The Fast and the Furious

These are the series of import street racer films featuring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker.  You can count of lots of modified cars – imports and muscle cars – some decent babage (mainly Michelle Rodriguez and Eva Mendes), street racing (no one has heard of drag strips), idiotic bro-mance dialogue, criminal hijinks, and finally some good scenery.

 Import Tuners 101.  The first Indy 500 was in 1911.  In the 1920s and 30s, bootleggers were souping up Model Ts, and later Ford V8s, to evade Federal liquor agents, a cat-and-mouse affair which developed into NASCAR.  In 1948, Hot Rod magazine was launched and NHRA established.  In 1964, Pontiac introduced the GTO, and soon thereafter Ford brought out the Mustang.  Despite this, the import tuner scene which started in California in the 1990s acts as though they invented this whole concept of modifying cars.

            Historically, the preferred vehicles for performance modification were the Model T, the Ford V8, the ’55-57 Chevy, the Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro, Pontiac Firebird, the GM A-bodies and from Mopar, the Charger, Challenger, Barracuda, and Road Runner/GTX.  Even AMC made the Javelin.  These were rear wheel drive, V8 cars made in America, designed from the ground up for performance.  The “hot rodder” concept was simply to take the largest displacement V8s which would usually only be available in the largest, full-size models, and stuff them in mid-size (or smaller) cars – the largest engine stuffed in the smallest car it would fit in.  The GTO was the perfect example: the 389 V8 under the hood of the Tempest/Lemans.

            In the 90s, someone discovered that Honda Civics and Acura Integras, plus a whole host of other Japanese cars, could also be modified.  These were cars with 4 cylinder engines, designed for maximum reliability and fuel economy with zero thought of performance.  Since these cars are giving up 4 cylinders to muscle cars, they are prohibitively expensive to modify for actual performance, i.e. nitrous oxide, superchargers or turbochargers, at least to bring them to the level where muscle cars start out, much less exceed the performance of any muscle car with similar modifications.  Not only can V8s be modified this way, they have been modified this way for ages (see above), and with twice the cylinders and 3-4 times the displacement (e.g. 6.0L V8 in 2005-06 GTO, three times as large as a 2.0L I4 but with only twice as many cylinders), they respond far better to these modifications than the 4 cylinder sewing machines do.

            Naturally, most import tuners can’t afford the $$$ for nitrous, turbo, etc., so they focused on such substantial mods as heavily tinted windows, triple blade windshield wipers, overpowered stereos with way too much bass, super low suspension, spoilers which looked like bizarre wings, tons of stripes and decals (e.g. “Type R” badges put on non-white Acura Integras), and coffee can mufflers.  If we can’t actually be fast, let’s at least LOOK like it may be fast….when it’s not.  Eventually, this scene earned recognition in a series of movies.  To be fair, American muscle does get a heavy dose of attention and respect, so I can’t complain 2 much.

 The Fast and the Furious (First).  Main location: Los Angeles.  Dominic Torreto (Vin Diesel) & Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker) are the two main characters.  DT is a colorful and bad-ass, but somehow likeable and sympathetic, criminal who always has some sort of “operation” planned.   O’Connor is an LAPD officer who goes deep (deep deep) undercover to infiltrate DT’s gang and bring him down.  Almost all of the cars are implausibly modified imports, for which the usual “mod” is a surplus of nitrous oxide, ubiquitously referred as “Nozzzz” (NOS being the most popular aftermarket supplier).  Although drag strips have been in L.A. since the late 40s – NHRA being specifically established to get drag racing off the streets and onto the strips – all the racing is on the street, with cops and other drivers conveniently absent.  O’Connor manages to convince DT – but none of his henchmen – that he’s not a cop.  Of course he is.  The import tuner crowd is obnoxious, the races implausibly computer generated, and the dialogue is mostly macho bullshit.   Jordana Brewster plays Dom’s younger sister Mia, who O’Connor falls for, and Michelle Rodriguez is Letty, Dom’s girlfriend.

 2 Fast 2 Furious.  Main location: Miami.  O’Connor returns, but Dominic is MIA; Roman “Rome” Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) replaces him as the “crime partner”.  Two classic American muscle cars surface: a 1969 Yenko Camaro (427 equipped), and a Dodge Hemi Challenger R/T – after beating the owners of the two muscle cars in a pink slips race, the muscle winds up being the ride for the remainder of the film.  Eva Mendes provides the appropriate eye candy as undercover (!) Federal agent Monica Fuentes pretending to be the bad guy’s lover.  It’s Miami, so the bad guy, Verone, is a drug dealer.  O’Connor is offered the job of bringing him in, to wipe out his no-no (letting Dom go loose at the end of the first movie). 

 #3.  Tokyo Drift.  Main location: Tokyo, Japan.  O’Connor is absent, Dom has a minor cameo at the end.  The film is essentially Sean (Lucas Black) as a white guy in an Asian world – he miraculously learns Japanese almost immediately and goes to school amidst the Sailor Moon crowd, aside from Twinkie (Bow Wow) a cool black dude who acts as his guide to Japanese culture.  He bumps ugly with Drift King, the nephew of a yakuza warlord; DK’s partner Han teaches him how to “drift” in various ugly import tuner cars.  Finally Sean beats DK in a drift race at night driving his father’s 60s Mustang which had been (again) improbably modified with a Japanese engine and other parts for drifting.

 Fast & Furious #4.  Main location: California-Mexican border.  Dominic and O’Connor meet again.  They’re out to take down a Mexican drug lord named Braga, and have to drive through a mine tunnel under the border not once, but twice – a scene which ends up looking like Lando Calrissian’s escape from the 2^nd Death Star in the Milennium Falcon in “Return of the Jedi”.  Dominic’s Chevelle and Charger both feature here, plus O’Connor’s annoying rice rockets (Dominic to O’Connor: “Muscle beats imports…every time”).  Braga’s #2 man, Fenix, drives a nasty green Gran Torino – and was responsible for killing Letty, so there is a personal element to Dom’s beef with Braga.

 #5.  Fast Five, Main location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  The gang escapes down to Rio – with Agent Rock (Dwayne Johnson) hot on their tail.  The finale looks like it winds up on the Rio-Niteroi bridge.  After some drama and excitement – theft of various cars from a train the desert, which looks like far Northeast Brazil – the gang decides to rob $100 million from corrupt Brazilian businessman Reyes, who looks a lot like Dunga, the last coach of the Brazilian national soccer team.  Remarkably, they persuade Federal agent Hobbs (Rock) to assist in the theft.   “Rome” returns to the gang for this episode. 

            Here we have more shooting than driving, and excellent scenery (Cristo Redentor and the beaches of Rio, plus some favela footage) than street racing – for which the main cars are late model Dodge Chargers.  To my knowledge, Rio has no street racing scene; gas has always been expensive, VW is the GM of Brazil, and none of the usual US muscle was ever imported to Brazil.  But Rio does have beautiful beaches and favelas full of ruthless drug dealers, so the crime and beauty element of the series could effectively be showcased in this movie.

 #6?  If the ending credits of #5 are any indication, there is an excellent chance that #6 will take place in Berlin, Germany.  None of the previous movies take place in Europe, and Han is seen driving to Berlin at the end of FF5.  “Sprockets!”

Iran-Iraq War

More obscure wars, but this one is a bit more recent – within the lifetime of anyone likely to read my blogs.  Yet again I take inspiration from Osprey, this time its Essential Histories volume entitled The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988 by Efraim Karsh.

 Background.  Up until the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, Iran and Iraq had an uneasy peace; they were rivals but neither attempted to invade the other, and they had understandings (e.g. the 1975 Algiers Agreement) about what would otherwise be contested territory to the south.   In particular, Iraq’s Shatt-al-Arab waterway was its sole access to the Persian Gulf.  Iraq was also nervous about Iranian support for a growing Kurdish insurgency, especially since much of Iraq’s oil producing areas were in the Kurdish part of the country. 

 February 1979.  Islamic hotheads took power in Iran – and took hostages from the US Embassy, which pissed us off and embarrassed Carter, doing much to ensure Reagan’s election in November 1980.  In July 1979, Saddam Hussein took power in Iraq.  Things started getting ugly, and both sides decided they really didn’t like each other.

 September 23, 1980.  Iraq invaded Iran and captured (from north to south along the border) Qasr-e-Shirin, Mehran, Musian, Susangerd, Khorramshahr, Aabadan, and Fao – and took full control of the Shatt-al-Arab.  All this territory was right across the border and less than 100 miles into Iran.  In December, Saddam Hussein announced that he would not advance further but simply keep the modest territory gained.  

 Late 1981, early 1982.  Iranian offensives drove Iraqi forces off Iranian soil, liberating Bostan, Susangerd, and Korramshahr, and invaded Iraq.  Iran now had the upper hand. 

 From 1983-86 Iran pursued several more offensives which captured modest amounts of Iraqi territory in the north (east of Kirkuk), center (west of Mehran), and south (near Basra).  In 1985 Operation Badr succeeded at capturing part of the Baghdad-Basra highway.  As with Saddam’s earlier achievements, Iran’s incursion into Iraqi territory was modest.

 1988. Iraqi forces, now better supplied, drove Iranians from Iraqi territory.  August – ceasefire.

 Supplies.  Iran inherited the Shah’s military, which had been US-supplied.  Ironically, the Israelis (!!!) helped keep them stocked in spare parts (e.g. F-16 tires), part of which was the Iran-Contra deal.  The Israelis considered Saddam Hussein to be the bigger threat than Iran and were happy to help the Iranians kill off Iraqis.  They even went so far as to bomb an Iraqi nuclear reactor in June 1981.  Libya, Syria, North Korea, China, Taiwan (they agreed on one thing!), Argentina, South Africa, Pakistan, and even Switzerland supplied Iran.

            For its part, Iraq was mainly supplied with Warsaw Pact equipment.  While the USSR had initially imposed an arms embargo on Iraq, after the Iranians started winning they changed their minds and opened the spigot:  200 T-55 and T-72 tanks, and SA-6 surface-to-air missiles, followed by T-72 tanks, Scud missiles (remember those?) and MiG-21, -23, and -29 fighters.  The French also supplied Saddam heavily with its own arsenal of weapons – on credit, up to $5 billion by 1986; little wonder the French had a vested interest in seeing Saddam remain in power in 2003.  Egypt, Spain, Italy, Britain, and Brazil also supplied Iraq with weapons. 

            Of course, few forget the US’ support for Saddam at this time, though this took the form of agricultural credits.  For the US, the memories of the Iran hostage situation were firm in our memory, and while no one really liked Saddam, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, so our hatred for the Iranians fueled our support for Saddam.

 Pasdaran.  This was Iran’s paramilitary militia, mostly infantry with very little heavy weapons support and little or no armor.  Iran subscribed to the “human wave of crazy fanatics” school of warfare which Iraq countered with the “Russian tanks and chemical weapons” school of warfare.  Of the two, the latter proved to be much more effective in the long run.  Iran’s military successes seemed to depend on the extent to which it relied on the Pasdaran or conventional armies to get its point across, generally more successful with the latter than the former.

 Chemical Weapons.  The Iraqis earned the dubious distinction of being the most prominent and infamous (though not exclusive) power to use poison gas since…World War I.  Mustard gas and nerve gases were used against Iranians and Kurds, both groups which were ill-prepared to resist chemical attacks.

 War of the Cities.  Each side had air forces and a civilian population highly vulnerable to air attack.  Baghdad and Tehran both suffered heavily in the war.  Each side was also heavily dependent on oil revenue (“it’s the oil, stupid”) and targeted each other’s facilities as a means of inflicting economic damage on each other.

 Persepolis.  This is the only movie I’ve seen which addresses this war.  It’s an animated film about a young Iranian girl, Marjane Satrap, who grew up in Iran during the war.  She likes Iron Maiden and prefers Western culture, spent time in Europe during part of the war, but was back in Iran during some of the air raids on Tehran.  She was not a big fan of the theocracy; the movie also describes some of the fanaticism which occurred in Iran.

Class Warfare

Many politically astute people in this country, particularly on the Left side of the spectrum, consistently wonder why the American working class (proletariat) tends to vote “against its class interests”.  Marxists would argue that these people lack “class consciousness” or are manipulated by fear, nationalism, religion, and other non-economic factors which blind them to the economic exploitation they so surely suffer.

 The assumption here is that the Republicans invariably represent the interests of Big Business and never the working class.  Then who DOES represent the interests of the working class?  The Democrats?  Not so fast.  They certainly claim to, consistently, but aside from a few like Paul Wellstone, most Democratic politicians simply want to get elected.  As an ardent capitalist, I certainly don’t agree that the Republicans support capitalism per se, so much as certain portions of the bourgeois who may be at best indifferent to, or at worst actually hostile to, capitalism, as much so as Michael Moore or Ralph Nader.  But for the purpose of this analysis, I’ll assume that the American worker’s best hope for salvation comes from the Democratic Party, and not any obscure socialist parties whose existence is practically unknown to most workers even if these parties may be sincerely devoted to the working man’s interest at a level the Democrats would never even imagine.   Why don’t all workers support the Democrats?

 1. Class consciousness.  The American proletariat does in fact realize that it is working class, even if doesn’t use the word “proletariat”.  It’s not like they think they own the means of production or control the economy.  But what the ivory tower types don’t seem to understand is that American workers see this as a temporary status and not some sort of permanent, hereditary caste like in India.  Sure, we have McJobs now and don’t like it;  today we’re grunts at Initrode, or waitresses at Chotchke’s.  But tomorrow?  Who knows.  Maybe a drunk driver in a truck will hit us and we’ll be able to get our “jump to conclusions mat” business off the ground.  Or we’ll get a better job at a better company and rise to the top, or start our own business and build it up and become “owners of the means of production” ourselves.  We refuse to accept “working class” as our fate, our destiny, our life.   Maybe Donald Trump is a big, pompous arrogant asshole, but we all share a common desire to BE HIM.  And for that reason we don’t want to ban Trump.

 2.  Fear and Nationalism.  Let’s look at this for a moment.  What I’ve seen of Democrats are candidates who (A) care about power more than anything else, (B) hardly distinguish themselves from Republicans 70% of the time, (C) rarely produce anything of value for the working man anyway even when they are in power, and (D) tend to scurry under the refridgerator when bad guys bump ugly with us, making all sorts of John Kerry-esque obtuse obfuscations, equivocations, rationalizations, and justifications, which ultimately simply sound like, “here’s cowardice hiding behind a cloak of moral and intellectual superiority”.  To Joe Sixpack, the Democrats don’t seem like their buddies, their allies, their champions in Congreff.  They simply appear to be wusses.

 The Republicans vary on this; I think of McCain as being the strongest “defense” candidate, more so than GWB.  And Bush II sometimes comes off as an idiot, though I don’t agree that he actually is.  Reagan was undeniably the benchmark for late 20^th century American nationalism.  Any US president or candidate is necessarily going to have to measure against him when it comes to appearing strong on defense or national interests on the global scale.  Like it or not, he gets credit for defeating the USSR and “WINNING!” the Cold War without a hot war.  And he faced down Qad-Daffy in 1986.  Clinton didn’t come close, neither does Obama (Osama KIA notwithstanding) and Dukakis, Gore and Kerry were not even close either as candidates.  So on foreign policy the GOP has a clear and consistent advantage even if its own candidates do no better than the Democrats at matching Reagan, mainly because the GOP candidates are at least TRYING to match Reagan while the Democrats are trying to ignore his existence.  I guess too few voters remember the Cuban Missile Crisis to make JFK an effective Democratic counter to Reagan as foreign policy demigod.

 And what do the Democrats have to balance out this huge advantage?  A pithy, insincere and scarcely credible claim to support the rights of the working class?  Please.  No one takes that seriously – except the hard core of leftists in the party who would never vote GOP anyway.  And remember, even if the Democrats could credibly claim to be staunch advocates of the working class, not enough working class voters are willing to identify themselves as such to make the claim meaningful. 

 3.  Religion and Morals.  It seems every day another Republican is either (A) booted out of the closet or (B) discovered to have a mistress.  Newt Gingrich has thrown his hat into the ring.  The GOP’s self-proclaimed moral superiority appears impervious to incessant instances of blatant hypocrisy.  But what do the Democrats offer?  Consistent alliance with the Village People (which apparently includes many Republicans).  Americans seem to be increasingly tolerant on many issues which the GOP opposes, but we fall well short of the full tolerance the Democrats insist upon.  While few Democratic candidates are atheist or outright hostile to religion, the party too often seems to embrace, even champion, alternative lifestyles which most of the American working class feels uncomfortable accepting.  “Just because you tolerate something doesn’t mean you have to like it.”  On this issue the working class appears to identify far more with the GOP than the Democrats.

 4.  Education.  This used to be a safe bastion of Democratic superiority, until the public schools tanked and the teachers unions opposed school vouchers – and bitchslapped the Democrats into supporting this position.  Working class parents want their kids to go to the best schools, and have no interest in sacrificing their children’s education simply to salvage the welfare of the teachers’ unions.  And when you have Democrats like Al Gore consistently opposing vouchers while sending their own kids to private schools, they lose what little credibility they once had.

 Popularity.  Ultimately, however, I’ve come to conclusion that political elections at every level, from President all the way down to dog catcher, boils down to nothing more sophisticated than a popularity contest scarcely more complicated or sophisticated than a school election.  Obama was more likeable than McCain, Bush was more likeable than Kerry or Gore, Clinton was more likeable than Dole or Bush Sr., etc.  And I believe this cuts across all classes and races, across the whole country.  I’ve explained above why many working class voters choose GOP candidates over Democratic candidates, but I believe popularity has more to do with our decisions than other issues – for most voters, mainly because the political differences between the candidates are too small to notice in most cases.  I don’t think of Bob Barr as any more likeable than McCain or Obama, but I vote Libertarian anyway. 

One Album Wonders

I’m the kind of guy who tends to buy ALL the albums of a favorite band.  For Frank Zappa, that will take some time.  For these bands, on the other hand, it’s made easier because for whatever reason, they only made one album – which may have been released after they broke up.  Many of them were found by Lee Dorrian, from the band Cathedral, and founder of Rise Above Records, who is well known in the stoner rock community.  The liner notes to these albums, which are remastered and reissued after ages of obscurity, with helpfully articulate band history information, read like name-dropping who’s who.  Leaf Hound crossed paths with Paul Kossoff of Free, while the Possessed shared roots with Robert Plant’s Band of Joy and Al Atkins of pre-Halford Judas Priest. 

 Billy Joel’s Attila.  Let me start by saying that I am NOT a Billy Joel fan; I can’t stand that pretentious “New York” pop music sound.  So I was skeptical about this album.   But it turns out this is not his mainstream pop piano songs, but more like Deep Purple (strong Jon Lord sound) without a guitarist – more boogie-woogie like Elf than Emerson, Lake and Palmer.  The songs have names like “Amplifier Fire, Pt. 1” and “Brain Invasion”.  Unfortunately, it’s heavy enough that I doubt he even wants to acknowledge its existence. 

 Luv Machine, Turns You On (Rise Above Relics). This was a West Indies (Barbados) band which relocated to London, but could not find success.  Their stuff is heavy enough with a good dose of funk added in.  This new version has 6 unreleased tracks on it.

 Jerusalem (self-titled) (Rockadrome).  Closest in sound to early Black Sabbath; like the first Sabbath album, this has a fair amount of jamming on it.  These guys were discovered by none other than Ian Gillan, who produced their album and donated extra Deep Purple equipment to the band.

 Steel Mill, Jewels of the Forest  (Rise Above Relics).  Another band emulating Black Sabbath, though a bit weirder.  This remastered version has not only the original 8 song album Green Eyed God, but 3 7” single cuts (all mono), 5 unreleased studio recordings, and a new track recorded in 2010.

 Leaf Hound, Grower of Mushrooms (Repertoire).  I hear Grand Funk Railroad, Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin in here.  This band was cited as a stoner rock precursor like Blue Cheer.  The singer, Peter French, also sang with Atomic Rooster and Cactus.  Despite the name, French insists they only drank beer. 

 The Possessed, Exploration (Rise Above Relics)  Scraping the bottom of the barrel, this band’s album remained unreleased until now.  The singer, Vernon Pereira, was the cousin of Robert Plant’s wife Maureen, and played with him in Band of Joy.  Guitarist Mick Reeves played in Sugarstack with Al Atkins, which later became Judas Priest. The major members of the band died in a road accident shortly after the material was recorded.  Of all these bands, this was the only one which I did not like: to me it sounded like 10^th rate Black Sabbath.  Having said that, they have the best album cover.

 Of these, with the conspicuous exception of Possessed, I can heartily recommend all of them to fans of 70s hard rock.  While they certainly sound similar to the more famous bands from that era (particularly Black Sabbath) their own sounds are different enough to avoid considering them mere clones or copycats unsuccessfully riding the coat-tails of the more successful bands.