The Professional Women's Hockey League rules

I spent most of the first ten years of my life in one part or another of northern Virginia. One day, when I was in third or fourth grade—this would've been 1987 or '88—our gym class had a visitor. I don't remember his name, or what he looked like, other than than he wasn't particularly old but nevertheless had at least a partial set of false teeth. This was because he was a player for the Washington Capitals hockey team. 

The details of the visit are hazy, naturally. I seem to recall the guy being a former player for the Caps, though he might have been an active one. I don't really remember his uniform—it'd have been weird if he hadn't been wearing it, right?—or what he talked about. (Presumably hockey.) It's the teeth, which he removed for us with what I can only imagine was glee, that's stuck with me all these years. We played floor hockey, which I really enjoyed, in gym class, but I don't know if that started before or after the NHL player's visit.

A few years later, for no reason discernable from my current temporal vantage point, I started paying attention to the Washington Capitals. I don't know if I watched any games on TV; living in Texas and then Venezuela, I mainly remember reading the box scores in the paper, and asking for (and receiving) a Capitals t-shirt for Christmas in 1992 or '93. By the time I went back to Virginia for a year to attend college, however, I didn't think much about hockey, and never took the opportunity to see the Capitals play.

And so until recently, hockey remained something I enjoyed when I watched it, which was almost never. Then I learned, via the ever-reliable and perenially interesting Metafilter, that a new hockey league had just started up. The Professional Women's Hockey League only has six teams at the moment, so I decided to follow Montréal, since I've visited and am pretty fond of Québec (though I haven't actually been to Montréal). It's a loose affiliation, however; I'm here to just enjoy the sport.

And enjoy it I do, because everything about it is fun. I can watch games live on Youtube, which is a huge plus. The play is physical without being boneheadedly aggressive. I'd forgotten how exciting it can be to watch a fast, skilled forward thread through a couple defenders and take a shot on goal. The players had a union contract before the first game was played. I even like the plain jerseys that display only the city name, since none of the teams have names yet. 

I've got a couple hockey-loving friends in Pittsburgh, where Montréal is playing Toronto next month, so I'm considering a weekend trip to see my friends and some hockey. I just hope I don't see any players pop their teeth out to shock little kids.

MMXXIV

Goddamn, it's 2024. I was thinking back the other day about the experience of writing this blog, and what mostly came to mind was an undifferentiated decade or so of late, late nights spent smoking cigarettes (which I don't do anymore, alas) and spitting out whatever came to mind. The heyday of that approach was roughly 20 years ago, and after several moribund years I mostly moved to translation. These days I barely have the wherewithal to translate and post anything, much less run my mouth about any and all of life's infinite indignities. Not that I particularly want to spend my time doing that, but you get the drift.

So what does the Year of Our Lord 2024 hold for your humble Corpse? Who knows. At one point I thought I'd like to write about organizing and the labor movement, but I'm more interested in the work itself than writing about it. That said, I'm involved in some shit that I think deserves a writeup at some point, but maybe not here.

There are always records and books and movies to write about, and maybe I'll do that this year. I don't know. I've stopped thinking too far ahead w/r/t my life, because I've experienced firsthand how quickly it can change. I may not have time to write about heavy metal records or kung fu or Thomas Pynchon—or maybe I will. I'm here for livin', dudes, and while this blog is not the quotidian record it used to be, it'll still reflect the antemortem musings of your favorite posthumous dude.

Até breve, amigos e amigas.

DAS

now playing: Memoriam, "Austerity Kills"