Wrong Answers Only Wednesday: Lehner vs. NHL, Ontario chaos politics, Grudenfreude and how to get out of seeing Dave Chappelle's comedy special
Hej vänner! These are some actual questions, just not from actual people. Enjoy your midweek.
The Maple Leafs and Canadiens play on Wednesday night for the first time since their seven-game playoff series 4½ months ago. Is there a hotter rivalry in big-league hockey? — H.G., Woodstock, Ont.
This space intends on being mostly an NHL-free zone. There are so many other more interesting leagues that offer reasons to watch their regular season beyond a weary Canadian sense of obligation, and resignation. But the hottest rivalry will always be the NHL's Awfulness vs. Reality.
One NHL story that made it through the manmade fog was Vegas goaltender Robin Lehner accusing the league and the Buffalo franchise of medical malpractice with treatment of an injury he had, in the context of Buffalo’s standoff with quondam No. 1 centre Jack Eichel. It fizzled within a few days; the NHL applied pressure and Lehner “(was) convinced that going all Joker isn’t the most productive way to go about his business.” It was fun thinking he might, though, especially since the league’s players’ association was nowhere to be found. The NHLPA seems to be about as a real of a union as a police union.
The moral clarity is self-evident.
Buffalo is perhaps the league’s worst-performing franchise with a 10-season playoff drought. It did nothing to deserve having Eichel, Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power or any other lottery draft pick land in their tanking laps. The NHL’s method of player intake, a draft system that encourages tanking, handed them those gifts. Now it is playing hell with Eichel’s long-term health outcomes. Eichel’s stance can be read, generously albeit, as saying there is no dollar value that can be put on, say, having a full range of motion to play with his grandchildren when he is 65 years old.
It is one thing to expect NHL players to play hurt in the playoffs. Playing with a broken hand or separate shoulder is one thing. Back and neck issues are on that other side of that line.
Five teams are left in the Major League Baseball playoff tournament. In the absence of any sentimental favourite, who do I root for now? G.J., Plevna, Ont.
There is a poll for that. The Boston Red Sox were pinched in the same cheating scandal as the Houston Astros, but elided the public scorning since more people would rather visit Fenway Park than Houston’s garish nouveau-riche copy of it, or something. And now they will play for a berth in the World Serious, oh joy.
The Atlanta team’s fans have slouched back into doing that racist chant. The San Francisco Giants-Los Angeles Dodgers survivor, by default, is the least of all evils, kind of like the Biden-Harris ticket or the Trudeau Liberals. Or, come to think of it, exactly like both.
How come large sport venues in Ontario can have a full house, while my restaurant that I built off the sweat off my brow (and help from my wealthy Boomer parents) cannot? C.W., Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont.
This debate is only a thing since Ontario’s Government For Property Developers could not be buggered to make vaccination status verifiable through a smartphone app before playing favourites (read: whoever was easier to negotiate with as a bloc) with reopening. Quebec launched its verification app more than one month ago; Ontario won’t have its system online until next week.
The only logic that the OGFPD is governed by is the Friday news cycle. What is the least that they can do that will get the most play from the pandemic-fatigued media — we are people too, in our way — once it is announced just before the weekend. That is how chaos politics flourishes miserably. Just wear people down until they are beyond bumfuzzled about realizing that trumpeting that we might be helping these murderclowns’ re-election chances by saying, “Look at the stuff we can do now.”
Since there was no app ready, the die was cast for the cheap ’n’ easy move. Give the people Additional Seating Capacity Fever, instead of helping the much larger food industry. Never mind that the owner of an independent restaurant, whose livelihood is hella-more precarious than a pro sports franchise on a CFL scale, let alone, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd., needs some help more than the latter. Never mind that society probably needs the independent restaurant more than it needs the sports franchises.
And never mind addressing the Smaller Class Size Fever, or N95 Masks For Teachers Fever that has been out there for only about a year. (Classrooms were already full of unvaccinated children, who have a 1-in-5 chance of having an unvaccinated teacher in certain school boards. Guess which school system, Catholic or public, has more of that.)
Making a cosmetic change only serves to foster more cynicism, bitterness created more bitterness and intransigence. That will serve to harden more vaccine refusers’ attitudes and leave us all in the shit a little while longer than we have to be.
Which state will Jon Gruden be coaching high school football in at this time next year? R.B., Niagara Falls, Ont.
Nothing like an overrated coach going out on his own rubber sword to lead one to set odds. Going from the gut:
Texas -250
Florida +115
Ohio +150
Georgia +175
South Carolina +200
Anywhere else +300
Alberta / Saskatchewan +500
Your Grudenfreude might stem from his jargon-riddled stint as a Monday Night Football commentator, or to when he won a Super Bowl at Tampa Bay with Tony Dungy’s roster in the early aughts. Mine has been cold-aged for twenty-six years.
Nineteen ninety-five it was. Randall Cunningham was my first NFL quarterback with the Philadelphia Eagles; the Minnesota Vikings were sort of a Team 1B. Cunningham was to be the quarterback for the ’90s, they said. The conservative NFL would adapt to this athletic quarterback, they said.
Injuries, a makeshift offensive line, ownership instability and a loaded NFC East division1 got in the way of Philly winning Super Bowls. Jeffrey Lurie became the Eagles’ principal investor in 1994. As as hall of fame passer Dan Fouts famously said, when an NFL franchise changes hands, “the coach gets fired and the quarterback gets retired.”
A year after Lurie’s takeover, Gruden came along as a 32-year-old offensive coordinator who had never overseen an entire offence at any level of football. Gruden was hired to install a Bill Walsh-style scheme, and suddenly Randall Cunningham was neither ‘disciplined’ nor ‘smart’ enough to be a first-string quarterback. There was not necessarily racism involved, since Philly would up putting Rodney Peete, who is also Black, behind centre as it had a modestly successful season. But it always sucked out loud that Philly did Cunningham so dirtily, with Gruden as the hatchet man. It sent one fan in Canada into the warm purple-hued embrace of the Vikings’ own brand of default-setting disappointment.
Of course you know the rest of the story. Randall Cunningham laid out for a season and made a comeback with the Vikings. He was the league’s most valuable player in 1998. Let us leave that there.
The Philadelphia Eagles finally did win that Super Bowl in the ’17-18 season after defeating the Vikings in the playoffs and winning the game in Minnesota’s stadium. And Randall Cunningham is now the team chaplain for the Las Vegas Raiders, and probably prayed for Jon Gruden’s soul on Tuesday, since he is just that good of a dude.
How can I form a take on Dave Chappelle’s transphobic jokes without watching his Netflix special? B.D., Gimli, Man.
A wise friend once suggested a litmus test for a politician, regardless of their brand of retail politics. It can be applied to comedians who have a big enough following to command Netflix specials and sold-out arena shows.
Do their policies, or jokes, actively hurt people not of your tribe?
Do their policies, or jokes, threaten you and your way of life in any way?
If the answer to No. 1 is yes and the answer to No. 2 is no, then screw ’em.
Comedy is not meant to be safe and sanitized. At the same time, though, with humour that plays on an out-group, it might only really work with a Russell Peters vibe of, ‘hey, we all have stuff, and The Man has tried to oppress us and kill us by times, and we’re all still here!’ It is like that humour is only in play in after an equity-seeking group has a certain amount of security and protection under the law. Trans and 2-spirited people are not yet there.
Netflix, as y’know, is less of a creative enterprise and more of a data mining operation. It is probably pollyanna as all get out to say this, but if the backlash causes it to steer clear of mining certain data about what bigoted users like, then that is a small win.
Other stuff…
Hamilton, Ont., welcomed one of the biggest rock and/or roll acts in band, and said ‘never again.’ For InSauga, I wrote a retrospective on the 1975 Pink Floyd concert at Ivor Wynne Stadium.
One good read is Corinne Segal’s interview with Dave Eggers about his forthcoming satirical novel, The Every. This observation from Eggers about machine judgements blew my mind:
“The main thing I’ve been struck by between 2013 and now is how uncomfortable we’ve become with uncertainty, mystery, nuance, and subjectivity. And how data, algorithms, apps and the like offer often-false, usually numerical answers to all the unknowable parts of our lives … Machine judgments are seen as more objective, more accurate, and fairer. And every year, more of the decisions that rule our lives will be made by machines — because those that used to make these judgments don’t want the responsibility, and the judged don’t trust other humans to make these judgments.”What am I reading right now, besides a menu? I am wending through Swedish rapper Jason “Timbuktu” Diakité’s 2016 memoir, A Drop of Midnight.
That is more than enough for today. Please stay safe, and please be kind.
OK, so now you know it was a long time ago.