The Weekly Meat

The NHL All-Time All-Ugly Team

We have to respect ugly. Ugly is part of the game. It is smart and calculating. It does not rest on its past glory. It's out there scouring obscure corners of the globe, signing guys while they're still playing Midget, and — judging from Brad Park's draft photo — it has been for a long time. Ugly has its teeth in several young stars of the moment, and ugly will be around for a long time to come. We simply cannot beat ugly. We can, however, celebrate it.

If some of these guys look like they've been hit in the face with a bag of nickels, it's because they have. Yes, several have won Cups, and most (OK, all) could kick my short, skinny, rec league ass, but the roster must be made.

Note that none of these guys are the victims of a single especially bad picture, at an awkward time. And aside from Doug Favell, I took a pass on old-school goalies like Gump Worsley. They were easy targets, but as the Gumper himself liked to say, "My face is my mask" — and that's a tough nut you've gotta respect. Kasparaitis, on the other hand, well, he ain't got no alibi.

	Mike Ricci — Don't kid yourself it's all about the missing tooth or the long hair. Beauty might be only skin deep, but ugly cuts straight to the bone. (Warning: Click the thumbnails for a bigger pic only if you dare.)
	Darius Kasparaitis — The man whose name sounds like a disease as bad as his mug. Darius, I'll always remember you losing in the fifth overtime, baby, when Keith Primeau shook you out of your jock. Now that was some beautiful ugliness.
	Nick Fotiu — A tough fighter who was always a hometown fan favorite. Probably a great guy to go have a couple of pops with. But a puss that only Mrs. Fotiu could love.
	Rod Brind'Amour — Ah, Brindy. I love his game: he's all effort, all the time, and I'd be willing to look like him if it meant I could play like him. But he's first team All-Ugly in any league.
	Doug Favell — One of the first guys to really start painting his goalie mask creatively, but like an ugly girl wearing gaudy jewelry, there was clearly some misdirection behind that. He always looked much better behind the mask.
	Chris Chelios — Sorry, Chelly. Your longevity is admirable, as is this piece of acting brilliance alongside Samuel L. Jackson, but you're on the list and you know it.
	Eddie Johnstone — Even when I was a young kid, I remember thinking this guy kind of looked like a rat with a beak.
	Slava Fetisov — Ugly in Russian? "уродско." A mainstay on the Soviet Red Army team, Slava was one of the best D-men in the world for a good decade before coming to play in the NHL at age 31. Shown here on the Wings, he proves that you can leave your country, but you can't leave ugly.
	Tiger Williams — The NHL all-time career penalty minutes leader, and a stand-up ugly dude. I think of him in those old school, equally ugly Canucks "flying V" jerseys. Of special note, epicurean readers will be keenly interested to see that Tiger has not been idle in retirement. If you can find a copy, check out his cookbook: Done Like Dinner: Tiger in the Kitchen.
	Esa Tikkanen — "The Grate One" was maybe the most accomplished pest of all time. And let's face it, the worst kind of pest is an ugly pest.
	Gino Odjick — Lurch, why the long face? Tough as nails, it's still inconceivable to me that the "Algonquin Enforcer" was forced to retire early due to a concussion from taking a puck to the head. Gino looks like he makes pucks run away and wet themselves.
	Jeff Odgers — Square jaw, busted up nose, accentuated by the Breathe Right strip. Frickin' beauty. Gotta love Odgers.
	Mike Bossy — Bossy was ugly in that stylish Iggy Pop sort of way that undoubtedly got him lots of action back in the Studio 54 days, and he was hands-down the most talented guy in this bunch, but he's one ugly dude.
	Kjell Samuelsson — Ugly is sneaky. Kjell tried to outgrow it, but even at 6'6" ugly was able to catch up to his face.
	Marcel Dionne — The aptly nicknamed "Little Beaver" was another amazingly talented first team All-Ugly guy. And one with more staying power than Bossy. One of the few guys in the 700 goal club, 5th on the all-time points list, and center to the legendary "Triple Crown" line, with Charlie Simmer and Dave Taylor. Neither of those guys were real strong in the looks department either, but something tells me they managed to get laid a lot with Marcel around for comparison, eh?
	Bobby Holik — Holik's got that medical-experiment-gone-awry meets drill-sergeant thing going on. He just plain scares the crap out of me.
	Brian Bellows — A point-a-game guy for a long time, but he never really learned to backcheck. And, of course, there's this damning evidence, courtesy of Bryan Trottier and Kevin Stevens (who, you know, was always a great judge of character). OK, OK, Bellows isn't really all that ugly, but I can't resist that ridiculous Trottier/Stevens clip.
	Dennis Polonich — Ladies and gentlemen, we just might have a winner. By all accounts, Polonich was pretty much a grade-A asshat during his tenure in the NHL. Despite being roughly the size of the artist formerly known as Prince, he was a pest of the highest magnitude. I remember going to a Saturday matinée game in Philly and having the benches clear so the Flyers could get a piece of him. It was Donnybrook every time he came to town, and like any good fan, I hated his guts.

How to Get Ahead in Business

Introduction
Open with a joke followed by a mixed sports metaphor. If you can do both at the same time, you'll be batting a thousand right out of the gate!

(Note: Exclamation points are generally for admins and the folks in MarCom. But what the heck, break the rules occasionally!)

PowerPoint
Always use PowerPoint. It's the greatest tool of all time for prolonging a meeting. And nothing is more business-y than a good long self-important meeting. PowerPoint enables you to project your notes onto a big screen so you can then read them verbatim to attendees. It allows you to waste time, money, and create 1970s-style "fly-in" animation at the same time you're wasting time and money. (How's that for synergy!?) So do it. Baffle them with bullshit. Above all, remember, nothing generates buzz like buzzwords.

Buzzwords
Repeat whichever buzzwords and acronyms you've heard in the latest meeting, especially from those one to two levels above you. When possible, try to be wordy (remember: four words good, two words bad) without actually being substantive. In lieu of content, use clichés, big words, and jargon. If you don't know any jargon, make up an acronym.

Acronyms
Everyone loves acronyms. From CEOs to CIOs and CMOs, all the way down the line to VPs. Also, there are some terrific jargon-generators out here if you know where to look. When you are forced to be substantive, be obtuse, and tell folks what they already know. People love re-learning what they already know. It makes them feel smart.

Bullet Lists
At around this point in any newsletter article or presentation, you'll want to include some bullet points:

• People love bullets
• They're like headlines
• That call attention to themselves
• So non-bulleted text can be ignored

There's No "i" in Team
Agree with your boss. They like that. And when your boss asks you to do something, turn around and assign the task to your subordinates. It'll make them feel special, and show your boss what a good designator you are. Designator is a new word. It's like decider.

Troubleshooting
If you're ever asked a question that requires actual thought, have a mental list of go-to words that you feel comfortable with: strategy, function, and execute are great ones to start with. You'll want words that are pretty much interchangeable and can be used to mean anything in any situation. Use them as needed. (Note: They can be especially effective in conjunction with one another.)

Conclusion
So get out there in 2008 and be all you can be — drive the car you aspire to be able to afford. Remember, everyone loves you — especially your boss's assistant. (You could run this whole shebang if you had an assistant like that.) So ramp up your game a notch, execute on strategy, and generate competitive value by leveraging technology to maximize customer take-away.

That said, I'd hate to leave you without an invaluable take-away. So here it is — the PowerPoint presentation....

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Hurt

Apropos of nothing (you want justification, get your own blog), a few thoughts on pain:
 

I. One Saturday, when I was seven years old or so, my dad left me alone in the car for a few minutes while he ran into the hardware store. I was in the front seat, and I got instantly curious about the dashboard. I pushed in a black round button. A minute later, the button popped out. Curiouser and curiouser, I saw that I was able to pull the button out of the dashboard. I did, and turned it around in my hand. The other side had incredibly bright, tightly wound orange coils. I touched the tip of my index finger to the coils.

I grew up in a non-smoking household. So, while I thank my parents for my limited exposure to secondhand smoke, I curse them for never mentioning the purpose of a car cigarette lighter. As you might imagine, it's an incredibly goddamn hot thing.

It was years before that fingertip regained its print.

II. I learned the word "torque" in the wee morning hours of February 23, 1980. I had been doing some twilight skiing the night before, and had badly broken my leg. It was what orthopedists (also a new word for this then 11-year-old) would qualify as a typical above-the-boot spiral tib-fib fracture. Essentially, the break was caused by the downward force of my body weight in combination with the fact that while my left knee was turning one way on a horizontal axis, my left ankle was moving the opposite way. The break spiraled up the tibia, and the force of the whole thing caused the smaller fibula to snap.

As the doctors explained, if you take a foot and a half long stick, hold it with one hand on each end and quickly twist your hands in opposite directions until the stick splinters, you get a good sense of how it all works. And, as I learned a few years later while watching some special effects show on TV, if you try the same with several stalks of celery, you can even make it sound like breaking bones!

I was a kid, and being treated in an otherwise excellent hospital, but I was given absolutely nothing for the pain — a fact that is incredible to me now. It's tough to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced it, but I'd have loved even a horse bit to grind my teeth against. Any muscle movement in my leg would twist the break even more. It was medieval and ungodly.

III. About 10 years ago, and just days before my sister's wedding, I managed to shatter my wrist. It was a dandy, involving both forearm bones, and several in the wrist itself, replete with "pulverized" fragments and the like. How I managed to do this at a ski mountain in mid-August isn't really important. What matters is that it was excruciating.

A passerby asked if I was OK, and I told her no, that I just broke my wrist and I'd love a ride down the mountain. I hopped in the back of her car. She asked my name and I told her. Then promptly passed out.

At the hospital, I asked the ER nurse for something for the pain and she cheerily returned with two vicodin. Gritting my teeth, and with an 11-year-old's hell in the back of my mind, I said something to the effect of "Maybe I didn't make myself clear. My wrist is currently somewhere in the vicinity of my fucking elbow. I've got a Blue Cross/Blue Shield card, and I'd like something only the slightest bit less potent than what killed John Belushi." Ah, she understood. She handed me the vicodin and apologized that it was all she was able to give me, but that she'd send the doctor right in. I thanked her and swallowed the vicodin.

The doctor appeared in the doorway a few minutes later. He cheerily asked how I was doing. I simply took my broken left arm in my right and held it out for him to have a look. Without taking a step closer to me, he just kind of made a grunting "Oh." sort of noise, leaned back into the hall, and said, "Could I get 100 of demerol and 30 [unintelligible] in here." He then came into the room and smiled. Through the agony, I tried to smile back.

IV. There exists a 0–10 scale for pain. Ten is pretty much reserved for drug-free birthing, passing kidney stones, burn victims, severe bone fractures, and perhaps, sustained blunt force trauma to the testes. It is both physically, mentally, and emotionally disabling.

The thing about extreme, crushing pain is that the moment it is alleviated, you have no real concept of what you've just felt. Clearly, those pain synapses are there for a reason — and likewise, they can occasionally be overridden for the very same reason: self preservation. Once the demerol hit, it brought the pain of my shattered wrist down to tolerable levels — 6 or 7 — and I could barely imagine what I'd felt only moments before.

I haven't been back to 10 on the scale since the shattered wrist. But playing hockey, I've since cracked ribs, separated my shoulder, torn cartilage, had my shoulder scoped, and broken my fibula. Because I've felt 10 before, I have only the vague sense each time that, though I'm in a world of pain, I'm still far from the top of the scale. I've hit 7s and maybe 8 in the past few years — and sneezing with cracked ribs is a miserable experience I'd wish on few outside those presently "working" or advising in the West Wing — but it's all been relatively manageable.

The human body is incredibly resilient, and amazes me in its ability to absorb tremendous amounts of abuse and slowly heal itself. Despite the amnesiac fog of pain, the mind is slower to heal — and rightly so, I think. Though I can't conceive of what number 10 pain feels like, I have some idea. And I'm not real keen on being there again. Birthing is not an option for me, but it's one of the very few pain projects I'd willingly take on. So, aside from that, I'll still play hockey, but I left behind my thoughts of buying a motorcycle the day I shattered my wrist. Accidents happen during everyday life, and I can roll with that, but there's no need to put myself out there in that sort of way — especially when I have so much other clearly important stuff occupying my mind.

That said, some amount of pain is life affirming. I'm not a masochist or tough guy by any stretch, but the day after a hockey game, when it hurts to get out of the car at the end of my commute to work and I find myself hobbling a bit, it feels good too. When the muscles I'd forgotten about ache, and I've got a welt across a foot or arm, I'm alive in ways that I'm not while sitting and working at my desk.

V. I've said what I can. Here are Trent Reznor's thoughts on the subject, via Johnny Cash.

The Cold War on Ice

Back in my professing days, I once tried to explain the concept of the Cold War to a classroom full of college students, most born after 1980, who gleefully admitted, "Our idea of the Cold War is Rocky IV."

I could sympathize a bit, allowing that my own memories of Vietnam were those of hearing the morning news on the radio and asking my parents why we were off fighting "gorillas" in some jungle. What'd we have against them anyway?

But when I was eight, I witnessed an epic Cold War battle played out in my own hometown. It was January 11, 1976, and my dad gave up his ticket (I can still see it now, with crossed US and Soviet flags) so my mom and I could go down to the spiritual temple of my youth, the Philadelphia Spectrum, the day the Soviet Red Army hockey team came to town to take on the team for which I lived and breathed.

It was a politically turbulent time. There just had been two attempts on President Ford's life; Mitchell, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman had been sentenced for their involvement in Watergate; the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh; and Saigon fell (so much for that domino).

In the world of hockey, it was four years after the epic '72 Summit Series, but that was an entirely Canadian thing, and though the players themselves may have known better, most fans in the US were oblivious to our silver hockey medal in Sapporo. And we were still four years removed from the Miracle on Ice at Lake Placid, and all of the replayed sights and sounds associated with that game.

For me, life was pretty simple. I slept under a big National Geographic map of the US. Next to it was a map of the world, with each country's flag on it (so I knew the hammer and sickle well). I had a red, white, and blue bean bag chair on my floor. It was a bicentennial year and I lived in the city in which the Declaration of Independence had been signed. The Flyers had won the Stanley Cup the preceding two years, and were, we thought, on track to repeat a third time. Philly pride was at an all time high even before Rocky crystallized the feeling in celluloid later in the year.

Like all kids of the Cold War, I was taught fear at a young age. I knew there were good guys in the world (see States, the United), and there were bad (see Republics, Union of Soviet Socialist). I knew it was solely because of the bad guys that my school was a designated "fallout shelter" — and I knew what that meant and when I thought about it, it scared the crap out of me. I knew, too, that I was more free than my Russian counterparts, and I knew that (though my ancestors had a century earlier) I did not want to live in Russia.

On this day, the good guys wore orange and white, and the bad guys wore red. It's difficult in our now-global world to stress just how incredibly foreign the Soviets looked — so different from our guys: their facial features more severe; to a man, they were clean shaven, in contrast to our wild and woolly bunch; they did not smile; and they all wore matching Jofa helmets (odd, eastern bloc-y things in that era, and with the Cyrillic CCCP on them), at a time when few in the NHL wore helmets at all. They warmed up with different drills; they skated and played differently. As a kid, it was like going to the zoo for the first time, or witnessing aliens: new, fascinating, and a little frightening.

Their outstanding goalie, Vladislav Tretiak wore not a goalie mask, but a wire cage on a helmet — one of the first I'd really seen in action. It looked so ragged, after I'd become so accustomed to the smooth, clean contours of Bernie Parent's simple white logo mask. The difference seemed significant to me even then; the steel cage somehow speaking volumes about the lives of others in their country.

The Russians looked, and certainly played, like hockey automatons. They were extremely talented and machine-like, and at the height of their international dominance. This swing through North America was billed as a goodwill (though there wasn't any) tour, with two Soviet teams playing games against the best NHL teams, none of which had beaten the Soviets' vaunted Central Red Army team. The Flyers — "The Broad Street Bullies" whom nobody but Philly fans liked or respected — were to have the final chance at North American hockey salvation.

After Kate Smith's rendition of God Bless America, the Spectrum was as loud as I've ever heard it, and that place could get so loud it shook, and you felt the thunder in your gut. And somehow, we all understood — twenty-five years before the thought would be articulated in the trash-talking '90s —  what "not in our house" meant. Today was our day.

I can't remember who scored for us, but I remember Ed Van Impe's un-penalized bodycheck on one of the Russians (the talented and targeted Valeri Kharlamov) stopped the game cold, as the Russian players and coaches literally walked off the ice to protest the rough play and unfavorable officiating. A few Flyers players skated around the open ice and took shots at the empty nets, and I remember no one moved, though no one knew quite what was happening or if and when it would be resolved. And it seemed like forever, but finally, the Russians came back out onto the ice.

After that, we pretty much owned them. The Flyers had an unorthodox style — we came at you like Joe Frazier, from odd angles, willing to get hit, and taking dozens of awkward, if not plain off-target, shots — as foreign to the more fluid skating Soviets as the Soviets were to me. We were tenacious on offense, trapped in the neutral zone, and were smothering on defense. We scored immediately after play resumed, and by the middle of the second period, it was all over but the shouting.

Mostly, that afternoon I remember, when my mom and I finally stepped out onto Pattison Avenue, feeling the sudden joy and awe that David must have felt when his stone struck Goliath, and the mighty giant crumbled. And for that one day, everything I knew in the world was right. The US was better than Russia. And Philadelphia was the best in the US. Life was brilliant.

BeezleBubba

This being the new year and all — and an important one, at that — let's start things off with a resolution: This time, let's please don't vote for another guy like the one currently in office. Not that I voted for him last time — or the time before that. But millions did. Not millions more than voted for his opponent in 2000, but still. OK, I'll stop. This is not to slam President Bush. OK, it is, but in a more specific way. And too, to slam the apathetic among us.

We live in a culture that celebrates and rewards — and yes, elects — mediocrity. Scores of corporate VPs and politicians get where they are not by succeeding, but by failing for so long and so consistently that they are eventually promoted to become someone else's problem; they actually fail upward. Forty years ago, education and writer Laurence Johnston Peter put forth his "Peter Principle," which states that "Employees within an organization will advance to their highest level of competence and then be promoted to and remain at a level at which they are incompetent." Well folks, guess what? The organization in question is our United States itself.

George Bush was elected precisely because of his mediocrity. Millions of Americans saw him as a likable, normal "Bubba" (to borrow from Bill Clinton's run) of a guy who spoke their nucular language. Just a regular Joe, clearing brush out on the back 40. His everyman-ness was (rightly so) the least spun aspect of his immaculately-manicured campaign.

And no, I'm not falling for Bush's well-honed "Aw shucks" demeanor when I call him an everyman. He's one of those guys who was born on third base, thinking he hit a triple. Most of us haven't had anywhere near his opportunities in life. (Hell, I'd love the chance to run a baseball team into the ground as quickly as he did [specifically, I'd like to do it to the Yankees].) But he's normal in his intellect, in his curiosity, his drive, his work ethic. He's just plain ordinary. Most of us are no different. Excepting, of course, the fact that —  well, uh — we're not the president.

But the fact remains that George W. Bush is the president — a failed symbol of our lazy desire for formulaic blockbusters and their paint-by-numbers sequels, and chain restaurants in which we can eat the same meal whether in Boston or Bismarck.

Those movies and the meals are never very good, but they are familiar. And what's most familiar to us politically is rich white guys. Granted, some of those rich white guys started off not so rich (see Clinton, Bill; Edwards, John; etc.), but we seem to fall for them just the same.

I voted for John Kerry last time around simply because he was there. But the guy's a complete stiff. And I don't mean he looks like he was carved from the same wood as George Washington's purported teeth, I mean that he's an out of touch rich white guy even among like-minded rich white guys.

In the 2000 election, George W. Bush painted himself as a good manager. A "decider." Said he surrounded himself with people who understood the issues he couldn't quite master himself. Well, anyone who read the modest Project for a New American Century manifesto his people wrote ten years ago should not have been the least bit surprised at the direction we headed under the Bush administration.

Well, now we're stuck with our current situation. And despite our desire for ordinariness, we no longer live in pedestrian times, and we simply cannot elect another pedestrian leader. We need someone who is extraordinary, not extra-ordinary. Electing an average Joe to the most powerful office in the world is irresponsible and reprehensible, and we can't get fooled again.

I don't necessarily care who we all vote for — as long as we do vote, and do so not simply for someone with whom we agree on critical issues, but for a candidate who has made the most of his or her opportunities in life (made more of those opportunities than you or I would have). Someone who sweats the details; excels under pressure; surrounds him or herself not just with smart people, but with smart people who own and listen to their conscience; and for god's sake, someone who does not take more vacation than we do.