Meloncholy

I remember the first time that I actually cared about sports.

For years I thought that football was the embodiment of the most primal elements of our human identity: brute force and fighting for dominance. The opening scene of 2001 A Space Odyssey would come to mind. I wanted nothing to do with it. But that all changed in the days leading up to my first visit to Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium. That is, my aversion to football changed. I still think that it seems prehistoric, but now I embrace it - I am a human after all.

Prior to July 2007 I had never been to a football game. Ever. I had occasionally wandered by the TV as my dad sat transfixed by the last minutes of the Grey Cup unfolding, holding out hope for a turnaround until the very end. We'd lose. We always seemed to lose. Poor Riders. My dad had to scratch his head to remember the last time they had won the Cup.

When a few coworkers at the ATCO Gas office made plans to go to the July 20th Riders vs Eskimos (home) game, I was a little hesitant. Ultimately I gave in, figuring it would be a good bonding experience with my office friends from my internship posting. My boss was a Riders fan (originally a Saskatonian), as was another coop student from the U of S. A few days before the game, I started getting a bit excited at the thought of cheering on our underdog team amidst a sea of infidel Eskimo fans. Someone had to.

I'm not sure exactly what sparked it, but I really wanted to make a watermelon helmet. Perhaps I thought I may as well have some fun with it, even if the game didn't do anything for me. I spent a good twenty minutes at Safeway trying to find a watermelon big enough to fit my noggin. That night I set away at carving my helmet, referencing images and the team logo on the net to get it just right. It was a perfect fit, and I was pumped.

My enthusiasm changed when I remembered that I would have to wear this thing in public. Fortunately, one of my coworkers was also making a melon helmet, so I wouldn't be alone (I love how he put pineapple spines in a ridge along the top - pretty bad ass). Helmets donned, we boarded the LRT, and what a surprise we saw: the subway was crowded with Riders fans. A father with a little girl pointed our way and speaking to his daughter said "Now there's some real Riders fans." I'd never felt so proud.

We had cheaped out on tickets and were seated at the third highest row in the stadium. Our seats had a spectacular view of the entire field - and the crowd. I had heard that Riders fans were the most energetic and loyal in the country, but I had not appreciated how true that was until that day. The stand opposite us was a veritable green ocean, Riders fans outnumbering Eskimos by 2:1. All manner of grab could be seen on the 13th man and woman: green and white afro wigs, flags on 5 m poles, and Pilsner box hats galore (one was shaped like a combine!). There was also a few fellow melon heads. There were so many Rider supporters in the stands that the city actually ran out of green and white face paint - seriously, it was in the news. It felt like a home game (or at least what I could assume a home game would be like. Oddly enough, that July 20th game had the highest attendance of any game in the entire season (46,704), eclipsed only by the SK vs BC playoff finals (54,712) and the Grey Cup itself (52,230).

We got off to a great start. By the beginning of the third quarter we were leading 20 to 1. In jubilation, Rider Nation hijacked the Edmonton chant "Let's Go Eskimos", drowning it out with "Go Home Eskimos". A valiant fan wearing nothing but green and white paint from the waist up streaked across the field, making it almost all the way to the end zone before being tackled by three security guards. The crowd cheered as he was dragged away. The fanatic frenzy of the game sent raw emotions of excitement, empowerment, and courage welling up in me - I now understood what was meant by Rider Pride.

Then everything went to pieces. With less than two minutes left on the clock, the Eskies had recovered to a score of 21, while we had made no additional gains. Though we were ultimately defeated, I could appreciate the spirit of unshakable faith that my father would exhibit during every televised game - no matter how rough it got, they were the Rough Riders, and they were our team. Have-not province, have-not team, but both ours.

While we left the stadium with our pride intact, someone walking beside me asked if they could see my helmet. "Go right ahead! Keep it!" I generously offered. As I turned away I heard the heart-wrenching sound of melon rind rupturing on pavement. It had not occurred to me that the guy might not be a Rider kinsmen, but a soulless Eskimo fan. But I still had my pride - they couldn't break that over asphalt.

On October 26th, we had our revenge. Even though the fall chill had frozen my extremities, the heat of that next football battle kept me warm. We trounced the EE 36 to 29 and it was glorious - the first Rider victory I witnessed in the flesh. Everyone was saying how good the season was going, that we might have a good chance at the Grey Cup. Almost a month to the day later, I was glued to the TV, cheering on every pass, every field goal, every touchdown at the game that meant everything. When the clock stopped to seal our triumph, I shouted from my balcony onto the street "Riders win Grey Cup!" It was a moment of great celebration: sometime in my life, I got to see the Riders win the Cup. It was almost like seeing Halley's comet.

But something happened over the next six years. Even though the Riders were on the rise and were making in back to the Grey Cup with some regularity, something was different. The feeling was akin to beating that difficult final level of a video game: YES!!! … but now what?

What happened? Why was the spark gone? Was it because we actually won the Grey Cup? Was our glorious victory ultimately a silent defeat on a different field? Can I possibly ask any more rhetorical questions? 

Dave's earlier post "Fanatics" delves into this with much better insight than I could hope to articulate. Thanks for that brilliant post - it gave me the inspiration for this one (memories of a different time). It is this change in the mood of the fans that you noticed that is reason for my melancholy.

In an attempt to end on a lighter note, here is a picture of me with a pumpkin on my head! (yes, it's real one).

In retrospect, 2007 was a good year for me carving out fruit/vegetables and sticking them on my head :)

One hundred and eighty!

I've been struggling with writing a post this month partly because I've been working out of town and haven't had a lot of time to draft a post over my lunch hours, which is what I typically do. It's also because the main reason that I suggested this topic back in May was a desire to complain about While the Men Watch, which I'm still annoyed by but can't bring myself to care about anymore.

So instead I'm forced to get sloppy again. Let's have a quick chat about one of the lesser known professional sports: darts.

Now, I don't really follow darts or anything like that, but I did randomly watch the 2010 Premier League finals with my brother, and that basically put the sport at the very top of my list of obscure entertainments.

I feel like I've been leaning pretty heavily on embedded videos in my posts, but please watch this one:

A few things I'd like to draw your attention to in this video:

• Yes, Phil "The Power" Taylor is wearing a shirt with his own face on the back of it.
  
• As you may have guessed, the so-called "nine-dart finish" is basically a perfect score in darts.
  
• That being said, the object of the game overall is to work down from 501 points to zero.
  
• OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE HUNDRED AND EEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIGHTY!!!!!

Suffice it to say, I hope, that my brother and I spent a very entertaining evening watching this.

I have no real lesson or philosophy that I'm presenting here. Mainly I guess it's just interesting and/or incredibly amusing to be reminded of pro sports outside of the big three or four that everyone tends to think of when they encounter the term.

Hat Trick, More like Limerick

'Bout professional sports I know naught,
I think there's a ball to be caught?
Crowd's eyes growing wider
While cheering 'go Riders!'
But for me it does diddly squat.

Fanatics!

I have never really been a big pro sports fan.  Like many things in my life I enjoy doing it rather than watching someone else do it.  I have never been in to hockey, basketball, golf, or baseball.  I have been a football fan for most of my life though.  I do enjoy playing all these sports, but the time commitment required to be a fan is pretty daunting.

My main sports these days would be CFL football (Go Riders!) and NASCAR.  That being said I am a pretty poor fan.  I find it hard to find the time to watch all the games and races.  And I only follow one team, and one race series.  There are people who follow all the games/races/matches of multiple sports.  Plus they follow stats, rankings and fantasy leagues.  This all adds up to a huge amount of time.  But that is okay.  Some people geek out about sports, and some geek out about other stuff.  I usually go with other stuff.  But, as I mentioned I am a Rider fan too.

I grew up as a rider fan, as my parents (especially Mom) are fans.  I have great memories of going to games in the summer, and cheering along with Gainer (the mascot), or bundling up in every scrap of clothing I own to cheer on the team in Playoff games in October or November.  I remember doing yard work while listening to games on the radio (before we had televised games).  Even when games were tense, or we didn't win, it was a fun experience.  I grew up through the years when our team sucked.  When making the playoffs was a miracle, when finishing not in last place was awesome!  But times have changed for our Riders.

Saskatchewan fans got the label of best fans in the CFL for sticking with out team through all those bad years.  No matter how they did, the fans supported them.  But in the recent decade the team and organization has improved.  They made it to three Grey Cup games in four years, and won one of them (should have been two, but that is another story).  They have been underdogs, and defending champions, and there have been some really great moments.  But, I find that this success has changed the mood of our fans.

Sask. fans still claim to be the best in the league, but there seems to be so much more negativity these days.  This year our team has struggled, but for the most part they have played well, even if all the games weren't wins.  But instead of people enjoying the games and excitement, they seem focused on whether we won or lost, and are quick to judge and throw blame around.  Everyone seems obsessed with winning the season, and winning the Grey Cup.  That is a good goal to have, but it shouldn't be the only one.  We should still be able to enjoy the game, win or lose.  But more and more people just end up angry, and/or disappointed.

Another example of this is the NHL playoffs.  Every year people get really invested in their team, and most of the people end up being let down and angry, when their team blows it in game 7.  It gets to the point where people riot.  They steal and wreck shit over the outcome of a game.  It is crazy that people can affected so deeply by a game.

But, I guess the word fan comes from the word fanatic, so maybe it is entirely appropriate for these people.  If that is the case I think I am more of a spectator of sports than a fan.  A spectator can simply watch the game, and enjoy the highlights (for both teams).  Most of the players share a sense of friendly competition, so why can't the fans?

Cyborgs

I don't have anything to talk about re: professional sports aside from what I said last month. So, I'm going to write about cyborgs instead.

To you readers who woefully did not have a nerdy childhood, teenhood, or adulthood, a cyborg is a conglomerate of a human and a machine. Robocop is a pretty classical treatment of a cyborg.

The classical definition of a cyborg is typically a machine fused to a human. I think a more contemporary definition of a cyborg might allow this human to detach their machine parts. This definition, when treated loosy-goosily, might imply that the use of any tool would cyborgacize oneself.

Perhaps it comes down to the individual's perception of the machine or tool that they're using regarding whether they're a person using a tool or whether they're a cyborg and the tool is a part of them. For the sake of argument, let's assume that if an individual feels closer to their identity when they're using their tool than when they're not that they are exhibiting cyborgly behaviour.

Here are a few tools that I feel more like myself when using:

1) Glasses
My prescription is -6,000,000 ± 5,999,995, which, in layhuman terms, means that I'm more likely to end up at a Robin's Donuts than work if I left the house in the morning without them. The world feels more normal when it's in focus. Thanks glasses.

2) Bike
I was recently biking with someone who I had known fairly well for a very long time. They commented that they were surprised with the grace with which I handled myself while on a bike. I'll be the first (or, second I guess) to say that I'm not the most graceful human alive while walking. I definitely feel more comfortable on a bike while transporting myself as opposed to walking. And, as it turns out, apparently I'm much better and more graceful when transporting myself via bike. Thanks bike!

3) Cell Phone
It feels weird when I'm out and about, think about something I want to ask / tell someone, and not have the ability to send a thought to someone else via text/email. Similarly, I feel disconnected when I know others don't have this link to me. I'm not sure whether the cyborg component in this example is the phone or whether its the connectivity to the internet that causes this sensation.

4) Computer
A majority of my job is on my laptop. I use this same laptop at home. In other words, I interact with this computer a lot. Recently, I decided to use a second monitor for one particular task. When I was interacting with my laptop on the other monitor, I felt really weird. I felt exactly like when you clasp your hands together, then invert them, have someone touch them, and then your fingers feel as if they're on the wrong arm. If you don't know what I'm talking about, too bad, I actually couldn't find any pix or vidz to illustrate what I mean. Anyway, it was totally cray. I felt a different sensation (or rather, a sensation I was accustomed to was absent) when using the second monitor. I've developed a sensation to using a (my?) laptop. Super weird.

It's weird to think that I feel like I'm living closer to my identity when using this machines as compared to when I'm not. I'm not too worried about this -- I think it's pretty an interesting observation about the sensations that I'm accustomed to and makes me who I am.

I'm a cyborg, guys. PS: Sorry sports fans.

September Topic!

It's September!

The August poll closed with the following breakdown of votes:

• 0 votes: siblings, writing, monarchy, reunions, travel, ancestry/genealogy, manual labour/skilled trades
• 1 vote: high school graduation
• 2 votes: -
• 3 votes: professional sports

So the topic for this month is professional sports. Go Riders!

Contributors: You can interpret this topic any way you want, and you can write as many posts about it as you want (within reason, obviously, not like 200 posts over the course of the month, but I don't think any of us have that kind of time on our hands). When you write your post, make sure you tag it with the topic and your name/blog identifier, so that if any potential readers like you and hate the rest of us, they can find your posts easily.

Everyone: We'll be doing something a bit different for October so there won't be a poll this month.

Comment on this post or the topic ideas post if there's anything you'd like to see added to the poll in October.