Punk Song for Every Owner: Geoff Molson, Alcohol

Nobody is really sure what exactly sports are for. Spectator sports, anyway—participation is its own reward, of course.

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' Theses on Fuerbach in a fairly ham-fisted fashion.

...the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family...

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.

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 plastic form of escape 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.***

Plus, all of those things are kind of easy, but...you know what? Getting fucked up is 'way easier than any of 'em.

(Song suggestion by Major Dude Sam Reiss)

Which brings us to an interesting fact: Molson Beer and the Montreal Canadiens are owned by the same people. It all comes together.

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.

—Collision, who likes Gang Green a little more than he should

*From Hunter S. Thompson's introduction to Generation of Swine.

**I'm leaving some parts out.

***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 cri about the essential exceptionalism of the St. Louis Cardinals. 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.

Punk Song for Every Owner: Jeremy Jacobs, Argh Fuck Kill

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.

(Song Choice by Our Own Bogdan von Pylon)

Bruins' Achievements That Weren't Important Enough for Jeremy Jacobs to Refrain from Nuking a Season, in His Billionaire's Wisdom

• 2008-2009 Vezina + Jennings Trophies for best goaltender + lowest goals-against average for a season
• 2008-2009 Jack Adams award for best coach
• 2008-2009 Norris Trophy for best defenseman
• 2010-2011 Stanley Cup
• 2010-2011 Vezina Trophy for best goaltender
• 2010-2011 Conn Smythe Trophy for best player in the playoffs
• 2011-2012 Selke Trophy for best defensive forward

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?

—Collision, who probably shouldn't've told his boss to eat shit

Punk Song for Every Owner: St. Louis Blues, I Don't Know What I Am

I 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.



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.

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 I've mentioned before, punk zines by Aaron Cometbus & Al Burian told me to travel and go crazy, 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.

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—and am—a Royals man; thus from Kansas City must I oppose the Cardinals from St. Louis. And now I roll with a crew of sports smarks, 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.

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, who we met earlier in our series, 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.

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 union-busting booze-profiteer, 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.

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-
country trips via Greyhound.

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.

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."
And that's when I start to feel sick, though Little Johnny is a guy I've always liked...
I start to lose it.  Fifteen years of frustration well up inside me and threaten to break.
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.
I'm not bitter about it, I'm pissed.
Fuck old school St. Louis punk.
Fuck life.

Punk Song for Every NHL Owner, corpse pose for the Jackets

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.

Not that the Blue Jackets are necessarily such a great thing. On the black side of the ledger, they:

• Are a team with some indisputable charm
• 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) Brandon Dubinsky
• Boast a shockingly well-regarded beat writer
• Sport perhaps my favorite jerseys in the game

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.

And, less kindly, a classic slice of horrifying noise, in honor of the 323 dead people associated with the building where the Blue Jackets ply their trade.

—Collision, who got badly fucked over by Evernote several different times while writing this on a plane to Columbus

Punk Song for Every Owner: Rocky Wirtz, Budd

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

"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?"

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.

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!

In honor of Chicago, TV, and rich guys doing things for money, we dedicate to you, "Rocky" Wirtz, a tune celebrating the power of live television, performed by Chicago's greatest musical exponent, Mr. Steve Albini.

Punk Song for Every Owner: Stan Kroenke, Slack Motherfucker

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).

Four years later, Stan Kroenke took ownership, and a year later, his team won it all. History, as we know, repeats.

The most repeating thing about history? Bosses gonna boss. As today's song for an owner puts it, perfectly:

you haven't moved from that spot all night 'cept to ask for a light
you damn' smokestack
you've wasted my time, I'd like to see you try to give it back
I'm working...I'm not working for you
slack motherfucker

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...)

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.

season preview: another year of a crappy per diem

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 dying leaf failing now and earthbound is like you, withering, dying, eventually to decay and rot.

Also it's hockey season.

At Clear the Crease, hockey season means just one thing: gimmicky listicles Puck Daddy runs as filler during the August doldrums HEAVY TUNES 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.

Pierre Idiot Trudeau:

New Divisions! Yay!

West:

• Canucks are the Sharks.
• Sharks are probably still the Sharks, a sad and over team.
• Ducks are still Selanne'd, so better than I give them credit for.
• Flames are 5 years away from being a good team, but probably 3 months away from being likable.
• Oilers are playoffs.
• Avalanche are middling.
• Wild still suck.
• Chicago still owns.
• L.A. is back to contending.
• Phoenix is still Phoenix, still some confusing combination of both under- and over-achieving.
• Jets are sniffs playoffs, crashes, burns.
• Blues are continuing to exploit the birthright Colorado sold to them for a bowl of lentil soup.

Is there still a team in Dallas?

Bogdan von Pylon:

I'm gonna watch this fucking season—even if it kills me.

Collision:

Avs: 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 season¹ is that they'd had the 26th-worst offense 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:

• Some observers are enthusiastic about the potential and leadership of the Avs' 'tenders;
• 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".

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) or 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.

Oh, and well-respected backup J-S Giguere? 21.4%.

[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 The Classical! Tell 'em Clear the Crease sent ya! Or don't, and be forever damned.]

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 huge off-season!

• Giant new scoreboard.
• Old players = new front office management types.
• 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!
• First pick in the draft! Hello, doughy-faced young guy exciting new center Nathan MacKinnon! What's that you say, new coach Patrick Roy? You are so enamored of this doughy-faced young guy 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!

The defense and goaltending, so notably solid last year, needed no attention, and therefore got none.

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.²

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 The Classical's Being There issue, a piece called "The Old Ways of Defeat". It's gonna be a long year.

—Collision, starting the season in the minors

¹Partially to prepare for the year, partially to prepare for the fantasy hockey league I'm in with Mark Black. Is fantasy hockey stupid? Indubitably. Is studying for fantasy hockey a colossal waste of time? But of course! But when I'm socializing with the guy who literally wrote the book on one of the greatest bands of all time, I'm going to do a little homework to avoid embarrassing myself.

²Hunwick 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.