Steve Young, Brigham Young, The Swede, and Chip Lambert

Ann Woo's Photos at tiny vices are calming.


Proposition 8 is wack, mormons are sort of wack (except for my cousins!), Steve Young is not wack (though Mormon), but is a descendant of Brigham Young, who is a historical Mormon Leader with 20 wives, which is wack.

I think some people have genetic predisposition to leadership. He must have had good genes, Brigham Young, to have become the leader of the Mormon church. He was probably tall and athletic. How does that work, then, that people who are tall and athletic make more money on average and generally achieve more.

This is sociologically proven. Each inch on your height is exquivalent to like, 2000 a year in salary. Most of these big leaders probably never had to be physical, like Steve Young.

But people look up to them or follow them regardless. I will argue that these people suffer less form depression and failure. They probably have higher self esteem, which is reinforced by their subjects. A literary character who is a big leader is 'The Swede,' from American Pastoral, who suffers a 'downfall' which is analogous or stands for an American Downfall. I like the Swede, but these big leaders are my spiritual enemy.

I liked the Corrections because I feel like Chip sometimes. Chip is smart, but he is an academic and a loser. He is depressed, too. I think he is funny. He is analogous or symbolic of American Academic/Cultural Downfall.

Brigham Young: People subjugated themselves to him, or wanted to, for whatever reason. And those are the same leader genes, physical characteristics that made Steve a good football player.

Also, and aside. Mormons don't really believe in what that Joseph Smith said. He was a liar, and he was full of shit. Watch southpark. It would take phenomenal denial to not see that. But I understand the draws of the church like any religion.

Religion can provide meaning, identity, purpose. It can provide friends. Are religions just like scenes? Except they're harder to leave?

Yes, a religion is like the best scene you could ever be a part of, where the people are nice, and care about you. But they are not so creative, maybe.

Corner Theory

By: Adam Humphreys
Here are some things I have thought while in New York, concerning what it’s like to live in New York, what this says about people who move here, and the world at large. These could also be called: failed personal philosophies of urban life.

If you are new to the city I suggest you read ‘The Human Zoo,’ by Desmond Morris. The central argument of the book is that human beings in a city behave in predictable and unhealthy patterns analogous to animals in captivity.

At one time I thought that this book was the key to understanding not only my experience of moving here and reorienting myself, but the people in the city at large. I liked to think that the people around me were ‘animals.’ That I was an ‘animal’ in competition with other ‘animals’ for dominance, rewards, money, whatever.

To thrive in the ‘animal city’ one must reoriented oneself to be maximally competitive. One must take social obligations seriously, and manage their contact list aggressively. I let that go very quickly because I felt it was wrong in my guts and balls.

Now to the Midnight Cowboy narrative/thesis: whereby young, optimistic people move to New York with ideas and lose those ideas and leave. Midnight Cowboy is pitch black jaded. I would get into this one if you’ve been around for a couple of years and don’t see yourself really ‘making it’ as you had previously envisioned. It’s funny to look at yourself and laugh at the notions you may have had once, and it might even allow you to put some distance between your new healing self and your old depressive self.

Now I’m proposing something I call ‘Corner Theory.’ It is very mysterious.

When you Google map Manhattan, you will see it is a grid. The streets run in rectangles, and the apartments buildings within are squares. The apartments themselves are usually little boxy things, and sometimes the bathrooms have no sink. Even on the sidewalk there are squares of pavement. This makes the city pretty efficient to maneuver, but it also means that there are tons of corners, and that any time you are here, when you look around and really take things in, you will always find yourself in or on some form of corner. Cornered, as it is.

With corner theory we can better accept instances wherein people behave like cornered animals.

Things to Escape To

Video Lottery Terminals in a barroom, Drayton Valley, Alberta

Fantasy of being wealthy, famous + respected

Fantasy of being celebrated 'posthumously'

Fantasy of stumbling onto a 'period of unrestrained creativity'

Fantasy of moving to Paris, Berlin, Prague, Mexico City, Cabin in the woods somewhere

Fantasy of stumbling upon great business idea

Notion that free will is bogus and therefor I am not accountable for my failures; or that free will is only 23% causal in 'life' and 'career' and I can be forgiven for wandering and not planning well enough ahead

Vacations to Paris, Berlin, Prague, Mexico, Miami, Art Basel, cabin in the woods somewhere

Drug use

Blogs, Novels, Poetry, Short Story collections, Films, New Yorker magazine, music criticism

Notion that I am getting better at planning ahead

Notion that I have 'achieved' a mutually supportive relationship with good, smart, creative, understanding woman

Games of chasing cat around apartment, meowing at cat, tackling cat, listening to cat meow, and getting bitten by cat

Movie theatre

Work at the store

Ideas for structure of novel

Short stories I am writing, ideas about 'style'

Drinks with friends

The intense, dull pain of flossing for the first time in two months and coating the string with bright blood

Blog posts

Hockey statistics, scoring race in the NHL

Music I will vouch for

www.bronxcheercomedy.com

Memories of old friends that I have not grown apart from, times when I have acted 'out of character'

Feelings of accomplishment with regards to the 150,000 trees I planted last summer and the nearly 500,000 I have planted in my life thus far

Notions of limited free will with regards to my future career and literary prospects

Notion that a lot of people could be jealous of my life

Notion that things end up working out in the end, how they work out we don't know, but that my 'wanderlust' could be re-defined as 'integrity' or 'lack of ability to compromise,' which can be interpreted positively

Intervention

Notion that a community college would probably hire me to teach, notion that there are a bunch of things that I could do that might be awesome and that I just haven't thought of yet

Hockey game tomorrow at Madison Square Garden and the smell of a hockey arena and the sounds of the echo in a hockey arena

You Fuckig Did It, Ray Scapinello

A referee never gets any attention until they fuck up. A referee is a leveled person. Nobody likes the referee.

Below the referee is the linesman. Do you know what he does? He calls icing and offside. He drops the puck. He puts the net back on it's moorings when it gets knocked off. It is a munson of a job. Nobody likes referees and nobody cares about a linesman. They are munson-men.

Yesterday I learned that a linesman has been inducted into the NHL hall of fame. I can't help but feel good about it.

I started to wonder about Ray Scapinello. Here you have a guy who has spent his life lines-manning. Guy is 62 years old and has been in more NHL games than anyone. He has been touring around North America forever. I wonder what his schedule is like. Where he works most often.

Do they fly him around? Or do they make him take the greyhound. If the execs at NHL were making the decision I am sure it would be a difficult one. Revenue is a priority. I am sure Scapinello was humiliated a few times on greyhound buses in the early nineteen nineties. I am sure he felt like nobody cared about him and he wasn't important or worth shit to the world at certain points in his life. Who wouldn't? as a munson man. He just thought to himself: 'this is my life, and that's the way things are.' Then he went about his days doing his job. Putting the net back on it's moorings and dodging stray pucks.



I am sure he was hit with thousands of 'clearing attempts.' I've italicized that because Ray will sometimes have wondered if the player was actually trying to shoot the puck at him just to hurt him.

I'll bet he accidentally blocked one of these, once or twice, and the other team benefited by his error, and scored. And Scapinello thought to himself: 'you're such an idiot, Ray' as the players scoffed at him and the coach screamed. 'All you need to do is drop the puck and call offside and stay out of the way of the puck, and you can;t even do that. God.'

Imagine how often he was screamed at by angry coaches like Mike Keenan? Then he thought: 'oh well, nothing here or there. That's the breaks I guess. Sometimes things won't work out the way you want them to.' Because that's the kind of guy Ray Scapinello is. He doesn't dwell. He suffers stoically. That's why he's in the HHOF.

The article's heading says, It's Unanimous: Scapinello Was the Best. They're stretching it: Ray knows. He probably thinks this is all kind of silly. The Best at what? The best at dropping the puck and calling icing and filling the holes in the ice with water bottles during commercial break.

Why wasn't he ever a ref? Did he never want that? Or was he not good enough? Did he feel that he had a special calling in lines-manning?

+++

Here is a munson who worked hard and didn't complain and is getting a little bit of recognition. I'm not going to act like this is some gigantic accomplishment. I'm not going to pretend like a spot in the Hockey Hall of Fame is like, sacred or anything. It's not that meaningful.

But it is something.

In the future, some Canadian kid will walk through the HHOF and say, 'Daddy, who's that?' And the Dad will say, 'a linesman I guess,' and then he'll walk up to the plaque and say, 'says here his name is Ray Scapinello.' And his kid will look up at the linesman's big cardboard cutout, thinking about whatever kids will be thinking about then - a new toy?

And that kid may or may not grow up dreaming of being a hockey player. He may keep dreaming into his late teens, but he might not be good enough. But he'll be still very much in love with the sport; making money by reffing peewee games as I did in my mid teens.

He won't be able to go to college. In his 20's he may or may not ref junior hockey games. The world won't make any sense to him. Hockey will endure.

And maybe he'll be a linesman one day, and the name Scapinello will resound in his head forever like an ohm.

Kathy Lo

My friend Kathy has been interviewed for this thing.

When I first moved to New York to go to school and my Dad payed my rent, Kathy moved out from Vancouver. She had a camera and a duffle bag full of clothes, and probably like, a thousand bucks - she wanted to be a photographer. She asked if she could stay with me, and I said sure.

We slept in the same bed for a month, until my roommates asked me to make her leave. It was an 'uncool apartment situation.' We never 'did it,' which was kind of special. I doubt many straight people will have that experience.

We went to lots of parties and she took pictures of kids having fun and put them on her blog. It was called kathyisyourfriend. I am pretty sure she's 'over' that now.

I met her mom.

She runs the supreme blog, where I talk about the music I like, and nobody seems to comment or care.

She works for this magazine.

She's a busy, hard-working city girl.

Kathy is one of these 'downtown cool' creative types that corporations will pay for being in advertisements. They'll be like: 'we need cool downtown creative girls for our thing.' And then they'll be like: 'what about that Kathy girl?'

She loves cats.