Spinning the Lockout

After a US polling firm apparently found that most fans think that hockey owners are to blame for the loss of this year’s season, the owners suddenly tabled an offer — the first bit of negotiating on their part since locking out the players back in August. Although pretending that they don’t care about public relations, the owners have hired Frank Luntz to polish their image. Who is Frank Luntz? He’s the guy who taught people to say “climate change” instead of “global warming”, to call estate taxes “death taxes”, and to term the US Affordable Health Act a “government takeover”. The Luntz mantra: It’s not what you say that matters, it’s what they hear. “They” being you and me, members of the public who are manipulated.

Frank Luntz [time.com]

Luntz got together a focus group in the Washington, DC area and quizzed them in order to discover how to frame the contract dispute in ways that would make the owners look good. But among the thirty hockey fans who made up the group, there was at least one person who was a bit put off by the entire exercise. This individual took pictures of the written portion of the test on his/her cell phone and reported back on the other parts of the three-hour session. All this info can be found in an article by Barry Petchesky on deadspin.com and it’s pretty interesting. Petchesky calls the owners’ message “bullshit” which drew a response from Frank Luntz: “My focus group research was made public today in attempt to discredit NHL efforts to reach agreement w/ players on new CBA.” Do you see how that was framed? Let’s ask Mr. Luntz, “Is your research so twisted that simply revealing it would discredit the owners’ position?” If this is such a clean enterprise, why are you upset that it’s been made public? On the other hand, as Puck Daddy points out:

The greatest irony in the National Hockey League pulling together a focus group to test its messaging in the lockout: That hiring GOP toad Frank Luntz to handle said focus group probably further tarnishes their image.

(This isn’t meant to be a partisan comment, mind you; rather a definition of terms, in that Luntz frequently works for the GOP and is, in fact, akin in his demeanor to an amphibious reptile that lives in a bog and devours insects for sustenance.)

Of course, it may be that Puck Daddy is a little miffed because one of his columns was taken as the basis for an entire page of questions: “Imagine our surprise when we discovered Puck Daddy’s “What We Lost When The NHL Lost Opening Night” column — word for word for word for word — served as the basis for one of Luntz’s exercises.“

A page from the focus group. “Which FOUR statements make you feel MOST negative about the owners?” [deadspin.com]

This isn’t the first time that Luntz research has been leaked — the entire 28-page document on how to frame health care hit the internet back in 2009 — and it isn’t the first time that Luntz has shown himself to be a bit prickly about these matters. At one point, he was castigating Democrats for using terminology they derived from polling, which caused some to label him as irony-challenged.

Anyway, the upshot of the focus group seems to be that “fairness” and “shared sacrifice” will be the new touch-words for the owners. The new offer asks players to give up 7% of revenue, this sacrifice will be shared by the owners who previously were asking for 10%.

The owners have looked pretty bad during these negotiations. There were the moves by certain owners to violate the very rules that they are trying to impose — for instance, the huge contracts that are back-loaded so as to get around salary caps at the same time as the league is demanding that contracts be made shorter so as to prevent backloading. And there is the question of why a lockout in the first place? Why not have the season while negotiations continue? That’s the way most contract disputes are handled, but this is the third time that the League owners have locked out the players and crushed a season. It’s my way or the highway, they say, take it or leave it. After all, as one owner put it, the players are all cattle anyway.

Meet The 1%: Ted Leonsis and Craig Leipold

A while ago I wrote about Stan Kroenke, the one-percenter who stole a lake in British Columbia. Stan also collects sports franchises including the Colorado Avalanche. Now that the NHL lockout is official it might be interesting to look at other owners, say the two guys on the owners’ bargaining committee. They’re just a couple of big kids really, having a fine old time creating havoc and consternation among the adults.

Craig Leipold co-founded a company called Ameritel that supplied equipment to other companies. It was successful and he sold for a bundle. Then he started another company called Ameritel that supplied services to other companies. A few years ago he renamed it Alta Resources. [Note: there are lots of companies called Ameritel in America and Leipold has nothing to do with most of them, such as Ameritel Payphones in Florida, investigated by the FTC; and there are lots of Altas that he has nothing to do with, for instance, the Alta fracking operation.] Leipold also loves games and back in 1997 bought the Nashville Raptors. What with one thing and another he couldn’t make that work and sold the team before picking up his current franchise, the Minnesota Wild.

Craig Leipold and Gary Bettman [via ESPN]

Ted Leonsis likes to be Happy; he says that’s the secret to success. In 1993 he took over America Online and actually turned that company into a money-maker — for a while. When AOL began sinking in the competitive seas of high tech, he flim-flammed Time-Warner into merging with AOL, which is akin to selling seats on the Titanic after it met the iceberg. Anyway, Ted had a list of  things that would make him happy and one was owning a sports franchise, so he bought a few including the Washington Capitals. Ted is a likeable guy, if you discount the times when he loses his temper and assaults someone — say, a fan who criticizes him. He loves the internet and has his own blog. He has an internet operation that shows socially conscious movies about Occupy Wall Street or labor organizing in Appalachia. Some of the other owners may find him a bit of a puzzle.

Back in 2008, the NHL was four years off the second of Gary Bettman’s three lockouts and the owners had pledged to sign shorter, cheaper contracts. So Ted signed up Alexander Ovechkin for 13 years and $124 Million. That Ted! Such a kidder! But he’s a Happy boy!

Gary Bettman and Ted Leonsis [via ESPN]

This year the League owners again said that they needed shorter, cheaper contracts. In April, Craig Leipold said:

We’re not making money, and that’s one reason we need to fix our system. We need to fix how much we’re spending right now. [The Wild's] revenues are fine. We’re down a little bit in attendance, but we’re up in sponsorships, we’re up in TV revenue. And so the revenue that we’re generating is not the issue as much as our expenses. And [the Wild's] biggest expense by far is player salaries.

Then, a couple of days before the lockout, he signed two 13-year contracts for $98 Million each with Ryan Suter and Zach Parise. Craig is not only Happy, he’s Excited! He’s always telling people how Excited he is: “AHHHHHHHHH!!! I am a madman. Oy, oy, oy. It’s hard to come to grips with. It was such a fun, great process.”

So Excitable Boy and Mister Happy represent the owners in the current fiasco and let there be no mistake, much as everyone despises that ferret-faced little turd Gary Bettman, he takes his orders from the owners. Of course, they probably leave the strategizing up to Gary and he just loves him some lockout.

Rumor has it that twelve or so of the American franchises are behind the cut-salaries and increase-revenues drive. Some teams — like New Jersey, Nashville, Dallas, and Columbus are really suffering. Phoenix has been operating in receivership for years now. So these owners want a bigger slice of the Big Pie — television revenues and the money available to the League to shore up rickety operations — that way they can stave off bankruptcy a little longer. So are these owners upset that Craig Leipold and Ted Leonsis act in ways counter to the principles they say they are defending? Nope, many of them have done the same thing. After all, these sports teams are just rich men’s toys and so long as somebody is having fun, well, that’s what toys are for.

Why The NHL Lockout Has Meaning For You

Perhaps you’ve ignored the National Hockey League’s lockout of its players because you think it doesn’t affect you. Guess again. The owners’ negotiating stance has become the standard for every employer.

Just to fill you in: When the current contract between the players and their owners ran out in July, the owners tabled a contract offer that would see player salaries cut and the total amount paid out to players reduced. The contracts that these players had signed individually with management became waste paper. In 2004, the owners locked out the players and, after a lost season, wound up with a deal that capped salaries and otherwise gave the owners an agreement that they said was final. But, of course, it wasn’t. “The intelligent victor always presents his demands in installments.” Now we’re at the next installment.

Back in 2004, the owners assembled a $300 Million fund to help each other through a season of no hockey. The players had whatever they had put away — that might be a lot for the stars but a whole lot less for the newly drafted and journeymen. This time the owners didn’t bother, NBC provided them with a contract that pays out even if not a single game is televised; the owners can sit back and giggle while they torture small animals or whatever else they may do for diversion.

But these power plays by management have become standard for employers. Take it or leave it, that’s the new by-word. Don’t want a salary cut? Then you don’t work. After all, nobody’s buying anything and interest on corporate debt is minimal. So shut the place down for a while — no one but the employees get hurt. If you’re in a public service job, then a contract can be imposed by the legislature and you must take whatever the politicians offer you. They’re not worried about you; they get rich from the backhanders and “campaign contributions” smeared around by the same people who use lockouts as a negotiating tool.

Oh well, you say, I’m not in a union job. But you are. Everyone that works is dependent on past union victories. All of that is now on the table. Looking forward to a pension? That means you want an “entitlement”. That’s what it’s called now. It used to be called insurance — after all, you paid a premium out of every paycheque for it — but now it’s an “entitlement”. And you know what, you are entitled. You are entitled to every damn nickel you put into that company or government plan plus a piece of whatever interest is left after the banks do their banditry.  

The model National Hockey League owner was Harold Ballard. He spent some of his time as owner in a jail cell. He reduced the once-might Leafs to a nothing team and openly laughed at the fans who came out every season to throw money his way. Ballard destroyed that team, but he made a huge profit, and his successors have continued to milk the franchise so that it is the wealthiest in the League. Harold Ballard set an example for owners everywhere: you can deliver a shoddy product and still people will buy it; you can destroy your company and make millions.

Mitt Romney headed a money-making organization whose business operated on Harold Ballard principles. It’s the current corporate model. We all of us — whether the 99% or Romney’s 47% — have skin in this game. And remember, next time you go into work, you might have to face some grinning scumbag in a tailored suit telling you, “Take it or leave it.”

Ruslan Salei

Next week it will be a year since an airplane carrying the Lokomotiv hockey team crashed, killing all but one of those aboard. Among the dead were ex-Canuck Pavol Dmitra and one-time Avalanche and Belarus Olympic team member, Ruslan Salei. This performance by artist Alexandra Konofalskaya was made at the opening of a Minsk tournament honoring Salei. Click for video:

 

Putin, Sports Hero

Back during the Russian elections, I posted a link to an animated cartoon that had Putin running at a track meet. First he shoots his opponents, then he has the finish line brought to him. This is funny, you understand, because that really is the way Putin wins elections. For example, last time around he disqualified any candidate that might beat him, then rigged the vote anyway. Here’s the cartoon:

[click to play] Say! Do you think this is where Sacha Baron-Choen got the race sequence in that new bad movie of his?

It will not surprise you to learn that, not only is Putin an accomplished tyrant, he is also a gifted athlete. Now you may have heard that 58-year-old Putin offered his talents to the national judo team (who claim to be seriously considering the matter) but did you know that he is also an excellent swimmer and hotshot equestrian rider? But that’s not all: Putin also plays hockey. Here he is last November. Take a look:

[click to play]

Oh my! That’s not exactly scintillating goaltending, is it? The goalie actually hands Putin the puck and Vlad still can’t discover an opening. In fact, he can’t handle the puck at all. You have to wonder about these powerful guys: they must know they look like jerks, so why do they do this stuff? Are they simply unable to resist acting out impossible fantasies? In his mind’s eye, does Vlad see himself circling the crease like a shark while the crowd cheers, “PU-tie! PU-tie! PU-tie!” He shoots! He scores!

It turns out Mao really did swim the Yangtze in 1966 but it doesn’t matter; he looked foolish, just as all these autocratic would-be sports heroes do.  After all, by definition, any event these most-powerful potentates are in, is rigged.

Of all the world’s dictators, Kim Jong-Il was probably the most gifted athlete. He once shot 38 under par on a world class green with five holes-in-one! Some say eleven! But Kim’s most amazing feat was trying bowling and, the first game, Kim Jong-Il bowled 300. That’s right. A perfect game, the very first game he ever bowled in his life. Putin is simply not in that class yet.

I say “yet” because Putin is still improving. Check out this video from a hockey game the day after Putin won the election:

[click to play]

Now you should know that Putin’s team was behind 4 – 3 when Vlad entered the game. Right away he scored and tied it up! Then, in the sequence above, you see Putin score the winning goal in a shoot-out. Now I don’t want to talk about whether the goalie could have covered the net better — poor bastard had a lot on his mind, no doubt — but look at that shot! Backhand and top shelf! That is pretty good for an ageing autocrat. Vladimir Putin, I salute you and award you the honor of being chosen as Most Improved Player, International Despots League, 2011 – 12 season.

[via PuckDaddy]

Mark Donnelly

Today is the first day of the Stanley Cup playoffs. One performer will be on the ice today that, for a while at the end of the season, I thought might be out for health reasons. Mark Donnelly is the Vancouver Canucks’ anthem singer. This is Mark early in the season:

This is Mark performing in game seven of the finals last year.

After Christmas, Mark visibly lost weight. Sometimes there was another singer. Clubs do pull in substitute singers for reasons that escape me — an opera singer in Ottawa had everyone on both benches laughing as she stretched a minute of song into almost five — but coupled with Mark’s weight loss, I was afraid that he might be really sick. Here’s how he looked in March:

I was relieved to discover that Donnelly was not ill, only dieting. He lost 172 pounds and may decide to lose more. Mind you, the way he did it has people talking: he subsisted on a 500 calorie-a-day diet and took shots of HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), also called the pregnancy hormone, to suppress his appetite. This is not a regimen that doctors recommend. Some say that HCG has no effect on appetite; Mark says, “It worked for me.”

Of course, Donnelly’s loss would be a tremendous blow to the Canucks. Back in the day, it was organ players who were thought to provide musical boosts to victory. Hockey anthem singers only began to be recognized as integral parts of the team after Kate Smith’s rendition of “God Bless America” took Philadelphia to a Stanley Cup. There’s only a couple of teams in the NHL that still have organists. Which brings me to my modest proposal: Vancouver should bring back the organ. A good organist plus Mark Donnelly would guarantee us a great season and post-season triumph!

Loser T-Shirts

So two teams are facing off for the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Stanley Cup. One wins and immediately that team is shown wearing baseball caps and T-shirts that say they are the champions. But suppose the other team wins? Well, then they also, within minutes, would be shown with their championship Ts.

We’re talking official gear here; anybody can print any shirt they want if they aren’t afraid of copyright police, but the official licensees have to follow the rules.  If they don’t, they may lose out entirely. If they jump the gun and print their team’s championship shirts early, they may jinx that team so that it loses. (St. Louis is in trouble.)

Generic Super Bowl shirt. That "ny" could have been the Patriots' logo if they hadn't lost. Somewhere in the world, it is.

This is how it works. The championship shirts are all the same — except for the name and/or logo of the winning team. Take a look at any year this century. The shirts are neutral, either gray or white, and have a big trophy in the middle or words saying “Champion”. Super Bowl shirts are an exception; sometimes they are colored shirts — possibly this is only done when the shirt color will not offend either team. Later on, they can print full color logos and so on for an entire year; now they have to hedge their bets. So: a team wins and, immediately, screens are set up to print the name of that team (usually in one or two colors) on that generic shirt. A few shirts and caps have already been printed for both teams. The winner gets their shirt right away and the printer starts cranking out the proper shirts. In 2011 when the Canucks looked to possibly take the Stanley Cup in game 6, an outfit called Get Bold had workers sitting by the presses, ready to churn out 900 T-shirts an hour all through the night.

Alas, it was not to be. So what happened to the two hundred or so shirts and caps that had already been printed for the Canucks? Well, they were shipped to Nicaragua where there had been an earthquake and people were homeless and short on clothing. This has long been the method for pro sports team license holders to get rid of their stuff. Various charities are given the gear to distribute as they wish. World Vision is a big recipient but there are many others. Major league baseball, basketball, football, and hockey have all become very conscious of the dollar value of souvenirs over the last twenty years or so. They are very involved in licensing and, usually, the various leagues have supported charity giveaways of non-winner garb. It beats throwing them into a landfill.

Of course this means that Ugandans consider the Buffalo Bills to be the greatest football team ever. Haitians are partial to the Texas Rangers, 2011 World Series champs.  Sometimes a loser shirt slips back to the big gravy world and is sold for less than you might think. Too bad, because this could work into quite a money-making deal for an impoverished village receiving World Vision handouts.

Somewhere there's a village where your team is a champ!

Somewhere in the world, your loser team is a champion. That’s the theme of this song which says that somewhere there is a village where the Canucks are 2011 champions, Calgary in 2004, Edmonton in 2006, Ottawa in 2007 – each team has its village. So, losing fans, take heart: somewhere there is a place you can go where your team is a winner. (Unless you’re from Toronto, of course.)

Flying Skates and Buffaslugs

In 2005, Kristopher Bazen, a Nike designer, was asked to come up with a new logo for the Buffalo Sabres. He was excited and enthusiastic about working on the new design. Poor wretch, little he knew what was about to happen.

Bazen came up with a charging buffalo and crossed sabres in a circle. Looked good. Still looks good. But then a committee got hold of it. This committee said the logo needed “to become more progressive, more abstract, to be aggressive and take on a new identity.” Right. So Bazen kept working. Recently, on his website, he released a complete page of the various designs that were worked through during this decision period:

See something good there? Sure. But the committee… Listen, for some years I worked at designing T-shirts and let me tell you, without any qualification whatsoever, committees suck! The worst is when you’re dealing with Lefties who want some kind of a group consensus. If you put a bunch of people together and tell them they’re critics, well, they will criticize. They will find something, anything, to complain about and then the designer has to go back and try to make sense out of their whines. But even without consensus, you have problems from committee members who maybe don’t want a change or, in my case, don’t want to spring for T-shirts. I recall a committee where one member said that the mountains looked like breasts and I should change them. It doesn’t take much of that kind of thing to turn you off people.

The thing is, most people don’t see. They talk about wanting this or that wavy hand in the air bullshit but they can’t really see what they’re blabbering about. They have a head full of notions but no eyes. Well, enough about my bitterness. Bazen was more committed to his profession; he stuck to it even when the committee came up with this “furry horned cashew nut”:

 

Soon the fans (world’s biggest committee in any league) made their opinions very clear:

“Where are the legs? Why are there no Sabres? Why is it wearing a mask? If it’s not a mask, then why is that blue strip on its nose? Is that a Breathe-Right strip that football players wear? Why is one horn white and the other yellow? Why does it look like it was inspired by Homer Simpson’s sperm?”

And so forth. Soon the logo was deemed to look like a slug and called the “Buffaslug”. There were Photoshop contests, pictures of salt being applied to the logo… For Bazen, it was hell: “It felt like shit.” But Kristopher Bazen might take solace in the fact that he is not alone. Let us consider the case of Joe Borovich, a Vancouver hockey fan who designed the original Canucks team logo.

When Vancouver finally got a franchise in 1972, it did not go to the Canadian group who already had a stake in the WHL Canucks, but to a Minnesota hustler named Tom Scallen. (The reason why the good guys lost was because of opposition from Toronto ownership who didn’t want another Canadian team in the NHL, but that’s another story.)  The WHL Canucks therefore continued to use their fine old logo and Vancouver had to come up with something new. Scallen wound up in prison, which is not unusual for NHL owners, but before that managed to select Joe Borovich’s design as the team logo. Joe got $5000. The logo depicts a stylized “C” made from a rink and a hockey stick and printed in “West Coast colors”: teal, green, and blue, which were also the official provincial colors at the time.

Well, that’s pretty good, right? Maybe, unless the team does poorly for too long, that’s when fans begin organizing coach lynchings (I’m looking at you, Toronto) and demanding stupid stuff, like changing the logo.

Tiger Williams in the happy yellow uniform.

One thing that needed doing was to change the ownership. That happened in 1974. With the team still losing, the next step was a new logo. So a hotshot San Francisco outfit, Beyl and Boyd, was brought in. They said the Canucks logo was too passive, Boyd had a theory about the way that the human eye perceives color, something about rods and cones and one or the other is more aggressive. He said a lot of other shit, too. So, for $100,000, the Canucks got this:

Then, as had been the rule since the Canucks joined the NHL, the light or white background jerseys were worn for home games and the team colors for away games (one of many stupid decisions intended — don’t ask me for the logic — to draw American fans). Beyl and Boyd substituted yellow for white, because yellow was a happy color! The rest of the logo (yes, that’s a logo) was that “V” from the shoulders to the crotch and the colors, orange and black — a black background for away uniforms — were not meant to recall Nazi rallies but for their inherent aggressive qualities. Joe Borovich first heard that they were killing his logo on the radio:

 I was devastated when the California group designed the new one. I hated the Canucks. I heard it on Frosty Forst in the morning on CKNW. I couldn’t believe it. I figured like the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens, I am here forever. Then all of a sudden this happened and I was just devastated.

Yeah, the Leafs and the Canadiens with their non-aggressive, classic uniforms. Boston may have the proper aggro colors but does anyone really know that the  logo shows a puck in the net? The Rangers only have the word… I could go on. Anyway, pretty much everyone hated the new uniforms from the team to the screenprinters (the team had to go to a flag manufacturer to get the things made). One thing that Beyl and Boyd got almost right was the shoulder patch, the flying skate. Pretty soon, when the Canucks braintrust decided to change the logo but not spend any money doing it, that skate became the new logo. The only problem was the background, “puke yellow” as Brian Burke called it, and that was soon shifted to white.

The then owners, the Griffiths family, changed the logo entirely to a killer whale “C”. This was criticized because it was blatant advertising of the Griffiths’ corporation, Orca Bay Entertainment. They also brought back Joe Borovich’s original logo as a shoulder patch — they paid $10000 for that. Later, for a few tweaks and color changes to the killer whale, they reportedly paid a million bucks!

But Joe should not be bitter. History has absolved him as the Canucks are now using his original design for their alternate uniform. This is after some years of fans paying premium prices for the “classic” or “retro” logo on their sports souvenirs. And Kristopher Bazan should take heart: even as his logo is being removed from Sabres uniforms, fans are starting to ask for the classic Buffaslug. It’s only a matter of time, Kris! Soon your despised creation will be the new must have.

Notes:
Vancouver Canucks logos

History of the Canucks Logo

The Buffaslug

Kristopher Bazan Homepage

Blog-O-Rama

There’s lots of good blogs out there. Here’s a few that I like.

The Cultural Gutter: There are four contributors to the Cultural Gutter that review comics, movies and TV, science fiction, and romance novels. I haven’t read a romance novel since, oh, Wuthering Heights, way back when, but I do read Chris Szego’s posts. I do watch movies and read comics and science fiction. I disagree with the opinions expressed on TCG a lot. But I still like to read the posts. Szego:

By its very nature, a Romance is suffused with positive attitude.  The characters learn who they are, what kind of lives they want, and then proceed to go out and get them. The end result is effort rewarded (which is frankly more interesting than virtue rewarded, because virtuousness can be boring).  We like to read about good things happening to decent people.  On good days, that makes us feel even better.

But some days aren’t so good.  Some days actively suck.  And some don’t just kick you in the teeth, they also pick your pocket on your way down, ruin your favourite jeans in the process, and convince Revenue Canada to audit you while you lie there wondering what the hell just happened.

That, my friends, is the day you need a good Romance the most.

Chris, I’ll take your word for it.

Consumed and Judged: Jeffrey Sconce reads trashy old books so that you don’t have to. Seriously, it’s a dirty job but you know you want somebody to do it. Sconce visits thrift stores and buys old paperbacks if, and only if, they have great trashy covers or cover blurbs that identify the contents as the product of a diseased mind. For example, Caligula: Divine Carnage, one of a series on atrocities committed by Roman emperors. A bit of the review:

…author Stephen Barber, a “noted cultural historian and the leading authority on Antonin Artaud,” was once called “the most dangerous man in Britain (Barber co-wrote the book with Jeremy Reed, who, while not necessarily dangerous, was called “England’s greatest visionary” by J.G. Ballard, which strikes me as even better than being the most dangerous).  It looked very promising. 

For the first twenty or so pages, Barber and Reed almost have you convinced.  Sure, a lot of what they describe seems improbable.  Maybe Tiberius forced everyone in the palace to kneel every morning before his “diseased, blackened sexual organ,” maybe he didn’t. …  But then Barber and Reed go too far, writing that Rome’s “plebian scum” loved Caligula because:

 

…he was a visible presence in the filthy backstreets of Rome, often to be seen carried about in a litter with Drusilla by his side, energetically masturbating with one hand while distributing gold coins with the other; the plebian scum elbowed and crushed one another into the dust in order to simultaneously catch the imperial spurting semen in their mouths and the coins in their hands.

 

Now, this strikes me as highly improbable on any number of levels. 

 

Well, indeed! Now perhaps you find it a good thing that Sconce has read this book and you don’t have to or perhaps you don’t, but certainly you can sleep more soundly at night knowing that this piece of rotten trash has been properly reviewed, flayed, and eviscerated. Yes! And Sconce has preserved the good parts, too! I think this site is best browsed by selecting the tag that most interests you, for instance “author demonstrably insane” or “greenwich village as portal to hell”.

 

Sconce also has another site, Ludic Despair, that features rants on important subjects like Zooey Deschanel (who?) but that is nowhere near as valuable a site as Consumed and Judged.

 

Total Dick-Head: I am a Philip K. Dick fan. I read his books and stories. I think Blade Runner sucked because it ignored the vision of PKD. This site, one of many about Philip K. Dick and his work, is more agnostic about Blade-Runner. (Hyphen or not? Even the studio can’t decide. Or maybe it’s just Ridley Scott’s way of creating yet another expensive DVD boxed set in two versions, one hyphenated, the other not. Fans can debate the difference to their heart’s content, but probably not on this site.)

 

Anyway, blogger Ragle Gumm (!) often goes for long periods without a new entry, but then he comes up with gems like this:

We… have the opportunity to enjoy the most Dickian presidential election in history, which has so far pitted a womanizing African American pizza tycoon, against a theocratic foster mother to some 28 children, against The Three Stigmata of Newton Gingrich, against a pro-life Libertarian, all vying for the chance to challenge the first African American president, who’s up for re-election.

 

Yes! In the mid-70s, Dick bemoaned the fact that it was no longer possible to predict the future, it had already overtaken us and science fiction was really history.

 

Pass It  To Bulis: I’ve been a Vancouver Canucks fan for forty disappointing years. Now that the team has a good shot at the Cup (second in two seasons) blogs about the team have proliferated like goals given up by the Columbus Blue Jackets. This is the best blog of the lot. PITB covers each game in the on-going feature “I Watched This Game” and even comes up with strange statistics (Drance Numbers) if you’re into that kind of thing. From “I Watched This Game”, February 18, versus Toronto:

The Leafs came into Vancouver having lost 9 straight games to the Canucks and were hoping to prove that they’d made the changes necessary to be successful in the West, like the American Office. Instead, they just wound up being awkward and cringe-inducing, like the British Office. It was initially exciting to watch the Canucks absolutely dominate an opponent, but by the end of the game I just wanted to look away. This game was executive-produced by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. I watched this game.

 

Right! Sometimes it’s embarrassing to be great. According to the evil Eastern media, the Canucks are the most-hated team in the NHL, but every time I see them play as visitors, there seem to be lots of fans in the stands. PITB follows a great team on its march toward victory (or horrific tragedy, which is also a worthy story).

 

Okay, that’s it for this session. There are obviously some blogs I like (in the list on the right) that aren’t here, but this time I wanted to give a nod to some that don’t (yet) get a full-time link.

 

 

 

Hockey Goons

You know who I’m talking about: the guys who can’t skate, can’t score, but are big and strong and hired as thugs to intimidate the other teams. Warren Zevon sang about such a guy and Roy MacGregor wrote a novel about one.

MacGregor’s novel,The Last Season, is about guy from rural Canada named Felix Batterinski who is trained, from an early age, to be an enforcer, which is what polite people call hockey goons. Batterinski’s youth sounds much like that of Derek Boogard, whose death from drugs and alcohol has been linked, rightly or not, to the brain damage he suffered while playing. When I read MacGregor’s novel I thought immediately of Dave Schultz, one-time tough guy for the Philadelphia Flyers, known at the time as the Broad Street Bullies.

Schultz in action. Note the taped fist.

About forty years ago, I saw the Bullies massacre the Vancouver Canucks — this was during a really bad period for the Canucks, their owner was in prison and management made a lot of poor decisions. One decision was to trade for a bunch of N.Y.Rangers, including Dave Balon, who had been an all-star the previous year. So, in the game I saw, there was a brawl — they used to clear the benches in those days, everybody fought — and Schultz paired off with Balon, grabbing his jersey. Instead of grabbing back, Balon began talking to Schultz, saying he didn’t want to fight. The look that crossed Schultz’s face was amazing: from a feral grin when he grabbed Balon, to astonishment when Balon chatted him off, to disgust. No one knew then that Balon’s body was deteriorating with multiple sclerosis, which would soon end his career and eventually kill him.

Schultz used to wrap his fists before a game; he figured he was going to fight. The League made a rule against wrapping your fists. Schultz set a record for the most penalty minutes served in a season: 472. But, here’s the thing, he could play hockey as well as fight. He scored a few goals but teams used to call on him for muscle. Dave played the role but he wasn’t Felix Batterinski.

Schultz  became a tough guy after he was drafted and began playing in the minors. His team was the Salem Rebels, Eastern Hockey League, Southern Division. I was a student at Roanoke College in Salem when I saw my first live hockey games. The franchise was brand new. In an early game during a brawl, the Salem goalie skated the length of the ice and plowed the opposing goalie with his stick. Or so I heard, I didn’t see that one. What I did see was the Salem captain taking a late game face off and, instead of going for the puck, slashing the referee’s shins as hard as he could. This was a tough league. This was two years before Schultz went to Salem where they taught him to be an enforcer. (from The Hammer: Confessions of A Hockey Enforcer by Schultz and Stan Fischler).

Felix Batterinski had a poison eating at him from inside, or so his old grandmother told him; he was a man full of hate. Schultz didn’t have that, but maybe Brian Spencer did. I saw Spencer when he was with the Islanders. He wasn’t an enforcer as such, he just played hard and mean. Sometimes, watching a Guy LaFleur or many a lesser player, you see someone who exhibits great  joy at just playing the game. Spencer looked like he never took joy in anything.

Spencer’s story is well-known. He came from Fort St.James in northern B.C. Drafted by Toronto, he was called up from the minors to play on a Saturday night. That’s Hockey Night In Canada, folks, and Brian’s father wanted to see his kid play. At the last minute, the CBC announced that, in western Canada, they would show the Vancouver game instead of the Toronto one. Spencer’s father took a gun to the TV outlet in Fort St. James and threatened the techs there, trying to get them to turn on the Toronto feed, which they may not have been able to do. The RCMP surrounded the place, there was a confrontation, and Mr. Spencer was shot to death. Brian refused to take any time off; he played the next night. For a long time he carried the names of the three Mounties who had shot his father in his wallet. Sometimes he said that someone would pay for the death.  

Brian Spencer went on to a relatively successful career, mostly in Buffalo, but was traded to Pittsburgh, who were looking for a goon. His career ended. He drifted to Florida and got into drugs. He was charged with murder, acquitted, and a few months later, was shot to death while seeking to buy coke. (from Gross Misconduct: The Life of Brian “Spinner” Spencer by Martin O’Malley).

Well, people do things and whatever they do, they are still people; no two are alike. Labelling someone a goon is not useful. Even Felix Batterinski can draw some sympathy, like when he suggests to his stewardess girl friend that maybe they ought to be permanent, maybe they should have children. “Who would want your child?”, she says, and right then Felix realizes that he has become something other than human. But these hockey players are human beings, they are real people, not goons. Mostly, they just want to play the game and this is the way they were shown to that end.

Many hockey players tried to help Spencer during his retirement. Many gave up on him. Rick Martin, his Buffalo team mate, didn’t. Spencer’s ashes found a place on Martin’s mantelpiece. Martin and his wife thought that Brian was a decent guy, just a little confused, maybe, and easilly led.  Martin himself died a little while ago. An autopsy revealed that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE is caused by repeated blows to the head. It seems to be not uncommon in hockey players that have been autopsied.

So the League is concerned about this and has begun cracking down on “head shots” although the rules aren’t all that clear and the referees seem confused sometimes about what they should or shouldn’t call. Along the way, people have asked about fighting, isn’t a punch a head shot? The League has backed off answering that question. The idea is that fighting goes along with hockey. There are various silly arguments that are supposed to support that contention but the fact is, you either accept it or you don’t.

I watched Bobby Clarke in a sports TV session where the topic came up. How do we end these concussions? was the question. Clarke said, bring back the centre blue line, if you don’t have rink-long passes then you won’t have players moving at such speeds when they run into stanchions, say, or each other and get badly hurt. This was a clear and direct remedy from a guy who knows something about hockey and it shut down the discussion. No one wanted to hear about slowing the game down. And, I have to say, it’s pretty exciting to see Sidney Crosby whipping down the ice at 35 kph. Do I want to lose that? On the other hand, is this rule worth a man’s brains? If a return to the old mid-line/two-line passing rule will help people and I don’t boost it, how can I complain about any other aspect of the sport?

 I’ve got no answers to anything; I’m just another of those folks deploring the damage while they cheer on the destruction.