Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

I’m not sure if y’all are familiar with hockey, but about a week and a half ago, the Boston Bruins’ Marc Savard was knocked out for the season by a cheap-shot, blindside elbow from the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Matt Cooke. It was a self-evidently dirty play. I’m not here to talk about that. I’m watching fans walking home from the Garden out my window as I write, after the Bruins’ first meeting with the Penguins since that savage hit. I don’t know what happened, and whatever did transpire is immaterial to my argument.

I’m here to talk about the palpable bloodlust among Bruins fans for the chance to get some revenge against Pittsburgh. This judgment is based on my completely unscientific reading of various website comments and Facebook status updates today, but considering Sports Illustrated’s hockey writer was lamenting the NHL’s lack of disciplinary action against Cooke, and I’ve been reading stories about this game on non-sports blogs, I think it’s safe to say that some type of retaliatory vengeance was on the mind of many Bruins fans today.

If you take a step back from your ingrained understanding of the game of hockey, it should be a little strange that we’re even having this discussion. After the hit on Savard, the outcry against Cooke was loud, sustained, sincere, and justified. Hockey is a physical game, but there’s no place for headshots like the one Savard suffered. But look where that’s gotten us: an expectation that somehow, the Bruins would retaliate. Would they go after Cooke? Would they go after Sidney Crosby, the Penguins’ star? Would retaliation take the form of a similar cheap hit, or a gloves-on-the-ice brawl?

Even that Farber column I linked to above, written before tonight’s game even took place, takes retaliation for granted: the NHL could have prevented the violence that will inevitably occur, but failed! Now the Bruins have no choice!

But of course they had a choice. Cycles of violence are called cycles of violence for a reason, whether they occur on the streets or on the ice. It’s the same principle. What would be the consequence of the Bruins collectively saying “We’re going to stop this. It was an unfortunate thing that happened to our star, but two wrongs don’t make a right.” Would other teams find them to be soft? Possibly, but what’s the consequence of THAT? More cheap shots? I doubt it, given that Cooke’s hit has put those types of hits on the NHL’s disciplinary radar. Generally rougher play? Fine. If it’s within the confines of the rules, I’m sure the Bruins are capable of defending themselves. I’m approaching this as a rational person, of course, and not as a hockey player, or a hardcore hockey fan. Assuming retaliation, though, is a very pernicious fact of NHL life.

And think of what that assumption entails. Bruins fans, and a good portion of the hockey world, booed Cooke lustily. And then what did they, certainly in some cases, cheer for, and in other cases tacitly accept? Some sort of similar hit against a Penguins player. It shouldn’t be hard for someone with self-awareness to realize the hypocrisy at work. As one of our great philosophers has reminded us this season, what if it were you hanging up on this wall? Hockey fans should know better.

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know that I, along with the Official Roommate of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun, play in a weekly cornhole league. (Cornhole, for the uninitiated, is a game a lot like horseshoes, except with beanbags and wooden ramps.) Well, last night was the championship tournament. What transpired was exactly what you would expect to transpire when two of the fiercest competitors in the history of lawn games pit their mettle against the best players the great metropolis of Boston has to offer.

That’s right, precious reader. The dynamite duo, Beanbag Puns Are Corny, is your Winter 2010 Social Boston Sports cornhole champion!

The greatest moment of my life.

After a cutthroat semi-final round, we were up against two of the most formidable cornhole practitioners I’ve ever encountered. Dudes were straight up assassins. I’m talking ringers on demand. After losing game one, we fell into a deep hole. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that there were several moments during that second game where I was convinced we were done for. But in moments like that, in the white-hot crucible of competition, the truly transcendent athletes find a store of will that, quite frankly, doesn’t exist in ordinary mortals. Suffice it to say, we were able to mount a furious comeback and complete a David and Goliath story that makes the Book of Samuel look like a writeup of a mid-July scrimmage in the Plattsburgh, New York Little League.

For that, we were given the right to sip the sweet, sweet nectar of triumph (aka Sam Adams Noble Pils) out of that golden championship chalice. And t-shirts that will forever identify us as cornhole champions. Success! Victory! Glory!

The vestment of a champion

Sometimes, in this bleak and depressing world we live in, it’s hard to find evidence that there’s justice. You can’t blame people for being skeptical about a benevolent force that’s guiding the universe in a positive direction. The conduct of daily life serves as a constant source of fuel for crises of faith.

But sometimes, every so often, something happens that gives you pause. Something that makes you believe that maybe, just maybe the forces of goodness and light can triumph over everything that is evil and wrong. Sometimes, the universe plays out like it should.

Sometimes the Eagles of Boston College vanquish the hated terriers of boston university for the Beanpot Championship.

It’s a great day to be an Eagle!

In the world of blogging, there are certain perils. One of them is having a great idea for a post that you feel really good about, only to write half of it and leave it languishing in your drafts folder. It’ll be there when you have time to finish it, right?

The peril, of course, in missing your shot. One day, you’ll be tooling around your Google Reader, only to come across a blog post that makes every single point you had been trying to make, and a few more that you would have made if you had actually finished your own damn post in the first place, although probably not as eloquently, so it’s probably for the best.

In that spirit, here’s Eric from Pitchers and Poets on expanding the Baseball Hall of Fame.

. . . but I think it’s time to hand the reins over to our dolphin overlords and pray for mercy.

While our elected leaders have trouble even counting to the number 60, these half-fish/half-mammal killing machines have devised a hunting system so intricate that I had to watch the damn video twice to figure out how it worked. And if you’re reading this, dolphin masters (and I have no doubt they’ve already mastered all of the world’s languages), please don’t lump me in with the rest of those devils who have polluted your oceans and ensnared your brethren in tuna nets. I’ll name names!

It used to be that I read this satirical Onion article and laughed. Now, I can only marvel at its prescience, and weep for humanity’s fate.

# I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

# More of this, please. I have a good buddy who finds this sort of behavior reprehensible. I can’t get enough of it. Firstly, as a colleague of mine would say, “This isn’t the effing Pentagon.” It’s football; it’s entertainment. Chad Ochocinco is an entertainer. Secondly, it’s not like Ochocinco called Darrelle Revis a bad father; he didn’t call him a tax cheat; he didn’t insinuate that he was a lousy tipper. He engaged in a little banter about the kids’ game that they both play once a week for millions of dollars a year. If Darelle Revis can’t handle it (and I’m positive that he can), he should get into another line of work.

Critics of players like Ochocinco and Terrelle Owens and similar blowhards sometimes argue about how these guys set a bad example, and that they show poor sportsmanship. I’m not going to address how sports figures shouldn’t be role models for anyone. And I’ll only briefly address how overrated the concept of sportsmanship is. Or, should I say, the concept that we should be looking to professional sports stars as examples of sportsmanship. (Which, I suppose, is related to the first point that I said I wasn’t going to address. Funny how that sort of thing happens.) The single-minded focus, egomania, and determination involved in reaching the pinnacle of athletic competition, in my eyes, disqualifies pro athletes from being any sort of examplars of what we’ve come to call “good sportsmanship.” I mean, think about how many wideouts Chad Ochocinco had to vanquish, at every level of his career, to get to the point where he’s the number one wide receiver for a playoff-bound team. The same goes for every pro athlete. They’ve undoubtedly had to do things that normal Joes like you or I would never even dream of attempting in order to get where they are; that’s why they’re pro athletes, and we’re normal Joes. All of this is to say, we expect them to be good sports, too? I think athletes should for sure receive positive attention when they display good sportsmanship; but we should come to expect trash-talking, boasting, and excessive celebration as something that comes with the territory, as opposed to something that we frown upon. This is just me talking, but I think as a consumer of professional sports and a patron on professional sports’ various advertisers, I’m owed a good show more than a bunch of juiced-up freaks trying to be good sports. Sportsmanship isn’t something that’s learned from watching dudes on TV: it’s learned on the actual field of play.

# Less of this, please. I’m not going to bury Mike Leach, since I’m sure there’s still a lot of investigating to do w/r/t Adam James’s allegations against him. I’m going to speak, via setting up a series of strawmen, to the larger story of how college athletes in general are mistreated by a system that makes hundreds of millions of dollars off their free labor, and how what they receive in return is less than a drop in the bucket. Now, I understand that some people might see big-time college athletics (we’ll focus on football) as sort of trade school for the professional ranks, so theoretically their big payday is just deferred a few years down the line, and the stuff they have to put up with in college is well worth it. Of course, the number of college football players who actually make it to the NFL, let alone have productive careers, is so self-evidently and intuitively infinitesimal that I won’t even bother linking to or even looking up the statistics. (How’s THAT for argument?) Another argument is that athletes are compensated via the education they receive, sometimes for free. It’s great that some kids who might not get the opportunity to receive a college education do so via their athletic skills. But how compromised does that education get when practices and games and training take athletes out of the classroom, or the threat of losing one’s scholarship if one doesn’t do what one’s coach says (like, say, get locked in a storage shed) hangs like the sword of Damocles over the heads of marginal players.

In any event, college kids playing varsity sports are most certainly not equivalent to pro athletes, no matter what anyone says about the quality of play at the upper echelons of competition or the absurdity of the modern-day idea of the “student-athlete.” If Wade Phillips wants to lock Tony Romo in a supply closet, well, great: they’re both grown men, being paid millions of dollars. Tony Romo isn’t a kid. Adam James is. Ivan Maisel, in the article above, wrote “whatever happened to wide receiver Adam James regarding his treatment for a concussion he suffered in practice two weeks ago, it is clear athletes are less likely than ever to stand for mistreatment in order to be team players.” I hope he’s right!

# And finally, give me a fucking break, Alabama.

Straylight Run

8 ) Straylight Run, Straylight Run (2004)

Now we’re getting into the nitty gritty. Straylight Run is a band formed by former members of Taking Back Sunday, frontman John Nolan and bassist Shaun Cooper. If you’re familiar with TBS, you’ll realize that these two bands couldn’t sound more dissimilar, and that’s a huge part of Straylight’s allure. Here, you’ve got a guy in John Nolan capable of screaming his larynx out on Taking Back Sunday’s Tell All Your Friends, but then weaving soft, soulful melodies on Straylight Run’s opening track, “The Perfect Ending.” Nolan isn’t the greatest technical vocalist, but the range that he can bring to a track more than makes up for it.

But then again, the fact that he isn’t the smoothest vocalist is another part of the allure. Nolan’s presentation, as a singer and a lyricist, reeks of earnestness. Take the album’s single, “Existentialism on Prom Night.” In a typical pop punk band, you’d hear lyrics like “Sing like you think no one’s listening” and you’d roll your eyes. But in Nolan’s hands, delivered with passion in front of pianos and violins instead of screeching guitars, the words have a sincerity that would have been unavailable to him in a band like TBS. Then there’s my favorite track on the album, “The Tension and the Terror.” From the sensuous lyrics that start the track (All the boys, voices cracking. / Oh, the moaning half tones. / Come summertime, we’re all the same age here. / All the tension and the terror, / Thin-limbed gorgeous green eyes smiling, / And I’m going straight to hell) to the confession that ends it (A look, a laugh, a smile, a second / Passes by and I regret it. / Words just aren’t right. / Sometimes I just can’t explain / All the ways you devastate me. / Always on my mind), the words aren’t sung as much as it would have been impossible for them to not burst forth out of the song. Maybe you don’t hear it that way, but I do.

And let’s not forget the beautiful Michelle DeRosa nee Nolan on background vocals (not to mention the lead on “Toolsheds and Hot Tubs” and “Now It’s Done”). Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun understand how I feel about girls who can rock. For the uninitiated, I’ll put it simply: they’re the best! There’s really not a ton of ways to eff up a song with the addition of female accompaniment, and Michelle really smooths out her brother’s rough edges.

Signature track: “Your Name Here (Sunrise Highway)”

I admitted up above that “The Tension and the Terror” is my favorite track on this album, but that’s inconsequential at this point. This album is important because of “Your Name Here.” The song is a follow-up to this Taking Back Sunday song, which in turn is a response to this Brand New song. I won’t go into the details of the East Coast/West Coast style feud that marked those bands’ early days, suffice it to say that at a time in my life when I actually WAS emo instead of just being an emo fan, “Your Name Here” helped me to realize that no matter what the conflict is, it’s important to reconcile with the people closest to you if you’ve been driven apart. You just can’t take grudges to the grave.

And then there’s the matter of the chorus: “Go east on Sunrise Highway. / Turn left on Carmans Avenue. / Go right at the first stoplight / And I’ll be outside, waiting for you.” The lyrics are meant to be directions, from John to his estranged pal Jesse, to John’s house on Long Island, ostensibly so they can peace things up. Of course, you can’t put driving directions in a song without diehard fans actually following them, which is what myself, my pal Caitlin, and my buddy Joe, Official Bandmate of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun, did one July afternoon. Here’s a picture of me, driving east on Sunrise Highway.

My other hand is at 10. What form!

Now, of course, unless you’re crazy, you wouldn’t put the EXACT directions to your house in a song that, who knows, could become a number 1 hit. So there’s really no such thing as “Carmans Avenue,” but there is a Carmans Road in Massapequa. And you can’t actually turn left onto it; rather, you’ve got to make a U-turn and then turn right. And at that point, if you go right at the first stop light, you’re really only hooking back up with Sunrise Highway. Here’s a photograph of your hero, this blog’s protagonist, me, at the final destination of the chorus to “Your Name Here.”

Womp womp

So, you know, did we learn anything? Is there some sort of didactic moral to this sad tale of a wasted afternoon? Absolutely not. Except, every time I go to a Straylight Run show and this song gets played, I get to nudge the dude next to me and say “Hey, I did that!” Ah, memories.

William Rhoden on Bobby Knight and John Calipari.

Abe Sauer on the North Dakota Fighting Sioux.

The Red Socks beat the Yankees eight times in a row earlier in the season, and it was the biggest thing in history up here. It was unparalleled dominance! The Socks owned the Yanks! Could they sweep the season series? Sure, it wasn’t even the All Star break, but the Yankees were buried!

All the Yankees have done since is cruise through their schedule, and beat the Red Socks 7 out of the last 8 times. No big shakes, though. Sure, the Yankees have the division sewed up. Sure, the Red Socks haven’t really shown any sort of ability to beat the Yankees when they’re playing well, even with the newly acquired slugger Victor Martinez. But it doesn’t matter, you know, because the Red Socks will probably make the playoffs, so these late games against the Yanks aren’t important.

So I was heartened to see the Village Voice’s Crazy Yankee Chick address this issue:

It would be inordinately helpful if Boston could collectively delineate their parameters for “Which Games Count.” If I understand it correctly, the current guidelines dictate that:

1. Any World Series won before 2000 is not relevant and should not be considered in arguments debating the historical success of franchises
2. Steroid use only voids the validity of a title in years outside of 2004 and 2007
3. A division title does not enable fans of title holder to assume superiority
4. Wild Cards and Division Champions possess equal levels of significance
5. In the event of a loss, Boston retains the right to default to inflated payroll accusations and/or invalidating loss on basis of team’s injuries
6. Any close and late hit from Alex Rodriguez shall automatically be stricken from the record in accordance with “ARod sucks in the clutch” bylaws
7. In the event of a save at the hands of Mariano Rivera, the current game’s outcome shall be eclipsed by past blown save incidences
8. In extreme situations, Boston fans may choose to redistribute vested interests, by taking an early withdrawal from the Red Sox 2009 Season account and re-allocating interests into Patriots 2009-2010 Season account
9. Substantiated support is not a prerequisite for “Yankees Suck” contentions
10. These guidelines are subject to change on the sole discretion of Boston advocates

Preach.