Newspaper = Go!

We finished the paper at 11:00. We then went to RATT and played a rousing game of Asshole while Listerites sang No Scrubs in the background.

Newspaper = GO!

The paper was done at 12:29. I'm too tired to come up with witty remarks on how late we were.

Mr Perfect

perfect game
Originally uploaded by Hobs.

Well, I finally did it. After countless years (well, actually, five, I think), and enough flicked mouse motions to vastly improve my masterbatory skills, I've finally bested the game Bullpen Blast, on Candystand.com.

I first started playing this game to pass the time in high school computer labs. I slowly picked it up as a good time-waster while I was waiting for my painfully slow internet to load back at my parents' place. Then, I used it to kill time while waiting for Fish to send me comics last year. Most recently, it passed the hours between proofs.

But I never really came close to beating it until now. Sure, I'd venture deep into the game from time to time, but something would always do me in—an eighth-inning grounder, a single that would drop in, a long drive that just barely stayed fair.

But not today, friends. Today was my day. My fastball was blazing all day. My curveball popped like Orville Redenbacher. The knuckleball had more moves than Remax, and the sinker dived like a yo-yo. Even my slider, the bane of my existence as a cyber-pitcher, was slipping and dipping and avoiding bats all night. It was a masterful performance, with 13 Ks, a full six of them in the last three innings, and just under 70 pitches for all 27 batters.

I'm thinking of getting a plaque made to commemorate my performance. But, to be honest with you, brilliance like this will probably just end up written across the stars.

Thoughts of a dying poplar

I see none of you have taken my initiative and tried posting to the blog more often. Were any of you reading this, it would be a far more effective admonishment, I'm sure. But, goddammit, one of us has to take responsibility for this thing, and if I'm the only one willing to fight this electronic, faceless fight against apathy and unupdated websites, then I'll put on my best pair of shitkicker pants and head into this one alone, a cyber Gary Cooper sashaying towards my ultimate doom with a gut-punched smile on my face and nothing but the wind at my back, you two-faced deserters. Give my regards to the Queen.

Anyway, several things have conspired to get me thinking about this particular city of ours. The first was this by ex-Gatewayer and personal Jesus Darren Zenko. His particular vision of Planet Nirvana is about as scarf-wrapped as my own, and that column, read as I crunched my way through the streets of Garneau (specifcally south Garneau), reminded me of how much I love this goddamned season. Fifteen degrees and a soft breeze is about all I ever want out of the outdoors, and I've always been a fan of lite-conservative dress, the kind of things people wear when they want to show off but don't want to, you know, freeze. Sweaters always look better than tank tops, to my mind.

Of course, this may come entirely from the fact that I've only ever spent my falls in Edmonton. I mean, I've seen plenty of other places at various times of the year—I can't imagine San Francisco getting better than it was in early December, and San Sebastien in mid-June should be a museum exhibit somewhere—but my autumns have almost exclusively been spent in Edmonton, usually preparing for a new school year. I can't help but think that this has skewed my perspective on the issue, solely because Edmonton is one damn fine place for autumn. Part of the reason, of course, is the fact the temperature avoids extremes, but it goes deeper than that. The one-note green of the city in summer, the ever-present, and as such unnoticeable, foilage, all seems to set itself on fire at more or less the exact same time, making the river valley, and most of the older neighbourhoods (ie any neighbourhood I'll actually see on a semi-regular basis), a cobblestone of reds, browns, yellows and oranges. It's like Picasso breaking out of his Blue Period with cubism, except instead of perspective, it's colour. And, you know, intsead of painting, it's trees. And Picasso was Spanish.

But it's more than that, too. Edmonton, though it calls itself a festival city and ostensibly has its best times during the summer, really only comes alive in fall. A new influx of University students descends on the city, and for a brief while, the number of young, presumably intelligent, attractive people seems to outnumber the pockmarked suburbanites; hell, sometimes they even go to concerts and shit, and they actually dance at most of them, too (find that in Toronto, I dares ya). It also always feel more urban to me; maybe it's just personal experience, but August is a month for long roadtrips and camping and visiting family farms. Come Labour Day, though, everyone is back, and they're ready to go; they've had their fill of that pseudo-outdoor bullshit, and they're ready to touch asphalt and smell gasoline and work that white-collar, office-tower job like the post-industrial society members they are.

Of course, there's one thing I honestly think that trumps all of this. It came to me yesterday, as I was riding the bus to a friend's housewarming. A gaggle of screaming kids piled onto the bus, nattering and banging windows and screaming about touchdowns. They were joined, over the course of the ride, by a couple people at each stop, all quieter than the children, but all focused on the same thing. I thought nothing of it until the actual party, where I met some of his coworkers. It seems they're Kenyan. In an effort to acclimitize them somewhat to Canada and Edmonton, their boss bought them all tickets to the Oilers preseason game against Vancouver. There it is: hockey. This is a sports town, folks. We can hand out arts awards, and yell about theatre and folk music, but goddammit, there is only one thing that actually defines us a city: sports. Mostly hockey. What else are we going to show people? What else actually screams out Edmonton? We have no Broadway, no Taco in a Bag to rally around. The only thing we all know is the Oilers.

And this is why Edmonton feels so right in the fall: it's returning to the one thing it knows. Sure, there's football, popular football, even, over the summer, but the Eskimos would need to threaten to bomb Northlands to get the 700 000-plus people living in the metro area of Edmonton that don't already follow the club semi-religously to care enough to do anything other than pick up a newspaper. The league is just too small, the players too small-time, the game not drilled into our soul the same way. Those that care about football care the fuck out of it, but it's no match for hockey. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone anti-hockey in this city; at worst, you'll get passive disapproval. But I can't imagine another city where even good portions of the arts community will throw back pints and talk about lack of a scoring winger; and even if a good half of the city, or more, doesn't come close to matching even a drunken, small-talk fervour, they'd still have to actively avoid getting hockey information to not at least know how the Oilers are doing this year. Seriously, over the course of this season, count how many cover photos the Journal and Sun devote to Oilers' pictures. My guess is at least 30 each, depending on if we make the playoffs and how many horrific car crashes happen on game nights.

And so, preaseason gets under way, and there's a bit more of a buzz. Random passersby say the word "Schremp" without even knowing why; kids, somewhere, play street hockey; jerseys and toques and other things that have "Oilers" on them show up a bit more, even if only ironically. Hell, even the few hockey haters out there at least have to come out and acknowledge what they hate, and point to it as everything wrong with the city. And, perhaps most importantly, this is still a time of hope: there is infinite possibility in this lineup of rookies, grinders and hard-nosed defencemen, which just won't exist in December or, god forbid, March. Even if you're not aware of it, half the city has hope, and that's got to be at least a little contagious.

Maybe I'm wrong, here—and, obviously, as I pointed out before, it's not just hockey—but imagine this city in June, hell, May if the Oilers are still in the playoffs. Fuck the Red Mile.

NEwspaper = GO!

Everything is done by 10:35. We = RAD!

Clear!

I got an e-mail from a volunteer today telling me that we should revive the Gateway blog. Never one to actively ignore volunteer suggestions unless I think they're stupid, I figured I would do what I can to liven things up around here. And, you know, I'm feeling some blog guilt for not posting here or on covered in oil for about a month or so. Man, blog guilt sucks.

Anyway, I was debating over what to post about, and coming up mostly blank. I figured I would go with telling you all about my experiences with NHL 94, the world's greatest hockey game that I can download for the SNES emulator I have on my computer, but that felt uninspired. Then I realized that, since my last post (I think) was about what exactly it is I do at the office, I could probably start some sort of theme along those lines, especially since today a lot of my job was, indeed, playing NHL 94. So, without further adieu, I present: "What the Managing Editor Does on Non-Press Days." (I will, for privacy reasons, only delve into things that are actually work related).

My day starts early, before noon, when I meandre into the office for our Tuesday Editor meeting. Now, while there are normally many valuable things to discuss and debate at editor meetings, today was mostly spent discussing how lovely the trees were this time of year. And we decided that Argyll Road was the ugliest place in Edmonton. Although, in retrospect, I think I should have made a case for 50th street north of the Yellowhead, or the Yellowhead area in general. But I digress. Or, well, not really--it turns out that was remarkably on topic for what we talked about at the editor meeting. Huh. I think, next meeting, we should discuss why we deserve raises.

So anyway, that ended, which means I'm now left to manage the fuck out of the Gateway, or whatever it is my job entails. Though I'm slightly hampered in this respect due to the fact the editors keep refusing to respond to any of my requests so that I can do my job. So mostly, I drafted and sent e-mails. Though I did also take note of the fact that my levels of respect for Tim and Chloé have somewhat diminished since they started jogging, and made a mental note to bring that up in a public forum at some point in the future, which I am fulfilling right now. Other highlights of my office time include loaning a couple of notebooks to a friend of mine that I'm relatively sure I'll never see again, and silently wondering to myself who would win in a fight, Scott Lilwall or Scott C Bourgeois. For the record, I think we should stage this, with the loser accepting the nickname "Trip" for the rest of time. Also, I feel Lilwall would win, mostly because I think Bourgeois, deep down, is generally too good a person to actually cheat to win a match, whereas I feel Scott Lilwall would have lesser compunctions about, say, clocking someone with a steal chair. This isn't to say that Scott Lilwall isn't a fine, upstanding, moral and ethical human being, just that he strikes me as craftier than Bourgeois--who is also, it should be noted, probably a squealer.

After that enthralling two hours, I went home to cook dinner and do private things. My Gateway day didn't start up again until about 8pm, when I figured I'd have articles to edit. Boy was I wrong. Since I was already on the computer, though, I figured I might as well play some NHL 94, as I'm trying to win my seventh straight Stanley Cup. Now, I've already won the Cup with the "good" teams (which, in video game 1994, for those who don't know, were Pittsburgh, Vancouver, Québec, Montreal and Buffalo) and the Oilers, just to see if I could, so I'm slowly working my way down through teams I don't really hate. This particular playoffs has me coaching the Winnipeg Jets, a fairly nondescript squad featuring, among others, 76-goal man Teemu Selanne, namby-pamby Russian Alexei Zhamnov, a young and burgeoning Keith Tkachuk, a defence anchored by Phil Housley in his prime and the always solid Teppo Numminen, and goaltending by Bob Essensa. After already dispatching the Blackhawks in the first round, I'm currently facing St Louis. I had already won the first and second games of the series at an earlier date, so I settled in for game number three, which brought the Blues home to St Loo. Despite an early goal by Bob Bassen, and a litany of bullshit calls, second-line centre Thomas Steen led the way with a hat trick, and third-line checker and team captain Kris King added a goal and an assist to give me a comfortable 5-2 win. It was fairly satisfying, as I didn't even need to get a "Sega deke" goal, and I injured Brett Hull in the second period, which is an experience almost as pleasurable as a chocolate pudding handjob for me at this point in my lonely, lonely life.

Anyway, at some point in my ass-whooping of the '94 Blues, articles actually started coming in, so I went through the arduous process of leaving sarcastic comments in articles until I stopped getting e-mails. In between, I snuck in another game of NHL 94, during which I again handily beat the Blues off the strength of a Teemu Selanne hat trick and 25-save shutout from Big Bad Bobby Essensa. I am now in the third round, where I face my toughest opponent yet, the fact that I have to start reading for class or I'm going to fail. And the Vancouver Canucks, who boast not only Pavel Bure and Cliff Ronning, but also a third line that features Geoff Courtnall and Petr Nedved, plus Trevor Linden in his prime. I'll tell you, Sons and Lovers better be one damn interesting book, because this series is sure to be a barn burner that will require a decent amount of my time.

So, yeah, that was more or less my day, as it relates to the Gateway. Stay tuned for some time in the future, when I relate to you what it is I do on press days.

Newspaper = GO!

We're done at 11:04. Take that, Central Web!

Newspaper = Go!

Apparently there is a purpose to these posts beyond entertaining insomniac Gateway hacks. They serve as a vital link between the Ed-Unit and the B-Unit, in that if the printer delivers our paper late, Smiz can look up these handy-dandy posts—because lets be honest, no human editor is going to show up around the office 9:30 after a press night and tell Smiz how we did the night before—and if Smiz finds out that we have submitted the paper on time, he can go ape-shit at the printer accordingly.

Neat!

That said, the paper left our humble abode at around 12:30 tonight. Consider the fact that this is a 40-pager and that we've submitted our previous issue 15 minutes ahead of deadline, I say we're off to a good start.

Keep it up!

He could feel his warm breath ...