Primal Scream Therapy for Insomniacs
I can't sleep.
Mostly because there's some kind of mini-rave happening somewhere in our neighborhood, with unnecessarily bright porchlight action and an odd combo of ethnic slo-jams and Metallica blasting through the open window.
Close the window, you say? Yeah, but then it's hot, and that's not particularly conducive to slumber either.
So...while every free second I've had since mid-August has been devoted to school (either decorating, correcting or fretting about the best way to discipline in a post-child abuse world) my middle of the nights have always been sacred to writing.
The trouble with spending every free second living and breathing school is that you're exhausted by about dinnertime, so seeing the other side of 10 o'clock becomes an impossible dream, let alone honest-to-betsy early a.m. quiet time.
But, at least for today, I'm here. There's an enormo stack of half-corrected tests crying out for attention in the other room, but I'm choosing to neglect them. Failure to sleep is found time.
...Found by an OverlyBoisterousArmenianRave!
Thank you, neighbor!
So I powered up the laptop, poured a bowl of Crispix, and turned on the TV for some genuinely odd late night offerings.
True story: "Lettuce," in Japanese, is "LETTUCE!" Just said with much more intensity. The things Food Network teaches you at 2:12 a.m.! As this is Iron Chef, not some sad imitation Teflon Chef or something, they are using five types of "LETTUCE!" None of which are iceberg or romaine or...pre-bagged Spring Mix. So I'm stumped as to what's left over. I guess that's why I'm not iron.
Boo! They just told the actress she looks as fresh as today's "LETTUCE!".
Lame!
I change the channel on you now!
Anyway:
I first started THIS on July 11th...ages ago...in response to the news that the least likely tradebait in the history of time had just been dealt to my Arch-Nemesis. (Don't let superheroes have all the fun, everyone needs an Arch-Nemesis!)
So, I launched a mini-tirade on how I'm taking on a NEW Arch-Nemesis: ME. But the whole topic stressed me out so entirely, I never got more than a few sentences out at time. So here I go, looking for closure on the whole post issue, if not on the topic altogether. Anyway, here's the director's cut of this post, finally remastered and ready for wide release. Sure, I'm an unreliable blogger. But I'm a heckuvalot faster than George Lucas.
I'm ready to stage a mini-protest to take back the night. Stop the insanity. Bring accountability to the White House! Wait, all except that last one. But I am mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore! SPORTS FANS are the most powerless people on earth.
You heard me, Drained-Energizer Bunny who finally stops going and is left to gather dust on the great toy-retirement home known as the top shelf, where all he can do is remember a time when he went and he went and he went...no one lacks control like ME!
Well, except every other person on earth who enjoys sport...
...and those people who realize their parachute isn't going to deploy...or those Pamplona bullrunners who twist their ankles three strides into the race...
Does it count as powerless if you chose to jump out of the plane or stand in front of angry bulls in the first place?
I don't think so.
Ian Laperriere is now on the Colorado Avalanche. If that isn't a sign of the apocalypse, I don't know what is.
Yes, I know. That doesn't mean much to you.
Scrappy Lappy. Won fan favorite year after year when the end-of-season awards went out without ever picking up any top scorer or Most Valuable Player titles. Which is almost true. His stats are terrible, and never manages to make much noise when the smoke clears and the box score gets printed up at the end of the night.
For those of us who sat and watched every nanosecond of the game, we could tell you he was the real MVP. The one who kept up the energy, the one who could make fans feel positive again without ever feeling cheesy or pre-programmed, the one who always looked like he wasn't just punching the clock and showing up for work a few evenings a week, but actually enjoying playing a GAME. The one whose zeal allowed those MVPs to find the back of the net night after night after night when everyone on the other team thought the game was pretty much over. He was the one King you could count on to never frost the tips of his hair. (It IS LA, after all.) Always more than willing to take a punch, especially if that meant he got to dole out a few dozen himself.
I went to a fight last night and a hockey game broke out. Hardy har har. You can't talk about Lappy without mentioning his toughness. But he's far from a hockey cliche.
He was the heart of the team, our ever-rechargeable battery. This sounds like a eulogy, right? In a way, it is. He's going to Colorado, land of the high salaries and umpteen division titles in a surprisingly short 8 year team history. He'll quickly get relegated to fourth line status. A liability on a team of superstars. And then, he'll get scratched from games altogether.
Bad trade.
First trade that ever happened to me...no, not the first one I ever witnessed, the first one that happened TO me was Summer 1994. Luc Robitaille to Pittsburgh for Rick Tocchet. No warning. No whining, no begging to be traded. Just an article on the front page of the Sports section one day (remember, this was back when the Lakers were semi-dormant and the Kings were recently cool) slugged with the caption "'There were tears' when Robitaille heard of the trade," and bearing some stock-photo of Luc in a game where he must have just been sucker-punched in the gut.
He had been, you know. By the owners who stuck him out their folding card table for an early morning yard sale.
I stared at that newspaper for a few hours that morning. Just stared. Didn't talk, didn't curse, didn't roll my eyes with the well-practiced bitterness I now wear as a 12-season NHL veteran.
It was a sucker punch for me, too. At the time, it was the owners who went straight for the gut.
Fast forward a decade. Owners again. Unloading players again. Not for money this time. Lappy's contract is barely worth the fax paper LA and Colorado worked out the deal on. For...a political statement? A show of strength? To exorcise any demons of an unsuccessful past and start again with new-look Kings in a new-look era?
Seriously. Hate the owners.
Which is why I was shocked beyond belief when I realized I was planted firmly on their side of the picket line.
Intermission for silliness:
Who knew Todd Glass had a Comedy Central special? He's not even watchable for 2 minutes a week on Last Comic Standing. At least Comedy Central has the wisdom to run this in the wee hours of nothingness, when normal people are either sleeping or bouncing to unnaturally loud Metallica from four streets over. YUCK!
I change the channel on YOU now!
Ah, VH1 Insomniac Music Theatre. Such genuinely poor music repeated so mindnumbingly often one can't help but want to get to sleep. See, I'm yawning now. What a brilliant psychological tactic.
Why is John Travolta's woman on a Maroon 5 video? Seriously gents, couldn't you have done any better than that? I mean, clearly Travolta couldn't, but you've got that whole rising star mystique working for you, not the flaming meteor crashing to earth vibe he now boasts.
Ooh, meteors! Scary.
And now, back to the post:
Guess who bankrolls these teams, folks? Owners can prance around and furrow their brows and act all concerned about the bottom line of their business investment, but the fact remains that the NHL--moreso than any other league--is built almost solely on ticket money. The highest ticket prices in professional sport, to be exact.
Which is odd, as their sport is...the least popular?
Curious. What am I paying for, exactly? Other than the drug I'm so desperately addicted to that I willingly pay whatever management asks?
Wow, they're bold to ask for so much. Shame on you, owners!
Wow, I'm the world's BIGGEST idiot to pay so much! Shame on US, fans!
There is no other source of income in the NHL. We have no marquee players. Have you ever heard of Jarome Iginla? Vincent Lecavlier? Evgeni Nabokov?
They're some of our league's best and brightest...ring any bells?
Huh.
Heard of Wayne Gretzky? Oh, good. There's one.
Except he retired five years ago.
Don't get me wrong: I'm still mad at the owners for letting it get to this point. (Seriously. Hate them.) Analysts predict a hockey work stoppage could last up to two seasons. That's an astoundingly long time for a sport that was only just starting to hit its stride and grab a decent American fanbase, especially as we knew this strike date has been looming since we last negotiated in '94. EVERYONE saw this coming.
NO ONE--but the fans--seemed to care.
Meanwhile, the league and the players have built up their warchests, and are set to sit out a long winter. Perhaps two. But in the end of their time out, they'll come out of their room like good little three year olds and tell us they've learned something.
Fine. Because as much as I hate the owners, and as much as I love the players--they're my boys, after all--they're a bunch of whiny little crybabies. OF COURSE you don't make as much as your friends who play football, basketball and baseball. You know why? Because people actually KNOW who they are. Want to buy their shoes. Drop them into clever cameos in their movies.
No one has a clue who you are, yet you're making an average of 1.8 million per year? You're collectively stealing 78% of our ticket money, and you want more?
Do it. Go on strike. Disappear for two years. Kick and scream in the corner til you get your way.
Guess what? I knew who you were. I dropped thousands to watch you every season. Not counting the merchandise. So did 18,000 other Los Angelenos. So did hundreds of thousands of other hockey fans across North America.
I hope, when you finally settle your petty little dispute, those arenas are empty. I hope we come to our Ike and Tina senses and realize that we don't need to put up with this. That, after a year or two of running out on us, your fans throw up their hands and tune into football.
Hate those owners. Hate them. Disgusted by the greed of those players. Disgusting.
But most of all, I'm sick to death of me. Of putting up with the emotional roller coaster of losing and losing and...having a summer to think we might win only to lose and lose and lose. Of digging deep into my catholic schoolmarm's salary to buy jerseys and hats and tickets and tickets and tickets. Sick of thinking that I can't wait for the strike to be over because I'll be in the stands the second they drop the puck and declare "game on!"
Congratulations, State of Colorado. You're off the hook...for now.
In the meantime, I'll focus all my arch-nemosity on me. (What? It's a word!) See if I can fight this and decide the thrill of the game isn't worth it. Use the opportunity of an indefinite strike to indefinitely re-examine my priorities.
Consider this my official press conference: Until further notice, I am on strike against myself: The Kings Lackey. Further reports to follow as news develops.
The fauxrave's long since over.
Anyway, I've given myself lots to think about. Lots to brood over. And lots to use as a reason to sleep as thought-avoidance.
So, for now, I excuse myself from typing, and will let myself have a normal human being amount of rest. We'll see if I have the stubborness to excuse myself from cheering, and will let myself have a normal human being amount of sanity.
Secretly, I hope not.
(But that's hardly in the spirit of my protest.)
Mostly because there's some kind of mini-rave happening somewhere in our neighborhood, with unnecessarily bright porchlight action and an odd combo of ethnic slo-jams and Metallica blasting through the open window.
Close the window, you say? Yeah, but then it's hot, and that's not particularly conducive to slumber either.
So...while every free second I've had since mid-August has been devoted to school (either decorating, correcting or fretting about the best way to discipline in a post-child abuse world) my middle of the nights have always been sacred to writing.
The trouble with spending every free second living and breathing school is that you're exhausted by about dinnertime, so seeing the other side of 10 o'clock becomes an impossible dream, let alone honest-to-betsy early a.m. quiet time.
But, at least for today, I'm here. There's an enormo stack of half-corrected tests crying out for attention in the other room, but I'm choosing to neglect them. Failure to sleep is found time.
...Found by an OverlyBoisterousArmenianRave!
Thank you, neighbor!
So I powered up the laptop, poured a bowl of Crispix, and turned on the TV for some genuinely odd late night offerings.
True story: "Lettuce," in Japanese, is "LETTUCE!" Just said with much more intensity. The things Food Network teaches you at 2:12 a.m.! As this is Iron Chef, not some sad imitation Teflon Chef or something, they are using five types of "LETTUCE!" None of which are iceberg or romaine or...pre-bagged Spring Mix. So I'm stumped as to what's left over. I guess that's why I'm not iron.
Boo! They just told the actress she looks as fresh as today's "LETTUCE!".
Lame!
I change the channel on you now!
Anyway:
I first started THIS on July 11th...ages ago...in response to the news that the least likely tradebait in the history of time had just been dealt to my Arch-Nemesis. (Don't let superheroes have all the fun, everyone needs an Arch-Nemesis!)
So, I launched a mini-tirade on how I'm taking on a NEW Arch-Nemesis: ME. But the whole topic stressed me out so entirely, I never got more than a few sentences out at time. So here I go, looking for closure on the whole post issue, if not on the topic altogether. Anyway, here's the director's cut of this post, finally remastered and ready for wide release. Sure, I'm an unreliable blogger. But I'm a heckuvalot faster than George Lucas.
I'm ready to stage a mini-protest to take back the night. Stop the insanity. Bring accountability to the White House! Wait, all except that last one. But I am mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore! SPORTS FANS are the most powerless people on earth.
You heard me, Drained-Energizer Bunny who finally stops going and is left to gather dust on the great toy-retirement home known as the top shelf, where all he can do is remember a time when he went and he went and he went...no one lacks control like ME!
Well, except every other person on earth who enjoys sport...
...and those people who realize their parachute isn't going to deploy...or those Pamplona bullrunners who twist their ankles three strides into the race...
Does it count as powerless if you chose to jump out of the plane or stand in front of angry bulls in the first place?
I don't think so.
Ian Laperriere is now on the Colorado Avalanche. If that isn't a sign of the apocalypse, I don't know what is.
Yes, I know. That doesn't mean much to you.
Scrappy Lappy. Won fan favorite year after year when the end-of-season awards went out without ever picking up any top scorer or Most Valuable Player titles. Which is almost true. His stats are terrible, and never manages to make much noise when the smoke clears and the box score gets printed up at the end of the night.
For those of us who sat and watched every nanosecond of the game, we could tell you he was the real MVP. The one who kept up the energy, the one who could make fans feel positive again without ever feeling cheesy or pre-programmed, the one who always looked like he wasn't just punching the clock and showing up for work a few evenings a week, but actually enjoying playing a GAME. The one whose zeal allowed those MVPs to find the back of the net night after night after night when everyone on the other team thought the game was pretty much over. He was the one King you could count on to never frost the tips of his hair. (It IS LA, after all.) Always more than willing to take a punch, especially if that meant he got to dole out a few dozen himself.
I went to a fight last night and a hockey game broke out. Hardy har har. You can't talk about Lappy without mentioning his toughness. But he's far from a hockey cliche.
He was the heart of the team, our ever-rechargeable battery. This sounds like a eulogy, right? In a way, it is. He's going to Colorado, land of the high salaries and umpteen division titles in a surprisingly short 8 year team history. He'll quickly get relegated to fourth line status. A liability on a team of superstars. And then, he'll get scratched from games altogether.
Bad trade.
First trade that ever happened to me...no, not the first one I ever witnessed, the first one that happened TO me was Summer 1994. Luc Robitaille to Pittsburgh for Rick Tocchet. No warning. No whining, no begging to be traded. Just an article on the front page of the Sports section one day (remember, this was back when the Lakers were semi-dormant and the Kings were recently cool) slugged with the caption "'There were tears' when Robitaille heard of the trade," and bearing some stock-photo of Luc in a game where he must have just been sucker-punched in the gut.
He had been, you know. By the owners who stuck him out their folding card table for an early morning yard sale.
I stared at that newspaper for a few hours that morning. Just stared. Didn't talk, didn't curse, didn't roll my eyes with the well-practiced bitterness I now wear as a 12-season NHL veteran.
It was a sucker punch for me, too. At the time, it was the owners who went straight for the gut.
Fast forward a decade. Owners again. Unloading players again. Not for money this time. Lappy's contract is barely worth the fax paper LA and Colorado worked out the deal on. For...a political statement? A show of strength? To exorcise any demons of an unsuccessful past and start again with new-look Kings in a new-look era?
Seriously. Hate the owners.
Which is why I was shocked beyond belief when I realized I was planted firmly on their side of the picket line.
Intermission for silliness:
Who knew Todd Glass had a Comedy Central special? He's not even watchable for 2 minutes a week on Last Comic Standing. At least Comedy Central has the wisdom to run this in the wee hours of nothingness, when normal people are either sleeping or bouncing to unnaturally loud Metallica from four streets over. YUCK!
I change the channel on YOU now!
Ah, VH1 Insomniac Music Theatre. Such genuinely poor music repeated so mindnumbingly often one can't help but want to get to sleep. See, I'm yawning now. What a brilliant psychological tactic.
Why is John Travolta's woman on a Maroon 5 video? Seriously gents, couldn't you have done any better than that? I mean, clearly Travolta couldn't, but you've got that whole rising star mystique working for you, not the flaming meteor crashing to earth vibe he now boasts.
Ooh, meteors! Scary.
And now, back to the post:
Guess who bankrolls these teams, folks? Owners can prance around and furrow their brows and act all concerned about the bottom line of their business investment, but the fact remains that the NHL--moreso than any other league--is built almost solely on ticket money. The highest ticket prices in professional sport, to be exact.
Which is odd, as their sport is...the least popular?
Curious. What am I paying for, exactly? Other than the drug I'm so desperately addicted to that I willingly pay whatever management asks?
Wow, they're bold to ask for so much. Shame on you, owners!
Wow, I'm the world's BIGGEST idiot to pay so much! Shame on US, fans!
There is no other source of income in the NHL. We have no marquee players. Have you ever heard of Jarome Iginla? Vincent Lecavlier? Evgeni Nabokov?
They're some of our league's best and brightest...ring any bells?
Huh.
Heard of Wayne Gretzky? Oh, good. There's one.
Except he retired five years ago.
Don't get me wrong: I'm still mad at the owners for letting it get to this point. (Seriously. Hate them.) Analysts predict a hockey work stoppage could last up to two seasons. That's an astoundingly long time for a sport that was only just starting to hit its stride and grab a decent American fanbase, especially as we knew this strike date has been looming since we last negotiated in '94. EVERYONE saw this coming.
NO ONE--but the fans--seemed to care.
Meanwhile, the league and the players have built up their warchests, and are set to sit out a long winter. Perhaps two. But in the end of their time out, they'll come out of their room like good little three year olds and tell us they've learned something.
Fine. Because as much as I hate the owners, and as much as I love the players--they're my boys, after all--they're a bunch of whiny little crybabies. OF COURSE you don't make as much as your friends who play football, basketball and baseball. You know why? Because people actually KNOW who they are. Want to buy their shoes. Drop them into clever cameos in their movies.
No one has a clue who you are, yet you're making an average of 1.8 million per year? You're collectively stealing 78% of our ticket money, and you want more?
Do it. Go on strike. Disappear for two years. Kick and scream in the corner til you get your way.
Guess what? I knew who you were. I dropped thousands to watch you every season. Not counting the merchandise. So did 18,000 other Los Angelenos. So did hundreds of thousands of other hockey fans across North America.
I hope, when you finally settle your petty little dispute, those arenas are empty. I hope we come to our Ike and Tina senses and realize that we don't need to put up with this. That, after a year or two of running out on us, your fans throw up their hands and tune into football.
Hate those owners. Hate them. Disgusted by the greed of those players. Disgusting.
But most of all, I'm sick to death of me. Of putting up with the emotional roller coaster of losing and losing and...having a summer to think we might win only to lose and lose and lose. Of digging deep into my catholic schoolmarm's salary to buy jerseys and hats and tickets and tickets and tickets. Sick of thinking that I can't wait for the strike to be over because I'll be in the stands the second they drop the puck and declare "game on!"
Congratulations, State of Colorado. You're off the hook...for now.
In the meantime, I'll focus all my arch-nemosity on me. (What? It's a word!) See if I can fight this and decide the thrill of the game isn't worth it. Use the opportunity of an indefinite strike to indefinitely re-examine my priorities.
Consider this my official press conference: Until further notice, I am on strike against myself: The Kings Lackey. Further reports to follow as news develops.
The fauxrave's long since over.
Anyway, I've given myself lots to think about. Lots to brood over. And lots to use as a reason to sleep as thought-avoidance.
So, for now, I excuse myself from typing, and will let myself have a normal human being amount of rest. We'll see if I have the stubborness to excuse myself from cheering, and will let myself have a normal human being amount of sanity.
Secretly, I hope not.
(But that's hardly in the spirit of my protest.)
posted by Tangentially Yours at
1:58 AM
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1 comments
