“I can’t define pornography … but I know it when I see it. I can’t define gutless … but if the shoe fits Niklas?”
Running interference with the Wings Niklas Kronwall
Havlat hit may not be interference but it shows lack of respect
By Terrance Seamus Gavan
A red herring led the sports headlines last weekend.
The red herring?
Whether the headhunting hit by the Wings defenseman Niklas Kronwall on the Black Hawks leading scorer Martin Havlat was actually interference.
Kronwall was issued a major penalty for the hit along the boards.
The hockey pundits all waded deeply into the pond, sharks to the bloodletting.
Most of the big hammerheads, including the three loopily partisan musketeers on TSN’s The Reporters hosted by Dave Hodge all jumped on the teetering bandwagon, citing that referee Dan O’Halloran and his crew quite simply got it wrong.
“If that’s interference, then we might as well remove Scott Stevens from the Hall of Fame,” said panel member and Sun media columnist Steve Simmons, who can always be relied on to chuck it all at the wall. The implication? Apparently that Scott Stevens earned passage to the Hallowed Hall for an unabashed predilection for mayhem. Which is just patently untrue. And that suggestion from Simmons, come to think, is another red herring. Because Niklas Kronwall is a lot of things, but he’s no Scott Stevens. Kronwall is just another built for bluster, journeyman mucker.
Michael Farber, another Reporters regular and an unmitigated apologist for all things career threatening in the NHL, said there should have been no penalty called. Farber viewed the hit as part of the day-to-day NHL shuck and jive. And the other panelist, the Toronto Star’s Damien Cox, was equally dismissive about the officiating crew’s so called “make-up call.”
The hit, for the record, put Havlat (a talented scoring machine) deep into a concussive coma for a good two minutes. As he lay on the ice, eyes rolled back to the nether reaches of his melon, the game officials on the ice conferred and finally called interference.
Was it a make up call? By strict definition of the rules, probably it was.
It wasn’t interference by strict definition.
But who cares?
That’s the red herring. Shift the blame. Change the conversation.
Discuss the call and not the brutal reality.
And here it is, the crux, the minutia of the incident.
It may not have been interference, but it was a devastating and malignant headhunting attempt to injure another player. Let’s not forget that Eric Lindros is not the first and will not be the last player whose career was cut short by too many cranks to the noggin. This is a problem that hinges on body armor, bigger bodies, and the changing parameters of a game that is outgrowing old standards.
So if not interference then what?
Well the officiating crew deemed it ugly enough to offer the game gate to Kronwall. That prompted a one game suspension.
Ultimately, it’s a hit that, like fighting, must be addressed by the NHL.
The National Football League has bowed to increasing scientific pressure and the eye-popping reports of early onset dementia caused by significant and ongoing head trauma. They responded by outlawing flagrant shots to the head.
Of course this is the NHL, ruled by a different set of standards, and an old school dinosaur named Garibaldi Bettmanasourus Rex, so we can’t expect too much in the way of redress.
Farber, Simmons, Hodge and Cox, all guys with some pencil-pushing pop and pundit, all said no foul.
Of course they’re not on the ice. But they love the mayhem. Figures. Voyeurs and pantywaists love the vicarious rush of adrenalin.
Brian Campbell, Chicago defenseman, who is part of the NHL competition committee, offers a different opinion.
“I thought it was gutless all around,” said Campbell. “I thought he [Kronwall] jumped. Marty didn't have the puck. His forearm came up high. He’s done it hundreds of time in the League, and it seems like nothing ever happens. I just don't understand it. We've talked about it, and eventually we've got to clamp down. These guys got to pay for it - guys that are taking shots to the head. It’s unacceptable and it’s not like it’s the first time it's happened with that guy. There’s no need for it in this game.”
And for me, that notation, and snippet from a player, rates higher than all of the swollen rhetoric emanating from the bloated couch-potatoes that spew forth in talking head segments on OTR, PTI and ESPN.
Was that a dirty hit? Was it headhunting? Was it a gutless hit?
The NHL and the old-schoolers state emphatically that it’s all part of the long history of the game.
But is it?
Remember Habs enforcer John Ferguson? Six feet and all of 178 pounds in his prime. How about Eddie Shack? Six foot one and 195.Gordie Howe? One of the biggest guys in the league. Six-one and 205 pounds.
They all played without helmets, and with body armor that resembled a rolled up copy of the Sunday Star on a slow news day.
I don’t recall if Leaf enforcer Eddie Shack ever took a loose footed, leaping run at the Habs’ Henri Richard [5’7” and 160] or Yvon Cournoyer [5’7” and 172], but I’m pretty sure that he never did. I’m also pretty certain that he and Fergie both had better things to contemplate than the notoriety engendered by the possibility of ending another player’s season or career. Back then there was less money and more chivalry extant.
Sadly none of that former gallantry seems to enter the equation these days.
Bone crushers, in body armor worthy of an ersatz Robocop on Tacks, don’t seem so enamored of tradition and respect for another player’s right to earn a living.
Saying that this type of rampant head hunting is part of the game, is equivalent to the NRA’s loopy logic regarding the second amendment right to bear arms in the USA. When that American legislation was penned, the arms referred to included single shot muskets and bowie knives.
The right to bear arms was never meant to include 50 mm assault rifles, ouzis and rocket launchers.
By the same token, clean hits in the NHL were never meant to include a blindside, leaping shoulder crank to an exposed and unsuspecting melon, from a body-armored, 6’6” 260 pound projectile traveling at 42 mph.
Geez. Someone could get hurt.
Just ask Martin Havlat – but you’ll have to wait until he wakes up
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Junk food embraces healthy living
Vitamin-fortified junk – hallelujahs for techno
Bonbons, butts, buckshot and bullets – on becoming consumer friendly
By Terrance Seamus O’Gavan
Health Canada is investigating the efficacy of adding vitamins to junk food.
About time too.
Good stuff like potato chips, double-dipped chocolate covered cheese-puffs, and cotton candy have been taking some hard knockin’ raps of late.
Woebegone naysayers in Canada’s meds profession are already manning the ramparts, and calling on the organics cognoscente to fight this trending toward totalitarian technology.
“I think that almost certainly what it will lead to is the fortification of junk food, of highly processed food, that really we should be discouraging the consumption of,” says Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute in Ottawa.
Horse hooey. What a namby-pamby.
Relax and abate good doctors. The people like it.
Forget all that useless claptrap about apples and oranges, broccoli and carrots.
Forge ahead. Get with the program. It’s 2009 for god’s sake.
Your kids hate parsnips and pomegranates. They love Pringles, Pez, peanut brittle, and popcorn. Add a bit of Vitamin D, some Human Growth Hormone, a spackle of Vitamin C, B12, garlic, and testosterone to that 550 gram Mars bar, and voila!
Your compost and rubbish diet is fundamentally fortified with a mélange of anti-aging, cancer-battlin’, weight-wackin’, cold-crunchin’ and swine-flu fightin’ agents.
Win-win. Junk food crunched to healthy living.
The paradigm spins. Mottos move. A 21st century campaign is borne.
“A Snickers a day keeps your doctor at bay.”
And why stop there for god’s sake.
The good news is spreading.
The gun lobby is on board. Like Season Shot, an ammo supplier. Years ago they came up with bird shot made from oregano, garlic, onion, pepper and other spiced treats.
Check out Season Shot’s startling new ad: “Ammo with Flavor! Season Shot is made of tightly packed seasoning bound by a fully biodegradable food product. The seasoning is actually injected into the bird on impact … When the bird is cooked the seasoning pellets melt into the meat spreading the flavor to the entire bird.” Whoeeee! And it comes in a wide array of flavors.
Now, gun makers are jumping on board this techno train.
National Rifle Association stalwarts Remington, and Smith and Wesson, are even marketing a safe bullet. You heard me.
A spokesman for Remington, Cleveland Gusto, says that all of their bullets –even those flak-jacket piercing, cop-killing, tightly-wound titanium-alloy 44-aught loads – will now be injected and fortified with vitamins C, D and E, a broad-base antibiotic, and a full 100-milligram dose of Anti-Inhibitor Coagulant Complex, an agent that speeds clotting in trauma victims.
“Drive-by deaths are on the rise in North America,” says Gusto. “In an effort to help appease this upward trend in senseless carnage, we will now be using a beneficial clotting agent to give innocent bystanders, cops, firemen, and other collateral damage victims some extra time after receiving a typically fatal gunshot wound.”
Gusto says that field tests are underway right now.
“We’ve been experimenting with the blood-clotting ammo in some war zones – Afghanistan, Iraq, various parts of Africa, downtown Detroit and southern LA - and thus far into field studies, especially with the vitamin and antibiotic enriched ammo additives, survival rates of gunshot victims is up dramatically.”
Gusto goes on to say that the bullet will be marketed as “The Life Saver – Your Friendly Fire Friend!”
The ammo, in various calibers, and sold in pink packaging, will be in your local K-Mart or gun shop, just in time for Christmas.
Nice. And you thought the gun lobby was just another hulking, asset-accumulating monolith, tied tightly to the bottom line.
It’s not stopping there either.
Smokers of the world unite.
From Montreal – where else? – we hear about VitaCig.
A Montreal entrepreneur, Roger Ouellette, is marketing a new type of cigarette called the VitaCig.
The Pitch?
You can have your smoke and get some important vitamins at the same time. Roger Ouellette, inventor of the healthy smoke – no, you pussies, this is not an oxymoron - created it for his “smoking” wife. (Smoking, in this case, being a pejorative and not an embellishment we’re guessing?)
He says the VitaCig has fewer odors than a regular cigarette, and also contains important ingredients such as vitamin C.
Ouellette, who didn't return my calls, told CTV recently, “We give you all the vitamins you lose, plus some vitamins to help you.” Health Canada is not impressed, and stresses that there is no such thing as a healthy cigarette.
Pussies and panty-waists. Quebecois smokers know better. The VitaCig is now available in over 2,000 stores in Quebec and will eventually make its way to other parts of the country.
Roger is already in discussions with Philip Morris, the Mohawk Nation and a number of other big players in big tobacco.
In an interview on National Public Radio recently, Ouellette says he is presently immersed deep within the bowels of his semi-detached Lachine basement laboratory working on phase two of his groundbreaking VitaCig project.
“Me, I’m working next on the VitaCig injected with a Phase Four Lung Cancer chemotherapy drug therapy regimen,” chuckles Ouellette. “My wife, Celine, she’s 45, been smoking for 25 years. She’s tres healthy right now, but you gotta’ know, oh-la-la, she’s buckin’ those odds. I want to be ready with ChemoCig (Trademark registered) when Celine needs it. No ifs, ands, or butts. (Sic – typo by author, who couldn’t resist)”
And, of course, I know what you’re thinking.
How close the apocalypse?
And when can we expect the locusts?
Milksops! Embrace the technology.
And remember Marie Antoinette.
Who said “Let them eat cake.”
Taken back then as a pejorative dismissal of the masses.
We know today that of course she was referring to the good cake.
The Chocolate-Chip-Carrot-Cookie-Crumble with the injected smallpox and mumps vaccine, vitamin C, D and E complex, oxidizing tetracycline compound, herpes therapy, and whole wheat fortified anti-bacterial abstract.
Relax people.
It’s all good.
And that ominous gathering black cloud, blotting out the sun on the horizon?
I have it on good authority.
Not locusts.
Just grasshoppers.
Bonbons, butts, buckshot and bullets – on becoming consumer friendly
By Terrance Seamus O’Gavan
Health Canada is investigating the efficacy of adding vitamins to junk food.
About time too.
Good stuff like potato chips, double-dipped chocolate covered cheese-puffs, and cotton candy have been taking some hard knockin’ raps of late.
Woebegone naysayers in Canada’s meds profession are already manning the ramparts, and calling on the organics cognoscente to fight this trending toward totalitarian technology.
“I think that almost certainly what it will lead to is the fortification of junk food, of highly processed food, that really we should be discouraging the consumption of,” says Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute in Ottawa.
Horse hooey. What a namby-pamby.
Relax and abate good doctors. The people like it.
Forget all that useless claptrap about apples and oranges, broccoli and carrots.
Forge ahead. Get with the program. It’s 2009 for god’s sake.
Your kids hate parsnips and pomegranates. They love Pringles, Pez, peanut brittle, and popcorn. Add a bit of Vitamin D, some Human Growth Hormone, a spackle of Vitamin C, B12, garlic, and testosterone to that 550 gram Mars bar, and voila!
Your compost and rubbish diet is fundamentally fortified with a mélange of anti-aging, cancer-battlin’, weight-wackin’, cold-crunchin’ and swine-flu fightin’ agents.
Win-win. Junk food crunched to healthy living.
The paradigm spins. Mottos move. A 21st century campaign is borne.
“A Snickers a day keeps your doctor at bay.”
And why stop there for god’s sake.
The good news is spreading.
The gun lobby is on board. Like Season Shot, an ammo supplier. Years ago they came up with bird shot made from oregano, garlic, onion, pepper and other spiced treats.
Check out Season Shot’s startling new ad: “Ammo with Flavor! Season Shot is made of tightly packed seasoning bound by a fully biodegradable food product. The seasoning is actually injected into the bird on impact … When the bird is cooked the seasoning pellets melt into the meat spreading the flavor to the entire bird.” Whoeeee! And it comes in a wide array of flavors.
Now, gun makers are jumping on board this techno train.
National Rifle Association stalwarts Remington, and Smith and Wesson, are even marketing a safe bullet. You heard me.
A spokesman for Remington, Cleveland Gusto, says that all of their bullets –even those flak-jacket piercing, cop-killing, tightly-wound titanium-alloy 44-aught loads – will now be injected and fortified with vitamins C, D and E, a broad-base antibiotic, and a full 100-milligram dose of Anti-Inhibitor Coagulant Complex, an agent that speeds clotting in trauma victims.
“Drive-by deaths are on the rise in North America,” says Gusto. “In an effort to help appease this upward trend in senseless carnage, we will now be using a beneficial clotting agent to give innocent bystanders, cops, firemen, and other collateral damage victims some extra time after receiving a typically fatal gunshot wound.”
Gusto says that field tests are underway right now.
“We’ve been experimenting with the blood-clotting ammo in some war zones – Afghanistan, Iraq, various parts of Africa, downtown Detroit and southern LA - and thus far into field studies, especially with the vitamin and antibiotic enriched ammo additives, survival rates of gunshot victims is up dramatically.”
Gusto goes on to say that the bullet will be marketed as “The Life Saver – Your Friendly Fire Friend!”
The ammo, in various calibers, and sold in pink packaging, will be in your local K-Mart or gun shop, just in time for Christmas.
Nice. And you thought the gun lobby was just another hulking, asset-accumulating monolith, tied tightly to the bottom line.
It’s not stopping there either.
Smokers of the world unite.
From Montreal – where else? – we hear about VitaCig.
A Montreal entrepreneur, Roger Ouellette, is marketing a new type of cigarette called the VitaCig.
The Pitch?
You can have your smoke and get some important vitamins at the same time. Roger Ouellette, inventor of the healthy smoke – no, you pussies, this is not an oxymoron - created it for his “smoking” wife. (Smoking, in this case, being a pejorative and not an embellishment we’re guessing?)
He says the VitaCig has fewer odors than a regular cigarette, and also contains important ingredients such as vitamin C.
Ouellette, who didn't return my calls, told CTV recently, “We give you all the vitamins you lose, plus some vitamins to help you.” Health Canada is not impressed, and stresses that there is no such thing as a healthy cigarette.
Pussies and panty-waists. Quebecois smokers know better. The VitaCig is now available in over 2,000 stores in Quebec and will eventually make its way to other parts of the country.
Roger is already in discussions with Philip Morris, the Mohawk Nation and a number of other big players in big tobacco.
In an interview on National Public Radio recently, Ouellette says he is presently immersed deep within the bowels of his semi-detached Lachine basement laboratory working on phase two of his groundbreaking VitaCig project.
“Me, I’m working next on the VitaCig injected with a Phase Four Lung Cancer chemotherapy drug therapy regimen,” chuckles Ouellette. “My wife, Celine, she’s 45, been smoking for 25 years. She’s tres healthy right now, but you gotta’ know, oh-la-la, she’s buckin’ those odds. I want to be ready with ChemoCig (Trademark registered) when Celine needs it. No ifs, ands, or butts. (Sic – typo by author, who couldn’t resist)”
And, of course, I know what you’re thinking.
How close the apocalypse?
And when can we expect the locusts?
Milksops! Embrace the technology.
And remember Marie Antoinette.
Who said “Let them eat cake.”
Taken back then as a pejorative dismissal of the masses.
We know today that of course she was referring to the good cake.
The Chocolate-Chip-Carrot-Cookie-Crumble with the injected smallpox and mumps vaccine, vitamin C, D and E complex, oxidizing tetracycline compound, herpes therapy, and whole wheat fortified anti-bacterial abstract.
Relax people.
It’s all good.
And that ominous gathering black cloud, blotting out the sun on the horizon?
I have it on good authority.
Not locusts.
Just grasshoppers.
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