Meet the Blogger – Romulus’ Apotheosis

I have had difficulty coming up with the words to properly honour our friend Rom. I wanted to do it in a style that would resonate with his own… A very difficult task for this layman.

With that said I present to you Meet the Blogger – Romulus’ Apotheosis.

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyhU2mVyFAk?rel=0]

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Rom is our blogging enigma. We don’t know his real name, we don’t know what he does for a living and we have no clue what his background is. What we do know is that he enjoys jazz, films (of the festival, foreign or B&W variety), the Oilers and indoor gardening. He is our mystery man.

Romulus was a successful military leader of the Romans, and its first king. Plutarch says he antagonized the senators so much that when he mysteriously died on the Nones of July, they fell under suspicion. One popular theory to explain the fact that Romulus didn’t just die, but disappeared, during an apparent eclipse or storm,

Romulus was a warrior king and elevated to the status of a god. The Rom we have gotten to know since he began writing for the Rig does in no way conduct himself as a king or god. He’s wicked smart and a very quick wit, but he has been an engaging and thoughtful ally and friend. The blogging Rom is another story.

In his writing, as is constantly made evident, Rom falls into the leader category and carries his namesake. He takes on complex topics, builds original ideas around those topics and then presents them in a way that only an original thinker can. To this point I haven’t seen a writer construct his own blog narratives around philosophical theories and ancient, historical references like he does. In the short time that he has been blogging he has made quite the reputation for himself through thought-provoking pieces like the changing landscape of hockey coverage or through essential draft reading. People have taken notice… He is one of a kind.

As a display of his uniqueness, here’s a quote from one of his most recent pieces where he displays his wicked smartness with aplomb…

It is an unfortunate accident of history that cynicism is today hitched to the wagon of the grave. In the life of Antithenes, or more famously that of Diogenes of Sinope, the cynical way of life entailed a radical rejection of human authority, customs, values, etc., in the course of pursing a life lived according to nature. The freedom from societal norms enjoyed by the cynics gave them a unique outsider perspective on social institutions and customs. From this vantage point, the cynics used what Diogenes referred to as the “most beautiful thing in the world,” παρρησία [parrhēsia], freedom of speech, to point out the contingent, capricious and absurd nature of human life and morality.

His prose is fluid and full of complex components. Though not for the faint of heart blog reader, the stories he tells unfold with precise expression. You’re never left wondering what his point was or why he asked the question he did as he is incredibly thorough, making certain that his position is stated and defended properly. Whether it’s dissecting puck possession and the effect of enforcers, emotional turns for hated rivals or deeper looks into IPP, you are bound to regularly read something that boggles and/or excites your mind. He walks and talks lock and step with the giants of the hockey blogging world and is a constant must read.

We are lucky to have him as a part of our team. When the point in time does arrive, the one that moves him on to bigger and better things (a blogging apotheosis?), we will wish him nothing but the best… but hope he doesn’t forget us mere mortals;)

Without further adieu, Rom.

1. When did you start writing about hockey? What got you into it?

Recently? Yea. Let’s go with that. Sometime in the past year. Who knows. I gather I spent some time on blogs interacting with people and trying out ideas. Mostly at Lowetide’s place. It didn’t really occur to me to start writing about hockey more seriously. It’s not like I harbored fantasies about being a sportswriter or anything. It just happened (writing about sports that is, which is not to be confused with taking myself for a sportswriter). I had written a few fan posts over at www.coppernblue.com in the past, just noodling about you understand. And, then this winter, a couple of things happened: I joined twitter and found myself (through some combination of boredom, available time and interest) writing semi-regular fan-posts at CnB again.

From there, the Rig Kids invited me to take on a proper writing position here. To be honest, it wasn’t something I jumped at immediately. There’s a certain reticence I imagine most hockey folks feel when considering the jump from making comments on a blog or twitter to formally writing about hockey in some capacity. A lot of it is time related. The online hockey community is a treasure to a lot people, myself included. So, you want to give them something worthwhile to chew on. That means spending a lot of your free time to try to get things right, or at least interesting.

Related to that is what you might call an “impostor complex,” where you really question whether you have something to offer that is original and interesting. I’m sure a lot of people second guess their efforts and wonder whether they are making a useful contribution to the conversations they care about.

At any rate, that jumble of concerns can certainly give one pause when considering whether to take up writing in some more serious capacity. What put me over the edge was really just a meeting of opportunity and interest.

2. Are there any writers that you look up to? If so, who are they and why?

This summer I read Peter Gzowski’s The Game of Our Lives (I’ve written about this a couple of times, most notably concerning Justin Schultz and Paul Coffey). One of the things that struck me while reading Gzowski’s book is how impoverished our storytelling skills are (by comparison). I find it somewhat confounding that a sub-theme on the power and value of storytelling hasn’t arisen out of the on-going blogger/analytics vs. MSM/narratives imbroglio. It also strikes me as some kind of cosmic joke that some of the most vociferous voices in the anti-analytics camp can’t seem to write a half-way compelling narrative.

My favorite storytellers currently working are Bruce Arthur, Pat McLean, and Allan Mitchell. They are all smart, have strong memories and know how to convey affects.

As someone who enjoys a good bit of analysis, to the extent that I can understand it, I read widely. But, if there’s one stop that I make everyday, if not every second hour, it’s Lowetide. Everything he writes is fantastic. He’s really mastered the ability to convey complex information in an accessible and historically interesting way. And, the group of regular commentators he’s gathered over the years is exceptional.

3. If you could give any advice to people interested in getting into writing about sports…what would it be?

Read voraciously. Talk to everyone. Hyperlink.

I think these are the three messages I would give people.

In order to write about anything in a remotely interesting way, you have to read a lot first. You need to get a sense of the questions people are asking and the analysis they are doing. This is will grant you, especially in the analytics community, an informed position from which to engage others.

From my experience, the community of hockey folks online is extraordinarily generous with their time to those who have a question or want to raise a challenge to something. You can learn a lot from these interactions and I would encourage the shy to buck up and engage others, spitball ideas and use the online community as a place to hone your thinking.

I think it is really important to bring the sense of community into your writing. The experience of engaging others online about hockey, especially in the analytics community, means that one is rarely operating in a vacuum. Be sure to continue your engagement with the community-at-large in your writing and acknowledge the work of others. Link to them. Sitting down to write something is just a different way of having a conversation and it is better for everyone when ideas are engaged and shared in as public a way as possible.

4. Do you specialize in types of writing (analytical, post/pre game blogs, prospects, opinion pieces…all of the above)?

I’m not sure I have a specialty. I enjoy teasing out bits of curiosity that spike my interest. Sometimes that means I’m marveling at the zone-starts of the LA Kings, and my writing is more analytical, but sometimes it simply means enjoying Brian Burke’s obvious glee at a harmless Jake Virtanen fib.

My speciality is really just following whatever happens to snag my interest on any given day.

5. Do you have a favorite article that you’ve written or one that got a lot of positive feedback or criticism? Tell me a bit about it.

My favorite pieces weren’t very popular. They were basically think pieces about a couple of things I’d be stewing on for a few years. My first piece published by the Rig was about democratization and the state of hockey in the social media age. I really like that piece. I also really like this piece I wrote about enforcers as mascots.

6. What sites do you currently write for? Favorite team(s)?

I write for you, silly. The Oilers, of course. As a kid I loved the Lakers, largely because of Kareem, Magic and Chevy Chase in Fletch.

7. Where can we find you on social media? Twitter/Facebook etc

This is the best place to reach me: @RomulusNotNuma. You can also email me at [email protected]

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Thanks for reading. Check out some more meet the blogger posts here.