posted 2010/01/08 at 16:04
I had thought that nothing could happen that would make me blog about, or even give much conscious thought to, the whole Tiger Woods brouhaha. Once again, I underestimated the ability of Fox News to take any situation and turn it into an opportunity to force their beliefs and morals down our throats. If I were to post a picture of the fingernail I broke earlier today and how I clipped it off, someone at Fox News could find some way to turn it into an example of how Obama's socialist policies are destroying America, or write some paean about how the religious right's version of Christianity means I'd never have to deal with another broken nail for the rest of my life.
I've come to expect Fox News personalities to say things so out of place with both reality and rational thought that more civilized countries would institutionalize them. I'm still a staunch believer in the First Amendment, and I still believe that the best defence against lunatic ideas is to allow the lunatics who espouse them to state them loudly, and at every possible opportunity, so people can judge for themselves how crazy they are. Granted, I think this would work a lot better if we could take a pair of scissors to this country and cut off the Deep South (they sound like they'd like that right now, anyway), but all Americans, now matter how misguided or misinformed, deserve a right to have their voices heard and votes counted.
That being said, the presence of Fox News in our culture, particularly when it is so dominant in some areas, complicates this matter a great deal. Fox News has always been a partisan tool for the right-wingers of this country to use to influence public discourse, obfuscating opinion and cherry-picked facts with actual journalism, and anyone in denial of this fact is in need of an intensive course of deprogramming. In the past, though, Fox News would at least put on a thicker veneer of objectivity with its Alan Colmeses and oh-so-rare shows that were actually "fair and balanced," although those shows usually came on weeknights at three in the morning. They still pull good ratings, though, because Fox News' demographic skews so old that at any time in this country, there are probably hundreds of thousands of televisions tuned into Fox News because their owners just died of old age.
That veneer has been steadily thinning since the election of Obama, though. Openly promoting Tea Party protests this past year was a textbook crossing of the line between journalism and advocacy, and although some on the left called Fox News out on this, such protests were nowhere near as vociferous as they should have been. Brit Hume's comments about Buddhism and Christianity were equally outrageous, and in the past even Fox News knew when to apologize when its personalities said something so out of line to defy description. Instead, Fox News has stood behind Hume's comments, even going so far as to have him basically reiterate them word-for-word on Bill O'Reilly's show.
Now, I will admit to not being as well-informed about the intricacies of Christianity as I'd like, but I think it reasonably safe to say that I know more about Buddhism than Brit Hume does. Setting aside the sheer offenciveness of Hume's comments for the moment, the notion that Christianity is somehow "better" at dealing with forgiveness than Buddhism is just patently and demonstrably false. Hume was speaking of what Tiger Woods would have to do to be forgived not by any actual higher power, but by the "higher power" of the religious right. Nothing short of beocming a card-carrying dittohead would redeem Tiger in their eyes, and for many of us, that would be a far greater sin than his affairs.
Worse yet, right-wingers continue to use the co-opt the language of victimization -- something which, in all seriousness, makes me physically ill -- and claim that criticism of Hume's comments are what are intolerant and misinformed, not Hume's comments themselves. Pretending for a moment that I held any actual cultural or political sway (a huge stretch, I know), imagine what would have happened if I'd written about any of the Republican politicians who got caught in affairs and sex scandals these past two years (I've lost count too), and said that what that politician needed to do was embrace Wicca, because Christianity was inadequate when it came to polyamory. My piece would probably be the lead story on The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck's radio shows for at least five days. Ann Coulter and Michele Malkin would be writing columns calling for my assassination. Brent Bozell would be shouting that my claim showed exactly how Christians are discriminated against in America. This controversy isn't about Tiger Woods or Buddhism or anything like that; it's about the religious right and their continuing efforts to make their warped religion the norm against which everything else should be compared.
I've come to accept Fox News and the Bill O'Reillys and Sean Hannitys and Brit Humes of this world the same way I've come to accept the scar I have on my right calf from when I sliced it open trying to climb a chain-link fence when I was younger: A reminder that stupidity exists in this world, and that it usually leads to painful, lifelong consequences. Even in the context of Fox News' laughable definition of "fair and balanced," though, Brit Hume's comments went way over the line, and not just liberals, but moderates and journalists as well should be screaming bloody murder until Hume apologizes and retracts his ill-informed statements about Buddhism and Christianity. If we don't, then we can expect similar comments from other right-wingers every time anyone not of their ilk gets in the news for anything.
Labels: politics, rhetoric, sports, television
posted 2009/12/31 at 20:51
AT&T is latest to end Tiger Woods sponsorship (AP via Yahoo! News)
As hard as I've tried to avoid the whole Tiger Woods thing these past few weeks, it's kind of hard to do that, especially when seemingly everyone, everywhere, is talking about it. After all, it's a perfect distraction from all that health care stuff, and who really cares if people go bankrupt or die because of our health care system if we can spend all our time talking about the umpteenth alleged Tiger Woods mistress and what job she has and whether or not she's prettier than Tiger's wife? Keep in mind, this is the same country that, when faced with the reality that Saddam Hussein did not have a viable WMD progamme in Iraq when we threw him out of power, decided that instead of calling congressional hearings about that, called them instead over Janet Jackson showing her nipple at the Super Bowl.
Speaking of this country's puritanical views on sexuality, while I don't mean to diminish the pain that people across this country feel when a spouse or partner reneges on a promise to remain faithful, our continuing obsession over celebrity love lives is simply absurd. You would think that by now this country would realize that a good handful of celebrity marriages are nothing but shams from the start, designed to boost publicity for the two parties instead of being, you know, for love. For all the rhetoric about same-sex marriage destroying the institution of marriage, or America, or the space-time continuum, or whatever the excuse is this week, I think a convincing argument could be made that far more damage is being done to marriage by these sham pairings. It's like some agent somewhere is shuffling around celebrity names trying to find the next roll-off-the-tongue pairing name like "Brangelina," and once that name is found phone calls are made, dresses are picked out, and writers are called in to concoct a story about how X and Y really met months ago and instantly knew they were soulmates. At least the stories manage to be marginally more believable and entertaining than the garbage Hollywood is putting on film screens these days; perhaps that's the awful truth of it, that people follow these celebrity entanglements because they're more entertaining than any films or CDs out there.
Getting back to Tiger Woods, though, him losing so many endorsements over these alleged infidelities -- I think more women will come out once the holidays are over and the morning shows are no longer being anchored by the third-stringers -- is just completely out of proportion to what Tiger did. After all, this past weekend I saw several commercials for Hanes t-shirts featuring Charlie Sheen, even after he allegedly held a knife to his wife's throat and threatened to kill her. One has to wonder what the public and/or the marketing people who control them see Tiger as having done that's so much worse than what Charlie Sheen did. Anyone who tries to tell me that race and gender aren't playing factors in here clearly hasn't been living in America for very long. Let's face it; if Tiger Woods had skin as white as Charlie Sheen's, would there be anywhere near as much attention paid to him, and would he have ringed up so many endorsements? This is to take nothing away from Tiger's athletic skills, but let's face it, watching someone play golf is only about a step up from watching paint dry. (Keep in mind, this is coming from a self-admitted fan of curling. At least the physics and geometry in curling is interesting.)
This gets me to my solution, simple as it may be, to this whole Tiger Woods thing. Much has been made of the fact that, through his golf winnings and endorsements, Tiger has become the first professional athlete to earn a billion dollars. Going back to that health care thing, nuisance as it is, instead of continuing to obsess over this Tiger Woods things so ridiculously, how about we simply make him pay $900 million to go to health care for uninsured Americans? Uninsured Americans will get health care at his expense, so they'll be happy, and as a country we'll be happier because not so many people will be going bankrupt and dying. Republicans will be happy, because Tiger's contribution will probably mean that they can get rid of the upper-class tax hike in the health care bill. Democrats will be happy, because their health care bill will likely be enacted into law and they can claim a major legislative triumph. Tiger Woods will still have $100 million left over, which is hardly a small sum, and after this act of generosity, I think it would only be fair for him to get his endorsements back and for us to all forget about this whole silly mess, and let him get back to winning hundreds of millions more dollars for whacking a tiny white ball into a hole in the ground.
We would save lives, save families, stop a lot of political squabbling, and get this whole Tiger Woods media mess off of our screens once and for all. I really don't see a downside to this. Better yet, if Tiger gets caught sticking his nine iron in someone else's bag again, we can simply make him pay for universal health care for all Americans, and then this country will really, truly, be a better place. You're welcome.
(Oh, and Happy New Year and all of that.)
posted 2009/09/19 at 22:52
Journey is one of my more shameful guilty pleasures. The video for "Separate Ways" caused too many bad influences in my childhood to count. This past NHL playoff season, of course, Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" became an unofficial anthem of the Detroit Red Wings, both for the reference in the song to "a city boy/born and raised in South Detroit," and for its general message of not giving up, no matter how tough times have been in Michigan these past few years. I don't know how many Red Wings fans stopped believing after that heartbreaker of a Game Seven, but I wasn't one of them. However, I think it's safe to say that I've pretty much stopped caring about the Red Wings. It was hard enough to get behind the team when it seemed to distance itself so far from its gritty roots -- and I realize that this is just Mike Babcock and management adjusting to Gary Bettman's vision of a new NHL -- but with Chris Chelios getting dumped this offseason and the team bringing back Todd Bertuzzi, who I still say has no business in any hockey sweater right now, let alone one with the Wing Wheel on it, I just can't see myself following the Red Wings that closely. I have too much on my plate as it is, and rooting for a team that no longer plays my kind of hockey just doesn't make much sense any longer.
As it is, the NHL has just gotten too sanitized for my liking, and as much lip service as Bettman pays to how fighting has always been a part of the game, he seems to be doing his New York best to cause fighting to slowly disappear from the game, and I'm sorry, but hockey needs fighting like Paris Hilton needs a brain transplant. This business with the Phoenix Coyotes has been painful to watch as well, as seemingly every other NHL team and every other major North American sports league seems to be behind Bettman's insistence that the team not be moved to a place where people might actually watch the games, namely Hamilton, Ontario. I have the feeling that Gary Bettman would move the Maple Leafs to Topeka and the Canadiens to Biloxi if he thought he could get away with it.
Speaking of sports, this past weekend I was in Columbus for reasons that don't concern you. Friday night, when I was in my hotel room chilling out, I turned on the television and sure enough saw a University of Toledo football game. This is never a pleasant thing for me, because a lot of the tuition increases I had to put up with as a student there were thanks to the college paying ESPN huge sums of money to televise so many Rockets games, only to have ESPN stop doing so once the Rockets began stinking again. It also doesn't help that last month I got a Rockets schedule in the mail, and even after adding gender identity to their non-discrimination clause, the college is still addressing mail to "Mr. Sean Shannon," whoever that is. (Then again, it also listed the 22nd of October as being on a Saturday. Remember, folks, this is where I got two degrees from.)
Anyway, this takes me to today, which was probably the most advertised Rockets football game in history, the start of a home-and-home series against Ohio State. (Speaking of Ohio State football, remind me never to travel to Columbus on the weekend of a big game ever again.) UT didn't really advertise it much when they went up to play Michigan last year, but of course after they won -- probably the second biggest victory in UT football history -- they've been sending me e-mails every month trying to get me to buy a "Big Win in the Big House" t-shirt. Now, I can understand why this would be such a big thing for UT, but in one of the most senseless decisions I can remember the school making -- which is saying a lot -- they decided to play the "home" game of the series at Cleveland Browns Stadium. Isn't the point of doing a series like this the revenue that can be gotten from having the Buckeyes here in Toledo? How much money did Toledo's local economy lose from such an asinine decision? The worst part is that the only major highway from Toledo to Cleveland is a toll road, so everyone from town who wanted to go to the game had to pay even more just to get to Cleveland. Anyway, Ohio State -- excuse me, THE Ohio State University (Goddess I can't stand that) -- shut out the Rockets, and will probably do so again down the road in Columbus next year. I'll try not to be in Columbus that day, no matter what other fun stuff might be going on in the city.
posted 2009/07/04 at 20:46
When I said that I wanted the Red Wings to exit the playoffs early, I should have known that the universe would take that as a sign to get the Wings all the way to game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals, and then to have them lose in a real heartbreaker. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, the universe threw a whole bunch of bad stuff at me right before then, so the Wings' loss really didn't affect me that much. That being said, between the way the NHL is going as a whole, and the Red Wings are going in particular, my enthusiasm for the Red Wings is just diminishing more and more. There was a time when I could craft my schedule around Red Wings games (and Hockey Night in Canada), but it feels like that time has passed now. My interest in sports has been diminshing a lot these past few years, but now I can barely be bothered to glance at the previous night's Tigers score.
This isn't true with just sports, either. Over the past couple of weeks I downloaded a lot of games to my Wii using the Wii Points I got for my birthday earlier this year, and I just can't seem to be bothered to play them much at all. Even the sequel to Final Fantasy IV -- which remained my favourite game ever even after I played Final Fantasy VII for a while, and the first video game to ever make me cry -- has gone mostly unplayed for several days, even though I've had next to no responsibilities over this holiday weekend, and plenty of time to play video games. The number of video games I've bought but never even put in my systems to test out is growing to truly appalling levels, and I've even gone so far as to buy games for systems I don't own yet. It feels like my buying habits have yet to catch up with the changes in my life that have seen things like sports and video games -- and yes, as much as I hate to say it, this blog -- to the wayside.
Unfortunately I can't talk too much about the changes in my life recently, but suffice it to say that for the first time since I was in school, I actually have a social life. I feel like I'm making stronger bonds with people than I have in a long time, too, and I'm getting the opportunity to figure out some things about myself that I never knew before. Given how I am about self-knowledge, you can imagine what a cool thing this is for me. I can't deny being kind of fearful, though, given how I've messed up situations like this in the past. I finally get a nice, long break from teaching after this month is over, and I'm hoping to use the next couple of months here to try to reintegrate things into my life that I've let slip for a while now. That should mean more blog entries, but it won't, for example, mean paying more attention to sports. This blog still serves as an important outlet for me and a way of connecting with people; I just don't feel that paying close attention to sports is doing me much good any longer.
Labels: hockey, personal, sports, videogames
posted 2009/04/10 at 19:30
There have been some pretty big changes in my life so far this year. Part of the reason my posts here have slowed to a trickle is that I just haven't had the kind of time to devote to the .org that I've had in the past. I've still got lots of potential topics on my trusty whiteboard, but finding the time and focus to write a proper entry on them has been difficult lately. It probably doesn't help that I've been Twittering more than usual, but that's kind of unavoidable under my present conditions. I really need to post here more often -- I still view the .org as an extension of my professional career, so it reflects poorly on me when I don't keep it updated -- so I hope to remedy that soon. Too many parts of my life seem to be falling by the wayside, and I need to correct that.
As a case in point, my interest in sports seems to be dwindling to almost nothing. Normally I make a point of catching the first Tigers game of the regular season, but I really didn't feel like watching it, and then I had a dinner date pop up at the last minute. I figured that I would catch another game after that, but the only time I've been home and able to catch a game was Tuesday night, and I just didn't feel like watching past the first couple of innings. I'll probably catch a game sometime next week, but I'll be doing so more out of a sense of obligation than because I actually want to.
I don't think I need to say too much about the Pistons or the Bengals here, except that I'll catch the NFL Draft later this month, as usual, because I like watching thirty-two-sided chess matches where I have no idea what the pieces do or who the players are. The only way the Bengals were going to be interesting this year was if they'd signed Terrell Owens; I loathe his homophobia and egomania, but trying to see him and Chad Johnson, er, Chad Ocho Cinco trying to function on the same team would have too intriguing of a trainwreck to ignore.
I don't even feel that attached to hockey any longer. The Red Wings will either get knocked out in the first round, or they'll lose to San Jose in the conference finals; there's no way they can repeat as champions this year given how erratically they've been playing. It says something that even I want the Red Wings to start Ty Conklin in net instead of Chris Osgood; I love Ozzie dearly, but he just hasn't been dependable this year. If nothing else, it would give USA Hockey a chance to audition Conklin for Vancouver 2010. I'll go ahead and give my pick for the finals, as much as it hates me to say it: Sharks over Devils. Worse yet, I'll even be rooting for the Devils, if only because they have Brendan Shanahan. I don't mind if Shanny doesn't get his name on the cup again, but it'll be worth it to me if he cheap shots Claude Lemieux and takes him back out of the NHL. (I'd also love to see Shanahan knock Sean Avery's lights out if they meet in the conference playoffs.)
It's not just Red Wings hockey I've lost interest in; I really don't care to watch Hockey Night in Canada like I used to. The show used to be a staple for me, but I've missed it more times this season than I can remember, and I don't really care. I still love Don Cherry dearly, but between the new presentation, the loss of the old theme song, and my general lack of enthusiasm for sports in general, I can't bring myself to care for the show like I once did. I'm making a point of catching the final broadcast of the regular season tomorrow night, but honestly, I'm kind of hoping the Red Wings get knocked out of the playoffs early this postseason so I have an excuse to stop watching. I wouldn't have even entertained these thoughts one or two years ago, but now I just want to stop feeling so tied to the Red Wings and the NHL, so I have time for other, more important, things.
Labels: hockey, personal, sports
posted 2008/09/21 at 18:47
For whatever reason, last night I actually watched the UT football game on ESPNU. This was my first time ever watching a game on ESPNU, meaning that I have now watched one more Rockets game on there than I have ever watched in person. For whatever reason I just never got around to watching any sports when I was a student at UT, even though I realized that I should at least go to one game of some kind just to say that I'd had that experience as a college student (and while I could get in for free). MCCC doesn't have any intercollegiate sports -- something I always hear from my students about -- so I don't have any opportunities to watch sports in person there either. I guess there was something surreal to watching something live on a national cable network that was happening less than ten miles from my house, even though one of the Professional Bowling Association's annual majors always takes place at a bowling alley less than two miles from here. I suppose that when I was younger I may have wanted to go to these events just to get my face on national television, but that was before I had my little bout with "Internet fame" that's turned me off of the concept of achieving fame for life, and, let's be honest, my face should be on few cameras as humanly possible.
While we're on the subject of sports, just to expand on what I wrote on Friday, at this point I've already pretty much given up on all sports but hockey. It's not like I have much time to follow sports these days what with the election and all, but with the resurgence of Tigertown officially over, the Bengals returning to their dismal form of past, and the Pistons unlikely to make any progress from last year, it's just easier for me to forget about all of them right now. On the other hand, the Red Wings re-signed Darren McCarty this past week, so all is once again right in my personal sports world. I doubt the Red Wings will repeat as Stanley Cup champions given the parity of the league, but they'll probably have more fights this year than in the last three years combined, and that will keep me watching as many games as I can. (That's one of the problems with my schedule this term, because I'll likely miss most of the Monday and Wednesday games that aren't on the West Coast.)
I'm also preparing to give up my Saturday nights to Hockey Night in Canada once again, and it's only now that I'm really able to appreciate just how much more I can get done on Saturdays in the offseason. Perhaps my love of hockey is affecting my schedule more than I should allow, but I take a strange comfort in having those hockey doubleheaders to look forward to at the end of the week. That results in my Sundays being kind of hectic as I rush to get things ready for Monday -- kind of like I am today, because I got booked up with all sorts of other things yesterday -- but in the end it seems worth it. I don't make pretensions of being some kind of hockey expert (though I don't let that stop me from making silly predictions like the one in the last paragraph), but I am a hockey fan, and maybe I need to be that hockey fan because it's one of the few opportunities I allow myself to stop overanalyzing every little thing and just enjoy something.
Labels: sports
posted 2008/08/06 at 14:36
The Olympics are coming up here in just a couple of days, and if you're like me then you already stopped caring about them a long time ago. In fact, I'm already getting a head start on not caring about the 2012 Olympics. Seriously, dealing with the Olympics is enough of a struggle in and of itself, but this time around we have the double whammy of an Olympics event marketed on the "special date" of 2008.08.08. I thought those kinds of date-marketing were okay back in the mid 1990s, but by 1999.09.09 I was sick of them. (Not just because Final Fantasy VIII was such a huge disappointment for me, either.) 2006.06.06 had some potential, but then Ann Coulter had to come along and screw that up with another of her sophomoric screeds.
Anyway, back to the Olympics. When I was younger I thought the Olympics was a big thing, but as I grew older I began to realize that I only thought the Olympics were big because the media had led me to believe that they were; it probably didn't help that I was eight years old when the Olympics hit Los Angeles, and of course there's always a surplus of marketing here in the United States when the Olympics come here. Finally I began to be around other people who didn't care about the Olympics, and I began to see the wisdom in their arguments. For some people the Olympics lost their lustre after the Munich Massarce in 1972; for others the Cold War-related boycotts of the 1980 and 1984 Olympics demolished their ideas of the Olympic spirit, that athletes should come together to compete regardless of the world political stage. For me it was the 1992 games, most notably for the inclusion of NBA players in the United States' men's basketball team. Nothing would please me more than to say that I took this stand out of principle that professional athletes making millions of dollars every year have no place in the Olympics, but in all honesty I was just pissed that no Detroit Pistons were named to the Dream Team. (Seriously, Chris Mullin over Isiah Thomas?)
I don't want to disparage the overall idea of the Olympics. I believe that the training and hardships that Olympic athletes put themselves through is nothing short of noble, and for those people whose lives have been dedicated to competing in the games, I wish nothing for them but the best of luck. For me, though, the combination of how absurdly overmarketed each successive Olympics gets, all the people trying to force me to care about them, and the sickening jingoism that crops up from nearly every competition, just drives me up the wall. (Not including baseball as a competition this year doesn't exactly make me happy, either.) I'm sure that I'll catch a little coverage here and there, probably on CBC since their coverage is so much more level-headed than American coverage, but the less I hear about the Olympics over these next few weeks, the better.
None of this, of course, is meant to diminish the fact that this is the time the world should have its more critical of eyes trained on the brutalities of the Chinese government. I thought that the whole idea behind giving Beijing the Olympics was that it would shame them into cleaning up both their environment and their disgraceful human rights record. Clearly the human rights situation hasn't been improved on any, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a marathon runner or two pass out from taking in all that toxic air for a prolonged time. For the past twenty years we were told that spreading capitalism in China, giving them most favoured nation trading status, and being nice to them would solve all the political problems over there, but that sure hasn't worked either. One has to wonder why this administration hasn't gone ahead and invaded China already; it would be supported by more countries than the invasion of Iraq was, and on top of that, China's got a whole lot of oil.
I'm being facetious when I say that, of course, but in all seriousness, it says something about our culture that we would send all of these reporters and cameras to China, but instead of looking into all the disappearances and killings of innocents, they're instead focusing on preteen girls swinging around on the uneven bars. If that isn't an apt description of the problems with America's corporate media, I don't know what is.
posted 2008/06/04 at 23:41
A couple of nights later than I would have liked, but hey, I'll take what I can get.
posted 2008/06/01 at 20:40
Well, at least one of my two picks to make it to the Stanley Cup finals got there, and I don't think I'm going out on a limb predicting that the Red Wings hoist the cup tomorrow night. Particularly given the demoralizing nature of Saturday's game on the Penguins, not to mention Crosby going off like he did after the final whistle, I just don't see a way for the Penguins to come back to win this series, much less win tomorrow night at the Joe. Mind you, I should have known that the Red Wings would get the cup tomorrow night because it's the only night of the series where I teach on the same night. After all I've been through lately, I surely need the visceral thrill of watching the Red Wings bring home yet another championship. (Yes, for those of you who strayed to the Pistons or Tigers or even the Lions, the rest of us will still forgive you for your transgressions. Hockeytown always has room for more residents.)
I will admit that the Red Wings kind of lucked out, facing a very depleted Colorado team in the second round, then catching the Stars after that quadruple-overtime game. There have been a lot of questionable calls going Detroit's way this whole playoff season, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the NHL Rules Committee revisit the rules on goalie obstruction after the way the Red Wings' opponents have been complaining about their style of play. That being said, I think a healthy dose of luck is necessary to win any championship, and, well, the Red Wings were due for some luck after the way the past few seasons had gone. I think these Wings still have some championships left in them -- only now does everyone seem to be catching on to how the Red Wings managed to stay dominant in the salary cap era thanks to a top-notch front office that scouts out European players as closely as North American players -- but I don't think they're going to be quite as dominant as the 1997-2002 teams. It'll probably be a while before the Red Wings hoist another cup, so I'm going to make sure to enjoy this one as much as I can.
This all being said, I'm now more convinced than ever that wherever I go in this country, I will need to pick up NHL Centre Ice just so I keep access to CBC's NHL coverage. Hearing the analysts on Versus talk about how the next two NHL franchises should go to Kansas City and Las Vegas gave me a headache, not to mention all the American commentators trying to say that Hockeytown faithful were cheering McCarty more loudly than the other Red Wings because of "his story," not because, you know, he pounds the ever-loving crap out of the opposition. I know that hockey will never gain the same national attention as other sports just because the sport dictates facilities that are easier to find and make here in the northern part of the country, but still, the standards for being a "hockey expert" in the American media seem to be even lower than those for being a "celebrity" these days. Some of my students from last semester went on a trip to Toronto this weekend, and I probably should have gone along with them; I doubt I could ever live full-time in Canada just because I'm so attached to my American creature comforts, but I should check things out there at least once.
posted 2008/04/09 at 21:21
You know we're getting into the heart of April in this part of the country when buds start appearing on some of the trees, you see young people milling about in promwear on Fridays and Saturdays, the post office gets busy with people filing their taxes in the last week to do so, and, of course, the Detroit Tigers are mathematically eliminated from the pennant race. Seriously, I don't know what's caused the Tigers to have this startling of a collapse in the early part of the year, but it is disconcerting to say the least. Things have to turn around at some point -- right? -- but all those early-season hopes of another playoff run have been fairly well dashed already. I expect Jim Leyland will last until the end of the season, but I doubt his contract will be renewed after the season is over. Is it too much to ask for that the Tigers bring Kirk Gibson back and make him the skipper like they should have done back in the Trammell era?
Of course with the Stanley Cup playoffs going on right now, I can't really care that much about baseball. I only wish I could be more confident about the Red Wings' chances given their propensity to choke in the first round when they win the Presidents' Trophy. Nashville was probably the best first-round opponent the Red Wings could have drawn simply because it will cut down on travel so much, but Nashville is due to finally win a playoff series here. If the Red Wings can win the series in short order and get more of their players more time to recover from the injuries they received this season, then maybe they've got a shot, but the Western Conference is just a huge mess these days with eight teams seemingly equally capable of making it to the finals. I'm going to say that the Red Wings make it to the finals this year, but I'm predicting they lose to Montreal there for two reasons. For one thing, I've been clamoring for an all-Original Six final for some time here, and of course there's the whole "be careful what you wish for" thing going on there. Secondly, for whatever reason (and I really can't think of a good one right now), the Canadiens' fans' chants are really getting on my nerves these days. I'd like to see the Red Wings get their eleventh cup this year, but I don't feel like there's a good chance of it happening.
As far as other sports go, I'm even less interested in basketball now than I can remember being before, and of course the Bengals' continued problems with Chad Johnson and players getting in trouble with the law make it hard to care much about football. I am looking forward to the NFL Draft like I do every year -- even if I don't follow college sports at all I just enjoy the "chess game" aspect of the draft -- but I have no choice now but to pin a lot of my hopes on the Red Wings, hopes that I somehow doubt they'll be able to fulfill.
posted 2008/02/17 at 17:41
Somehow the news of Richard Zednik getting his carotid artery cut by a teammate's skate blade passed me by for a little while. After I heard about it, video of the incident surfaced in the "now playing" part of the YouTube homepage, and the first time I watched it, for a little while there I think I was as close to throwing up as I'd been in several years. I couldn't see any blood in the early part of the footage, though, and then later when I saw the footage on television I didn't see any blood there either. Still, something in me just gets sick whenever I know I'm about to see something like that, even if I know ahead of time that I won't be seeing lots and lots of blood. As much as I like to read horror novels, I strongly dislike watching horror films, and similarly I just don't think I have the stomach for those kinds of things in real life. Even knowing that Zednik is fine now, knowing how close he came to losing his life there just makes me want to never see that footage again, as much as everyone has been playing it over and over this past week.
I'm writing this post now so I don't have to keep watching the Red Wings lose yet another game here. (Why did they have to start the losing streak right when they start selling out the Joe again?) Even with the salary cap in place, I still think that the Wings are going to feel a strong temptation to try to spend their way to another cup by bringing more veterans in, and even though they've given away so many of their young talent and still remained a strong team, I don't like Wings' management's fetish with older players. The Wings need to get toughter, and I can only hope that Darren McCarty scoring a hat trick in Grand Rapids a few days ago means that he might get called back up soon. Part of me wants to think that the Red Wings might deliberately be dogging it right now just to try to get McCarty back up sooner, but I know that they wouldn't actually do something like that. I could handle this losing streak a little better if I knew that McCarty would be coming back soon, but right now it's gotten to the point where I may actually skip watching Monday's game when I've been putting a lot of effort into catching as many Wings games as possible this season.
Given that pitchers and catchers reported to spring training last week, maybe it's time to think more about the Tigers here. As much as I would prefer to go see a Red Wings game over a Tigers game, I'd be more likely to go see a Tigers game due to a variety of circumstances. The main problem I have with going to either a Red Wings or a Tigers game right now is that I don't have anyone to come to a game with me, and I'd really prefer not to go to a game by myself. My schedule is so unbelievably packed with work and other pursuits right now that I just don't have any time to socialize, and things won't get better in that regard any time soon. I don't even think I'm going to have that much time for myself over spring break, and I've applied to teach over the summer as well. The worst part is that I know that I could probably make time to socialize if I put some effort into it, but given my lack of luck in that regard in recent years, I'm kind of afraid to put myself on the line like that. I need to get over that soon, though, because it's just not been healthy for me.
posted 2008/02/03 at 18:27
Someone has yet to explain to me the allure I've found in the past two years' Puppy Bowl broadcasts on Animal Planet. I'm not a dog person in the slightest, and I never watch Animal Planet any other time of the year. (We get enough animals coming around here to eat the food we leave out that I don't need to go to television to get my fill of animals.) There's something about the Puppy Bowl that just keeps me watching, though, and not just because there's nothing else on television right now besides you-know-what. Getting people to tune into the Puppy Bowl instead of the Super Bowl would be an interesting countercultural project, although I have a feeling it would attract more people who disliked teams in the game than people who wanted to make any kind of grand statement against football or the Super Bowl teams. Hey, I'll be the first to admit that if the Bengals were in the Super Bowl, I'd be watching that instead of the puppies.
All things being equal, though, I am going to flip over to the game every once in a while just to see how things are going there. My feelings about the Patriots and the Giants aside, the fact that the Patriots might go undefeated kind of adds an historical element to tonight's game that makes me feel obligated to catch at least parts of it. It's just one of those things that I feel a strange compulsion to watch, like Barry Bonds breaking the home run record or something along those lines. I imagine it's the same way for anyone with even rudimentary knowledge and interest in sports; when you know something historic may be about to happen, you feel obliged to keep track of it even if you have no personal investment in any of the players or teams. I guess it helps that in my favourite (North American) sport, the Red Wings have been the team breaking all of the records in recent years.
There's another reason I feel obliged to catch parts of the game, which is that I'm sure that my students will be watching as well. Even with as late at night as I teach, I'm sure some of them will still want to talk about the game, especially with Tom Brady being a University of Michigan player back in the day. I try to keep up with the music and television and such my students consume just in case I can find some teachable stuff in there (you'd be surprised how much of my class I devoted to stuff from Chappelle's Show back when I taught at UT), and although I doubt I'll find much to teach from in the Super Bowl (especially since my students will be doing peer reviews Monday and Tuesday), maybe knowing a little about what happens in the game tonight will make me seem a little less dorky than what I normally come off as.
Labels: sports, teaching, work
posted 2008/01/10 at 20:00
Only with the way the Red Wings have been playing this past decade could their record-setting first-half performance cause the league to barely bat an eye. Of course, the way these things seem to have gone in that time, they'll probably get a good first-round scare and possibly be eliminated, and knowing my luck it'll probably be the Blue Jackets who knock them out. Still, for all that the Red Wings kind of became the New York Yankees of hockey in the mid-90s by outspending nearly every other team to ludicrous degrees, three years into the salary cap system they're even more dominant than ever. Even with so many of the old Russian players gone or retired, and with a head coach who was never around during that time period, that old puck-possession system continues to reap dividends with the Red Wings' goal differential and shot differential both at absurd levels. After the Wings' dominance of the past decade, though, hardly anyone notices.
I was glad to see Chris Osgood get another All-Star nod, although the goalie situation for the Wings is kind of worrying me. As much as I hated the Red Wings waiving Osgood back in the day and signing Hasek, at the time I couldn't deny that Hasek was a better goalie than Osgood. I don't think that's the case these days, though, as evidenced by Osgood's stellar win-loss record and goals against. When it comes time for the playoffs, I'm not that sure just how the Red Wings will play things; "Hasek is still the number one goalie" seems to be the mantra of the Wings these days, but Osgood is just plain performing better, and Hasek's body isn't allowing him to start that many games. I don't think Hasek should sit for the playoffs, but I don't think Osgood should, either. Alternating the two feels like the best thing to do, but I can't recall any Stanley Cup champion in recent memory deliberately alternating goaltenders in the playoffs.
The real Red Wings story that's getting buried right now, though, is that Darren McCarty just started his first minor league game last night in a rehab stint. I don't know if there's a place for McCarty on the Red Wings' roster right now given how everyone seems to be clicking on all cylinders, but him returning to the Red Wings would really help fill up all those empty seats in the Joe. Aaron Downey's been half-playing an enforcer roll with the Red Wings so far this season, which I think is playing a big part in the Wings' success, but McCarty at his peak could earn his spot on the roster by both his play with the puck and his ability to knock some teeth out. I still think the Red Wings' publicity problems of the past few years had a lot to do with McCarty's departure -- of all the modern Wings players, his grit and toughness best embodied the spirit of Detroit -- and if he's healthy enough to play at the NHL level again, bringing him back might just get the Joe selling out again.
copyright © 2010 Sean Shannon