Kings - Stanley Cup Champions

it's no longer spring so it makes sense that a big procrastinater like me is finally doing some deep cleaning.  i'm in the kid's room, throwing out what doesn't fit and toys of bygone years, rearranging virtually everything and cleaning deep in the carpet, windows and sills and all the cracks and corners.  since terra had a last day of school party and so did not go to the parade with me i got her a souvenir pennant commemorating the kings championship and today i put it up on a wall in her room.  afterwards, i stood back and admired the pennant and for a split second a wave of emotion welled up in me.

why?  do i care this much about a sports team?  if so, that is beyond silly.  that is not it, however.  i stopped and thought about it and i realized i feel something deep because i remember what the championships of my teams meant to me when i was a kid. 

in 1977 when the raiders beat the vikings in superbowl xi at the rose bowl, i was 11 and it was the greatest thing in the world.  i remember fred biletnikoff's sliding catch at the viking one that set up a touchdown like it was yesterday.  i remember the raider's first touchdown so vividly because i was impressed like nobody's business.

the raiders set up in a goal line set at the vike's one yard line.  of course mark van eeghen or clarence davis were about to pound through the middle of the line for a score, i assumed in great anticipation.  the vikings figured the same thing but stabler and john madden had another idea.  stabler took the snap and turned to his running backs who filed towards him as if to take the hand-off and vault into the end zone.  the snake faked the give and tucked the ball into his abdomen as slyly as his nickname suggests and acted as if trotting away from the handoff but suddenly, he pulled up and turned towards the left side of his line where he saw dave casper springing free from a tepid, almost fake, block and look up over his left shoulder.  i remember the sun.  the crown city, my city, was awash with golden hues of brightness and stabler pulled the ball up to his left shoulder and tossed it like a nerf basketball over the top of the pile of humanity clustered in front of him at the goal line.  i could see the ball spinning with stabler's trademark counter-clockwise rotation, sunshine guiding it over outstretched claws of hands and sparkling off the brown leather as it reached casper, "the ghost," who caught it like a firefighter catching a baby, two hands under the oblong treasure, cradling into his gut to put the raiders up 9-0.  (what casper did next is not what a firefighter would do with a baby after the catch, by the way.) 

i remember just being amazed.  i looked at the tv with my jaw open like a flytrap.  i was ecstatic and i admired that play because it was just so much bigger than life.  i did not expect that play.  neither did bud grant and the vikings who were losing their fourth superbowl.  i had never seen anything like that.  when the raiders were beating the patriots and the steelers en route to that superbowl glory i had not seen a play like that.  they had been an awesome team, especially in the passing game and in sheer moxie, but this play surprised me and made me feel something deep inside.  the world was large and there was much more to it, than i had dreamt of in my philosophy.

in october of 1981 the dodgers won the world series.  for the third time in five years they played the yankees in that series after having lost the previous two times.  thhe dodgers lost both of the first two games in yankee stadium then came home and won three in a row at dodger stadium, (all buy one run.)  then they walloped the yanks in game 6 back in new york.  what a thrill that entire post season was.  i attended the one game playoff against the astros at dodger stadium to settle the playoff participant after each time won a half of the strike split season.  jerry reuss was brilliant that day.

i had attended several world series games in 1977 and 1978 when the dodgers lost to the yankess and reggie jackson so revenge was especially sweet.  jay johnstone had a big pinch hit home run i'll never forget.  when you are 16 and a pinch hitter comes up for your team you are always thinking home run, (which reminds me of how i thought the same thing in the playoffs in 1988 when mike scioscia came up against the mets.)  the dodgers were bigger than life that year.  ron cey got hit in the head, pedro guerrero hit a monster homer to rub it in near the end of game 6, steve yeager had clutch hits and fernando, burt hooten, jerry reuss and the rest of the dodger pitching staff mowed down yankees like a jefferson davis dream sequence.  (dave winfield 1-22 on the series?!)

those were big moments for me.  later as an adult i enjoyed seeng the angels beat the san francisco giants in the 2002 world series.  at that time i thought of myself as more of an angel fan than a dodger fan but i go back and forth, (to the horror of many.)  at that time the angels had darin erstad,who was my favorite player, and they were a homegrown, ragtag unit that was not expected to win it.  and now the kings have won the cup.  wow.

there is still a little kid inside me.  noam chomsky says sports are a diversion that distract and pacify people who are in many ways being taken advantage of or at least in a democracy, not being represented properly, and he is not wrong.  still, what a diversion.  sports represent the vary nature of life.  there is a great deal of human drama therein.  the games are relateable.  we know what it is like to succeed and to fail and so we cling to our teams and we live and die with them. 

i have lived and died with the kings for 20 years.  (i was a fan much further back but really latched on in the wayne gretzky era, even naming my first cat "gretzky."  i remember marcel dionne and the triple crown line and i have a signed team canada card rogie vachon once gave me.)  it was in the early '90s when i decided the kings were my favorite of all teams.  i fell in love with hockey and was dismayed at never having played the game, (though i did play quite a bit of floor hockey, as it was called, in college.)  hockey was new to me and i loved the combination of athleticism and toughness.  i was becoming more politically aware in those days and may have even felt guilty for being such a jock and avid follower of my teams.  so, i remained loyal to the lakers, raiders, dodgers and angels, but the kings were something of a powerhouse with wayne gretzky and luc robataille and company and so, i latched on to them.  a funny thing happened however.  the king's owner bruce mcnall had his empire come crashing down in a barrage of tax evasion charges and the no longer flush kings hit the skids.  from 1994 through 2011 the kings won one playoff series and missed the playoffs 8-10 seasons in a row to begin the new millenium. 

so what?  i remember that series they won like it was yesterday.  i remember adam deadmarsh's overtime game winner against the vaunted detroit redwings in overtime as he fell to the ice and shot the puck at the same time.  i also remember all those in between years.  hell, i remember the years of vitaly yachmenev, yanick perreault and alexander frolov.  these were some poor teams.  each year i would see the bright spots but each year by the midway point in the season it was obvious the kings were going nowhere.  i despised their ownership, too. 

then something even funnier happened.  the kings got good.  dustin brown and anze kopitar grew up.  they seemed to take something from each of the several coaches they had in their careers and got better.  the kings finally got a goalie; jonathan quick.  most importantly, the kings committed to winning, (from the same ownership group i had formerly detested.)  deam lombardi took over as general manager and brought in a host of old, eastern and northern, hockey people including first terry murray then of course, daryl sutter.  the commitment to winning manifested itself in the kings acquiring depth.  they got mike richards from philadelphia last off season, which was when i knew lombardi and company believed they had a real contender.  i believed too.  the timing seemed right for kopitar and brown in particular. 

the kings won the stanley cup because of their defense and their physicality.  throughout the playoffs it was easy to see that other teams did not want to hit as much as the kings.  they would for a spell then they would drop off and the kings would take a lead.   then the other team would try to match the kings physical play in one big hit and would end up taking a penalty, which the kings took advantage of even when they did not score on the resulting power plays.  it was willie mitchell and matt greene and alex martinez and slava voynov and drew doughty who anchored this team. 

what a glorious run, too.  in 1993 and 1999 i loved playoff hockey because of its edge-of-your-seat nature.  overtime games in particular, make for great theatre.  this year was not like that.  the kings dominated every round.  they started against the team with the best record in hockey, president's trophy winning vancouver canucks and they won the first two games in vancouver and never looked back.  when they lost game four it just seemed like they took their foot of the gas a little bit.  in game five they accelerated anew right into the second round where they met the st louis blues; the second best team in hockey on the regular season.  the kings swept them and there was never a worrisome moment for yours truly.  in the third round the kings faced the phoenix coyotes, a tough team who had a great second half of the season, just like the kings.  the kings won the first two games in phoenix and repeated the pattern they had established against vancouver of dropping the fourth game before winning the series. 

in the finals the kings met the new jersey devils.  the kings won the first two games on the road for the fourth straight series.  true to form they lost the fourth game at home and had to return to new jersey where this time, they lost game 5 as well.  i was worried, finally.  that said at the start of game 6 i predicted the kings would win the game 6-1.  i felt like new jersey had just been hanging with the kings and that the kings would breakout and with the nature of big games being that teams behind will often take more chances when they are on the ultimate precipice of defeat, (as evidenced by a host of superbowls with lopsided scores...or that dodger game six they won 9-2 in yankee stadium in 1981.) the kings went up 3-0 early on a five minute major penalty resulting from an unfortunate boarding hit on rob scuderi that required 30 stitches to sew his face back together.  dustin brown scored on a redirection of a drew doughty shot, the brown scored again on a hard shot from right between the circles which devil's goalie martin brodeur got a piece of but which deflected up the length of his torso and into the net and then terevor lewis scored one more time with about two seconds left in the penalty from in close on a rebound.  the kings never looked back.  (here's a season recap.  this one got me too, boo-hoo.)

it was an amazing run and so satisfying to a longsuffering fan like myself.  i love the lakers but the lakers are perpetual greatness.  they do as good a job as any sports team on the planet of putting the best product possible on the court game after game, season after season.  i hope the laker under the buss family ownership and with mitch kupchak as general manager continue this practice for many more years.  if they are able to do that they will never please me like the kings just did.  there is something about remaining loyal to a team for a long time and finally being rewarded. 

in the intermission between periods two and three of game 6 i went outside with the smokers at the bar just to stretch my legs a bit.  one king fan there assured me if the kings won he would cry.  i laughed a little, understanding the emotion at same time.  my friend, felix, explained that he too would probably shed a tear.  he said this with a smile on his face and cigarette in his mouth and i wondered if i was going to see a bunch of gronw men sobbing. 

with under a minute to play in the game, the 6-1 score all set to confirm my prophetic abilities, the large bar i was in grew cacophonous.  almost everyone in the joint stood, staring at tv screens, mouths agape, clapping hands, hooting and hollering.  cameras snapped, cheers went up, and as the clocked ticked zero the bar manager bear hugged me from behind and said in my ear, "can you believe it-your team won?!"  (tony became an avid kings fan during this post season so he was careful not to call them his team just yet, though i felt different.  as far as i'm concerned, welcome to the fold, tony.)  i was a little shocked but more i was just ecstatic.  i jumped up and down and high-fived david and felix and roy and tony the bar manager and the guy next to roy and the man behind me who assured me jonathan quick would win the conn-smythe tropy for mvp of the playoffs and the two guys in kings gear in the middle of the bar who had joined us in making the entire place a loud uproarious kings bar.  i also looked over at that tall, 20-something kid who said he would cry, his face on the table in the crook of his arms, crying like a baby by himself.  i high-fived his friends.  i looked over at felix who had then sat down and who also had a tear in his eye.  he was not cobbing or anything but his eyes were moist and when he saw me look at him he seemed to laugh a little in spite of himself.  the older man who owned the towing company and who had been at the same bar with me through most of these playoffs came over an caught me sitting and put a hand on my left shoulder from behind and patted me about five times real quick in on the belly.  "how about that," he asked jubilantly?!  i just leaned back in exhaustion and grasped his hand and shook it fervently a few times.  "i'm going to the parade," i said, and he assured me he would be there as well.

next came shots.  too many shots.  tony got my kings jersey off the mannequin from behind the bar and told me to put it back on which i did.  monday night karaoke started and those two guys who never stopped dancing got up and sang 'we are the champions.'  sweet. 

three days later i took my son to the parade and since my daughter could not go, i got her a pennant commemorating this historic victory.  the parade was great, 200,000 fans lining figueroa downtown and the kings rolling by on the tops of buses with lord stanley's cup in tow.  mark kept calling it the piston cup, which tickled me to no end. 

so here i was a week or so later putting the pennant up in terra's room when it all caught up to me for a moment.  i was so happy the kings had won.  i wished the kids were a little older to enjoy this as i had with the raiders and the dodgers and magic johnson's lakers of the early '80s.  throughout the playoffs i had engaged the kings with the games as much as possible.   they watched much of the phoenix series with me and when i erupted in cheering and clapping because the kings scored a goal, the kids would erupt as well or come running back into the room to find out what had happened.  "was it kopitar," mark would ask?  (several times it was kopi.)  as i stared at that pennant on the wall i recalled the last month of hockey, terra and mark, the bygone championships of other teams and the many years of falling short for the kings. i remembered the frustration of all the playoff defeats of all my teams and how they could, at times, (ridiculously,) ruin my mood.  i remembered my childhood, kareem abdul-jabbar, ron cey, mike haynes, orel, garret anderson, shaq, reggie smith's bat from the 1978 world series my dad got for me from a friend of his who was a dodger scout, gail goodrich, mickey hatcher, robert horry, jerry west, ted hendricks, frankie rodriguez, robbie keane, rick monday, wilt chamberlain, john lackey, jim plunkett and now justin williams and dustin penner and these glorious kings.  i remembered where i was when many of  those championships were won, even on the side of the freeway getting a speeding ticket when kirk gibson launched one into the right field pavilion. 

i didn't cry.  i could have.  i felt it from deep within me.  i paused looking at that pennant and felt satisfied.  i hoped my kids would remember this one just as i remember the lakers of 1973, barely.  the kings are the stanley cup champions, which consequently makes me feel like a champ too.

why am i being penalized?

i have been unemployed for about 28 weeks and my unemployment coverage in california ran out recently.  now i have no income but all the same bills, for which the maximum unemployment benefit i was receiving was not cutting the mustard to begin with.  what am i to do?

i am doing the only thing i can do now.  i am liquidating my retirement account.  in doing so i will suffer maximum penalty taxes for early withdrawal. 

how is it that when the world's banking industry was on the brink of collapse because of rampant gambling on wall street in the form of credit default swaps and bad mortgages clustered together into unrecognizable forms and sold helter skelter all over the globe, my retirement account was responsible and bore the burden of saving it?  how is that in the last five and one-half years my retirement account has not made one cent but rather has suffered a net loss?  should i have stuffed the money under my mattress?

so as i signed the papers yesterday to liquidate the account in order to sustain me and my five and seven-year-old children for who knows how much longer, (until i find a job,) i had to set aside the tax penalties up front so i do not have the irs on my case at the end of the year.  that is when the irony struck me.

i saved that money over the last 15 years in the workforce and without having any choice in the matter it was essentially raided in 2007 and on an ongoing basis since then.  the banks, by the way, have not paid any penalties.  rather they have paid small fractions of what they should owe not to me but back to the federal government. 

i am okay with that small amount of money going to the government but i am not okay with my being penalized now that i need the money.  it is beyond regrettable that i need the money to begin with.  taxing me extra on it is adding insult to injury. 

in the age of "too big to fail," i feel like i should be "too small to pinch."  doesn't that seem reasonable?  we'll see if i can find a sponsor for this idea in the coming weeks.

fear and virgins

a friend of mine posted a video she found inspiring on facebook last week and i could not help but be intrigued.  it was of pastor raul ries of calvary chapel, (calvary chapel golden springs in diamond bar.) 

i used to attend his church intermittently in the '80s and went to his mentor's calvary chapel in costa mesa in the early '90s.  sometime thereafter i lost my faith, which of course is a euphemism for an utter rejection of an ideology and a belief system.  so it was interesting to see this preacher before me some 25-30 years older than when i had last seen him. 

i clicked on the embedded video and watched as ries began to discuss the end times.  his voice was as familiar as the sound of paper ripping around the seal of a can of chewing tobacco under my fingernail.  neither of these sounds have i heard in years but both of them i heard so many times they are unmistakable.  as a kid i liked raul's voice.  it had that gritty sort of smoky sound perhaps like someone who talked too much.  the familiarity of that voice washed over me as i sat at my computer watching and listening.

raul talked about ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 and he conjured horrific scenes, surely instilling large amounts of fear in the hearts and minds of his supplicants.  he talked of "islamofascists," who would commit acts of terrorism in hopes of reaching heaven where 77 virgins would presumably greet them with legs open and accepting.  raul actually talked about how in the '70s he thought he saw other signs of the end times that were quite different from the signs he saw in the present but he presented these new signs as if they were so much more valid than the earlier signs he saw. 

i remembered those earlier discussions.  raul was for me like a tape recorder i had pressed pause on all those years ago and here i found him again and i pressed pause again and he sounded just the same, saying all the same things but with different boogeymen.  as a younger man i was engrossed in raul's preaching.  i found him engaging as he would talk about his own checkered past and how he was redeemed by jesus. 

i used to wonder how so many people after all these years could still believe saddam hussein and iraq had attacked the united states on 9/11, or from whence islamophobia came?  i noticed just today there is a "birther," running for office in california and he has a serious chance of winning.  (a birther, of course, is someone who believes the president is muslim or that he was not actually born in the united states, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.)

seeing raul ries preaching and hearing the audience respond from time to time helped me to understand these phenomenon.  fundamentalist christians of the calvary chapel ilk have little chance of knowing the truth.  every weekend, because they are good people who wish to be enriched and inspired by and through their faith, they march into these calvary chapels filled with positivity and open to learn all that god has for them.  and every weekend they likely hear ideology similar to what i heard.  it is indoctrination and worse.  it's laziness and fear-mongering.  it is raul ries and chuck smith and greg laurie and a slew of other modern day shaman capitalizing on the goodness of people, people who navigate the world daily with only the best of intentions and who are looking for something bigger then themselves to latch onto and help light there way.  instead of a positive message that encourages and uplifts them they are being spoon fed fear.

the end times are coming.  horrible things await those who reject this message including the lake of fire.  those who are different from you all want to kill you.  world war III is upon us.

it was quite the stroll down memory lane, too, as i heard the same message back when i attended the calvary chapel.  back then the end times were upon us because sin was running rampant, gay people were being accepted in society, (a sure sign of the apocalypse,) communist russia was the evil empire and one had better be ready because the lord was coming like a thief in the night and it would be real bad to be left behind.  i had forgotten how insidious it was. 

i got out and while i know few like myself, (i can't think of a single friend from those days who is not still a christian,) it just didn't occur to me raul ries could get away with this.  i was surprised he could preach this lazy doctrine of fear and maintain his place atop this still popular church, but then that is what fear does.  it paralyzes.  these people are afraid and they feel obligated to attend their church every week because it feels like part of their penance.  i remember feeling low as i arrived at church every week be it a sunday morning or night, or even on wednesday evenings.  i felt guilty just showing up there but i knew i had to do it and then by the time the service ended i felt like a champ primarily because i had endured the sermon.  i was earnest in my prayers throughout the service and then when the pastor made his call for salvation and the choir sang 'just as i am,' a good feeling of love swept over me and i was ready to go eat some lunch and to tackle another week.  after all, i was redeemed. 

i see now it is all a part of a formula.  the calvary chapel formula, as i recall it went like this:

• everyone shuffles into church in casual attire because this is just that kind of church, one where you can be yourself.
• there would be a welcome or perhaps an invocation to create some air of solemnity.
• next came the songs, those folksy, rock and rolley kind of hip songs but for jesus because this is just that kind of church, casual, where you can be yourself.
• every business needs funding; offering time, typically offered along with the sense of responsibility that it was to you to give 10% of your earnings to the church by god's order.  (not a bad business model.)
• next came the sermon.  i guess raul ries may be something of a specialist on end times because over the years it always seemed to be his go-to message.  it basically goes like this: the world is a dark and horribly sinful place with all manner of perversion and corruption but jesus is your savior.  accept him and live by his tenets and you will go to heaven for eternity.oh, and the end will be unbelievably ugly and intense and firey and painful an we're right there, right on the cusp of just that end so, well you know, you had better join this club, suit up every week and be sure to give us 10% of your cash.  that message would be capped with some quick word about how great it was to be a christian and to know one is saved...followed by the call to come on down to the altar and accept the lord.
• lots of emotions, crying, swaying back and forth with hands in the air, sinners going forward followed by flocks of supporters to insure the emotional connection and anchor.
• an advertisement of what will be featured in the sunday night service and the flock is bid adieu.

in retrospect i couldn't be more dismayed by this charade.  i am particularly appalled by a man who has been preaching the same message for 40 years, always telling his congregation the end is near and seemingly believing it himself, (near as in within the next 10 years but possibly next month,) not waking up one day and looking himself in the mirror and going wait a minute.  what am i doing?  some days i tell them to fear god, some days i tell them to fear the devil, some days i tell them to fear the world, and some days i tell them to fear islamists but always i tell them to fear.  how do you do that for 40 years without realizing you are a false prophet?  how do you live your own life without realizing fear is among the very worst conditions to live one's life under all the while selling fear?

i would have embedded the 35 minute clip i saw on my friend's facebook page but it is no longer available.  (whoever posted it has since deleted their youtube account.)  still, there are many examples of raul ries and other preachers, (many of them of calvary chapel,) doing their thing on youtube.