The Hammock Papers: Hockeytown.

16 February 2012

Hockeytown.

Fredericks, The Spirit of Detroit (as Wing Nut), 1958

The Wings won for a record-setting 21st straight time at Joe Louis Arena by besting the Dallas, 3-1.

Oh, how quickly things change. When the opposing team gets off the bus now they better be ready to play, because this is Hockeytown and 91% of the time we don't give up points in that old grey barn on the river.

21 straight wins and 55 straight sellouts- the community has taken notice. People are responding to this team in a way that they haven't since The Captain was captain and our locker room was the Detroit branch of the Hockey Hall of Fame. I haven't seen this many winged wheel car flags and window decals since 2002.

These recent home wins have generated points, interest, and a psychological advantage. The points have carried the Wings to the top of the standings, which will guarantee home ice throughout the playoffs if the team continues this pace. The interest comes from a portion of the fanbase that has been asleep for too long but has awoken and found their way back to the Joe. The psychological advantage comes from an extended streak of dominance, a streak that teams are thinking about before they even set foot in the building. The league has been put on notice. This is Hockeytown, and Hockeytown is back.

Read the rest at Octopi Garden.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL