HOCKEYBEAR thought real friends would have stayed

1/11/2013 – Alaska 5, Michigan 4 – 7-8-4, 5-7-3-1 CCHA
1/12/2013 – Alaska 4, Michigan 1 – 8-8-4, 6-7-3-1 CCHA
1/13/2013 – Michigan 53, Ohio State 56 – 16-1, 3-1 Big Ten

Photo by Paul McCarthy via alaskananooks.com

YOU CAN'T GO ON. YOU'LL GO ON.

Yost Arena getting pretty empty. Fans making there way to the exits as the 'Nooks lead 4-1.
— Nanooks Hockey Blog (@NanookHockey) January 13, 2013

Primeval forces of destruction like me do not usually have Twitter accounts. HOCKEYBEAR remembers many æons ago in Internet time, when there was something of a fad among commenter trolls that they weren't really "trolling," they were engaging in a "sociological experiment." Of course, I scoff at this notion — these so-called experimenters did not collect the required informed consent forms, did not follow the principles set forth in the Declaration of Helsinki, and did not publish their results in any peer-reviewed publications. However, the term came to mind as HOCKEYBEAR watched the Michigan fanbase melt down this weekend, and it wasn't the good kind of meltdown that destroys evil planets.

HOCKEYBEAR finds foot-ball and basket-hockey to be inferior to ice hockey, but I support Michigan in their endeavors in those sporting competitions because the human I force to write tweets for me supports Michigan in those sports. My human found it most strange that I required him to root for my Nanooks and against the Wolverines this past weekend. However, small humans of Michigan, he recommends you try it sometime. Pick a team that's not a huge rival that you're somewhat partial towards — for some of the posters on this most excellent blog, this team could be EMU, or Oklahoma, or Missouri — and don't just wish them well when they're not playing your Wolverines. Root for them to beat your team and see what it's like to be an outsider looking at how Michigan fans behave. HOCKEYBEAR was sometimes impressed, but sometimes I was also very, very ENRAGED.

Michigan fans expect a lot from their teams and are right to be disappointed by this weekend's hockey and basket-ball defeats. Michigan fans are lucky to have some of the most educated and well-reasoned blogs and forums of the Internet, and I am IMPRESSED at how well you self-police against the infinity of human stupidity. Even HOCKEYBEAR has problems policing that. It is good to have high expectations and demand that athletes that represent your school be the leaders and best. HOCKEYBEAR expects this of the Nanooks; HOCKEYBEAR expects it of every school, really.

I am going to quote what I wrote in my hockey series preview on Yost Built: "I am INFURIATED that the Michigan 'faithful' are so willing to abandon their team during a down season, by which they mean a season where the Wolverines might not make the tournament that my 'nooks have made ONCE."

It is one thing to be disappointed when your team doesn't meet expectations. It is another thing to abandon them and disrespect them and write things like "What a shame it would be to waste time on these [delete] [revise] [delete again] fellows when the basketball team is such a joy." This is especially true when your team is not a professional team. Support your team through thick and thin. You are lucky that most of your times are good times. You are disappointed because your foot-ball team went 8-5. You are frustrated that your hockey team might not make the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1990. You are upset because your basket-ball team lost for the first team all season. (How quickly you forget that it wasn't that long ago that you were very happy that your basket-ball team won the NIT.)

Trey Burke, Speech to the Electors of Crisler

Burke opposed the French Revolution, but he supported the American Revolution.
Political scholars ponder the meaning of this, as if it were something more than a dislike of decapitations.

I am sorry I cannot conclude without saying a word on a topic touched upon by my worthy colleague. I wish that topic had been passed by at a time when I have so little leisure to discuss it. But since he has thought proper to throw it out, I owe you a clear explanation of my poor sentiments on that subject.

He tells you that "the topic of declaring for the draft has occasioned much altercation and uneasiness in this arena;" and he expresses himself (if I understand him rightly) in favour of a coercive authority forcing players to stay in school.

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a Michigan basketball player to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with Coach Beilein and his assistants. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion of his talent, his mature judgment of his abilities, his right to play professionally if he so chooses, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your point guard owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of the Maize Rage is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a player ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the player is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to support, and to receive no remuneration for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,--these are things unfortunately known to the laws of the NCAA, and which arise from the fundamental mistake which is the whole order and tenor of its constitution.

Michigan basketball is not a congress of players from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, without agent or advocate, against others without agents or advocates; but basketball is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the team; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a point guard indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not just a Michigan Man, but he is a basketball player. If a Michigan constituent should have an interest, or should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of a player, the team ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect. I beg pardon for saying so much on this subject. I have been unwillingly drawn into it; but I shall ever use a respectful frankness of communication with you. Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I shall be to at least the end of my sophomore season: a flatterer you do not wish for.

A Tale for Hockey Advent: Un abominable chandail d'or sur la glace

Flin Flon, Manitoba, there's not an iota of rightness of hue
Your five-buck currency I must say fervently
Is the wrong shade of blue (not Pantone 282).

The winters of my childhood were long seasons, but getting shorter each year. We lived in three places - the school, Panchero's, and the skating-rink - but our real life was on the skating-rink. Tremendous battles were won on the skating-rink. Tremendous strength appeared on the skating-rink. The leaders and best showed themselves on the skating-rink. School was a sort of punishment. Politicians always want to punish children and evaluating teachers based on standardized tests is their most natural way of punishing us. However, school was also a quiet place where we could prepare for the next hockey game, lay out our next strategies. As for Panchero's, we found there the piquancy of Cholula: there we forgot the school tests and dreamed about the next hockey game. Through our daydreams it might happen that we would recite a prayer: we would ask Bo to help us play as well as Carl Hagelin.

We all wore the same uniform as he once had, the maize and blue uniform of the Michigan Wolverines, the best college hockey team in the world; we all combed our hair and grew it long in the same style as Carl Hagelin, and to keep it in place we used Axe - a great deal of Axe. We laced our skates like Carl Hagelin, we taped our sticks like Carl Hagelin. We posted all his highlights on our Facebook timelines. Truly, we knew everything about him, as we all followed his Twitter feed.

On the ice, when the referee blew his whistle the two teams would rush at the puck; we were five Carl Hagelins taking it away from five other Carl Hagelins, with two Shawn Hunwicks guarding the nets; we were twelve players, all of us wearing with the same blazing enthusiasm the uniform of the Michigan Wolverines. On our backs, we all wore the famous number 12, but for the two goalies, who wore the famous number 31.

Aleph Borges: A Season in Review

If you don't get the title reference, turn to page 274, then come back. This post will still be here, as it exists in all points in time and space.

Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of athletes in space.
                Hamlet, II:2, as paraphrased by Jordan Kovacs

That same chilly morning that Ricardo Rodríguez was fired, after an imperious confrontation with his athletic director in which he only for one instant stooped to sentimentality and fear, I noticed a new advertisement for some smartphone or another had been posted on the billboards of Interstate 8; the fact deeply grieved me, for I realized that the vast unceasing universe was already growing away, and that this change was but the first in an infinite series.

One month later I had left San Diego de Alcalá for good and while setting up my office in Schembechler Hall, I was greeted by my predecessor, one Calvino Argentino Magi, who now holds some sort of subordinate position on a stravenue in the outskirts to the north of Sonora. Calvino Argentino is a substantial, black-haired man of refined features. His football activity was constant, passionate, and versatile, but in Ann Arbor it was ultimately insignificant.

On February 8, 2011, I took the liberty of enriching him with an offer of a bottle of Bell’s Winter White Ale. Calvino Argentino tasted it, pronounced it “interesting,” and, after a few snifters, launched into a poem on which he had been working for many years called the Augural Canto, Prologurial Canto, or simply Prologue-Canto.

I begged him to read me a passage, even if only a brief one. He open a desk drawer (one of the drawers which I had not yet cleaned), took out a tall stack of tablet paper stamped with the letterhead of the Bentley Historical Library, and read with ringing self-satisfaction:

There is no life - no life without its hunger;

Each restless heart beats so imperfectly;

But when you come and I am filled with wonder,

Sometimes, I think I glimpse eternity.