The Bounty Hunter

Former New Orleans Saints and Washington Redskins defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams, is under investigation by the NFL for offering bounties to his players if they laid an especially violent hit on an opposing player, or if they knocked an opposing player out of a game.  Football is a violent sport, and everyone on the field accepts that.  Williams’ program assumed that the natural incentive of competition would not be enough for his players.  He (allegedly) thought that providing a little extra ‘juice’ would increase his team’s odds of winning.  Money can be a powerful motivator.

 While Roger Goodell, the NFL Commissioner, tries to sort out the facts from the fiction, it is being underreported that the same bounty system exists in the political arena.  Since the beginning of politics in this country, money has flowed to those who could deliver the most devastating hits.  Money was especially available to those who could knock the opposition clear out of the game.

Here’s what the post-Citizen’s United bounty system looks like: 

Sheldon Adelson, billionaire gambling titan and the only Newt Gingrich supporter left, has already pledged a $10 million bounty to defeat any GOP challengers to Gingrich for the nomination.  He doubled down this week by adding another “substantial” contribution to the Gingrich SuperPAC, Winning Our Future.  That’s quite a gamble.  Someone should tell Adelson that in politics, the house doesn’t always win.

The Koch Brothers has put a bounty on organized labor and the Democrats in Wisconsin by pledging $700,000 for an advertising campaign to help Puppet Governor Scott Walker survive a recall vote this year.

Karl Rove, through his SuperPAC Crossroads GPS, have put a bounty of $15 million on the table for any candidate who can sweep the legs out from under President Obama on the way to a 2^nd term.

Bill Maher, politically incorrect comedian, has contributed a bounty of $1 million to Priorities USA Action, the Obama SuperPAC, so that our current President can take the knees out of (probably) Mitt Romney in November.

President Obama has a $100 million cash on hand bankroll to spend towards causing irreparable injury to whatever candidate the GOP lines up behind the right tackle this fall (the GOP would never line their field general up behind the center).

I’ll bet you $10,000 that today’s political bounty system will not result in any meaningful investigation or trip to the Commissioner’s Office.  In politics, bounty hunting is part of the game, and someone’s going to get hurt.

Perhaps Williams should quit football and run for office.  His style of pay-for-play would be most welcome, and let’s face it – he’s gotta be better than Joe the Plumber.

The Lorax and The A-Team

Mass media – is it the reflector or the director?

I have not seen the newest blockbuster movie, The Lorax.  My kids would like to see it, and should I need an afternoon nap one of these weekends, I might take them.  I have a habit of dosing off during any movie targeted at kids under the age of 12, or movies starring former members of the Friends cast.  They make me sleepy.

I have heard that as kids movies go, this one is fraught with controversy.  From the headlines and occasional talk radio snippets I hear, The Lorax is teaching children evil messages, much like Kaos used messages embedded in rock n’ roll music to hypnotize kids into killing Control agents on Get Smart (kids, ask your parents).  The evil messages in this particular movie are that pollution is bad, trees are good, and that we should take care of our planet.  Chilling stuff.

This kind of childhood indoctrination from Hollywood is unparalleled in our history, if you exclude all the other instances in history where you could argue that the exact same thing happened.  Let’s look at how today’s anti-government zealots grew up under the tutelage of a subversive Hollywood messaging machine.

Kids who grew up in the 1980s watched The A-Team, the hit action show with George Peppard and Mr. T.  The A-Team was a group of patriotic, loyal Americans who were 1) wrongly accused and convicted of a crime by a government they loved, 2) escaped shortly after incarceration because the government was too incompetent to hold them, and 3) can be hired as outsourced talent when your inept government cannot do the job (because of red tape, regulations, legal requirements, etc.).

What did kids learn?  You need for-profit vigilantes to get things done, and we now have wars fought with 50% hired contractors.  The government cannot run the prison system, so we need outside, for-profit vendors to run our jails.  The government cannot help you, and effective solutions are only available in the private marketplace.

 Kids who grew up in the 1980s watched the blockbuster movie E.T. about a lovable alien anxious to go home.  In E.T., the government showed up at Elliot’s home, moved in, threatened the boy to cooperate, and ultimately proved so incompetent that a small boy could escape their grasp on a bicycle with an extraterrestrial on board.

What did kids learn?  The government can show up at any time and confiscate your home, your pets, anything they want all in the name of national security, so you’d better be ready to lie and be armed to protect yourself.  The government is so dumb, even a pre-teen can pull one over on them.  If that’s true, why would we trust the government with financial regulatory oversight?

Kids who grew up in the 1980s watched Die Hard and all of its sequels.  Kids were raised knowing that only an urban cowboy like John McClane who flaunted the rules could really defeat the bad guys.  The dumbest characters in the movie were the police captain and the FBI’s finest, the two Johnsons (no relation), both representatives of a bloated government bureaucracy stuffed with morons that cannot think in the real world.  They have to follow the FBI Terrorism playbook by the letter, and the results are disastrous. 

   

Kids watched First Blood and the Rambo franchise, and learned that the government is run by bureaucrats who are not loyal to the United States of America, and that only a renegade outsider can speak truth to power (with a machine gun preferably).  As an extra bonus, kids learned that domestic protests against the Vietnam War are responsible for American deaths (not carpet bombing or napalm sprays).  These protests were not protests against war; they were protests against our military.  Dissent weakened our commitment to winning, so we lost.  The protesters lost Vietnam.

 

Kids who grew up in the 1980s watched Top Gun and learned that those who flaunt the rules and do whatever their instincts tell them are the ones who will succeed.  Not only will those rogue personalities succeed, they’ll be promoted into positions of authority to teach others how to act outside of the rules.  Maverick becomes the Top Gun instructor, a final recognition that his instincts were better than any government protocol.

So what did we get for our media indoctrination that rogue actors are better for us than inept government systems and useless protocols?  I give you Oliver North, and his heroic and illegal efforts to funnel money from Iranian arm sales to Nicaraguan rebels.  Oliver North broke the law and justified his law breaking by claiming that the law was wrong and he knew better.  We cheered his rebellious nature and his unquestionable loyalty to his beliefs, and looked the other way at his illegal actions.  As a newly minted political celebrity, he narrowly lost election to the Senate a few years later, and now is a radio host and sought after TV commentator.  Crime pays as long as you believe in your cause and the victim is the “system”. 

A review of the hit shows of the period when today’s most ardent anti-government activists were left home alone to absorb as much TV and VHS movies as possible demonstrates an overwhelming bias towards a few basic ideas that today are Far Right orthodoxy:

·         Government representatives are incompetent.

·         Justice can only be achieved by hiring outsourced talent.

·         Wars can be won only if all internal dissent is eliminated (corollary: wars are lost when there is public dissent).

·         Lone actors within the system that use illegal means in order to justify an end are heroes.

So the next time you’re bludgeoned by a Far Right activist with theories on the indoctrination of children from Hollywood a la The Lorax, agree with them and let them know that the proof of their theory is in their mirror, assuming they grew up watching The A-Team, E.T., Top Gun, Rambo, Die Hard, The Dukes of Hazzard, Beverly Hills Cop, and on and on and on... 

 

Silly?  Maybe.  No more silly than blaming the Bert and Ernie for the increased acceptance of gay marriage.

Mass media – is it the reflector or the director?

** - Based on some ideas I gleaned from my current read, Back to Our Future by David Sirota, a book that is completely one-sided but offers some interesting perspectives nonetheless.      

Romney Released by Republicans

In a long anticipated move, today the Republican National Committee released star player Mitt Romney from the team.  Had Romney remained on the team until March 31^st, he would have been due a participation bonus of 500 superdelegates to the 2012 National Convention.  Cutting him now gives Romney a chance to catch on with another team before the real season begins in September, and it gives the RNC the flexibility to pursue rebuilding with younger, more exciting talent.  Romney is an unrestricted political free agent, and can sign with any team. 

 

At a somber news conference, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus thanked Romney for his years of service to the organization.  “We have nothing for respect and admiration for everything Mitt did for this team, and we will remember him in particular for his glorious 2002 victory in Massachusetts. Let me be clear – this is not about Mitt Romney and his abilities - this is a business decision.  As an organization, we felt that after weighing the short term benefits of keeping Mitt on the roster, it was in our best long term interest to look ahead to 2016.  Frankly we view this decision as in his best interest as well.  Mitt can start moving in another direction to help another team right away, and we owe him that opportunity.”

Romney’s career started slowly with the RNC, and early on he was labeled as a leader who could not win the big one.  He came close in 1994, losing to the undefeated Ted Kennedy in the Senate finals, but he finally brought home the elusive championship in 2002 when he was elected governor of Massachusetts.  His victory that season was even more impressive considering that he had to play in front of a hostile Northeastern liberal crowd.  During that campaign season, he cemented his reputation as a superb game manager, mixing a solid ground game with the occasional advertising bomb.  Positional adaptability was his signature skill.  He could alter his approach from season to season, and sometimes from day to day, keeping opponents and fans off balance.

In recent months, however, it became clear that Romney was no longer the same player who had saved the Olympics and turned around struggling businesses.  He began suffering from self-inflicted verbal injuries that affected his game, and during the current primary season, has taken some devastating hits.  Newt Gingrich hit him so hard in South Carolina some wondered whether he would ever recover.  Since that blindside hit, he has limped to victories against weak competition and the blogosphere has been filled with questions about the toll of the process on his abilities.  Fans began to openly wonder how many more hits their hometown hero could take before his storied career would be over.

“It’s a sad day for Republicans, but we’ve got to move forward and look to the future,” said Priebus.  “We can’t expect our young guns to wait on the sidelines holding the clipboard for Mitt any longer.” 

The young guns behind Romney on the depth chart include Rick Santorum, who is valued for his ability to extend a play and audible from the podium.  The rap on Santorum is that he never knows when to take the sack and demonstrate patience during game situations.  His decision making will need to improve dramatically if he hopes to lead the RNC team to victory.

There have been rumors that the RNC was considering moving up to draft Jeb Bush, a leader with a strong pedigree.  Both his father and brother played at the professional level, so many inside the organization hope some of their skills and ability to connect with fans transferred to young Jeb. 

 

“Jeb has won at every level he’s competed at, but this is a different ballgame.  Up here, the game is faster and more violent, and without a preseason, it isn’t a slam dunk that he’ll be game ready for the big game against DNC in November,” added one Romney teammate.

Speculation began immediately that the Democratic National Committee would be interested in signing Romney.  Leaders of the DNC promised to do their due diligence and consider their options.  “Look, we already have a quarterback, but it would be negligence on our part not to look into whether or not Romney can still play at this level.  It appears that he would be comfortable within our system, so we’ll see.”

Other teams seem more wary of Romney.  The Green Party, the Libertarian Party, and the Socialist Party all expressed restrained interest in the free agent star.  One unnamed source summed up the sentiment among all the political parties.  “You have to consider him since at one time or another in his career he built his offense around our philosophies.  But you cannot look past all the recent fumbles and the missed opportunities.  He can’t duck and dodge like he used to.  Everyone knows his moves.  He’s stiff like a statute under the bright lights anymore.”

Fan reaction to the release announcement was mixed.  Former Romney supporter Bud Light put it this way: “It was time to move on.  We stuck with the last guy too longer and it hurt us,” referring to the RNC’s decision to re-sign John McCain in 2008.  “He was past his prime, but we thought we were getting the Ol’ 2000 Maverick.  Instead, we got the old 1974 Buick.”

“We will never find our franchise politician of the future if we holding on to Romney any longer.  We wish him luck, except when he goes up against us.”

RNC flag waver Carl Spackler will miss the comfort of his handsome team leader behind the center. “Everyone else is untested in the big moments.  No one knows for sure how Rand Paul will handle a debate question on nuclear proliferation, or how Marco Rubio will suggest reforming the tax code.  These are game situations.  At least with Romney, you knew where he stood.  He was unequivocal in his support of strong families, strong military and freedom.  I like those things.  They’re strong.”

Romney has made it clear that he has no interest in a backup role, or in a role as mentor to a younger talent.  “I still got game left.”

The Republican National Committee, and the league, are not so sure.

Castles in the Sand

 

A billionaire sheik in Abu Dhabi had his name, Hamed, carved into a plot of sand in letters so large that they could be seen from space.  My kids have tried that, but the waves seem to wash away part of the letters before they ever finish.  My kids do not have the means to indulge their own age appropriate narcissism, but Hamed had the ego and the means.  I do wonder whose attention he was trying to attract.  Those few humanoids in space at that very moment are a narrow demographic to impress.

Fortunately, we all have inexpensive means to indulge our own narcissistic impulses to be seen and heard throughout the civil and uncivilized world and beyond.  We have Twitter accounts to broadcast our slightest physical discomforts and our misunderstood political views.  We have You Tube to televise our everyday ordinariness and our hidden comedic ‘talents’.  We have blogs to pretend that we’re Hemingway, just without all the career luck he had.  Carving our giant names into sand is what we would prefer, but becoming a momentary Internet sensation in our own circle of trust will have to do at least until we strike oil in the backyard.

We have reached the pinnacle of the Culture of The One.  The 2006 Time magazine Person of the Year was “You”.  The cover had a little mirror on it so we could see ourselves.  No one else really mattered that year, and the trend has continued unabated.  I worry.  We have always been a country that valued “rugged individualism”, but at what point did the value of self-sacrifice that defined our ruggedness morph into the value of self-absorption that emphasizes our individual exceptionalism?

The focus on self has crowded out a meaningful focus on others.  Sure, we can anonymously donate some cash to Haitian earthquake victims, or buy a rubber wristband, but try finding enough volunteers for the high school soccer team car wash. Try finding enough volunteers to join the homeowner’s board of architectural review, or even to attend the annual HOA meeting.  We must be too busy creating our virtual giant letters in the sand to actually get out there and help move some real sand.

We see the celebration and reinforcement of self-absorption all around us.  LeBron James, the self-proclaimed global icon, explained his basketball philosophy by saying, “It’s not about sharing, you know, its’ about everybody having their own spotlight.”  Wow, the guy doesn’t want the ball during crunch time, but with that quote, he pretty much slam dunked modern America, didn’t he?

After 9/11, our President did not ask us for collective sacrifice to defeat the terrorist threat.  He encouraged us to defeat the forces of evil by going “shopping”.  That sentiment truly served as the bookend of an era that began with John Kennedy challenging a nation to “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”  40+ years after that speech, the closing answer was simple – we can buy iPods and big screen TVs for our country.

The current election is shaping up to be a continuation of this struggle between helping others and helping ourselves.  Obama ran in 2008 on “Yes We Can”, with the implicit message they we as a nation can accomplish more together than apart.  Romney is gearing up for his run with a different message: “Yes You Can” that turns the spotlight directly on to the lazy rabble that needs to take a bath and start working instead of freeloading in the park.  One message asks that we sublimate our needs to achieve a greater result as a nation.  One message asks that you maximize your own talents individually, and the nation will benefit as a result.  It’s Coach Norman Dale from Hoosiers demanding 4 passes to teammates before any shot is taken versus LeBron James hogging the spotlight and taking any shot he wants, whenever he wants.  Side note: LeBron hasn’t won anything yet.

It is the political embodiment of Glenn Beck’s entreaty from his webpage in 2009 – “I feel like I need to keep saying that word so it stays in front of your and everybody’s mind – individual, individual, individual!”  As amateur thinker Beck said on his TV program, “We’re not all in this together.  It’s our independent spirit that has pulled us out of tougher jams than the one we’re in now.”  We are stronger when we are separate, and we should not be confined by common purpose.  Ignorance is Strength and Freedom is Slavery.  Beck never said that part, but he could have.

As a nation, I wish we could be more like Seal Team Six (without the camouflage and the guns of course).  No one knows their individual names.  No one follows their individual Twitter feeds.  Individual fame is sacrificed for the success of the unit.  Everyone has a role, and no one has the spotlight.  They toil in anonymity until the time comes to achieve as a team, and that they do.  That wish is dashed now that Act of Valor is a hit box office movie this month.  Even the Seals couldn’t resist a few letters in the sand.  Maybe all sense of community and team is gone.  Maybe that’s what the Founders wanted – a nation of individuals, and We the People was just a ruse.

The Self-Help section of the remaining local bookstores is one of the largest and contains dozens of best-sellers.  It would be nice one day to find a Self-Less section just as large and just as popular.  To be fully selfless these days, you have to be one rugged individual.  There are fewer and fewer that are happy to toil in the shadows, but the world needs ditch diggers, too.

I wonder about the workers who carve Hamed’s name in the sand.  I wonder how many wished it was their name being seen from outer space.  I think I’ll tweet that, right after I attend our elementary school PTA meeting.

 

One Sorry Sorry

From The Week:

Mark Byron from Cincinnati complained on Facebook that his estranged wife was an “evil, vindictive woman”, and was ordered by a judge to post daily apologies for a month or go to jail.  He said the judge is violating his freedom of speech.  “If they can do this to me, they can do this to others,” he said.

That of course is a great idea.  Even if she was/is an “evil, vindictive woman”, an apology is in order.

The man who needs to be sentenced by an activist judge to repeatedly apologize to a woman in a public forum is Rush Limbaugh.  He has so far issued one written apology for calling the Georgetowne University student a “slut” and a “prostitute” while simultaneously invoking the “comedian” defense: 
 
"My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir," Limbaugh says in the statement. "I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices."

Yes, nothing is more hilarious than a conservative political radio host with upwards of 20 million listeners calling a woman a slut and a prostitute based on her political view that contraception should be covered under the ACA and that the Blunt Amendment is absurdly broad.  Given that contraception coverage is already included in hundreds of health plans across America, including those cities and town where “real” Americans live and work, I guess he could joke that a large majority of his female listeners are sluts and prostitutes as well since they have the pill on their plans.  Guffaw!!!

Limbaugh’s apology couldn’t be confined to just a heartfelt mea culpa to the woman in question.  He couldn’t control himself.  "For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week.  In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation."

It is tough to argue with that.  His show does illustrate the absurd and it does glorify absurdity.  His financially motivated “apology” went on to include more Limbaugh laugh tracks:

“I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress.”

Rush is a regular Jerry Seinfeld.  He is resurrecting the original Show about Nothing with his own jolly twist.  What makes this so funny is how his portrayal of Ms. Fluke’s actual testimony differs from what she actually said at the hearing.  That’s called “illustrating the absurd with absurdity”, or as it is more commonly known, “making stuff up that wasn’t said”.

If you read her testimony (it’s short), she spoke about how contraceptive coverage is included in the Georgetowne faculty and staff plan already.  She talked about friends with ovarian cysts and endometriosis who need the birth control medication to manage their conditions.  She talked about the plight of her married friends who attend law school with her and pay annually $3,000 in out-of-pocket costs. 

In Rush’s comedic world, she is Snooki.  Stop it, you’re killin’ me!

To prove that his humorous, insult driven take on the issues of the day was no “fluke” (pun intended), days later he suggested that Ms. Fluke post videos of her sexual escapades on You Tube for all to see since Rush’s loyal Dittoheads were paying for her moral lapses with their tax dollars.  He really is the Don Rickles of political commentary, isn’t he?

While Rush distributes the pitchforks and torches to his listening audience, I have to ask – how are taxpayers being asked to pay for Ms. Fluke’s contraception?  She testified that her school, a private school where she pays the tuition, should be required to offer contraceptive coverage under the employer’s plan.  Where do the tax dollars factor into this equation?

Rush added as part of his “apology” that “In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone’s bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a presidential level.”  That means that discussion of Rick Santorum’s campaign raison d’etre is off the table for Rush.  Now that is funny.

Now, advertisers are pulling out, just as Rush suggested Fluke’s parade of anonymous lovers do while she waits for taxpayers to pay for her indiscretions and her moral weaknesses.  I cannot stop chuckling at his EIB comedy show!

By the way, I have a religious objection to war, torture and the death penalty.  Please, don’t force me to pay for such immorality with my tax dollars.  My religion forbids it and to force me to support such actions with my tax dollars violates my religious freedom as guaranteed in the Constitution.  Deal?

“Inappropriate” is wearing white before Memorial Day.  Limbaugh’s attacks (and they were attacks, not comic genius) are better described as disgusting and offensive and mean and hurtful.  Just Say No.

With Limbaugh, abstinence is the moral choice. 

A Foreign View

I read this post by Ed Kilgore on Washington Monthly this week, and I have read it over several times.  I hesitated sharing it immediately because it sounded overly optimistic and frankly, too liberal (anything that mentions “climate change” as a threat is usually dismissed completely by some, even though the real debate on climate change should be the cause, not the fact that it is happening at all).  Perhaps it is optimistic in places.  It is difficult to view the world through the lens of a 24 hour news cycle as anything but unstable and chaotic.  Images from across the globe of civilized people going about their daily business in peace and safety do not make for riveting television.

The closing paragraph resonates with my more “let’s hear both sides” pragmatic bent, and I agree with its’ sentiment.  National security and foreign policy should never be one note topics, and neither should be directed exclusively with an eye to what happened yesterday.  That’s the job of historians.  Both national security and foreign policy are shaped by nuance and detail, and require an eye to the future.  Neither is effectively managed through mindless shouting and bumper sticker sloganeering.

From Ed Kilgore as posted on Washington Monthly:

There is a useful buzz this week surrounding an article in, of all places, Foreign Affairs magazine, by Michah Zenko and Michael Cohen, with the provocative title: “Clear and Present Safety.” It argues that despite the regular alarms issued by national security experts and politicians of both parties (most notably the Republican presidential candidates who regularly accuse the Obama administration of potentially catastrophic weakness in the face of powerful and sinister enemies), the U.S. and indeed the whole world are much safer than at any recent juncture. Here’s Zenko and Cohen’s succinct summary of current conditions:

The world that the United States inhabits today is a remarkably safe and secure place. It is a world with fewer violent conflicts and greater political freedom than at virtually any other point in human history. All over the world, people enjoy longer life expectancy and greater economic opportunity than ever before. The United States faces no plausible existential threats, no great-power rival, and no near-term competition for the role of global hegemon. The U.S. military is the world’s most powerful, and even in the middle of a sustained downturn, the U.S. economy remains among one of the world’s most vibrant and adaptive.  Although the United States faces a host of international challenges, they pose little risk to the overwhelming majority of American citizens and can be managed with existing diplomatic, economic, and, to a much lesser extent, military tools.

Why, then, don’t U.S. national security policies, and the political debate surrounding them, reflect this reality? Zenko and Cohen point to a host of factors, from the mental habits of national security stakeholders to a massive and continuing (if psychologically understandable) overreaction to 9/11 (on which, they note, the U.S. has expended an estimated $3 trillion). Beyond dollars, cents and lives, U.S. policy, they believe, is still dominated by Dick Cheney’s so-called “1% doctrine” whereby remote threats to national security absorb vast resources while more immediate problems, foreign and domestic, are ignored:

[T]he most lamentable cost of unceasing threat exaggeration and a focus on military force is that the main global challenges facing the United States today are poorly resourced and given far less attention than “sexier” problems, such as war and terrorism. These include climate change, pandemic diseases, global economic instability, and transnational criminal networks — all of which could serve as catalysts to severe and direct challenges to U.S. security interests. But these concerns are less visceral than alleged threats from terrorism and rogue nuclear states. They require long-term planning and occasionally painful solutions, and they are not constantly hyped by well-financed interest groups. As a result, they are given short shrift in national security discourse and policymaking.

This is a prescription for a paradigm change that is not likely to get immediate traction in a political world where Democrats are forever trying to prove they are tough enough to be entrusted with the nuclear codes, and Republicans are openly frothing for war with Iran and a confrontational stance towards many other countries (and entire religions, for that matter).

But the growing debate over this article is not a bad place to begin an effort to bring American foreign and national security policy out of its strangely anachronistic paranoid crouch and into the world we actually inhabit. It’s far from being a world without many dangers and threats, but it is one where we can actually undermine our security by underestimating it. (emphasis added)

Hmmm...It could be that drilling more domestically and bombing Iran will not solve all of our international challenges.  Imagine that.  The national security and foreign policy debate should expand, not narrow, although election years are usually not the most fertile time for new ideas on foreign policy and national security to take root.  They are usually better times for the smelly fertilizer of saber-rattling and vague references to Neville Chamberlain.

We can open our eyes a little wider, can’t we?

Thinking Outside The Box

Last week it was announced that Chantilly’s only exclusive inline hockey facility would be permanently shutting its doors.  For the space known colloquially as The Box, the bitter end will come sometime before the end of this month.  I am sad beyond words but thankful that it provided as much joy and competition and camaraderie as it did to myself and so many others for 6 too short years.

Hockey has been in my blood since the early 1970s.  It began when my brothers first handed me a leftie stick (I am right-handed in all things but hockey) and we scrimmaged on the backyard blacktop with our Mylec sticks and no bounce orange ball pucks.  What equipment we couldn’t afford we made.  Old sofa cushions were cut into goalie pads and secured with rope or belts we had outgrown.  A varsity jacket made an ideal chest protector.  In those heady days, we did quite a bit of damage to the back of the house with errant slapshots, and the soles of a new pair of sneakers could be worn through in a week or two.  We played early and often, and I have the photographs and scars to prove it.

Street hockey gave way to pond hockey in the winter, one of life’s greatest simple pleasures.  The Warinanco Park Lake (really a big pond) would only freeze to a sufficient depth for about 5 days each winter, and that free ice time needed to be maximized.  I have vivid memories of shoveling the snow on the ice in the shape of a makeshift rink and playing for hours, but I have absolutely no memory of eating any meals on those days.  Pond hockey has no intermission, no concession stands.  You play until the black puck and the sky are the same color.

From the free winter ice we moved on to the big time – renting out the main Warinanco Park rink.  For $100, we could secure private ice time from 1 AM until 3 AM, or 3:30 AM until 5:30 AM.  Two hours of hockey freestyle on a rink all to ourselves.  We would organize 2 teams of 10 skaters each, and for the paltry sum of $5 per player, we were N.Y. Rangers or N.Y. Islanders for a few hours.  My mother would marvel at my dedication.

“I can’t get you out of bed for school, but for hockey, you can wake yourself at 2:30 in the morning without a complaint.  I don’t get it.”

I got it, though.  I liked sleeping, but I loved playing hockey.  I was good at it.  On the rink, I was important.  On the rink, I was cool.  That’s all that really matters to a skinny kid with a big mouth.

After high school, life intervened and hockey playing became something I used to do as a kid.  Slowly but surely, with each subsequent move to another apartment, in another city, for another job, my personal hockey equipment supply starting thinning and my treasured tools of the game became outdated.  Kinda like I was becoming.  Nothing else seemed more important, but everything else was more pressing, and a year away from the game quickly grew to 22 years.

The thought of returning to the game was never far from consciousness, but I needed a push.  Sitting around is easier, but not nearly as fun.  In 2002, I started seeing a number of roadside signs for Potomac Inline Hockey, teams forming in your area now, check us out online.  The more I saw these signs, the more the idea took root.  I can play hockey again…I think I can, anyway.  I wasn’t really sure.

I kept the desire secretly in my heart for a year.  It took that long to overcome my self-doubts about my abilities, and to build up the nerve to tell my wife that I was ready to spend some of our money on my narcissistic desire to play a crazy kid’s game.

 

Did I mention that I had never been on inline skates for more than a few wobbly minutes in my life?  This fun fact would give any rational man pause, but as I have established, I was not rational about the game.  Over that year, my desire to play morphed into my need to play.  Maybe I could be important and cool all over again, riding the coattails of a deceptively strong wrist shot and a deft passing touch.

Those early seasons with Potomac Inline were played at Splash N’ Play (the N’ is text for “and”) at the intersection of Route 28 and Willard Road.  The lighting was dim, the rink not regulation size, but that seemed not to matter.  I picked the inline game up quickly, of course not before flying shoulder first into the boards because I couldn’t stop on wheels very well.  My left shoulder still sags slightly lower than the right, but it is a defect that I wear proudly.  It’s physical proof that yes, I am a hockey player.  We rink rats can be weird like that.

Splash N’ Play was sold to a church group, and our ouster by the faithful turned into a blessing for us devout puckheads.  A group of volunteers far more dedicated than me put together a plan to create an inline hockey-only facility within 10 minutes of my house, and without missing a season, they made it happen.  I will be forever grateful to them for their hard work.

The Box became my sanctuary.  It was my place to yell, push, shove, use foul language, laugh, and score (goals).  Where else is yelling, pushing, shoving and cursing so richly rewarded?  At The Box, I was Bizarro HR Guy, the complete opposite of my HR work persona.  I always got a chuckle when a fellow teammate would find out that I was in human resources, and stare incredulously.  “You?  After the sh*t I’ve heard come out of your mouth?”  Like I said it was a sanctuary, a politically correct-free zone with few rules except get back on defense and pass once in a while.  Mostly, though, when I was at The Box I felt important and cool for 44 minutes of running time twice a week (sometimes more) for 6 glorious years. 

I’ll play elsewhere next season, and it will be a new kind of fun.  But I will miss The Box and all the great friends I made there.  Keep in touch on FB, fellas.  We will face off again someday.  I must mention the one thing I won’t miss – the post-game locker room smell.  That’s nasty. 

RIP The Box, Chantilly’s Finest Inline Hockey Arena