I'm BACK....Alas Hockey is Not

After months of contentious negotiation I am pleased to announce a new CBA has been reached with the owners of this blog (J-God’s Happyland Travel Company and Bakery Inc.) and production of poorly edited blogposts will resume. While I’m not allowed to announce the financial terms of the deal Darren Rovell reports that there will be a 53/47 split of all blogging-related revenue (estimated to be $0.00) generated by this site and a cap of no more than 4 postings a week with a posting floor of one per week. 

I apologize to the fans of this blog (hi mom!) and promise to do all that is necessary to win back your affection because you are truly the BEST BLOG FANS IN THE WORLD!

Speaking of collective bargaining agreements, it’s looking more like I’ll be having to find a way to spend my nights this fall without the National Hockey League. With less than 3 weeks before the current agreement is set to expire, the owners and the players are at the “cut off meetings early” portion of negotiation.  Soon we’ll see the “take time to explore our options” part, then the “alternative solutions presented” meeting, which leads to the “rumors of a threatened lawsuit by one of the parties”. That should lead to a lot of angry columns and rants on the internet.

Nobody needs to see Vinny in an Ak Bars jersey ever again.

It’ll also set the stage for the “meeting late in the night to resolve the dispute before the self-imposed September 15^th deadline” that brings a little hope only to be dashed by the “reports that an agreement couldn't be reached” news.  A couple months of “taking our pucks and going to play in Scandinavia” leads to “talks quietly resume” which finally brings us to “an agreement in place that closely resembles the old deal has been reached in time for the NHL to kick off the season with the Winter Classic (Live on NBC and presented by Bud Light!)”.

So at least there is a process.

I should probably be a little more bent out of shape about the whole thing after all, according to the columnists and shrieking heads on TV, I’m the one who is going to get screwed.  The players will still get paid and the owners will still be part of the 1%.  Yet, you know something, I’ll be ok.  Yeah it sucks that I won’t be able to watch the Lightning play for a few months, but in the grand scheme of things that ain’t too bad.  At least I’m not on the hook for season ticket payments for a season that is going to be shortened (sorry ‘bout that, Link).

Pretty sure second row seats 9 and 10 are Link's.

The last time the players and owners couldn’t play in the same sandbox I held my own personal strike. I forwent hockey for an entire season post-lockout.  No watching, no going to games, no buying of cards. Cut them out of my life.  Guess what, it didn’t change anything.  The only thing that happened is that I lost two seasons of enjoying hockey instead of one.  So this time I’ll wait for them to come to an agreement and then I’ll go back to watching the best game in the world.  Does that make me a mindless sheep? I guess so.  I can live with that. Also, is there a singular from of “sheep”? It just sounds weird.

For the record I’m not on either team’s side.  The owner’s offer was insane, not only are they proposing that the players take a smaller slice of pie (46% compared to the current 57% of revenues) they also want the pie to be smaller by redefining hockey-related revenue. They also want to get rid of those annoying “lifetime” contracts that they’re always so happy to announce when they sign a player to them.  Let’s not even talk about the 10 years of player control before they can enter unrestricted free agency. I’m pretty sure they got together (in a room with wood paneling and many leather bound books) and said, “Let’s throw out so many bad ideas at once that hopefully the players will let a few slip by,”  then went back to drinking brandy and watching polo or whatever rich, white guys do.

By those demands, the player’s counter-offer seems almost reasonable (according to the media), but it’s not. Reducing their share of revenues for three years only to go back to the current split in year four doesn’t solve the problem. It only delays the problem for three years. If the owners don’t like the revenue split now, they’re not going to like it in 2015. 

Increased revenue sharing is a good idea (and may be REALLY interesting in a few years if the US dollar rises in value) but allowing the trading of cap space is a horrendous idea that will further the split of the have’s and the have not’s in the league.  Teams that don’t spend to the cap as it is will use it as a way to keep their payroll down while teams who’ve already spent to the cap will be free to take on more bad contracts that will have them crying poor the following season.

The owner’s plan has a “save us from ourselves” feel to it while the players offer gives off a Pollyannaish “if we give you $500 million in revenue now you’ll agree to doing things the old way, right” naiveté to it. I will give Bettman credit, though. He managed to put an offer out there so incredulous that the players assume the salary cap is a given and aren’t even arguing it.

If we give you $500 million now, you'll give us more money later, right Uncle Gary?

Economics are like kryptonite for me (see my bank account for proof) so I can’t even come up with a plan that makes sense and offer a reasoned argument for it. However, having been through the wringer a few times as a sports fan I can predict that eventually they will come to an understanding that doesn’t drastically change the landscape of the sport.

Gazing into my cracked crystal ball (damn cats) I’m thinking the agreement will look something along the lines of a 52/48 split in revenues in favor of the owners.  There will be an expanded revenue sharing system among the clubs while contracts will be capped at 7 years with the amount of the contract spread evenly over the length of the deal. Unrestricted free agency will start after six years.  

At some point (probably in 2013) the NHL will return.  As a cheap sum’a bitch I hope they try and entice the fans back with a reduced price on NHL Center Ice so I can watch the Lightning games on a decent stream, after all it’s all about me, baby! The players and the owners will pat themselves on the back for coming to an agreement and talk about working hard to show the fans how sorry they were, but it needed to be done “For The Good of the Game”.

I’m sure the league will issue a statement about the fans being THE BEST SPORTS FANS IN THE WORLD and try to sweep all the acrimony under the rug by going out on an all-out media blitz on how exciting the young players in the game are and giving away some cheap plastic trinkets on Fan Appreciation Nights.

I’ll be sure to tune in (no trinkets needed!), because it beats watching basketball and if I’m too lazy to use the time productively (learn a new language? Yeah right). Will others?  Probably. For all of our bluster and feigned outrage the bottom line is that the NHL is the best version of hockey there is and that’s what we want to watch. The league knows it, the players know it.  If they really thought the future of the sport was in jeopardy they would ironed a deal out weeks ago.  In the meantime, hey at least you have this blog to read!

Please sign a deal soon. You do not want this man on the streets with free time. #downieforever

A Break From The Norm - Thanks Sis.

I told myself I would come home and write up a boxing story. After all, it is a good four days after the fights and if I keep putting it off I’ll probably start losing press passes and I love me some press passes. Unfortunately,  I made the mistake of checking Facebook.  If I can offer any little bit of advice to anyone trying to write – don’t check Facebook before you start writing.  It’ll distract the hell out of you.

Case in point, my sister and her friend start posting pictures of Bieber and Pete Wentz like they’re 14-year-old fan girls (note - they are not 14). For some reason that leads me to looking up music they were actually listening to when they were teenagers. That led me to the Concrete Blonde song “Joey”.  For some reason I remember my sister having a cassingle of that song.

*History lesson for those under 25 reading this.  Cassingles were the next step from the 45 vinyl records our parents listened to Elvis on and the precursor to the iTunes download you kids have for your LMAFO and Gotye songs.

It was a cassette tape that had a song on one side, usually a top-40 hit, and a B-side song on the other that the cool kids said that they bought it for. They were usually 3 or 4 bucks in the store and kept you from having to invest in the whole album because, back then, there wasn’t a Spotify or Youtube where you could check out an entire record before buying it. You either took the plunge and hope enough songs were good to justify the purchase (for me it was three songs) or hoped one of your friends bought it and let you make a copy of it.  Two-tape cassette decks FOR LIFE, BITCHES! Here endeth the lesson.*

Anyway, I posted “Joey” to Facebook and then allowed myself to get sucked into the time-waste that is Youtube.  Y’all know what I’m talking about. You start watching one video, then another, and another.  Then you remember that one other song and you look it up and start another stream.  Before you know it an hour has gone by and you’re watching Kenny Rogers sing “The Gambler” on TheMuppets – puppets drinking and smoking….good luck getting that on a kid’s show these days.

One thing I noticed while I was tumbling down the video rabbit hole is that music video’s kicked ass back in the mid-1990’s.  I’m not here to debate if music is better today or not, that argument has been going on since Beethoven banged out notes on his toy piano and it isn’t ever going to be solved. 

However, I have no doubt in my mind that the music video heyday ran from about 1990 to 1997 and produced some of the most iconic short films ever.  I know it’s a flawed rating system, but look at the MTV Video Music Award list and how it’s devolved over the last 20 years.  Van Halen’s “Right Now” took the prize in 1992 over some strong competition (look “Under the Bridge” is a stupid song, but don’t tell me you don’t picture Anthony Kiedis running in slow motion every time you hear the song).

You're welcome for that.

Let’s run down some of the highlights (I’m lazy and mostly took the MTV video of the year, sue me it’s late):

1990 – “Nothing Compares 2 U” – set the bench mark for close up shot of the artist singing the song. Simple, yet effective.

1991- “Wicked Games” – Black & White. Supermodel rolling around on the beach. Why did it take someone 10 years to come up with that one?

1992 – An awesome year with “Right Now,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Into the Great Wide Open,” “Tennesee,” “Good Vibrations,” “Black and White,” “November Rain”

1993 – “Jeremy” – remember the uproar over a video that insinuated a kid shooting his classmates? Would this even be a blip on the radar today?

1994 – “Cryin” – Steven Tyler’s epic run of whoring out Alicia Silverstone and his own daughter

1995- “Buddy Holly” – Weezer brings back the Fonz and the rest of the gang.

1996 – “Tonight, Tonight” – The Pumpkins bring artistic angst to the forefront

1997 – “Virtual Insanity” – yeah Jamiroquai doesn’t exactly stand the test of time, but the video was fantastic.

I’m supposed to believe that “Firework” is on the same level? Not to sound like “The Miz,” but really? REALLY?  Katie Perry shooting fireworks out of her tits is as good as the apathetic high-schoolers in “Smells Like Teen Spirit”? No thank you.  I’ll take Jeremy gunning down his classmates over some kid overwhelming muggers with magic tricks any day of the week.  And “Bittersweet Symphony” is the Bret Hart all of walking-down-the-street-singing videos. The best there is, the best was and the best there ever will be.

“November Rain” came out in 1992 and didn’t even make the final four for MTV, and that was the great “Hold crap did you see that video” of my childhood.  We spent hours…ok lots of minutes…dissecting that song.  Who was Axl’s new wife looking at when she got in the car? Was it Axl or his wife walking to the gun shop? Why did that guy dive into the wedding cake like he was getting gunned down by the mob? It’s only rain chief! Why was there a mirror in the casket? Was there a mirror in the casket? And of course the big reveal – So that’s what Slash looks like!

The video, like the song, was overly grand and melodramatic and full of images that now are funny to watch – Slash walking down the aisle of a downtown church and ending up outside of a church in the middle of the desert, the kid dressed like Oliver Twist at the reception, Axl wearing a bow tie at the funeral, etc. But it was still awesome. While it took itself too serious, it made the song better.

You had so many bands making iconic videos (including the masters Tom Petty and Michael Jackson) that even after two decades you remember what they look like even if, like me, you didn’t have cable when they were released.

I’m sure the death of MTV, and to a lesser extent VH1, as anactual music playing channel is the leading cause of the degradation of noteworthy music videos, but there has to be more to it.  Did the genre outgrow itself? Were there so many good videos being put out that they became counterproductive? 

Most likely they just became too damn expensive. The ends didn’t justify the means. After all, they were initially just another way to promote the song and the band in the pre-internet- everyone- is- connected age. Record companies could afford to make a few videos because it was a good way to reach their target audience that was planted in front of the TV for 4-5 hours a day. 

Now it’s cheaper to just throw a song up on the internet and hope it goes viral. Does anyone know what the “official video” of Carly Rae Jepson’s “Call Me Maybe” looks like? Is there even one or are there just 400 different versions of sports teams lip-syncing it?  If a song goes viral, why waste time putting a lot of effort into making a solid video – just get it on iTunes as fast as possible and watch the folks plunk down their money a $1.29 at a time.

Or, maybe my perception isn’t reality, maybe I’m just not as aware of music as I used to be. The video-sharing sites that abound on the internet should be an awesome platform for the re-birth of the music video genre. People have access to it in greater numbers than anything MTV could have hoped for in their prime.  Sure, figuring out how to translate 1,000,000 YouTube views into actual money isn’t easy, but isn’t that why these music execs went to college?

Let’s not forget about the artistic talent that cut their teeth by first making music videos. Metacritic has a list of 22 directors whogot started directing videos.  There are some decent names on there like David Fincher and Spike Jonez.  Sure Michael Bay is on the list, but where would the summer blockbuster be without his explosions? He had to learn that somewhere (and that someplace was apparently Meatloaf video’s). Maybe it’s not worth it for the next generation of Hollywood directors to spend weeks working with temperamental music folk for a four-minute video that will only exist on the internet.

Heck maybe those temperamental musicians aren’t willing to risk putting out a really creative video. It might hurt their image if the public doesn’t like what they put out.  Lady Gaga made her name taking calculated risks so it’s probably no surprise that she’s had some of the more memorable videos over the last few years.  Of course, she’s had Madonna’s career to use as a template, so maybe it wasn’t that much of a risk.

I’m not even sure why I’ve devoted this much time to the topic.  After all, it’s not like I don’t have the ability to watch the awesome video’s of my youth whenever I want (as long as I have an internet connection). Maybe it’s because it seems like another creative outlet that seems to be slipping into mediocrity. Movies are nothing but remakes or sequels. Music isn’t released unless it’s been auto-tuned and overproduced to the point everything sounds like it’s comingfrom Twiki. Writing is devolving into poop jokes and acronyms. LOL YOLO!

Or maybe it’s because the music video was the one thing in music that was created and prospered during my youth (well that and rap music).  My parents’ generation had had rock music and music superstars (and drugs, lots and lots of drugs) so while we might argue over whose music was better there was at least a relatable point of reference. They couldn’t do that with true music videos. They had promotional videos but it was mostly recorded live performances.

We had the birth of the music video (The Buggles for lack of a better starting point) and watched it grow into a surly teenager (the aforementioned “Smells Like Teen Spirit”) and now 30 years later it seems to be settling into an undistinguished middle age.

Jesus, this turned into an old-man rant.  I feel kind of bad about that.  Heck, I haven’t even started drinking yet. It’s starting to feel like the first step on the journey that leads to me sitting on a front stoop somewhere yelling at kids to be quiet and asking The Duchess what time Matlock comes on.  Because I tend to be a hopeful person I think that there will be a resurgence in the art form, hopefully it won’t be too far away.