdijv8DC1vtqJxZBReTvi2OT5UJOUkzSaDxwfXQeiKiKjbO0me5nQ8eNG6XZqTnNPk2Ys1Dai9UF1xDnYVjNeYlQAHRitMO2kx-5G8JbJz87JDAyFTlg7FiA7v7oNj3vovsCs/s1600/pest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjQjtKrDbdijv8DC1vtqJxZBReTvi2OT5UJOUkzSaDxwfXQeiKiKjbO0me5nQ8eNG6XZqTnNPk2Ys1Dai9UF1xDnYVjNeYlQAHRitMO2kx-5G8JbJz87JDAyFTlg7FiA7v7oNj3vovsCs/s1600/pest.jpg" /></a></div> <p>Bogdan von Pylon: Doesn't care what you think. The man who squats behind the man who runs the soft machine. Sharp mind and sharper tongue behind the whole CtC operation. </p> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcANiVocR4clkACMSIhiFI672RMoG1wC1OixOreKunckwwm6ZdfjkSQnhAxv6bOKswBu8kGbVSGsbchyq4zCWsTjMd3IoEdk-E68IlHkdNdyA8DN8I29N54ctcsMxPk4rnhHYL_ejzfNI/s1600/collision.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcANiVocR4clkACMSIhiFI672RMoG1wC1OixOreKunckwwm6ZdfjkSQnhAxv6bOKswBu8kGbVSGsbchyq4zCWsTjMd3IoEdk-E68IlHkdNdyA8DN8I29N54ctcsMxPk4rnhHYL_ejzfNI/s1600/collision.jpg" /></a></div> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/cfcollision">Chris Collision</a>: Avs fan. Writes about hockey a lot for <a href="http://theclassical.org/author/chris-collision">The Classical</a>. (Also <a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/why-we-watch-andre-miller-the-seer">basektball</a>, <a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/royals-nation">base</a>-<a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/raptor-in-the-winter">ball</a>, and <a href="http://theclassical.org/theclog/memo-from-ursa-major-an-introduction-to-the-alaska-nanooks">bears</a>.) You may have seen his work on <a href="http://deadspin.com/5883363/duncan-siemens-rides-the-bus-on-the-loneliness-of-the-long+distance-minor+league-bus-rider">Deadspin</a>, or on <a href="http://freedarko.blogspot.com/2011/03/two-snakes.html">FreeDarko</a>. He writes about HEAVY TUNES for <a href="http://www.negativefun.com/">Negative Fun Records</a>. Sagittarius. </p> <p>You can hear Jeff and Collision on the new <a href="http://noheadlineaudiozine.com/">No Headline AudioZine podcast</a>, released Sunday. Collision and von Pylon got hella liquored up on Saturday. Go Avs Go! </p><p><a href="https://twitter.com/urbanitas23">Jew Grimson</a>: Long-lost token Blackhawks fan. Instigator/sensitive soul type, not entirely unlike <a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/exclusive-television-preview-sean-avery-and-ryan-callahan-hate-your-clothes">Sean Avery</a>. DJ. Not particularly interested in hearing your nonsense.</p><p>Clear the Crease enjoys the musical stylings of <a href="http://lorddying.bandcamp.com/">Lord Dying</a>. </p><p>See you in the streets.</p>
Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-32672941425522444942013-05-01T14:26:00.001-07:002014-06-01T14:12:53.574-07:00does fire stop pucks?<p><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/opinion/2013/05/nhl-awards-picks-30-thoughts.html" target=_blank>9. Martin Brodeur, asked if we [Ed note: sic] could consider retiring: "Why would I? I've still got the fire."</a></p>
<p><b><a href="http://www.hockey-reference.com/players/b/brodema01.html" target=_blank>Martin Brodeur's Save Percentage</a> vs. <a href="http://www.quanthockey.com/TS/TS_SavePercentage.php" target=_blank>(NHL Average Save Percentage)</a> by Year</b><br>
<blockquote>2013: .901 (.912)<br>
2012: .908 (.914)<br>
2011: .903 (.913)</blockquote></p>
<p><i>—Collision, who notes that the fire apparently stopped stopping more pucks than the league average three full seasons ago</i></p>
Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-45972020306850821132013-04-26T13:16:00.000-07:002013-04-26T13:16:15.973-07:00rubbish and gold bought with ruin and sold at a loss<p align=right>here there is none that can guide me aright in the pathless wood.—<br> ...<br> If I've had to howl 'neath the lashes of fate, trust me to find folks I can lash in my turn—<br> ...<br> The corpses all laugh. But their laughter is forced;<br> ...<br> Enough for the day is the evil thereof,—<br>and further: Discount not thy funeral.—<br></p> <p>Not long ago, the NHL team from Colorado—dead last in the league—hosted the one from Calgary, second-to-last. The game itself was uninspired but inspiring, in that it led well-regarded veteran goaltender J-S Giguère to go ham on his squad after the game. All this has been <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/avalanche/ci_22988045/giguere-not-backing-off-angry-rant-avalanche-teammates" target=_blank>more-than-adequately covered elsewhere</a>, of course. Over to The Classical, however, I came at things from a slightly different angle: <a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/losing-again-a-puck-opera" target=_blank>Losing Again: A Play in Verse</a>. It hosts probably the piece of art I'm proudest of having had a hand in ever: Bogdan von Pylon's pitch-perfect reworking of Raymond Pettibon's cover for Black Flag's <em>Jealous Again</em>.</p> <p align=center><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibVMZGEXpbZKmzDW37tC9MVsAoDOcDyVdgMm3S1UbZX78zJ0Iv9dqK5OuDLdF3YEN2q20ZlJtI0ClhuQzqUqOJ-vXZzoQpqbaSVFYWamHJdoM4VjTlGbiYv2cjZJwCv5QIwXZ7njvTJ78/s1600/Giguere_tears.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibVMZGEXpbZKmzDW37tC9MVsAoDOcDyVdgMm3S1UbZX78zJ0Iv9dqK5OuDLdF3YEN2q20ZlJtI0ClhuQzqUqOJ-vXZzoQpqbaSVFYWamHJdoM4VjTlGbiYv2cjZJwCv5QIwXZ7njvTJ78/s320/Giguere_tears.jpg" /></a><br><em>(Jiggy's eyes are the fountain of the bitter and searing lye of tears) </em></p> <p>Aside from the best art you will see today, the piece trickles from a lot of different sources. One is our own semi-tradition of bets here at CtC: Bogdan von Pylon and I renewed our whimsical wager of <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2011/11/poetry-corner-not-joke.html" target=_blank>Shopping of Photos by him or Crafting of Poems by me</a> in the event of "our" team losing. "My" team lost, naturally, and so I began to guide my pen across page—carving and wheeling like the plodding skates of an Avalanche defenseman getting beaten wide—then other, darker roots of influence manifested and from the thick taproot of menace and despair began to bloom weird leaves. I thought of the faces of the goaltenders who worked that night, and thought of their losses and reversals: It instantly seemed that a few short stanzas were inadequate to the task of capturing the spirit of the thing, the meaning of this late-season trudge through the slough. The obvious solution to this perilous lack was a play in verse.</p> <p>Probably this seemed very necessary because I have of late been reading <a href="http://academics.triton.edu/uc/files/peergynt.htm"><i>Peer Gynt</i></a>, in the aftermath, for all is aftermath, of an <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324624404578257750582338148.html" target=_blank>interesting staging thereof</a> I attended with the Lady Noodles not long ago. It was, in the words of the program, "<a href="http://www.sfsymphony.org/Buy-Tickets/2012-13/MTT-conducts-music-from-Peer-Gynt.aspx" target=_blank>a hybrid <i>Peer Gynt</i></a> [combining] parts of ... three scores—Grieg, Schnittke, and Holloway—with a semi-staged multimedia production". The <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/music/article/Good-show-but-this-is-no-peerless-Gynt-4206754.php" target=_blank>staging was somewhat light</a>, playing much for laughs and eliding essentially everything from the third quarter of the book, which contains Peer Gynt's attempts to sell himself as a prophet, some still-disturbing scenes in a madhouse, and a sequence of actually horrifying cruelty on a ship. The book used for that performance did elide these sections, anyway. The rather superb Robin Holloway piece <em>"Ocean Voyage"</em> did seem to evoke/embody much of the tumult and sad human shittiness Ibsen built into those passages, though it was incorporated clumsily into the show, being very long and more than a little flow-breaking. </p> <p>One of the primary themes of <i>Peer Gynt</i> is the frank evil causing/caused-by the philosophy demanded by the Motor City 5: "let me be who I am". This philosophy is of course ascendant now, and not merely in our politics! It has poisoned our writing, too. Essentially every writer within 10 years of my age sallies forth misunderstanding the lessons of confessional poetry/<a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/08/psychotic-jest-and-infinite-reactions-how-david-foster-wallace-didnt-invent-the-internets-voice/" target=_blank>Lester Bangs</a>/David Foster Wallace/Joan Didion/Herman Melville/whoever strikes you as what Ibsen called "Old fossil Highnesses who make it their pride to keep plebeian blots excluded from their line's escutcheon", and reduces every topic to "a written monologue by that most interesting being, <i>myself</i>". But these writers aren't Alice James, or Ibsen, or even <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/08/how-lester-bangs-taught-me-to-read.html" target=_blank>Bangs</a>, and the spring of self is stagnating badly. <blockquote>It's here, sir, that one is oneself with a vengeance; oneself, and nothing whatever besides. We go, full sail, as our very selves. Each one shuts himself up in the barrel of self, in the self-fermentation he dives to the bottom,—with the self-bung he seals it hermetically, and seasons the staves in the well of self. No one has tears for the other's woes; no one has mind for the other's ideas. We're our very selves, both in thought and tone, ourselves to the spring-board's uttermost verge,— </blockquote> </p> <p>And, well, <b>fuck that</b>. Since I wish to speak of the rough infinity of things more interesting than myself before I speak of myself, the formal play of a play in verse seemed Just The Thing. Plus the third and fourth influences plaguing, or maybe blessing, my every word; I speak, naturally, of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and of Thomas Pynchon—or at least I speak of the urge so potent in them to STOP</p> <p align=center><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gaduCx4Dkgg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><em>(Let's put on a show!)</em></p> <p>everything and break into song. And so what was conceived as a pair of poems turned into a play in verse turned into a rock opera—or at least a musical. Which, again: you can read over at <a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/losing-again-a-puck-opera" target=_blank>The Classical: Losing Again</a>.</p> <p>But why goalies in particular, you probably aren't asking. There are several reasons. First, as I learned from <em>Manufacturing Consent</em>—not <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQhEBCWMe44" target=_blank>that one</a>, <a href="http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/org_theory/Scott_articles/buraw_paper.html" target=_blank>the other one</a>—the name of the game is to try to build up <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2778550?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102102520021" target=_blank>an analysis of the whole structure of capitalism by looking closely at the shop floor</a>; so why <em>not</em> start my look at the shop floor with a look at the goalies? (Charles Fort is instructive here: all life is connected and "One measures a circle, starting anywhere.") Second, if hockey itself be of interest, then surely goalies are of interest, for as one brilliant observer querulously asked "Is [the goalie] not worth between 50 and 60 percent of his [sic] team?" </p> <p>Okay, so that brilliant observer was legendary goalie Jacques Plante, who perhaps is not the disinterested historian one would wish most for. Nevertheless, goalies do seem important. Third: <a href="http://theclassical.org/articles/every-thing-on-every-nhl-goalies-mask" target=_blank>their helmets are colorful and interesting and draw the eye</a>.</p> <p>Perhaps, despite all good faith and honest craft, the project failed. Perhaps the result was still and all more an autobiography than an analysis, revealing only my needy vanity, my own failure(s) and rotten (mis-)appropriations of the work of others as an attempt to reclaim what the world stole from me. Perhaps my foolish project is too much like Peer Gynt's, self-serving always, ignorant and arrogant, doomed to an inherent and meaningless uniqueness that can never be special; nothing more than my identity in prose form, a portrait of no more than a shallow and sickly self. <blockquote> It's true—my grounding's by no means thorough, <br>and history's wheels within wheels are deceptive;—<br>but pooh; the wilder the starting-point, <br>the result will oft be the more original.— </blockquote> </p> <p>Thanks for reading, everybody!!</p> <p><em>—Collision, sidelined</em></p>Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-72750759671896332312013-03-26T10:20:00.000-07:002014-05-18T17:02:10.652-07:00too dumb to play with themselves issue one billion<p>I am on record as <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2011/10/100s-of-avs-fans-just-like-you-me.html">liking and respecting the hell out of Adrian Dater</a>. I think he's <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2011/02/hoof-arted.html">among the best beat writers in the business</a>, and his opinions are usually interesting and well-argued. He's got skin thin enough to block me on Twitter, but that's no big deal: I'm a redhead myself, and I know from temper. Anyway, I'm glad he's my primary conduit for Avs information. </p> <p>All that said, there are in this 240-word piece "<a href="http://blogs.denverpost.com/avs/2013/03/25/david-quinn-takes-boston-university-coaching-job/12835" target=_blank>David Quinn takes Boston University coaching Job</a> three separate claims that I want to talk about for a second (all presented verbatim): <ul><li>I knew this a couple days ago, but couldn’t say anything. Oh well, I kept my promise to my source. Which is a poor answer to the question: why be a reporter and grant sources their wish not to publish things in the paper? Well, it’s a long story, but it happens sometimes. Let’s move on...</li><li>Avs policy is not to have assistant coaches talk with the media at all. Hey, it’s their policy, and I don’t have a problem following it. </li><li>Guy Boucher? I think his availability is intriguing right now. I think there’s a chance he could be the next Avs coach. But that’s all: just a chance. Nothing is immediately imminent. </li></ul></p> <p>So what the hell is journalism? <ul><li>Talking to people and not telling anybody what they say </li><li>Not talking to people that somebody doesn't want you to talk to </li><li>Heavy hinting and speculation masked as opinion—or maybe this is a journalist being used to float a trial balloon by somebody in the institution he's supposed to investigating... </li></ul> </p> <p>It's all pretty gross. And, as I've said before, since there's so little at stake with professional sports—it's not like we're being fed a series of bad reasons to spend trillions of dollars invading Iraq, we're just trying to figure out if it's a goalie's groin or hip that's hurt, and how badly—there is absolutely no reason not to do it right. Go ahead, protect your sources. Seems reasonable. But could you at least <i>act</i> like it bugs you that you're being told who you can and who you can not talk to? </p> <p><i>—Collision, who literally nobody wants to talk to anyway</i></p>
Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-88460682988531178972013-03-25T19:19:00.000-07:002013-03-25T19:19:48.046-07:00Semin Back as 'Canes Get Cocky<p>We've had <a href="https://twitter.com/JRoddman/status/312388291443965952" target=_blank>a lot of fun with Semin</a> around here, to the point where some have even complained about seeing <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2013/02/is-semin-on-rocks-in-carolina.html" target=_blank>so much Semin in the 'Crease</a>, but the Internet exploded today with the news that the Carolina Hurricanes have decided they need Alexander Semin in their jersey for five more seasons. While his production has been spotty for the past few campaigns, he's really come on for the 'Canes this time around, and his fast hands really fill a hole for a team that often struggles to punch it in. </p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM2ez8Z9EVjGKiNUGHMoAHKM71tsBBX6rDY8oIN1UpXjzHON5AYlvfWp6WCPd0UnOKqgT8lkzg8THcNLY-s-syJ5TuzK9-u4BmTe5OuE15lAd2JbtWzSL57Sg2PkOFFpzxTE7dnSofba4/s1600/CTC_Semin_Canes.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM2ez8Z9EVjGKiNUGHMoAHKM71tsBBX6rDY8oIN1UpXjzHON5AYlvfWp6WCPd0UnOKqgT8lkzg8THcNLY-s-syJ5TuzK9-u4BmTe5OuE15lAd2JbtWzSL57Sg2PkOFFpzxTE7dnSofba4/s320/CTC_Semin_Canes.png" /></a></p> <p>Some observers may <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/alex-semin-gets-5-deal-carolina-hurricanes-incredible-233909813--nhl.html" target=_blank>choke on his cost</a>, but right now it certainly appears as though Carolina wants to put Semin on their ice for another five seasons. For now, we can all quit worrying about where Semin will end up. At least until next year's trade deadline, when, surely, scoring wingers will be a sizzling-hot commodity and Semin will be on everybody's lips once again. </p> <p>To commemorate this new consummated deal, please enjoy the sloppy, slapped-together Photoshop that our own Bogdan von Pylon expelled before a quick cigarette and a nap. </p> <p><i>—Collision, hoping von Pylon will call, later </i></p> <p>Okay, okay. It isn't all dick jokes and making fun of <a href="http://clearthecrease.blogspot.com/2013/02/ryan-lambert-sucks.html">Ryan Lambert's inability to figure out what he's trying to say</a> around here. Other notable moments from the <b>CtC Thread du Jour</b> include finding our next book club book: </p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRkMct5rx2djcKANUENw1G66srBoQqXP4ivGMwjk5C9sWJZ7B69a78IonD_UBXJmArwT3zGA1O9Zub_-CJ219dZaNu_gGV3MbPXRsEPIUoqyIappQTARqoIRFe6wq2iaF0dALvCa4HIfg/s1600/IMG_20130325_120821.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRkMct5rx2djcKANUENw1G66srBoQqXP4ivGMwjk5C9sWJZ7B69a78IonD_UBXJmArwT3zGA1O9Zub_-CJ219dZaNu_gGV3MbPXRsEPIUoqyIappQTARqoIRFe6wq2iaF0dALvCa4HIfg/s320/IMG_20130325_120821.jpg" /></a> </p> <p>And, spurred on by the Onion, I prepared a list of the five awesomest things ever said on the clock. </p> <p># 5: Reported by Pierre Idiot Trudeau, eavesflirting at the Red & Black some years ago: <blockquote>"Hey, why didn't Tracy put away this delivery?" <br>"Because she sucks?" </blockquote></p><p><a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/epic-saga-of-employees-ineptitude-passed-down-thro,31765/?ref=auto" target=_blank>This Onion article</a> is # 4. </p><p># 3 is some dude I knew who once asked his boss <blockquote>"how big a diagram do I have to draw you, using how many colors of crayon, to explain that what you're asking for can not be done?" </blockquote> </p><p># 2 is of course Bogdan von Pylon: <blockquote>"this is important, so I'm going to use profanity. Please don't take it personally". </blockquote></p> <p>#1: Noodles reply-alling an entire work list—every on-site employee got this—with <blockquote>"I'm sorry, but this 'no-vacation, everybody-needs-to-pull-together-and-work-harder' stuff is ridiculous, when you fired a third of us—our friends and co-workers—last week. Now you have too much work to honor time off requests? You not being able to manage the workflow is not a reason we need to work harder." </blockquote></p> <p>Smash the state, fuck your boss, all power to the people and ban the fucking bomb. </p>Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-54680548439321077772013-03-12T13:24:00.001-07:002014-05-18T17:02:51.594-07:00how is this better than "a chink in his armor"?<p>One suspects there will be minimal outcry over this. But it's still annoying.<br><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxfItUqiT-WRoo7TX34X_d9OET47f75Y2zZiKtpyShwmb295CbPy50C0xd7AfqNOSE9UK-ZPkmL4SKJeapz3y494dmB6y4bqOooUvWf-E1g_x3bWV7OqdS8rKNYT5W8hxhczMNJiwhhyw/s1600/no_no_no..png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxfItUqiT-WRoo7TX34X_d9OET47f75Y2zZiKtpyShwmb295CbPy50C0xd7AfqNOSE9UK-ZPkmL4SKJeapz3y494dmB6y4bqOooUvWf-E1g_x3bWV7OqdS8rKNYT5W8hxhczMNJiwhhyw/s320/no_no_no..png" /></a> </p> <p><a href="http://sfbay.ca/2013/03/12/curry-spices-up-bollywood-night-for-warriors/">Curry Spices Up Bollywood Night for Warriors</a> </p> <p><em>Haw haw haw, see, Curry—Bollywood—Indians <strong>love</strong> curry, which is a spicy food, probably the national dish of India, which is where Bollywood is, and also Curry is the name of the best player on the Warriors, so it writes itself!</em></p> <p>Except it doesn't write itself. Somebody wrote it. (Presumably not "Ryan Leong", since that's the usual dodge used by reporters when some internet jerk gets upset about a headline.) Somebody wrote this cheap pun because they thought it was funny, and, sure, okay, it works on whatever level it works on, and I guess we should be happy the Warriors are doing some minimal kind of cultural outreach with a Bollywood night. But would they have run an essentializing and at least borderline offensive pun with any of their other cultural outreach nights? </p> <blockquote> <p>"David Lee Fries Glen Rice on Asian-American 'Sorry for the Internment Camps Thing' Night"</p> <p>"<a href="http://jack.urbanup.com/12965" target=_blank>Jarrett Jack Racks Up Steals</a> on African-American 'Free Basketball Tickets Might Stop this Crime Wave' Night"</p> <p>"Andris Biedrins <a href="http://www.spotrac.com/nba/golden-state-warriors/andris-biedrins/" target=_blank>Makes a Lot of Cabbage</a> on 'Eastern Europeans Like Borcht, Right?' Night" </p> <p>"Jolly Swagman Andrew Bogut Slaps Shrimpy, Barbie-Like Team Around on 'Waltzing Matilda and Fried Wallaby Night'" </p></blockquote> <p>Sure, all these jokes are bad, real Borcht-belt level stuff, and most of them even require explanatory links; this is because the jokes I made rely on slightly more obscure cultural references and connections than Bollywood/Indians/Curry/curry. But the connections are there, and, in my fake examples, would obviously preclude their publication. So why are these precluded when "Curry Spices Up Bollywood Night" isn't? </p> <p><em>—Collision, humorless dink</em></p>Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-586851650445579424.post-81856834678182967262013-02-15T15:36:00.000-08:002014-05-18T17:03:15.988-07:00Ryan Lambert Sucks<p><em>(Non-optional <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJEZ8ZLvdTs">soundtrack to this post</a>.)</em></p> <p>Here is an edited version of three grafs from Ryan Lambert's latest column. (I include unedited originals below.) I've used strikethrough to eliminate the weasel words, pointless asides, or things irrelevant to my main point. </p> <p><blockquote>Scott Howson, <strike>for all the talk about how hard he tried and how his firing was more about going in a "different direction" than his personal job performance,</strike> was simply not a good NHL general manager. That much was obvious to anyone who saw <strike>how pathetically bungled the Rick Nash saga was, or</strike> his draft record, <strike>or most of his other trades, and the vast majority of his free agent signings.</strike> </p> <p>But <strike>you have to give</strike> Howson <strike>this: He</strike> just set his successor up for an hilariously successful future.</p> <p>Howson's drafting and trading over the last few years has accumulated a decent number of prospects that range from "good" to "very good," though <strike>to be fair maybe</strike> only one can be considered "great." <strike>They're mainly defensemen, like Ryan Murray (the benefit of picking second, one supposes), David Savard and Tim Erixon, as well as goaltender Oskar Dansk. No overwhelming prospects, but a good group nonetheless. Grabbing guys like Cam Atkinson hasn't hurt either.</strike> But <strike>overall</strike> there's a reason Hockey Prospectus and Hockey's Future have the Blue Jackets in the bottom half of the league when it comes to prospects. </blockquote></p> <p>So, what we have here is an argument that runs: <ol><li>Scott Howson was not a good NHL general manager </li><li>His draft record was bad </li><li>His successor is in a good position to succeed </li><li>Because there are a decent number [Ed. note: whatever the hell that means] of good/very good prospects, and one great one </li><li>But their prospects are bottom-half of the league </li></ol></p> <p>The contradiction is clear: Lambert is simultaneously saying that Howson was bad at drafting (1., 2., 5.) and good at drafting (3., 4.). How could a patently self-contradictory claim get made and published? I mean, I'm not misrepresenting him or his arguments in any way: all I did was try to shave away the cruft and reveal the argument he was making. </p> <p>My theory is this: it would be easier for Lambert to understand what he himself was saying—and for his editors, if he had any—if he'd cut down on the weasel words and pointless semi-conversational asides. </p> <p>(Earlier this week, his lede was this, again with the weasel words eliminated: <blockquote> On Monday night, the Flames went down <strike>pretty</strike> quietly in a home game against the Minnesota Wild that <strike>pretty much</strike> all observers agreed was in every way a dreadful, unwatchable hockey game. </p> <p>That description <strike>fairly accurately</strike> covers <strike>most</strike> Flames games this season, </blockquote></p> <p>That's 42 words, 6 of which are pointless qualifiers that only blunt whatever statement he's trying to make. Fairly accurately. Most. Pretty pretty much. </p> <p>Maybe he gets paid by the word, so 14% filler is working well to line his pockets thickly with hockey-blog-troll stacks of cash. Maybe he doesn't read his own results, and what we're reading are first drafts. Maybe he thinks he trolls effectively enough without removing all the equivocations—the etiology doesn't matter, though, because it's clear that his obfuscations are legitimately getting in the way of his ability to communicate, as they so, so brutally did in his little Howson riff. </p> <p>It doesn't really matter. I don't read Lambert much: even when his point isn't buried under fearful hedges, that point is rarely more interesting than "X sucks and Teemu Selanne is great and I saw a lacrosse goal on YouTube" or, very occasionally, "Y should get more credit and Teemu Selanne is great and I saw a lacrosse goal on YouTube". Even if it has a Simpsons quote at the bottom, I can skip a column that doesn't do any more work than that. But if the dude is going to get big-boy real estate on the only hockey blog that matters, I'd like to see him do better work. </p><p><em>—Collision, who loves Titus Andronicus as much as Lambert does</em></p>
<p> Scott Howson, for all the talk about how hard he tried and how his firing was more about going in a "different direction" than his personal job performance, was simply not a good NHL general manager. That much was obvious to anyone who saw how pathetically bungled the Rick Nash saga was, or his draft record, or most of his other trades, and the vast majority of his free agent signings.</p> <p>But you have to give Howson this: He just set his successor up for an hilariously successful future. </p> <p>Howson's drafting and trading over the last few years has accumulated a decent number of prospects that range from "good" to "very good," though to be fair maybe only one can be considered "great." They're mainly defensemen, like Ryan Murray (the benefit of picking second, one supposes), David Savard and Tim Erixon, as well as goaltender Oskar Dansk. No overwhelming prospects, but a good group nonetheless. Grabbing guys like Cam Atkinson hasn't hurt either. But overall there's a reason Hockey Prospectus and Hockey's Future have the Blue Jackets in the bottom half of the league when it comes to prospects. </p>
Chris Collisionhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16584073887456341125noreply@blogger.com0