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“Me Too” backlash is ridiculous

27 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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Some people are mad (or scared!) culture seems finally determined to protect women from sexual assault and rape. They may insist protecting women is a good thing, yes, but the effort has gone too far!

“It’s a Witch Hunt!” they say. No, it’s not. There are no such things as witches. Creeps and rapists exist. They’re everywhere.

OK, but now any woman can say anything and just like that, an innocent man’s life is ruined. Actually, when a female victim comes forward, it’s she who gets piled on, threatened, her reputation attacked. There are very real barriers keeping victims from speaking out publicly. The notion that women are lining up en masse to make up lies just to destroy innocent men is ridiculous.

Why is there more concern about these theoretical men who could maybe have their futures ruined, instead of all the actual women whose past, present and futures contain suffering?

“OK,” they say, “but not every creepy thing is rape!” Who can’t tell between a grope and forced penetration? Women know the difference. Any normal person does. They’re all unacceptable, but they’re not interchangeable or identical. This is easy to understand.

The’re a fear that employers and political parties are just throwing anybody from Aziz to Weinstein under the bus together. Well, companies and political parties have always clamored to protect their reputation / brand. When have they ever cared more about ethics and legal justice for workers than their own self-interest? The only thing that’s changed is, now, enough people consider sexual assault to be bad that they want to disassociated themselves from it.

The notion that men can’t make jokes in the workplace anymore, because anything will get them fired…is it really so onerous, to ask professionals to be professional? I held some zingers back. It kind of was a crime! They were good ones. But, damn it, I was a committed professional in my last office.

People are very quick to defend an accused man, even before anyone knows what he’s accused of. An illustrative example is Patrick Brown, the Conservative candidate for Ontario until a few days ago. His entire staff stepped down when it became known that a report accusing him of sexual assault was imminent. Brown denied all guilt. Many supported him. I heard his backers suggest it was merely a butt grab…even before they had any idea what he was accused of.

Turns out the accusation is that as a federal MP he gave alcohol to an 18-year-old and asked her to suck his dick. Words to the effect of that or “put this in your mouth.” She did, then she was uncomfortable and stopped. Another woman accused him of giving her alcohol when she was 18, and throwing her on the bed trying to kiss her. He maintained his innocence, his party tossed him out.

I’m not sure hatred for Kathleen Wynne was the only reason people rushed to defend Brown, because women in general are doubted. Rather than try to glean reality accurately, there’s a tendency to minimize, to reduce all accusations to the mildest one any man has ever been accused of.

Brown is an interesting case, because journalists and insiders apparently knew about him long before. They interpreted this story as finally it’s coming out, whereas this came out of the blue for most people, myself included. Who else knew, and when? That can be asked of every case.

Recall, even Weinstein initially insisted on his innocence and people believed him. Even though now apparently everybody knew. It’s been since reported in New Yorker’s “Army of Spies” that he hired former Mossad agent to spy on women he abused, to make sure they didn’t come forward, and to make sure journalists didn’t report on him for it.

There’s a fundamental difference between the court of public opinion and actual courts. An accused has the presumption of innocence when the state can imprison them. This is as it should be!

But by granting accused men the presumption of innocence in the court of public opinion, they assume women coming forward are guilty: it’s impossible to assume they’re both equally innocent at the same time. The neutral thing is keep your opinion suspended until more is known. Though I admit, I am now inclined to believe women.  Remember, this court is just the collective society’s opinion. It can’t punish anyone. Public opinion never fires someone, only companies or political parties do, and it’s based on their perception of how public opinion will affect them.

The flood of men being called out is because there’s a decades-long backlog. It’ll slow down, hopefully, when men improve.

Also, ignore boomers when they inevitably say ridiculous things like “in my day, we didn’t consider that assault!” as if their obsolete standards should matter in this day they just acknowledged we’re not in. Do they think assault should be tolerated now, because they tolerated it?

More to the point, who cares about them? Black people had separate water fountains in the US until 1964, and the last Canadian Government-run residential school closed in 1994. It would be a needless shame if we calibrated today’s world according to what that generation found OK.

I should add, nothing above is really partisan or buzzkill-y. Have sex! Enjoy! Fuck! Have afternoon anal for all I care. Just have it be consensual, which isn’t a big ask. If your’e doing it all right she won’t merely give you permission, she’ll repeatedly beg you to fuck her harder.

[Note: Jan 30–I don’t want to be mistaken for sounding flippant last para: I should have made my larger point clearer, that if a man/woman sends “mixed signals” it should interpreted as a red light not a green.

Also, I used salty language here perhaps unadvisably but not mindlessly, to indirectly combat the misguided notion I fear is kinda prevalent among men, that concern for safety/comfort of your sexual partner is somehow for prigs or killjoys.]

 

On Aging: An increasingly growing problem

29 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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aging, Happy new years, New years, parenting

On my forehead stand a couple relics, hairs that have bravely refused to recede. They demarcate the old boundaries of my hairline. A stinging reminder of what was. Proud but sad, like a luxury hotel in an abandoned country.

I noticed them years ago when a Cool Barber downtown cut them off. Why is he applying a razor to my forehead? It was my first time at a Cool Barber so I thought maybe that was a trend? What I’m saying is, it was inconceivable to me that my hairline could recede.

When a buddy told me in 2014 that I was in fact losing some hair, I feared he was losing his mind. Me? When time begins to deteriorate the body, it doesn’t usually announce itself. Timing and severity is the difference between the balding 20-year old and the Silver Fox whose thick grey hair signals, unfairly, both old age and youth. But my situation seemed doubly unfair: Not only am I subject to hair loss, but why do I have in several places where hair isn’t strictly necessary, but not my head? What kind of shit is this, fate, you bastard?

My dad used to point to the skin on his head and say to me: “Look, son: this is your future.” I laughed. It was funny then and even now, despite the statement’s latent horror. The unavoidable fact is I am older than I used to be.

People say when you return home after skipping town things stay the same. That isn’t quite true. The cost of Toronto housing has become three or four tiers more insane and my social circle includes literal babies. The sign you have completed one major revolution in life’s cycle is hanging out with people well under the legal drinking age.

How, when did it come to this? Timeless questions. Age and time was once automatically measured and felt when it was linked to a school year. Time was divided into neat sections, then every few months was a milestone. Summer. As reward for completing some little time unit, go drink and smoke in the woods for two months (camp, fun place). Then start it all again. Repeat. Such was time. One day there is nothing left to graduate.

But my god, I’m not dying! I’m 33. Growing up, especially for males, was to have an immortality complex. The first signs of aging doesn’t mean death is around the corner, but it’s a sign that I am in fact subject to death. This is new and tbh not altogether pleasant.

With age comes responsibilities, some great and inevitable, but I don’t want age to determine things.

One of the best nights I had in India was hanging out with a 55-year-old friend, drinking and singing songs on guitar until 5am. In North America and in consumer society in general people are slotted into demographics. The more they are targeted, the more its reinforced and they come to think of themselves in narrow age terms. This is reductionist and limiting. People feel they can’t learn new skills or art, adventure. Age groups do not mingle here. It’s not like that elsewhere.

In 2016 I went to a rager Holi party loaded with babies and grandparents. That obnoxious class of people—20-somethings—were in abundance too. There was a kiddy pool, fully-catered food and open bar. I was wet, full and drunk. Some military gentleman hosted it in his Defence Colony home. The dance floor was hot, karaoke was bumping. I wasn’t sure what affect bhang would have on me, so I took it twice. Everyone went home by 4:30pm.

This party would never happen in Canada, not just because Holi is Indian but age here creates rigid barriers. Silos. Surrounded by people of different ages, people perform. The young strive to appear mature. The older, mature enough. People try to be an age, instead of themselves.

This different schema/outlook has parenting implications. My good Delhi buddy is a 40-year-old father with an 11-year-old kid. The boy came to some parties and saw us smoking hash. It’s a funny time in Toronto as we await Canada legalizing weed—there are people (crusty obsolete weenies) who would call child services and report this maniac of a dad, even as conservative politicians who recently demanded mandatory minimums for possessing weed jostle to become drug dealers. (Great article on Julian Fantino’s hypocrisy) My buddy justified it on very principled, philosophical grounds. In thrust, “I live a moral life, so why should I have to hide anything from my child?”

Aging requires answering one fundamental question: Will I live how my parents/community did, or carve out something different? There is no right answer There are probably elements of both. It’s worth saying, some otherwise indefensible values are defended simply because it’s the traditional way of doing things. But the familiarity and sense of belonging to one’s own culture can be meaningful, too.

This will affect where people decide to live, whether to raise a family, what kind of values underlie all this in our adult lives.

Actually, I no longer believe there is any such thing as “adults”. When you’re six, the nine-year-old at the playground is intimidating because they’re enormous and, being nine, they know life. I wonder what senior citizens think, as they watch people in their 60s and 70s fuck up the planet so badly. As a kid you see a friend’s parents, or your own, and you assume they’re responsible and wise. No, some are just children ravaged by time, so they look like that. Really they have coke problems, mid-life crises or other complexes. Maybe they’re terminally immature.

Age guarantees nothing. There are many very wise children and elderly maniacs with no grip on reality. Don’t get me wrong all things being equal, age brings wisdom and I respect people who lived through stuff. But all things are not equal, and the notion that people are on a guaranteed track marching forward towards Responsibility and Wisdom simply because they haven’t died yet is not true.

Wordsworth and Blake were onto something when they praised children. I’ve never seen an infant commit genocide! Everyone loves childhood innocence. What about adult guilt?

My hope is AI replaces everybody so we can all chill for a living. I’d like for us to all age gracefully, without being so fixated on the look rather than the health of our bodies. I don’t want to be forced or nudged into abiding by social mores concerning age that aren’t mine.

I won’t be a different man when those lonesome, heroic forehead hairs finally admit defeat. Other hairs will surely go, too. I accept my age now. It’s OK! Again, I’m not 101. But when I am fatter and even more severely weathered I hope there’s still a party for me somewhere, playing guitar until late. If there isn’t, I’ll make my own. Even if I’m saddled with those ever-present things going around these days, children.

Happy New Year’s, everybody!

 

In India from Canada–jumping between economies, consumerism, money and other thoughts

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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India, travel

The following is simply a reflection of my own experience after living in India for a year and a half.

Every county has a range of shops and stores, from cheap to expensive and in between, covering everything from food and fashion. But if any country has the full range, it’s India.

Really rich Indians make Forest Hill people look like paupers, and they shop and live accordingly. The cheapest shops in India are very cheap. A local merchant, a vegetable wallah or whatever, can charge a white man like me way more than he’d charge an Indian, unable to believe his luck he can rip someone off so bad. But I’m used to Toronto prices, so I feel guilty I’m ripping him off. Both things are true at the same time.

If you want to spend a lot of money by Toronto standards in India, you can. There is a class of Indians who have fuck-you money, who never look at price tags. This exists, probably in larger number than Torontonians suspect, even if it’s barely a fraction of the Indian population. A quick Google search tells me that the average annual Indian income is $616 US. This is the figure, though another quick Google search says there are 236,000 Indian millionaires. The total population is roughly 1,300,000,000 (poor people do not immediately jump into the census when born) but some of these millionaires are actually billionaires, too, and I wonder what India’s average annual income would look like if you removed a handful of people at the very top.  Millions of people make way, way less than $616 a year.

Before arriving, I was curious to see how evolved consumerism and ad culture was in India, or Delhi at least. The food scene is intriguing. Food delivery is very common: There is an enormous surplus of labour, and they jump on one of a million motorcycles in Delhi and deliver McDonald’s or whatever else.  Smaller commercial restaurants may outsource their food delivery. There is always someone to do anything for a tiny amount of money.

Smaller local non-chain restaurants are a different story. They often don’t deliver. If the menu says a masala dosa costs 60 rupees ($1.20 Cdn), that’s what it costs. No tax. Somehow, this is just fine. Modi’s new HST tax means 18% is added, and this applies in fancier sit-down restaurants or North American chains. In smaller local places, the price is the price.

But being a white Torontonian yuppie scum meant I could toggle between economies when convenient. Obviously people with more money can buy what they want, this isn’t a revelation, but life has a very different quality when even luxuries are fundamentally affordable, when strangers assume of me, rightly, that I can pay for what they charge for a  dentist, between $22-30 Cdn (one time they did some free orthodontistry work too) or medical, or whatever food. Maybe it’s wise to save, but there is no cost in life if I decide to buy some nice food or whatever.

Delhi is a dirty city. The air is poison. I should say, street sweepers and others do a great job of cleaning, everyday. Shockingly poor people scavenge for garbage. In Lajpat Nagar 1 where I lived, there was a dump near me and people just go around picking stuff up.

Without getting into deeper reasoning or socio-cultural explanations for the root of Indian garbage habits, in this dirtier city I decided to buy a fancy face wash. Exfoliating, with rose and honey and apricot. This luxury item, an Indian product, cost like $2 and some odd cents. French hygiene products, for wealthier Indians, cost more than they do in Toronto.

I could buy things from the economy where prices are calibrated for poorer Indians, or if I felt like it from the foreigner economy. If I want to buy a super cheap souvenir, I pay local prices. The Lajpat Nagar II main market sold bangles, I think it was $1 for a dozen. In Toronto, the other day I happened to be at a local so-called Found Objects store selling bangles, and laughed to see each individual bangle for $2. 100 rupees for a single bangle!

Haircuts in my neighbourhood cost $1-3, and a head massage, those blessed things, could be $1-7. (A head massage is actually the head, shoulders, back, arms, and they crack your knuckles, and also sometimes your neck.). One time I paid $2 for a haircut and a head massage.

But Delhi has Khan Market (read: Con Market), too.  It is apparently among the world’s most expensive commercial real estate. When I got homesick, and yearned for the quintessential Toronto experience of being ripped off, I would come here.

About $20 Cdn here got me my beloved bagel lox and cream cheese, with fries and two double espressos. Indulging in India costs less than everyday Toronto.

Khan Market has lots of great yuppie crap, from the Body Shop (foreign soap) to $100 sushi meals with like only four rolls because the damn fish is flown in from god knows where and isn’t exactly overly fresh. The price of exotic items are, fittingly, not calibrated for normal Indians. If it isn’t produced in India, regular Indians probably don’t need it, because historically they never had it. (By “regular” I mean the non-professional types I worked with at the station.)

And again, “affordable” is a relative term. In India, unless it was for the people with Fuck-You money, about everything was affordable to me. Yet I made the legal minimum wage, the lowest salary a foreigner is allowed to receive by law (less, given my cheap ass company worth billions). But I never had to look at my bank account to decide if I could afford a nice lunch.

The truth is I made an obscene amount by Indian standards, and a pathetic amount by Toronto’s. A colleague nearly ten years older and with more than 15 years experience in Indian journalism, with a higher title and level of responsibility in the office than me, made less than half of what I did.  Yet I worked there knowing I’d have to reckon with Canadian prices eventually, and that housing in Toronto increased by more than 20% in the time I was away, so that a detached house in Toronto costs well over one million dollars. (50 million Indian rupees). Rent soared, too.

So I knew I was simultaneously rich and not rich. The way in which I was not rich is actually decadent as hell. People making Canadian salaries can go to many countries in the world, and by simple virtue of having been paid Western wages, can live like kings. This does not work the same way in reverse.

I find the relative wealth of the West disturbing and impossible to justify. I’ve seen Indians who work at least 12 hour days 7 days a week, and they’ll make next to nothing. This is one telling symptom of both a national and international economy predicated on absolute bullshit.

I could have delivered to me a smoked salmon sandwich, on a fresh ciabatta bun with craime fraiche and grainy mustard, and two stupid little heart-shaped sugar cookies for about $8-9. Of course there are cheaper things to eat. Spending this much was beyond the possibility for many colleagues, but in Toronto this may get you an appetizer. North Americans who know nothing about India, understandably, may be surprised to learn continental fare is available.

In Lajpat Nagar 1, I occasionally ate chicken, rice and roti made by a woman on my street. It cost almost $2. Very spicy and good! My Indian colleagues were shocked I ate this, as it could be sketchy in fact. Meh.

Street food, oh man. Basic vada pavs, fried potato with nice spices and a fresh yummy bun, cost I think 30 rupees in places. 60 cents. This is not a small amount of money for many locals.

Again, that India is cheaper than Toronto is not a revelation. But the feeling of freely being able to switch between these economies brings some uncomfortable questions. Being able to parachute into a country and live like a king while millions there starve is weird. I’m not responsible for this, but nonetheless you can’t be there and not see and feel how wrong it is. It’s not exactly guilt, because I know I’m not the guilty one, but I’m certainly living a very fine life based on something that does not feel right.

I’d wonder, could an economist explain this in a way that makes sense? Is it just that North America has such valuable currency because the US military is present around the world ensuring that US business interests are looked after? I suspect it’s to do with the latter, but it’s a damn complicated world and this feels like an oversimplification too. But it does seem beyond coincidence that the US dollar is proportionately as high as their global military presence.

But to see people born there, living on the street…there are economic and geo-political lenses this can be seen through, but the situation urges you to see it through basic existential terms. They were just born there, I’m just born here, and whatever the other reasons are, as complicated and diverse as they are, they come second. Not first.

Hash is obscenely cheap, even if, as I understand it, the price has gone up markedly. It is currently $30 Cdn for a “tola”, or ten grams(!!!), of potent Himalayan charras.  In Canada this money gets you 2 grams if you’re lucky.

Like I said, the average Indian annual income in 2013 was $616 US. I made $3,000 Cdn, monthly. This sounds like a brag in light of that fact, but remember, I could not have legally made less money. There are white people in India working illegally for charities and NGOs and things like that, and they make less. But it’s true that if you see a white person in India, they had enough money to buy the plane ticket to get there. That the legal minimum was such an obscene amount of money there speaks to how white people have everything work in their favour. Legally, and even culturally in practice, there is always a tailwind for white people.

Before coming to India I was paying Toronto rent and working as a private guitar teacher. No salary, no guaranteed income. I managed to sell some writing here, less reliable than teaching. I had a flatmate in Toronto, where my share of rent was about $1100 monthly. I lived alone in a nice apartment in a good area in South Delhi, and rent was $400 a month. I knew people who paid in rent $120-250ish Cdn.

One time I noticed The Gap was coming to India. Big news! Every Western brand has automatic prestige in India, because it is simply Western. Indians automatically accord respect and importance and high-status to anything Western, even if the thing itself is made in Bangladesh and is merely advertised by North American 20-somethings.

I saw signs, breathlessly praising the upcoming opening of The Gap. Then it opened, and I was curious to see what things cost. A t-shirt, $30 Cdn, same as here. That is insane, I thought, and aside from wealthy Indians who want to signal that they can afford North American prices, Indians won’t go for that. Indians know the price of things and do not waste a single rupee. Paisa vasool. “Finally, The Gap Is Here!” a sign read, or something like that. I thought and hoped Indians were too smart to be taken in by these prices. Next time I came, it read, “Gap Open! Up to 90% off!” Good! Fuckin parasites.

Indian Terrain is a chain store in malls and locations around Delhi and other Indian cities. If I buy a nice button down shirt it can cost about 2,000 Indian rupees, or $40 Cdn. The shirt will be much higher quality than H&M, but actually $10 more expensive, perhaps. But it compares in quality to Club Monaco, where shirts not on sale can range from $40-$120.

Yet In Old Manali, I bought a beautiful button down shirt hand-stitched by the fellas in the store for $10 Cdn, 500 rupees. I know there are people in India selling hand-made shirts with the same fabric for even less.

One thing I noticed, actually, is that poor people in Delhi and elsewhere in North India have clothes that fit well. I speculate on the reasons: most Indians are smaller. Malnourishment is a real problem. Not many people wear XXL. Clothes need to be made in fewer sizes. People in Toronto buy ill-fitting clothes maybe because there are more wrong sizes to buy. This is probably a very dumb gora observation, but I wonder if there’s anything to it.

A few weeks after landing in India, I wondered if I, standing at just over 5”8, was the largest man in the country. I towered over many people who are clearly poor and seem to have suffered from stunted growth. Several of the “office boys” and janitors at work, and people like them in the city. I find that phrase “office boy” demeaning and classist, but it’s a common phrase most Indians would never think to put quotation marks around.

But also, better fit may have to do with Indian merchants being more capable than their Canadian counterparts. People who sell the clothes commonly make them too. There is less division of labour. Shops make and sell, some just sell what’s been pre-made. But even in a commercial store like Levis, you just buy jeans according to waist size, not length—they measure the leg length and cut it there in the store while you wait. I wonder if poor Indians get custom clothes them because tailoring is so common there, so it’s just a part of buying clothes. Here, there’s a premium on “made to measure” or “bespoke” clothing, and the cost goes up by 1000%. I think the idea of having loads of pre-made shirts from factories to sell is relatively new in India, dating back to the early 90s when the economy “liberalized”, ie began its slow, slow opening to Western countries. (Ask a Western businessman if it’s easy to do business in India, and he will say “no” or laugh, no matter what Modiji tells you).

Alas, this is one of those things I could not learn, because it’s so rare for poor Indians to speak or understand English, and my Hindi is pathetic. Hindi meri bakwas hai. I wonder if middle, or upper-middle class Indians will think my speculation is ridiculous. Or maybe it’s accurate. Maybe some journalists I know could answer it, but for the most part, from what I could gather, most middle or upper class Indians have no desire to speak to poor Indians. They stopped seeing them a long time ago.

I would occasionally see Indians wearing clothes that clearly came from the West, through charities I guess. Oldschool Nike t-shirts! In Ajmer, Rajasthan, I saw a dude who had no shoes and a ragged lungi but wore a t-shirt that said “Bury me in my ones. Nike Air.” Think about that. This dude was not into basketball/hip hop culture. I’ve seen a few poor Indians wearing Wu Tang gear, guys who I suspect have not entered the proverbial 36 chambers.

Let’s chart the life cycle of that t-shirt: Probably originally made in Asia by a worker paid pennies hourly, bought by a North American for $25+, given back to charity maybe just to be nice or perhaps it went out of style or some other reason, back to Asia to a guy who has no clue what Air Force Ones are. The shirt never changes in substance, just its value is inflated like hell in North America because its worth is abstract. In India, it first represented an impossibly low wage, then was a symbol on a man, then fabric on a man. Both are reality, but North American reality is often psychological, existing mostly in the mind. (Of course the shirt has a tangible existence in both places, but it is not valued at $25+ because North Americans value cloth on their body more–signaling “Nike” is the value.)

Being back in Canada, where the value of products is largely abstract, making it susceptible to endless manipulation and  inflation by obscenely wealthy and exploitative companies, life seems to be moored to something less real. Psychology understanding of a shirt’s brand is real, but this reality is decadent compared to the tangible desire to cover your body in cloth. My Indian friends and colleagues would kill me if they’re reading this, because I’m not talking about them and Indians hate to be thought of as poor. They have a chip on their shoulder, understandably. The British robbed them blind. At one time, India had 25% of the wealth on Earth.

So as a white guy walking into Delhi, working for an international news station, I immediately had top shelf connections. The world of Indian journalism is small. Like all over the world, only upper and middle class people become journalists. They are the ones who go to college for it, or can afford giving time to work in unpaid internships. Indian news stations don’t have dalits working there. Everyone has worked in every other office, they do the circuit. They all know each other, and the circle is small.

I had done nothing there but arrive, and the country felt insanely open to me. I could travel anywhere, buy anything I wanted in it (not a car or a house, maybe, the latter because there are rules regulating foreigners buying property, and anyway I didn’t have that much money).

On my second day in India I met the premier of Ontario. I has welcomed inside a bunch of embassies. I regularly went to the Press Club and the Foreign Correspondence Club. To be sure the latter two aren’t very exclusive, my then-editor in chief had a membership and we went there to eat cheap kebabs and drink cheap beer and whiskey. One of my hosts worked at the US embassy, and she met David Letterman while I was there. I went to a wedding at the home compound of the President of India. I had a press pass, and cars in Delhi have “press stickers” to say to police and everyone else, “don’t fuck with me or I’ll report you”. There was power. Especially as a white man. And I had done nothing there. I repeat, nothing.

More than access or stories, it’s the way people approached and perceived me that is shocking. I was a sensation. I was one of the only white people to work in my office building, and people treated me with more respect than I deserved. I’m just a guy! Poor and definitely wealthy Indians too enjoy being seen with a white man.

At work, I was able to push back in ways my Indian colleagues were not. It was understood that for all the talk of not having a traditional hierarchy in the office there was still a hierarchy, but I didn’t really give a fuck about that. I wasn’t an asshole, but I resisted being pushed around in ways my colleagues were not able to, I expected the company to live up to the contract it signed and I repeated my expectation to them until they sometimes kinda did, which is an utterly foreign concept in an Indian office. I never called my bosses “sir”.

My existence was enormously sheltered and privileged. Uber is there in Delhi and cheap as hell. Rides within the city are $1 to share, or $2 to ride alone. Plus in my first year, my company paid for every single Uber I took, work-related or not. I took the Metro occasionally, it was about 30 cents a trip. But saving a dollar or two to be crowded and sweaty and have to make up the last mile to and from the metro station with a rickshaw driver who understood no English made no sense.

I’d sometimes pay a rickshaw driver to take me to the metro (subway), or from the metro to where I needed to go. Since the company was paying for my Uber and the metro came from my pocket, it made no sense to take the longer, more expensive and more confusing way. Thus, again, living was easy and sheltered. I’d see people living, sleeping under a flyover from an air conditioned car. This is a trite, packaged image, but I literally did see it everyday.

Weeks after being back, I find I’m surrounded by wealth and abstract/brand cravings, so they people are unsatisfied despite possessing more wealth than most of the world could ever dream of. This sounds like a criticism of these individuals, but really it’s the influence of consumer society, ie mental poison. It drives the rich mad.  It’s also something I knew before and everybody knows, and there’s nothing more trite than coming back from India and pointing out the gap between wealth and happiness. Look, India has spiritual people and spiritual frauds all over the place and Toronto has beautiful caring soulful people, poor and wealthy alike. But the hollowness here is palpable and everywhere, and I want to shrug it off but it is so fundamental to the world, the external world and people’s inner life, that I simply despise it.

Returning to Puck after India

22 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

I feel elated to have hockey back in my life again. Puck was too fundamental to my childhood, adolescence and also adulthood to feel alien now, but a lot has changed.

The feeling of knowing Saturday night will begin again with puck is incredible. But the Leafs are different. They are good! Actually! Being a Leaf fan is to be emotionally fragile about them, and I’m trying not to invest feelings, but having dominant players to root for is a pleasant shock.

In India I didn’t mourn the loss of puck. I was busy and very stimulated and the absence of puck had no impact on my life for the first year. But after about twelve months it was playoffs, and the Leafs were in. I woke up at 3:30 am, lit some charras and watched the best pro hockey I’ve seen in probably 15 years. Matthews. The timing, and the place of it, was strange, but once the puck dropped it was like riding a bike.

I had contacted the Canadian embassy in Delhi to see if I could attend their NHL playoff screening, but they responded that not only couldn’t , no such screening existed. Why even have an embassy, then? They didn’t explain this either. They recommended I buy some Rogers service to stream the game. No, I felt safe from Rogers this far away and refused to let them gouge me, so I streamed it online, which was surprisingly reliable.

In the past, when any regular season let alone playoff game was on, I could be heard screaming abuse at players and refs in a room by myself. The players, too, in the 90s-early 2000s mirrored my insane intensity. They sometimes spat in the face of opposing players face, then jumped in their bench and punched this same face. One major strain of NHL hockey was real sheer burning hatred, and this was released not by outscoring opponents but by beating the shit out of them. This satisfied me, because even if we didn’t win the Cup, and we most certainly didn’t, at least we won a round or two and hurt some rats.

From the bit I’ve seen, NHL hockey has softened enormously and the results are spectacular. A Leaf collided with a Sen last night, and instead of a facewash or chirp or a hack or slash, they each seemed concerned for the other’s well being. Then they just…moved on. Look: the truth is these are obscenely overpaid and obscenely talented kids playing a game they love. What team they play for is arbitrary. It’s a game. I used to think a human being’s character and moral worth was solely determined by what team drafted them–it’s hard to believe I was ever so stupid. (Actually, is it?) Refs now are actually enforcing the rules of hockey, instead of allowing them to be skirted by enforcing The Code of the game, and now hockey games are won by playing hockey. Goonery seems gone, and I don’t miss it a bit.

In India the closest thing I could buy to a hockey stick was a field hockey stick, or what in India is called a “hockey stick.” It was a dinky stupid little thing, but I could stick handle a tennis ball around when aching to play, and this approximation of actual hockey, deeking out inanimate objects, was the closest thing I could find.

IMG_20170616_221457

I just returned from playing my first ice hockey game with full equipment, goalies and refs and all, in probably 7 years. And that game was my first in years, too.

I bought real twigs the other day! I told the gentleman at Sport Check I needed help, because the equipment all seemed so new. There were no Easton Aluminums, Koho or Titans. There were no Sakic curves. They’ve been composite for years, but even when I was playing shinny I had a wooden twig. The knowledgeable employee told me things I find incredible. All sticks have very large curves now, no heel curves. “It’s all about the sauce these days.” He means saucer passes, raising the puck on a pass over an opponents’ fore-checking stick so it lands on the other side for a teammate. Skill.

Skates cost between $89-1000 (About 5,000 to 50,000 Rupees!). Skate sharpening now isn’t just sharpening a blade, there are different kind of cuts, with ratios that apparently do mean something to players who can tell the difference. The advances in gear are substantial—sticks/skates are impossibly light, they flex to your foot, skates are protective (if you have money, otherwise break a foot blocking a shot, you poor bastard you deserve a broken foot), the helmets even apparently are better.

At the rink today a sign proclaimed: “Relax, it’s just a game.” This was not the messaging I heard as a kid. Don Cherry taught that the failure to block a shot or forcefully clear the front of the net was a national disgrace. I’m not sure it ever occurred to me that hockey was only a game. There were duties, often semi-violent to violent. I took it oddly seriously as a 12-14 year old, my golden-era as a select player. I was a good house league player until 19, ie mediocre to decent in the actual world.

Today I played with some buddies and had an incredible time. I was gassed halfway through the first (maybe a quarter way), but took some late rushes as a D man, made a few passes, deeked a few people, got burned on some odd man rushes going back (it was not a cerebral lapse, I was pinching because I just didn’t have the juice in my legs to get back and accepted it then and now), and we won 5-2. Their goalie made a few surprisingly good saves on me when I went roof, but I got an apple. I didn’t have my head up with the puck to know where guys were, I felt behind in that respect. But made some good and unexpected passes. And botched some. It was kind of a blur. I couldn’t believe that once ice-time was something I desperately wanted more of. Oh my god. Winning the game was second to making it out alive. 17-15-15 minute periods, stop time and only two full lines. Killer.

But this time a teammate talked about his kids. The parents at my game were not watching from the stands they were on my team. Playing puck as an old bastard is extremely chilled. Our team and the opposing one was not very high-level, but there was definitely talent. There was healthy competition—ie there barely was any. No chirping, body checking, slashing, slew-footing. I was a sub only playing because most of the guys actually on the team had a bachelor party, but I tried not to botch it too bad and hold my own. My commitment wasn’t ferocious. It turns out hockey actually is just a game. This counts as a revelation.

Leafs are good and I just might skate again. Sports isn’t only a con perpetrated by obscenely rich owners who get citizens to buy them stadiums with public money then make tickets affordable only as a business write-off. The pathological profiteering of the Leafs ownership is bearable, and hardly even detectable from TV, when the team is actually run by bona fide hockey guys (Babcock, Shanahan, Lamoriello). I don’t notice the prices because I don’t pay for seats, merchandise, ACC beer or anything. Auston Matthews speaks for himself.

Maybe I’ll regain what wheels I barely had, so if I need to sub in I’ll have some juice for the third. And for shinny too.

I was onto something, surrounding myself as a kid with this game. Having puck in my life again feels wonderful!

How advertising undermines freedom

25 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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The “West” actually has less freedom than it thinks it does, thanks to the proliferation of advertising and marketing. I know advertising and marketing are not synonymous, but for the purposes of this essay one will be shorthand for both.

I’d like to describe the problem by means of an allegory. I will borrow from Milton’s Paradise Lost, a story well-suited for the purpose.

Paradise Lost

In Milton’s re-telling of the Old Testament’s Adam and Eve story, God has advance knowledge that Eve will definitely eat the apple (thereby forcing humanity to fall into sin: history’s unhealthiest bite of fruit), yet it is stated that she had the freedom not to eat it. Consider this: can Eve really have the freedom to refrain from doing something if God knows she will do it? If she doesn’t eat it, a choice allegedly within her freedom, then God’s knowledge is wrong, which is impossible, because God is infallible. If in fact she is bound to eat it because God knows she will, then she cannot be said to be truly free.

The apparent paradox of the situation falls apart when reality instead of the theoretical conditions posited are applied; this is a fictional story about another fictional story and the God posited in it does not exist, so neither can any of the conditions.

But the allegory applies today to consumers/citizens (Eve) and advertisers (God). In this sense, advertisers have preordained knowledge citizens will buy into consumer culture, even orient their life around it, despite having the freedom not to.

 

Are people free, then?

Their advanced knowledge about consumer/market behaviour is not omniscient, but reliable and improving all the time. Becoming more god-like.

In this sense, how much freedom do people ruthlessly subjected to advertising truly have? An important amount! There is an enormous difference between governments actively depriving citizens of their actual freedom, and being given freedom with the foreknowledge that it will be exercised narrowly. Advertising does not equal freedom eliminated, certainly not on a legal level. But at least psychologically, ads’ increasing volume and sophistication (of the ads themselves and the accuracy in targeting) does undermine people’s agency in their own life. This is problematic.

 

Outside influences are inevitable, though

But it’s also impossible to imagine a scenario where nothing external influences a person’s life. Humans live in communities where, thankfully, we must encounter people and institutions. Outside influences change our minds and behavior. This is good and inevitable. In this sense, freedom cannot be thought of as a person’s life being guided merely by the intrinsic things inside them, or free from outside messaging, like ads. The question is, then, what is the nature of the outside forces seeking to influence people? Whose side are they on, theirs or ours?

 

Give people a break!

Some people, often self-satisfied, scoff looking at the latest stupid/expensive/useless shit to hit the markets, and say “what kind of idiots buy this shit?” Many products are indeed useless and expensive and the rest.

But it’s unfair to assemble teams of sophisticated psychologists, artists and others for the express purpose of seducing masses of people, bombard them with million dollar ad campaigns, then blame the targeted people for succumbing.

You can hate the vapidness, triteness and all the exploitation of consumer culture without thinking every participant is an idiot. It’s not just unfair but irrational to subject people to what amounts to mind-control, then blame them for being controlled to some degree. Marketers conduct tests until they know the targeted demographic will respond. How, then, can the demographic be blamed for responding?

To be sure, the larger social issue is bigger than the merits of a single ad or product, but about buying into a concept of life, buying into the end product of an accumulation of ads. This is consumerism.

Narrow economic outcomes are dictating the psychological well-being of millions of people by coercing them psychologically. Many people in Toronto, other Western cities too, are surrounded by money and misery. Why? People are spiritually bored, there is no outlet. Aside from the daily work grind, having babies and going to the gym, meaning is in short supply. The messaging they are bombarded by doesn’t fulfill them. Of course they don’t. They are meant to take, not give.

Is advertising evil?

No. Advertising is inherently amoral—advertising is done for causes good and evil. But every evil cause can use advertising to pass itself off as virtuous. From cigarette companies targeting children, to Narendra Modi’s BJP Party spreading bogus stories via WhatsApp. The point isn’t that all advertising is evil, it’s that any evil on Earth can use advertising to further its purposes.

Besides, nobody totally avoids the consumer shit around us, not even the smug pieces of shit who write articles about how stupid it all is. If you want to be an activist for exploited labourers, it’s an extremely worthy cause. But for most people the point isn’t to abstain from consumer culture entirely, it’s to prevent life from being reduced to its (often empty) values, to maintain some kind of unique inner-life in the face of ads.

This doesn’t excuse the worst sins of the ad industry or those who use it sinfully, just that public ire should be directed chiefly at the perpetrators.

On the surface the participants in ad culture, the middle- and upper-middle class around the world, look like its benefactors not its victims. There is some illusion here. Only professionals or people who come from money (often the same), or that ultra-rare species the self-made-man/woman , can afford to comfortably participate in top-shelf consumerism. They will buy “local” things, which are expensive because a white person made them. To appear like they belong, the less affluent social aspirants either buy things they can’t afford or buy Fast Fashion, things cheap because a white person merely markets them.

The middle and upper-middle class people are of course not the worst victims–that would be the factory worker in Bangladesh, etc. But they are pressured relentlessly in different ways to pay for social status, to calibrate their values according to lines people from dire regions find incomprehensibly decadent, and in this way they are parted from their money and often left wondering why they are so miserable in a rich society. I tried to explain the mental health crisis, the rise in suicide, to my Indian colleagues–I suspect it has something to do with this.

They/we enable consumerism, but are victims too. No doubt some people disagree. They find their place in this arrangement to be wonderful. OK. Many people born into a favourable place in it loved slavery, too.

The above is oversimplification perhaps, but I don’t think it’s inaccurate. It’s complicated, this ad shit. These are just some thoughts.

 

Some thoughts

29 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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A buddy was telling me that Nietzsche often wrote in little bursts, or aphorisms. I am not Nietzsche, to put it lightly, but that mode is an efficient way to get a wide variety of things on my mind off it.

  1. Restaurants in Toronto are increasingly wonderful, but there’s a kind of person who only enjoys the best ones because a publication endorses it. This person eats status, not food. The people who want a good chill with good good look identical to the status eater; the point isn’t to judge who is who, it’s that people ought to consider what kind of restaurant-goer they are.
  1. I considered bringing my Leafs jersey to India, but expect that team’s shame has travelled that far, and mutilated beggars with leprosy will feel sorry for me.
  1. Capitalism is a Ponzi scheme, but instead of new investors to keep the fraud known as the economy afloat, they raise inflation to insane levels and incrementally enforce austerity measures on poor people.
  1. The musician’s goal is to transcend the physical instrument, so that when they feel a sound or hear it in their head, the fingers simply move so that they produce that sound. This is a hard stage to reach, but is only a prerequisite to the next stage: the sounds you hear and feel must be good ones.
  1. Human rights and consumerism each have a Sisyphean aspect, an endless escalator, I find interesting, even if there’s no causal connection; addressing one oppressed group inevitably but accidentally excludes another, or a subdivision of it, but including them excludes another, and so on. While in consumerism things like car models are of a year time hasn’t reached yet. In 2016 they sell the 2017, etc. Burgers were promoted for their size, then grade, then for the extent they were organic/natural, then the aioli, then for its gourmet cheese, some other highly local or exotic ingredient…it never ends. On the one hand, it’s delicious, but often the real purpose isn’t to serve a delicious, it’s to advertise the ingredients to justify the higher cost.
  1. Money/currency being unshackled from the gold standard has a parallel in consumer goods; neither currency nor goods have any intrinsic worth anymore, so since things are only worth what people will pay for them, making people insane makes their value insanely high.
  1. Young males, and immature older males, are an absolute threat to females, and have no idea that they are. Their obliviousness is mirrored in themselves, as fuckboys are anything but self-actualized. Intellectual or self-proclaimed progressive males, of course, can be slimey towards women too. When considering this topic, seek input from females, which I don’t say because it’s a trendy progressive thing to say, but because I’d ask a musician about music or a scientist about science.
  1. Novels can be assessed for their social and artistic worth. Each written document is a separate entity that may have value in one category, both, or neither. “Don’t write for the day, write for the ages” is the battle cry of aesthetic artist, but those who wave this flag either get enough sustenance from this niche specialty to look at the world’s ills and shrug, they separate aesthetics from their socially engaged essays or, more likely, they aren’t marginalized. It’s noble to be dedicated to functionless art, but it’s wrong to sneer at the artist whose art uplifts or serves people who need that.
  1. Serious thinkers let go of certainty. Anyone who believes they’re infallible isn’t just wrong, they will suffer; embracing uncertainty permits spitballing halfbaked ideas until they develop into better ideas, while those who believe they’re always right shy from saying anything potentially wrong, and this ego deprives them of a great tool for learning, or developing ideas. Also the incorrigible think everyone around them is stupid, and this embitters them.
  1. The only person more despised than a liar is the person who tells the truth.
  1. People sometimes brag about the volume or quality of what they read. Some art presupposes a certain intelligence in the audience, but remember, idiots claim to love and understand great art. Anyway, anyone can read a novel if they look at all its words. Bragging should be reserved for the person who wrote it, not read it, and the point of reading isn’t to own a cultural claim but to experience pleasure or, better, ecstasy.
  1. I get why wealthy white people don’t read about the marginalized—it’s uncomfortable and they don’t see an immediate need to do so. The ignorance it breeds, tragic but understandable, continues bc most major papers have predominantly white writers. Editors should fix this, but they reasonably assume that publishing important but unpopular writers won’t save a dying industry. Their position is about hopeless.
  1. Compassionate, intelligent people can be extremely racist, because racism doesn’t derive from a deficit of these things, but from being unaware of how things are when you have a different body. We’re hard-wired to live in smaller communities because we evolved in tiny bands for 10,000 years, and multiculturalism in a globalized world is new and hard for not being suited to our brain in its default setting.
  1. The caveman who ruled the cave by various permutations of brawn and intelligence—who supplied food by hunting, pleasure by charisma, safety by cleverness, or some mix—is regarded roughly the same way by his community as the Porsche driver, the Hollywood celeb, and the good family provider. The underlying impulse has never changed, only the expression has. Responding to these qualities are ingrained in us, but look for more in a lover than excellent survival skills. Maybe humans alone have the capacity to process and appreciate abstract, complex things, so revel in this.
  1. The prude bore who dismisses art because it’s lewd or funny is the most sad but contemptible idiot. This describes every government sensor, but also self-important smug academic types. Lewdness alone doesn’t make art good, obviously, but consider that masterpieces like Madame Bovary, Ulysses and Lolita were not just frowned upon when released, but were made illegal.
  1. I imagine even the biggest meathead sports fan would be mildly affronted to learn how much of their tax dollars go to subsidize billionaire sports owners. Cities pay hundreds of millions of dollars so the owner has a free or hugely discounted stadium, usually in a prime downtown location, needed for him to generate tens millions of dollars annually. The cities never get paid back. Diehard sports fans should question if this is a waste of money, and those who hate sports but love education and clean water should be rioting.
  1. Everyone knows that the only force that commands respect is physical force, yet many who watch oppressed people riot from afar sympathize with the cause, but wish they expressed justifiable anger peacefully, forgetting violence is all that’s ever created change. I don’t like violence either, but I get it. (Not all violence is justified, of course.)

18. It’s a shame that the truest things are often expressed in such corny banal terms, but that doesn’t invalidate the underlying sentiment. Love is nearly impossible to write about. It often appears on walls in stand-alone form, “love,” as if that alone says it all. It’s a directive, a reminder. Don’t confuse the sophistication of a phrase for the truth of it. A lot of garbage is expressed very cleverly, too.

19. Ace Ventura has a 45% on Rotten Tomatoes, so on the Halperin meter I rate Rotten Tomatoes 0%. I hate it when brilliance dressed in silliness is thought to be stupid, and there isn’t a prison sentence long enough for the people who gave this movie a failed rating. Ace Ventura is a modern masterpiece, comparable to Gogol’s Dead Souls.

19. If you light a candle at night and listen carefully to Robert Johnson, you will feel the ghosts that eluded you as a kid when you looked in the mirror and said “Bloody Mary” three times.

20. As TVs grew in size and quality, the systems people commonly hear music on got worse. MP4s, Apple’s music, compress the sound waves so they fit onto little devices, so they sound terrible. The difference between a good phonograph and digital music is as palpable as that of a colour and a black and white TV. Seriously.

21. The most brutal, vicious, and psychologically demanding sport in the world is chess.

22. Creating a laugh where otherwise there’d silence is the closest thing to a godly act. It’s creation, and the pleasure borders on ecstasy and the sublime. It’s just from the gut. A genius without a sense of humour is an enormous waste.

Niqabs, Syrian Refugees and Western Culture

16 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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Tags

conservatives, election, Homer, Joyce, Stephen Harper, Western culture

The niqab is a manufactured issue in this upcoming Canadian election that Conservatives opportunistically, shamefully amplified because their base is less than enamoured with Muslims. Another related disgrace is the Canadian response to the plight of Syrian refugees, the worst since the Second World War. Better divisive issues than focus on their past election tampering, abysmal environmental record, blind eye to murdered indigenous women, abandonment of Canadian military veterans, etc. To list every Conservative travesty threatens my word count, but I write today to defend “Western Culture.”

The literary bedrock of Western culture is the Bible and Homer. That’s why Joyce combines both strains in Ulysses, as the Jewish ad man Leopold Bloom meets the artist Stephen Dedalus (Greek name). The Hebrew and Greek come together over the novel. The Bible doesn’t bear on my topic as directly, but Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce have much to say.

Eumaeus is the real Homeric hero, not Odysseus. He is the poor swineherd who offers Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, food and comfortable lodging. Zeus decides that after ten years in Troy, mortals need to learn how to live in peace. How to be civilized. Zeus sets up a code of hospitality humans must obey in the new order: when a visitor comes, give them food, wine, a bed, and ask about their family. Odysseus spends the entire poem learning what Eumaeus does instinctively. (Odysseus has the Gods permission to slaughter the suitors because they subvert Zeus’ new order, by consuming his food and wine, sleeping in his home and trying to court Odysseus’ wife Penelope.)  

While it’s obvious today that god/gods don’t exist, we don’t need divine orders to treat people decently. Eumaeus might have shown Odysseus hospitality because he thought perhaps it was a god, but the truth it was Odysseus, a person who needed help. That should be enough. Western hospitality dictates that harried wanderers be helped. That’s what Western culture says to do. If you believe Canada shouldn’t do its part to assist desperate refugees fleeing the Syrian war, you oppose Western values.

As for the anti-Muslim sentiments stirred up but this fake niqab concern, Joyce would have been disgusted. Staunchly secular, schooled by Jesuits, brought up on Dante and the Bible, he didn’t believe in God but hated xenophobia even more. He as a Catholic made Bloom a Jew. There’s a scene in a bar where this Irish nationalist asshole called “the Citizen” challenges Bloom’s citizenship. Essentially Bloom, being Jewish, isn’t “old-stock” Irish enough for the Citizen. In a Biblical parody of Elijah, Bloom exits the bar in triumph, ascending to heaven in a chariot. Sense of belonging, what it means to be in a community, is a huge theme in Joyce. 

I’m tired of Western culture being thought of as xenophobic because people unfamiliar with it allow their own paranoia to replace Homer and Joyce as its embodiment. The irony is Conservatives fear-monger specifically in the mistaken belief they are defending Western values, when really they trample them. Western culture is innately pluralistic, except for when it falls short of its own standards. Distressingly, this seems to be happening now.

Our Heroes: Habs over bruins in 4

28 Monday Apr 2014

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boston bruins, gionta, lucic, montreal canadiens, nhl playoffs, playoff predictions, serial killers

Our Red White and Blue Heroes are hard to gauge: while it’s impossible to fault a team after sweeping their round, it’s also hard to know how much to make out of beating a young, inexperienced team missing its number one tender. More, we received a healthy dose of hometown reffing and fortunate bounces. But these variables seemed to emanate from our squad’s mojo, a by-product of our swag, itself a by-product of consistent, stable team play. We are a unified group who believes, and we seem to be making our own luck more than having it handed to us. We need to continue this momentum.

So ignore round one. We’re playing the Bruins, a cup contender that defeated Detroit in 5, with a core group that last year managed to beat the seemingly-indomitable Maple Leafs.

 

Image

We need Gallagher to beat up Lucic, Subban’s punishing slap shot and ass-first body check, Pacioretty and Gionta to score clutch goals against Tushy Rash. Hopefully Markov will eclipse his previous high by remaining healthy for five minutes.

Between us and glory is a team of highly skilled barbarians. Milan Lucic is the bully of the century, an insatiably bloodthirsty one-man military. Around him, nobody’s testicles are safe. Also, he is good at playing actual hockey. Threat 1B is Zdeno Chara. A lot of people don’t know this but his parents were carnival freaks, and in addition to passing on to Zdeno superhuman strength and size, he’s gifted with the ability to hammer nails into his nose.  So he is absolutely immune from succumbing to intimidation, responding to futile attempts the way I do to Leslie Nielsen movies. His reach covers blue line to blue line, making it as proportionally outsized as his nose.

Even Don Cherry would say that, despite being French, Bergeron is tough. Last year he competed in playoffs despite a broken upper and lower body. He is the best faceoff man in the league, by far a more essential component in victory than outscoring opponents to hear analysts talk about it. Krejci elevates his play when necessary, and is as enthusiastic about violence as his colleagues. You could compare Marchand to a real rat if only the sewer produced a creature so talented at diving.

If the entire Bruins team went to jail (which would happen if the law applied to them) they would immediately run the cell block, and would certainly be the ones on the giving end of jail’s notorious funny business, subduing comparably effete people like serial killers. For our heroes to win, we must score goals while skating very quickly away from them. Motivation to move will be abundant, arising from the desire to score, live, and not be treated like fresh fish.  

Hence my prediction, Habs in 4.

Why I’m cheering for the Habs this playoffs

13 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by jdhalperin in Uncategorized

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Tags

kessel, montreal canadiens, nhl playoffs, subban, Toronto Maple Leafs

I, Jeff Halperin, will cheer for the Habs this playoffs. This may sound surprising from a guy who has recently expressed hatred for them and their fans. To be precise, I said the team was nothing but perverted midgets, their fans debased. Of course I was a diehard Leaf fan. But the latest edition of Leaf Collapse was really something else. It’s brought me to this, cheering for the Habs.

It’s impossible to look at the Leafs in the face, the sight of them makes my stomach sick. Even looking at blameless Kessel in ads I find disgusting.

Not everyone finds it natural to cheer for a different team in playoffs just because they’re Canadian; it’s a question of whether you see it as Leafs vs Habs or Toronto vs Montreal. I’ve always enjoyed myself in Montreal, and I currently have no allegiance to these Leafs.

Us Leaf fans don’t have a rejoinder to the smug gloating Habs fan or Subban triumphantly tugging the logo on his jersey. JVR taunted Subban, tugging the Leaf after scoring a game winner versus MTL—it was, shall we say, premature.

No, advanced stats corroborate common sense, the Leafs are a very bad team. When they are without the puck they never seem to get it back. Kessel and JVR manage to score in the remaining small window, somehow. But this isn’t even what’s worst about them. No lead is safe because psychologically they are beyond fragile. The Leafs have an incurable case of PTSD.

Rooting for the Habs is a middle finger to the Leafs, a form of protest. Not that they deserve this consideration, but part me of thinks it good that Habs fans witness sanity from a Leaf fan. One Leaf fan was so deranged he began a blog, “Our Heroes: A Balanced Perspective Of the Maple Leafs’ Journey to the 2014 Stanley Cup.” The blog is over because…enough already, I will end here before I get sick.

Our Heroes: Game #2 vs Columbus

04 Tuesday Mar 2014

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From what I saw, the Leafs played the whole time in Columbus’ end, scoring, getting rush chances and continual sustained pressure. They looked dangerous and determined. Bozak barely missed what looked like an open net chance in the final minute or so with the net empty to tie the game, and for once our empty net didn’t get scored on (we lead the league in allowing empty net goals, one reason why our goalies have great numbers despite our total goals against).

How did we lose? I’m unsure. For one thing I had work and only watched the last five minutes of the game, a 2-1 loss. It is incredible to me how in sync I am with my team. It appears my Leafers arrived to the game the same time I did. When I got to the TV we were down 2-0, I felt relieved to make it in time for the comeback. The Gods I disparaged last piece are sometimes called mysterious, but really they’re just bastards. More likely they’re like Poseidon, toying with Odysseus, bouncing him around the sea before giving up the game and sending him back to Ithaka. Odysseus was lucky, it only took 9 years to return from Troy. Ergo, we are overdue. The Cup should arrive in Toronto roughly between June 3-10.

Ignoring the divine realm, strictly at ice level, we have a tendency to play up or down to our competition, losing against teams like Florida, Columbus and recently even bottom feeders like montreal. But we dissected the shit out of Chicago 4-0 earlier, the second time this season we beat the reigning Stanley Cup champs. Having watched us dominate our enemies secretly fear the worst. Even the most severely warped, foaming-at-the-mouth sens or habs fan surely must conclude these are the real Leafs.

While this seems obvious, maybe I shouldn’t attribute powers of impartial judgement and rational thinking to low lives rooting against the Leafs. But alas, we can’t help our nature: I am not just the paragon of hockey wisdom, but am generous with those who don’t share my viewpoint.

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