Weeds & Breaking Bad

These are two remarkably similar shows, both on cable, and both continuing for several seasons.

 Weeds (Showtime).  Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker) is a widow living in Agrestic, California.  Her husband Judah, who had been the brains and breadwinner of the couple, abruptly died of a heart attack leaving her to raise their two sons Silas and Shane all by herself.  Apparently she has no high school diploma or college degree, or the slightest skills of any nature, as she delved right into the marijuana trade immediately and hasn’t looked back since.  I’ve just finished Season 3.

            Along with her children, there is also the city council’s goofball treasurer Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon), Nancy’s BFF Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins), her husband Dean (Andy Milder) and Nancy’s brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk).  Her primary source of weed is a quasi-Jamaican criminal godmother Heylia (Tonye Patano) and her (son? Nephew?) Conrad (Romany Malco) who is the real genius in growing the weed and is consistently the man who makes it happen.  He reminds me a lot of Montel Williams.

            Naturally, even being able to grow a decent crop means little without the means to sell it off and make money, and when the money does come in (as it tends to do) then the challenge is how to launder it.   And when the operation grows impressive, that attracts not merely law enforcement attention – e.g. Peter Scottson, the “Agent Wonder Bread” corrupt DEA agent who marries Nancy but can’t win her heart – but also competing gangsters, be they Armenian, black (U-Turn and Marvin), hispanic (Guillermo) or biker/redneck.  Everyone wants a piece of the action, it seems, and even non-gangsters, when they learn of the operation, then try to charge for their silence. 

 Breaking Bad (AMC, the same people who bring us “Mad Men”).  Almost identical plot, but considerably darker, especially with no comic relief from characters like Nealon or Kirk to lighten the mood.  Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is a long-suffering, overworked and underpaid chemistry teacher from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who develops terminal lung cancer despite being a non-smoker.  When his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris) alerts him to the vast cash made by crystal meth dealers, Walter rides along on a bust and realizes he can cook far better meth than these clowns.  He quickly corrals former student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) into a 50/50 partnership, with Walter producing the finest, purest meth anyone’s ever seen, and Jesse taking care of sales and marketing.  They cook in a used camper out in the desert, and Walt insists that they wear yellow hazmat suits and gas masks.

            Of course, keeping this a secret from his ugly wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) and cerebral palsy-suffering teenage kid Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte – looking like Steve Martin’s long-lost love child) is a challenge.  By the end of Season 2, she’s left him, convinced that his secrecy is hiding an affair, not a lucrative crystal meth business.   Hank himself is beginning to suspect him at this point.  What saves Walter is that NO ONE can imagine this bald, super uncool high school chemistry teacher – who eventually code names himself “Heisenberg” - is a crystal meth cook.

            As in “Weeds”, the challenge is to hide the cash and account for its results: how can Walt explain how he pays for expensive chemotherapy without the help of his former university colleague?  And the other huge problem is how to deal with nasty competitors who either try to shake them down or put them out of business.  For his part, Walt gets progressively more ruthless and aggressive about expanding the business and begins losing his patience with would-be competitors and his scruples about fighting back.  If he has to be a killer to make this whole thing work, damn it, he’s facing terminal cancer and is not about to back down from what has to be done.  This freaks out Jesse, who considers himself just a sales and marketing guy – if a bit of an unusual industry he’s in – but not a killer at heart.

 Nancy doesn’t smoke any of the marijuana (though practically every else does – even Shane tries it) and Walt never samples his own product, but Jesse has tried it enough to be able sell his customers on its quality.  Neither show glorifies the drugs, but marijuana still comes off as pretty harmless and crystal meth as a recipe for rotten teeth and terrible hygiene. 

 Neither show goes into enough detail to explain HOW to grow marijuana or cook crystal meth.  The former involves growing lots of plants, some form of fertilizer in big white containers, and lots of lights.  The latter involves chemicals and equipment and a fair amount of occupational hazards (e.g. poison gas or explosions) if not done properly.  While neither marijuana nor its by-products prove the least bit dangerous, Walt has managed to make phosgene gas, ricin (from castor beans) and thermite, an intense  burning substance useful for cutting holes in big thick steel doors.  No one is going to be able to watch the shows and know enough to go into business for themselves.  The real kicker to both these shows is that they show how dangerous and unpleasant both businesses are not merely for meek souls such as Nancy Botwin or Walt White who might be inclined to enter them to make some extra cash and solve their financial problems (and exchange them for a whole host of much more dangerous ones), but also the hardcore criminals who frequently wind up dead.  Very dead. and in some particularly nasty ways.  Enjoy both, and be warned.  

Clutch, Bakerton Group, and The Company Band

“Bang bang bang bang, vamanos, vamonos” - Clutch

 Finally I saw Clutch at the Artscape Festival in Baltimore – a free show with a full regular set, even including some new, as yet unreleased material.  Quality entertainment!  I had been meaning to see this band for ages, but something always came up: I was up in NJ on New Year’s Eve 2009 when they played the 9:30 Club in DC, a show they filmed and released on DVD.  Other shows were as opening acts for bands I didn’t care enough about (e.g. Black Label Society).  But persistence paid off.

 Clutch themselves come from Germantown, Maryland, and have been around since 1990.  They’ve kept the same lineup:  Neil Fallon (vocals), Tim Sult (guitar), Dan Maines (bass), and Jean-Paul Gaster (drums).  I haven’t seen any evidence that they’ve progressed past the club circuit in all those 20 years, besides maybe opening for larger bands at larger venues.  The largest local venue they’ve headlined was the 9:30 Club.

 In addition to remaining together all these years, putting out albums and touring with a stable lineup, they’ve also managed to be interesting without having any special gimmicks.  No outlandish costumes, no fancy instruments, no lasers, fireworks, no movie screens, nothing more than either a backdrop or a Maryland flag.  They’re also the only major band from Maryland.

 Tim Sult is stocky (not fat), keeps a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes like Beetle Bailey, and hunches over his Gibson SGs or Les Pauls, standing in one place, often adding some wah-wah.  Maines simply stands up and plays his bass, and Gaster plays his drums (he reminds me of Jean Reno).  They’re fairly competent and articulate, but nothing special.  They just play their music, and play it well. The music is 95% hard rock with 5% funk or groove added in, but such a slight hint, far less than Faith No More or Head Rot Chilly Peppers.  The most exciting part of the band, live-wise, is Neil Fallon.  He barks his lyrics – somewhere in between “ok, that makes sense” and “weird word salad” – like an angry preacher or soapbox demagogue.  He has a compelling intensity.

 By now the band have several albums: Transnational Speedway League (1993), Clutch (1995), The Elephant Riders (1998), Jam Room (1999), Pure Rock Fury (2001), Blast Tyrant (2004), Robot Hive/Exodus (2005), From Beale Street to Oblivion (2007), and Strange Cousins From The West (2009).  The first album is thrashy, with the second album marking the beginning of the band’s current sound.  Like AC/DC and Motorhead, the albums pretty much sound the same.

 They even have two side projects.

Bakerton Group.   This is an instrumental jam band, no lyrics, though Fallon is listed as being a member.  On half of Clutch’s material, he plays rhythm guitar anyway, so that’s probably his role in this group.  In fact, the lineup is the same as Clutch.  Material: 3 song EP, Space Guitars; Bakerton Group (self-titled album); and El Rojo (second album)  I’m not aware that they’ve ever actually toured this material.  It’s very funky, somewhat like Particle or Zappa’s Hot Rats album.

 The Company Band.   This is a “supergroup” featuring James Rota of Fireball Ministry (guitar) and Brad Davis of Fu Manchu (bass) with Neil Fallon…singing.  They have two EPs, Sign Here, Here, and Here, and Pros and Cons (no mention of hitchhiking), and a full length album, The Company Band.  The first EP is done up to look like a corporate report, whereas the album looks like a stock certificate.  The music is straight ahead rock, sounding (due to Fallon) very much like Clutch.  As with BG, I’m not aware that this band has ever actually toured.  

The Dark Knight Rises

As I started this whole blog business with the first of these three movies (Batman Begins, 2005), and reviewed the second one (The Dark Knight, 2008), with Heath Ledger as the Joker, so I might as well follow up with this one.  My attitude toward the films could be described as “grudging respect” rather than any great enthusiasm.

 After succumbing to public contempt, taking the blame so that Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) could be remembered as an illustrious prosecutor and not Two-Face, Bruce Wayne, aka Batman (Christian Bale) remains in seclusion and self-pity, stumbling around on a cane and growing a beatnik type of beard. 

 A new villain, Bane (Thomas Hardy) emerges from the woodwork and manages to not merely take over Wayne Enterprises – through a shadowy series of stock deals assisted by WE’s poor stock performance all these years that Wayne let the company deteriorate without his public efforts to prop it up by appearing at cocktail parties and dancing with the female lead character – but also (wait for it, people!) rigs half of Manhattan (sorry, Gotham City) with explosives AND converts a WE fusion reactor into a nuclear bomb.   He blows the bridges surrounding Manhattan, presumably including the GW Bridge.

 Commisioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is back, just as bad-ass as a man his age can be, assisted by Officer Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who seems to be the next generation in good cops coming online.  Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), Alfred (My Cocaine) are back as well.  Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) and “Catwoman”/Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) compete for Wayneman’s affections. 

 Since this wraps up a trilogy, let’s make sure Nolan has included ALL his necessary ingredients:

*          Super-bad-ass bad guy who talks trash well – Bane.  He even has his voice mechanically altered.  Of course the bad guy is very smart but also ruthless, carelessly wasting incompetent minions without the slightest hesitation or problem.

*          Lucius Fox and his array of impressive hardware – with something new each time

*          Alfred and his surplus of hoary wisdom and melancholy, anchoring Wayne in morals and tradition, reminding him of his legacy and responsibilities, and giving him much-needed advice and moral support

*          Wayne captured and crushed in pain and pity for much of the movie, trapped in a pit, but of course he works his way out again (spoiler alert!)

*          Lots of explosions in the right places – including the bottom dropping out of “Giants Stadium” – it’s funny that the Gotham City football team looks like the Steelers and not the Giants or Tebows

*          Wildcard character of dubious morals but eye candy – “Catwoman”.  I say she’s about even with Michelle Pfeiffer and Halle Berry.  Hurry up and get Sofia Vergara into the role.

*          Half the good characters remain good, the other half turn out to be bad, and likewise many bad characters (e.g. Bane) remain evil while some of the naughtier ones switch sides as well

 Warning.  The film clocks in a 2 hours and 45 minutes, and is not a non-stop action orgy like “The Avengers”.  In fact, much of the film is talking, talking, talking, etc. made worse by Batman’s confusion that he’s wearing a poncho and smoking a cigar.   I won’t call it boring, but neither will it say that the plot keeps your interest at midnight without resorting to Sour Patch kids or something like that to keep you awake.  Worth seeing?  You bet.  Best movie ever?  Hardly.  I’ll have catch it again on DVD to pick up on all the half-whispered lines I couldn’t hear in the movie theater.  But for the rest of you:  ENJOY.

Who Wants to Run America

Good evening, America.  We’ve assembled an impressive array of politically astute figures, and an ordinary American, in the hopes of deciding which economic/political system fits the needs and preferences of America’s workers.  

 First, let’s meet our target audience, personified in the form of John Carter, a 40 year old auto worker from Flint, Michigan.  He has a wife and two children.  He likes Grand Funk Railroad, hunting, and watching the Red Wings. 

 And here are our contestants:

 From Berkeley, California, attempting to pitch the dictatorship of the proletariat to Mr. Carter, is Professor Trotsky (no relation).  (Trotsky, coiffed as his namesake, warmly waves to the audience).

 From Flint, Michigan himself, the man corporate America loves to hate, here to pitch “market socialism”, it’s…Michael Moore! (wearing yet another blue collar hat, Moore also warmly smiles and waves).

 From Washington, DC, here to sell Mr. Carter on our current capitalist system, let’s welcome the ascerbic, caustically witted, former National Lampoon writer P.J. O’Rourke! (Insincere smile but still waving).

 And finally, from Texas, here to pitch an unusual and radical idea called “libertarianism”, US Representative and aspiring Republican presidential candidate, “Dr No” himself, Ron Paul!  (Weak but humble smile).

 Each candidate will present his case, but the others can offer useful criticism and insights.  We’ll start with Professor Trotsky, who takes a seat opposite Mr. Carter. 

 “Good evening, comrade.  I understand you have kept your job at the Ford plant despite the recent economic problems.”

“Sure have.  I’m Ok.”

“Good.  For a moment there, it was fairly scary, wouldn’t you say?”

“I suppose so.”

“Good.  Do you believe the men running Ford, and the men in Washington, including President Obama himself, are looking out for you?”

“I don’t know.  I doubt it.  The union sticks by me.”

“I would hope so.  Wouldn’t you prefer it, though, if the entire country was set up to look out for your interests?  If the government took over Ford and ran it for your benefit?   In fact, the government would run everything.”

Carter looks uncertain.  “Everything??”

“Yes, there would be no private companies at all.  You would be guaranteed a job, health insurance, a place to live.  No worries at all.”

Carter remains skeptical.  “One big huge government?”

“Yes, Mr. Carter.  You see, Ford, GM, all those big companies have gotten too big.  We need to get rid of them.  We’ll have the government run everything.  For you, of course.  That is, for the working men and women of America.  On their behalf.”

“What if I don’t like what the government is doing?”

P.J. O’Rourke butts in.  “Then you can talk to the secret police.  They’ll throw you in a labor camp…without a trial.”  Shock and alarm from Carter.  Moore keeps quiet, but Paul smiles.

Trotsky regains his composure.  “Democracy has had its day and failed, Mr. Carter.  As it is today in America, corporations control the elections and decide who your candidates can be.  Whoever you vote for, big business has already bought and paid for.  Why talk of a choice under those circumstances?”  He smirks at O’Rourke and Paul.  Even so, Carter is still not happy.

“So who is going to run this government?”

O’Rourke interrupts again.  “Well, it won’t be you.  It will be a small group of guys like Trotsky here who know what’s best for you.  Not workers, of course.  And if you don’t like it, too bad.  And if you raise your voice and complain, you’ll get a visit in the middle of the night.  Bye bye!”   

Trotsky replies.  “I understand your concern, Mr. Carter.  But it will not be this way forever.  After years of dictatorship, the state will disappear and we’ll have a stateless society, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  Communism.  No more government, no more secret police, no more labor camps to re-educate the bourgeois to be nice, humble workers.”

“…and WHEN will this happen?” O’Rourke asks.  “HOW will this happen?”

“In the future.  We don’t know when or how.  But it will happen.”  Only Trotsky is satisfied with this explanation.

“Has it ever happened anywhere in the world?  Russia?  China?  Cuba?  North Korea?”  O’Rourke smiles as he mentions these countries.

“Not yet, but it will.  Someday.”

Trotsky’s arrogance can’t overcome O’Rourke’s warnings.  Carter is not sold. “I don’t think I like that idea, Mr. Trotsky.  I’ll hear what Moore has to say.”  Trotsky gets up and leaves, upset.  

 Michael Moore sits down in the chair opposite Carter.

“How about those Red Wings, huh?”

“Meh.”  Since they didn’t win the Stanley Cup this year, Carter isn’t excited.

Sensing Carter’s ambivalence, Moore starts his pitch anyway.  “You’ve heard Mr. Trotsky.  I don’t want a dictatorship like he does.  I think the system works fine the way it does.  It just needs some help.  Big business needs to be slammed into the boards every now and then.  No labor camps, no secret police, we still have elections, you can keep your guns, your pickup, and everything else.  But if you go with me, here’s what you get….

“FREE healthcare!  No dicking around with insurance companies.  None of this ‘previous condition’ crap.  You’ll have a pension, you’ll have unemployment benefits, you’ll have disability, maternity leave, all of that.  All for free.  No one’s going to lay you off and send your job overseas.  It’s fantastic.  They already have this in Europe, and it works!”

Carter now looks much more excited.  “No KGB?  No gulags?”

Moore smiles.  “Nope!”  He’s smug.  Very smug.

O’Rourke interrupts again, with his familiar nasty smile.  “Tell him about the taxes.”  Carter perks up cautiously, as if he knew what Moore was promising was somehow too good to be true.

Moore gets very nervous and evasive.  “Taxes might be a little higher.”

“How much higher?”  Carter asks, very wary.

“Try 80% and higher.  To start.  And at the top it’s close to 100%.”  O’Rourke had to say it, because Moore would never admit it.

“80%????” Carter is really upset now.  And he’s pissed at Moore.  “What kind of fast one are you trying to pull on me??”  Moore just shrugs, looking irritated but also guilty.  “I’ve heard enough.  Get out.”  Moore gets up and leaves, petulantly.

 O’Rourke sits down.  “Ok, my part is easy.  I’m simply selling you the system you already have now.  You can get laid off.  You have crappy health insurance… if you have any at all.  No gulags, no secret police.  And if, by some miracle,” his eyes twinkle, “you hit the jackpot, you get to keep most of it.  Not all of it, but most of it.  Your taxes are what you pay now.  Nothing like 80%,” he scoffs.

Carter thinks.  “I’m not all that happy with what we have now, but I don’t want a police state and I don’t want to pay 80% taxes just to get free health care.”

O’Rourke smiles.  “I didn’t think so.”

Carter nods.  “Ok, let me hear what this Dr No guy has to say.”  O’Rourke gets up and lets Ron Paul sit down.

 Ron Paul meekly nods and takes his seat.  “I’ll keep it simple.  No Federal Reserve.  No taxes.  I’ll legalize drugs, prostitution and gambling.  The government will shrink to just the police and military, and we’ll be out of Afghanistan, Europe, all those other places.  In fact, it will be so small, you’ll hardly even know it exists.”

Carter is stunned.  “How will we pay for all this?”

Paul comes clean.  “I suppose I should clarify.  I mean no income taxes, no IRS, and no Social Security.  There will be a few sales taxes and things like that, but the burden would be much smaller.  And with the military not fighting wars all over the world, it won’t need to be as large or expensive as what we have now.   We can also sell off Federal property.   Of course, if marijuana is legal we can tax it and make money that way.”

“Roads?”  Moore smirks, regaining some composure.

“Gas taxes and tolls,” replies Paul.  “The New Jersey Turnpike predates the federal highway system, was built completely with private money and opened on time.  If it works in New Jersey it can work elsewhere.  Toll roads have gotten much more convenient with EZPass.  But if you don’t like tolls, gas taxes can pay for roads too.  You pay when you fill up at the pump.  And if you’re not driving anywhere and not buying gas, you don’t have to pay for the roads.”

Carter isn’t quite sold.  “If this is so good, why haven’t I heard of it before?”

Paul now shows his familiar obvious resentment, bitterness, and petulance.  “Because most of the media tends to sympathize with Michael Moore’s viewpoint, and those that don’t almost always support O’Rourke’s position.  No one takes my ideas seriously because they don’t think it will work.  So they write me off as a crackpot and call me names.  I do have other positions besides auditing the Federal Reserve, but you wouldn’t know it from ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, or Fox.”  Paul takes his seat and the chair in front of Carter is now empty.  Now it’s time for him to choose.  Which of these 4 men represents the America that John Carter, the American worker, really wants the most?  If it were up to John Carter, who would run America?

 Carter now is extremely indecisive.  He thinks out loud.

“I don’t want this ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ Who knows when we’ll get communism.  Maybe never.  It just sounds like an excuse for you to take over and run everything.  I don’t like that.  I’m out.”

Carter then turns to Michael Moore.  “I might go for your system…were it not for those horrendous taxes.  I’m out.”

He turns to O’Rourke.  “Don’t think you’ve sold me, O’Rourke.  I am not happy now.  And I don’t know how it would get any better.  In fact, I do want change.  I want to try what Ron Paul is offering.  It seems like the only one we haven’t tried yet, anywhere.  It has no track record for failure, because it’s never been done.  So I’ll go with Dr. No on this one.”

 There you have it, John Carter has made his decision: Ron Paul.  The rest of America can text in your choices: 001 for North Korea (Trotsky), 002 for IKEA America (Moore), 003 Business as Usual (O’Rourke), and 004 for It’s 4:20 in America (Paul).  Standard text messaging rates may apply. 

The Olympics

Last weekend I was in the mall, and saw that GAP was selling T-shirts with past Olympic logos.  Paris 1924, L.A. 1932, Montreal 1976…curiously, no sign of Berlin 1936.  Sorry, we’re all out.

 By which I should clarify, that with a few exceptions, most of my comments herein apply to the Summer games.  I’ve been watching some of the London games, with varying degrees of regularity and diligence.  The events I’ve been watching most have been women’s gymnastics and swimming, mainly the ones NBC has been throwing at us, probably because of Michael Phelps and because the US womens’ gymnastic team is dominant this time around (they’re also pretty cute).  I don’t recall China being this competitive at prior games; in Beijing they won the most gold medals, while the US had the top total.

 Here are the listings (summer games):

 1896     Athens, Greece

1900     Paris, France

1904     St. Louis, USA

1908     London, UK

1912     Stockholm, Sweden

1916     WWI games between Central Powers and Allied Powers

1920     Antwerp, Belgium

1924     Paris, France

1928     Amsterdam, Holland

1932     Los Angeles, USA

1936     Berlin, Germany

1940     WWII Games between Axis and Allies

1944     WWII Games between Axis and Allies

1948     London, UK

1952     Helsinki, Finland

1956     Melbourne, Australia

1960     Rome, Italy

1964     Tokyo, Japan

1968     Mexico City, Mexico

1972     Munich, West Germany

1976     Montreal, Canada

1980     Moscow, USSR

1984     Los Angeles, USA

1988     Seoul, South Korea

1992     Barcelona, Spain

1996     Atlanta, USA

2000     Sydney, Australia

2004     Athens, Greece

2008     Beijing, China

2012     London, UK

2016     Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

 Starting with 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, the Winter Games began being staggered at 2 years – same years as the World Cup.   If I pay scant attention to the Summer Games, I pay almost no attention to the Winter Games, regardless of whether US athletes are competitive in the particular event or not.

 I was too young to have watched the Munich games in 1972 (and wasn’t even born in 1968) so the 1976 games in Montreal were the first ones I remember.  I vaguely recall seeing Nadia Comaneci on TV when I was 7 years old.  She’s still a celebrity in Romania, though she doesn’t seem to do much these days except be a celebrity.  Let’s see Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian get a 10 in gymnastics.

 1980.  We boycotted the Moscow games, and beat the Russkis in hockey at the Winter Games in Lake Placid.  Woohoo!

1984.    L.A.  We watched these at my aunt & uncle’s house in McLean, as they had air conditioning, a modern luxury which one Foreign Service family, living on McArthur Blvd. in DC, felt was unnecessary (it wasn’t us).  Mary Lou Retton availed herself of Nadia’s former coach to score a 10.  The East Bloc boycotted these games in retaliation for ours in 1980, except for Ceaucescu, who sent the Romanians to L.A. anyway.

1988.    Seoul.  ZZZ.

1992.    Barcelona.  NBA players finally allowed to compete in basketball >> “Dream Team”.  ZZZ for me, I don’t watch basketball anyway.

1996.    Atlanta.  Years later, the FBI finally nabbed Eric Rudolph, the real bomber.  Sorry, Mr. Jewell.

2000.    Sydney.  ZZZ.

2004.    Athens.  ZZZ.

2008.    Beijing.  ZZZ.

2012.    London.  Not quite ZZZ, more like Z.

 Germans.  In 1930, to make up for the 1916 games which had been scheduled for Berlin (but cancelled due to everyone fighting World War I) the IOC gave the Germans the Olympic games in Berlin in 1936 (and the Winter Games in Garmisch), which Adolf Hitler took advantage of when 1936 rolled by.  Jesse Owens, however, didn’t fully cooperate and embarrassed Hitler by winning a few medals.  However, the Germans still won the most gold medals and overall medals.  This would have been a fun series to watch, if only we could substitute these games for the 2012 games on TV.  How about that – select WHICH Olympics you want to watch.  Get working on it, ESPN wizards.

            Likewise, drama unfolded in Munich in 1972 – another group of sickos wasted the Israeli team.  Fortunately the Israelis tracked down the rest of the killers (see “Munich”).  In other news, Mark Spitz excelled at swimming and Olga Korbut (USSR) wowed in gymnastics. 

 Winter Olympics Highlights.  First held in 1924 at Chamonix, France (home of Mont Blanc).  The 1936 games were held in Garmisch, which I visited for skiing in 1990 with my brother and best friend.  As mentioned above, we won in hockey in 1980.  The 1994 Lillehammer Games were the ones immediately after the Tonya Harding & Nancy Kerrigan scandal.  Kerrigan won the silver behind Oksana Baiul (Ukraine) who won the gold.  The major Winter events are figure skating and skiing – hardly luge (Norm McDonald: “there is no such thing as professional luge”) or bobsled (even for Jamaicans). 

 The games themselves vary in interest level to me.  I’m not really much of a sports guy.  I do NOT digest all those statistics, nor do I feel testicularly compelled to “get into” literally EVERY sport (with an American jingo-bonehead conspicuous ignorance of soccer, though when I lived in France I was guilty of this willful ignorance).  So I’m scarcely more inclined to watch the Olympics than any other sporting event – less so, in fact, than the World Cup.  Speaking of which, despite 5 World Cup victories, Brazil has never won the gold medal in soccer at the Olympics.  No one can explain this. 

            I would suggest that anyone else simply watch what you want to watch, and ignore everything else.  You have NO patriotic duty to watch Americans compete in any sport.  Surely they won’t notice if you zone out back home (“OMG, Gabby Douglas fell off the balance beam because someone in America changed the channel!”). 

            At an abstract level, the athletes compete at such a high level, so far beyond my capabilities, that they may as well be aliens.  That makes them…sometimes interesting to watch.  What I don’t see is any nationalism entering the equation for the athletes themselves.  When you get down to swimming, gymnastics, basketball, etc. all sports are ultimately sports and apolitical.  It’s the spectators watching, waving the flags, who inject that element into the sport.  The athletes themselves don’t seem to care.  All they care about is winning – not for their country, not for their families, or their coaches, or their hometowns, but for themselves.  Which is as it should be.

            I suppose a political argument could be raised about results.  In the past, East Germany was notorious for doping its female athletes with steroids (remember Joe Piscopo?).  I’m not sure the Chinese haven’t upped the ante this time around.  But those who argue in favor of statist regimes [these people do exist today, Michael Moore is at the top…though he lacks the intellectual honesty to admit it] should observe how strong the First World countries, especially the US, do at the Olympics.  That a brutal regime that doesn’t care about individuals should be able to bludgeon its children and citizens into top class athletes is not much of a surprise.  Reward them with benefits the ordinary proletariat never sees and hold their families hostage at gunpoint to assure gold medals.  All well and fine.  Then how do these fat, lazy, decadent Westerners do so well?  Let’s see: the Soviets dominated the medal counts in 1956, 1960, 1972, 1976, and 1988.  The USA dominated in 1948, 1952, 1968, 1996, 2000, and 2004, with 1964 split and 1980 and 1984 being obvious outliers due to the mutual boycotts.  Really, the analysis should combine together all First World medals (not just USA) and all communist countries (not just the USSR), ignoring minor spats like Yugoslavia and Red China.  I don’t have the patience to figure that out. 

            By the way, I’m not aware that the Vatican ever sends a team to the Olympics…but Iran does.  Islam beats Catholicism at the Olympics.  So we’ll root for Israel.  Close enough.

            Finally, don’t get me started about “McDonalds”-themed America-bashing.  The next fast-food-obese US athlete I see will be the first.  Michael Phelps and Jordyn Wieber don’t seem to worship at the Golden Arches, though Phelps’ herbal preferences don’t seem to have impacted his abilities in the pool.  I’m not aware that tobacco smokers are well-represented in his sport. 

            Let’s go US!  And if we don’t win in London, there’s Rio in four years.