Rich Baiocco

NHL starts up again on Saturday night! This lockout was brutal. Nobody really cares about hockey except those that do, and to us it’s essential. If you know what I mean, then you’re excited as hell this weekend. 

Cult sport.

Played as a kid. Played growing up. Played in college. Played men’s league, pick-up leagues, street hockey games, basement games, pond hockey games, frozen lake fuckarounds, worked at ice rinks, given skating lessons on both coasts. Have family that works at ice rinks. Have family that gives skating lessons. Had family members dependent on the lockout ending for financial survival.  We’re deep in this sport like cockroaches, generations of fans putting in time and dues for joy. Pure joy, like first snow, like sledding. Every night of hockey is sledding through first snow of the year. Nothing quite like it.

I don’t know anyone in my family who likes poetry. I don’t know anyone in my family who has ever tried to write a novel.  I definitely do not know anyone who is into zines or DIY publishing. And I don’t mind being different. Shine out and lonely too sometimes. But damn it feels good to get momentum going on something your whole family gets behind. No need to wrangle everyone around the tv, or force conversation because everyone’s watching, everyone’s talking. Because everyone’s in love.

Belief. Touch and we all ride, Touch and we all ride.

We took my girlfriend’s dad ice skating on one of the lakes up in Minnesota. I grew up on the northeast playing hockey. There are boards. You bump into things. The most important thing is cramming a piece of frozen vulcanized rubber into a goal, or keeping it out. I love it, no doubt it’s in my blood, but there’s nothing like skating out on a frozen lake. Sun setting,light playful, a baker’s delicate master touch of snow dusting the glassy black surface and endless glide…

~rjb

So I’m a huge New York Rangers fan.  Hockey.  Like, it’s my life blood. I run this Rangers website. They’re as strong and benevolent a force in my life as music and poetry and I can’t even qualify to you how appreciative towards music and poetry I am except to say a good song—even a good lyric—, an illumined moment that some exceptional soul found the words for, heard or read when you really need it, can without a doubt make your life come alive, be the only one who understands during dark times, pull you out of a depression and/or rocket you into love, or at the very least, decency.  I’ve been saved a million times by the bright waters of others’ songs and writing and I look at Rangers hockey like a perpetual river I can walk beside for the entire season.  (in the summer there is baseball, The Yankees, and actual rivers to walk beside)

Why would some greedy corporate swines want to dam up that river?  

For the last month Time Warner Cable has been in a contract dispute with MSG Network and since both sides are evil soulless pigs they’ve decided to pull MSG Network (and all Ranger games) from television so as to create leverage in this ridiculous money war.  Both sides are disgusting bastards.

In my area there are no other cable providers, my building manager won’t let us get a satellite dish, and I don’t have enough money to go to bars every game so instead I just listen to the games on radio or stand outside bar windows peeking in while people eat nachos and point and laugh at me.  Pretty fun.

I wrote this open letter  because a lot of people are getting screwed out there.  But I don’t think it’s enough.  That’s why I need your help:

I need a hex on these corporate fascists.  I know there are some goth kids out there on tumblr—I’ve read your poetry.  Some voodoo children, some black magik practitioners, some witches, some satanists, some conjurers.  Can you please place a hex on these motherfuckers?  They don’t care about us, they don’t care about anything except shoving as much green into their pockets as possible and humiliating hard working folks in the process.  I’m sticking pins in dolls over here, and am just tired of getting screwed around by The Man and having no voice and did I mention that the Rangers are in 1st place and having their best season in over a DECADE!  

Hex doesn’t have to be the apocalypse, but just something to let them know they’re not as strong and omnipotent as they think they are: blood leaking through cracks in the ceiling, bed posts go up in flames as they sleep, cut finger every time they slice a piece of cheese, credit cards all become demagnetized, all their cocaine and viagra ceases to work and winds up like BBs in their lungs making it difficult, if not impossible to breathe, get high, or have sex.  Things like that. 

Anyways, if you’re good with hexes and can help out to the cause I know all Ranger fans in NYC would be eternally grateful.  

Thanks,

~rjb