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ESPN's 30 for 30 Reviews: King's Ransom

ESPN's 30 for 30 kicked off tonight with "King's Ransom" aka The Legend of the Wayne Gretzky Trade...Lets start this review....

COMCAST Cable Guide Says:

"Kings Ransom - chronicling the 1988 trade of hockey star Wayne Gretzky from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings."

I am not a hockey guy....and I never have been...i've never strapped on a pair of skates I went to my first ever LIVE NHL game this past March and I can barely name 6 CURRENT Boston Bruins (oboy...um, Bergeron, Sturm, Tim Thomas, Lucic....fuck...Phil Kessel was traded.....ok...you see my point here.) I blame this mostly on the Popkin's not being a winter-sport family.....

Anyhow, I have absolutely nothing against the sport, and in fact one of the biggest surprises to me since starting at ESPN is finding out just how many truly devoted NHL fans there still are. Gut punches like the 2004-05 NHL strike, the lack of a major TV deal and unofficial removal of membership from "The Big Four Proffesional Sports" has only made hockey fans MORE ravenous.

So with a framework of hockey ignorance and respect, what did The Great One even mean to me going in?

Well first off, in 1988, the year Gretzky was traded, I was 5 years old. So I have literally NO memories of Gretzky as a Edmonton. On the flip side, as a child of the 90's....I was in the DIRECT wheelhouse of the Gretzky/LA King/#99/Great One Marketting blitz.

Just how marketting blitzy? Um...Anyone remember the old Saturday Morning cartoon "Pro Stars?" Gretzky effing fought crime alongside Michael Jordan and BO JACKSON!!



Thats right MJ and Bo Jackson. And truthfully, thats all an 8 Year Old like me knew. If this guy was appearing in every issue of my Sports Illustrated for Kids AND was badass enough to hang in cartoons with MJ and Bo.....well thats pretty much as big as you get!

As a Hockey-ignorant youth, I was plenty happy to float through the rest of the 90's worshipping the Braves, watching Ren and Stimpy and listening to Blues Traveler while respecting Number 99's greatness with same casual respect I'd pay to his iconic-athlete peers Joe Montana, Andre Agassi or Kristy Yamaguchi.... and I'd do it with with no care or knowledge about the man's early days with Edmonton.

The Review:

***SPOILER ALERT*** I'm not sure this really qualifies as a spolier because what I'm about to tell you happened almost 20 years ago, and is very public knowledge.....but here it is...

Did you know that the Edmonton Oilers won the Stanley Cup in 1990? I only bring this up, because this little historical factoid pretty much negates ANY and ALL possible intrigue that this docu-story could possibly ever drum up. Seriously.....how could any rational human possibly blame the Oilers owner for trading the Great One to L.A, when the Oilers would end up winning the whole damn thing 2 years later WITHOUT him....meanwhile, in LA, Gretzky is carrying a busted King's team through the playoffs, only getting to the Stanley Cup Finals ONCE. Thanks for the memories!

Now that i've dropped that little knowledge-nugget on you, I suppose we should praise director Peter Berg for stating this key information in the final 30 seconds of the film via those traditional "this is what happanned years later" title sequences.....at least he smart enough to know this information would really serve to distract us from his story.

So what WAS Berg going for?

90% of the the film is very straightforward and is mainly told objectively by three men: Wayne Gretzky himself, Former Edmonton Oilers Owner Peter Pocklington, and Former Kings Owner Bruce McNall. This is how the major players were portrayed......

Wayne Gretzky: hockey jesus. Soft spoken canadian gentleman by day, leader of uber-stacked 80's dynasty Oilers by night. Fresh off Edmonton's 4th Cup, in the midst of his prime and looking to become the highest paid player....if only the Oilers could re-negotiate his contract.

Peter Pocklington: affable owner, businessman who despite all attempts from by the fans of Edmonton, really didnt fit the same villanous characterazation of Harry Frazee (the infamous Red Sox GM who sold Babe Ruth to the yankees.) Pocklington has Gretzky under contract for two more years, and would like nothing more than to re-neg a longterm contract.

Bruce McNall: LA businessman, also affable, who really pretty much falls into a "right place at the right time" as he takes over the franchise from Lakers owner Jerry Buss who had originally expressed intressed in acquiring Gretzky.

The City of Edmonton: underrepresented in the film, small market, put on the map by Gretzky and 4 stanley cups. Edmonton apparently follows hockey as intently 12 months a year the way America intently watches the Olympics for 2 weeks every four years. (gretzky's analogy, not mine)

Janet Jones Gretzky: beautiful fledgling LA actress, star of Police Academy 5 and apple of Wayne's eye. partially blamed by Edmonton as being a "jezebel" who convinced Gretzky to leave. I literally only mention her because i think we should bring back the term "jezebel" to describe attractive women who may appear to have alterior motives. (quick tangent....theres also a hilarious moment in the documentary, there is home-video footage of the newlywed Mr. and Mrs. Gretzky take a post-nuptuals limo ride through a crowded downtown Edmonton....and you can clearly hear this little kid in the crowd yell "Hey Janet! I saw Police Academy 5, it was awesome!!" Watch this documentary for that, if nothing else....)


What was so frustrating about watching this story unfold was how little meat there was on this bone. Personally, I've become numb to the notion of Team/Ownership loyalty. We've been in the era of free agency for almost 40 YEARS!!! Loyalty in pro sports is as only good as your Jerry McGuire super agent.

and the fact is.....the story was about as typical a story one can have about a player deciding to leave a town.

The story of the trade was just too neat and tidy, and as we find out throughout the doc, Wayne had as many reasons to leave for LA as Pockington had to trade him.....coupled with an opportunistic Kings owner who was willing to spend the prospects and $ to turn The LA Kings into the hottest ticket in town.

(Side note....maybe the funnest part of the documentary was seeing all the early 90's Movie Stars rink-sidem in the locker room and mugging for the camera in true "just there to be seen fashion"....I saw Kevin Costner, John Candy, Tony Dana, Michael J. Fox and if you had REALLY eagle-eyes like me, a young Kate Hudson whooping it up next to her mom Goldie Hawn)

The film shines brightest when we get to re-live Gretzky's tear-filled press conference where he says good-bye to Edmonton (Just after he was given one last chance to nix the deal we're told)

The only other real morsel of tension and angst comes when Gretzky is asked by the director how many championships he won with Kings (answer: zero) and how many mre he thinks he could have won if he stayed in Edmonton (answer: four)

What would I have liked to see?? For starters, how about an angle? was this a series of fortunate or unfortunate events?? I think the "facts, just the facts" approach was a good one in thoery,
especially for a story that had little intrigue. But the objective presentation of the facts don't ever allow you feel personally connected to this landmark moment in Hockey history.

If there were three aspects that i felt were underplayed in the film it was A) the fans and the city of Edmonton B) the cultural impact of Wayne Gretzky coming to america. C) How was it that the Kings were the only team involved in the bidding war

The Bottom Line:

Technically speaking, King's Ransom is a well made documentary, and is everything it promises to be in Comcast's one sentance cable guide description...but its not much more. Cue the music and end the review because there's is very very VERY little else to add about this film's overall story. While Berg manages very capably summarize the Gretzky trade....there aren't nearly enough personal accounts from the fans of Edmonton, nor is there enough attention paid to answering the question: what was the lasting impact of the Gretzky trade? And what would LA and Edmonton be like if the deal never happened??


6.5 Bo Jackson's out of 10

Music=Baseball?

Hey guys,

Matt here. It’s certainly been a while, hasn’t it? ­I have to admit, last month I committed THMP infidelity with my LOST guest blog over at Pop Candy, and just last week I wrote my first post for the all new Boston @ New York blog created by Plushgun’s Dan Ingala. But Alex’s triumphant return to THMP has inspired me to finish a little project I’ve been working on for a while, so here we go!

Sabermetric nerds like me (baseball stat-lovers) will be familiar with the concept of a player’s “peak years.” Although there is some debate as to what the exact peak age is, baseball players tend to have their most productive season between the ages of 26 and 31. Before that they’re still coming into their own, and once the hit their 30’s their skill set begins to decline. Age 27 is often considered a make-or-break time for ballplayers – if they don’t have their “breakout” season by then, it’s probably never gonna happen.

That got me thinking, is the same true for musicians? Do we have “peak” and “breakout” years, and are they the same as in baseball? The answer, for the most part, was a resounding “yes.”

Now, the first thing I had to decide was how to determine a band’s age. And I’ll admit, I took the easy way and just assigned the lead singer’s age to the whole band. I know, I know, it’s not perfect but there was still a lot of work ahead.

I found that, just as in baseball, before modern advances in nutrition and conditioning (steroids and botox?), musicians used to peak earlier than they do now. Consider The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who. If you consider their 5 “peak years” to start at age 24 or 25, you get the following albums: Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, Abbey Road, Let It Be, Their Satanic Majesties Request, Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main Street, Tommy, Who’s Next, and Quadrophenia, among others. Not a bad list! With Led Zeppelin you have to start even younger, when Robert Plant was just 21, but you still get a five year peak that includes Led Zeppelin 1-4 and House of the Holy.

Skipping along to the beginning of the “modern era,” we can use the standard ages 26-31 as our “peak seasons” and the baseball/music parallels become uncanny. U2 and REM came out with The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby, Green, Out Of Time and Automatic For The People during those years (1986-1991).

The grunge/alternative scene fits in pretty well, with Pearl Jam (Ten, Vs., Vitalogy), Soundgarden (Badmotorfinger, Superunknown), Smashing Pumpkins (Siamese Dream, Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness), Radiohead (The Bends, OK Computer), Nine Inch Nails (The Downward Spiral), and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Blood Sugar Sex Magic) all putting out their best work during their age 26-31 years. Other 90’s acts like Dave Matthews Band (Under The Table and Dreaming, Crash, Before These Crowded Streets) and Beck (Odelay, Mutations, Midnight Vultures) fell into the same pattern. Hip hop artists like Dr. Dre (The Chronic), Jay-Z (Reasonable Doubt, In My Lifetime volumes 1-3) and Outkast (Speakerboxxx/The Love Below) also peaked from ages 26-31.

In all my research I found two notable exceptions: bands that had double peaks. First we have Aerosmith, who from the ages of 25-30 put out the albums Aerosmith, Get Your Wings, Toys In The Attic, Rocks, and Draw The Line, then disappeared for close to ten years and came back with a vengeance, at age 39, with Permanent Vacation, Pump and Get A Grip. It’s hard to say which phase was more successful. And we have the strange case of Green Day, who burst onto the scene at age 22 with Dookie, Insomniac and Nimrod, then spent their “peak” ages of 26-31 putting out the lone dud Warning, before returning at age 32 with their most successful album to date, American Idiot.

It’s also of course worth mentioning that the age of 27 has a special meaning in rock music, because it’s the age where everyone dies. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and countless others, have had their careers (and lives) cut short at just 27 years old. It’s impossible to say what the next four years would’ve held for these artists, but if their peers are any indication, they could’ve been just at the beginning of their greatest creative period.

So where does that leave us? Chris Martin from Coldplay turned 31 last year, but Kings of Leon and MGMT are just beginning their 26-31 years, and hopefully they’ll follow the trends of their predecessors…

ESPN's 30 for 30: Popkin Reviews 'Em All!!!

Hello friends, been a while, but i'm performing some lyrical mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on The Honest Male Perspective......temporarily of course......but resuscitating it nonetheless!!

Your wondering what in good name of Yorvit Torrealba is bringing me back? ESPN's upcoming year-long series: "30 for 30."

...Allow me to expand.....

.....On the surface, "30 for 30" sounds like another familiar ESPN premise: Start with a catchy name, wrap it in "countdown" style format, add flashy graphics package, add 1 part Stuart Scott and mix. And VOILA! The sports-loving nation is served.

Too many times stunts like "Who's Now" or "Mount Rushmore of Sports" feel like forced, spoon-fed territory (the latter) or come off as a weak idea--who's today's biggest sports star?-- that end up doubling as cross-promotional tools for the movie "I now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry." (the former)

Both instances seemed fairly forced, very unnatural and thus uncool....its on the same scale of phony awkwardness of A-Rod's public image or when i try to pet a Dog....in the end all three try to come off like they know what they are doing, but its painfully obvious how unnatural the whole thing really is.

So why will 30 for 30 be any different? Well for starters, read the website's description and check the video clip:



"Inspired by ESPN’s anniversary, ESPN Films’ 30 for 30 is an unprecedented documentary series featuring thirty films from some of today’s finest storytellers. Each filmmaker will bring their passion and personal point of view to their film detailing the issues, trends, athletes, teams, rivalries, games and events that transformed the sports landscape from 1979 to 2009."

These aren't canned, formulaic "Behind The Music" style documentaries that all have the same narrartor......these are 30 Individual sports stories.....told in 30 different ways....by directors who pitched stories to ESPN based on their personal ties, or interest in the subject matter!!

Its unbelieveable to even comprehend......The "doused in disney"corporate check writers ESPN for once took the "hands off" approach, trusted filmmakers to do what they wanted to do.

You just never see the keys to car handed off for projects of this size......EVER....for this reason ESPN should be applauded.

And my excitement as a sports and film fan is absolutely genuine....this isn't some grassroots viral publicity campaign....its just that after working at ESPN and being a part of some of the behind-the-scenes stuff here for 4 years, it isn't as often that I get THIS excited about something we put out there!

and thats exactly why THMP is back with thunderous swagger!!

So here's my plan friends: watch every 30 for 30 film over the year.....and review it for you Siskel and Ebert style...if its a can't miss you'll know, and if it blew warm chunks of clam chowder i'll tell you so......then at the end of the series, i'll rank them ALL one-to-thirty.......sounds simple enough....so lets do this....

First up tonight at 8PM: King's Ransom by Peter Berg

Walken Is the King of SNL

Yes he reads directly from a card, but goddammit is he funny. Watch and enjoy.

"Yo, don't dudley my scoot!"

Scott i'm upset that your streak of "post titles featuring ejaculatory slang" ended at a paltry two. In other news, "The Honest Male Perspective" celebrated its 100th posting! With a whimper, mind you.

Between you and me dear reader, Scott, Doug and I have been secretly hoarding the funny. Thats right, for about 1 month the three of us have been using Google Reader to share the most john-blazin internet articles/clips with each other....

i know its not fair to deprave you funny clips. but lets face it. you are the middle man in this info-sharing orgy.

The REAL reason i'm posting isn't because baseball season is coming or because the Celtics are doing exactly what I predicted they'd do in this very space on October 30th. Its because I got bored on the internets again started inputting my name in various search engines....this week: URBAN DICTIONARY!

I foudn this idea is even MORE novel and cheeky than my last novel and cheeky idea of "Youtubing" myself! I found it eminently fascinating to know if my own name was being used as part of some secret (most likely urban?) amongst the social networks....am I a verb? am I noun? I was very happy with my findings...

the first definition was kinda stupid and confusing....

POPKIN:

n. 1.) A sandwhich in the 'High Speech', from Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

2.) A word Loran often calls Austin, means he is cute and sexy.

ex.} "i miss you, popkin"

See what I mean? i decree that anything/anyone that references Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series be beaten with the "nerd" shovel and have their pocket protectors and scotch-taped specticles publicly ridiculed.

definition 2 yielded much more....

POPKIN:

1)	when a man gets head while eating a frozen treat (ex. ice cream)

ex.} " Man its so hot, I could use a popkin."


Kids, this is why we write blogs. Discoveries like that and their effect upon sharing them with the world. I mean honestly, now i can finally express myself. We've all yearned for frozen treats and we've yearned for oral treats. Now know what you get when we splice them together. You get Popkin.

Popkins are satisfying. Popkins are messy. A good Popkin is hard to find? I could do this all day....but I wont. We have one more urban interpretation of the name POPKIN!

POPKIN:

Old southern term for sandwich. ex.} "Bob please make me a peanut butter and jelly popkin"

Think about THAT next time you're at Quiznos in Mobile, Alabama. This is good stuff folks.
What happens when you go down south and ask for a sub?? you will get laughed out of the diner and will go home hungry.


Before I bounce, I searched the names of the other THMP writers: here are my favorites

	DUDLEY
	1) To make a really big mess of something. 2) A really big mess. ex.{ "Yo, don't dudley my scoot!" "What a piece of dudley..."

BARKER

(1.) noun: A very unattractive woman. From dog, an animal which barks.

ex{ "That girl is a serious barker"

WARNER

Person who pretends to be a 'Goth' or 'Sweaty' 24/7m but removes all the metalgear and make-up when in the presence of Mom & Pop prior to going out for an evening meal. Named after Brian Warner a.k.a. Marilyn Manson, who looks TOTALLY DIFFERENT without make-up and contact lenses! ex.{ "Did you see Jim the other day in the library? I couldn't believe it - the guy's a REAL Warner!"

MOSES (definition 1)

An extremely cool, but difficult way to take a shit.

A moses is when you are freeing the "Egyptians" ... but just before they leave their "prison" you need to flush the toilet. This symbolises the parting of the seas. It is only a true MOSES if they hit a dry toilet bowl, and are then taken away to safety by the returning seas.

Your friends may claim to have pulled a perfect moses, but if there is any scepticism you can always tell by the larger than normal skid mark left on the bottom of the bowl.

This is an extremely difficult move to pull... your timing is critical!

ex.{ "WOW!! Look at that skid-mark, that was definately a legend that dropped that MOSES!! " "WOOOOO!HOOOOO! I just landed my first true-MOSES! A picture of that shits definately going on the net!!"

MOSES (definition 2)

a guy who will or had sex with a girl when she has her period,
part the red sea right?

ex. {"Betty: I got some last night. Jane: I thought you had your period? Betty: Yes, but John is freaking moses."

"WHY ARE THESE MINES EVEN HERE!?!"