My Way and 9th Company

Now it’s time for another blog on obscure foreign movies, and as you may expect by now, they’re about WAR, which is one of my favorite topics.

The first is a South Korean film about World War II. 

My Way.  A Korean – Jun-Shik Kim (JSK) – and Japanese – Tatsuo Hasegawa (TH) start off as friends/rivals.  Both are good marathon runners and compete against each other in the mid-30’s leading up to the war, even trying out for the Japanese Olympic team, i.e. the 1940 games which were supposed to take place in Tokyo, but which were cancelled due to the war.  Tatsuo is the grandson of the Japanese military governor.  Korea was a Japanese colony from 1895 (the first Sino-Japanese War) until 1945.  The movie depicts the Japanese as arrogant and mistreating the Koreans as second class.

            They both end up in the Japanese Army in 1938. Tatsuo is an esteemed officer, while JSK is a lowly private; he and his fellow Koreans in the unit were conscripted as punishment and suffer the abuse you might expect.  TH and JSK don’t get along.

            Part I:  Up in Manchuria, the Japanese bump ugly against the Red Army.   “Banzai” suicide charges aren’t enough to defeat several waves of Soviet tanks (which look like T-26s).

            Part II:  The pair wind up in Siberia in a Soviet POW camp.  One of the Korean soldiers is now the block leader and browbeats the previously abusive Japanese, now POWs.   TH and JSK still don’t get along. The Germans invade, so the Red Army comes by looking for warm bodies to fight the Nazis.  Facing imminent execution for a prison riot, our two buddies quickly agree.

            Part III:  Stalingrad?  Sverdlovsk?  Who knows.  In some battered Soviet city, the Red Army schmucks are thrown up against a wall of Germans with MG42s and other fun stuff; from the timeline it’s still 1941, so the Germans are still very much in the game.  And the stereotypical Commissar is right behind them to shoot anyone retreating.  SOMEHOW, both guys survive this…slip into German greatcoats and uniforms…and trudge through the snow to the German lines.  They get split up at this point for the next three years, each not knowing if the other has survived, although JSK did help TH survive the battle and helped him escape.

            Part IV:  These two Asians in German uniform who speak no German eventually wind up in an Ostbatallion (mixed Wehrmacht unit of Arabs and other miscellaneous Russian ethnic groups all thrown together because the Germans have no clue who they are, only that they’re not European) at Normandy in June 1944, and finally reunite.  Guess what happens! 

An epic story, very long, but intriguing to see what happens to these two, sometimes at odds, sometimes rivals, but ultimately friends.  They have to depend on each other to survive in a brutal war on three different fronts in three different uniforms.

The second film is a Russian deal, in Russian with English subtitles, taking place in Afghanistan.

9^th Company (DVD).  This was in the previews which came with “My Way”.  Imagine your typical French Foreign Legion film:  various disreputable types flee to the FFL to escape either justice or boredom, get sent to the godforsaken desert of North Africa, and wind up practically wiped out by angry Arab tribesmen.   Got it?

            Ok, now instead of the French Foreign Legion, it’s the Red Army in 1988 – towards the very end of the Soviet Union.  Instead of North Africa, it’s Afghanistan.  Instead of Justin Bieber tribesmen, it’s the mujahedeen.   But almost exactly the same.  Some things never change, do they? 

            The funny thing about this film is that back in 1988, we’d be rooting for the mujahedeen against the Red Army.   Nowadays, knowing the “muj” (as the Russians call them) morphed into the Taliban?  Eh, not so much.  Most of the Russian soldiers are as sympathetic as Paul Baumer & his buddies in “All Quiet”, or the Band of Brothers gang, or any other close-knit squad of misfit soldiers who only want to survive.

NFL Bad Boys

Miami takes down Tom Brady!  The Vikings crush the Rams!   The Cardinals are on top of NFC West, above the 49ers!  The Bills are on top of AFC East, while the Patriots are on the bottom!  The Texans are 2-0, and on top of AFC South!  Luther Bliss to Teddy Roosevelt: “This is Kentucky, sir.  Everything is topsy turvy.”  I want to see how this season develops, if only out of morbid curiosity. 

            Well, I did… until this Adrian Peterson thing blew up.  Who knew what was going on?   On the Vikings site, the fans all charged immediately into “DUMP HIM IMMEDIATELY” mode.  Only a few said things like “let’s wait to see how this pans out,” or “innocent until proven guilty.”  Charles Barkley offered his predictably “out of the box”/”I don’t care what anyone else thinks” support for AP’s behavior.  As with Donald Sterling, I’m baffled as to why off-field behavior which doesn’t result in the athlete locked up pending the trial, will still result in a suspension or deactivation.  I can understand if a bank employee is accused of embezzlement – something directly related to his job – they would suspend the person pending the investigation.  But switching his kid in Texas doesn’t seem to bear any connection with running a football in a game. 

            For that matter, neither does punching your wife in a hotel elevator.  In Ray Rice’s case, the incident took place in February 2014, the couple later reconciled, they’re married now, and the local prosecutor’s office already made the determination not to press charges.   I’m not aware that their CURRENT relationship is abusive.  If it was one incident which was resolved at the time – however shocking it might have been – there is really no practical relevance to bringing this up now.  As Mrs. Rice herself complained, it just embarrasses both of them and costs her husband his job, without protecting her.   Ruining their lives and livelihood is a big price to pay simply so the rest of us can feel morally self-righteous. 

            Imagine, on your two week vacation, you go to Las Vegas.  Something happens.  Maybe not a corpse or a missing person, but something which results in a criminal charge against you, though it’s later dropped and you don’t even serve a day in jail; you hired a local attorney who resolved the matter without so much as a single court appearance on your part.  You return home, go back to your job.   Then the s**t hits the fan.   Your boss finds out.   Although the incident had no bearing on your job, your boss still decides to fire you because of “what happened in Vegas.” 

            From what I can tell, the logic behind suspending or releasing a player for off-field behavior which does not otherwise compromise his ability to play (e.g. Aaron Hernandez locked up pending a murder trial, or Michael Vick going to prison) is that athletes are celebrities and public figures, and that sporting events are public events.  The games are not conducted at fields away from public scrutiny, with the results simply posted after the fact for fans to know about. 

            Therefore the public has some expectations as to the character of the athletes that they watch playing.  Will the fans still come to the games, or watch them on TV or cable, if the team includes wife beaters or child abusers?  Will they still drink Budweiser if the brewery continues to sponsor a league with such players in it?  Are we, as fans, prepared to overlook the player’s off-field screw-ups if they produce sufficiently impressive results on the field?  Is the league’s potentially most explosive QB, running back, or wide receiver currently sitting on death row or in a maximum security prison as we speak?  Ironically, the Oakland Raiders are one of the cleaner teams in the league, but all teams seem to have some misbehaving athletes.  And this problem occurs in other professional sports as well. 

            Look at Michael Vick.  In 2007 his Falcons career took a nosedive in his dogfight scandal, he served 21 months in prison.  Yet he served his time, reformed, and is back in the NFL today. 

            If you indefinitely suspend any player facing any sort of criminal charges, even if they remain out on bail or can resolve the charges without interfering with their availability to play for the team (e.g. plead the case down to a lesser charge, suspended jail sentence, probation, etc), that will substantially deplete the available personnel in the NFL.  At any given point, SOME NFL player has a criminal charge pending against him.  DUI seems to be the most common, plus drug-related charges, or Plaxico Burress’ gun-related incident.  

            And consider this.  At the risk of sounding overly complacent or “boys will be boys”, this is a rough, full contact sport.  A certain aggressive spirit is necessary to play the game.  If we winnow out all the players with any aggressive impulses, we might compromise the intensity of the game.  Imagine an NFL where 100% of the players are meek angels with absolutely clean criminal records.  A whole load of Tim Tebows.  That may not hurt at the QB position – most of them, aside from Big Ben, seem to behave themselves – but the rest of the positions will suffer to some extent.  Are the fans somewhat inconsistent on this:  we want a good game, but we aren’t willing to tolerate the type of players necessarily to give us that game, vs. “yeah, he’s a punk, but he’s OUR punk!”? Only domestic and dog abuse, though, rises to the level where the fans morph into the angry villagers in a Frankenstein movie, wielding torches and pitchforks and seeking to drive the offending player out of town, tarred and feathered.

            Before we go any further, let me clarify one issue.  Not even Adrian Peterson’s defenders argue that he should be immune to criminal prosecution simply because he’s such a great running back.  To my knowledge, no one is claiming that professional athletes should be held to a lesser standard, let alone granted immunity.  If an ordinary person would be released on bail, merit probation, a first offender program, or a suspended sentence – fairly common accommodations which keep the defendant out of jail – then there’s no reason why a professional athlete shouldn’t deserve the same clemency. 

            However, if the offense took place in the town where the athlete plays, common sense indicates that a local prosecutor who refused to let a player go out on bail, jeopardizing his team’s chances for that season, might face some challenges when re-election came up.  Then again, the same overwhelming fan reaction to “dump him NOW!” should protect the local DA from political repercussions.  If I had to place bets on the Atlantic County, NJ prosecutor’s NFL allegiance, I’d say he’s in Eagles territory, while the Ravens are in a completely different conference.  I’m curious as to whether a Minnesota prosecutor would handle Peterson’s case differently than the Texas guy running the show now, or a prosecutor in Green Bay, Detroit or Chicago, for that matter.   Here’s some free legal advice to NFL players (worth what you pay for it, right?): be VERY careful what you do when you’re in enemy territory.

            Anyhow.  

            In all fairness, there are plenty of running backs who don’t switch their kids or punch their wives.  Maybe we should “clean house” once and for all – and see what happens.  Try a zero tolerance policy, suspend ALL these players for this season, and see what happens. 

            With morbid curiosity, of course.

Solutions

It’s time for another blog on more esoteric topics than movies, books, or music.   In this case, it’s a “meaningless corporate buzzword” (MCB), “solutions”.   I picked this one because it bothers me the most, but also because it’s the one most likely to be inflicted on the public at large and not just the poor drones at Initech.

Why do I dislike it?  Well, it’s deliberately vague.  “Solution”.  To what?   Presumably to problems.  What problems?  Most businesses can simply claim, “we sell a quality product or service at a reasonable price.”  What’s wrong with that?  Fairly straightforward and honest, right?  But the company barking “solutions” is claiming, we do better than that: we have “solutions”.   Huh?  Solutions to what?  Storage problems?  Staffing problems?  Business problems?  So vague, in fact, as to be meaningless. 

I don’t know who came up with this stupid expression, but I’ll venture a guess.  Either it was a New Age type who knew that New Agery doesn’t pay the mortgage, so he/she/it had to get a real job, but couldn’t simply accept bland, grey flannel, Don Draper corporate culture at face value.  No, this clown had to New Age the business so he/she/it would be nice and comfy, and New Age the crap out of everyone else too.

Or it may have been some consultant.  In “Dilbert”, Dogbert – the cynical little dog – explains that “consult” is a combination of “con” (as in, con artist) and “insult”.  The consultant in fact cheats the company out of $$$, as well as insulting them and their intelligence.  This Harold Hill type came into town – the Two Bobs, right? – and gave a slick spiel about “solutions”, after which the pointy haired bosses ate it up.  Now we’re stuck with it:  bosses, employees, and the general public.

Either way, it’s annoying.  Really annoying.  Remember George Carlin, the comedian?  I suppose he was somewhat liberal, somewhat anti-authoritarian.  But above all he was anti-bullshit.  Because the primary purpose of bullshit seems to be to lie, so that that someone can use, cheat, steal, rob, or exploit you.  So a company that deliberately uses a vague, meaningless term when interfacing with the general public is essentially saying that, as a matter of principle, its corporate philosophy is to be deliberately misleading.

Might I suggest that we boycott any company that uses “solutions” in its literature, advertising, and certainly its corporate name.  Boycott bullshit.

Opium, Morphine, and Heroin

As a “companion” to The Annotated Hashish Eater, is the Hashish Eater’s Companion.  However, as a practical matter, this volume is mostly about opium and not hashish.  It includes various articles on opium, including Thomas DeQuincey’s famous Confessions of An English Opium Eater (in its entirety) which served to inspire Ludlow to write his own Hashish Eater.

Opium was the original deal.  Opium essentially consists of a mixture of codeine and morphine.  Morphine is the underlying drug.  Laudanum is a mixture of alcohol and opium. 

Heroin came later.  Diacetylmorphine is the chemical name, tradenamed as heroin by Bayer.  It was originally synthesized in 1874, then developed into a commercially marketable drug in 1897, and sold from 1898 to 1910 – ironically, as a non-addictive alternative to morphine, although they soon realized that error.  It was banned in 1924.

Unlike Ludlow, whose hashish consumption was purely recreational, DeQuincey claims his opium habit stemmed from various painful and uncurable medical conditions, although both authors cite Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the author of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan”.   Coleridge’s own addiction to opium was well known to both of them.   What’s strange is that both were aware of Coleridge’s conditions before beginning their own consumption.

Back in the nineteenth century, up until the early twentieth century, morphine was the most powerful painkiller.  For many suffering from painful, incurable conditions, morphine was the only drug that worked.  Many soldiers were given morphine for their wounds and later became addicts.  “Heroes For Sale” (1933) describes a WWI US soldier given morphine by well-meaning German doctors and ultimately becoming addicted.  Oddly enough, back in 2000 I had back pain, so I was given one shot of morphine at the E.R. for it.  It did the job well.  But I only had that one shot, and did not turn into an addict.

In addition to killing pain and inducing a general state of intense euphoria, opium produced extremely lucid and colorful dreams, powerful enough to be remembered and recorded, thus Coleridge’s inspiration and muse.   However, the horrendous chemical dependence arguably offset this benefit.  Opium becomes a necessary ingredient for sustained life.  At that time there was no receptor substitute like methadone to help an addict wean off the drug.  Insomnia, chronic constipation, issues with appetite, skin complexion, in fact so many different problems that the addict’s body is taken over by the drug with irreversible physiological damage. 

Ludlow actually echoed this in his own stories.   Those who condemn the opium addict have no idea what the person is going through.  The drug is so powerful, the addiction and dependence so thorough, that the addict is consumed with the need to get more.  He will lie, cheat, steal, do whatever it takes, to friends, family, loved ones, anyone, to get more.   He is no longer in control of himself.

Ludlow himself described not only his own difficulty in trying to kick the habit, but his proposal for a rehab center – in third quarter of the nineteenth century – and efforts on his part to assist others in doing so.  Infrequent recreational use might not necessarily lead to addiction – Ludlow describes different patients having different levels of dependence – but after a certain point, there is no going back.   The withdrawal symptoms become so close to lethal that as a practical matter, the person is better off sustaining a modest habit than getting off the drug completely.  

At this point the victim is doomed to this for the remainder of his life.  Ludlow described this as a very slow form of suicide, oddly enough a sentiment echoed in Ozzy Osbourne’s song “Suicide Solution”.  But for all of Ozzy’s idiocy and substance issues, he was wise enough not to even dabble with heroin, much less become addicted to it: his song refers to alcoholism. 

By the twentieth century, opium and laudanum were replaced by heroin.  Several prominent rock stars got themselves hooked on heroin.  Of these, Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols) and Layne Staley (Alice in Chains) ultimately died.  David Crosby, of CSN/CSNY, described heroin (and other hard drugs aside from marijuana) as “a massive waste of time”.  The singer for Sublime, Bradley Nowell, is the most egregious example of this idiocy.  He deliberately got himself hooked on heroin because he believed it would help his musical inspiration and ability.  Naturally he learned what all the previous addicts learned:  it’s a losing bargain.  After a few cycles of clean and dirty, he finally fatally overdosed on the drug in 1996.

William S. Burroughs, the author of Naked Lunch and a member of the beatnik group that included Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac, was an addict.  Much of Naked Lunch is a vivid depiction of heroin addiction and the extraordinary lengths to which an addict will go to procure more of the drug.  The appendixes to the latest edition include an essay by the author on heroin rehab, i.e. what works and what doesn’t.

By now there are several movies handling this topic, but “Trainspotting”, with Ewan McGregor long before Obi-Wan Kenobi or “Men Who Stare At Goats” as a recovering heroin addict, is probably the most graphic.   

Opium Wars.  In the 1840s, England traded with China.  They paid in silver, a valuable commodity, but had a surplus of opium grown in Afghanistan and India, so they decided they'd rather pay the Chinese in opium than silver.  The Chinese weren't idiots, and refused.  Unfortunately for the Chinese, despite having invented gunpowder centuries before the British, they fell well behind in its practical - military - applications; as early as the twentienth century, entire units of the Imperial Chinese Army and various warlord armies were equipped with spears.   Of course the British were successful at coercing the Chinese into accepting opium as payment instead of silver.  As you might imagine, this caused many problems in China and considerable anger and resentment.  See my blog on the Boxer Rebellion (1900).

Years ago our law office represented a heroin addict.  We negotiated a deal with his creditors to surrender his houseboat in a marina in southwest DC in exchange for writing off his debts.  He asked us to get a few personal belongings off the boat before surrendering it.  This boat essentially was a garbage scow, but he had been living on it.  Talk about a real life horror story.  Heroin? No thanks.