NFL vs. College Football

Now that the regular season has begun, it’s time to for a sports-oriented blog entry.  I love the NFL...and can’t stand college football.  Here are some of the reasons why:

 1.         Super Bowl v. College Bowls.  The NFL has ONE Super Bowl, preceded by NFC and AFC Championships and a sensible playoff schedule.  On the other hand, there are 32 college bowls and NO playoffs.  That’s as many bowls are there are NFL teams!  Come on.  At least college basketball has the March Madness bracket.  College football is a confusing mess.  Unfortunately the powers that be are too strong and have too much to gain by maintaining the current system and refusing to switch to a playoff system.

 2.         Mascots.  NFL has the Vikings, Cowboys, Giants, etc.  What do we have for college teams?  Terrapins (my school)?  Boilermakers?  Sooners (what’s a sooner?)?  Orangemen?  Gamecocks?  Cornholers – err.. Cornhuskers?  Ok, there are the Wake Forest Demon Deacons and the Duke Blue Devils.  But most of the college teams have pretty lame mascots.

 3.         Uniforms.  Why is it that the top college teams have the dullest uniforms?  Notre Dame – black with a simple gold helmet (at least they’re no longer riding horses – see above).  Penn State – dark blue, white helmet with a stripe (not even player names on the backs of the jerseys).  Ohio State – silver with red stripe on the helmet.  Michigan – lame Wolverine type design.  For every Florida State with a spear there are dozens of others like Nebraska with just an N stencilled on.  The uniforms look like those generic football uniforms you see in ads for TVs or beer.  Only the Cleveland Browns combine a lame name and a lame uniform.  They’re better off renaming themselves the Dawgs and at least putting a paw print on the side of the helmet. 

 4.         Quality.  Only the top college players get picked in the NFL Draft, so the quality throughout the NFL is far higher, played at a far higher level, than college football.  Everything about the NFL is high-tech, professional, and top tier.  College football, by its nature, is a distant second.  And any NFL player will tell you exactly the same thing.

 Finally: GO VIKINGS!

Still Not on DVD

Two movies are STILL not out on DVD.

AC/DC “Let There Be Rock”. I mentioned this film earlier in my blog. This was a film that came out in Paris in 1979, showing one of the band’s last performances with original singer Bon Scott, at the Zenith. This place is up far northeast Paris, and we’ve seen several concerts there, unfortunately not this particular one.
AC/DC were touring their album Highway to Hell, possibly the best of their original Bon Scott albums. By now Brian Johnson has been with the band for 27 years, far longer than Bon Scott, but somehow Bon is the classic singer. The movie not only shows the band in concert – in top form – but also has several interviews with various band members. Bon gets to show his abundant charm, wit, and Scottish accent, even speculating that if there was a war, AC/DC could put on concerts for the troops. Malcolm Young, the rhythm guitarist, kicks a soccer ball around a field. Phil Rudd, the drummer, drives a Porsche 928 around a lake, chased by a biplane. Angus Young, the lead guitarist, even has a few words to say and scribbles a cartoon of himself.
This is one of the better rock movies out there, of a great band, playing a great concert, at the peak of their career, with some stunning extra footage in the middle. WHY is this not on DVD??

Beatles, “The Compleat Beatles”. A fantastic documentary, narrated by Malcolm McDowell, best known for his performance as Alex in the film “A Clockwork Orange.” The band’s history is told from Liverpool, the early days at the Cavern and in Hamburg, the rise of Beatlemania, the transition period of Revolver, the masterpiece Sgt Pepper, and even their breakdown and breakup are well-told. George Martin, the producer, is articulate and eloquent; various other musicians – including Billy Preston and the Beach Boys – give their two cents worth, and the way the whole thing is put together is fantastic, even without any actual interviews with any of the band members themselves. It’s stunning how they make it work even without John, Paul, George or Ringo involved.
We can now see the low-budget monstrosity “Magical Mystery Tour” on DVD (as Monty Python might put it, all the imperfections of the original film are now in crystal digital clarity!!). We can see the extended idiotic music video with great music but a stupid plot, known as “HELP!” on DVD. But when it comes to the best possible documentary on one of the best possible bands....it’s still VHS.
Why, when much lesser product by each band is out on DVD, are these two films still stuck on VHS? It’s oversights like this that force us to keep our VCRs instead of switching over completely to the DVD format. Argggh!!!!!!!!

THX1138 vs. American Graffiti

George Lucas’ first two movies, “THX1138” and “American Graffiti”, before “Star Wars” blew our minds in 1977. I decided to check out the former and revisit the latter.

1. THX 1138 (1971). Taking place eons in the future, in a very clean totalitarian regime – somewhat like 1984 (George Orwell), We (Yevgeni Zamyatin), Anthem (Ayn Rand) and Brave New World (Aldous Huxley). The main character, THX (Robert Duvall) works in a radiation plant, and comes home to his cubicle he shares with a cute number LUH 3417. Their lives, of course, are rigidly controlled: they’re not supposed to have sex, but they are supposed to constantly consume certain prescribed drugs. Eventually some other guy, SEN 5241, manages to get the girl transferred away and himself installed as THX’s roommate.
THX himself isn’t too happy. Although he has some cool holograms and a bizarre counselor, he’s alienated somehow, and ultimately tries to escape. They’re under some sort of mandatory medication, apparently something like the “soma” consumed in Brave New World to keep everyone docile and cooperative; in his case it doesn’t seem to work very well. He’s chased by cops, who look pretty much like the “bad” Terminator in T2 as the motorcycle cop. The plot isn’t very strong and not much happens, though it does have the obligatory “cars driving fast chase” scene every single Lucas film has to include.
The film is less notable in and of itself, as for its obvious inspiration for a much newer one, “The Island”, with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johannsen. “The Island” picks up where “THX1138” left off.

2. American Graffiti (1973). One night in August or September somewhere in 1962 Modesto, California, various teens have their respective adventures and find themselves. Steve (Ron Howard) (aka Richie Cunningham from “Happy Days” and nowadays a big-time director with much less hair) and Laurie (Cindy Williams) (aka Shirley from “Laverne & Shirley”) break up with the stress of Steve going off to college and Laurie remaining in town. Curt (Richard Dreyfus – very young) – chases after a hot older woman, a blonde in a T-Bird (Suzanne Somers), not an alien spacecraft or a huge shark, briefly hanging out with the Pharoahs, the local gang. Tiger (Charles Martin Smith) (some nerd) borrows Steve’s hot rod to go cruising, picks up a chick, Debby (Candy Clark), and has his own bizarre misadventures. Milner (Paul Le Mat – looking like Chekov from “Star Trek”), the top gearhead with a yellow Ford deuce coupe (see above, with license plate THX 138), picks up underage Carol (Mackenzie Phillips) (later in the show “One Day At A Time” with Valerie Bertinelli...schwing!) while being shadowed by Bob Falfa (Harrison Ford) in a souped up, jet black ’55 Chevy Belair – his early version of the Milennium Falcon, though with Cindy Williams instead of Chewbacca (she’s considerably prettier and more articulate, though I doubt she’d rip anyone’s arms off). Incidentally, that ’55 Belair later showed up, in grey primer with a dual-quad 454, in “Two-Lane Blacktop” driven by James Taylor and Dennis Wilson. Even Wolfman Jack has a role.

In a sense, this film is the movie prequel to the series “Happy Days”. It’s very much like “Dazed and Confused” and others of these films involving aimless high school students drifting around over the couse of a single evening. Between the two of these, I much prefer “Dazed and Confused”, although myself I was far too young to have experienced high school in the 70s, but I remember being a kid at that time. This film is more a reminder of the 50’s nostalgia that was the rage in the US during the 70s, particularly Sha Na Na and “Grease”.

A good start – but Star Wars blew them both away.

Dr Strange

I’m not much into comic books – not DC Comics, not Marvel Comics, Japanese comics, underground comics, or graphic novels, though occasionally one or two of them grab my attention. Spiderman, the Freak Brothers, Alan Moore, etc. are fine but most of the rest leave me flat, including Superman (too powerful) and Batman (now too “dark”, “serious” and pretentious).

My favorite is Dr. Strange. Recently I caught the “movie”, if you can slap that loosely defined label on the animated idiocy they released as Marvel’s entry for this superhero. Even The Punisher got a real movie. It looks like it was done by the same people who gave us those more recent Batman animated cartoons, where Gotham City looks like it’s the 30s, everyone is so serious, etc. It seems to have gone straight to DVD, where it belongs – it sucked.

The early Dr Stranges, back in the 60s, illustrated by Steve Ditko, were by far the best. They were incredibly psychedelic, going off into dozens of crazy, bizarre, screwed-up dimensions. Dormammu looked like some weird, crazy villain, not just a ripoff of the devil in Fantasia’s “Night on Bald Mountain”, as this movie made him out to be. Dr Strange vs. the Devil? Come on.

I can't say he was as cool as Spiderman - Strange took himself too seriously and didn't seem to have a sense of humor. But he did end up on the cover of Pink Floyd's album A Saucerful of Secrets...

Dr. Strange wasn’t just a wizard, casting spells, doing magic stuff around like an overgrown Harry Potter. Any kind of magician can do that. This guy went places. Weird places. And met people. Weird people. Eternity? Dormammu? Countless bizarre alien wizards who all thought they could beat The Sorceror Supreme – including some hot sorceresses? That’s my scene. He rescued entire dimensions, saved the Universe, and protected the Ancient One. He’s the man.

Soccer Jerseys

I suppose most people collect something or other in the course of their lives. In addition to CDs, I also collect soccer jerseys. I’ve lost count, but as of now I have something like 40 of them I’ve accumulated since June 2000.

In the Beginning. I was on my first trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2000. It was winter there, though winter means 70 degrees, fog on the beach, and it gets dark at 6 p.m. We were staying in Copacabana, and I was just getting to know the city and all about it. I learned its four premier teams were Flamengo, Fluminense, Botafogo, and Vasco de Gama. On that trip I got my first jersey, the red/black home jersey of Flamengo; by the end of the trip I had my second, Botafogo (black/white vertical stripes). And I was hooked.

Teams. I rounded out the RJ collection on the next trip (New Year’s Eve 2000-2001) with Fluminense and Vasco, then spread across Europe: Arsenal (UK), Bayern Munich (Germany), as well as French, Spanish, and Italian teams. I stayed away from national (World Cup) jerseys, with the exceptions of Brazil (5 stars after 2002), Poland, and Romania (1973 version). I even managed to get the Iron Maiden variant; after so many rock bands made baseball and hockey jerseys for themselves, Iron Maiden – die hard fans of West Ham United (east London) – decided to make their own soccer jersey.

Rivals. I do commit the heresy of collecting and wearing the jerseys of mutual rivals: Arsenal v. West Ham and Tottenham, Flamengo and Fluminense, Schalke & Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid and Barcelona. I tend to pick the most important teams and cover the bases.

Brazil: Flamengo (x2), Fluminense, Botafogo, Vasco (RJ), Cruzeiro (MG), Santos (x2), São Paulo FC, Palmeiras, Corinthians (SP), Atletico Paranaense (PR), Internacional (RS) + Seleção (5 stars)
England (Premier League): Arsenal (x4), Tottenham, West Ham, Chelsea (London); Manchester United, Liverpool, Newcastle
Germany (Bundesliga): Bayern Munich (x2), Hertha Berlin, Schalke '05, Borussia Dortmund, Hamburg FSV (x2), Werder Bremen (x2), Vfb Stuttgart, Bayer Leverkusen, FC Kaiserslautern
France (First Division): Bordeaux, St Etienne, Paris-St Germain, Olympique Lyonnais (x2), Olympique Marseilles
Italy (Serie A): AC Milan (x2), Inter Milan, AS Roma (x3), Juventus, Fiorentina
Spain (First Division): Real Madrid (x3) & Barcelona
Romania: Steaua Bucuresti, and national team (1973)

Personalized. Most of mine have either blank backs or a number and no name. Until recently Brazilian teams didn’t put the players’ names on the back. Occasionally I’d get a personalized jersey: Giovanni Elber (Brazilian) with Bayern Munich; David Beckham (two Real Madrid jerseys); Ronaldo (Brazilian) w/Real Madrid; Ronaldo (Portuguese, aka Christiano Ronaldo) with Manchester United; Kaka (Brazilian) with AC Milan; Ronaldinho (Brazilian) with Paris-St. Germain, etc. I tended to pick Brazilian players with European teams, with the obvious exception of Beckham.

Home/Away/3rd. Teams have a home jersey (usually dark), an away jersey (usually light, often white), and sometimes a third jersey (odd color) to wear when their home/away jersey is too similar to the opposing team’s away/home jersey. I’ll pick whichever one strikes my fancy. Santos (Brazil – Pele’s team) has a home jersey which is plain white, so my two Santos jerseys are the away versions with black/white vertical stripes. Neither of my AC Milan jerseys are the standard red/black home jersey.

Sponsors. What’s remarkable about soccer jerseys is that unlike with US sports teams, they have corporate sponsors on them, a practice which began in the 80s; by comparison the jerseys of the 70s and earlier look rather dull and sparse. Many of the sponsors are insurance companies, Internet companies, cell phone carriers or companies (Siemens Mobile or T-Mobile), and even beers – Carlsberg, the Danish beer, sponsors Liverpool, and Holsten, a German beer, sponsored Tottenham. Emirates, the airline from Dubai, has been sponsoring a few teams lately, notably Arsenal.

Comfort. The shirts are extremely comfortable, made of the latest high-tech fabrics to breathe well; and I always get the short-sleeved versions anyway. They’re great to wear in the summer or on the treadmill at the gym. They also often have collars, so they’re almost like polo shirts.

Sources. Most of the time I ordered them from Subsidesports, a company in England with a great selection, plus they do a great job of personalizing the jerseys. Almost all of my Brazilian jerseys were purchased in Brazil. A few I bought from stores here and there, but it’s rare to find a store in the US that carries these. There was a very brief time a few years ago when the local Foot Lockers and similar places carried them when it was a brief fad, that is long gone. Finally, I’ve ordered some jerseys from the teams themselves, which lets you get a 100% authentic jersey with any player’s name on it. The official jersey has the team crest embroidered, and is of noticeably better quality than some knockoffs - as with most things in life, you get what you pay for.

Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness

My computer at my old office crashed, along with the next few planned blog entries, so I have to adlib here and come up with something quickly. As it happens, I finished off Reefer Madness, a book by Eric Schlosser, best known for Fast Food Nation. I may as well review both of them.

I went into FFN expecting it to be an all-out crucifixion of McDonald’s and the fast food industry: nasty, obnoxious artery-clogging filth; and evil, soulless corporations enslaving millions of hapless workers in hopeless, dead-end McJobs. I was wrong.

First off, nowhere in FFN does Schlosser condemn fast food as unhealthy. Sure, he doesn’t claim that it’s healthy or good for you, but simply the absence of positive nutritional value is not, in itself, an indictment of this class of food as poison. He falls well short of that. In fact, he goes into considerable detail about the conscientious efforts of the various chains – particularly Jack-in-the-Box – to guarantee that its food is safe and free from bacteria and other impurities which could cause food poisoning or disease. Any discussion of the long-term effects of a lifetime of McDonald’s consumption is outside the scope of his book.

He was particularly impressed with the skill of the industry at developing artificial colors and flavors, centered in their chemical plants located along the New Jersey Turnpike (which any of us familiar with that strip of highway has surely seen at some point). Note: artificial almond flavor is actually LESS dangerous than natural almond flavor, which contains trace elements of cyanide. Yep. Though the amount of cyanide in an almond is so small, you’d have to eat literally thousands, or even millions, to have a chance of dying. Death by almonds? Not likely.

He was also impressed with the scope, organization, planning and efficiency of McDonald’s. As I recall from my days as a business student in college, practically every management professor and textbook was impressed by the thoroughness with which McDonald’s structures its operations. The machines in each restaurant are specifically designed to work in a certain fashion with zero discretion left to the 16 year old no-experience, bad attitude slackers who make up the workforce.

Granted, that makes the job itself as soulless and dull as any on an assembly line in a factory – after all, the goal is to mass-produce fries, burgers, etc. and quickly serve them to hungry, impatient customers – but it means we, as customers, can count on the same food, in the same quality, and the same quick service (if not sincerely pleasant!) whether it’s a McDonald’s in New York, L.A., Paris, London, Moscow, or Tokyo, allowing for regional variations in menu and taste, which is by design, not any failure of the local operation to meet corporate standards.

Naturally the personnel practices of McDonald’s and other chains are never going to impress Michael Moore, but Schlosser falls far short of condemning the industry as feudal. That is reserved for the next book….

Despite its title, Reefer Madness is not just about marijuana, though 1/3 of the book is devoted to that subject. The theme of the book is America’s underground economy: marijuana, illegal immigrants, and pornography. Here is where Schlosser takes closer aim at questionable employment practices, particularly among illegal immigrants in California’s strawberry farms (and to a lesser extent Florida’s fruit industry). Not only does he roast the growers in California who mercilessly exploit the Mexicans, he explicitly questions the Invisible Hand of capitalism and invokes Adam Smith to specifically invoke the dreaded words “market failure”.
Unfortunately, he does little to suggest what the solution to that market failure is, beyond a passing idea of paying the workers a penny more per unit. But consider this: first of all, we already have minimum wage laws; second, these are illegal immigrants, who shouldn't even be in the country in the first place, much less working. What exactly is the argument that people who entered the country illegally and are violating the laws by working (albeit with the obvious cooperation of their employers) should receive the benefit of our labor laws? This issue was completely ignored.

On the other hand, these people do provide a valuable service, and they do something which no one else in the country is willing to do -"it's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it". In fact, the growers may have a difficult time hiring Americans to pick strawberries even if they were willing to pay a decent wage and America's strawberry consumers were willing to pay a higher price. The guest worker solution - proposed by others and criticized by Schlosser - seems to be the most appropriate recognition both of the need for these workers in our economy and their illegal status.

Given how heavily he slams not only the industry but capitalism as an economic form, this is all the more reason why he should have spent an equal amount of time providing a solution – one which would not have caused more problems than it solved. I didn't hear much of that from him besides his cursory rejection of the guest worker proposal. All very well to sneer at “the invisible hand” and write off the Libertarians as naïve children who fail to recognize the true complexity of modern society and economics, but if you can’t propose a realistic solution, or a better alternative to other proposals, you should just shut up. Two words: RENT CONTROL.
The other two thirds of Reefer Madness concern marijuana, with a strong emphasis on how stupid many of these mandatory minimums are, and the hypocrisy of politicians who demand the death penalty for drug dealers – except when their own children are caught selling pot by the pound under their very noses. He’ll get no argument from me: amen, brother, he’s preaching to the choir…. Obviously marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco, yet gets hammered as if it’s cyanide. Come on. Both the idiocy of the harsh drug laws and the rapant tyranny of the asset forfeiture laws (discussed briefly therein) could fill entire books.

The third part is porn. The majority of this section is a lengthy biography of Rueben Sturman, the man who singlehandedly created the US porn industry; covering Sturman basicially describes how the porn industry itself got started here. Here’s where Schlosser is more simply informative and isn’t up on his Marxist-Socialist soapbox. It's hard to tell whether Schlosser considers him a victim or a hero; on one hand he developed an important industry, on the other he evaded taxes until an IRS agent finally brought him down. Perhaps he's neither - or both.

Entertaining, on both counts. Unfortunately the porn section didn’t provide any samples…

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.