The NHL - Still Run by Pondscum

And so another shining example of NHL Front Office fraud and corruption has laid itself at our feet. This time in the form of a $10,000 fine to head coach Lindy Ruff after Thursday's melee.

Now, it's not the fine I take issue with. Ruff did exercise poor discretion after the game in telling the press he essentially told his guys to "go out and run 'em." He may simply have forced the NHL's hand.

The fraud and corruption comes in when we consider A) the extent of the fine, B) compare it to the $100 fine given to Ovelchuk for his viscious, very dangerous hit-from-behind on Daniel Briere, and finally C) the total lack of consequences administered to our dear friends in Ottawa.

You see, Ottawa had clearly lost the momentum in the game. They wanted it back, and in a fashion very typical of players of his ilk, Chris Niel thought the best way to do that was to kill somebody. Somebody turned out to be team captain, class-act, and widely respected around the league player Chris Drury, who had already fired a shot and now had his head turned away from the charging bull who was steaming towards him with blood in his eyes and foam on his lips. Drury was helpless, and Neil tried to decapitate him.

So many Senators fans make the argument that the hit was clean. "Clean" is a relative word ... in this case meaning that it was not breaking any current NHL rules. So yes, it was clean in the same sense that Kasparitis' low hip-check to the knee on Tim Connolly last season was clean. Here "clean" is simply a word used to describe a vicious, inexcusable hit with clear intent to inflict pain, that simply happens to keep elbows or sticks out of the equation.

Because the bottom line was that it was a late blow, delivered to a vulnerable player, and it was delivered intentionally to the head, whether it was a shoulder or an elbow that did the damage.

Not that anybody should be surprised. Neil is exactly the kind of player that is a wart on the raging, masculine erection that is the NHL. He is a shameless headhunter ... a player whose sole purpose is inflicting pain, and who never even tries to disguise this fact. What was it Neil himself said after the game ... oh yah, he said, "there's a reason I lead the NHL in hits." What a guy.

But Ottawa's shame is not limited to this player alone. No, it extends to all levels, all the way up to coach Bryan Murray, who had this very emotional thing to say ... "Ssch, sshhh, chxsh, shishle, shrrxxx, shhsch!!!!!!!"

And in between his incoherent, jackass slobberings, he managed to make some other fine points ... such as the only reason Drury was injured was because "his helmet wasn't fastened properly," and how shocked he is that Lindy would send out his goons to go after the talented players. The latter of these comments I shall deal with further ... the former - well, they are just among the most inane, mistifyingly stupid words I've ever heard come out of professional sports.

Cheers to the Ottawa spin machine, by the way. They certainly have done a fantastic job making Lindy Ruff and Buffalo seem like the bad guys. A neutral observer might almost be tempted to think that all that happened was a star player was nearly decapitated, and his team wanted to come out and send a message ... "don't fuck with us!" Nope. Thanks to the brilliant machinations of the Senators, we have all learned that it was a clean hit, that Drury should keep his head up, and that the Sabres are the type of criminals who would then send out huge goons to attack the innocent finesse players on the other team.

All of which begs the question ... who in their right fucking mind puts out their star players on the very next shift when he hears the fans going insane, sees Lindy incenses and screaming at the referees, and knows Drury is now back in the lockerroom bleeding all over everybody and everything that comes within six feet of him? Clearly Murray is either savagely retarded, or he is a manipulative, scheming prick.

Given the length and success of his career, we're inclined to go with option B - he's a scheming prick. Because sure enough ... Lindy and the Sabres are out for some physical payback on the next shift, which leaves Murray free to go prancing out to the media and put on his best "thunderously indignant" face, and bitch about how these clowns attacked his best players and Buffalo has no class.

Which brings us back to Lindy's fine. Well, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong here, but it seems to me that two coaches made two separate decisions about who was going out on the ice next. And even if Lindy has the last line change by virtue of being at home, as anybody whose watched hockey for more than two weeks can tell you, Murray didn't exactly have to consult a psychic to know which players Lindy was going to put out. That puts the responsibility for Mair and Peters going after Heatley and Spezza on Murray ... he deliberately put them in a hostile and aggressive situation so that he could deflect criticism away from Neil's cowardly attack on Drury by putting the aggressor status on Buffalo.

So fine ... Lindy gets a black eye here for being an honest, emotional guy, while the manipulative prick wins the post-game spin session. That's usually how these things go.

On a side note ... I'm reminded of an incident several seasons ago when a goaltender was bumped into. The goaltender's coach deemed the play to be cheap, and so he sent out his goons to fight the Jarome Iginla line of Calgary (the first line). Yes, that coach was indeed Bryan Murray. So in addition to being a scheming asshole, he is also apparently a scheming asshole who is a hypocrite. Selah.

Back to our main point, however ... the league has once again punished the wrong person. Or at least not punished enough people. We've had too many examples over the years that have shown Gary Bettman to be a mindless, savagely deranged psychopath, and this is already the second time this year his front office has done Buffalo a great injustice. First, Ovechkin is given a $100 fine for a brutal, potentially disasterous hit on Daniel Briere that sends him face and neck-first into the boards. Now it intercedes on Thursday night's proceedings only to give Lindy a $10,000 fine for "putting out his tough guys against the other team's top line," as if this is actually a punishable offense.

Cheers to Gary Bettman! The NHL has gone from a more popular national sport than the NBA to not even hardly garnering a mention on ESPN during his tenure, and if we're lucky we'll continue to be treated to the greatest trainwreck in the history of crumbling entertainment industries.

Fuck you Gary Bettman, fuck you Colin Campbell, fuck you Bryan Murray, and go fuck yourself Chris Neil. You are worth less than a pocketfull of pondscum, the lot of you.

Sherry Sees a Shrink (or: A Shrink Gets the Screaming Shit Scared Out of Him/Her)

By Michael J. Sherry



I must apologize, doctor, for the lack of progress we have made since I began this ridiculous adventure. No, don’t take me the wrong way. I know you’re trying to help, and I admit that you are a learned and professional therapist. But you’ve said it yourself. I’m a tough coconut to split. But I have decided to take your advice. Since, on account of my ridiculous mumbling and stammering, we are unable to touch on anything of significance during our sessions, I will now try to write some thoughts down for you and maybe it will be somewhat clearer. Perhaps you will be able to make something – anything – of it.

So now ... by means of profoundly rational processes ... I shall find the explanation for my madness (i.e. nervousness, sleeplessness, and socially unacceptable behavior (i.e. the drinking, the shouting, and the savage aggression wreaked upon inanimate objects):

I'll keep this as simple as possible (and by "simple as possible" I really mean "difficult as hell" but sort of less "difficult as hell" as the undertaking really calls for. Its sort of like saying let's send the space shuttle to Mars as "simply as possible," and then launching into years of mathematically profound complexities of indecipherable nature and finding - aggravatingly of course - that this is the simplest means of reaching such an end). Sameness and so-called "equality" of various things (i.e. personality, philosophy, fuck-sprees, etc.) is a democratic way of paving a tennis-court-society (that is to say a flat, featureless one) where everyone stumbles about - smugly and confidently, of course, while inwardly fearing little crevices and blemishes, shaking at the very thought, terrified that destiny is fucking bullshit and free-will is just as equally bullshit, and that maybe Jean-Paul Sartre was right about a few more things than we'd like to give him credit for - with faces like basketballs and futures (hopefully) like a Meg Ryan movie (puke!) or (more realistically) like something similar to James' "The Beast in the Jungle" - that is to say waiting and waiting, and then ... So that's what we're looking at here. Well, what options have we, doctor? A way out, that's what we have! But how? Okay, well, like, the shortest route between two points A (here) and B (where we're going) is a straight line, right? (Incidentally, that's not what I'm doing here, and maybe I should. Sit here, in silence, in the dark, and say - oh, well, everything is an image of an image of an image, and that's the problem. But no, I'm sitting here, listening to fucking Syd Barrett of all people, sipping a glass of Sherry (yes, I've finally taken that step ... name: Sherry, drink: Sherry - more specifically TAYLOR Dry Sherry (chilled) and its pretty good, though not great (its no whiskey) and trying ... successfully, unsuccessfully, I won't speculate ... trying to explain madness in terms of rational processes, a contradiction right off the bat. So naturally this all sounds a little mad, and then on top of that I'm trying to think lucidly while the mindless Syd Barrett plays his bizarre, equally mindless solo shit in my ear ("Floating, bumping, noses dodge a tooth/the fins a luminous/fangs all 'round the clown/is dark below the boulders hiding all/the sunlight's good for us/'Cause we're the fishes and all we do/the move about is all we do" - Terrapin, from "The Madcap Laughs") and I'm drinking a cold glass of Sherry (18% alc.). You call that a fucking straight line???) So - getting back to it all now - what's the shortest way, the "straight line" as it were? Embrace Sartre? No, it's an extreme, and besides, it’s just another image. The image of "YOU, THE NIHILIST!" Right? So maybe look inward and say "whose really there?" Cliché. And ... yes ... an image. And further ... it's you (presumably something inspired by the "inside" version of you) that's doing the "looking inside" and so it's like trying to see your own face, which, sadly, is something you can never do. You can see an IMAGE of it in a mirror. You can see it electronically reconstructed on film. You can always see the image of the image of the image ... But can you ever look at your own face out of your own fucking eyes? Never. (Yah, shit, I know this may all sound like a lot of deconstruction jargon ... "Sherry, there you go deconstructing all of these constructions!" Sure, but what I'm also doing - more significantly, I think, but that's me - is deconstructing deconstructions with equal profundity and genius unleashed (limping genius, maybe, but something resembling it at any rate. And optimistic genius too, doctor ... genius with wood, if you want). So what's sacred, if anything? Do we look to find something to break out of this cycle? This wheel of "that's all bullshit, and no don't give me that nonsense cause that's all bullshit too" deconstruction of construct... well I'm repeating myself. But I hope I've clarified). So the truth is you can't know the truth, even if there is something like it (which I'm skeptical about, but I'll try and stop with the commentary). That means ... quite possibly ... the wheel keeps spinning and we can't find a positively charged notion to fling us from it. Construction failed. Deconstruction failed. Deconstructing deconstruction will ultimately do the same. So (getting back to it now) maybe the only way to purge yourself from this spinning maelstrom of nonsense is simply to swim with it while facing backwards (WHAT!!??) Let me explain. You CAN'T get out of it. But that doesn't mean you can't give the impression you are trying, right? (Boy, this Sherry is really good, by the way. And now I'm listening to "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" which was Pink Floyd's first album in 1967, when Syd Barrett still had something resembling a brain, and acid hadn't brought a horrifying sort of life-in-death to him just yet. Amazing album, by the by). But the swimming against it (or, rather, pretending to) while really letting the current take you is just another image: the image of you swimming against. Translation - more bullshit. You're only contributing to the maelstrom. So that's not the answer. So here's the crux - I AIN'T GOT IT FIGURED OUT YET!! But as far as I can tell, the best thing to do is embrace the image of your choice, learn it, master it, pray to the image - and burn in your skin making the rest of the goddamn world think it ain't a fucking image. Be an actor. The end. (Post-script: Ultimately, we might find an answer when we can truly understand what is meant by a "straight line" in spatial terms, where everything (distance, time, matter) is bent and really not straight at all (at least not the way we think of what it means to be straight). Put more simply - when you fly a "straight" route from Earth to Mars, you're actually flying in a lot of circles (orbits) because both Spheres are moving. It's not like walking from one fixed point to another. That, I think, is what complicates this whole fucking matter. Either that, or its just a lot more bullshit and I'm guilty of complicating what I propose to (in theory) solve.)

(By the way - if I'm at all correct (which I'm probably not, its probably just more of the noise I can't get out of my head) I think I just scratched the surface of what might be a good definition for "writing." How? A lot of ways (e.g. complexity/over-simplicity, philosophy/madness, general/personal, public/private, etc. etc. etc.) but mostly, I think, by showing what it IS simply and bottom line (viz., tangible/rational/mathematical treatment of a intangible/irrational/non-mathematical object with the ultimate result of complexifying the object's intangible/irrational/non-mathematical nature. In this case, the rational approach to madness and unsocial behavior, creating more (and also exposing inherent) madness).

(But - maybe that long honking paragraph of pompous trash did exactly what I wanted it to do. Not by anything the words mean, but simply by its very existence. In other words - hear that shit in your head and try not to be a cynical/angry/behaviorally-challenged (at times) individual).

Right, doctor?

(And ... then again ... maybe its genius of the highest variety brought about by the fact that I'm drinking an alcoholic beverage that I share a name with (WHAT A FUCKING COSMIC IRONY!!!!))


~~~~~~THE EEEEEEEEEEEEEND~~~~~~~



Irritated and dog-tired, I remain

Patiently yours,

Michael J. Sherry