by copyranter

I know, I know. The Awl’s tagline is “Be Less Stupid.” And lots of American sports fans consider hockey, with its violent yet legal ice dance-fighting and hard-to-watch helter-skelter play, to be the stupidest sport in the world (I say, what about chessboxing?). Additionally, this is a strange time to start a hockey column, what with the NHL season more than half over. But here we are: you, smart readers and me, stupid hockey fan. Let’s start by taking a brief look at the game’s top two players.

Both first overall draft picks, Pittsburgh Penguins center Sidney Crosby and Washington Capitals winger Alexander Ovechkin came into the league the same year, 2005. They’re both offensive stars, but play completely different styles. What makes this an interesting discussion is that the two men seriously don’t like each other. And if you want to be a true bloodthirsty NHL fan, you can’t like them both; you must pick a favorite. There hasn’t been a 1–2 player rivalry like this since, oh, probably the one in the 1950s between Detroit Red Wing Gordie Howe and Montreal Canadien Maurice “The Rocket” Richard.

Crosby, aka “Sid The Kid,” is Canadian, and the pretty PR face of the league. His Penguins won the Stanley Cup last spring. He is a playmaker and passer extraordinaire. Here’s some video of The Kid in action:

However, to many, he is also known as “The Crybaby.” Last year, in an ESPN players’ poll (scroll down to the 4th question), Crosby was singled out as the biggest on-ice complainer (to referees) by 52% of the respondents. The second leading whiner vote-getter, Philadelphia Flyer defenseman Chris Pronger, was named by only 8% of his fellow skaters. This reputation was not helped last May when in a playoff game against Washington, Crosby complained to the refs about hats being thrown on the ice after a hat trick (three goals) scored by… Ovechkin. For you non-fans, this hat-tossing is an unassailable age-old (somewhat stupid) hockey tradition.

And yet, Crosby is the smartest, savviest player since The Great One, Wayne Gretzky-who also happened to be a whiny crybaby.

Ovechkin (aka the Unfrozen Caveman) is bigger and stronger than Crosby, and is pure skating power and goal-scoring talent. He can score from anywhere inside the other team’s zone, even from his ass. He seeks and initiates contact. He gets off shots-on-goal in a blink, even with defensive players draped all over him. His shooting force/accuracy is marvelous. Here are some highlights of the Russian in action:

He has won the last two Hart Trophies as the league’s most valuable player (Crosby won in 2007). He even received the key to the city from Washington mayor Adrian Fenty. Others to get keys from Fenty include Nicolas Sarkozy and the Pope. Ovechkin’s Capitals are picked by many experts to win the Stanley Cup this spring.

But what does Alex think of The Kid? Well, the two briefly tussled in a game last February. Crosby gave Ovechkin a little baby check from behind. The Russian responded by ever-so-gently removing Crosby’s helmet, a move that infuriated the fuck out of Sidney. Ovechkin then mocked Crosby by making chicken wing motions from the bench. Here’s a short video of the international incident, a clip that has attracted 1,773 comments as of this writing.

The two teams met in a nationally televised game on Super Bowl Sunday. Crosby scored two goals to vault visiting Pittsburgh into a 4–1 lead. But Ovechkin, completing a hat trick (down came the headgear again), scored two third period goals to tie the game, then assisted on the overtime game winner. (Video highlights here.)

The NHL is in the middle of a two-week break for the Olympics. But Crosby and Ovechkin could be headed for a wonderful showdown in Vancouver: The Canadians and the Russians are favored to meet in the men’s hockey gold medal game.

Have you picked a favorite? You’ve probably guessed whose camp I’m in.

Copyranter is an ad copywriter who blogs about advertising here. Before selling out, he was a sports reporter for several small newspapers, including a daily where he covered the Philadelphia Flyers. He knows his way around a rink, having majored in hockey in college-which led to his graduating with a 2.8 GPA in Communications and a wicked wrist shot.

I am for sure late to this, but I finally caught Swedish director Roy Andersson’s You, the Living this week and I have to tell you that I haven’t been so transfixed by a movie for some time. I don’t want to get into the plot or structure-if you must, you can read a bit more about it here-but I found it to be simultaneously bleak, uplifting, tragic, amusing, and above all haunting. There’s a weightlessness to it that somehow manages to give it an indescribable heft. (It also apparently renders those who try to write about it sadly inarticulate.) It’s out on DVD now, and I’m pretty sure you Netflixers can get it through that service. Strongly recommend.

I was just watching this video on the Times website because OMG, Sandy Bullock, HER HAIR. A few questions: seriously now, why can’t I embed this video? Is it because… they’re desperate for the pageview on this video, against which they are not actually displaying advertising, so who cares anyway? (Stick a very short pre-roll ad on that puppy and let it be free!) And also when was this video published? Last year? This year? When you hit the “share” button, it launches a little popup, and then when you hit the “permalink” button, which launches another inexplicable popup, it says the video was published on “10[square][square],” which, I think that is some James T. Kirk star date time, not our human one? When is this, and why can’t I have it!

This is one of those weird intersections where Jersey Mayhem meets Knifecrime Island: Brendan Byrne, the former governor of New Jersey, was punched in the face by an unprovoked attacker as he and his wife exited London’s Waterloo Station. The 85-year-old Byrne tells the Star-Ledger that, “I think I’m alright. I have some cuts on my face. I never fell down, like when I fought Muhammad Ali.” (The governor and Ali “sparred” in an 1979 charity match.) “I’m surviving.”

Good for him, and best wishes on a speedy recovery. I think we can all be grateful that this was just a simple assault, rather than a more serious glassing. Because you don’t want to give folks in Jersey any ideas.

May I totally gay out on you for a minute? There are two Esquires, at war with each other. There is the magazine that published the Roger Ebert profile, which is, by all accounts, amazing. (I can’t read it yet because I don’t have any time for a meltdown right now!) Then there is the magazine that is producing “Inside Their Olympics: Get All-Access Analysis from Lovely Athletes at the Winter Games (Easier on the Eyes Than Costas, Eh?),” starring “North America’s Loveliest Olympians,” which, wow, seriously, stab yourselves, your ironic Mad Men shtick is not actually ironic. I think it is this latter Esquire that is giving away clothes today.

“The gray suit is a sartorial staple, and it’s the expert tailors at Hugo Boss that hammer home that point,” goes the advertorial copy Esquire, in a sentence that simultaneously blows and enlimpens (not a word!) the mind.

Suit value: $1195.00. No purchase required! And other conditions! “Winners will be selected in a random drawing from among all eligible entries received on or about 4/1/10. Canadian winners will be required to correctly answer a mathematical testing question as a condition of receiving a prize.”

(Yes, it’s the always amusing Canadian sweepstakes laws at work.)

So: Hugo Boss? I mean, fine, this is an article of business attire, and in our society, which despises nudity, people must wear clothing, especially while practicing business. (Even in Canada.)

But right now, pretty much every decent winter suit is on sale for 75% off right now. So anything made of wool can be had for less (often far less) than $1200, whether it is Zegna or Neil Barrett or Paul Smith or anything (by which I mean, pretty much everything) that is better than Hugo Boss. That a (FREE!) not-so-great $1200 suit is supposed to be candy-bait to Esquire readers speaks poorly of exactly who the advertorial staff thinks are Esquire readers. (Particularly with the ALL-CAPS on TWELVE-HUNDRED-DOLLAR. I know, I know: I am a homosexual who lives in Manhattan, but when I hear “$1200 suit,” all I can think is, “Uh huh? You mean like at Men’s Wearhouse or whatever?”)

The Esquire reader should be turning his nose up at this suit, in particular because he is told in every single issue what suit he should buy (usually incorrectly, to be fair) and exactly how he should roll up his sleeves (wait, that’s GQ, sorry) and which cufflinks are for wearing after 6 p.m. The Esquire reader should use this Hugo Boss suit to wipe his bottom, not to put on the outside of his nudity while in an office environment, presumably only to remove it before his afternoon squash appointment.

Warning: it’s Ash Wednesday. Now that you’re not surprised, you won’t have that moment when you are wandering around downtown and are suddenly like holy crap, why does everyone have stuff on their faces?

I am absolutely devastated to learn that two participants in MTV’s popular ethnographic documentary “Jersey Shore” are not actually of Italian descent. I mean, I don’t even know what to believe in anymore. Also, how do we classify this? “Pseudo Guido?” “Phony Bologna?” “ShamWoww?” So many questions.

Tom Scocca: I wish the Times did have the composure and self-assurance it pretends to have.

Choire Sicha: Ah. The whole “black man has been in jail!” thing.

Tom: It’s just like the McCain-and-lobbyist story.

Tom: I am not even using her name, because she didn’t have an affair with John McCain as far as I could tell.

Tom: But it is the same deal. The Times becomes, through its strenuous efforts not to appear irresponsible, exactly as irresponsible as it is accused of having been.

Tom: It gets mau-maued into reporting that it doesn’t have good evidence of the claims that people were criticizing it for reporting on.

Tom: John McCain’s campaign staff had concerns about the appearance of possible closeness to a lobbyist.

Tom: David Paterson has a favorite aide who has a not obviously alarming amount of documented trouble with the law.

Choire: Here’s what seems unelaborated to me.

Choire: “And several current and former administration officials said that Mr. Johnson’s dressing down of the governor’s Washington office in September contributed to the departure of several seasoned people from the office.”

Choire: 1. Several?

Choire: 2. Who!

Choire: 3. Where are they?

Tom: That clause there sounds like a minor but interesting news story about the Paterson administration.

Choire: Doesn’t it? What sort of dressing down? Also… how big IS the governor’s Washington office???

Tom: I would gladly read 850 words that answered all the questions that are not answered in that sentence.

Tom: What happened, to whom did it happen, where did it happen, why did it happen, and how did it happen?

Tom: It seems possible to me that a crisply reported account of this incident, one that answered these questions, would help a reader decide whether David Paterson is presiding over a bumbling, incompetent administration or not.

Tom: That would be, happily enough, a subject of interest to the voters.

Choire: I would be interested in such.

Choire: Because, unfortunately, I already know that the United States puts more than 1/3rd of black men in state or federal prison at some time in their lives.

Tom: But Choire — this particular black man is “6-foot-7, with a booming voice.” So you see, right there, people have something to worry about.

Choire: According to data from the late 60s to the late 70s, 51% of all non-white men can expect to be arrested for a felony in their lives. When you cross-reference that by “extremely large black men,” I assume that percentage rockets up to something like 70%?

Tom: Look at you, worrying about identifiable action by the criminal-justice system.

Tom: “She said she did not file a formal report, but said she had filed an earlier domestic violence complaint to the police about Mr. Johnson. She declined to offer evidence of that.”

Choire: I assume that is a different incident than the Halloween-costume-ripping incident??

Tom: Yeah, that’s a different one.

Choire: It is hard to keep this relatively complicated personal life clear!

Tom: It is. And the Times is too busy smudging the dots to connect them.

Tom: It’s pretty amazing when you get to the end and see the additional-reporting-by tag, which brings the total number of reporters on the story to six.

Tom: Maybe the story would have come out better with only one reporter on it.

Choire: Maybe? I wonder how Danny Hakim’s meeting with Paterson was. I can’t quite really picture it!

Tom: I can’t picture anything in this story.

Tom: It’s all shadow puppets.

Tom: The trouble here is that the Times is so annoyed and confused by having had its scruples questioned, it descends into this parody of scrupulousness.

Tom: The headline that loads above the browser bar says it all: “Paterson’s Ex-Driver, David W. Johnson, Is a Top Confidant.”

Tom: So this is just a profile?

Choire: That seems to indicate that the story is a profile of a person.

Tom: Yet the headline on the text itself is “Paterson Aide’s Quick Rise Draws Scrutiny.”

Tom: So it is a story about controversy. Or is it a profile? Perhaps the New York Times should have made up its mind before publishing it.

Tom: What’s irritating about these botched takedowns, this and the McCain thing and all the other awful campaign stories, is that the Times pretends that it doesn’t have a responsibility to decide what the stories are about. We’re just reporting objective facts!

Choire: Why these facts and not others? What about the price of granite and stuff?

Tom: Remember that story about how Biden used official funds for landscaping at his house? And the landscaper had no idea whether or not the landscaping was in preparation for official events there? Facts! Here are some facts for the reader. We report! You… decide?

Choire: Actually I don’t really remember that story, it turns out.

Tom: You may have forgotten it, because it said nothing. Like this story.

Choire: I have read this story a few times now. And in the end I came away with conflicting “icky” and “sympathetic” feelings? On the one hand, I think, “Hey, this guy is like me, he used to run into trouble all the time and now he’s got a job and working hard.” And on the other hand, I think, “What is this dude’s problems with women? Jesus Christ!”

Choire: And then I don’t know anything, so I finally decide IT IS NONE OF MY BUSINESS.

Tom: Yep.

Tom: “Draws scrutiny.” From whom? From the New York Times, seems like.

Choire: From some quitters down in D.C.?

Tom: Well, yes.

Tom: The Times suffers from a fundamental confusion about how to do scandal stories.

Tom: The Times is not a passive observer of these things. This kind of reporting is a prosecutorial activity. That doesn’t mean the paper is out to get someone. It means that the paper has, through reporting, come to a particular factual conclusion, and it needs to prove that conclusion to the reader.

Tom: It’s a very scrupulous kind of prosecutor.

Choire: That is a useful act.

Tom: The thing about a prosecutorial approach is, it assumes a vigorous defense.

Tom: Is the evidence you’re obtained solid and persuasive, or can someone contest the facts? Are there gaps in your logic that would allow someone to reject your conclusions? Is there exculpatory evidence that you’re overlooking? Would your piece survive the most skeptical and uncharitable reading it could get?

Choire: You mean, basically, someone asking over and over again: why are you writing this?

Tom: Yes. Why are you writing this, and how do you know you’re right?

Tom: That is what the editors’ job is.

Tom: But what the editing at the Times does is it fudges the indictment.

Tom: “We ain’t sayin’ nothin’, we’re just sayin’…”

Tom: They try to hide behind Teaching the Controversy.

Choire: This is complicated because it’s not a controversy that we would know unless we worked in Albany.

Choire: Which, however, IS their job!

Choire: I do want them to enlighten me on what people are actually talking about!

Tom: Here’s the controversy: a bunch of people who are losing influence in the Paterson administration, or who are otherwise hostile or self-interested, are running around saying, “Paterson talks about how bad domestic violence is, and his No. 1 confidant is a straight ghetto drug-dealing thug who beats up women all the time.”

Tom: See also: infighting McCain campaign staff.

Tom: So there is good reason to approach these rumor-stories with caution. People have agendas.

Choire: Sure! And I do think that Times reporters are pretty sensitive to disgruntlement and motivation.

Tom: But you can’t just pick up the accusations with a long pair of tongs and wave them around at the reader.

Tom: The disgruntled people are making substantive claims. Is John McCain fucking a lobbyist? Is Paterson’s right-hand man beating up women?

Choire: And is he doing this ten years ago or now?

Choire: And is that related to his “sudden rise”?

Tom: The Times thinks it’s OK to answer these substantive questions through innuendo, hearsay and discussion of appearances.

Tom: “She said she did not file a formal report, but said she had filed an earlier domestic violence complaint to the police about Mr. Johnson. She declined to offer evidence of that.”

Tom: She declined to offer evidence?

Choire: I mean, listen, I believe Anita Hill and all. But what?

Tom: Is there paper, or is there not fucking paper?

Tom: You have six reporters on this story, and you are just asking the woman to offer evidence herself? Get the fucking paper, or shut the fuck up.

Choire: I’d like to think a parenthetical was cut by the editors there about shoddy police record-expunging.

Tom: I’d like to think I’ve got a homemade ice cream sandwich right here, but I don’t.

This morning, we are pleased to announce the acquisition of Spiersblr. Unrelatedly, we will be replacing Awl editor Alex Balk with Spiersblr’s publisher, Elizabeth Spiers. (Balk was offered the position of Spiers’ assistant, but declined, due to a weak back.) Awl publisher David Cho, an original Spiersblr investor, will be returning any profits made from his investment in Spiersblr to The Awl. Spiersblr will act as a channel of The Awl, covering Silicon Alley theory, advances in programming languages and everything that is wrong with former actress Justine Bateman (a rich vein to mine, you must admit), as well as breaking up-to-the-minute Formspringing. The Awl itself will focus more on cat-related news and video clips taken off of the TV and then put online. Simultaneously, we will be demanding that Tumblr relinquish Awl.tumblr.com, just because we can, and they will do it so fast it’ll make your head spin. “It’s still all about scale and success. There’s no online living in cachet,” announced remaining Awl founding editor Choire Sicha. “As part of this expansion strategy, we have continued to grow the number of Executive Decision Makers who visit our site.” The Awl will not be releasing the acquisition price for Spiersblr, if any.

Has the “mancession” been so severe that it is now affecting the masculinity of the American teenager?

According to Allstate Foundation’s ‘Shifting Teen Attitudes: The State of Teen Driving 2009,’ 27 percent of girls admit to speeding at least 10 miles over the speed limit, vs. 19 percent of boys. Also, 16 percent of girls report that they are very aggressive while driving, up from 9 percent in 2005. Meanwhile, 13 percent of teen boys admitted to being very aggressive while driving, vs. 20 percent in 2005.

Or are girls just getting braggier while boys are learning to shut up a little bit when asked about dangerous behavior by insurance companies? I call for more research!