Bourne Blog: The pressure to fight when your team's being murdered
The sport of hockey and its culture are wonderful in a lot a different ways -- I'm on the "greatest game out there" bandwagon with both feet. That said, I've never really enjoyed that there's pressure to fight when your team is getting shellacked.
Think of the speech we heard yelled at the Washington Capitals by Dean Evason during HBO's "24/7", who was bitter Ovechkin ("The greatest player in the world") fought and not ... anyone else: "When is one of you guys gonna grab your [bleeping] sack and do something about it?"
That's a step away from "If you can't show me you've got some heart by winning, you better find another way." (Hint hint, brother truckers.)
Ovy is one of the select few guys on his team that isn't expected to "man up" in those situations. Everyone else? What's your excuse?
The New York Rangers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs seven-spit yesterday, allowing Marian Gaborik(notes) to shoot the hockey puck into their hockey net four times. (NHL.com's Dave Lozo dubbed the feat of scoring four goals "pants magic," given that "hat trick" is already taken and "hat trick-plus one" is a pretty pathetic title for such an exceptional athletic feat).
The game only saw two fights, but both of those came after the contest was long out of hand, which is to say they came after both teams took to the ice to start the game.
I can't confirm nor deny that those fights wouldn't have happened in a close game, but they would certainly be less likely.
When you get back to the lifeless vacuum that is your bench after another listless shift, it's awkward in a way that can only be described as the immediate moments after a high school breakup. Someone should say something, but ... what?
And coach fumes. Oh, he fumes. The plumes of steam billowing from his ears while the sound of a boiling pot of tea plays in the background are less than subtle.
Still, he generally remains silent, but everyone knows: Somebody has to show they give a damn, and soon, or next practice isn't gonna be a whole lot of fun. And "next practice" is probably presumptuous, as there's a small possibility the entire team will be traded by then.
And that's what it comes down to -- proving to your coach, teammates and anyone watching that you're not going to take being embarrassed like this lightly, and you really do care. Often, it's tough to tell if anyone actually does during the type of beatdown the Leafs took last night.
The tough part is, you're probably getting killed because your team has no legs or energy in the first place, so to muster it up to prove you're angry and that you care can take some serious effort.
When I think about this situation, I think of my first weekend with the Utah Grizzlies, playing a three game series in Phoenix against the now-defunct Roadrunners.
It was infuriating -- you want to get your season off to a good start, you want to prove to coach you're worthy of powerplay time, and the game is over before it starts.
After a blowout loss in Game 1 (minuses for everyone!), we had a surprising player healthy scratched (a guy on an AHL deal), the type that made you realize it could happen to anyone. But that didn't stop us from getting obliterated for a second straight game.
When we fell behind that night and nothing was going right, I knew I had to find someone to fight to prove that I cared. (This was in the wake of coach's comments after a guy fought: "At least one [flippin'] guy on this team gives a crap."). I really wanted to stay in the lineup the next night.
The problem is, I spent a number of shifts trying to find a dancing partner and not thinking about hockey. I was nervous on the bench between shifts because frankly, I'm a complete Sally, and getting punched in the facial region isn't exactly an awesome time. And, I found myself annoyed it had come to this.
Seventeen PIMS and a bloody nose later, I did my part to help the game devolve into a gonger. It was stupid, it was unnecessary, but at least I got to play the next night.
That's precisely why it sucks, and why games occasionally get out of hand - there's the assumption that if you don't scrap when you're losing badly, you don't care. Then suddenly you drop the mitts and you do again. It's like a reset button.
I'm not so sure that attitude is worth as much as it used to be in professional hockey, as fights seem less relevant all the time, but just remember: you'd be a lot cooler if you did.
The culture of hockey is almost always a fun one, but like most sports, it can deteriorate into some Neanderthal-esque hijinx from time to time.
I'm assuming that part of the game isn't going away anytime soon, so until it does, I'll just lean back like most people, kick my feet up and say it:
That's hockey, man.
... I guess.
Lindros: Players' disdain for each other poisonous
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011 9:51PM EST
Last updated Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011 9:52PM EST
His words are measured and without self-pity. Yes, he will add his voice to those crying out for more respect among National Hockey League players, but attempts to get Eric Lindros to connect his own history of concussions to what Sidney Crosby is going through, or about to go through, get nowhere.
After a career ruined by six concussions and resulting political battles with a game and power structure that didn't want to know what it was really dealing with, Lindros is all too aware that each concussion, let alone each person's response to it, is unique, both in terms of rehabilitation and reintegration into the game. The star player is targeted; the third or fourth-liner worries about his job. Culture change? Good luck with that.
"What happens is you get tagged as being concussion prone, and there's a huge decline in the respect you get because of it," Lindros said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "It's people trying to make their name, you know? It's little things that occur after the play, like when it switches out of the corner and the play goes up the ice and you're spinning around heading back up to back check and – bam! You know … where they kind of catch you."
Is culture change coming to the NHL as a result of Crosby's concussion? Or could it be that the only thing that has now happened is that Crosby has just had a target put on his back for the rest of his career? The answer depends on whether NHL players and agents realize how utterly daft they look.
Forget the owners. Forget Gary Bettman or Colin Campbell. They live in a muddle of money and rules and politics; by nature they can't see the forest for the trees. They are lost causes. The agents are speaking up – some of them, at least – but mostly to throw the issue in the lap of the National Hockey League Players' Association.
Note to the agents: You want change? Spend some money and get everybody together at the all-star game and go behind a locked door. Keep the press out. Turn off the BlackBerries. And read your players the riot act. Stress zero tolerance for a shot to the head, any hit above the shoulders. Then lobby for Draconian suspensions. If a few players get screwed for clearly accidental hits? Too bad. The game will go on without them.
Respect?
"Well, we used to talk about this all the time when I was at the players' association," Lindros says, his voice trailing off.
You wait for the next statement. It never comes.
Lindros believes the seminal moment for the discussion of concussions and sports occurred in October of 2009 when the iconic CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes devoted a segment to concussions among NFL players and a possible link to early-onset dementia. "That's when the big push finally started, it seems," Lindros said. "The pressure initially was on the NFL. But then it moved to other organizations."
Is this the NHL's come-to-Jesus moment? As Lindros noted, it is both "ironic and unfortunate" that it appears as if it's taken a concussion sustained by the game's biggest name to create at least a sense of movement. Once upon a time he was that name – or one of them – and nobody seemed to learn much from the lesson that was his career.
So let's see what happens the first time Crosby is back on the ice and in a vulnerable position, with some rock-head circling. "Guys take liberties," Lindros said matter-of-factly. That they do, and until that stops, there will be no culture change. Just lost opportunity and, most likely, more lost careers.
The NHL can't say it wasn't warned.
Fantasy Hockey: The necessary evils of the plus/minus rating
(Note: Our friends at Dobber Hockey are back for some fantasy fun. All stats are through Wednesday night's games; this feature will be found on Thursdays here on Puck Daddy.)
Last week we ranted on the PIM statistic and the silliness of having it as a positive statistic. This week we'll talk about the dartboard otherwise known as the plus/minus rating.
How difficult is this statistic to predict? Look no further than Jeff Schultz(notes), who was plus-50 last season but is currently sitting at minus-1. It's a team-driven stat, but there is no popular recognized method for adjusting it team-by-team. Unlike with PIM, we're probably stuck with this one. But we don't have to like it.
Just keep throwing the darts.
Goals (with Yahoo! percent owned)
J.P. Dumont(notes), RW, Nashville (3%)
Back from the dead, Dumont has five goals in his last two games and will probably maintain his hot stick for a couple of weeks yet. The thing with Nashville is that they have eight or nine players who take turns getting hot two at a time. Recently it was Sergei Kostitsyn(notes) and Patric Hornqvist(notes). Now it's Hornqvist and Dumont. If there was a way to fit eight Preds on your bench and activate them two at a time each week, then it would be like having two Dany Heatleys on your team. But alas, it doesn't work that way. And they don't give us advanced warning as to who is next on the hot-streak docket.
Taylor Pyatt(notes), LW, Phoenix (2%)
Let's call this the "Yandle Effect". Keith Yandle(notes) has emerged a young star in the NHL and the Coyotes are starting to design the offense around him. And in doing so, they're winning games. The net result of this is players like Shane Doan(notes), Sami Lepisto(notes), Lauri Korpikoski(notes) and Taylor Pyatt start producing above expectations either directly or indirectly because of Yandle's presence in the lineup. The 29-year-old Pyatt has five goals and two assists in his last nine games.
Assists
Brian Rolston(notes), LW, New Jersey (2%)
As soon as the Devils brought back their old ways system coach, the aging Rolston became relevant productive. With a goal and four assists in his last four games, he is also seeing more ice time then he has in months. If he keeps this up, and 238 more forwards back out of the All-Star Game, we could very well see Mr. Rolston in Raleigh on January 30.
Mats Zuccarello(notes), LW/RW, N.Y. Rangers (2%)
With four assists and seven points in his last eight games, MZA is in a great position to build on things with the Brandon Dubinsky(notes) injury. When he was put on a line with Derek Stepan(notes) and Wojtek Wolski(notes) in recent games, things really took off.
Plus/Minus
Niklas Hjalmarsson(notes), D, Chicago (4%)
His plus-8 on the season is fairly modest, but the Blackhawks are winning games now on the strength of improved goal scoring and non-Marty Turco(notes) goaltending. Most Hawks are upping their plus/minus stat, but Hjalmarsson is making the biggest waves, with his plus-10 rating over the last six contests.
Lauri Korpikoski, LW, Phoenix (2%)
Although he sees absolutely no power-play time, Korpikoski has settled in nicely as a contributing third-line center. The Yandle Effect has dominoed to him as well and instead of settling in as a 30-point, plus-5 player he is more of a 45-point plus-15 player. In his last six games he has seven points and is plus-5. For the time being, he is seeing second-line ice time whilst Kyle Turris(notes) and Eric Belanger(notes) struggle and Vernon Fiddler(notes) is on the shelf. I'm guessing this is the only time you have read a hockey column with the word 'whilst' in it.
SOG
Roto-leaguers would be interested in the fact that Milan Michalek has 12 shots in his last three games and 41 in his last 14. Since he also has four points in his last four contests, he'll probably chip in on some of the other categories for you as well. Hear that, Sens fans? Forget your one win in 10 games -- Michalek is doing really really good in fantasy hockey!
PIM
Adam McQuaid(notes), D, Boston (1%)
It's a little surprising that McQuaid is only owned in one percent of leagues, given that his career chart throughout all levels of hockey showed some lofty numbers in this stat. Oh, and he's 6-5, 210. Now that McQuaid is getting 14/15 minutes per game, he has more opportunity to drop the gloves. In the last 16 games he has 33 penalty minutes, six points and is plus-10. Read those impressive numbers again and let's bump that one percent up. Along with Steve Kampfer(notes), Boston has been pulling these defensive gems out of a hat lately.
Goalies
Henrik Karlsson(notes), G, Calgary (1%)
Relax poolies. Don't grab this guy yet. Just keep your finger near the submit button is all. It's a long shot, but in most leagues isn't that all that's available on the wire for goalies? He's the best backup that the Flames have had in years and is really starting to show it. He has stopped 65 of the last 69 shots that he's faced, while Miikka Kiprusoff(notes) has saved just 62 of the last 75. What you could see is a gradual cannibalization of Kipper's minutes as Karlsson slowly Corey Crawford's(notes) him to the bench.
Middle-of-the-Pack Jack says ...
I Matt D'Agostini(notes) has been lighting it up for me over the past two weeks, with 10 points in his last 10 games. I'm keeping him active this week and riding the wave!
Whatever, Jack. With T.J. Oshie(notes) back in the lineup Tuesday, D'Agostini saw his lowest number of minutes in the last 12 games. He was a temporary top sixer but will probably find himself back on the third line very soon.
Dobber's Clown of the Week
For teasing poolies with your 20 points in 18 games and actually making some of us believers ... and just when your ownership rate inched up to 12% of all leagues, you go pointless in five and snap us back to reality.
For that, Sergei Kostitsyn, you're a clown.
Chris Kunitz VS Pascal Dupuis
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PrintLet me first start with saying, the reason for this post is that many people think that Pascal Dupuis isn't performing to a level that he should be performing being that he's on a line with Sidney Crosby, but most people seem to give Chris Kunitz a pass because he appears to be having a more productive season. I'm not going to say that Pascal Dupuis is having a great season, I just don't think he's really getting a fair shake of the stick.
I'm not a huge stat guy, or at least a huge stat guy past the basic stats that NHL.com has, so there will be no Corsi or any of those sabermetric-type stats in my post... if you want those, talk to one of those guys.
All of the statistical information was taken from NHL.com & dobberhockey.com
See the rest, after the jump.
So here are the basic stats I am using. Just looking at these at face value, obviously Kunitz is having a better season than Dupuis. I mean he has 12 more points, a better +/-, that's a pretty easy argument.
So the argument I hear the most, Dupuis plays with the best player in the world a majority of the time, he should be putting up better numbers than .43 points per game. Well that may be true... but here's why I think he's not getting a fair shake.
Chris Kunitz plays 18:26 minutes per game, and per the stats on Dobberhockey.com, of those 18:26 minutes per game that he plays, 80.25% of those minutes are spent while Sidney Crosby is on the ice which equates to 14:47 minutes per game.
Pascal Dupuis plays 16:58 minutes per game. of those 16:58 minutes per game, 53.53% are spent while Sidney Crosby is on the ice which is 9:05 minutes per game.
That's 5:42 minutes per game that Kunitz is on the ice with Crosby more than Dupuis is on the ice with Crosby. That's PER GAME! Over 45 games thats' 256.5 minutes more ice time with Crosby than Dupuis, which if you account for 60 minute games, that equals 4.275 games.
Dupuis basically only plays with Crosby when it's even strength and gets virtually no power play time, while Kunitz is part of the 1st power play unit and gets the 3rd most PP time per game(only Crosby and Malkin have more). And yet he only has 7 PP points this season. This is just speculation, but if you replaced Kunitz on the PP unit with Dupuis, I would bet Dupers has at least 7 more points this season... which would put him right on line with Kunitz minus his PP points.
Kunitz already has more minutes per game than Dupuis, and of the time Dupuis is on the ice, 2:43 minutes of that is spent short handed where he isn't expected to score goals. Kunitz plays very little short handed.
So give Dupuis a break... or at least throw Kunitz under the bus as well. :)
Jane McGonigal Thinks Reality is Broken, and She Wants to Fix It
- By
- January 20, 2011 |
- 10:52 am
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Jane McGonigal's No. 1 dream is to see a game developer win a Nobel Peace Prize. And while her new book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, doesn't provide a detailed road map to the award, it draws attention to a number of essential signposts pointing the way. Read on for a review of McGonigal's book and a preview of some of her upcoming projects designed to make our lives just a little bit better.
By Michael Andersen, originally posted at ARGNet
She has also put her theories to practical use with alternate reality games and interactive experiences including The Lost Ring, Top Secret Dance Off, Cryptozoo, and Evoke. Jane has taught audiences how to do the Soulja Boy dance, snuck on stage for a Flynn Lives event, and used game mechanics to help recover from a concussion.
McGonigal's new book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How they Can Change the World, hits bookstores on Jan. 20, and expands upon the central point of her presentations: reality is broken, because games do a better job of making us happy. Rather than attacking games as an escapist outlet for avoiding real-world troubles, why don't we subvert those game mechanics to make the world a better place?
The book draws upon a healthy mix of psychological research isolating specific tactics for induce happiness ("happiness hacks") alongside practical examples of those tactics utilized in both traditional and "serious" game design. The net result? A list of 14 "fixes" that can help readers improve their lives through play.
The book did a superb job of outlining concrete examples of why we like games in the first place, and how we can transform that interest into something that will make our lives and the lives of others better. While reading through the book, I often found myself cheering along with the "epic wins" documented in the book, ready to proudly declare, "We can do this! We can make the world better, if only a little bit!"
Reading this book about happiness feels good. Don't be surprised if you catch yourself grinning from ear to ear a few times each chapter.
The book is structured in three sections: The first delves into what makes us happy, the second embraces the notion of entering alternate realities, and the third addresses the challenges and potential embodied in massive collaborative projects.
Each section could easily be a book in its own right, with the first section providing a game developer's how-to guide that should be on every development team's required reading list, explaining key concepts like flow and failure in easily digestible language. Another section addresses how massively collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Folding@Home use gaming elements to achieve "epic wins."
The section that is most likely relevant to ARGNet readers addresses alternate reality games, offering a bold new definition for the term that embraces everything from online work-management systems like Chore Wars to new educational models like the one implemented at New York City charter school Quest to Learn.
McGonigal defines this new breed of alternate reality game as anti-escapist games: games played out in a real-world context that improve our lives. As videogame theorist Ian Bogost noted in his review, this is a bold redefinition that might help the genre break out into the mainstream.
The definition captures the imagination and summarizes much of what I personally find to be compelling in alternate reality games. As an operative definition, however, it leaves much to be desired, as it potentially rebrands everything from the game of tag to chess as an alternate reality game.
A much more practical definition can be found later in the book, where McGonigal defines narrative ARGs as games that "use multimedia storytelling — video, text, photographs, audio, and even graphic novels — to weave real-world game missions into a compelling fiction that plays out over weeks, months, or even years."
Serious games that attempt to do more than activate positive emotions and serve as "happiness hacks" still have a long way to go, as they try to find the balance between fun and function. And I remain skeptical towards applying gamification tactics to complex problems that are resistant to game designer attempts to reduce goals to concrete action steps.
However, Reality is Broken provides a much-needed lexicon for continuing the development process, and McGonigal's continued explorations into the field will hopefully unveil new tactics to successfully engage the ever-increasing gamer population in world-changing endeavors. After all, failure is part of the discovery process, and on the aggregate level, even modest improvements in everyday life can go a long way towards making the world a better place.
Moving forward, McGonigal has announced the return of a number of her past projects, offering additional opportunities to hone engagement models: Starting next week, groups can apply to experience season one of the World Bank's Evoke, with veterans of the first round serving as mentors for the next. Top Secret Dance-Off will also be returning under the umbrella of McGonigal's new company, Social Chocolate.
Super Better, her attempt to gameify her recovery process, is also under development for a formal release. Finally, McGonigal is working with the New York Public Library to put on Find the Future: The Game on May 20, from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.
The website allows users to level up by interacting with the website and creating games (Level 100 can only be reached by winning a Gameful Award at the site's annual awards) administered by the adorably exuberant Mayor. Each level allows you to level up your own Gameful monster from unhatched egg to one of six different pets.
Speaking engagements will also incorporate game elements, as McGonigal plans on using Groundcrew, one of the games heavily featured in the Reality is Broken book, to spice up her presentations. The book tour includes stops at The Colbert Report (Feb. 3) and South by Southwest Interactive (March 11-15), with locations spanning across the country in both the United States and Canada.
The NHL Guardian Project origin story: Behind the scenes of hockey's most controversial new marketing effort
Adam Baratta works with superheroes, but doesn't need mutant powers of perception to assess the initial reaction to the NHL's Guardian Project.
"I understand what's happening right now. We're getting negative feedback from some of the hockey purist bloggers," said Baratta, chief creative officer for Guardian Media Entertainment.
For the last few weeks, the NHL has been releasing images and videos detailing 30 superheroes created by comics legend Stan Lee and Guardian Media Entertainment -- with designs and abilities representative of each NHL team and city. Many hockey fans have greeted this bold marketing initiative with clever ridicule or outright scorn, rhetorically pummeling these characters like a Marvel piñata on message boards, blogs and social media.
Cutting through that cynicism, said Baratta, is the fact that the Guardian Project's Facebook campaign has generated over 1,000,000 votes from fans in an ongoing contest to see which Guardians are revealed on NHL.com each day.
The NHL has put so much faith in the project that it's made the Guardians part of its All-Star Game marketing hook this season. The superheroes will officially debut in a 5-minute live segment during next Sunday's NHL All-Star Game in Raleigh; "a combination of in-arena ice projection and hologram show," according to Baratta, as the 30 heroes "save" the Carolina fans from their arch enemy after he takes over the arena.
Sure, it sounds corny; but Baratta said the creators of this project are confident that once the Guardians' mysterious storyline and the sprawling scope of this campaign are revealed, the detractors will believe that a hockey-based superhero project can fly.
"Right now, it's like asking you to judge how good your steak will be from Wolfgang's by looking at a cow in the field. We haven't even rolled this thing out yet. All we've done is reveal an image, and given you a slight tease on what's to come," he said. "This is not a one-off, or a small, limited scope venture where it's just at the All-Star Game. There is a major business venture behind this, with a tremendous amount of planning."
So what is the NHL Guardian Project? Where did it come from? Where is it going? And is there any chance it can turn derision into dedication? Like every Stan Lee creation, there's an origin story ...
THE ORIGIN
About 12 years ago, Tony Chargin, now the executive vice president of GMW creative affairs, was home for Thanksgiving when he asked his nephews if they wanted to go outside and toss around the football -- but they weren't into it.
Chargin began to think about the disconnect between professional sports leagues and generations of young fans growing up in the digital age. What would make a kid today interested in a sport he or she wasn't already fascinated with?
Chargin turned to his own childhood, when he was obsessed with superheroes, and had this brainstorm: Turn each team in a pro sports league into its own unique character, and there's your entry point.
Stan Lee, the legendary former president of Marvel Comics, joined the effort about seven years ago. They first took the idea to the NFL, only to walk away from a deal with the League, according to Baratta. The reason? The NFL wanted to cast active players as the superheroes, something the creators felt had obvious pitfalls because you can't always anticipate the mistakes and poor judgments of real people.
"At the time," recalled Baratta, "they wanted to center it around Michael Vick."
Whoops.
GME's involvement with the NHL spans roughly 16 months, as Chargin and co-creator J.D. Shapiro pitched the idea that this superhero project was a way for the League to grow its brand globally and especially among "9-14 year old boys and girls" who may not follow hockey at all. (Strange demographics, incidentally, considering none of the Guardians appear to be female.)
"We want to give fathers and mothers an opportunity to introduce the sport of hockey to their kids in a way that speaks more to what the kids are interested in," Baratta said.
"Hockey fans, above and beyond all other sports fans, are purists. We've been cognizant of that since the start. So we're trying, right now, to create something for hockey that will expand their awareness -- hopefully around the globe."
THE CHARACTERS
The design team visited with each NHL franchise, talking with presidents and CEOs to ensure that the characters were representative of the team and the city. The Predator, for the Nashville Predators, is a "skilled musician" who is duty-driven since he's from the Volunteer State. That sort of thing.
Once their attributes were established, next came the look of the characters, which has proven to be problematic in the eyes of some fans. The Bangin' Panger blog has been chronicling the similarities between Guardians and other recognized comic characters; for example, the Juggernaut may want to get lawyer'd up and go after the Edmonton Oilers Guardian:
But face it: Stan Lee created his first character (Destroyer) in 1941; since then, nearly every superpower, costume and look has been claimed by comic book heroes and villains, with plenty of crossover.
"There were certain limitations we had in the creation of these characters. The Flame had to have fire, OK? The Bruin had to be a bear. I think we've been fairly creative," Baratta said.
"If you look at the majority of the superheroes created out there, there's a similarity in the way they're created. They all have ripping muscles and tight suits and have very similar looks and feels. We needed to have 30 characters that were unique and distinct and recognizable."
OK, so the Guardians are derivative of other, better-known characters. What do you expect when, within the storyline, they were actually created by a child?
THE STORY
Part of the disconnect between hockey fans and this project is, quite frankly, that they haven't a damn clue what it's all about. Which is a point of frustration for Baratta in the weeks leading up to the project's big reveal.
"Look, there's a lot that I'd like to share with you about what we've done, how we've put this project together and where we're going in the future," he said in a phone interview last week.
To hear Baratta spin the plot summary of the NHL Guardian Project is like hearing a screenwriter pitch a fantasy film to a skeptical studio head: He knows all the characters, all the origins, all the plots and explains them all in painstaking detail. It's a fully realized world these characters exist in, to the point where there's a 400-page book in the works to provide more back-story.
The full plot is under wraps; we had to sign a non-disclosure form after seeing all 30 character designs and hearing the complete origin story for the project. But the non-spoiler summary goes like this:
Mike Mason is a huge hockey fan, and was born "special" at birth. Not a disability, mind you; "special" in the sense that he's smarter and stronger than other kids, for reasons we can't share. By the time he's 15, Mason is your average teenager; Stan Lee calls him a "Peter Parker" type.
He's obsessed with hockey and with superheroes, and earlier in his life created 30 different characters for the NHL teams: Meticulously designing their powers and personalities; giving them alter-egos and writing about grand adventures they'd embark on.
We can't explain how, but know this: Eventually, these Guardians come to life for Mike as a combination of artificial and organic materials. They "download" all of the information he's created for them, from their origin stories to their hockey knowledge. Hence, the Ranger and the Flyer don't get along, and neither do the Blackhawk and the Red Wing. (A bickering team of super-powered heroes? How very Stan Lee.)
They become Mike's friends, partners and protectors; banding together to fight the evil Devin Dark and his military machines. (For those who speculating about the Big Bad of the Guardian Project, sorry to disappoint; it's not actually Sean Avery(notes) or the NBA.)
Alas, that's as much as we're allowed to share. The rest of the origin includes things like nanobots and medical miracles and some classic Stan Lee comic traits like crisis of identity. The creators have done more than just develop 30 artistic drawings with NHL logos for posters and lunch boxes; they've developed a complex narrative that, in their eyes, will play out over the course of years, maybe decades.
"We are teasing this in a way that has no frame," said Baratta. "The truth is that I fully expect that when people understand the depth and the passion that we have to stay true to hockey while at the same time staying true to Stan Lee's fanboys, they're going to be blown away by the thought process that goes into this."
THE MULTIMEDIA ASSAULT
Nine months ago, GME had a chance to do a Guardians TV series. "The problem was they wanted to do it around four characters, and we didn't want to do anything that didn't involve 30 teams," said Baratta, who probably will never be hired for a programming job with NBC if that's his vision for the NHL.
Television is still in the plans. So are feature films, video games and social media games.
So is incorporating each Guardian into the in-arena experience, so they "react" to what's happening in the game.
"You're at a hockey game. Everything you see on the LED boards is controlled by a game operations director. We've talked with purists from the Canadian teams and some of the younger teams, and what we found from start to finish is that they have their own approach. If we design content that's cookie cutter to all 30 teams, they wouldn't run it. So we're working with the teams to tailor these characters for their cities," said Baratta.
What does that mean? How about the Los Angeles Kings Guardian either raising his sword in celebration or slamming it down in anger during a home game, depending on what the team does on the ice?
So are the NHL Guardians like a second tier of mascots for NHL teams?
"These guys are not mascots," said Baratta, curtly.
"Mascots are cute and cuddly and really for the very young fan. Superheroes are the kick-ass tough guys that represent the spirit of the team."
OK, BUT HOW DOES IT CREATE FANS?
Admittedly, we had to ask Baratta several times during our chat about how any of this will create a single new NHL fan. Because, like you, we're sorta baffled by that notion.
The first thing to know, according to him: "It's really not all about hockey."
Making the project about hockey, he said, would have repelled those who aren't into the sport. The direction they took allows readers or viewers to fall for the plot and characters, and then gradually ease into hockey fandom.
"Do I expect kids to fall in love with the sport because the superhero is wearing the logo on his chest? Immediately, no; I expect the kid to fall in love with the story and what the hero represents," he said.
So say junior loves the Blackhawk Guardian. How does that lead to his becoming a Chicago Blackhawks fan? There are three primary ways the project reaches out to non-hockey fans:
1. Brand Recognition. Baratta said the average person can name about two hockey teams. His hope is that in five years, these characters and their logos become so popular that it leads to better name recognition of NHL teams.
2. Social Media Gaming. Fans of a particular Guardian will be encouraged to follow his hockey team every night. Social media games in which users earn points or bonuses when the team does well are being designed; for example, if you're a fan of the Flyer, and the Philadelphia Flyers go on the power play, you've have a chance to earn double points within whatever Guardian social media game you're engaged in while the Flyers on the man advantage. So while dad's watching the game, his young fan is watching both the game and a mobile device, playing along. In theory.
3. Hockey References. "While our story isn't about hockey, the entire spirit of it is inspired by it," Baratta said. "When Mike creates the Flyer, he knows everything that's ever been written about the Flyers, and instills all of that into the character. He knows who Bobby Clarke is. All of these histories of every single club, these characters represent."
What they envision is a bit of a "Shrek" effect: References to hockey in the comics and cartoons that make hockey fans chuckle and young non-hockey fans want to seek out the meaning of the allusions.
If the project works, there will be generations of fans discovering hockey in this manner. Because Baratta and Co. believe the Guardians are here to stay.
EXCELSIOR!
I caught an episode of the old "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" cartoon the other night on cable. Through 33-year-old eyes, it was a tepid mishmash of obvious plotting, ridiculous dialogue and homoerotic overtones. But back when I was nine, I wanted to watch every episode five times and get all the toys for Christmas.
I thought about that experience in thinking about the NHL Guardian Project. Like most of you, it has made me cringe more than a few times as a hockey fan and a comic fan. Many of the character designs are unoriginal. Many of the character traits are sometimes laughable: The Minnesota Wild Guardian "is an intellectual and avid reader, taken from the fact that the Minneapolis-St. Paul area is one of the most highly literate in the Country." The Buffalo Sabres Guardian has a body "totally comprised of water."
Even after speaking with Baratta for an hour, I still don't quite understand how it converts a kid who's not into hockey into being a puckhead. The social media aspects sound promising; but is a 9 year old who likes The Lightning because he "is a natural ladies man with an in-your-face bravado" going to eventually want a Steven Stamkos(notes) jersey?
But the thing with my skepticism is ... I'm not the target audience. I never was. Most of you aren't, either. We've been killing this thing for not being about hockey when, in fact, it never was. We've been recoiling at how cheese-tastic the characters are, but a 9 year old might actually dig the Blue Jackets' "state flag of Ohio made of astral plasma." Or relate to the general storyline of the project in a way we can't.
Maybe the target audience embraces the NHL Guardian Project; maybe it never catches on and we're seeing The Canuck action figures in the dollar-store graveyard in a few years.
Either way, we can all agree on three things: That the Guardian Project goes way deeper than what we've seen thus far, and will live or die on that narrative; that the Canadien is the love child of Iron Man and Cobra Commander; and that the NHL All-Star Game presentation of the Guardians is going to be ... er, memorable.
Big Bust
The rise of the mafia superindictment.
Posted Thursday, Jan. 20, 2011, at 7:35 PM ET
The last few years have seen a new kind of indictment—the superbust—that targets organized crime on a much larger scale. In February 2008, federal officials rounded up 62 reputed mobsters in the New York area, charging them with the usual slew of mob-related crimes, including murder, conspiracy, drug-trafficking, robbery, and extortion. Three months later, they indicted another 23 people, including one of the highest-ranking Gambinos. Then on the morning of Jan. 20, the FBI and local law enforcement arrested 127 suspected mafiosos.
Thursday's roundup wasn't just the largest bust in recent memory. It was also unique in that it targeted alleged criminals across seven different families, from New York to New Jersey to Rhode Island, for crimes spanning decades. Whereas past crackdowns have generally focused on one family at a time, the 16 unrelated indictments released Thursday name, among others, 13 members of the Gambino family, 14 people tied to the Genovese family, and all members of the Colombo family leadership who aren't currently in prison.
Why one huge arrest, rather than a bunch of smaller ones? "It's a statement," says Jim Wedick, a former FBI agent. "They wanted to say, 'You know what? We are back in town.' " Since 2001, the FBI has shifted its resources away from traditional crime-fighting toward counterterrorism. Thursday's bust is a message from the Department of Justice to organized crime: We haven't forgotten about you.
There are other advantages to a large-scale roundup. By corralling so many people at once, investigators are more likely to get individuals to cooperate. Say the police arrested you and one other partner in crime: The odds of your partner turning informant in exchange for leniency would be relatively low. If they arrest 127 people, betrayal is almost assured. (Not all the alleged criminals arrested on Thursday worked together, of course.) A single turncoat can do a lot of damage to his family and others. When Salvatore Vitale was arrested in 2003 for his involvement in more than 10 murders, he testified against Bonanno boss Joseph Massino. "Mr. Vitale provided lead after lead," said one assistant U.S. attorney. "The results speak for themselves."
At the same time, busts create power vacuums. The bigger the bust, the bigger the vacuum. The struggle for power usually leads to intra- and inter-family violence. "People are now suspicious of each other," says Jay Albanese, a criminologist at Virginia Commonwealth University. "Each thinks the other guy got them arrested." Amid all the stress, some people turn themselves in, like Nicholas "Little Nick" Corozzo did after the big Gambino bust in May 2008.
Crime families also tend to change the way they operate after a bust, in case the arrestees turn informant. For example, they may shift their resources toward safer types of criminal activity. Instead of focusing on street-level crime like extortion or loan-sharking, they might focus more on fraud and money-laundering. "These kinds of things are simply less visible and a little more insulated from detection," says Albanese.
The downside of arresting mobsters en masse is there's more room to screw up. Prosecuting one case is hard enough. Prosecuting 16 at the same time is a nightmare for even the most competent U.S. attorneys. The logistics, from discovery to lining up witnesses, takes time. But if the prosecutors don't meet deadlines, the prisoners could go free. "I used to say, don't take the whole pie, let's take a portion that's manageable," says Wedick, who as an FBI official arrested and helped prosecute mobster brothers Joseph and Bill Bonanno in California in the 1980s.
Big busts may reduce certain types of crime but not others. Organized crime typically falls into three categories: goods (drugs, stolen property), services (loans, prostitution), and infiltration of business and government. There's no question that the mob's influence over businesses and politicians has declined over the last 30 years. When the FBI keeps arresting the leadership of a crime family, it's hard to re-establish the relationships necessary to keep up an extortion racket.
But the demand for stolen property, say, or prostitution, hasn't gone away. If one family loses control of the market, another takes its place. That's why the long-term solution to organized crime addresses not supply but demand. It has less to do with busting capos than with treating drug addiction and alleviating poverty. Just look at the success of the federal government's anti-smoking campaign, says Albanese: "We made it a public health issue. The law had very little to do with it." Likewise, the DOJ can prosecute the mob all it wants—that's its job, after all. But only by targeting root causes can they snuff it out entirely.
How Fox News Built a Mind of Its Own
"Be honest," Roger Ailes told me one afternoon over the telephone. "What's the worst thing you've heard about me?"
I was able to answer him instantly: "People are terrified of you. You scare the shit out of people, Roger."
"I wonder why," he said. "I'm trying to think if I've ever threatened anyone. No, I don't think so."
I would like to say that this is the only time Roger Ailes ever lied to me in my reporting for a profile on him, but I can't. First of all, I wound up talking to him for four hours straight in a subsequent meeting, and I can't imagine that he succeeded in rising above the human propensity for untruth. Second, I don't think he was lying — to me, anyway. There was an element of willful amnesia in his answer, an element of apostrophe, almost of disassociation. Has Roger Ailes ever threatened anyone? Of course he has. He is known for threatening people. At least four of the thirty-plus people I interviewed claimed they were threatened by him. He told me what he told the township of Philipstown, New York, when the township of Philipstown informed him that he'd have to let an "environmental inspector" through the fortifications surrounding his weekend mansion: "I would suggest that you call first, because otherwise I'll shoot him and my dog will eat him." Sure, it's a funny story, and Ailes, as he often does in his own stories, makes his turn in character, aware of his own reputation if not his own absurdity. But still.
Ailes also asked me, during the same telephone conversation, "What's the most interesting thing you've learned about me?" Once again, I was able to tell him, without pause, "that you suffer from hemophilia." But I wonder if I got this answer right, after all. Certainly, the fact of Ailes's hemophilia is significant for the survival mechanisms it bred in him, the self-protective predisposition for combat. Yet after spending time with Roger Ailes — and, more importantly, spending countless hours watching Fox News and absorbing its rhetoric — I wonder if the most interesting facet of Roger Ailes is not his unmatched capacity for finding threats outside himself in order to deny the threats coiled within, for whitewashing his own soul by ascribing darkness to others: his capacity, in other words, for psychological projection.
And it is the signature not only of the man, but of his network — the real reason that Fox News is said to be Roger Ailes. He says that he did not watch Glenn Beck's three-part call for arms against financier George Soros before it aired, and I have no way of telling whether he is telling what seems an unlikely truth. But the hallmark of Beck's program was the relentlessness with which it pursued an indictment that could have been drawn up against Ailes himself, or for that matter Beck, or for that matter Rupert Murdoch. It even listed the five steps Soros supposedly uses to destabilize countries, and if they all sounded familiar, that's because they were propounded by a network that inserted itself in the disputed presidential election of 2000 and took it upon itself to foment the Tea Party movement of 2010: Form shadow government, control airwaves, destabilize the state, provoke an election crisis, and then take power by staging massive demonstrations and sit-ins and telling voters what to do through television and radio stations....
But of course what makes Fox compelling, beyond its crisp competencies, is the sheer amount of psychological need that is always on display. From Fox's inception in 1996, Roger Ailes has been out to overturn the chair of the "godly anchor" — the idea of the newscaster as national conscience and presiding authority — and has succeeded so well that he has also overturned our notion of what's acceptable in our political discourse. It is an historic accomplishment, but also a personal one, in that it never would have happened if Ailes hadn't been driven to it for reasons that are uniquely and even obscurely his own — if he, growing up the son of a factory foreman in a stratified factory town, hadn't seen Walter Cronkite as someone not to admire, but to cut down. More than anyone in the history of American television, Ailes has found a way to speak through the screen without ever appearing on it, has managed, as a charmingly unlovely man, to speak through all his charmingly lovely women with a remarkably consistent voice. But watching Fox is captivating in the same way it might be captivating to watch a beautiful girl with a tic. It is not, as it styles itself to be, the voice of the silent majority; it's a therapy session, which is why it's so loud. It eschews weakness by projecting strength, rejects doubt by proclaiming certainty, but in the end Fox is fascinating because it's a Freudian funfest.
Which brings us to the matter of Fox — and, to some extent, the entire conservative movement — and the Jews. Over the past year — or, more accurately, since the arrival of Glenn Beck in early 2009 — Fox and people aligned with Fox have not engaged in incessant anti-Semitism but rather have incessantly appropriated the tropes and symbols of Jewish suffering to make the case against those they deem anti-Fox. It was not enough for Glenn Beck to go after George Soros; he had to implicate Soros — a Jew whose family was destroyed by the Nazis — in the Holocaust. It was not enough for Ailes to make political hay off the firing of Juan Williams from NPR; he had to call those who fired him "Nazis." And, of course, it was not enough for Sarah Palin to complain that she had been unjustly implicated in the mass-murders of Jared Loughner; she had to deploy the loaded term "blood libel," and then go on Fox and tell Sean Hannity that she knew exactly what she was doing. Beck, Ailes, Palin, and Hannity are all gentiles, of course, but such is their sense of victimization — and the extent of their animus — that they manage to conflate the two, in the ultimate historical analogy. They might not be guilty of anti-Semitism; what they are guilty of is a feat of psychological projection that enables them to say, without blinking, that we are all Jews now.... but only if we watch Fox News.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/fox-news-psychology-4957213#ixzz1Bd4BcYDn
Is James Frey the Most Important Writer in America?
By Stephen Marche
Antonio Zazueta Olmos
The author of A Million Little Pieces and other works of fiction.
Today is an uplifting, degrading, and all-around confusing time to be a writer in America. Even as creative-writing departments proliferate like bedbugs and each year brings a fresh (and deserving) claimant to the title of Great American Novel (The Emperor's Children, Netherland, Freedom, all great books), content farms are herding the young and determined literati into anonymous sweatshops run by all-seeing, unforgiving masters of metrics. More people want to be writers even as continual technological breakthroughs — Blogspot, Twitter, and tablets of every shape and size — make the future of writing less solid and predictable. The old orders are falling and the new ones have not yet emerged, and worst of all, nobody, it seems, knows how to write about sex anymore. We are in a moment of literary in-betweenness, and into this world of upheaval, to everybody's surprise, has stepped James Frey, a refugee from the great decade of American fraud, pointing the way up and out like a deranged false prophet. The man has plans.
John Bramley/DreamWorks
I Am Number Four, a story about a good-looking teenage alien and his struggle to survive.
It's hard to believe that it's been five years since Oprah humiliated Frey on national television. And though he proceeded (sensibly) to make himself scarce for a while, you are going to be reading a lot about him this year, even if you're not really meaning to. His upcoming novel, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, follows a man who may or may not be Christ through twenty-first-century Manhattan, and the film version of the best-selling book I Am Number Four will be released in February. The latter is the first fruit of Frey's publishing venture, Full Fathom Five, the setup of which has caused a minor scandal. Frey finds young writers to "coproduce" commercial young-adult fiction: They write it, he controls it, they can tell their friends and parents that they've written a book, and he takes up to 70 percent of the royalties. Frey, at least according to some, trolls the M.F.A. programs in New York rather the way pimps in movies troll Penn Station for farmers' daughters, but I hesitate to judge his plan. The truth is that anyone who spends $40,000 a year to be taught how to write by writers who cannot make a living by writing, or who imagines that fairness and common sense have anything to do with the publishing industry, could probably use a lesson in how life really works.
(Hemingway) Archivo Castillo Puche/EFE/Corbis; (Mailer) Interfoto/Alamy
Hemingway and Mailer are among Frey's idols.
Which leads me to the only thing I really like about Frey: his arrogance. He unblushingly compares himself to some of the greats (Hemingway, Mailer) and believes that his new young-adult production scheme is like the work of Jeff Koons or Ai Weiwei, who both hire workers to produce their oversized art. We haven't heard this kind of boldness from a writer, this claim to an inheritance of a grand tradition, since Norman Mailer died. The best writers now are humble to the point of insanity. Before he went on his Freedom book tour, Jonathan Franzen told Terry Gross on NPR that he just hoped to hand-sell a few copies at local bookstores. (He ended up on the cover of Time.) The younger generation, meanwhile, seems to come in two flavors: the earnestly meek (Jonathan Safran Foer, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Lethem) and the ironically meek (Gary Shteyngart, Sam Lipsyte, Joshua Ferris). The danger of all this — and it is a real danger — is that their meekness will be taken seriously, and that writing will then be accepted as the natural domain for losers. The world today is filled with graying men who became writers so they could follow in the swaggering footsteps of Mailer, Bellow, and the other giant egos of postwar American letters. But how many young men today read, say, Jonathan Safran Foer's dollhouse fiction and say, That's what I want to do with my life?
Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images
Two Koons employees at work in the artist's studio.
Whatever else you can say about Frey, he refuses to be a loser, and writing matters to him in a ferocious, palpable way. He is always trying to connect as massively and viscerally as possible, and, when he wants to, he can write quite well. Don't misunderstand me: The idea that he belongs with either a brilliant cynic like Koons or an artist saint like Ai Weiwei is ludicrous. They use the methods of mass production to create gorgeously unique events; he is using the methods of mass production to create mass-produced fiction. With Full Fathom Five, he has turned himself into just another pulp publisher with a notorious past. But the lessons Frey offers for ambitious writers are essential: Never apologize, never give up, and be entrepreneurial. It also helps to know how to write.
So what comes next for writers? It might help to look at another time of literary in-betweenness, the mid-eighteenth century, when writers endured the overlap between the end of the era of patronage and the beginning of the era of the professional writer. Samuel Johnson, who famously said that anyone who didn't write for money was a blockhead, nonetheless wandered the streets of London in a state of near beggary for years. His Lives of the Poets documents the sufferings of his contemporaries to make a living with words, but through their struggles to create poems and longer narrative forms that people would actually pay for, they prepared the way, commercially and intellectually, for the nineteenth-century novel and the Romantic poets. Like them, we don't know where our world is headed, but we're going to need Frey, and any other writer who thinks writing is worth fighting for, to push us forward toward something completely new and different. It might even be magnificent.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/thousand-words-on-culture/james-frey-full-fathom-five-0211#ixzz1Bd775nlV
Work Out So Hard You Vomit
The rise of P90X, CrossFit, and the "extreme" exercise routine.
Posted Thursday, Jan. 20, 2011, at 10:51 AM ETSee the rest of Slate's Fitness Issue.
This is CrossFit, and in trying it out I am joining some uncounted yet increasingly muscled masses—millions, perhaps, but at least hundreds of thousands of Americans. But I am failing. Perhaps this is because, earlier in the evening, I had my first encounter with CrossFit's sleeker cousin—P90X, a powerful, 90-day extreme workout system, hence the menacing acronym.
I am an intermittent runner, and I'm not in terrible shape in the scheme of American corpulence. But I am a lover of all things butter, and someone who has been castigated for her lack of "core and upper-body strength" by a Pilates teacher who mainly caters to elderly women. When I started asking around about how to get leaner and more buff, CrossFit and P90X were the two names that kept coming up. "You get so strong!" one friend cooed. "That shit should be illegal!" said another, apparently positively.
More to the journalistic point, CrossFit and P90X are the iconic fitness movements of the last half-decade or so. Looking at the workouts themselves and the businesses behind them, the relationship seems fraternal. The two systems share a lot of the same DNA: They both focus on intensive strength and agility training and employ video-based workouts. Both have enthusiastic—and sometimes, frankly, crazy—fan bases who love posting homemade videos of their morning routine or their insane feats of strength or their bodily transformation. And both have been touted not just as systems to whip even the laziest among us into shape, but as ways of life, cults, revolutions.
Of the two workout brothers, P90X is the slick, camera-ready pro athlete, while CrossFit is the sweatshirt-clad, hometown college favorite. The former is the best-selling brainchild of Beachbody, a company that makes and sells workout DVDs, mostly via infomercials (e.g., "P90X: The Proof") and the Internet. Since 1998, the company has made $1.3 billion in sales to 10 million customers, with P90X the shiniest jewel in a crown that also includes titles like Brazil Butt Lift and Hip Hop Abs. (The most popular iteration of P90X was first released in 2003.) The videos are slick, expensive-looking, and decidedly aspirational. They are also, it must be said, incredibly campy. Workout sessions are led by the preternaturally tan Tony Horton and followed on camera by a series of fantastically chiseled co-eds; the setting is a kind of artfully distressed warehouse space.
CrossFit knows no camp—no distressed warehouse spaces, no Malibu beaches, no oiled, flexing washboard stomachs. The brand's unofficial mascot is Pukie, a clown who encourages participants to, yes, work out so hard they vomit. The backbone of the company, founded by former gymnast Greg Glassman (known affectionately as Coach with a capital C) and his ex-wife Lauren Glassman, is a frills-free Web site. The workouts themselves are free and instantly accessible to anyone, and practitioners are encouraged to devise and post their own. (Coach calls the approach "Darwinian/free-market.") While CrossFit first got its toehold in police forces and Army units, it is now the rage among everyone from suburban moms to hay-bale-lifting farm boys. It is apparently also quite popular among prison inmates.
The company makes most of its money training and certifying CrossFit instructors, bringing in an estimated $6.5 million a year (PDF). (Certification seminars currently cost $1,000.) It welcomes CrossFitters to open CrossFit-branded gyms (charging some licensing fees) and runs the annual CrossFit Games.
The similarities between CrossFit and P90X end when it comes time to look at the bottom line. Beachbody has sold $420 million worth of P90X DVDs since 2005, with those sales making up about half the company's revenue. (It's a private company, so it doesn't disclose profit figures.) Though company executives fret about slowing sales growth, revenue for the line still increased a whopping 30 percent in 2009. CrossFit's finances, however, seem something of a sore spot. Indeed, the company's publishing arm, CrossFit Journal, features a kind of defensive advertorial that makes the case that "CrossFit is hugely profitable, and its growth has only accelerated during the worst economic downturn since the 1930s."
"The world knows nothing of the virtual company," Glassman says in the article. "Venture capitalists don't get it, the MBAs don't get it, and the media don't get it. The very people who should understand it best are aghast at the concept."
True, we dollars-and-cents types don't get the give-away-the-exercises-for-free model, money-wise. But we certainly get it follower-wise. The videos, the fan base, and the social component are what keep anyone sticking with either of these decidedly painful, results-demanding workout systems. The Glassmans created a system that does not need their chiseled abs to keep growing: CrossFit is more of a community than a business.
For followers of both systems, much of the joy comes from gloating or whining about your crappy workout at CrossFit's forums or P90X's virtual community. CrossFitters are encouraged to post grainy homemade videos of themselves doing different bits of workouts—lifting bales of hay, then doing squats, for instance—to YouTube or the CrossFit site. They also head to the Internet to report on the growth of their biceps or to mythologize about rhabdomyolysis, a condition that develops when you work out so hard your muscles break down and release dangerous chemicals in your bloodstream. (The condition is rare, but not unknown (PDF) in the CrossFit community.)
These videos and chat boards help members who can't share in a group workout or visit a CrossFit gym feel included. The same goes for its high-def relative, P90X. Enthusiasts have put up thousands of YouTube clips of themselves flexing and squatting and giving impromptu home testimonials—testimonials the company has incorporated into its infomercials—and have built Web communities to support each other through the first grueling days.
It's those funny videos—where can I find a bale of hay to lift?—that I'm thinking about as I lay on the floor after a few hours of pain. I'm not sure which system I like better. They both hurt. But they both work. As I flex my slightly bruised muscles in the mirror, I'm thinking I just might post a video once I've got my six-pack.
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