"But There's Nothing To Do..."

My Doomsday Diary.

Here's how I spent what was supposed to be our Final Day on Earth. Except for the Happy Ending, I found myself that day fervently hoping the planet would, indeed, split wide open and burn to a cinder. It started with my nephews.

I feel somewhat badly for today's children, mostly because they have been robbed of all the things that I believe should make up childhood.

I've been thinking about this notion this past week because of what happened last Saturday...

I have four nephews, aged 14, 13, 11 and 5. They're great boys, and by that, I mean that I love them very much, not that they're the best behaved. In fact, my nephews have the manners of a pack of wild boars...wild boars with toothaches and hemorrhoids, I mean. They can be a touch ornery and rambunctious, to say the least. Part of this is just The Age; two teenagers, busily exploring the boundaries, pushing every envelope. The two younger ones, naturally, mimic what they've seen the older ones get away with, which is quite a bit as my sister and brother-in-law are a bit lax in the discipline department. When I was their age, if I pulled half the stuff they did -- and got caught -- I'd be on the phone looking for organ donors, just in case I needed them in the aftermath of the truly horrendous beating I was going to get.

Worse, I grew up in a house with my grandparents and my uncle and his family. Stepping out of line -- and getting caught -- meant, potentially, three beatings. Even worse, I went to Catholic school, which meant stepping out of line included a bonus beating from the nuns, then three beatings when you got home. Considering that I was a beastly little swine as a child, I'm amazed that I was able to survive a John McCain-like experience of near-constant physical torture. Fortunately, for me anyway, I seem to have gotten away with just enough to avoid permanent brain damage.
 
My nephews have, thus far, been spared the experience of a truly epic beating at the hands of their belt-and-wooden-spoon-wielding grandparents, wooden-hanger-wielding mother, and the open-hand buttocks assault of an ex-Marine Uncle, and in today's Catholic schools you couldn't find a Shao-Lin- ruler-wielding nun if your life depended upon it. Besides, they all go to public school, except the oldest, and the Catholic school he attends is generally regarded as 'soft'. I went to grammar school with Dominican Nuns who moonlighted as hand-to-hand combat instructors with the Green Berets, and a high school with Black-belt Christian Brothers, half of whom seemed to be tough Hell's Kitchen Irishmen, and every last one of them claimed to have been a Golden Gloves boxer in his youth.

Suffice to say, short of being raised by the Spanish Inquisition, with alternate weekends at Gestapo Headquarters, very few people know physical discipline like I know physical discipline. Today they'd call this 'child abuse', but back then, it was just what parents did to straighten their kids out when that was necessary.

But, I digress...

Anyways, I had occasion to 'babysit' my nephews, despite the fact that none are babies anymore, but the oldest are certainly too irresponsible to be left to care for the younger two when their parents are away. Their father had pulled a weekend overtime shift. Their mother was dragooned by the Little League they've all played in to do her 'volunteer' service. My mother, a woman whom God certainly sent to annoy the living shit out of every other living being on Planet Earth, came along. Heaven forbid she should have to sit at home and rely upon her own wits to keep herself entertained for a day. It began, predictably enough, with constant complaints about 'the Sciatica', her back hurts, her legs, her knees, her sinuses, and even her fucking ass. It's all an act, by the way, it's all a play for attention because she's sympathy junkie and a drama queen.

This is the First Indication that I'm going to have trouble at some point. But I'll get back to that in a moment. Let's start with the Second Indication that it's going to be One of Those Days.

If there's one thing I really dislike about Modern Kids, it's the silly whining they all engage in about having 'nothing to do.'

Mind you, my nephews live in a house which has FIVE televisions, all with cable access including 150 channels and On-Demand programming up the Wazoo, two DVD players (with an extensive library), a Playstation 3, an X-Box 360, and a Nintendo Wii, each again with an extensive library of games. The garage is simply overflowing with bicycles, skateboards, kick scooters and roller blades, not to mention a bewildering array of portable ramps and rails for them. All my nephews play baseball -- Little League, High School, and Travelling Teams -- so there are enough bats, baseballs, and gloves laying around to equip a Major League Team. The only things missing are Buck and McCarver, chewing tobacco, and Yankee Stadium.

There are two computers in the house, both with internet access. I know they have internet access because guess who installed the cable modem and Wi-Fi router (that would be...Me)? There is a vast array of computer games available, as well, not to mention two or three Nintendo DS consoles. There are enough Lego bricks (the five year old is a Lego junkie who might soon require methadone treatments to wean him off of them) to build a life-size replica of the Manhattan Skyline.
 
There is a small library of age-and-theme-appropriate literature, and for good measure my sister has stocked the house with all manner of Art Supplies, colored pencils, sketch pads, crayons, markers, paints, and so forth, that would have made Van Gogh lock himself in her basement, and kept him far too busy with it all to even have time to think of cutting his own ear off.
 
Oh, and the three Big Ones have cell phones, too, and text message Lord Knows Who constantly. She just might be raising a passel of boys with the strongest thumbs on all of Staten Island.

I can understand the five year old complaining "I have nothing to do", because, well...he's five. Five year olds have attention spans measured in RPM's, although, like I said, he's a Lego junkie and when he's in his zone you don't hear a peep out of him for hours at a time.  

And the Swimming Pool hasn't even been opened for the season yet. On a good day, my nephews will protest, loudly and in a manner which reminds me of a menstrual girl, if their mother suggests they go outside to play. They've been known to cry about 'how unfair' that is. Did you ever know kids to complain they're being sent outside to play? They'd rather ride their kick scooters IN THE HOUSE, on her marble-and-ceramic-tile floors, and she lets them get away with it.
 
So, who has 'nothing to do'? Well, the 13 and 14 year old, naturally. They're the biggest pests of all that way. They decide that since there's 'nothing to do' why not engage in a bit of absolute stupidity and build a tree swing?

Now, about this swing. It's my brother-in-law's fault. He decided one day that it would be a good idea to find himself a length of rope, toss it over a high branch on the tree out front of the house -- over 30 feet in the air -- attach the broken seat from an old office chair to it, and then encourage his children to swing from it. Even the Biggest Doofus. There's just two problems with this swing; the first is that once you're on it and gain any sort of momentum, you're swinging out into the street, and since there's about 20' of rope involved, you're swinging 20' out into the street and into traffic. The second problem is because of the peculiar position of the anchor branch, once you begin your 're-entry' from the street, you're likely to crash headlong into the trunk. If you're, say, 14, and weigh about 150 pounds and gather enough momentum to make the swing worth your while, if you hit that tree you're probably doing 20-25 MPH when you make contact.

Considering that the other three launch the 5-year old with enough force to loft the Space Shuttle, he's probably going to hit it at closer to 30 mph, assuming he manages to keep his grip at all.
 
For that reason specifically -- the five year old must be kept off of this dangerous contraption -- they are forbidden to do this thing without their father being there to supervise, so that they don't get stupid and carried away, and a 911 call has to be made. This Swing-erecting event also leads to the most inhuman arguing and crying you've ever heard over 'who's turn' it is; it's like listening to sorority sisters argue about who gets to use the Big Mirror, and there's no place for me to plug in my curling iron in the common bathroom with 12 other girls already in it. The whole operation is far more trouble than it's worth, if you ask me.

But this is exactly what they want to do, and they keep insisting they have the right -- and permission -- to do it whenever they fucking want to. Except that I know they fucking don't. So, I tell them; No Swing, find something else to do. This pronouncement gets the expected grousing, and unfortunately, no surprise at all, a lot of cursing.
 
I would have swatted them good for sassing me, but I'm not allowed to touch my sister's children that way. Consequently, neither does she...not until they've reached the point of being in close-to-riot condition. No wonder they push the envelope; there's no consequence for even having the audacity to dare it. Someone should smack them around. I took things from them I wouldn't take from a grown man without insisting he step outside and defend his honor. 

The Law has been laid down. No Swing. I go back into the house. The The First Indication is now heard from, and you would think the Gates of Hell had just burst open and poured forth a vast horde of soul-stealing demons, red in tooth and claw, fire and brimstone flowing from their flared nostrils.
 
A bit about my Mother, first, so that you can get some idea of what's about to happen when I continue this story. My Mother is, without a doubt, the most disagreeable person in this Solar System. She's not a bad woman, she just has some rather strange ideas and an overly-inflated opinion of herself which is totally detached from reality. The first problem she has is that whenever she says something, no matter how stupid, how inane, how inappropriate, how non-topical, insulting, no matter how unasked for, she believes it should be treated as if Moses carried the decree down from the Mountaintop engraved in stone. As soon as the words are uttered, she either expects whatever it she wants to be done right this very second, or that it is to be regarded with the same reverence and respect that we have for the law, worthy of immediate attention and action, and we should all fall to our fucking knees and thank the shit out of her for having graced us with her words of wisdom. 

I beg to differ. She was a rotten mother who offered no real guidance, and who's children suffered for her poor choices in husbands, and the bad decisions she made that ruined her life. These required her children to pick up the pieces for her, because that would require effort, and then support her for the last 25 years of her life. She's fortunate that we haven't taken her out into the woods, slathered her in animal fat, and left her there to face the grizzlies alone, or just tossed her off a convenient pier in cinderblock underwear, already.

As if this wasn't annoying enough, this distasteful personality trait is attached to a woman with an anxiety complex so monumental, and a variety of other mental issues of the Poor-Me type (the very worst), that it has kept the best therapist on Staten Island busy for 25 years...with no improvement to date, whatsoever. Which leads me to the question; just who the fuck was it who said she was the best in the first place? Because she's convinced that her every word should be an Imperial command, and because every second that passes between command and action builds up the cycle of anxiety and impatience, and because it all plays into this martyr complex of hers, nothing is ever simple. Everything is a fucking imperative, Earth-shattering emergency that is accompanied by That Sound.  

That Sound. Look up the word 'cacophony' in the dictionary. Doesn't even come close to describing it. Imagine it like this: the sound of 4,000 cats being castrated simultaneously with a rusty, unsharpened garden scythe, set against the background noise of a pack of constipated wolves baying at the moon whilst being serenaded by some great locomotive that hasn't had it's moving parts oiled in a couple of centuries moving at high speed, which then tries to come to a screeching halt upon a dime.

That's almost it. But still not quite. You also have to imagine someone pouring table salt into your eyes when you're hearing it. 

It's a terrible sound. Hearing it gives one the impression of great shards of jagged glass and ten-penny nails being pounded into your skull. The sweat breaks out on your spine. Your teeth are set on edge as if someone just slit your asshole with a razor blade and then poured lemon juice and Liquid Plumber into the open wound. You'd rather be sucked into a jet engine -- and survive -- than to hear that sound. You'd rather have someone open an umbrella up your ass repeatedly than to listen to it. You'd rather be the sex slave of some Al'Qada dude with a sandpaper and blowtorch fetish. It's a sound I've heard -- even in my sleep -- almost every day of my life for the last 44 years, and the amazing part of it all is that I haven't killed her yet.

MAAAATTTTYYYYYY! Come up here...NOW! Ohmygodohmygodohmygod....Look what that LUNATIC is DOING! STOP THEM!

The Swing is being set up. They can't even get the rope over the branch, and already, it's as if someone has just been struck by lightning, run down by a garbage truck and shot eleven times...all at once. And I absolutely HATE being called "Matty". I'm not a seven year old in short pants and knee fucking socks.
So, I tell them. No swing. Now knock it off. "But we have nothing to do." Bullshit, find something else.

Ten minutes later:

MAAAAATTTTTYYYYYY! LOOK WHAT THESE KIDS ARE DOING! Gooutthereandbreakhisass, goddammit!

Guys, I said Knock It Off. No Swing. Do us all a favor, and don't give that pain in the behind inside another reason to start wailing. I don't want to hear it, and it's pissing me off. Just shut her up and stop, or I'm taking this crap away from you.

Not two minutes later, it starts all over again:

So, I take the rope, the seat, and the garden tools they're using trying to get the damned thing over a 30' high branch. Find something else to do, fellas, because if I have to listen to that woman one more time, someone's getting killed, and it might not be just her.

At this point, the little guys want to go to the schoolyard and ride their scooters. Of course they do; it's only a mile walk, and naturally, the Big Ones don't want to go. I can only imagine what I'm coming back to when these two, naturally, resume their stupidity behind my back and Ye Old Nervous Windbag inside has several hours to witness and endure their nonsense and get progressively more aggravated, frustrated -- and even shriller -- because they ignore her repeated commands to stop it.

I take the Little Guys to the schoolyard, and we have some fun. They get to ride their scooters, they jump around on the playground, we play with a football they've found...and I get hit on by a chick. There's two scifoozas that we run into on the street nearby who talk as if they were taught to whisper in a sawmill, and use language that's...well... 'salty' is an inadequate description. It's even worse than mine.

Scifooza Number One can't stop talking about her boobs. In front of my two young nephews. She's telling Scifooza Number Two that as soon as she gets her "chemical balls" (admission: I have never heard this term before) she's going to get "my tits done", and "finally fucking get myself a fucking husband because all they want is fucking D-cups". Sciffoza One apologizes profusely for using such language in front of My Sons. There not my Sons, they're my Nephews, but it's okay. I'll just tell them to ignore you.

"Do you think my tits are alright, or should I get 'em bigger?" Sciffooza One asks. Scifooza Number Two feigns being flabbergasted. One gets the impression that Number One asks every random man she meets this question, and Number Two is obliged to pretend to be embarrassed, even though she's probably shown her tits to twice as many random men. And she might get paid to do it, too.

"Nah, nothing wrong with what you got. They're just fine."

"You boys are soooo lucky! Your father is such a nice man..."

"He's not my father, he's my uncle."

"He's soooo nice!" I'm now having my shoulders and biceps felt up and pinched as if she were looking for a ripe cantaloupe in the supermarket. She apparently likes my hair, too. I'm about to smack this bitch.

"I'm not married, you know...", She says.

"No? You? Can't imagine why not..."

"You have beautiful sons. I wish I had a son...."

"They're my nephews."

"Really? I thought they were your kids..."

"If you could shut up about your tits for three seconds you would have realized you were told otherwise three times. Maybe that's why you're not married: you can't shut up about your tits, you're pushy, and you don't listen very well."

 Number Two finds this uproariously funny. We leave. If I ever wanted the local equivalent of Trailer Trash, I now know exactly where to find it. I wouldn't marry this chick for a Green Card and a mention in her father's will. It took near an hour to reach the schoolyard, if only because the five year old has little legs that don't carry him so fast. Twenty-five minutes after we get there they want to go home. Another hour back. And...

There's the FUCKING SWING...naturally. And a crowd of neighborhood kids all waiting for their turn. Mommy Dearest is apoplectic, and on the verge of having puppies. I figure if she does manage this astounding feat, it ought to look like something out of Aliens, only with fireworks and more gunfire. It's now all my fault that this happened because I was away for three hours doing GOD-KNOWS-WHAT-STUPID-SHIT-YOUR-BROTHER-IN-LAW-IS-AN-ASSHOLE-FOR-SHOWING-THEM-THIS-SHIT-GODDAMMIT-WHERE-IS-YOUR-SISTER-THAT-INCONSIDERATE-BITCH-THEY'RE-DRIVING-ME-INSANE.

And people wonder why I am the way I am? If you had my life...

Anyways, here's what I mean by 'losing their childhood".

In my day, if we were told 'you can't do that', we simply found something else to do. And since we didn't have a billion beeping-and-bright-lights-electronic geegaws, we had to make due with whatever was at hand, and somehow manage to have fun with it. Worse, I grew up in Brooklyn, and there wasn't a front lawn, an open field for miles, or a swimming pool in the back yard. We didn't even have a back yard worth the appellation. In those days, we played a lot of wiffle ball (no one plays wiffle ball anymore), and a ton of stickball. These were games that were pretty cheap, and in which you could improvise equipment if you didn't have any, and play for hours. In winter, we played tackle football -- in the street -- and during the fall, we played tackle football...on the concrete in the schoolyard. Hockey was played year-round, either road hockey or roller hockey, ice hockey being something extremely rare: skates were super expensive (your parents might blow a week's salary on skates then), and the only ice was at Coney Island, which required a death-defying trip on the B or D train, dodging muggers and streakers. We used a roll of electrical tape worn smooth on the sidewalk for a puck. It works remarkably well on the well-worn blacktop of a city street.

Protective equipment, if you could find any, usually consisted of a mish-mash of catcher's gear, baseball gloves, football helmets and shoulder pads, and the simple expedient of stuffing magazines into your socks to serve as shin guards. A hockey stick in those days cost about $10, and that was a ton of money, so no one took slap shots -- the best and easiest way to break a stick on blacktop.

There were exactly seven television channels -- and one of them was PBS. Video games consisted of Pong, and if your family could afford it, you might get lucky and have an Intellivision, Atari -- or the Cadillac of them all -- a Commodore 64 with something like 3 really crappy games. Otherwise, you needed to scrounge quarters to go to the local candy store to play pinball, or maybe Space Invaders or Asteroids. When PacMan came around, kids seriously considered taking up a life of crime to support their habit. You dreamed of the days when you had enough quarters to just play a few games of PacMan AND get an Egg Cream. That was like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous to us.

We played a lot of common childhood games: Johnny-on-the-Pony, Red Rover, Stoopball (kind of like baseball, only with 'phantom' runners, where you tossed the rubber ball with all your might against your front steps when you were 'up'). We played handball and basketball in the schoolyard, boxball on the sidewalk (like tennis, using the square sections of the sidewalk as a court). When your rubber Spaulding ball split at the seams (they always did) from all that stick- and boxball, you simply took the two halves and played Halfball (a variant of baseball, played with the half a ball and a short length of thick rubber hose).

When you didn't even have a ball, you played Skelly. In this game, you shoot bottlecaps that have been filled with melted wax around a square 'board' drawn on the sidewalk or street in chalk. If you were really serious about your Skelly, you carved your Skelly Board into the hot asphalt of the street in summer with a screwdriver. Kids got very creative with their carved Skelly boards. Some were really intricate and quite challenging.

We didn't have trees to climb, so we climbed fire escapes and 'laundry ladders'. These were skinny, metal ladders, often 30' or more in height -- and not always anchored very well -- that one found behind most houses or apartment buildings, and to which tenants attached clotheslines from their back windows. Climbing a laundry ladder was usually something you did when playing 'War', in which we ran around the streets and the back-alleys in mock combat with toy guns. Try that today, and the local authorities will drag your kids off to a mental institution, just in case they want to grow up to shoot a Democrat. Any fence was like an open invitation to 'come climb me', and it didn't matter if there was barbed wire or razor wire, or even if it was rusty; we climbed them, especially if there was something 'cool' on the other side...like access to Tar Beach (the roof of an apartment building from where one could launch water balloons, or watch the local girls sunbathe).

Bikes and skateboards were rarities. In the Brooklyn of that time these things were likely to get stolen. At knifepoint. I was mugged at knifepoint, twice, before my thirteenth birthday. Nowadays in Brooklyn, they definitely would be stolen, only you'll receive multiple gunshot wounds and might get your house burnt down just so there's no witnesses to the crime for good measure.

Everyone played with matches. Everyone played with magnifying glasses and anthills. Everyone played with magnifying glasses, anthills, model glue and a can of hairspray. You circled the anthill with the glue, set fire to it with paper and magnifying glass, and when the ants came up to escape, you used the hairspray can like a flamethrower. We knew how to make slingshots, and makeshift crossbows with a piece of two-by-four, a thick rubber band, wood staple and a clothespin.

Disputes between kids were always settled with fisticuffs, or a wrestling match, and three minutes after someone got his ass kicked everyone was friends again. We collected comic books, baseball cards, bottlecaps and Matchbox Cars. We 'flipped' baseball cards, we pitched pennies, we played a lot of catch, Tag, Dodgeball (or a rougher variant, Kill the Man With the Ball), Red Light-Green Light, Ringolerio and Bulldog. We built model airplanes and ships. We knew how to build and repair our own toys, or adapt them to other uses. We did it in the CITY, too, with a lack of open spaces and grass, and with what nowadays would be considered Third-World-level disposable incomes.

In short, we knew how to be BOYS. We never had 'NOTHING TO DO'.
My nephews, for all the love I have for them, would have been lost in that world. They would have been constantly bored because no one would be giving them anything. As it is, they get so bored despite all they have, that they become single-minded of purpose when it comes to a tree swing that even in my day would have given Evel Knievel second thoughts. Now, granted, there's some creativity and a sense of danger involved in that swing, but the point is if we were told 'don't do that', we found something else to do, and we had enough of a store of made-up/improvised games/activities at our disposal that it wasn't difficult.

Nowadays, kids seem incapable of doing this. Try to teach these things to them, and they look at you as if you've just emerged from a spacecraft with three heads, green skin, and antennae. They aren't interested unless there's a flashing light, a large price tag, a beeping sound, or a degree of extraordinary, bound-to-end-in-the-emergency-room danger -- they call these things Extreme Sports nowadays, but in my day, they were simply the things The Stupid Kid Who Always Had a Broken Bone did.

There was a degree of danger in what we did, too, but it was always a calculated danger (kids were smarter then, I think). We knew the limits. An equivalent to this swinging between traffic and a great fucking tree trunk in my day was called 'Skitching'. In Skitching, one either wore roller skates, or did it in winter when the streets would be full of packed snow that you could slide on. You simply grabbed onto the back of a stopped bus or truck, and got low where the driver might not be able to see you easily, and got yourself pulled along as if water skiing. At least until the vehicle stopped, and you didn't...you usually only stopped when you got a face full of back bumper. The worst cases saw the Skitcher eat the bumper and then slide under the now-stopped vehicle, and being too stunned to move, get trapped under a wheel to get themselves run the fuck over. Never did it myself, never wanted to. It was just too stupid and dangerous.

But such was the life -- and the joys -- of a city boy in the 1970's, and amazingly, we did these things with no adult supervision, whatsoever. Makes you wonder just what the hell happened to the world and what happened to the Spirit of Boyhood. These kids today are such pampered, spoiled, over-supervised, whining little pansies who don't get beaten on a regular basis for their misbehavior, and who don't know how -- and who can't be trusted -- to play on their own. And who suffered for it all this fine day? Why... I did.

I'm not even their parent, either.

I had to listen to a Screaming Banshee who turns my insides into a knotted mass, and who could curdle used motor oil with her voice alone. I had to hike two hours to and from a schoolyard I didn't want to go to, and we barely stayed. I was nearly sexually assaulted on the street by a bimbo I wouldn't screw with a stolen penis, and who didn't even have the courtesy to offer me a drink before putting her hands on me. I had my nephews actually tell me to do something anatomically impossible -- twice -- and I'm not allowed to feed them their teeth. When my sister finally gets home, she wants to know why I 'didn't do anything to stop those kids from putting up the swing' and has the nerve to ask me if I'll watch them again the following day.

It's a good thing it was supposed to be Doomsday, and there was a 'We Didn't Die' party later that evening. I managed to play a few other games that night that also don't require flashing lights and electronics, or adult supervision...only adult participation.

That was something else we learned to do in the schoolyard, too. 

The Wide World of Sports, Part II...

From the Gridiron, we jump to the Ice, and start talking about a real sport: hockey. I say 'real sport' because, well, let's look at all the others; baseball is pretty much 2-3 hours of watching two guys play catch with a lot of inactivity in between. It's a sport that celebrates the .300 hitter, which means it really celebrates the guy who's failed 70% of the time. Anyone who remarks, like many did a decade ago about the Clutch-and-Grab era of hockey, that they'd rather watch a one-hit shutout -- i.e. a game with no action -- than a 1-0 hockey game --with lots of checking, and perhaps a fight or two -- needs psychological help.

Golf? I believe it was Mark Twain who said that "Golf is a pleasant afternoon's walk, interrupted". Any 'sport' that you play in business casual, requires a servant to lug your gear about and involves a motorized cart, is hardly a competition. If there was a goalie to keep the ball out of the little hole, you might have an argument about whether it's a sport. Quite frankly, if your game doesn't involve defense, and is mostly played by overweight white guys, and ends with a snort and a steak in the Clubhouse, it's not a sport; it's more like an expensive hobby.

Basketball? Does anyone actually play basketball anymore, or has it has it simply degenerated into an exhibition where guys take a 10-yard run up to a basket before they make a 6' leap to 'slam dunk'? Back when I played basketball you needed an outside jumper, needed to know how to play defense, we didn't take time outs every five seconds, and a wrist-slap or an elbow to the chest wasn't a 'flagrant foul' that put you on the DL for three months; it was 'just the price you paid' for going to the basket.

NASCAR. What great thrills: watching 40 guys make left turns at ridiculously high speed, praying for an accident to break up the monotony and get your juices flowing. Really, if you need a million-dollar-fuel-injected machine to compete, it's not really a sport, is it? Football? Five minutes of nothing leading up to six seconds of action over the span of three hours, and in the end, it's usually the least-involved guy on the field -- the fucking kicker -- who decides it all. Soccer, a game I've actually excelled at, is polo without the horses and where the idea at the professional level seems to be to play for a tie. MMA is not a sport: that's human cockfighting, and if I want to see that there's half-a-dozen Irish Pubs within walking distance. No Pay-Per-View fees, either.

No, hockey is the only real sport, so far as I'm concerned.

Which is why I get so pissed off when people who know nothing about the game start pontificating about some of the more rugged aspects of the game, like Zdeno Chara's hit on Max Pacioretty, the fights between the Boston Bruins and Dallas Stars, or the Brawl at the Nassau Coliseum this past February. Much like football (that is when the players are actually involved in a play, and not standing around between plays or otherwise making fools of themselves with all the sack and touchdown dances) is a contact sport; it involves actual physical contact, often violent physical contact, between players.

People who don't understand the nature of hockey 'violence' simply don't understand the nature of the game, but they somehow feel qualified to pontificate about it's more brutal aspects. For those of you who don't understand hockey, and the reasons why there are fights, and occasionally, a horrendous accident in which someone is hurt, here's your list of reasons why it all happens:

1. Take 12 full-grown men, and put them in a fishbowl.
2. Arm them with deadly weapons, i.e. a stick, and a set of razor-sharp skates.
3. Make them play on ice.
4. Encourage them to reach speeds of 25-30 MPH, and run into each other, or smash each other against the boards and glass (it actually hurts MORE to get hit in open ice than it does along the boards; the boards and glass in most rinks actually give some under stress, and act like a spring).
5. Make them chase an object (The Puck) which is made of solid, vulcanized rubber, which has been frozen solid and can be propelled at speeds exceeding 100 MPH, and who's shape makes it's flight characteristics wholly unpredictable.

Tempers are bound to flare in that sort of situation. If you don't give players the opportunity to vent their frustrations (i.e. fight), they will soon start doing stupid, and dangerous, things: like cutting each other with their skates, clubbing each other with their sticks, or throwing elbows at each other's heads. Fighting in hockey is a safety valve; giving players the opportunity to pummel each other prevents some of the more unattractive aspects of human nature from rising to the surface. In all actuality, there are very few injuries that come about as a result of a hockey fight, primarily because it is difficult to get enough leverage on ice skates to throw a knockout punch.

There is also an etiquette to a hockey fight; you never just attack someone. You issue a challenge, and the etiquette requires that your would-be opponent oblige you. If he doesn't, there's usually someone else who will pick up the gauntlet, and thus, the overall violence is kept at a manageable level. It's not unusual to see two players punch each other silly, and then pat one another on the backside afterwards, or a fight to breakup when both combatants tire themselves out and agree to separate. Generally, fights between players aren't personal matters: they are usually a reaction to something which has occurred on the ice, and that once someone has been given the opportunity to vent their frustrations, the whole thing is pretty much over. There is, however, a big difference between a system of violence with rules and a context, and another system in which the players cross a line and enter the realm of the Truly Stupid.

By the way, the Golden Age of Hockey -- generally considered to be the 1940's to the 1980's -- saw far more gratuitous violence that you see in the modern NHL. It was not uncommon in the days when the league did ban fighting, to see players get carved up with sticks, or have their limbs skated over. One of the greatest players in the history of the sport has a dubious honor named after him; a player is said to have scored a 'Gordie Howe Hat Trick' if during the course of a game he has tallied a goal, an assist -- and a fight. But, I digress...

The Realm of the Truly Stupid nowadays involves players going after each other's heads. There's a variety of reasons why this happens. The first set of reasons are cultural: in the Old Days a player was taught to protect himself on the ice at all times, because you never could tell where a hit might come from (there was far more hitting 20-30 years ago then than there is now). In the modern game, there are two referees, more rules about what you can/can't do with a stick, what constitutes a legal/illegal check, and a mindset that puts a premium on Power Plays, so that the players often depend upon the officials and the sometimes-esoteric nuances of the rulebook to defend them rather than relying on their wits; they've abrogated their responsibility to protect themselves.

The second cultural flaw in modern hockey is the idea of The Pest. This type of player is also known as 'The Lunchbucket Guy', 'The Sandpaper', 'The Antagonizer', 'The Energy Guy' (not to be confused with The Goon or Enforcer, who's job is to protect his teammates) and his is a specialized skill within the confines of hockey. His job to go out onto the ice and be a total jerk. This role has been immortalized by both the hockey media and by a generation of coaches who spend more time studying Sports Psychology than they do hockey. The idea is take advantage of the fact that in the normal course of the game raw emotion is sometimes provoked. The Sandpaper Guy is supposed to go out and deliberately provoke those raw, emotional, responses from other players, and thus, take a punch or a slash and draw penalties against an opponent. It's a specialized skill; you need to be part bully, part psychologist, part asshole.

As a tactic, it's brilliant. However, when a kid has come up through the hockey ranks convinced that the only way he can 'make it' in the NHL is to be a borderline-dirty player, it becomes a hard habit to break. He's trained and encouraged to start trouble, and depending upon his level of maturity he may not know when to stop. And when you can't draw that flash of emotion with a simple slash across the ankles, or a push, because the other players have become more disciplined and taught not to take penalties, you have to take greater, and more drastic action, to justify your existence. The borderline-dirty play now becomes your bread and butter.

There's also a Code of Machismo in the game, much like the Samurai Code, which states that any injury that doesn't result in a jagged bone sticking out of a bloody hole in a limb, or having a vital organ knocked out of your body, is something you should just 'skate off'. Failure to live up to this code lessens a player's reputation for toughness amongst his peers, and one school of thought says that players who succumb 'too easily' to injuries make themselves targets. Hockey players routinely play with broken bones, stitches in their face, snapped-off-at-the-base teeth, black eyes, broken noses or dislocated joints quickly snapped back into place by crack medical and training staffs; they're simply stitched up, shot full of Novocaine, and sent back out on the ice. In fact, they often beg to be returned to play as quickly as possible by the medical staff. Part of this Machismo Code states that short of being knocked unconscious, you should make every effort to play with a severe head injury so as to not be labeled a pansy.

Then there are the circumstances of the modern game to consider when it comes to injury and head trauma; it's faster than it's ever been before, the players are bigger than ever before (there are, to my knowledge, approximately 20 players that I can name off the top of my head who are over 6' 4", and/or weigh in excess of 230 pounds), and when you take into consideration some of the changes in the last two decades (detachable nets, equipment improvements, removal of the red line, the stupid trapezoid, seamless glass, the inability to slow down a forechecker, the two-ref system, the instigator penalty, and the return of the Little Man to the game) what's amazing is not that every so often there's a fight, or someone gets run into a partition, but that someone doesn't get killed more often.

The problems with the Chara/Pacioretty hit break down like this:

1. Pacioretty took a bad path to the puck. Instead of using the other 80' of the ice that he could have to skate around Chara, he tried to squeeze himself between Chara and the boards. He did this because he's been trained to know that even if he doesn't get to the puck, he's more than likely to draw a penalty on Chara for obstructing his progress. Twenty years ago, Paciroetty would have taken a different route to the puck, but nowadays the players are looking for penalties (Sabermetrics has invaded hockey! Arrrgh!). If you don't know anything about hockey, learn that much, at least; sometimes, the quickest way to the puck is also the quickest way to get your head smashed in.

2. Chara is 6' 9" -- without skates -- and about 260 pounds. Pacioretty is 6' 2" and is listed at 203 pounds. If Chara puts his arms up to take or to deliver a hit, he's pretty much going to hit everyone on the ice in the head. Pacioretty has compounded his original mistake (different route to the puck)by trying to out-muscle a player 7 inches taller and 57 pounds heavier. That's like trying to stop a runaway tractor trailer with a Jack Russel Terrier...only less funny.

3. Neither player appears to be aware of their position on the ice. The area around the benches is perhaps the most dangerous spot on the entire ice surface, other than being directly in front of the goals. Nothing good ever happens there; players collide with one another during line changes, players get hit and propelled into the benches, players get hit and have the bench gates suddenly open on them as they're falling, sometimes a player gets run into an open bench gate with hip or head, and now in this case, Pacioretty gets himself run into the partition that separates the two benches and provides a spot for a color commentator and some photographers to get a better look at the action. If you took that little booth out, it doesn't do much good, because you still have to keep the teams physically separated when not on the ice, and there would still be a partition there.

The real issue the NHL has to deal with is not a bunch of guys fighting, or someone getting hurt as the result of the natural flow of the game; it's the douchebag who goes around hitting people from behind, or taking a liberty with another player in a vulnerable position because 'it's his job' to 'stir things up'.

Players like (each has video linked) Sean Avery, Matt Cooke, Trevor Gillies have serious issues with the concepts of respect and boundaries. They do what they do because it's what they get paid to do, and because that's how they got to into the league and how they stay there, and they give no thought to how this affects everyone they come into contact with. In the case of Avery, the league actually -- in a backhanded way which I think is almost unconscious -- protects them. Mario Lemieux (owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins) can complain all he wants about the thuggery in the Modern Game, but I don't recall him being so critical when Jay Caufield (and others) was there to fight his battles, and he has one of the worst offenders (Cooke) on his payroll. His real issue is that his multi-million-dollar Golden Boy (Sidney Crosby) isn't on the ice because of an accidental hits, and because the Islanders beat the snot out of his team (which has a roster of fighters of it's own that is quite formidable) one night in February.

This issue isn't going to be resolved by a public outcry over 'gratuitous violence'; it's going to be corrected when the Matt Cookes, Trevor Gilles' and Sean Averys of the world lose their jobs. What they do is NOT hockey. The public which cries about this level of violence is the same public which mostly knows nothing about hockey, made NASCAR and MMA two of the fastest-growing 'sports', and which routinely looks the other way when yet another NFL player is hauled off on domestic violence or murder charges. Even the causal hockey fan loves a good fight or a hard bodycheck, and so long as everything is legal, the combatants are willing, and the fisticuffs are a result of the natural flow of the game, it's all to the better.

What you need to do is not condemn the sport, only the assholes who don't play it properly. Hockey players will sort this out themselves, and it will, unfortunately, require that certain guys get beatings on the ice. That's the purpose of a hockey fight, after all: to let so-and-so know he can't get away with what he's just tried to get away with. Once a guy takes enough knuckles to the head, he starts to get the message and the stupidity stops. If the league wasn't so worried about it's image, it would take out the stupid Instigator Rule and not have the officials rush to break up skirmishes, and let the players police themselves; whenever the league tries to clamp down on fighting, we get more of this sort of thing.

And that 'image' they were trying to clean up by clamping down on fighting gets tarnished because we've taken the violence to a whole 'nuther level. And morons who know nothing tsk-tsk and tut-tut, start their preaching... and then go and watch WWE when no one is looking.

On Busybody Moms

Today being Mother's Day, while we're all focused on the sainted ideals of motherhood, I'd like to give those Mothers who deserve it a round of applause; Motherhood is not an easy thing, and the successful mothers (defined as having raised anything that doesn't put safety pins through it's cheeks, doesn't screw daschunds, doesn't go on a killing spree, doesn't live on the public dole, and has at least earned a GED) deserve much credit and respect.

The Unsuccessful Mothers (defined as someone who simply happened to be in the room at conception and carried to term, but otherwise bore no responsibility for or towards her offspring) should be taken out and shot. Of course, that won't happen; to suggest it would have me identified as a sexist, and we know what happens to men who get the "sexist" label -- ugly, mental chicks and militant lesbians will refuse to talk to you, and might even call you names. This rather bizarre form of "punishment" almost invites more sexism, but most women were never exactly noted for their linear thinking skills (oh dear...I've gone and done it again!). I digress...

I would like to reserve a special brand of approbation, however, for a specific class of Mothers. Everyone knows one of these women...and secretly hates them. In fact, we harbor dark dreams about their untimely demise, or perhaps we have disturbing mental pictures about what we'd like to see happen to them (admission; the one I'm thinking about right now is the source of many a snuff dream!). I'm talking about the Busybody Mom.

The Busybody is into everyone else's business and uses her concern for her offspring as her justification. She does this because her own life is probably lacking in purpose beyond her children, or she's horribly stuck in the present, or she just needs a hobby. The worst sort is the Busybody Mom who turns this particularly horrible trait (i.e. annoying others by making impossible and ridiculous demands upon them) into a career.

To illustrate the point, how about a woman who decides that the local library is peddling smut to children, and having gotten no satisfaction by asking the library to engage in an act of unofficial censorship by pulling the "offending" books (or making certain they don't fall into the clutches of children) decides that the best thing to do is to check the books out of the library herself... and then never return them.

Problem solved, right? Well, no. The question of whether or not something is "smut" has already been answered; The Supreme Court of the United States basically said that one woman's "smut" is someone else's "Free Speech", unless it's so outrageous as to cause reasonable people to come to a consensus about it's potentially harmful effects. Now, as to the logic behind stealing library books I suppose it is better than burning them in the public square, but it is theft, and it presupposes that other parents and readers are unable to cope with the implications of a book that someone else has deemed inappropriate for them. She (the thief) presumes to speak for society based upon her own internal belief system. The example she's setting for her children -- that sometimes stealing is okay, so long as you use God or the cause of decency as your justifications -- somehow eludes her in her single-minded quest to make sure her pre-teen daughter doesn't read Judy Blume or something.

Usually these cases (the one above is a true story, incidentally) get some media attention; and the asshole who steals library books manages to turn her personal crusade into a career. She turns her new-found media stature into a gig as an overnight-expert on "smut" and library censorship, and then she gets it in her head to start a Foundation or Council or Commission -- which usually has the word "Family" or "American" in it -- so that dopey religious freaks, or ultra-left-libtards who both see it for the totalitarian organization it's really intended to be -- will fund it to the hilt, depending upon which side of the issue she's on. Thus, her momentary panty-bunching over a book becomes a lucrative career that doesn't result in much of a useful product or service.

This is but one example. There's a host of others, like the woman who continually shows up on FoxNews (Meme Roth. I call her the Sugar Nazi) to decry the outrageous amounts of salt, sugar, caffeine, MSG, cardboard, Styrofoam, rare earths, plankton and non-ferrous metals in everything we eat. This woman drives me absolutely batty because her answer to every question of good nutrition and better public health is either to outlaw something, or to put it under government control. It wouldn't surprise me if she was in favor of registering every Hershey Bar in America as a deadly weapon. She believes that because her ideas about health and eating are superior to everybody else's that the rest of us should be compelled (by law, if necessary) to follow her example.

I'd like to force-feed her Twinkies until her eyes burst from her head, personally.

You can usually tell the Busybody Mom from a distance; she's the one who's overly enthusiastic...about everything...and who is easily carried away by her own (one or more of the following): doubts, fears, ignorance, desire for complete safety, desire for attention, feelings of inadequacy, and total lack of anything more constructive to do. She's all about controlling your life and behavior from a distance for her own satisfaction and comfort. She hides all of this behind a veneer of apparently restless energy which is directed into campaigns "for the children". She's the Stepford Wife on Crusade. She seems reasonable, if over-enthusiastic, but you somehow "know" that behind closed doors she's probably this-close to taking an overdose of sleeping pills, and her husband is probably thinking about his secretary, the chick at the Coffee Shop, or basically anything with breasts and a heartbeat -- and maybe even other men -- so long as it's anyone who isn't his pre-occupied and perhaps-insane wife.

The Busybody Mom typically ruins her child's life in the process of trying to make it better. Mostly because she's a smothering presence. She's not only successful in imparting her neuroses into her own children, but in transferring them to other Mothers who will implant them into their children, too. If that wasn't enough damage done, occasionally these idiots happen to achieve a power far out of proportion to their actual importance, and get a law written, or changed, or even manage to have a government policy redirected to suit their tastes. Because one Mom might have an issue with her child drinking soda, now millions will have to suffer for it as she manages to get the government to put taxes on it, or worse, starts dictating to the soft drink industry what can and can't be in a can of Pepsi. If Pepsi should happen to go bankrupt in the process because they produce an inferior product no one will buy afterwards, or from lawsuits, a "greater good" will still have been served, and "Children" will have been "protected" from "poison".

And the world becomes a little less enjoyable and colorless for the rest of us, but it was never about us in the first place, so who really gives a shit? Nosey Nancy got her way.

The Busybody Mom also can't shut up. About anything. Even things she obviously knows nothing about. Not only is she an "expert" on whatever her pet peeve is, she's an expert on everything else, too, and just can't help but add her two cents to every conversation within earshot. I met one of those yesterday and I'd very much like to crush her skull like a ripe tomato. I'm pretty sure something resembling the jelly-like-seedy-pulpy mess that comes out of a tomato is probably the only thing keeping her own skull from caving in.

This woman's pet peeve was skateboards and scooters. She went on and on about them, telling me how, despite the fact that her child wears a helmet, knee-and-elbow pads, and probably five layers of bubble wrap, he still managed to fall off the skateboard twice, breaking bones in both instances. Instead of realizing the obvious -- her kid is a fucking klutz -- she's been lobbying to get the skateboard and scooter manufacturers to add "safety features" (short of training wheels what safety feature could you put on a skateboard? Seat belts? Air Bags?), but more than anything else, she's been lobbying YouTube to stop allowing people to post their skateboard and scooter videos -- because that's what inspired her son to go out and break his leg and his collarbone.

So, not only is he a klutz, he's probably a moron, too. Imitating the death-defying stunts on YouTube that require a lot of dexterity, nerve, and a high pain threshold is probably not the best use of your time, nor is it a test of genius. But now, according to his Mom, everyone else should have to suffer for it -- those who enjoy skateboarding and scootering, those who watch YouTube, those that design, buy and sell skateboards, scooters and the safety equipment -- all because her son is a fucking retard with less-than-optimum motor skills and no self-preservation instinct. The real solution (take the skateboard away from the kid) might cause him a trauma (and paint her as the bad guy in her child's eyes), and so the only "fair" answer to her dilemma is to fuck up everyone else's life and livelihoods so that her brittle-boned-uncoordinated-would-be-daredevil doesn't have his precious self-esteem damaged. In reality, he will be damaged because he'll be embarrassed and humiliated by a mother who continually overreacts and leaps to his (imagined) defense at the drop of a hat.

You'll be happy to know this particular woman is also an expert on ice hockey, terrorism, heart disease, interior decorating, home improvement and construction, and chemistry, because all of those subjects came up in polite conversation as well, and she always had something to say on them, too. None of it made any sense, but you were expected to take her word as Bible-Truth, in any case. Oh, and she had that vapid, vacant smile, and the most annoying laugh -- being half-screech-half-snort -- that would be considered a justification for murder in about 11 states.

So, to the Busybody Mom, I raise not my Champagne flute in homage, but my middle finger in rebuke to you this Mother's Day. And I would like to remind you that life is much easier for all involved when we all learn to mind our own fucking business.

Finally, The Olympics are Over...

Because another day of watching curling (even if they do have hawt babes) would have set me on a murder spree. Another day of the Lindsey Vonn soap opera might have induced a coma. Watching a bunch of homosexuals leap around on ice skates holds absolutely no interest whatsoever. The constant, relentless display of Canadian Political Correctness, right down to the contrived Inuit-themed symbology, is enough to make you want to pluck out your eyeballs.

These Olympics had but one redeeming quality, as, alas, all Winter Olympic Games do:

The hockey.

Hockey, at least, is a real sport. Not like that collection of slacker games with snowboards and pot-smokers. Not like those batshit-crazy stunts that involve little sleds and, unfortunately, dead Georgians. A sport is defined, by me, as a competition in which there's an opponent, that opponent plays defense, the two competitors are likely to make physical contact in which bones may be broken, there are a set of definite skills that doesn't include the ability to wear sequin-covered spandex, and which doesn't depend upon gravity in order to propel the competitors; they're using their own muscle power.

Now, I have to say this: the hockey in these games was absolutely awesome. Even the Women's Hockey, which I thought was a joke (I still think it is. How can you play hockey without body checking? Children play this way.), but I have to give those ladies thier props; they put in a tremendous effort, they work so hard, and they displayed an awful lot of skill and guts. So much so, that it was almost not-so-weird to watch women playing hockey. I wouldn't go out of my way to find a women's game again, but it was rather entertaining.

As for the Men's hockey, well, how much better does it get than watching Alexander Ovechkin flatten an old and fat Jaromir Jagr at center ice?

(Ed. Note: I tried to upload a video of that open-ice check, but the International Olympic Committee has copyrighted the image. So much for the games being about the spirit of competition, and not money, right?)

The Russian team disappointed me. The Czech Republic intrigued me, and was, if I can admit to a guilty pleasure, my favorite team (I'm a big fan of Patrick Elias), and the combination of Zach Parise/Jamie Langenbrunner for the U.S. Team was everything I love about the sport (Hey, did you notice something? The three players I've named all play for the same team...I wonder, could that be MY favorite team, mayhap?). The Swiss Team was great. The Swedes left me shaking my head. Even watching Germany and Latvia get crushed, there was still some great hockey being played on that ice.

Am I happy that the Canadian swept the Gold Medals in hockey? Hell no. The Canadian Women deserved their medals, I think, and so there's no beef there. The Canadian Men, however, got extremely lucky. Today, all over Canada, newspaper articles are being written about the "greatness" of Roberto Luongo, just as they have been for the last decade (why the Press in Canada continues to beat the drum for a goalie who has always choked in big games is beyond me. Team Canada;s best goalies were on the bench) but the sad truth is this: Roberto Luongo is a loser, always has been, always will be, who was bailed out by one of the top three skill players in the world -- Sidney Crosby.

Sid the Kid...well, I hate him with a passion -- because he's the biggest crybaby on the ice -- but you have to admit that he plays a real pretty game of hockey. That guy has got game. And it's appropos that when the gold medal was on the line, that Canada's greatest player since Gretzky should score the winning goal. Congratulations to Team Canada, Monsieurs and Mademoiselles.

There is the possibility that we won't see professional (at least not NHL-professional) hockey players in the Olympics again. Personally, I can seee why they're here in the first place; I guess with no more Cold War there has to be some sort of draw to make the games interesting and to justify the expense. The current Great World Conflict -- between Civilization and Islam -- can't fill the shoes of the Old U.S.-Soviet ideological conflict, if only because Saudi Arabia doesn't field a hockey team, and you can't do a triple-Lutz in a burhka, hence professional players in what's supposed to be the amateur arena.

I think the league should reconsider that proposition. It's talent, spread across every team in the competition, could get no better showcase. And yes, even if you do have to stop your season for three weeks to accommodate the Olympics, it's worth it because you have no real national television contract in the United States, but people will watch Olympic Hockey, and they'll become fans.

Just like I did in 1980. I grew up in a city that had both the New York Rangers and New York Islanders in their heyday, and as a child played roller hockey in the street, but never watched a hockey game on TV religiously until Al Micheals screamed "Do you believe in miracles?" I've been hooked ever since. Most people who have never watched hockey or followed hockey become fans in much the same way; I can't tell you how many hockey fans I know who weren't until they actually went to a game and saw it close up and personal for the first time.

Anyways, perhaps we could just drop all the bobsledding, cross-country skiing, and 10-year-old, anorexic girls on skates, and 42-pound stones and brooms, and just make the Winter Olympics a three-week-long hockey tournament? Because that was awesome!

I Could Kiss a Liberal Today...

It's just one of those days. They come so rarely. I'm actually happy this morning, because I've had a wonderful weekend.

The Jets beat the San Diego Chargers. Great game, and a stunning upset. You'll note that unlike in some American cities, when our football team wins a playoff game (the first one in many years) we don't riot and destroy other people's property.

I had a lovely day with my 4-year-old nephew yesterday. Legos, Wii, Spongebob and ice cream. Does it ever get any better? Dare we dream?

Got some more irons in the fire job-wise, some of them looking very good, indeed, over the long term. Despite this bad economy, I'm still determined to get "Fuck-You rich" and then rub it in the face of every ex-boss, and ex-girlfriend I've ever had. Fuck-you rich is defined as "even if you taxed 90% of my income, I would still have enough money left over to buy-and-sell you a hundred times over, Sucker!".

And if that wasn't enough, I got hockey on television this afternoon. My Devils are on at 1:00. Nothing better than to celebrate MLK Day with the Whitest Sport on Earth!

I can only hope that liberal I finally kiss has D-cups and no gag reflex, but maybe that's too much to ask?

Why Did It Take a Canadian to Write This?

David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen takes a swipe at feminism, terrorism, airport (in-)security, Islamonazis, political correctness and the devaluation of the manly virtues...in one fell swoop.

And it's got hockey, too? I think I just had an orgasm....

This is required reading! Pass it on to everyone you know.

(H/T FiveFeetofFury)