This is one of the most terrifying stories I’ve seen in a long, long time.

There’s a craze sweeping the country. Grown men are becoming obsessed with little toy ponies and a show called “My Little Pony.”

That’s right. While (you would hope) most men will be talking about the NFL draft, the Stanley Cup playoffs and maybe even the presidential election, there’s a growing group of men out there who are fascinated by an animated show intended for pre-school girls.

And, of course, the author of the story and the creator of the show think that this is a sign that men are evolving. In a good way.

“This might be a little short-sighted on my part, but I just assumed that any adult man who didn’t have a little girl wouldn’t even give it a try,” Faust said in a phone interview. “The fact that they did and that they were open-minded and cool enough and secure in their masculinity enough to embrace it and love it and go online and talk about how much they love it — I’m kind of proud.”

Faust brings up a good point. Aside from a few brony-haters, blessedly very little (negative) hay seems to get made over dudes liking something that’s “supposed to be for girls” (like, for example, the way girls would be side-eyed for liking Transformers in years past).

Despite a tacit understanding that some people might be surprised by their choice of entertainment, most bronies show little to no compunction about their fandom. They shouldn’t have to. And, intentionally or not, they might be bucking the gender socialization of things considered to be “for girls” or “for boys.”

The feminization of America continues.

There was a time when grown men playing with toys made for little girls would have a net thrown over them and be taken away to a really nice place with lots of really nice men in white coats.

Not to be judgmental.

Here’s NHL.com’s Alan Robinson on the Penguins postmortem press conference today.

He’ll be my guest Wednesday at 1.00 on TribLive Radio.

http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=629520

One of the major global warming alarmists is re-thinking his position.

Ever notice the response when a  Steeler or  a Penguin lays out an opposing player?

Fans love it.

Despite all the talk about concussions and life changing injuries, fans are still watching the games.

Maybe that’s because, even if some of us won’t admit it, we like violence.

John Allemang of the Toronto Globe and Mail pointed out in a column that, despite all the violence and all the suspensions handed out during the first round of the NHL playoffs –ratings are way up.

(He’ll be a guest on my talk show today at 1:30 on TribLive Radio.)

 

Enlarge this image

JOHN ALLEMANG

Sports violence is within us all

It’s a truth that’s impossible to deny as the bodies are carried off the NHL’s battlegrounds: Violence may be denounced and disallowed in the rest of our lives, but in hockey it remains a primal pleasure.

Fans love the thundering hit, especially in the playoffs when the stakes are raised, the referees back off, and the emotional level of a high-energy game is constantly on the boil. TV ratings are up by 50 per cent on TSN and NBC, and it’s hard not to see a connection with the bad-tempered side of the grinding Stanley Cup quest that has even the recently concussed SidneyCrosby throwing punches and trading insults.

 

 

PODCAST

A wild weekend in the NHL

“That’s really playoff hockey, isn’t it,” Philadelphia Flyers coach Peter Laviolette said after Crosby took on Philadelphia’s star player, Claude Giroux.

Cross-checks to the throat, heads crushed into the glass, punches traded by guys who are usually content to let lesser teammates play the goon role: This is all part of the heightened emotion and physical drama that the NHL promises fans and advertisers in the postseason.

“It’s adrenalin,” said Brian Burke, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ general manager famous as a proponent of on-ice belligerence, truculence and intimidation. In the heat of the moment, players can’t help themselves, or so the argument goes, and hockey fans are the beneficiaries: We watch with fascination to see what kind of carnage comes next.

Then a Marian Hossa is laid out flat by a professional NHL headhunter, and the blood lust takes a brief pause. Maybe the sight of highly paid gladiators savaging each other isn’t such a pure pleasure after all?

Introspection about violence in contact sports is a fleeting thing, and not just because the games would disappear if we took away the basic element of aggression. The larger issue sports fanatics are trying to evade is this: Who knows what we’d learn about ourselves by confronting the fact that other people’s suffering makes us happy?

“Moral outrage about sports violence comes and goes in fits and starts,” said Kevin Young, professor of sociology at the University of Calgary.

“We like to think we’re living in a society where violence is increasingly an anathema. So it might seem inconsistent with where we’re headed in a civilized culture for us to pay athletes to hurt other people and knock them out of the game. But that kind of reaction is just naive: This is what conventional, orthodox North American sport has always been about.”

Make that two (maybe three) wasted years in a row for the Penguins.

Last season was wasted because of injuries and a first round knockout.

This season was wasted because, by the time the playoffs arrived, the team was as healthy as it had been in two years and it still fell flat in the first round.

Hockey players are in their prime in their late 20s.

The Penguins stars are a couple of years away from that and they have “only” one Stanley Cup to show for it.

This isn’t the way it was supposed to work. This group was –at the very least– expected to contend for Stanley Cups –plural.

They didn’t contend two years ago. They didn’t contend last season and they didn’t contend this season.

It may be a little early to blow this group up but it’s definitely not too early to do some serious tweaking.

Ray Shero has a lot of work to do this summer. He has contracts and the salary cap to deal with and he has to decide what this team needs to do to become a better playoff team.

Nobody is going to care if the Penguins win the President’s Trophy next year.

So, whatever Shero does or doesn’t do between now and training camp in September won’t be able to be judged until next May.

It may be too early to call for the firing of Dan Bylsma and his staff but I think he would be the first to admit that his honeymoon ended at about 3:30 on Sunday.

As I used to say in a former life….Watch This.

Discuss.