The Oshawa Whackers had a season unlike any professional team had ever had in any sport at anytime. They went from a dismal last place finish last year in the Ontario Hockey League to a nearly undefeated season. The franchise had to thank Otto Werner for the turn of events.
Otto was born and raised in Kitchener, Ontario and came from a long line of Germans going back to Prussia. Otto’s grandfather jokingly told Otto at a young age that their family was related to Bismarck and for that reason Otto was named after his great, great uncle by marriage on his mother’s side; Otto Von Bismarck.
At a young age, Otto believed he was born special because he was German and a descendant of the man who was responsible for unifying most of the German-speaking people.
Otto like all young Canadian boys, learned to play hockey and he excelled at it. Otto made it all the way to the NHL and did well at the top level of the hockey world until he was forced to quit due to concussions. Otto had well over five solid concussions during his two years of NHL hockey. Since leaving the NHL, Otto became a coach who knocked around all over Canada at various levels. Otto coached for a few years at Waterloo University and it was while he was at the school that he received a BA in philosophy. At the age of fifty, Otto was the picture of health and virility. Otto ate well, played hockey five days a week, lifted weights, listened to Wagner and studied Friedrich Nietzsche as if he was a god and that is sort of funny since Nietzsche claimed god was dead or worse, never was.
Before the championship game with a 3-0 lead over Guelph after at 74-6 season, Otto made love twice to a young female student who came from a farming community in western Ontario. She read passages of Nietzsche while Otto did pushups naked. Rather than touch his chin to the ground, when his flaccid cock hit the ground, Otto would spring back up. Melanie, with her exposed swollen breasts, full of life, sat on the bed reading a poem out loud which was written by Richard Wagner while Ride of the Valkyries blared on the an actual phonograph.
Is this still German?
Out of a German heart, this sultry screeching?
A German body, this self-laceration?
German, this priestly affectation,
The insense-perfumed sensual Preaching?
Otto stopped Melanie who was not reading the poem as if it was a question but rather a statement. Otto popped two pain pills to stop what he described as broken glass pressing against his brain. Without the pain pills, it felt like shards of glass were digging into his skull. After a glass of German white wine and two pain pills, rough sex and a shower, Otto left for the arena. The young men filed in and began stretching out and taping their sticks. Otto entered wearing a suit with his hands in his pockets. His black hair was slicked back and his eyes made him look as if he was somewhere else all together. The players thought their coach was a whack job and that moniker would be fitting for a hockey coach of a team called The Whackers.
“Between good and evil… Lays victory. Several thousand people from this town will come today to see a victory… A man who says, “I like this, I take this for my own and want to protect it and defend it against anybody”. This is what I have sought in each and every one of you all season long. You trusted me and I believed in you. With so much starvation in the world, what will this victory ultimately mean in the larger scheme of things? Well, not a fucking thing actually to anyone but us. You become a permanent statistic in a book and on a cup so that when we leave this place, it will be noted that on this day, we did something that meant something to several thousand residents of this town and to every man who put everything into achieving something tangible and something memorable. We are less than tiny grains of sand in a cosmos we cannot begin to grasp and yet I must tell you that of all the things in this life that you could undertake, playing ice hockey is among the noblest of occupations. It is a secret we hold dear to our hearts and is our national treasure. It is more than a sport, it is life itself. For those who toil at menial tasks for a pittance to sustain themselves, they always come back to the arena to honour and appreciate those who have mastered the art of working together for a common goal and a greater good which is hockey. Every attainment, every step forward follows from courage, from hardness against oneself. There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too might be admired someday… Simply put, finish off these suffering Guelph bastards. They couldn’t hold your jocks at a Sunday mass. You all are aware of where you stand in the history of modern day sports if you win this game. Where we go from here is not as important today as what we can and will achieve… Fucking bury them and then say a prayer.”
The Whackers won handily and the coach who was a cross between Adolph Hitler and Vince Lombardi, quietly slipped away during all the celebrating. At a hotel off route 401 that runs from north of Toronto to Windsor, a fire broke out. This fire was a magnificent blaze that took firemen from several small towns to help extinguish. News reporters arrived at the scene to interview those that were able to escape. One of the survivors was a man by the name of Otto Werner. He wore a white robe and had his arm around two young women that looked young enough to be his daughters only they weren’t. The news reporter recognized Otto and asked Otto if he was relieved that he made it out alive and then asked what he was doing in a hotel in a town that he lived in. Otto never took his arms off of the young women that were shy in front of the cameras. Otto smiled and grasped the shoulders of the two young women and then kissed them both on their cheeks before speaking.
“Around the hero, everything turns to tragedy…”
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
A Letter From My Son's Hockey Coach or Darwin Was Right
Parents, Please be advised starting with our next game (Jan. 21st) I will go back to having 5 defence and 9 forwards. This will address any issues we have had with trying to keep ice time balanced during a game. In the event we are short players for a game I will do the best I can as a volunteer coach to try and keep it as fair as possible to all our players. This means I will roll the lines to get as even as possible skating time for each child, regardless of how other teams “match” our lines . TRANSLATION- YOU SIGNED UP FOR PARK DISTRICT ICE HOCKEY. THIS IS NOT AAA OR AA AND SO THE PARK DISTRICT HAS PUT A GUN TO MY HEAD BECAUSE OF YOUR COMPLAINTS AND SO I HAVE AGREED TO PLAY EVER KID AS EQUITABLY AS POSSIBLE. IF ANY OF YOUR KIDS EVER MAKE A AAA OR AA LEVEL, YOU WILL SEE WHAT INEQUITABLE IS ALL ABOUT DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE COST FOR YOUR CHILD TO PLAY BETWEEN SEPTEMBER AND APRIL IS EQUIVALENT TO BUYING A USED AUTOMOBILE EACH YEAR OR TAKING A HAWAIIAN VACATION FOR A MONTH. KEEP THAT IN MIND WHEN YOU ARE CRYING.
It has always been my intent to try and keep everyone’s ice time as close as possible while trying to keep competitive with other teams. It is not an easy task to try and get the kids off the ice for a shift change while play is going on. I am always open to suggestions that any one might have , about ANYTHING . If there are any parents that would like to assist in working the bench during a game I would be more than happy to oblige. TRANSLATION- I WILL GIVE YOUR FAT ASS A STOP WATCH AND TELL YOU THAT YOU NEED TO GIVE EACH PLAYER ON THE TEAM EXACTLY 15 MINUTES OF PLAYING TIME AND YOU CANNOT CHEAT AND GIVE YOUR BORED, UNINSPIRED, SPOILED, TALENTLESS LITTLE BRAT, ONE SECOND MORE OF PLAYING TIME THAN ANY OTHERS. WHEN YOU THROW YOUR HANDS UP AND TELL ME IT IS IMPOSSIBLE, I WILL PAT YOU ON THE BACK, GIVE YOU A HAPPY MEAL AND RECOMMEND THAT YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR THE DURATION OF THE SEASON.
Please contact me with any concerns you may have regardless of what they might be . Don’t forget that we follow the 24 hour rule for any complaints to any of the coaches. The intent of that rule is to prevent any “heated” discussions that may cause hard feelings , not to give you time to forget the problem . Level heads solve more problems than hot ones ! Hockey is a journey , not a destination- TRANSLATION- I HAVE A MILLION OTHER THINGS GOING ON IN MY LIFE OTHER THAN COACHING THIS TEAM FOR NO MONEY. I DECIDED TO COACH THIS TEAM BECAUSE MY NIECE IS THE ONLY GIRL PLAYING ON AN ALL BOY SQUAD AND WANTED TO ENSURE THAT HER EXPERIENCE WAS AS POSITIVE AS POSSIBLE GIVEN THAT YOUR HORMONE DRIVEN LITTLE FUCKS ARE THINKING ABOUT LINING HER UP A WHOLE HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN PUTTING A HIT ON AN OPPOSING PLAYER DURING A GAME. WITH THAT IN MIND, WE CAN DISCUSS YOUR CONCERNS AFTER 24 HOURS SO THAT I AM NOT TEMPTED TO ASK YOU TO STEP OUT TO THE PARKING LOT AFTER THE NEXT PRACTICE. I’D ALSO LIKE TO RECOMMEND THAT YOUR SON TAKE UP GOLF BECAUSE THERE IS A LOT LESS PASSING IN GOLF AND HE WON’T HAVE TO FEAR BEING HIT UNLESS HIS ASS IS STANDING ON THE FAIRWAY. I AM FULLY AWARE THAT YOU FEEL YOU COULD COACH THE TEAM A WHOLE LOT BETTER THAN ME. BASED ON THE PARENT/PLAYER GAME THAT WE HAD BEFORE CHRISTMAS, I WOULD HAVE TO CONCLUDE THAT YOU NEVER PLAYED AND ALTHOUGH YOU HAVE SEASON TICKETS TO SEE AN NHL TEAM, I SUSPECT YOU ARE WATCHING THE BEER VENDOR MORE THAN STUDYING THE GAME ENOUGH TO VOICE AN OPINION WORTH CONSIDERING. REMEMBER WHAT DEAN WORMER ONCE SAID IN THE MOVIE ANIMAL HOUSE? “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son” - DON’T BE THAT PERSON.
I hope it will become a life long love your child can someday share with their own kids . There are many skills he will learn along the way . Some children pick up the game easier than others, that doesn’t mean they can’t all have the same amount of fun. See you at the rink- Coach Bob-TRANSLATION- YOUR KID WILL HAVE KIDS ONE DAY PROVIDED THERE ISN’T OCEAN FRONT PROPERTY IN KANSAS WITHIN THE NEXT TWENTY YEARS AND WE GO OUT LIKE THE DINOSAURS. I HOPE YOUR CHILD REMEMBERS YOUR SCREAMING AND BERATING YOU GAVE HIM FROM THE STANDS AND SHUTS HIS FUCKING MOUTH AND JUST SITS AND WATCHES THE GAME. YOUR SON WILL NOT BE IN THE NHL UNLESS HE CHOOSES TO WORK AS AN USHER AND SIT PEOPLE AT AN ARENA. THAT IS AS CLOSE AS HE WILL GET TO WORKING AT AN NHL ARENA. I WOULD SUGGEST YOU ALL READ UP ON DARWIN. YOU MAY GET BORED AND SINCE YOU REALLY DON’T READ MUCH OR UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE READING, PLEASE READ RE-READ. I WOULD STICK TO THE INHERITENCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS. THIS WILL EXPLAIN A LOT TO YOU ABOUT NATURAL SELECTION, SURVIVAL OF THE FITEST AND THAT PHYSIOLOGICAL CHANGES ACQUIRED OVER THE LIFE OF AN ORGANISM MAY BE TRANSMITTED TO OFFSPRING- FURTHER TRANSLATION- WE CANNOT PICK OUR PARENTS. IF YOU ARE UNATHLETIC AND SLOW, DON’T EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM YOUR SON… WHATEVER… I’LL SEE YOU AT THE RINK- COACH BOB
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It has always been my intent to try and keep everyone’s ice time as close as possible while trying to keep competitive with other teams. It is not an easy task to try and get the kids off the ice for a shift change while play is going on. I am always open to suggestions that any one might have , about ANYTHING . If there are any parents that would like to assist in working the bench during a game I would be more than happy to oblige. TRANSLATION- I WILL GIVE YOUR FAT ASS A STOP WATCH AND TELL YOU THAT YOU NEED TO GIVE EACH PLAYER ON THE TEAM EXACTLY 15 MINUTES OF PLAYING TIME AND YOU CANNOT CHEAT AND GIVE YOUR BORED, UNINSPIRED, SPOILED, TALENTLESS LITTLE BRAT, ONE SECOND MORE OF PLAYING TIME THAN ANY OTHERS. WHEN YOU THROW YOUR HANDS UP AND TELL ME IT IS IMPOSSIBLE, I WILL PAT YOU ON THE BACK, GIVE YOU A HAPPY MEAL AND RECOMMEND THAT YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR THE DURATION OF THE SEASON.
Please contact me with any concerns you may have regardless of what they might be . Don’t forget that we follow the 24 hour rule for any complaints to any of the coaches. The intent of that rule is to prevent any “heated” discussions that may cause hard feelings , not to give you time to forget the problem . Level heads solve more problems than hot ones ! Hockey is a journey , not a destination- TRANSLATION- I HAVE A MILLION OTHER THINGS GOING ON IN MY LIFE OTHER THAN COACHING THIS TEAM FOR NO MONEY. I DECIDED TO COACH THIS TEAM BECAUSE MY NIECE IS THE ONLY GIRL PLAYING ON AN ALL BOY SQUAD AND WANTED TO ENSURE THAT HER EXPERIENCE WAS AS POSITIVE AS POSSIBLE GIVEN THAT YOUR HORMONE DRIVEN LITTLE FUCKS ARE THINKING ABOUT LINING HER UP A WHOLE HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN PUTTING A HIT ON AN OPPOSING PLAYER DURING A GAME. WITH THAT IN MIND, WE CAN DISCUSS YOUR CONCERNS AFTER 24 HOURS SO THAT I AM NOT TEMPTED TO ASK YOU TO STEP OUT TO THE PARKING LOT AFTER THE NEXT PRACTICE. I’D ALSO LIKE TO RECOMMEND THAT YOUR SON TAKE UP GOLF BECAUSE THERE IS A LOT LESS PASSING IN GOLF AND HE WON’T HAVE TO FEAR BEING HIT UNLESS HIS ASS IS STANDING ON THE FAIRWAY. I AM FULLY AWARE THAT YOU FEEL YOU COULD COACH THE TEAM A WHOLE LOT BETTER THAN ME. BASED ON THE PARENT/PLAYER GAME THAT WE HAD BEFORE CHRISTMAS, I WOULD HAVE TO CONCLUDE THAT YOU NEVER PLAYED AND ALTHOUGH YOU HAVE SEASON TICKETS TO SEE AN NHL TEAM, I SUSPECT YOU ARE WATCHING THE BEER VENDOR MORE THAN STUDYING THE GAME ENOUGH TO VOICE AN OPINION WORTH CONSIDERING. REMEMBER WHAT DEAN WORMER ONCE SAID IN THE MOVIE ANIMAL HOUSE? “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son” - DON’T BE THAT PERSON.
I hope it will become a life long love your child can someday share with their own kids . There are many skills he will learn along the way . Some children pick up the game easier than others, that doesn’t mean they can’t all have the same amount of fun. See you at the rink- Coach Bob-TRANSLATION- YOUR KID WILL HAVE KIDS ONE DAY PROVIDED THERE ISN’T OCEAN FRONT PROPERTY IN KANSAS WITHIN THE NEXT TWENTY YEARS AND WE GO OUT LIKE THE DINOSAURS. I HOPE YOUR CHILD REMEMBERS YOUR SCREAMING AND BERATING YOU GAVE HIM FROM THE STANDS AND SHUTS HIS FUCKING MOUTH AND JUST SITS AND WATCHES THE GAME. YOUR SON WILL NOT BE IN THE NHL UNLESS HE CHOOSES TO WORK AS AN USHER AND SIT PEOPLE AT AN ARENA. THAT IS AS CLOSE AS HE WILL GET TO WORKING AT AN NHL ARENA. I WOULD SUGGEST YOU ALL READ UP ON DARWIN. YOU MAY GET BORED AND SINCE YOU REALLY DON’T READ MUCH OR UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE READING, PLEASE READ RE-READ. I WOULD STICK TO THE INHERITENCE OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS. THIS WILL EXPLAIN A LOT TO YOU ABOUT NATURAL SELECTION, SURVIVAL OF THE FITEST AND THAT PHYSIOLOGICAL CHANGES ACQUIRED OVER THE LIFE OF AN ORGANISM MAY BE TRANSMITTED TO OFFSPRING- FURTHER TRANSLATION- WE CANNOT PICK OUR PARENTS. IF YOU ARE UNATHLETIC AND SLOW, DON’T EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM YOUR SON… WHATEVER… I’LL SEE YOU AT THE RINK- COACH BOB
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Saturday, November 12, 2011
The Beat Your Ass Cafe
Patrice Fort was born and raised in a really small town that most people never heard of in Alberta. For those of you in the states, Alberta is a province, which is sort of like a state except that it is not a state. The Fort family slowly moved from the Plaines of Abraham near Quebec City and over the years kept moving west like the Mormons in search of a new town called Springfield. The Forts wound up in no place Alberta.
Fort, if you know the French language, means strong and Patrice was the epitome of a Cro-Magnon man of the modern age. Patrice was a hair over six feet tall and weighed 250 lbs. Patrice was a solid mass of muscle like a human pit-bull. At a young age, Patrice learned that his ice hockey skills were mediocre at best. Patrice was not fast and did not make the best decisions on the ice nor did he have the best shot. Patrice was able to fight and from the age of thirteen, Patrice never lost a fight.
The thing that scared people most about Patrice when they were faced with fighting him was that there was no anger or malice. It was just something he was born and bred to do and so he would pummel opponents who messed with the premier players on whatever team he happened to be playing on. It was during juniors that life suddenly changed for Patrice.
Patrice’s Quebec junior team had gone south to New York City to play in a tournament sponsored by some bank that no longer exists in the states. Patrice had never been to a city as large as New York and had never imagined so much humanity crammed into such a small space in a place like Manhattan. Patrice went into a Starbucks and ordered a tall hot chocolate and watched the unique people that walked down the sidewalk near Times Square. From the Starbucks window, for Patrice it was like watching a freak show at the circus. There were so many different types of people, in varying sizes and shapes. An older woman of about sixty years of age came up and spoke to Patrice in a way he had never heard before. Even though the woman was older, she was shapely and confident.
“Many years have come and gone man and you’re one of the last relics of the Neanderthal period, man. All swelled up with muscles and I suppose you never took one supplement… Man, dig that crazy tune.”
Herbie Hancock was playing Cantaloupe Island over the speakers in the Starbucks. The woman put her hand on Patrice’s large forearm and closed her eyes as the song played. Patrice looked at the strange woman and sort of dug the tune that softly played.
“People are always saying that this or that is the shit. I’m here to tell you that this is the true shit, man. You weren’t around when this shit was devised. People were swinging to Benny Goodman and then cats like Herbie came round and opened people’s eyes to music that could speak without words. 1964, we all thought the world would end, man. Kennedy killed and a cowboy with his hands on the nuclear button, man. Beatles came and what did they say? They said too much but listen to this here, man. I know you can feel it, cave man, baby… I bet you’re hung like a horse.”
It was the first time that Patrice had ever had sex with a woman and the woman was older than his own mother and twice as shapely. There were very few sags and lumps on the old Beatnik woman. They made love, if you want to call it that, several time over the course of an afternoon while listening to cool Jazz and hearing the woman read Beat Poetry by Ginsberg and Kerouac. Patrice left the small basement apartment in Manhattan and was never the same.
As the years went on, teammates came to understand that Patrice was a bit out there but they respected the difference. And wouldn’t respect a man who could kill them with his bare hands. On planes and trains, Patrice listened to Coltrane, Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk through earphones and wrote poetry.
What colour is blue when the sky is gray. Walk down the streets of Detroit like I came from Mars, come to visit bars full of coulorful coloured folk and they think they know me because the press wants to own me, ride me, pride me like a pony and it’s phony. Won’t eat gluten. I’m free like Putin who wants to keep Russia from anarchy after the fall of The Wall and Soviet dynamo. The Red Army Team came to town when I was young. Ate biscuits and drank coffee in a vast land. I followed the road from Alberta to everywhere, man. Everywhere is nowhere and yet I’m somewhere between where I should be and where I am. Sit in the shade sipping wine no words to this Monk tune that rolls through my mind. If the colour blue is true, I hold out hope for me and you… Coltrane, last train try in vain… Gonna sit outside in Portugal or Spain and write a few words on the balcony in the rain… Rinse and repeat that, Cat.
Now to you and I, words strung together such as this meant little or nothing. A long stream of unconsciousness. Patrice was traded from Phoenix, to San Jose to Boston and then went to Nashville and landed in Detroit at minimum wage for the NHL. The Detroit Red Wings were a finesse team that really did not need a lug or a goon to go out and fight to protect the true hockey players of the team. The fighters were an outdated necessity from days gone by of clutch and grab hockey a la Philadelphia in the 1970’s. Detroit grabbed Patrice and never really played him until one day against Chicago, a heated rival who happened to be winning the game and taunted the Detroit team. The Detroit coach, Mike Babcock, nodded to Patrice, who on his first shift, beat up two Chicago players and mistakenly punched a referee. From that point on, Patrice had a home in the hearts of Detroit Red Wing fans.
Most people don’t know the story behind the finger snapping when Patrice takes the ice. To those from out of town or watching on Versus, it may sound like the theme from the Adams Family is being played. Before long, large groups of Beatnik poetry types who frequented Patrice’s café in the Detroit suburb of Hamtramck, began going to Detroit Red Wing games, wearing jerseys that had the name FORT on the back. Scruffy faced young men who appeared to be anti-sports, showed up wearing Red Wing jerseys, snapping their fingers violently whenever Patrice got on the ice or fought. Before long, everyone got in on the act. It was like throwing octopus on the ice.
After home games in Hamtramck on Jos Campau there is a Beatnik café where people drink and read poetry to Jazz. It is called, Beat Your Ass Café. It is nothing more than an old Polish watering hole that Patrice bought to host poetry readings and feature live Jazz. On the walls are pictures of some of Patrice’s best fights with the dates and names of opponents. Patrice usually appears after games and reads his latest poetry while young Jazz musicians play behind him and others. It is standing room only after Red Wing games. Dig that.
Fort, if you know the French language, means strong and Patrice was the epitome of a Cro-Magnon man of the modern age. Patrice was a hair over six feet tall and weighed 250 lbs. Patrice was a solid mass of muscle like a human pit-bull. At a young age, Patrice learned that his ice hockey skills were mediocre at best. Patrice was not fast and did not make the best decisions on the ice nor did he have the best shot. Patrice was able to fight and from the age of thirteen, Patrice never lost a fight.
The thing that scared people most about Patrice when they were faced with fighting him was that there was no anger or malice. It was just something he was born and bred to do and so he would pummel opponents who messed with the premier players on whatever team he happened to be playing on. It was during juniors that life suddenly changed for Patrice.
Patrice’s Quebec junior team had gone south to New York City to play in a tournament sponsored by some bank that no longer exists in the states. Patrice had never been to a city as large as New York and had never imagined so much humanity crammed into such a small space in a place like Manhattan. Patrice went into a Starbucks and ordered a tall hot chocolate and watched the unique people that walked down the sidewalk near Times Square. From the Starbucks window, for Patrice it was like watching a freak show at the circus. There were so many different types of people, in varying sizes and shapes. An older woman of about sixty years of age came up and spoke to Patrice in a way he had never heard before. Even though the woman was older, she was shapely and confident.
“Many years have come and gone man and you’re one of the last relics of the Neanderthal period, man. All swelled up with muscles and I suppose you never took one supplement… Man, dig that crazy tune.”
Herbie Hancock was playing Cantaloupe Island over the speakers in the Starbucks. The woman put her hand on Patrice’s large forearm and closed her eyes as the song played. Patrice looked at the strange woman and sort of dug the tune that softly played.
“People are always saying that this or that is the shit. I’m here to tell you that this is the true shit, man. You weren’t around when this shit was devised. People were swinging to Benny Goodman and then cats like Herbie came round and opened people’s eyes to music that could speak without words. 1964, we all thought the world would end, man. Kennedy killed and a cowboy with his hands on the nuclear button, man. Beatles came and what did they say? They said too much but listen to this here, man. I know you can feel it, cave man, baby… I bet you’re hung like a horse.”
It was the first time that Patrice had ever had sex with a woman and the woman was older than his own mother and twice as shapely. There were very few sags and lumps on the old Beatnik woman. They made love, if you want to call it that, several time over the course of an afternoon while listening to cool Jazz and hearing the woman read Beat Poetry by Ginsberg and Kerouac. Patrice left the small basement apartment in Manhattan and was never the same.
As the years went on, teammates came to understand that Patrice was a bit out there but they respected the difference. And wouldn’t respect a man who could kill them with his bare hands. On planes and trains, Patrice listened to Coltrane, Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk through earphones and wrote poetry.
What colour is blue when the sky is gray. Walk down the streets of Detroit like I came from Mars, come to visit bars full of coulorful coloured folk and they think they know me because the press wants to own me, ride me, pride me like a pony and it’s phony. Won’t eat gluten. I’m free like Putin who wants to keep Russia from anarchy after the fall of The Wall and Soviet dynamo. The Red Army Team came to town when I was young. Ate biscuits and drank coffee in a vast land. I followed the road from Alberta to everywhere, man. Everywhere is nowhere and yet I’m somewhere between where I should be and where I am. Sit in the shade sipping wine no words to this Monk tune that rolls through my mind. If the colour blue is true, I hold out hope for me and you… Coltrane, last train try in vain… Gonna sit outside in Portugal or Spain and write a few words on the balcony in the rain… Rinse and repeat that, Cat.
Now to you and I, words strung together such as this meant little or nothing. A long stream of unconsciousness. Patrice was traded from Phoenix, to San Jose to Boston and then went to Nashville and landed in Detroit at minimum wage for the NHL. The Detroit Red Wings were a finesse team that really did not need a lug or a goon to go out and fight to protect the true hockey players of the team. The fighters were an outdated necessity from days gone by of clutch and grab hockey a la Philadelphia in the 1970’s. Detroit grabbed Patrice and never really played him until one day against Chicago, a heated rival who happened to be winning the game and taunted the Detroit team. The Detroit coach, Mike Babcock, nodded to Patrice, who on his first shift, beat up two Chicago players and mistakenly punched a referee. From that point on, Patrice had a home in the hearts of Detroit Red Wing fans.
Most people don’t know the story behind the finger snapping when Patrice takes the ice. To those from out of town or watching on Versus, it may sound like the theme from the Adams Family is being played. Before long, large groups of Beatnik poetry types who frequented Patrice’s café in the Detroit suburb of Hamtramck, began going to Detroit Red Wing games, wearing jerseys that had the name FORT on the back. Scruffy faced young men who appeared to be anti-sports, showed up wearing Red Wing jerseys, snapping their fingers violently whenever Patrice got on the ice or fought. Before long, everyone got in on the act. It was like throwing octopus on the ice.
After home games in Hamtramck on Jos Campau there is a Beatnik café where people drink and read poetry to Jazz. It is called, Beat Your Ass Café. It is nothing more than an old Polish watering hole that Patrice bought to host poetry readings and feature live Jazz. On the walls are pictures of some of Patrice’s best fights with the dates and names of opponents. Patrice usually appears after games and reads his latest poetry while young Jazz musicians play behind him and others. It is standing room only after Red Wing games. Dig that.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Sir, please step out of your vehicle
Any original six match up for me is more appealing than say seeing Phoenix against Tampa Bay. Although the players from both teams are excellent and worthy of playing at the highest rung, if you live in Tampa you should be swimming or jet-skiing and thanking god or Allah that you don’t live in Edmonton. Purely because of the weather, Edmonton is a fine place to live if you don’t mind being cold.
I bought a standing room ticket to see the Chicago Blackhawks play the Detroit Red Wings at Joe Louis. I parked near the Renaissance Center that sits on the river that separates Canada from the United States. I walked over with hoards of Wings fans that were wearing all the current stars and then a few throw backs like Probert and Lapointe: two guys who played on both the Red Wings and Blackhawks who are still loved in Detroit unlike Marian Hossa who comes off as a cup chasing carpetbagger.
I took my place against the wall in the 200 section near center ice and watched the Red Wings essentially give the game away in the first period. Twenty seven seconds into the game, while people were buying beer and urinating before the game really got going, Brent Seabrooks scored. Then somebody by the name of Ben Smith, who is probably no relation to any Smith you know, scored for Chicago next Brian Campbell and then finally, to really put a stake through the hearts of Red Wing fans, Marian Hossa scored a cherry picking goal. My thought was, “What the fuck is going on?”
There was a time when people feared playing in Detroit and lately everyone shows up to get a win. I saw the Red Wings play in early March in Los Angeles at the Staples Center and they destroyed the Kings. A few days later, the Kings came to Detroit to get a pay-me-back.
There is very little more annoying that seeing some fat bastard raising his beer in a Kane or Toews jersey except seeing Boston Red Sox fans in places like Seattle or Chicago Cubs fans anywhere at all. I had to listen to some fuck tell me how great Chicago was but that he was living near Ann Arbor. If I wanted to hear mindless jabber while watching the game, I could have brought a wife. Not necessarily mine but anyone’s who wouldn’t care to watch the game but really needed to talk and be heard. Finally the Chicagoan had to piss and disappeared into a line that was as long as what you might come to expect at a popular amusement park attraction. He might still be waiting.
The game ended, I walked over to Pegasus Restaurant in Greektown. I ate and had a couple of glasses of wine. I then went up to the casino and had a few vodka and cranberries and walked out of the building ahead for a change. Usually the Greeks clean me out. Fatigue got to me before they emptied my pockets.
I drove north on interstate 75 and then east on 696. I exited on Van Dyke in the Detroit suburb of Warren and headed north in the left lane. Most of the streets in and around Detroit are like expressways. They are designed to get you moving and keep moving. The speed limit was 45 mph and I was probably going close to 55 mph when someone coming out of a fast food restaurant on the opposite side of the street, cut in front of me going 5mph. I wanted to turn my car into a monster truck and flatten the stupid, thoughtless, selfish driver who cut me off. This driver forced me to slam on my breaks just so he could hurry home with his fast food at 1am in the morning.
I didn’t have the ability to turn my car into a monster truck or a steam roller and so I decided to pass the guy on the left and then jam on my breaks, forcing him to stop abruptly the way he made me kill the life of my breaks just so that I would not run into him. Just as I passed the selfish driver and cut back into the lane while breaking, I could see flashing lights in all of my mirrors.
The car I was driving had not been entirely killed by my son and daughter but did appear to have lived through a demolition derby or two. If I were a racial profiling cop stopping a beat up Pontiac with no hub caps and dents all over the car, I would guess the driver was released from prison, about to go to prison, carrying open liquor or drugs, a thief, a drug addict, a young black man or a young white man who resembled Kid Rock. He came up to get my license and insurance card and flashed a light in my face. What he saw was a middle aged white guy in a Detroit Red Wings knit hat and a Red Wings t shirt. I wanted to tell him that the beat up Pontiac was my beater car that I drove to downtown Detroit so that nobody would suspect that I have a dime to my name or anything of value within the car that would warrant breaking the windows. It is a perfect automobile to park and walk away from within the city of Detroit without worrying. I wasn’t given the chance to explain that my two teenage children learned how to drive in the car and although it looks like hell, it keeps me from having to use my Dodge Magnum in the winter. None of that mattered to him. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that he was assuming I was an angry old drunk in a beat up car. The conversation went as follows.
Officer- What just happened over there?
Me- You had to have seen the guy pull out from across the street and cut me off.
Officer- I saw that and that was stupid. What you did was illegal and a bit stupid too.
Me- You’re right. I let my anger get away from me.
Officer- You let your anger get away from you because your angry? Maybe cause you were drinking? Where were you tonight? How many drinks did you have?
Since leaving the game, I had four drinks in two hours. Most likely 15% alcohol in the Merlot with dinner and 40% alcohol in the Vodka/cranberry and enough to be considered impaired. My breath was probably flammable. I considered lying to the officer about drinking but then realized he probably smelled something and so I claimed to have one drink at dinner after the game. The officer then invited me to step behind my vehicle with lights flashing and a Mag-light in my face. He asked me to bend one leg and raise the other and count “one Mississippi, two Mississippi” until he told me to stop.
My thought was that even without a drink, I wasn’t sure if I had the balance and strength to not tip over or sway. I took a deep breath and gave myself a pep talk before commencing the test to determine if I was going to drive away or be taken in cuffs to jail.
“I fucking told you years ago about getting out of your car and fighting people in traffic, giving people the finger and cutting them off. You’re driving a shit box car that looks like something you stole from a junk yard and you cut into the left lane to show an asshole that you can be a bigger asshole if forced. Great fucking decision. Now the four to five days a week of ice hockey, squats once a week in the gym, bike riding, elliptical and treadmill running you do whilst watching NHL hockey games in your basement, all these things make really strong thighs. You have strong thighs. Bend your fucking leg and support your total weight without swaying or falling or you will fucking be in jail tonight with someone that probably killed, raped, stole or had drugs in their possession. It will cost you thousands to clear your name, you’ll lose your license, you’ll make the local Warren papers, and you help pay some lawyers college tuition for their child and you’ll need to have some device installed in your car that you need to blow into before it will allow you to drive. Your family will think you’re a bust out at Easter and your boss will wonder what kind of a loser gets a DUI after going to a hockey game, a restaurant and casino. I have total faith in you and know you can do this. Don’t think about the fact that you can feel your heart through your chest and that it is up to 120 beats a minute. You are buzzed but not speaking Portuguese yet. Fucking concentrate and knock this bitch out of the box… Okay, I’ll be in the car if you need me. I can’t bear to watch this.”
“Ten Mississippi, eleven Mississippi, twelve Mississippi…”
I wondered how many Mississippi I would need to count to until I could relax and put my leg down. The officer was staring me dead in the eye as I counted, curled my left toes under and did all I could to be a Pink Flamingo with arms out like an airplane and my right leg up like the Karate Kid. I could feel the sweat trickling down my spine and my left leg shaking out of fear and fatigue. I was up to thirty Mississippi.
“Alright, you can put your leg down. Put your feet together and follow my finger.”
The officer moved his finger from left to right and right to left and then decided to ask me some questions. It was no longer officer to potentially DUI candidate. It was now man to man.
“Is something going on in your life that would make you do that?”
“No, I was just so surprised that someone’s judgment was so poor that they thought going from standing still to cutting in front of a car traveling at nearly fifty miles an hour, was a sane decision. It was a poor decision on my part but I’d like to have had a few minutes with that guy alone. If I were in line for the bathroom at Joe Louis and someone cut in front of me like that, I would have faced washed him in the toilet but it happened in automobiles. That and the Wings lost to Chicago again and I had some random asshole from Chicago talking to me the whole game about his triplets, some dude who makes French bread in Chicago, visiting Denmark and so much more. The only time he stopped talking was to cheer for Blackhawk goals. It was a rough night. I only made it worse.”
The cop then told me to get back into my car. I was prepared for a ticket for illegal lane usage since I passed the drunk test. A minute later, he returned with my license and my insurance card. No ticket, no DUI. He had one last piece of advice for me before cutting me loose.
“Just keep in mind that we have eleven cups and they have three. We will be in the playoffs for the twentieth time consecutively and they will need an act of god to not get bumped at this point… Have a good night. Go Wings.”
I yelled back to him a thank you and received a welcome. As I drove the speed limit towards my bed, I was so appreciative that I was going to bed instead of jail. I was thankful that he asked me to balance on one leg instead of touching my nose or walking a line or counting backwards in Dutch or whatever else they ask drunken people to do before taking them to a holding pen. I needed two sleeping pills before I could sleep as I was wound up and wired. I turned on highlights from around the NHL and MLB and tried to relax. A commercial came on of some suave looking attorney in a suit who offered to get me out of a DUI for a very affordable price, I turned off the television and drifted off replaying the whole event. I felt like the luckiest guy in Warren at that moment. And I was.
The NHL season has concluded today. The Chicago Blackhawks had to sit around television sets and root for the Minnesota Wild instead of living it up at a bar. The Wild were triumphant and the Stars were stymied in their former home town. Dallas gets to go golfing and Chicago gets to prove to Vancouver and fans everywhere that they are still the Stanley Cup champions. It should be an exciting eight weeks of excellent hockey.
I bought a standing room ticket to see the Chicago Blackhawks play the Detroit Red Wings at Joe Louis. I parked near the Renaissance Center that sits on the river that separates Canada from the United States. I walked over with hoards of Wings fans that were wearing all the current stars and then a few throw backs like Probert and Lapointe: two guys who played on both the Red Wings and Blackhawks who are still loved in Detroit unlike Marian Hossa who comes off as a cup chasing carpetbagger.
I took my place against the wall in the 200 section near center ice and watched the Red Wings essentially give the game away in the first period. Twenty seven seconds into the game, while people were buying beer and urinating before the game really got going, Brent Seabrooks scored. Then somebody by the name of Ben Smith, who is probably no relation to any Smith you know, scored for Chicago next Brian Campbell and then finally, to really put a stake through the hearts of Red Wing fans, Marian Hossa scored a cherry picking goal. My thought was, “What the fuck is going on?”
There was a time when people feared playing in Detroit and lately everyone shows up to get a win. I saw the Red Wings play in early March in Los Angeles at the Staples Center and they destroyed the Kings. A few days later, the Kings came to Detroit to get a pay-me-back.
There is very little more annoying that seeing some fat bastard raising his beer in a Kane or Toews jersey except seeing Boston Red Sox fans in places like Seattle or Chicago Cubs fans anywhere at all. I had to listen to some fuck tell me how great Chicago was but that he was living near Ann Arbor. If I wanted to hear mindless jabber while watching the game, I could have brought a wife. Not necessarily mine but anyone’s who wouldn’t care to watch the game but really needed to talk and be heard. Finally the Chicagoan had to piss and disappeared into a line that was as long as what you might come to expect at a popular amusement park attraction. He might still be waiting.
The game ended, I walked over to Pegasus Restaurant in Greektown. I ate and had a couple of glasses of wine. I then went up to the casino and had a few vodka and cranberries and walked out of the building ahead for a change. Usually the Greeks clean me out. Fatigue got to me before they emptied my pockets.
I drove north on interstate 75 and then east on 696. I exited on Van Dyke in the Detroit suburb of Warren and headed north in the left lane. Most of the streets in and around Detroit are like expressways. They are designed to get you moving and keep moving. The speed limit was 45 mph and I was probably going close to 55 mph when someone coming out of a fast food restaurant on the opposite side of the street, cut in front of me going 5mph. I wanted to turn my car into a monster truck and flatten the stupid, thoughtless, selfish driver who cut me off. This driver forced me to slam on my breaks just so he could hurry home with his fast food at 1am in the morning.
I didn’t have the ability to turn my car into a monster truck or a steam roller and so I decided to pass the guy on the left and then jam on my breaks, forcing him to stop abruptly the way he made me kill the life of my breaks just so that I would not run into him. Just as I passed the selfish driver and cut back into the lane while breaking, I could see flashing lights in all of my mirrors.
The car I was driving had not been entirely killed by my son and daughter but did appear to have lived through a demolition derby or two. If I were a racial profiling cop stopping a beat up Pontiac with no hub caps and dents all over the car, I would guess the driver was released from prison, about to go to prison, carrying open liquor or drugs, a thief, a drug addict, a young black man or a young white man who resembled Kid Rock. He came up to get my license and insurance card and flashed a light in my face. What he saw was a middle aged white guy in a Detroit Red Wings knit hat and a Red Wings t shirt. I wanted to tell him that the beat up Pontiac was my beater car that I drove to downtown Detroit so that nobody would suspect that I have a dime to my name or anything of value within the car that would warrant breaking the windows. It is a perfect automobile to park and walk away from within the city of Detroit without worrying. I wasn’t given the chance to explain that my two teenage children learned how to drive in the car and although it looks like hell, it keeps me from having to use my Dodge Magnum in the winter. None of that mattered to him. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that he was assuming I was an angry old drunk in a beat up car. The conversation went as follows.
Officer- What just happened over there?
Me- You had to have seen the guy pull out from across the street and cut me off.
Officer- I saw that and that was stupid. What you did was illegal and a bit stupid too.
Me- You’re right. I let my anger get away from me.
Officer- You let your anger get away from you because your angry? Maybe cause you were drinking? Where were you tonight? How many drinks did you have?
Since leaving the game, I had four drinks in two hours. Most likely 15% alcohol in the Merlot with dinner and 40% alcohol in the Vodka/cranberry and enough to be considered impaired. My breath was probably flammable. I considered lying to the officer about drinking but then realized he probably smelled something and so I claimed to have one drink at dinner after the game. The officer then invited me to step behind my vehicle with lights flashing and a Mag-light in my face. He asked me to bend one leg and raise the other and count “one Mississippi, two Mississippi” until he told me to stop.
My thought was that even without a drink, I wasn’t sure if I had the balance and strength to not tip over or sway. I took a deep breath and gave myself a pep talk before commencing the test to determine if I was going to drive away or be taken in cuffs to jail.
“I fucking told you years ago about getting out of your car and fighting people in traffic, giving people the finger and cutting them off. You’re driving a shit box car that looks like something you stole from a junk yard and you cut into the left lane to show an asshole that you can be a bigger asshole if forced. Great fucking decision. Now the four to five days a week of ice hockey, squats once a week in the gym, bike riding, elliptical and treadmill running you do whilst watching NHL hockey games in your basement, all these things make really strong thighs. You have strong thighs. Bend your fucking leg and support your total weight without swaying or falling or you will fucking be in jail tonight with someone that probably killed, raped, stole or had drugs in their possession. It will cost you thousands to clear your name, you’ll lose your license, you’ll make the local Warren papers, and you help pay some lawyers college tuition for their child and you’ll need to have some device installed in your car that you need to blow into before it will allow you to drive. Your family will think you’re a bust out at Easter and your boss will wonder what kind of a loser gets a DUI after going to a hockey game, a restaurant and casino. I have total faith in you and know you can do this. Don’t think about the fact that you can feel your heart through your chest and that it is up to 120 beats a minute. You are buzzed but not speaking Portuguese yet. Fucking concentrate and knock this bitch out of the box… Okay, I’ll be in the car if you need me. I can’t bear to watch this.”
“Ten Mississippi, eleven Mississippi, twelve Mississippi…”
I wondered how many Mississippi I would need to count to until I could relax and put my leg down. The officer was staring me dead in the eye as I counted, curled my left toes under and did all I could to be a Pink Flamingo with arms out like an airplane and my right leg up like the Karate Kid. I could feel the sweat trickling down my spine and my left leg shaking out of fear and fatigue. I was up to thirty Mississippi.
“Alright, you can put your leg down. Put your feet together and follow my finger.”
The officer moved his finger from left to right and right to left and then decided to ask me some questions. It was no longer officer to potentially DUI candidate. It was now man to man.
“Is something going on in your life that would make you do that?”
“No, I was just so surprised that someone’s judgment was so poor that they thought going from standing still to cutting in front of a car traveling at nearly fifty miles an hour, was a sane decision. It was a poor decision on my part but I’d like to have had a few minutes with that guy alone. If I were in line for the bathroom at Joe Louis and someone cut in front of me like that, I would have faced washed him in the toilet but it happened in automobiles. That and the Wings lost to Chicago again and I had some random asshole from Chicago talking to me the whole game about his triplets, some dude who makes French bread in Chicago, visiting Denmark and so much more. The only time he stopped talking was to cheer for Blackhawk goals. It was a rough night. I only made it worse.”
The cop then told me to get back into my car. I was prepared for a ticket for illegal lane usage since I passed the drunk test. A minute later, he returned with my license and my insurance card. No ticket, no DUI. He had one last piece of advice for me before cutting me loose.
“Just keep in mind that we have eleven cups and they have three. We will be in the playoffs for the twentieth time consecutively and they will need an act of god to not get bumped at this point… Have a good night. Go Wings.”
I yelled back to him a thank you and received a welcome. As I drove the speed limit towards my bed, I was so appreciative that I was going to bed instead of jail. I was thankful that he asked me to balance on one leg instead of touching my nose or walking a line or counting backwards in Dutch or whatever else they ask drunken people to do before taking them to a holding pen. I needed two sleeping pills before I could sleep as I was wound up and wired. I turned on highlights from around the NHL and MLB and tried to relax. A commercial came on of some suave looking attorney in a suit who offered to get me out of a DUI for a very affordable price, I turned off the television and drifted off replaying the whole event. I felt like the luckiest guy in Warren at that moment. And I was.
The NHL season has concluded today. The Chicago Blackhawks had to sit around television sets and root for the Minnesota Wild instead of living it up at a bar. The Wild were triumphant and the Stars were stymied in their former home town. Dallas gets to go golfing and Chicago gets to prove to Vancouver and fans everywhere that they are still the Stanley Cup champions. It should be an exciting eight weeks of excellent hockey.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
My Night with Toula
Men and women play organized recreational ice hockey for different reasons, primarily because they love the game. Secondly, I believe it is like joining fraternal orders in the past. The Moose, Masons, Elks and so on. Men love women but occasionally need to fraternize with other men. I suspect it is similar for women too.
For me, I would much rather play pick up/shinny/rat hockey than play on a team. More often than not, a team will have over ten guys and at thirteen to fifteen guys, it is more sitting than playing. The hurry-up-I- wanna-get-home attitude of many referees who refuse to blow icing or let just about anything short of decapitation take place so that they don’t have to blow their whistle, puts me more on edge than I need be. Be all that as it may, invitations come up periodically to fill in for absent paid players and I usually answer the call.
A team of police officers needed a fill in one night and so I opted to grab my gear and head over to the local rink after all the youth teams had skated, some time before midnight on a week night. I can’t tell you if we won or lost. Most games are pretty unremarkable for the most part unless one scores a hat trick, gets hurt or has a good fight. None of the above occurred for me.
The cops held court at a particular bar after games and so I accompanied them for the proverbial “one”. I surmised that men primarily join teams more for the fraternity than for calorie burning. Buckets of beer flowed for over an hour. The average was about a six pack per player. At 150 calories per bottle, that is about 900 calories of liquid and that does not include the nachos with cheese, chili and sour cream. I had a good time listening to tales of drunk driving, stopping strippers from a local strip club, wife beaters, bank robbers, speeders, thieves and so on. These men day in and day out see the worst of the worst among us. I mixed glasses of Merlot with Sangria so that each was not too bitter or too sweet. After about an hour, one of each drink arrived at the table compliments of a smiling woman with a pool cue in her hand. She smiled at me and lifted her eyebrows. The cops all kidded me and I rolled with it. Had the woman been beautiful, there would have been no kidding but I was being pursued by a woman twice my size. I politely raised both glasses to her from across the room as a gesture of gratitude. After almost two hours of the lively art of conversation, I decided it was time to leave before I couldn’t leave as I was nearly drunk at that point. I may have been already drunk come to think of it.
As I walked towards my car, a black Trans-Am circa 1984, rumbled towards me. The tinted window dropped and inside was my plus sized suitor. She asked if I wanted to go for a ride. I giggled at the invitation. More often than not, it is a man who sends a drink across a bar to a female that has caught his eye and times the departure of the female so that he can offer a ride or a phone number. It was a week day and I was due at work in less than six hours but decided that going for a ride was going to be worth it. There was a better than even chance that I was going to be calling in sick.
We drove to another bar in a blue collar area of the city to have another drink or maybe two or three. We played pool against a couple of men who were dead serious about their pool playing. My date single handedly destroyed them without any help from me. At stake was a round of drinks and we won. On top of the several drinks that I had downed with the cops and several more at the second bar, I had downed well over two thousand calories of liquid and found that when I turned my head, my vision had a two second delay. What I learned and retained about the woman prior to incoherence was that her name was Toula and that she was Greek, never married and in her thirties. She played competitive pool regularly and had a nephew of high school age that played ice hockey. What Toula learned about me was that I played ice hockey, coached ice hockey, owned a few ice hockey pro shops and played music
Upon reaching my car, I had to divulge to Toula that I was unable to drive home. Being a good Greek girl who was not married, Toula lived at home with her parents so going to her house was out of the question. I told Toula that we should just go to my apartment. Toula scanned my apartment to try and gather what I was about by studying my belongings. She saw the poster of Marlon Brando from the 1950’s on a motorcycle, books about philosophy, every book written by Kurt Vonnegut and anthologies by H.L. Mencken, my couch, television and full sized acoustic bass in the dining room all by itself on a stand. There stood my giant violin alone. I do recall Toula asking me to play it. I not only played it, I sang. I did this for probably a few minutes and then I don’t remember anything else.
I woke up some hours later and the sun felt as if it had been up for a good part of the day. I had a good headache going and was dehydrated. I didn’t move at first because it hurt my eyes to blink. I used my peripheral vision to see if I had in fact brought back home the woman who had purchased me a drink. She was lying on her side, facing me with the palm of her hand supporting her head.
“Good morning, sleepy head…”
I had no choice but to acknowledge her presence. I was missing my shirt and could feel cool sheets against my legs but wasn’t sure if I was wearing anything at all. I reached down by hand to confirm that I had at least underwear on and I did. I must have had a confused look on my face about a few things from the night before and so Toula filled in the blanks.
“Um let’s see… You played the bass for me after you took off your shirt and pants. I told you that you looked like Mogli from the Jungle Book and you sang, “I wanna be like you” until I helped you into bed,” said Toula.
I could have excused myself and went to the washroom to examine myself for any hints of sexual activity upon my person during the two minute long morning urination but instead I posed a question with my eyes. Did we consummate the evening? How did it all work? Was I any good? Are you on birth control?
“You wanna know if we did something now, don’t you? Well it wouldn’t be fair to tell you at this point… Why don’t you put on some clothes and we can get breakfast.”
We talked about many different things and I realized that she was really a nice person who was funny and quite easy to talk to. I suspected her size was an impediment to finding any sort of quality male and to me that was sad. Toula was funny and intelligent and had her act together. The only thing she lacked was a physique that would draw men to her. We ate breakfast and I was returned to the place I had parked my car the night before. I hugged Toula and told her I had a great night. She didn’t ask for my number or to see me again. She roared off in her Pontiac and I never saw her again… Until.
After coaching a game one night, I left the locker room after the game and walked through the lobby where the parents were waiting for their boys to shower and go home. I rarely stopped to talk to the parents because accessibility breeds unnecessary problems. I really don’t care to hear what parents think and if you listen to one, others soon chime in.
One of the mothers of one of my players who was really quite attractive, stopped me to introduce me to her sister. I was surprised and stunned to the point of not being able to speak.
“My sister Toula wanted to meet you…”
I shook Toula’s hand. She winked and told me that it was very nice to have met me. All I could say was it was very nice to have met her too.
One game on last night and it was a beauty in Detroit. An overtime win for Detroit over Phoenix that could have gone either way like last year’s playoffs. Lidstrom has nine straight games of at least a point. That sort of effort is what Detroit will need if they want to reclaim the cup. That and Howard will have to come up big at key times. Six goals against will not cut it.
For me, I would much rather play pick up/shinny/rat hockey than play on a team. More often than not, a team will have over ten guys and at thirteen to fifteen guys, it is more sitting than playing. The hurry-up-I- wanna-get-home attitude of many referees who refuse to blow icing or let just about anything short of decapitation take place so that they don’t have to blow their whistle, puts me more on edge than I need be. Be all that as it may, invitations come up periodically to fill in for absent paid players and I usually answer the call.
A team of police officers needed a fill in one night and so I opted to grab my gear and head over to the local rink after all the youth teams had skated, some time before midnight on a week night. I can’t tell you if we won or lost. Most games are pretty unremarkable for the most part unless one scores a hat trick, gets hurt or has a good fight. None of the above occurred for me.
The cops held court at a particular bar after games and so I accompanied them for the proverbial “one”. I surmised that men primarily join teams more for the fraternity than for calorie burning. Buckets of beer flowed for over an hour. The average was about a six pack per player. At 150 calories per bottle, that is about 900 calories of liquid and that does not include the nachos with cheese, chili and sour cream. I had a good time listening to tales of drunk driving, stopping strippers from a local strip club, wife beaters, bank robbers, speeders, thieves and so on. These men day in and day out see the worst of the worst among us. I mixed glasses of Merlot with Sangria so that each was not too bitter or too sweet. After about an hour, one of each drink arrived at the table compliments of a smiling woman with a pool cue in her hand. She smiled at me and lifted her eyebrows. The cops all kidded me and I rolled with it. Had the woman been beautiful, there would have been no kidding but I was being pursued by a woman twice my size. I politely raised both glasses to her from across the room as a gesture of gratitude. After almost two hours of the lively art of conversation, I decided it was time to leave before I couldn’t leave as I was nearly drunk at that point. I may have been already drunk come to think of it.
As I walked towards my car, a black Trans-Am circa 1984, rumbled towards me. The tinted window dropped and inside was my plus sized suitor. She asked if I wanted to go for a ride. I giggled at the invitation. More often than not, it is a man who sends a drink across a bar to a female that has caught his eye and times the departure of the female so that he can offer a ride or a phone number. It was a week day and I was due at work in less than six hours but decided that going for a ride was going to be worth it. There was a better than even chance that I was going to be calling in sick.
We drove to another bar in a blue collar area of the city to have another drink or maybe two or three. We played pool against a couple of men who were dead serious about their pool playing. My date single handedly destroyed them without any help from me. At stake was a round of drinks and we won. On top of the several drinks that I had downed with the cops and several more at the second bar, I had downed well over two thousand calories of liquid and found that when I turned my head, my vision had a two second delay. What I learned and retained about the woman prior to incoherence was that her name was Toula and that she was Greek, never married and in her thirties. She played competitive pool regularly and had a nephew of high school age that played ice hockey. What Toula learned about me was that I played ice hockey, coached ice hockey, owned a few ice hockey pro shops and played music
Upon reaching my car, I had to divulge to Toula that I was unable to drive home. Being a good Greek girl who was not married, Toula lived at home with her parents so going to her house was out of the question. I told Toula that we should just go to my apartment. Toula scanned my apartment to try and gather what I was about by studying my belongings. She saw the poster of Marlon Brando from the 1950’s on a motorcycle, books about philosophy, every book written by Kurt Vonnegut and anthologies by H.L. Mencken, my couch, television and full sized acoustic bass in the dining room all by itself on a stand. There stood my giant violin alone. I do recall Toula asking me to play it. I not only played it, I sang. I did this for probably a few minutes and then I don’t remember anything else.
I woke up some hours later and the sun felt as if it had been up for a good part of the day. I had a good headache going and was dehydrated. I didn’t move at first because it hurt my eyes to blink. I used my peripheral vision to see if I had in fact brought back home the woman who had purchased me a drink. She was lying on her side, facing me with the palm of her hand supporting her head.
“Good morning, sleepy head…”
I had no choice but to acknowledge her presence. I was missing my shirt and could feel cool sheets against my legs but wasn’t sure if I was wearing anything at all. I reached down by hand to confirm that I had at least underwear on and I did. I must have had a confused look on my face about a few things from the night before and so Toula filled in the blanks.
“Um let’s see… You played the bass for me after you took off your shirt and pants. I told you that you looked like Mogli from the Jungle Book and you sang, “I wanna be like you” until I helped you into bed,” said Toula.
I could have excused myself and went to the washroom to examine myself for any hints of sexual activity upon my person during the two minute long morning urination but instead I posed a question with my eyes. Did we consummate the evening? How did it all work? Was I any good? Are you on birth control?
“You wanna know if we did something now, don’t you? Well it wouldn’t be fair to tell you at this point… Why don’t you put on some clothes and we can get breakfast.”
We talked about many different things and I realized that she was really a nice person who was funny and quite easy to talk to. I suspected her size was an impediment to finding any sort of quality male and to me that was sad. Toula was funny and intelligent and had her act together. The only thing she lacked was a physique that would draw men to her. We ate breakfast and I was returned to the place I had parked my car the night before. I hugged Toula and told her I had a great night. She didn’t ask for my number or to see me again. She roared off in her Pontiac and I never saw her again… Until.
After coaching a game one night, I left the locker room after the game and walked through the lobby where the parents were waiting for their boys to shower and go home. I rarely stopped to talk to the parents because accessibility breeds unnecessary problems. I really don’t care to hear what parents think and if you listen to one, others soon chime in.
One of the mothers of one of my players who was really quite attractive, stopped me to introduce me to her sister. I was surprised and stunned to the point of not being able to speak.
“My sister Toula wanted to meet you…”
I shook Toula’s hand. She winked and told me that it was very nice to have met me. All I could say was it was very nice to have met her too.
One game on last night and it was a beauty in Detroit. An overtime win for Detroit over Phoenix that could have gone either way like last year’s playoffs. Lidstrom has nine straight games of at least a point. That sort of effort is what Detroit will need if they want to reclaim the cup. That and Howard will have to come up big at key times. Six goals against will not cut it.
Friday, October 15, 2010
The Jewish Prodigy
I took some time off from non-fiction to finish and work on some fiction but now I’m back to write about an actual person that stands out in my mind that I feel is worthy of more than what I can offer him but nonetheless, a person I think you should read about.
If you took all the Jewish ice hockey players that have made it to the big time and placed them side by side with those that are of African ancestry; blacks, bi-racial, mixed race, Afro-American, Afro-Canadian, Haitian, and Jamaican, it would surpass those that identify themselves as Jewish.
Growing up, it was sort of interesting that the Catholics were Italian, Irish, and Spanish by way of Mexico, South America and so on but a Jewish kid was just Jewish. Not one of them came from Israel or anywhere near it but they were just Jewish. I’m not certain of the lineage of the player that I’m going to tell you about. I suspect they were once from some Slavic country whereby his predecessors wound up at a place like Ellis Island and were promptly given an Anglophile name that stuck with them through the years. What I do remember of this child when I saw him first take the ice as a six year old boy was how complete of an ice hockey player he was at such a young age. His skating was very fluid, his stick handling skills were well developed, his knowledge and intelligence to pass when he should instead of when it was absolutely a last resort was impressive given that most six year olds congregate around the puck like dogs in the yard with a tennis ball. The child at the age of six could have easily competed alone against a team of five his own age and done well. Some children can sing, some can paint and some have that ability to put all the tools necessary together to compete in ice hockey before they can write their names in cursive. This child was one of them.
It was some years later when I had an opportunity to speak to this prodigy’s father. I was getting dressed to play ice hockey with a bunch of Chicago Board of Trade guys who rented the ice on Wednesday afternoons. I was getting dressed to get on the ice as was the father of the young Jewish player. We were both late and were rushing to get dressed and join the group that had already finished warming up and were already playing. The silence was almost uncomfortable and so I asked the man whom I had seen at rinks for a number of years how his son was doing. He went on to tell me that he was able to scrape together a house league team of orthodox/religious Jews so that his son could be on a team. The orthodox Jews need to be in by sun down on Fridays and cannot engage in many things such as ice hockey until sun down on Saturdays. I jokingly told the father that if he were willing to have his son join my team, I would observe the Sabbath myself. The father took me up on it.
At the time, I was coaching a travel/all-star team at a neighboring rink. The team I had was mediocre at best. The players were really not above average as much as their parent’s bank accounts provided the organization with the ransom demanded so that the aspirations of the parents, who live vicariously through their little men, could somehow be met. I apologize for that little rant. Having just wrote about parents with the ways and means to get their children onto a team that they really don’t have any business being on, this father although he had ample money, did not need to buy his son a spot on my team or any team.
From the point at which this player joined my team, my wins began to surpass my losses. My players began to think more about what they were going to do rather than reacting when it was already too late to make a decision. My players followed the example of this player and all were better for it. Many people who take up a sport that are great at what they do, get recognized and idolized. Many egos are fed off of the money and attention that they receive. I am almost certain that had this player made it to NHL or a higher level minor league team, the success would have been taken in stride. This boy never bragged about his points, hat tricks and high plus/minus statistics. When targeted on the ice for cheap shots, he understood that it was not personal as much as a sign of respect due to his ability to win a game and control a game. He was respectful and courteous at all times. I truly believe that the young player, who played on teams that I coached for over six years, had the tools necessary to compete at the highest level. The choice to be religious took him out of the running. It is god’s gain and fandom’s loss.
The boy I coached is now a man. He quit organized hockey after playing midget AA. He is finishing at Yeshiva University in New York City and may go into accounting. He currently plays in New Jersey on a high level men’s team. I had the chance to play on a summer league team with this young man this past summer. It is rare for anyone that coaches any sport to find someone who is an outstanding player and a superior human being. One usually has one attribute or the other. I suspect this young man will do as well in the world as he does on the ice.
If you took all the Jewish ice hockey players that have made it to the big time and placed them side by side with those that are of African ancestry; blacks, bi-racial, mixed race, Afro-American, Afro-Canadian, Haitian, and Jamaican, it would surpass those that identify themselves as Jewish.
Growing up, it was sort of interesting that the Catholics were Italian, Irish, and Spanish by way of Mexico, South America and so on but a Jewish kid was just Jewish. Not one of them came from Israel or anywhere near it but they were just Jewish. I’m not certain of the lineage of the player that I’m going to tell you about. I suspect they were once from some Slavic country whereby his predecessors wound up at a place like Ellis Island and were promptly given an Anglophile name that stuck with them through the years. What I do remember of this child when I saw him first take the ice as a six year old boy was how complete of an ice hockey player he was at such a young age. His skating was very fluid, his stick handling skills were well developed, his knowledge and intelligence to pass when he should instead of when it was absolutely a last resort was impressive given that most six year olds congregate around the puck like dogs in the yard with a tennis ball. The child at the age of six could have easily competed alone against a team of five his own age and done well. Some children can sing, some can paint and some have that ability to put all the tools necessary together to compete in ice hockey before they can write their names in cursive. This child was one of them.
It was some years later when I had an opportunity to speak to this prodigy’s father. I was getting dressed to play ice hockey with a bunch of Chicago Board of Trade guys who rented the ice on Wednesday afternoons. I was getting dressed to get on the ice as was the father of the young Jewish player. We were both late and were rushing to get dressed and join the group that had already finished warming up and were already playing. The silence was almost uncomfortable and so I asked the man whom I had seen at rinks for a number of years how his son was doing. He went on to tell me that he was able to scrape together a house league team of orthodox/religious Jews so that his son could be on a team. The orthodox Jews need to be in by sun down on Fridays and cannot engage in many things such as ice hockey until sun down on Saturdays. I jokingly told the father that if he were willing to have his son join my team, I would observe the Sabbath myself. The father took me up on it.
At the time, I was coaching a travel/all-star team at a neighboring rink. The team I had was mediocre at best. The players were really not above average as much as their parent’s bank accounts provided the organization with the ransom demanded so that the aspirations of the parents, who live vicariously through their little men, could somehow be met. I apologize for that little rant. Having just wrote about parents with the ways and means to get their children onto a team that they really don’t have any business being on, this father although he had ample money, did not need to buy his son a spot on my team or any team.
From the point at which this player joined my team, my wins began to surpass my losses. My players began to think more about what they were going to do rather than reacting when it was already too late to make a decision. My players followed the example of this player and all were better for it. Many people who take up a sport that are great at what they do, get recognized and idolized. Many egos are fed off of the money and attention that they receive. I am almost certain that had this player made it to NHL or a higher level minor league team, the success would have been taken in stride. This boy never bragged about his points, hat tricks and high plus/minus statistics. When targeted on the ice for cheap shots, he understood that it was not personal as much as a sign of respect due to his ability to win a game and control a game. He was respectful and courteous at all times. I truly believe that the young player, who played on teams that I coached for over six years, had the tools necessary to compete at the highest level. The choice to be religious took him out of the running. It is god’s gain and fandom’s loss.
The boy I coached is now a man. He quit organized hockey after playing midget AA. He is finishing at Yeshiva University in New York City and may go into accounting. He currently plays in New Jersey on a high level men’s team. I had the chance to play on a summer league team with this young man this past summer. It is rare for anyone that coaches any sport to find someone who is an outstanding player and a superior human being. One usually has one attribute or the other. I suspect this young man will do as well in the world as he does on the ice.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Ice Hockey: The Saturday Night Tournament
After having played three sets of music Friday night and having sat through a dinner on a Saturday afternoon for my grandfather’s 90th birthday, where my dad still asked me who my barber was in order to get a cheap laugh, I set out to play five hockey games between 9pm Saturday night and 5:30am Sunday morning.
Big Sexy called me the week before and asked me if I would be interested in entering a team in the first annual iron man hockey tournament on a Saturday night. It took me two seconds to answer.
“Hell yes…”
After committing, it became necessary to amass the correct five players and a goalie to effectively tread water in such a tournament. I started calling and sent around my text messages until I had my team. I received a text message during my grandfather’s birthday celebration from Big Sexy that read;
“DON’T FUCKING CHICKEN OUT, CALAHAN… WE’RE COUNTING ON YOUR TEAM TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN…”
While eating my scallops and spinach, I had to listen to my dad tell my kids, what an asshole I looked like as a teenager. I smiled politely and listened to the story I had already heard at least a dozen times before. Now mind you, my father had had a nip of something before replaying this story. My kids enjoyed the story. Kids always like hearing stories no matter how old they get.
“Your dad looked like a fucking idiot… Pardon my French. He wore combat boots, camouflaged pants, T shits that said everything under the sun and a Mohawk hair cut… Now look at him, he still has a bad barber. Poor bastard still can’t catch a break.”
This was coming from a Vietnam Veteran that went from looking like Charles Manson to Beetlejuice. I smiled politely while being roasted by my father and responded to Big Sexy in a text message.
“WE’LL BE THERE WITH BELLS ON…”
Big Sexy owns a pro shop inside a municipal rink and he and the park district guys who ran the rink, decided to host a tournament where by each team could only have five skaters and a goalie. There were no substitutions allowed. No line changes. Whistles for icing and penalties were penalty shots. I gathered up my team based on good feeling, comedy and talent.
My best friend and confidant was my first choice. I’d give you his name but he’s shy. His nickname is Butterball and it’s not because he’s fat. We were once playing a pick up hockey game where a loud mouthed guy from Boston kept chirping on the bench. We got tired of listening to his goofy Bostonian accent and my best friend made a comment to the guy who acted as if he invented the sport of ice hockey from Boston, a rotund figure with mediocre abilities at best.
“HEY BUDDAH-BAWL… WHY DON’T YOU GET ON THE ICE AND PLAY SOME FWUCKING HAWKEE AND SHUT THE FWUCK UP…”
Since that day my dear friend goes by the name Butterball or Buttah-bawl. Now Butterball is poor as a church mouse as the saying goes. Butterball had a job with a railroad company and he was let off of work some eight months ago. He now has created a landscape company and has some accounts of well to-do people who refuse to use their leisure time to manicure their lawns. Butterball hired my son to help him. He didn’t have money to play but I spotted him and he accepted. All the others were without out a cent and so I spotted them all too.
My son and his life long hockey companion decided to play along with this tournament instead of attending a party of someone who knew someone who knew someone who was having a party or just going to any drinking establishment on a Saturday night. I had to explain to both these young men of twenty two years of age, what kind of tournament we were playing. The concept was not sinking in readily. They both pledged to play in the tournament for me.
My son Quinn and his friend Tim both had been playing minor league hockey up until six months ago when the team they were playing for, suddenly folded due to lack of money. Both came home and resumed their lives doing odd jobs, drinking and hanging out. Neither of them was going to do much of anything on a Saturday night and so they decided to play in the tournament.
I needed one more skater and a goalie and so I called Andras who was the younger brother of the two South African brothers from my Canada story previously. Andras had been playing division III hockey with another lad whom I had coached when they were in high school. Frostie was the goalie.
As you all know who know the sport of ice hockey; it takes a special mindset to want to have people fire pucks at you while you’re dressed like the guy from the movie, The Hurt Locker. When I coached Frostie, he was five feet tall and looked to be eight years old. He was a Darren Pang type of goalie and was very good for his height. I had not seen Frostie for two years and he suddenly was seven inches taller and went from having a buzz cut to really long hair and looking like one of the brothers in the boy group called The Hansons (not to be mistaken for the brothers in the movie Slapshot).
We stepped out on the ice with two college players and two minor league players and lost to a bunch of slow footed, once a week players by the score of 3-2. In the locker room, there was a lot of finger pointing and animosity. I summed it up as best as I could with an analogy they could all understand.
“It was like challenging your father to a fist fight and knowing that you are stronger and faster, took him for granted and he stepped up and handed you your ass…”
They all thought about it and agreed I had hit it on the head. I gave them the best advice any coach could ever give a player. It was probably what Mike Babcock said to the Detroit Red Wings after a humiliating loss in Detroit on a Sunday when they could have won their playoff series and moved on;
“Quit fucking around with the puck and just fucking shoot it… There’s no reason to be the fucking Harlem Globetrotters with fancy fucking passes. Use their defensemen as screens and just fire the fucking thing.”
This discussion went on at a TGIFridays restaurant while we drank ice water and ate nacho chips with salsa in our hockey equipment. Frostie the goalie wore everything except his helmet, catcher, blocker and chest and arm protector. He walked into a restaurant with skates and leg pads on and they sat us in a corner where nobody could smell us. We discussed the whole rabbit and tortoise thing and we’re ready for the rest of the evening. We only had four more games ahead of us.
The second game was against a team full of beginners. We were leading the game five to nothing with only three minutes into the game. I had to rein the boys in and tell them to play keep away until the end of the game. We fired blistering slap shots over the head of the goalie and wide just to not insult the other team entirely. Next we then took on the hosts of the tournament who came in stacked. We came from a 2-0 deficit to win the game 3-2. My son in the whole process had almost gotten into two fights and trashed talked from beginning to end. He still has not figured out that rough play against him is more a sign of respect than intent to injure. We then went on to face a team of mostly blue collar cop/firemen/Italian players that thrived on extra curricular activity. Within two minutes, a small Italian cop with an attitude a several beers in him, put the body on my son and got the stick up high. The rest of the game, my son said things personally to get under the skin of the man with a Napoleon complex. Things such as, you suck, you’re old, on my worst day I never was as bad as you and so on. We beat that team 4-0 and nearly had a full team on team fight when one of their guys slew foot Butterball in front of our net. Butterball, for as even tempered as he was, was going to beat down the man who swept his feet from behind and caused his head to bounce like a bowling ball inside his helmet on the ice. I tried to be the voice of reason with the other team.
“Boys… You’re just upset because you lost and lost even though you tried to cheap shot us the whole fucking game. Go get a beer and watch us in the final…”
My mother was verbally assaulted and I was invited to have sex with myself and so on. I smiled and went to the locker room to sip on some water and have a snack until the Zamboni had cleaned the ice for the grand finale.
At five in the morning after having had played four games and having sat around wearing smelly hockey equipment for eight hours, after having watched highlights of professional hockey games and baseball games on ESPN, the final came. We promptly scored three quick goals. My son got into it verbally with a young guy with an ample amount of testosterone on the opposing team and they took to playing bull and matador with each other throughout the course of the game. When the dust settled, we had won the match 3-2.
So there we were, five skaters and a goalie sipping cheap beer in a smelly locker room littered with tape and other debris on the floor as the sun was beginning to light the eastern sky, minutes before the figure skaters would be diligently stretching out in the lobby and taking the ice. We had won the championship of a tournament where by we won nothing more than embroidered fleece sweatshirts and free pass to the next tournament, while the rink workers were cleaning up all evidence of the hockey tournament. I said nothing sappy or nostalgic to any of the boys in the room. I thought to myself that at a point in my life where I was younger, I was the coach of the goalie and three out of the four other players besides myself and Butterball. We were able to have fun and win on a meaningless tournament in a suburb of a big city in North America on a Saturday while people in the world starved, hunted for fresh water and tried to avoid being killed in the cross fire of war. The hectic pace of life and necessity of having to slog through the day to day world of working and making ends meet, will take precedence an importance over a ice hockey tournament on a Saturday night. Someday I will run into all of them even though it may never happen collectively again the way it was last night and we will reminisce about our championship victory. We will laugh about the things we said in the locker room to one another and going to a restaurant with all our gear on and how we walked to our cars as champions as the sun was coming up and birds were chirping on a spring morning. Guys never say to other guys that things such as a tournament make life more worth living. They just ask… “When are we playing again?”
Big Sexy called me the week before and asked me if I would be interested in entering a team in the first annual iron man hockey tournament on a Saturday night. It took me two seconds to answer.
“Hell yes…”
After committing, it became necessary to amass the correct five players and a goalie to effectively tread water in such a tournament. I started calling and sent around my text messages until I had my team. I received a text message during my grandfather’s birthday celebration from Big Sexy that read;
“DON’T FUCKING CHICKEN OUT, CALAHAN… WE’RE COUNTING ON YOUR TEAM TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN…”
While eating my scallops and spinach, I had to listen to my dad tell my kids, what an asshole I looked like as a teenager. I smiled politely and listened to the story I had already heard at least a dozen times before. Now mind you, my father had had a nip of something before replaying this story. My kids enjoyed the story. Kids always like hearing stories no matter how old they get.
“Your dad looked like a fucking idiot… Pardon my French. He wore combat boots, camouflaged pants, T shits that said everything under the sun and a Mohawk hair cut… Now look at him, he still has a bad barber. Poor bastard still can’t catch a break.”
This was coming from a Vietnam Veteran that went from looking like Charles Manson to Beetlejuice. I smiled politely while being roasted by my father and responded to Big Sexy in a text message.
“WE’LL BE THERE WITH BELLS ON…”
Big Sexy owns a pro shop inside a municipal rink and he and the park district guys who ran the rink, decided to host a tournament where by each team could only have five skaters and a goalie. There were no substitutions allowed. No line changes. Whistles for icing and penalties were penalty shots. I gathered up my team based on good feeling, comedy and talent.
My best friend and confidant was my first choice. I’d give you his name but he’s shy. His nickname is Butterball and it’s not because he’s fat. We were once playing a pick up hockey game where a loud mouthed guy from Boston kept chirping on the bench. We got tired of listening to his goofy Bostonian accent and my best friend made a comment to the guy who acted as if he invented the sport of ice hockey from Boston, a rotund figure with mediocre abilities at best.
“HEY BUDDAH-BAWL… WHY DON’T YOU GET ON THE ICE AND PLAY SOME FWUCKING HAWKEE AND SHUT THE FWUCK UP…”
Since that day my dear friend goes by the name Butterball or Buttah-bawl. Now Butterball is poor as a church mouse as the saying goes. Butterball had a job with a railroad company and he was let off of work some eight months ago. He now has created a landscape company and has some accounts of well to-do people who refuse to use their leisure time to manicure their lawns. Butterball hired my son to help him. He didn’t have money to play but I spotted him and he accepted. All the others were without out a cent and so I spotted them all too.
My son and his life long hockey companion decided to play along with this tournament instead of attending a party of someone who knew someone who knew someone who was having a party or just going to any drinking establishment on a Saturday night. I had to explain to both these young men of twenty two years of age, what kind of tournament we were playing. The concept was not sinking in readily. They both pledged to play in the tournament for me.
My son Quinn and his friend Tim both had been playing minor league hockey up until six months ago when the team they were playing for, suddenly folded due to lack of money. Both came home and resumed their lives doing odd jobs, drinking and hanging out. Neither of them was going to do much of anything on a Saturday night and so they decided to play in the tournament.
I needed one more skater and a goalie and so I called Andras who was the younger brother of the two South African brothers from my Canada story previously. Andras had been playing division III hockey with another lad whom I had coached when they were in high school. Frostie was the goalie.
As you all know who know the sport of ice hockey; it takes a special mindset to want to have people fire pucks at you while you’re dressed like the guy from the movie, The Hurt Locker. When I coached Frostie, he was five feet tall and looked to be eight years old. He was a Darren Pang type of goalie and was very good for his height. I had not seen Frostie for two years and he suddenly was seven inches taller and went from having a buzz cut to really long hair and looking like one of the brothers in the boy group called The Hansons (not to be mistaken for the brothers in the movie Slapshot).
We stepped out on the ice with two college players and two minor league players and lost to a bunch of slow footed, once a week players by the score of 3-2. In the locker room, there was a lot of finger pointing and animosity. I summed it up as best as I could with an analogy they could all understand.
“It was like challenging your father to a fist fight and knowing that you are stronger and faster, took him for granted and he stepped up and handed you your ass…”
They all thought about it and agreed I had hit it on the head. I gave them the best advice any coach could ever give a player. It was probably what Mike Babcock said to the Detroit Red Wings after a humiliating loss in Detroit on a Sunday when they could have won their playoff series and moved on;
“Quit fucking around with the puck and just fucking shoot it… There’s no reason to be the fucking Harlem Globetrotters with fancy fucking passes. Use their defensemen as screens and just fire the fucking thing.”
This discussion went on at a TGIFridays restaurant while we drank ice water and ate nacho chips with salsa in our hockey equipment. Frostie the goalie wore everything except his helmet, catcher, blocker and chest and arm protector. He walked into a restaurant with skates and leg pads on and they sat us in a corner where nobody could smell us. We discussed the whole rabbit and tortoise thing and we’re ready for the rest of the evening. We only had four more games ahead of us.
The second game was against a team full of beginners. We were leading the game five to nothing with only three minutes into the game. I had to rein the boys in and tell them to play keep away until the end of the game. We fired blistering slap shots over the head of the goalie and wide just to not insult the other team entirely. Next we then took on the hosts of the tournament who came in stacked. We came from a 2-0 deficit to win the game 3-2. My son in the whole process had almost gotten into two fights and trashed talked from beginning to end. He still has not figured out that rough play against him is more a sign of respect than intent to injure. We then went on to face a team of mostly blue collar cop/firemen/Italian players that thrived on extra curricular activity. Within two minutes, a small Italian cop with an attitude a several beers in him, put the body on my son and got the stick up high. The rest of the game, my son said things personally to get under the skin of the man with a Napoleon complex. Things such as, you suck, you’re old, on my worst day I never was as bad as you and so on. We beat that team 4-0 and nearly had a full team on team fight when one of their guys slew foot Butterball in front of our net. Butterball, for as even tempered as he was, was going to beat down the man who swept his feet from behind and caused his head to bounce like a bowling ball inside his helmet on the ice. I tried to be the voice of reason with the other team.
“Boys… You’re just upset because you lost and lost even though you tried to cheap shot us the whole fucking game. Go get a beer and watch us in the final…”
My mother was verbally assaulted and I was invited to have sex with myself and so on. I smiled and went to the locker room to sip on some water and have a snack until the Zamboni had cleaned the ice for the grand finale.
At five in the morning after having had played four games and having sat around wearing smelly hockey equipment for eight hours, after having watched highlights of professional hockey games and baseball games on ESPN, the final came. We promptly scored three quick goals. My son got into it verbally with a young guy with an ample amount of testosterone on the opposing team and they took to playing bull and matador with each other throughout the course of the game. When the dust settled, we had won the match 3-2.
So there we were, five skaters and a goalie sipping cheap beer in a smelly locker room littered with tape and other debris on the floor as the sun was beginning to light the eastern sky, minutes before the figure skaters would be diligently stretching out in the lobby and taking the ice. We had won the championship of a tournament where by we won nothing more than embroidered fleece sweatshirts and free pass to the next tournament, while the rink workers were cleaning up all evidence of the hockey tournament. I said nothing sappy or nostalgic to any of the boys in the room. I thought to myself that at a point in my life where I was younger, I was the coach of the goalie and three out of the four other players besides myself and Butterball. We were able to have fun and win on a meaningless tournament in a suburb of a big city in North America on a Saturday while people in the world starved, hunted for fresh water and tried to avoid being killed in the cross fire of war. The hectic pace of life and necessity of having to slog through the day to day world of working and making ends meet, will take precedence an importance over a ice hockey tournament on a Saturday night. Someday I will run into all of them even though it may never happen collectively again the way it was last night and we will reminisce about our championship victory. We will laugh about the things we said in the locker room to one another and going to a restaurant with all our gear on and how we walked to our cars as champions as the sun was coming up and birds were chirping on a spring morning. Guys never say to other guys that things such as a tournament make life more worth living. They just ask… “When are we playing again?”
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