Skorzeny Speaks

"The Most Dangerous Man in Europe", Otto Skorzeny, actually wrote memoirs, Skorzeny’s Special Missions. He’s best known for being behind the paratrooper rescue of Mussolini in September 1943, as well as "Operation Greif", the famous Battle of the Bulge operation wherein German soldiers, dressed as American troops, infiltrated behind US lines causing all sorts of confusion and trouble. I’m not sure why he was called "dangerous", as he didn’t seem personally dangerous to anyone, and his own operations had limited scope and effect. But his story is certainly interesting. Here are the high points:

 1. Born in 1908, died in 1975, from Vienna, Austria. His name is pronounced "Skor-Tseny", which I had figured out without ever having heard it pronounced; yet he notes that some Germans could not pronounce it properly.

 2. He was rejected by the Luftwaffe for his age, not his size. So he joined the Waffen SS, eventually winding up in the Das Reich (2^nd SS) Division. SS men tended to make up a sizable portion of his commando units, but he recruited from the Army, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine as well. Their unofficial motto (not the official motto, Mein Ehre Heisst Treue (My Honor is Loyalty)) was "take it easy". Surfer/stoners in the SS? Amazing.

 3. Midway through the war, before the Mussolini rescue operation, Skorzeny was summoned to the Wolf’s Den (the HQ in the forests of East Prussia) to meet with Adolf Hitler and the other top brass of the Nazis. It was a real "we’re not worthy! we’re not worthy!" moment. At one point, Hitler had a group of German officers around him, and he solicited their opinion on Italy. Most gave various different responses, Germany’s ally, fascism, etc. Skorzeny simply said, "mein Fuhrer, I am an Austrian", and Hitler understood immediately.

 The situation in Italy was getting confused and dangerous, what with Mussolini captured by the Italian military and some of the top Italians making noises about making peace with the Allies (negotiating in Lisbon, Portugual) and switching sides. Reichfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, briefed Skorzeny, rattling off a long list of names and saying "loyal" or "disloyal". Skorzeny, said, "whoa, maybe I should write some of this down," and Himmler replied, "you fool! Nothing is to be written down, you have to memorize this!" So Skorzeny was thinking to himself, hey, I met the Fuhrer and Himmler today, amidst all this excitement I’d be lucky to remember one name, let alone dozens, and he wants me not to write this down?? Come on.

 4. Hitler on Mussolini. As an Austrian, Hitler had a particular contempt for the Italians in general. In Mein Kampf, he scoffed at the Kaiser for including Italy in the Triple Alliance: "what moron combined Italy and Austria-Hungary in the same alliance?" Sure enough, Italy opted out in 1914 and switched sides in 1915.

But despite this opinion of the Italians, he had warm and sincere feelings for Mussolini, who he considered his personal friend. He asked Skorzeny to rescue him, "because I owe it to him as a friend." The German-Italian alliance was motivated by ideological compatibility; Mussolini had taken power in 1922, and literally wrote the book on fascism. Hitler and Mussolini were kindred souls, even if the Italian war machine wasn’t quite up to the demanding standards of the Wehrmacht, or if their hapless exploits continually required German rescue (Greece and North Africa).

 5. At some point during the battle for the Eastern Front, Himmler got the firm idea to destroy the Soviet blast furnaces at Magnitogorsk. A quick analysis showed the operation to be completely impractical – no information existed on the facility, and even if they knew something about it, it would have been impossible to get a team there and then back. From this, Skorzeny learned "to display immense enthusiasm for any plan, however idiotic, which they put forward, and keep on reporting progress." "St Bureaucracy", as he later described it.

 6. During the 1938 Anschluss, he was responsible for defusing the situation and ensuring the takeover was bloodless. Later on, in 1944 when the Hungarians threatened to defect to the Soviets, Skorzeny planned and carried out the operation that shut that down immediately.

 7. Himmler, considering the new V1 rockets, asked Skorzeny if it would be possible to launch one from a U-boat against NYC. Himmler's take on this was: these Americans have had it so easy, the war hasn't hit them at home. If we smack them in NYC they will back off. Skorzeny started by speculating that this U-boat/V1 thing may be possible. But then he cautioned Himmler: attacking NYC would be counterproductive. FDR had been trying to convince Americans that Germany is a threat to them. Shoot a V1 into NYC and you'd simply confirm what FDR had been saying. Don't underestimate the Anglo-Saxon strain in the Americans. Like the British, their morale jumps sky-high when directly threatened – note the contemporary parallels with 9/11.

 8. He studied the Allied commandos extensively and admired Bill Donovan (OSS commander and founder of the CIA) – and was ultimately interrogated by him after the war. He saw that the Germans had their work cut out for them; while the British wouldn’t have any trouble finding French, Belgians or Dutch willing to fight against the Germans, even to risk their lives doing so, the pool of available British and Americans around Europe willing to betray the Allies was somewhat small – as was the supply of Frenchmen willing to work against the Allies who had just liberated their country.

 9. Skorzeny was briefly involved in counterintelligence in Holland, against British operatives. He loved the Sten gun, particularly the silenced variant. He met Admiral Canaris, head of the German Abwehr (military intelligence) – who he found to be VERY obtuse and inscrutable.

 10. He worked with frogmen and helped develop German midget submarines. In a way he was a German SEAL. This was in addition to jumping out of planes as a paratrooper.

 11. For Operation Greif, he had to round up Germans who spoke English. He actually only found TEN who could speak English with an American accent and pass themselves off as Americans. 30-40 spoke English fluently but with an accent (imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger in a US uniform trying to convince someone he’s not German – "no, I’m Austrian!") and the rest could say "yes" and "no" but otherwise had to keep their mouths shut. Skorzeny fails to describe his own English fluency, if any, but in any case the Fuhrer specifically forbid him from personally leading the mission, saying he was too valuable to risk losing.

 They had a difficult time getting enough Allied uniforms and equipment; one supply center sent them greatcoats, which GIs never wore, and another sent sent field jackets labelled "P.O.W.". The German soldiers wore German uniforms under the American ones: the theory was that international law only forbids enemy uniforms if you actually use your weapon, so they were instructed, if going into combat, to take the American uniform off first.

 Another problem: when it came time to find these Germans who spoke English, the brainiacs at the German High Command decided to distribute a memo throughout the entire German armed forces. "D’oh!" And of course, the Allies got wind of the plan within 8 days – yet somehow they never acted on this knowledge. The commandos caused all sorts of confusion and problems. There were rumors that Eisenhower was marked for assassination, and several US officers and men were mistakenly arrested as German spies. Skorzeny mentions that during his post-war interrogations by various Allied officers, they were convinced he was either involved in some plot to kill Eisenhower or to whisk Hitler off to some hidden location outside Berlin, possibly even outside Germany.

 When they used captured Jeeps, they aroused suspicion by carrying the full 4 men per Jeep; US practice was to only carry 3 at a time.

 He got into more trouble for this than for anything else. Yet he got the idea from the Americans, who had run operations dressed as German soldiers. And sure enough, during his war crimes trial, a British Commando officer, Yeo Thomas, testified on his behalf that the Allies had done the same thing, so he was acquitted.

 12. There is, however, a disturbing element to this book, which was written well after the war: absolutely NO mention of the Holocaust. From his own activities, Skorzeny probably had no personal involvement with the various elements of the Holocaust. But being in the SS, associated with various top level SS leaders, it’s impossible to believe that Skorzeny was unaware of what was going on. He must have known. Yet he doesn’t offer any apology, even insincere, such as "regrettably, mistakes were made."

 The closest clue, and a bad one, comes from his comments on the Nuremburg trials. He remarks that his fellow defendants – high ranking Wehrmacht officers, Nazi leaders, and SS officers – cravenly pleaded for their lives and whined that they were only following orders, instead of defending their actions. Granted that Skorzeny himself had nothing to apologize for – he was acquitted – but certainly the architects of the Final Solution had much to answer for. His comments, and complete lack of reference to the Holocaust, suggests that he personally approved of it but decided to be discreet and not offer this controversial opinion in the book.

 This spoils and stains an otherwise impressive book about an impressive figure. He was probably the most versatile and capable special ops officer the Germans had during the war. I found his own story, in his own words, to be impossible to put down.

DC Revisited

I live in Northern Virginia – about 10 minutes outside the District of Columbia, better known as "DC", as in Washington, DC. Lately I’ve been going in more often and seeing parts of it I’ve never experienced before. I learn something new about it each time.

 Format. DC is in the form of a diamond, cut into 4 quarters: Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast. The north-south division is Constitution/Independence Avenues which straddle "The Mall", and the east-west division comes from North and South Capitol Streets. These streets, however, are off-center of the diamond, a few blocks east of the apex, so Northwest is larger than Northeast. Much of what we would think of as "Southwest" is better known as Arlington County, Virginia, cut off from the rest of Southwest DC by the Potomac River, so actual Southwest DC is fairly small.

 North-south streets are numbered (going down as you go east in Northwest towards the Capitol and back up eastwards of the Capitol); east-west streets have alphabet names (A, B, etc. – K Street being the major business area). Diagonal streets are named after states: Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Connecticut being the major western streets (lots of embassies along Mass. Ave.) and New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, and Pennsylvania Ave. being the major east side streets. Georgia Ave, though, runs north-south, also known as 7^th Street. Each of the state streets continues well past the DC-MD line and well into Maryland, becoming major commercial avenues in the suburbs. Wisconsin Ave. turns into 355 and goes all the way up to Frederick, Maryland, an hour out of DC. We knew it as Rockville Pike and grew up along there as kids.

 DC is connected to Maryland by land, with an invisible border you observe by a sign as you drive by on one of the major roads. It’s divided from Virginia by the Potomac River, so the connections there are by bridges and major highways (much more obvious that you’re going from one to the other). 395 comes up to DC from Virginia, but does not connect with 95 coming down from Maryland. They spent the money earmarked for the hookup on the Metro instead, so 95 splits off into 95 and 495 (the Beltway), whereas 395 sprouts off into New York Avenue, Pennsylvania Ave., and the Capitol Bldg. district. 395 goes across the 14^th Street Bridge (final destination of an Air Florida Flight, as Howard Stern famously remarked as a finale to his career as a disc jockey in DC in the early 80s) which puts you on 14^th Street running north-south. Memorial Bridge brings you to the Lincoln Memorial and the Rock Creek Parkway (if you can avoid getting completely confused) – an unfortunately rare destination from Virginia considering the bridge’s beauty and origin from Arlington Cemetary. Route 50/66 put you on Constitution Ave. coming in eastbound from the west. Key Bridge, a close second to Memorial Bridge in aesthetic appeal, brings traffic from Rosslyn to M Street in Georgetown and K Street, so it gets heavy traffic and more use than Memorial Bridge. I used to walk across it when I lived in Rosslyn.

 The Beltway. It’s not just a circumferential highway surrounding DC, Arlington County and Alexandria. It completely surrounds DC and has two bridges across the Potomac, the American Legion Memorial Bridge and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge (which has a drawbridge), each of which connect Maryland and Virginia. It’s been used metaphorically to describe a state of mind: "inside the Beltway" (thinking of Washington’s federal bureaucracy, the Establishment, the insiders, etc.) vs. "outside the Beltway" – everywhere else in the country, a kind of "us vs. them" mentality depending on who is talking. Other cities – including Baltimore, right up to the northeast of DC – have their own beltways, but the DC Beltway has a unique political significance.

 My own experience. I grew up in suburban Maryland, and my father worked at the Department of Commerce. The DOC building is on Constitution and 14^th Street, is one of the last of the huge government buildings built in the 20s and 30s, and the last built without central air conditioning installed. Its official name is the Herbert Hoover Building, though I don’t recall anyone referring to it as such. The lobbies and hallways are archaic and you can tell it’s an old building, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, with the A/C units hanging out of the windows. In the basement is the National Aquarium, which has a decent selection of fish if you consider that it’s fairly small. My dad used to take us there as kids. The Air & Space Museum, and other Smithsonian institutions, were the other reasons for us to – briefly – explore DC.

 In 1979 we moved to Paris, which meant we’d only see the US on home leaves every other even-numbered year. I mentioned 1984, when we stayed in a house on McArthur Blvd., though this is as far southwest DC as you can get without going into the Potomac, and as noted, the house’s poor A/C had us running to McLean, Virginia (right across the river) in search of sanity at our relatives’ house.

 I came back to the US to live most of the year on campus at the University of Maryland, College Park. I missed the DC alcohol age grandfathering by 3 months (I turned 18 in January 1987, instead of October 1986) so my excursions into DC were very limited during this time. One time my friend Phil took me to a place called Brazil Tropical (off Pennsylvania Ave.) for my first caipirinha, ages before I went to Rio de Janeiro and had one there.

Once I passed 21 and my brother and friend were still single, we’d hit two of the major zones for straight 20s something singles: Georgetown and M/L Street (closer to 18^th Street and the K Street district). This would have been the mid-90s as my brother got married in 1998 and my best friend in 1999. No more clubbing after that....

From September 1998 to April 1999, and then again from January 2000 to November 2000, I worked at a government contractor, CACI, on their L Street office. This was at L and 12^th, one block off K Street, and for all intents and purposes well within the "K Street" corridor. I took the metro from Rosslyn to McPherson Square and got to know this central business district, where all the fancy commercial offices are, and the major DC law firms. The deli’s in this neighborhood have names like "Gourmet Provisions" and charge twice what you’d consider reasonable. Thank God the McDonald’s on New York Ave. kept its normal rates, not that I’m a big fan of Evil Clown.

 A few blocks south is the Mall, the southern end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the Capitol. The Mall is flanked on one end by the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the Reflecting Pool (remember "Forrest Gump"?). At the opposite, eastern end is the Capitol. It’s lined by the various Smithsonian museums including, but not limited to, the National Museum of American History, the Museum of Natural History (north side) and the Air & Space Museum (south side). The Mall’s most recent purpose has been grounds for protests, first the Free Mumia series of World Bank/IMF series – from 1999 to 2003 - and then the next set from March 2003 (invasion/liberation of Iraq) onward to the present. However – as "Forrest Gump" points out – the area was rife with protest during the Vietnam War and even the Bonus March of the Great Depression.

Pennsylvania Ave. itself was supposed to have an unbroken view from the White House to the Capitol, but some dumbass Treasury Secretary decided that his ego trumped L’Enfant’s plan and dumped the Treasury Dept. building in the middle. A suitably creepy building along Penn. Ave. going towards the Capitol is the Old Post Office Building, with its tall clock tower, which is now an indoor mall usually full of tourists. The "new" post office building next door dates from...1935. This does it for the tourist part of town.

 DC does have large swaths of ghettos, run-down shithole land, off in Southeast and lots of Northeast. As I noted earlier, Southwest is rather small. Northwest is generally decent territory – it includes very posh residences along Foxhall Road (my uncle, who was a lobbyist, used to live there), and the American University neighborhood is very nice.

Lately I’ve gotten more aquainted with the Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan areas. Dupont Circle is where Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire Aves. meet, crossed by 19^th Street. It’s a trendy district where you can count on seeing too many guys holding hands and fans of "Will & Grace", Judy Garland, etc. ("Not that there’s anything wrong with it!" as they insisted on "Seinfeld"). Adams Morgan is essentially 18^th Street north of U Street, up to and including Columbia Road, and is a multicultural district, primarily hispanic, with plenty of Spanish spoken. When the Brazilian team won their fifth World Cup on Sunday, June 30, 2002, we celebrated the victory right at the top of 18^th Street. It was a huge block party with bongos, cheering, Brazilian flag waving, and shouts of "PENTA CAMPEAO" over and over again.

 Just last weekend we took a walk through the Meridian Hill Park, which dates from the early 20th century. It has a fantastic cascading fountain (like you’d find in Italy, of all places), and statues of James Buchanan, Dante, and Joan of Arc ("which of these things is not like the other, which of these things does not belong") which is, to say the least, a bizarre combination to find in an otherwise beautiful park – even nicer than Parcul Cismigiu or Parc Monceau. 16^th Street goes up a steep hill, and features some of the most bizarre architecture you can see in DC, short of the gothic, Adams Family monstrosity of the Old Executive Office Building or a close second, the Willard Hotel. Much of it dates from the turn of the century, when cable cars allowed development up the steep hills on 16^th Street, Wisconsin, Connecticut, etc. Some resemble castles, some resemble Arabic/Middle Eastern, and even when the neighborhood changes from apartment buildings to houses, you still get the early 20^th century eclectic style, with many bungalows or the mail order houses you could find in old Sears catalogs (yes, you could buy an entire house from the catalog back then). Much of the buildings between Adams Morgan and Dupont Circle share this schizophrenic heterogeneity. Perhaps H.P. Lovecraft would have felt at home here – or perhaps it would have been "too new" for his tastes.

 Getting around. The Metro in DC, unlike New York, London, and Paris, is a fairly recent addition and doesn’t have anywhere close the coverage it does in those cities. In Paris it’s like a station every 4 blocks, in DC it’s more like 10-15 blocks. Driving in DC is a hassle. In theory the city is set up intuitively with the numbered, lettered, and state streets, but in practice it degenerates into insanity with one-way streets, streets ending and picking up half a neighborhood away, the Rock Creek Park cutting the northern part in half, plus terrible potholes and bad drivers, many of them cab drivers from who knows where. Even when you do get to where you’re going, you still have to find a parking space, which is as much a nightmare in DC as in any other city. Walking around the city, however, is fine (as least in good weather), assuming you don’t mind walking long distances. I got used to it in Paris-sur-Seine (and that shithole version on the Dambovitsa) so I don’t mind it too much in DC, it’s the parking BS I can’t stand. Even so, whenever I’m in DC I’m immediately inclined to leave ASAP.

Role Playing Games (Revised 2022)

[Updated 2022.   With "Stranger Things" bringing '80s nostalgia, including D&D, back into mainstream attention, it's time to revisit this topic.]

It all started back in September 1981, when our friend Danton came back to Paris from summer vacation in the US. He got us hooked on a new type of game: the role playing game, with character sheets and strange dice – d4, d8, d10, d12, d20, as well as the common d6. We started off with Dungeons & Dragons for one night and the next day started with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (commonly known as AD&D).

For those of you who know what these are, this will be a nostalgia trip. For others, maybe I’ll be able to clue you in. You create a fictional person – a character – in a make-believe world, with stats (strength, wisdom, intelligence, constitution, dexterity and charisma) and hopefully a few comrades to share the journey (a fellowship) and if you’re really lucky, a good Dungeon Master (DM) with a sense of humor and a good imagination, who understands the rules as well as you do and isn’t an arbitrary SOB. You start off simply and easy, clueless and weak, but after killing off a few weak monsters and grabbing their measly copper pieces, you work your way up to stronger monsters with better loot, and accumulate power, spells, gold, magic items, etc. Yeah, it’s all in your head, so if your imagination sucks, the game will too. But for those of us who could handle it and enjoy it, it was a trip.

AD&D. The most popular, by far.  Generally referred to as D&D, in practice most players are actually playing AD&D, which is the standard version; D&D itself is actually pretty basic and dull compared to AD&D.   It’s closest to Tolkien and Middle Earth, though they called hobbits “halflings” and wizards “magic-users”, warriors were “fighters” (not “sword-users”). The combat doctors were clerics (not “mace-users”) (though no one seemed to care which deity you worshipped and the spells were all the same anyway) and for traps and locked doors, we had thieves (“lockpick users”?). My top character was a 13th level cleric of Thor, with my 2nd favorite a drow (black elf) fighter-magic-user. We played this one for ages, working our way through all the mainstream modules, most notably “Expedition to the Barrier Peaks”.

For all its simplicity and popularity, though, the game was fairly unrealistic and most of the rules were somewhat arbitrary. Automatic parries? No dodge? All your skills go up equally when you go up a level? Rigid classes – fighter/ranger/paladin, cleric/druid, magic-user/illusionist, thief/assassin – with level limits for non-human races? All magic-users and clerics get the same spells? And this business of clerics not using edged weapons, or magic-users and thieves being severely restricted on armor and weapons. Don’t get me started on alignments – good/neutral/evil vs. chaotic/neutral/lawful, and most bizarre, “alignment languages”. Bah. And no one really developed a coherent idea of WHERE this was supposed to take place (e.g. did anyone seriously use Greyhawk?). The most obvious, Middle Earth, was not an option (I don’t think TSR ever got the rights). Swords and sorcery, sure, but very little depth. But we enjoyed it for awhile, at least until we discovered RuneQuest (see below).

Main personal character:  Trumgeld, 13th level cleric of Thor.  

Top Secret. Also by TSR, this time a spy RPG set in contemporary Earth. My guy was a German BND agent who carried an MP40; my brother’s CIA character carried a shotgun. We followed through quite a few modules of this. I recall one adventure where my bloodthirsty comrades literally killed everyone (even those who weren’t on a hitlist) and took everything that wasn’t nailed down, even down to a sack of potatoes (it must be worth something to the agency!). Crazy Top Secret rule: a grenade does 1d10 damage, so it’s theoretically possible to survive a grenade attack at point blank range and get no more than a scratch.

Main personal character:  Fritz Muller, agent of BND (West German intelligence).

Gangbusters. We must have played this TSR game set in the 1920-30s about 15 minutes. Not bad, but too few modules. Also, TSR had this odd policy – completely different than Chaosium – of literally developing an entirely new game system for each different RPG they developed. Because we’re playing gangsters and FBI agents in '30s Chicago means we need a completely different system than spies shooting each other up in the 1980s.

Star Frontiers was the TSR space RPG, which wasn’t too impressive. I suppose the high point was having a race of intelligent amoebas. Cool.

Gamma World. Think you can survive a post-apocalyptic nuclear holocaust world? Check this one out. TSR did a decent job of this one. The best part was all the mutations. I had a huge argument with the DM about PST (pure strain humans) being immune to mutation. My top guy was a PST, go figure – the only race without any mutations at all. The weapons were almost as cool as the mutations.

Main personal character: Urchin Clapton, pure strain human

Traveller. I can’t remember who made this one, but it wasn’t TSR. This was an RPG set in space, in the distant future. All the books were small and black, and the whole thing was played with d6, which was unique among RPGs. Unfortunately, the most fun of all was CREATING the character. Developing his (or her) military career until mustering out was more fun than playing the game itself.

MERP. Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) managed to get the rights to do a Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP) game – and dropped the ball completely. Its game system was indecipherable. Sure, you could really be a hobbit, an elf, a dwarf, a Dunedain, or a Beorning (but not a Balrog...damn!) but why would you want to, where would you go, and what would you do? There were no modules, only sourcebooks. Our friend Myles, usually our DM, quoted the Moria sourcebook: “There are lots of dwarves here.....” Uhh, yeah. And there are elves in the forest, and orcs in the dungeons. Thanks, we’ll take it from there.

Call of Cthulhu. Starting the Chaosium games. Chaosium started off with RuneQuest and did the smart thing of simply re-using its basic system for all the other games it made, with slight variations. This one was based on the H.P. Lovecraft stories and extremely well done. The killer element here was SANITY. In other games you can get wounded or killed (boring!). Here you risked going completely insane – cool! Moreover, this was one system with an amazing array of adventures supporting it. They seemed to put out more than we could handle. Surprisingly, despite dozens of Lovecraft stories to draw upon, the writers managed to develop original scenario plots yet remain faithful to the Mythos and ideas of the stories. My favorite two characters were Charles Marx, a West Point graduate and veteran of “The Great War” (aka WWI); and Muller, a German member of a little known reactionary party known as the NSDAP – who also fought, on the other side, in the Great War (I made him the father of my Top Secret character). This was a game we kept up with, mainly because the support was so fantastic. I’ll never forget that one where the DM rolled a “critical” (.01%) for finding a ladder when we needed it!

Main personal character:  Charles Marx

Stormbringer. Chaosium tackles Elric and the Young Kingdoms, the Michael Moorcock books. Modest support, but still fun. My top character was a Melnibonean warrior-sorceror, Jermyn Relic. Thanks to a module called “Hall of Risk”, he managed to create Demon Armor which was practically impenetrable and a Demon Sword which could do 2d8 + 97d6 damage (far more damage than Elric himself could have done with Stormbringer) – and he was an Agent of Arioch. Maybe he got a little TOO powerful. The Chaos characters had the most fun, and if you weren’t from Melnibone or Pan Tang and at least a sorceror of some sort, you were almost certainly dead meat. My first character, Ozzic of the Purple Towns, did OK, but it was Jermyn Relic I liked the most.

Main personal character:  Jermyn-Relic, Melnibonean Agent of Arioch.

Superworld.  Also by Chaosium.  After "The Boys" maybe we should play this again.  You make super heroes and role play them.  Somehow they get a variety of superpowers, handicaps, and even hero points.  Since it was from Chaosium it shared their skill-based system.  My own character, Necroman, got into trouble for actually killing a supervillain, which I found out the hard way was a no-no.

Main personal character:  Necroman

RuneQuest. Finally. This was, by far, the best of all the RPGs. My high school buddies turned me on to this one, and I loved it far more than any of the others – I was addicted. Chaosium started RQI and II, and Avalon Hill perfected it as RQIII. By now it’s gone through multiple changes since 1986, so the current version could be called RQ VII.  We actually played a brief scenario of this last year with our gaming buddy before he returned to Germany, but changes in the game meant we had to create new characters to do so, and we didn't have time to do much to develop those characters.  

Where do I start? Skills you develop individually – and can master beyond 100%. Anyone can use any weapon or armor – no arbitrary limitations or classes. If you want to be a sorceror and wear full plate armor, or be a priest and carry a sword, go right ahead. Priests worship specific deities and different gods give different spells: combat and death spells from the war god (Humakt), healing spells from the healing god, etc. so you have an incentive to join specific cults, and cult allegiances provide incentives for friendship – or war (and thus plenty of scenario inspiration). The “gods” catalog listed the requirements to join cults, the benefits of each one, and the special spells each one provided – NOT like AD&D where all gods give you exactly the same thing and they’re listed with combat stats as if you’re actually going to meet and fight them. Come on.

Depending on what cult you belonged to, if you mastered (90%+) 5 or more specific skills (usually combat skills) you could become a Rune Lord – and RQIII combined priesthood (reusable badass spells) with Rune Lord for the top combat cults. Becoming a RuneLord of a combat cult was one of the top goals of the game for your character, and when you achieved that status – developing a character from a clueless, wuss of a peasant into a bas-ass death machine (e.g. Luke Skywalker’s transformation from Tattoine farmboy into Vader-nailing black-uniformed Jedi) – you felt fantastic....even though this was a completely fictional character (!). It’s hard to describe if you weren’t into it.

 RuneQuest chucked wisdom as an attribute and substituted size (SIZ) as a quantified number, not merely small/medium/large as in AD&D. The monsters had the same format as player characters, so theoretically you could use any monster as a PC, though as a practical matter the “races” – human, dwarves, elves, trolls, broos, ducks, morocanth (intelligent tapirs), and dragonewts – were the most suitable.

 The combat system alone was fantastic. 10x more realistic AND no less playable than AD&D. Hit points per location (arm, leg, etc.) and not merely general hit points. Armor points to be exceeded by damage to inflict wounds: not this arbitrary nonsense of “armor classes”; you roll to hit and then roll damage to see if you actually penetrate armor. You could get special hits – impales – and critical hits, ignoring armor; and even screw up big time: fumbles. You have to roll to parry or dodge. A parry, if successful, added the armor points of the parry item (usually a shield or a two-handed weapon) to the armor on your body; a successful dodge, if rolled, avoided all damage. There were hit points per location, and you rolled a location when hitting, not merely doing general damage (so you could decapitate someone) and even aim blows at specific locations, strike to destroy a parrying weapon (e.g. shield) or for knockback (to push someone back or over).

Skills were on a percentage basis, from base level (the level of someone with no training or experience), up to 100%, but somewhat oddly, the game let you advance past 100% in skills.  Rolling below the skill number on d100 (usually two d10, one for the 10s and another for the 1s) was a success.  96-100 is always a failure (fumble) no matter how high your skill.  Rolling under 20% of your skill was a special (impaling weapons do double damage), and under 5% a critical (weapon does maximum damage and ignores armor).  Every skill successfully used on an adventure can be rolled to increase, so gradually you achieved mastery (> 90%) in various skills.  As noted you have to roll to parry or dodge.

 Magic: three different types of magic, which theoretically anyone could learn. Spirit (“battle”) magic was the easiest to get but the weakest, but at least a simple warrior could have a healing spell without being a priest. He couldn’t raise the dead, but he could patch himself up. Priests, for their part, do get the most powerful spells, divine magic, including Sever Spirit (death spell) and Resurrection (you can figure that one out). RQIII added sorcery, with its own rules; mainly it made spellcasting very skill-intensive and added wizardry as an art, something which had been missing in RQII. There are even spirits, spirit combat, and shamans.

 Glorantha. RQI & II were based in a proprietary world, Glorantha, with its own races, gods, and mythology. They actually fleshed it out more than Middle Earth (who are the gods of Middle Earth?). While RQIII divorced it, in theory, from Glorantha, nominally setting it in "Fantasy Earth", as a practical matter we only played in Glorantha. The races were well done, particularly the trolls (darkness race originally from Hell, with a sonar that let them see in total darkness), ducks (yes, like Donald and Daffy) and broos (goatlike race of chaos who urinated on everything, could impregnate any living being, even other males, and spread disease). Even chaos was introduced as a concept: a foul, degenerate force of impersonal enthropy which corrupts whatever it touches, spewing bizarre montrosities such as broos, scorpion men (a centaur variant based on a scorpion instead of a horse), jack’o’bear (bear with jack-o-lantern for a head), walktapus (man with octopus for a head....like Cthulhu) and gorps, amorphous acidic blobs. The chaos cults had the baddest spells. Add in chaotic features – bizarre mutations so that no two broos were the same – and you have a recipe for some crazy stuff.

Basically it all came together with RuneQuest, which is why it was my favorite. Unfortunately, our gaming buddies all went off to different places after high school, scattered across the globe: Canada, Ireland (our best and irreplaceable DM), Germany, and combine that with the “wife & kids” deal. As you may suspect, our gaming group was 100% male, except for a brief spell in junior high when I DM’ed a group of female classmates for AD&D for a few weeks (it was fun while it lasted).

Main personal characters:  Necrovern, human Sword of Humakt; Detruncari, High Priest of Dark Truths, Thanatar; Lenyn Frehwynd, Wind Lord of Orlanth; Sweet Leaf, green elf Wood Lord of Aldrya and Light Servant of Yelmalio; Uzzy Uzko, dark troll Death Lord of Zorak Zoran; Dark Zunk, dark troll Karrg's Son of Kyger Litor and acolyte of Argan Argar; Clovehoof Bladebroo, broo Sword of Humakt; Lemmy Atum, tusk rider adept sorceror

Three Red Movies

Despite my staunchly capitalist tendencies, I’m fascinated by the Soviets, Reds and Russians. I’ve read and seen “Enemy at the Gates” (the book/movie about the battle of Stalingrad, August 1942-January 1943) but somehow that wasn’t enough. Nor was the interminable “Dr Zhivago” with Omar Sharif and Obi-Wan Guinness, or the insomnia-curing “Reds” with Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton. I wanted MORE MORE MORE! Here are three more obscure ones...

The North Star. I don’t know where i saw pieces of this, but I decided to track it down. It’s on a Neflix DVD with two other movies. It’s a 1942 movie made by the glorious comrades in Hollywood (Stalin’s minions? No....!). The first half of the film shows happy, well-fed Russian peasants (the same type who were brutally murdered by Stalin ten years before) blissfully unaware that a Fascist menace is lurking at the borders. They sing so much I’m wondering if this is actually a musical. Finally June 22, 1941 rolls around, the music stops and the fun begins. The Germans take over their village, while the able-bodied men escape to the forest and become partisans. Eventually the well-equipped, clean-living, and expertly-led partisan group attacks the village and liberates it from the Germans. The Red Army itself is nowhere to be found, presumably retreating big time as Stalin traded space – of which the Soviets had a surplus – in exchange for time. A few people end up as casualties.

 What I find interesting is how clever this “propaganda” is, ostensibly for US audiences in 1942 to persuade them that the Soviets, who until Pearl Harbor were ideologically enemies of the US, suddenly became our friends due to the mutual antipathy for Nazi Germany. To be believable as propaganda, I suppose they couldn’t be TOO hard on the Germans. The Germans come off as very disciplined, very professional, very competent, and even some of the German doctors are “civilized” and not Nazis. The Germans are not complete animals. Interestingly, the Russian doctor chastises the “civilized” non-Nazi German doctor by telling him, “so long as you’re cooperating with your Nazi superiors and obeying their orders, don’t kid yourself that you’re any better than they are.”

 Since the movie was made in 1942, while the war was in full swing, I wondered how they expected to acquire authentic German uniforms and equipment. Sure enough, the helmets are all the WWI pattern steel helmets (1916-18) with oversized decals; the rifles look like Gewehr 98 (WWI) vs. Kar98k WWII models; the machine guns, rather than MG34 or MG42 are the WWI Schwarzlose models. Rather than the modern Wehrmacht of 1942, Russia has been invaded by the Reichwehr of 1934. The Stukas look authentic, as do a few MP40s. Somehow I doubt the Nazi government would have been too cooperative at assisting Hollywood at producing this “gee, aren’t the Russians swell?” movie.

Battleship Potemkin. This is the old 1925 silent movie. (Somehow my mind reads “Potemkin” to read “Pumpkin”, which gives a somewhat different feel to the story...the good ship Lollipop?) The Potemkin mutinied in 1905 (12 years before the Revolution). According to the story as told in the film: their main reason for overthrowing the officers was due to horrible meat (rancid with maggots) and inedible stew. The ship’s doctor claimed there was nothing wrong with either. The men protested that Russian POWs in Japan got better food – and knowing how ruthless the Japanese are, that says volumes about the Russian Navy. The captain ordered the marines onboard to shoot the unruly sailors, but they balked at that, and before long all hell broke loose. They threw the officers overboard, and the sailor who instigated the rebellion was shot by an officer. They brought his body ashore, labelled “shot for soup” ("no soup for you!") and a rebellion broke out in Odessa. Finally the Cossacks were summoned and shot the unarmed protesters on the steps, leading to the famous shot of the baby carriage tumbling down the steps.

Arsenal. No, not about the Premier League team from north London (well featured in the Colin Firth ORIGINAL of “Fever Pitch”, not that crap with Jimmy Fallon about the Red Sox). This is yet another B&W silent film from the early Soviet Union. It seems to focus on an arsenal (arms depot) which was disputed between two major armed groups: Ukrainian nationalists and Bolsheviks. Since it takes place during the Russian Civil War (1917-22) you can guess which side wins. The Ukrainians come off as the bad guys. Lots of Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifles and Sokolov-mounted Maxim machine guns.

 I couldn’t really follow the plot (even with Russian/English subtitles) and the constant close-ups of various characters doing nothing at all got old very quick. Probably the most interesting part of the film was elements featuring Germans: both the end of the war (WWI) showing German soldiers in their late war steel helmets, essentially chasing hapless Russian soldiers back home from the front (note: unlike WWII, in WWI the Germans won the Eastern Front war): and a very touching segment where three soldiers – Russian, German, and French – each return home to their wives. The wives (Russian, German, and French) are clutching newborn babies, looking very guilty, and the soldier/husband – presumably away from home for far more than nine months – angrily demands CHTO? WER? QUI? Finally, there was a considerable amount of very unhappy looking people missing various limbs. War sucks – for everyone.

Harry Potter

Now the last book has come out, and the series is over.  Movie #5, “Order of the Phoenix” is out, and I imagine #6 and 7 will eventually be completed as well.  I read all the books and saw movies 1-4.  Overall, what’s the deal?

 Books.  Seven, by now, all written by J.K. Rowling and each title begins with “Harry Potter and the...”

1.         Sorceror’s Stone.  This book introduces us to Harry, his “Muggle” family the Dursleys, Hogwarts, the basic elements of magic, and most of the main characters.

2.         Chamber of Secrets.  More of the same.  Instead of a stone, they find a secret chamber within Hogwarts.

3.         Prisoner of Azkaban.  Introduction to Azkaban (the prison for bad magic people) and the Dementors, the wraith-like guards of the prison.  First glance at Sirius Black.

4.         Goblet of Fire.  The Quidditch World Cup starts this off.  There’s a Tri-Wizards competition between Hogwarts and two other schools, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang – the first time we ever learn that there are magic schools besides Hogwarts.  Cedric Diggory is the Hogwarts champion, yet Potter is also put in.

5.         Order of the Phoenix.  Introduction to the Order, which operates independently of the Ministry of Magic.  The Order directly opposes the Death Eaters, who are Voldemort’s support team.  A junior version of the Order, “Dumbledore’s Army”, arises at Hogwarts because the Defense Against Dark Arts teacher, Dolores Umbridge, is such an incompetent idiot.

6.         Half-Blood Prince.  The Death Eaters grow more powerful, Harry learns more about Voldemort and his “Horcruxes” - soul split up into 7 seperate objects – so defeating Voldemort requires finding and destroying each one.  Harry starts to hook up with Ginny Weasley.

7.         Deathly Hallows.  Harry, Hermione and Ron skip the final year at Hogwarts and spend it trying to track down the Horcruxes while evading Voldemort.  We also learn about the Deathly Hallows, which are a killer wand, a stone of resurrection, and the Invisibility Cloak (which he found long ago).  Finishes everything up, ties up the loose ends, and explains exactly what Snape and Dumbledore were up to all this time.

 Characters

Harry Potter.  The only one known to survive the death curse, which caused his distinctive lightning bolt scar on his forehead.  He’s a celebrity within the wizarding world, shows immense natural talent, but is insecure and would gladly forego the fame and danger.  Despite his fame and talent, he’s not an arrogant prick – though he fails to take advantage of his fame when it comes to getting a date for the prom in book 4.  As he grows older, he grows smarter, better at magic, and a bit more petulant.  As the series goes on it becomes more apparent how important he is and how much of his fate is inextricably tied with Voldemort.

Ron Weasley & family.  Apart from his younger sister Ginny, who ends up at Hogwarts, Ron is the youngest of his family.  They are all wizards, so they take magic for granted.  The father, Arthur, works at the Ministry of Magic; an older son, Percy, is a bit of a self-important ass, first as a Prefect at Hogwarts and then working for the Ministry.  Bill works in Romania on dragons, and marries Fleur (a hot French chick).  And Fred and George are the joking twins, always up to no good – but still decent guys after all.  Ron is Harry’s same age so he forms the closest bond, but all the Weasleys – particularly Ginny – like Harry.

Hermione Granger.  The Muggle-born overachiever.  Her parents were not magical, so she’s got a chip on her shoulder and vastly overcompensates.  She knows all stories and spells.  She comes off as a real know-it-all.   She’s far more motivated than Potter, though it ends up being a good thing.

Neville Longbottom.  The opposite of Hermione.  He comes from a distinguished family of magic but is for the most part (until book 7) a shy, insecure underachiever.

The Malfoys.  Draco and his parents, part of the Death Eater crowd and Slytherin house.  Incredibly arrogant assholes.  But worth what to see what eventually happens to them in book 7.

Dumbledore.  The headmaster of Hogwarts, the kind old wizard, far wiser than he appears to be, very much the Gandalf of this book.  He protects Harry and gives him a remarkable amount of support and assistance behind the scenes.

Voldemort.  The #1 Bad Guy, easily the Sauron of the series.  Originally known as Tom Riddle and involved at Hogwarts.  He’s Potter’s nemesis throughout the entire series.  His fan club are the Death Eaters, mostly scum from Slytherin. 

Snape.  The #2 Bad Guy, well played in the movies by Alan Rickman.  He seems to have it out for Potter (Rickman spits out the name with the same contempt and venom he did with “McClane, Mr. Rambo Cowboy” in “Die Hard”).  A Hogwarts professor, first of Potions then Defense Against the Dark Arts.  He leaves us guessing – until the very end! - about whether he’s with the Death Eaters or not.

Hagrid.  The big, burly, dense but helpful groundskeeper who never found a wild animal he didn’t think he could tame.  He helps out Harry big time and is a sympathetic character.

 Hogwarts.  The magic school somewhere in England.  Supposedly it’s hidden, and reached, by the students, by a magical train called the Hogwarts Express.   It’s split up into four houses: Gryffindor (the bravest, best students – including Potter, Hermione and Ron); Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff (mediocre houses not particularly special or bad); and Slytherin, which have the slimiest, nastiest, most unscrupulous students.  Given that this house seems to only produce evil wizards who belong in Azkaban, I’m not sure why the house should even exist. Naturally Snape was a Slytherin.  The students are assigned to houses by the Sorting Hat and remain in that house for all 7 years – if you don’t like where the Hat sent you, tough shit.  The castle is magic and has moving stairs, magic paintings, secret passageways, hidden rooms, ghosts, and all sorts of crazy shit.  It even has dormitories, though these are not co-ed.  There is no sex in the books, the romance is light and fluffy, and it isn’t until book 4 that the kids even realize there’s a difference between girls and boys. 

            The magic itself varies from simple stuff all the way up to spells causing complete domination, excruciating pain, or even death.  As you can imagine it plays a central role in all the books.  However, it’s never explained why some people have the ability and some don’t – some magical people end up with non-magical children called squibs.  There is no mention of God, the Devil, angels, demons, an afterlife – Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, or even oblivion - or even pagan dieties.  The source of magic itself is never explained at all.

 Quidditch.  The make-believe game played on flying brooms.  Actually pretty lame.  They make it into a magical equivalent of soccer, rugby and cricket rolled into one; there’s a World Cup and private teams.  Harry plays on the Hogwarts team for Gryffindor house and is a natural – he plays “Seeker”, a position most like quarterback.  Fortunately Quidditch stops being important after book 4 and they focus on the nasty stuff going on with Voldemort instead.

 The Ministry of Magic.  The magic world has its shadow government of wizards.  The Ministry regulates the magic world and keeps it secret from the Muggles (non-magical people).  Apparently only the top levels of the Muggle government are aware of its existence.  Incidentally, it’s not clear whether the MoM only controls England or has worldwide jurisdiction, as they never mention MoMs in any other country, yet there are schools other than Hogwarts and students from all over the Eastern Hemisphere...which leads to my next topic.

 Americans?   Oddly, there are no American characters in any of the books, nothing takes place in America, the country itself isn’t even mentioned once (I think there may have been some Americans at the Quidditch World Cup), there are no magic schools in America, and for all we’d know from reading the books, the entire Western Hemisphere doesn’t even exist (no Brazilian, Mexican, Argentinian or Canadian wizards either).  I’d say it’s strange, but hey – we’re talking about books about magic. 

 Children’s Books?  Well, it’s no match for Tolkien, Moorcock or Robert E. Howard.  It does get a bit confusing in some places.  But with names like Hufflepuff and calling the non-magicals “Muggles” much of it is lame.  On the other hand, several people die, and the language isn’t completely simple.  It’s more than Dr. Suess.  I’d say they are children’s books, if you define children as “10-13 years old.”   After reading more serious stuff, particuarly textbooks, regulations, or any boring stuff we have to endure as adults, it’s like candy for your brain.  But not corrosive, more like a guiltless pleasure.  By all means, enjoy it.

Engines 101

These are those strange things under the hood of the car – instead of a squirrel on a treadmill (though on some cars it seems that IS what’s pushing the car so damn slowly!). Very few cars have two (Citroen Deux Chevaux) or three (Geo Metro) cylinders, or as many as 16 (very old Cadillacs, with a V16, and the brand new Bugatti, with a W16). Most have 4, 6, 8, 10, or 12. (I won’t even get into rotary engines, as the Mazda RX-7 and RX-8 are the only cars with this type of engine).

Configuration. Either inline ("straight"), V (e.g. V6 or V8), or horizontally opposed ("flat"). The latter is most common with Volkwagen (flat 4 in the Beetle), Subaru, and Porsche (flat six in the 911). VW has introduced a W configuration (two V’s together) and Bugatti uses it with 16 cylinders to put out 1000 horsepower (!). The Sherman tank of WWII had a 30 cylinder engine consisting of 5 banks of inline 6s in a star formation. WWI and WWII fighter planes and bombers often had a radial engine: the cylinders arranged in a circle facing inward.

V8s. These are the kings of performance. Although Chevrolet had a V8 in 1916, the first commonly used and modified was the Ford flathead, debuting in 1932. It wasn’t until 1948 (Cadillac) and 1949 (Oldsmobile) that Ford had any real competition. And in 1955, Chevrolet released its small-block V8, which took the performance laurels away from Ford.

At Ford and Mopar (Chrysler-Dodge-Plymouth) the company made a common family of V8s, though with separate small- and big-block variants; Ford alone had 4 different series, not counting Lincoln and MEL engines which dropped out in the 60s. Until 1982 each GM division – Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac – made its own V8s, and Chevrolet, Olds and Buick produced small- and big-block variants.

The top models were the Pontiac Ram Air 400s (I, II, III, IV, and V – the RA II is pictured above) and Super Duty 455 V8s, big block Chevy LS6 454, Buick 455 Stage 1, Olds Rocket 455, Ford 428 Cobrajet, the 426 Hemi and 440 Six Pack made by Mopar, and the AMC 401.

Displacement. Take 4/3 of PI, multiply it by the bore (cylinder diameter) squared, then by the stroke (distance the piston goes up and down the cylinder) and finally by the number of cylinders, and you have the displacement, either in cubic inches (CID) or liters (metric).

Nowadays almost all engines are measured in liters, with CID being talked about only with reference to V8s. Funny, we still use quarts and gallons here in the US, but our soft drinks are sold in 2 liter bottles! Most 4 cylinder engines displace around 1.5-2.5 liters, 6 cylinders between 2.8-4.3, and V8s somewhere from 4.0 all the way up to 8.0. The 6.0L V8 in the newer GTO and Corvette, then has three times the diplacement of the average 4 cylinder engine although it only has twice as many cylinders, and the 7.0L (427 CID) V8 in the Corvette Z06 – with 500 HP on tap – has even more.

Quite simply, the larger the displacement, the more power the engine can put out. Artificial means of introducing more air to the cylinders, such as nitrous oxide injection or super- or turbo-charging, can dramatically increase power and make an otherwise smaller engine act and behave with the power of a larger engine.

Displacement and horsepower gradually increased through the 60s, peaked in the early 70s, then took a nosedive when emissions and fuel economy standards were abruptly imposed by the Federal government, like the cops shutting down a raucous party on noise complaints. After scrambling to master emissions controls, developing EFI systems, and improving ignition systems, the car makers were finally able to satisfy Big Brother that they were doing their job to protect the atmosphere and keep fuel economy decent, and then turned to improving performance again. By the early 90s the horsepower figures (and to a lesser extent, displacements) finally returned to – and then quickly exceeded – those of the 60s.

This can get a bit confusing because some displacements are repeated by different companies. Chevy and Ford both make a 302 (5.0L); Chevy, Pontiac, Buick and Olds all make a 350 (5.7L) – and all 4 are completely different and do not interchange (with the new Dodge Hemi also displacing 5.7L); the same holds true with the 4 divisions’ 400 CID V8s, adding that both Ford and Mopar also make 400 CID V8s; Chevy and Ford both make a 427; Ford and Pontiac both make a 428; and Buick, Olds and Pontiac (B-O-P) all make a 455. AMC shared displacements with Chevy (327), Mopar (360), Ford (390), and Buick (401).

The largest was Cadillac, at 500 CID, but now Chevrolet has crate engines displacing 502, 540, and now 572 cubic inches.

HP vs. Torque. Horsepower is a measure of power over time, but gives a misleading impression of a engine’s street performance. Enthusiasts know to focus on torque, the twisting action which gets a car moving from a dead stop. Just as we prefer to think of 0-60 acceleration vs. top speed, torque is likewise a more relevant measure of real-life daily street driving. In this, V8s tend to shine the brightest. Observe that most 4 cylinder engines, even those with turbo, tend to put out as much torque as HP, whereas a V8 will put out 50% more torque than its level of HP.

Fuel Injection. Until the 50s, all cars were carbureted. A carburetor uses airflow through a venturi to "suck" fuel into an airstream, mixing it through various complicated mechanical subsystems (idle, acceleration, part-throttle, main circuit, cold start up/choke, etc.) to satisfy the engine’s various fuel demands. Carburetors are sized by "barrels" – one, two, and four being the most common, and performance V8s sometimes had six (three two barrels aka "Tri-Power" or "Six Pack") or eight ("dual quads" – e.g. the 426 Hemi).

By the 80s, carburetors were being electronically controlled but also phased out. Nowadays the only gas engines with carburetors are on lawn mowers, motorcycles, and other small devices – and vintage muscle cars. The famous Rochester QuadraJet (GM), Carter AFB (Mopar), and Holley (aftermarket) 4-barrel carburetors are still sold in various forms today for enthusiasts with older cars.

In the 50s mechanical fuel injection made its debut. Patterned somewhat off diesel systems, they appeared on Mercedes, Corvettes, and a handful of other cars. It was never popular and most mechanics had no idea how to service them. Many owners switched over to carburetors out of sheer frustration.

Bendix had attempted electronic fuel injection (EFI) in the 50s, only to be hampered by vacuum tube computer technology. They sold the rights to Bosch, which was able to make EFI a practical reality in the late 60s when transistors – and later integrated circuits – vastly improved computers. VW came out with the first EFI in 1968, Mercedes followed soon after in 1972, Cadillac in 1975, and in the early 80s Detroit and Japan began switching over. By the 90s the transition was complete, even on trucks.

Saabs, Volvos, VWs, Audis and Porsches often use a strange form of EFI called CIS (continuous injection system) wherein the injectors - one for each cylinder - are always open, and engine speed is controlled by increasing the fuel pressure. As odd as it sounds, it actually works pretty well.

The earlier form of EFI on US and Japanese cars was throttle body injection (TBI), which has a device of the same size and location as a carburetor, sitting on top of the intake manifold, with an injector or two squirting fuel for all cylinders. It's not particularly fancy or effective, but it's better than a carburetor. TBI is an intermittent system with engine speed changed by increasing or decreasing the pulsewidth of the injectors - how long they stay on spraying fuel before shutting closed again; the shortest pulsewidth at idle, increasing up to wide open throttle (WOT).

The usual EFI system these days - and used on all high performance applications - is port fuel injection, with intermittent injectors, one for each cylinder. Some are sequential port (injector fires for its cylinder on the intake stroke) others are batch fire (injectors fire in pairs), though like CIS, the batch fire system works surprisingly well in practice, with no noticeable difference in performance vs. a sequential port system.

The latest wrinkle in EFI development is cylinder deactivation, whereby certain cylinders are turned off at idle and part throttle and the full engine only turned on for full throttle – saving fuel without a noticeable decrease in power. Cadillac tried that in 1982 with its 8-6-4 engine, but the technology at the time was not good enough to do justice to the concept, which only recently became practical.

OHV vs. OHC. Overhead valve means the camshaft, which opens and closes the valves, is located in the engine block and uses pushrods and rocker arms to open the valves. Overhead cam means the camshaft is located on top of the cylinder head and operates on the valves directly or through followers. The major deal with OHC is that such engines are believed to breathe better – because they usually have four, instead of two, valves per cylinder – and thus offer more top end horsepower. Certainly many of the performance snob journalists at Motor Trend and similar magazines consider OHV to be obsolete. Yet GM and Mopar have proved with their more recent OHV V8s and V10s that OHC is NOT the only way to make substantial power, and OHV is by no means obsolete.

 There’s a lot going on under the hood, but it’s all fairly simple. And there IS a difference between a 4 cylinder and a V8, as I know every time I step on the gas...and fill up at the Sunoco station.

Summer of '84

It’s summer of 2007, as hot and humid as any other I can remember, and by now I’ve gone through almost 40.  But a few special summers stick out in my memory, and none more than this one: 1984.

 I had just finished sophomore year in high school in Paris, and most of my friends, including my best friend Phil, somehow chose that particular summer to have their families move away from Paris.  Fortunately we got home leave that summer, so we were able to spend about 6 weeks in the US, which for us was like heaven.  The night before the flight home was as exciting and difficult to sleep through as Christmas Eve.

 With our own house rented out, finding a place to stay was a challenge each time we returned.  This time we traded spaces with a family in DC, who had a small house off McArthur Blvd.  I was 15, my brother 14, and my sister was 9, but we were all much larger than the young children this family had, so the beds were all a bit on the small side.  Their “kitchen table” consisted of a booth from a subway car, about as large as the kiddie section of a McDonalds and way too cramped for a normal sized teenager.   They also had air conditioning, but with a huge Chinese bed on the ground floor (!) with really no practical purpose other than to block airflow through the ground floor of the house, the A/C didn’t work too well.   The kitchen had no glasses, only coffee mugs.  Finally, this was one of these Foreign Service families who had travelled all over the world and wanted EVERYONE who entered their tiny Bag End hovel to know it.  They decorated it like a travel museum – “this is where we’ve been!! aren’t we great??” – including the afore-mentioned bed in the living room.  With all the way-too-small crap of the entire house (built for hobbits!) what they really needed was a large, circular door to complete the Middle Earth connection.  Damn travel snobs.  Our own apartment in Paris was 3 times larger – these people clearly got the better end of the swap.  Returning to Paris and our own place was a rescue from claustrophobia. 

 The 1984 Olympics were going on in Los Angeles, and our relatives lived in McLean – in a normal sized house with properly functioning air conditioning and no Chinese bed – so we spent a considerable amount of time there.  We also watched lots of “Mork & Mindy” for some reason (don’t ask me why).  I didn’t pay a great deal of attention to the Olympics, even Mary Lou Retton’s perfect 10, as much because I generally don’t care for the Olympics anyway as for the absence of the Soviet Bloc because of their boycott. Interesting – Romania did NOT join the boycott, but Retton won anyway.  The Romanian women’s team did win the gold for the team competition, whereas the US men’s team won the gold.  For being smart enough to buck the trend (“80 percent of success is showing up” - Woody Allen), Ceaucescu’s gang cleaned up with 53 models, #2 after the US with 174.  The overall consensus even among Americans was that our stellar performance was only because so many countries who usually compete heavily with us (e.g. the USSR and East Germany) were absent.

 Reagan was President, Bush Sr. was Vice-President, and the upcoming November election would feature Walter Mondale & Geraldine Ferraro getting hosed big time (keep that in perspective when we see Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers!). 

 I got my first contact lenses, and had a devil of a time learning to take them out and put them in, but it was worth the effort.

 The trip started with a stay at the Howard Johnson’s hotel in Crystal City, where I got a massive sunburn, with the resulting days of unbearable itchiness.  D’oh!

 We met up with Phil, whose family was living in Greenbelt while they were waiting for their sea shipment to arrive from France; they would eventually move to Sterling.  This was notable as it was the first time we’d ever met any of the people we had originally met in Paris, in the US.  The place they were staying in had a VERY OLD black & white TV with a distorted picture tube.  More “dark brown and yellow” than black & white, and anything round, like an aspirin, looked more like an egg.  (“How do you remember this stuff??”)

 I was also doing lots of reading, in particular devouring, for the first time, H.P. Lovecraft (horror) and Michael Moorcock (fantasy).  We were also heavily into role-playing games at that time, so we got Stormbringer, which was Chaosium’s RPG for the Elric books.  I had bought Judas Priest’s albums Sad Wings of Destiny and Sin After Sin at the PX in Belgium prior to the trip, and Black Sabbath Master of Reality at Henderson Hall here in the US, so those three albums served as a musical backdrop for the horror stories and Elric saga.  Twisted Sister were big at this time, particularly their hit “We’re Not Gonna Take It” with the classic video featuring Niedermeyer from “Animal House” as the nasty father.  More magic, listening to that, reading that, in this stupid little hobbit house. 

 It was a great summer – and I STILL listen to those albums fairly often.  At least NOW I can drive....