Iron Maiden - Live After Death

I recently picked up the DVD of “Live After Death”, Iron Maiden’s classic 1985 Long Beach Arena show in 1985 on the World Slavery Tour for their Powerslave album.  Apparently this had been on VHS for ages (and I know I’ve seen it, although I never bought it) but until now had not been released in DVD format.  The second disc includes footage of Iron Maiden in Eastern Europe on the same tour (behind the “Iron Curtain”, as these countries were still communist at that time) and Rock in Rio I, which complements their more recent Rock in Rio (III) DVD.

I have two caveats about the quality of this, and then I’ll move on.  First, the original double LP included a 4^th side recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon on the same tour, and included “22 Acacia Avenue”, “Children of the Damned”, “Die With Your Boots On”, “Wrathchild”, and “Phantom of the Opera”.  This segment was missing from the original CD release of the album and apparently not filmed, as it hasn’t even showed up in this collection.  The second caveat is about “Running Free”, which Bruce Dickinson needlessly extends by another 5 minutes with that inane call-and-response segment.

Having said that, this DVD captures not only Iron Maiden at their peak, but also the whole 80’s metal movement.  The setlist alone is excellent: “Trooper”, “Revelations” (my favorite, aside from “Strange World”, which I don’t think we’ll ever see played), “Powerslave”, “Hallowed Be Thy Name”, “Number of the Beast”, etc.  I’ve heard “Run To The Hills” a few too many times to get excited about it anymore.  Bruce Dickinson is at his best, jumping around and still in long hair.  His inter-song contributions – especially this bit about Queen Victoria smoking hemp to alleviate her menstrual cramps – are a far cry from “are you ready to rock, motherf**kers???” we usually can count on from the likes of Motley Crue or Skid Row.  Dave Murray and Adrian Smith trade off their melodic, winding solos; Steve Harris attacking us with his Fender Precision Bass; and (zzz) Nicko McBrain going nuts behind the drums.  No sign of Blaze Bayley or Janick Gers; I never liked Bayley, and while Gers is a decent guy, he doesn’t seem to add anything except another guy running around with a guitar.  (Rik Emmitt: “More necks, I need more necks!” and “More frets! I need more frets!”)  Most importantly, the result is not some incessant wall of noise, but a coherent, tight, well-organized array of sounds which all fit together and give us metal at its finest.

Background.  Emerging from the slums of East London amidst the punk era of the late 70s, Maiden finally secured a record deal in 1980 after 3 years in the trenches of the club scene and scraping enough cash to make a crude demo, the Soundhouse Tapes.  After two albums with the original singer Paul D’ianno (not a bad voice, but a bit rough around the edges), Iron Maiden and Killers, the band dumped D’ianno for Bruce Dickinson and took off with Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, and Powerslave.  Along with Def Leppard and Saxon, Maiden are one of the few bands of the so-called New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) to survive into the mid to late 80s and make it big. 

Tour.  By this time they had 5 albums, three with Bruce Dickinson, and toured Powerslave as the World Slavery Tour.  The stage setup was amazing: elaborate backdrops, Egyptian motifs, and a huge Eddie.  Even the floor had Egyptian designs.  Contrasted with AC/DC’s bare stage with just Marshall stacks, or the Grateful Dead with their “wall” P.A. and carpets on the floor, this was even more outrageous and ambitious than even the prior stage masters, KISS.  This was metal at its most extravagant and self-indulgent, but somehow it worked, because the music was just as monumental, bombastic and dramatic; in other words, metal at its peak, at its best. 

It started in August 1984 in Poland, and continued for practically an entire year, even to Rio de Janeiro Brazil for Rock in Rio I, in January 1985, in front of 300,000 metaleiros, after Whitesnake and before Queen, the headliner, before finishing up in July 1985 in California.  Countries: Poland, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, UK, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland (August-November ’84), Canada and USA (November ’84-March 1985, except for Rock in Rio in January), to Japan and Australia (March-May ’85), then back to the US from May to July.  The P.A. system put out 152,000 watts, the monitor system was 21,000 watts, and the lighting alone was 7,000 watts.  They recorded and filmed the live album over 4 nights at the Long Beach Arena in L.A. on March 14-17, 1985.

Band.

Bruce Dickinson (vocals).  Nicknamed “Air Raid Siren”, Dickinson was as much an improvement over D’ianno as a Z06 Corvette is over a standard Camaro.  He’s got a top quality voice, sings so you can actually understand the words, and chats between songs almost as wittily as Ian Anderson.  He’s probably one of the top singers in metal, or music, period.

Dave Murray (guitar).  Along with Harris, one of the only original members.  I love his long blond hair consistently – from 1977 to this day – parted in the middle, and his innocent-but-hiding-some-dark-secret impish smile.  His solo style is melodic; his top solos are “Powerslave”, “Strange World”, “Phantom of the Opera”, “22 Acacia Avenue” and “Revelations”.  Murray is probably one of the most underrated metal guitarists.

Adrian Smith (guitar).  Quiet, unassuming, yet hardworking and competent, Smith is like the Brad Whitford of the band.  He plays off Murray well (they’re old buddies from before Iron Maiden) and they never step on each other’s toes.

Steve Harris (bass).  Clearly the anchor of the band.  He’s a big fan of West Ham United (east London Premier League soccer team), Wisbone Ash, and Jethro Tull.  He’s also the leading writer of the band’s music and lyrics.  There would be no Maiden without ‘Arry.  He attacks his Fender Precision Bass with passion, jumps around the stage, and lip syncs the words he wrote for Dickinson to sing.

Nicko McBrain (drums).  I really don’t have much of a discerning ear for drummers besides distinguishing styles at the extremes (Neil Peart vs. John Bonham) so I won’t comment on his technique.  He acts a bit loony as part of the “drummers have to be the animal” act, but is actually pretty smart and articulate.

Eddie.  Their mascot since the early days.  It’s not clear WHAT he is, or what he’s supposed to be, but he appears in some form on every album, in various clever forms on their T-shirts, and has some stage presence at every show, be it an oversized dummy lurching around on stilts or an inflated mummy blown up at the back of the stage.  Megadeth have their persistent wanna-be Eddie, Vic Rattlehead (better to rip off Iron Maiden than Metallica, huh?), and even Motley Crue tried (for about a nanosecond) to weasel in with lame-ass mascot of their own.  But there’s only one Eddie.

Brazil.  While Maiden struggle to fill modest venues these days in the US – and are only playing one show in the UK on this tour – in Brazil it might as well still be 1985.  They headlined their night at Rock in Rio III (which was taped and filmed) in January 2001, yet again in front of 250,000 screaming Brazilian metal fans.  They continue to pack the crowds in there, a feat they could never repeat in the US.  For a country known for bossa nova, “The Girl from Ipanema” (Stan Getz or Frank Sinatra), and all that soft, tropical music, Brazil outclasses the US and UK for sheer metal devotion, even to this date. 

UP THE IRONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Intellivision

 

My Tron blog led me to this one, as seems logical.  These days we’ve got Nintendo Wii, the Xbox, and Playstation, with their super-sophisticated graphics and plotlines.  I’m old enough to remember the Olde Days, when we had much cruder games to play with.

Pong.  WAYYY back.  I remember playing this in the basement of my friend Paul, who was also our next-door neighbor.  Tennis, hockey, and squash, with big or small paddles, was about the range of games in this thing.  Black and white.  That was it.  Pretty crude, but very simple and very playable, especially if you didn’t even have an Atari to compare it with.

Odyssey.  My relatives in Long Island had this thing.   It was a modest improvement over Pong, using overlays on the TV screen but still having crude graphics.  We couldn’t get it to work.  I remember it had a haunted house game I would have liked to have played….

Atari 2600.  This was the first game to really have any impact, and certainly had by far the most games.  Back in 1980 we had the choice of this or an Intellivision.  Going with quality over quantity, we picked the Intellivision, though we had no shortage of friends who had made the opposite decision and were happy to play their games with us.  The graphics were crude but viewable, but the play was fairly simple, with a simple joystick with one button.  In retrospect, though, despite the wide variety of games available for this system, the only Atari games which were really decent were “Combat” (the stock cartridge which came with the system, and curiously absent from the recent standalone Atari units you can get at Toys R Us these days) and “Adventure” with its dragons which looked more like ducks.  Activision actually made better games, and probably saved Atari’s butt from an earlier extinction.

Intellivision.  We loved this.  From 1980-84 we were relentless in trying to collect literally every single game they made, even boring ones like Reversi which we played once and never again.  Although the disc-based controller wasn’t nearly as easy to get used to as the Atari’s joystick, the keypad and side buttons dramatically enhanced the range of options available, making the games considerably more sophisticated without necessarily (!) compromising their playability. The graphics were 10x better than Atari’s.  The voice cabability – with the IntelliVoice module and the games Bomb Squad, B-17 Bomber, Space Spartans and Tron: Solar Sailor – wasn’t nearly as remarkable as the games which featured them weren’t that great.  Here are some of the highlights.  Relax, I won’t name them all, but the games tended to be fairly high quality, so even picking the highlights means picking a fairly high percentage of them.  Although the sports games were “officially licensed” by the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, NASL, PGA, etc. none of them were nearly advanced enough to allow you to actually select real teams.

            Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  The earlier Cloudy Mountain game was cruder, but far more playable and enjoyable than the later, more ambitious and complex (and boring) Treasure of Tarmin game.  We were huge gamers when the first cartridge came out, only to have our Intellivision unit fry on us shortly before getting the game. 

            Astrosmash.  Clearly cool with huge scores available and varying color backgrounds, but after a certain point it got dull and repetitive.  It’s like Asteroids but oriented left-to-right across the bottom of the screen.

            NFL Football.  You could program plays, offense and defense, and could actually complete passes.  This game actually scrolled left and right, rather than up and down the screen.

            MLB Baseball.  One of the best, EVER, and had crude voice ability (the umpire) long before IntelliVoice.  The keypad allowed complete control over all players on the field, yet the game was very playable.  I’m not a fan of baseball, but I loved this game. 

            Bump & Jump.  How can a dump truck go at 200 mph?  Who knows.  This game was cool, especially with the changing seasons, but you got 50,000 points for completing a segment without crashing anyone, far higher than you ever would by crashing as many cars as you could.    The Death Skull car was cool.

            Lock & Chase.  Like Pac-Man but better (I always thought Pac-Man was dull, as the maze never changed, whereas Ms Pac-Man had changing mazes which made it more worthwhile to advance, beyond simply ramping up the score for its own sake).  The original arcade version was at the arcade in the Jardin where we used to go as kids.  You’re a thief who steals coins in a bank, avoiding the Keystone cops and picking up bonus items along the way.  Instead of an energizer pill, you can lock doors behind you.

            Burger Time.  I brought my Intellivision to college with me during sophomore year and my roommates got addicted to this one.  I’d come back from class and find them doing marathon sessions of this (“screw class, I’m getting a high score!”).  I got pretty good at it myself.  Your little chef makes giant burgers by walking across the buns and patties, avoiding animated evil hot dogs, a fried egg, and a pickle.  Cute but compelling.

            Frog Bog.  Childish, but still cool.  Two frogs jump from pad to pad trying to catch bugs with their tongues.  The frog with the most points after a time period wins.  At night the bugs are fireflies.  The frogs could actually miss the pad, splash into the water, and swim back onto the pads.

            Mission X.  A scrolling bombing mission in a Lockheed P-38 Lightning, with strafing and bombing.  It was unclear whether the targets were German or Japanese.

            Night Stalker.  One of my favorites: you’re hunted down by killer robots in a dark maze, and you have to keep getting new guns as each only has 6 shots.  Bats and a spider lurk around to paralyze you.  The robots get progressively more dangerous (aggressive and intelligent) as your score increases, up to the invisible robot who was by far the most difficult to kill.

            Sea Battle.  I loved this one.   You have a whole fleet, including a sub, two PT boats, an aircraft carrier (minus aircraft??), destroyers, a battleship, a troop transport and a mine layer and mine sweeper.   Mines were so damn annoying we generally agreed to ban them. If you were really cocky, arrogant and good at the game you’d try and wipe out your opponent’s whole fleet using only your mine layer or mine sweeper.

            Snafu.  Killer funky disco music!  Simple but effective, reminiscent of the light cycle phase of Tron.

            Triple Action.  Race cars, tanks – with ricochet effect! – and biplanes (with stall) brought Intellivision up to Atari’s Combat credentials, with better graphics and few wrinkles.

            Shark! Shark!  More groovy music, adding bubble effects too.  You’re a fish eating other fish, avoiding a shark and jellyfish, gradually getting larger and larger as you successfully devour smaller fish and avoid the larger ones.  You can eat your opponent, which is pretty funny.

            Star Strike.  We got this one at Hamleys, the toy store in London.  They ripped off “Star Wars” for this one.  You have to kill aliens swooping over their space station channel or they’ll destroy the Earth.  Whether you defeated the alien death star or let them blow up the Earth, the finale was impressive either way.

            Vectron.  This was more my favorite than my brother’s.  Abstract puzzle kind of shoot-em-up, very challenging and thought-provoking, but with fantastic graphics and sound effects.

            Utopia.  Long before Civilization and SimCity, there was Utopia.  Two islands, two competing societies, with housing, schools, hospitals, hurricanes, rain, rebels, and crops, etc.  Well before its time.

            Space Armada, Space Battle, and Space Hawk.  Armada was nothing more than Space Invaders.  Space Battle was pretty good (a fairly originally done shoot-em-up) and Hawk was OK as long as you didn’t set it on the realistic but unplayable drift mode.

            Pitfall.  One of the Activision games.  My brother loved this one.  Any of you Atari fans will probably recognize this one.

            Tron Deadly Discs, Maze-A-Tron, and Solar Sailor.  I mentioned these in the last blog.

            Skiing.  We could do the downhill, even to the point of mastering the fastest speed, but the slalom was well beyond our capability.

            Imagic.  This was by far the most impressive of the aftermarket suppliers.  Their games were ….original.  Microsurgeon, Beauty and the Beast, Demon Attack, Atlantis, Safe Cracker, Dracula, White Water, and Dragon Fire were the ones I’ve played.  The games weren’t always impressive, but they were certainly imaginative.

            Lame-O’s.  ANY of the gaming ones (Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack, Horse Racing, Roulette, Royal Dealer), the strategy games (reversi, backgammon, checkers, or chess, although the chess game played “The Ride of the Valkyries” when you won); or the Electric Company Word and Math fun games.  Sports: Boxing & tennis.  The golf, auto racing and basketball games were mediocre.  The hockey game was cool that you could trip the opposing players and get sent to the penalty box, but the team colors were brown and green, which made it hard to see which was which.  

Colecovision.  I have to mention this in fairness, as it rivalled the Intellivision in graphics quality at that time, and had a similar controller.  The Zaxxon and Smurf games were the best.  It could also play the Atari 2600 games (with a special module), something the Intellivision could never do.

After Intellivision and Colecovision came the first generation Nintendo and Sega Genesis, which lead us up to the present day.

TRON

This was a movie released in 1982 by Disney, which we saw in the movie theaters when it came out, on our home leave to the US that summer.  It features, among others, Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan, and Bernard Hughes.  The true star, of course, is the special effects.

Story.  The main character, Flynn (Bridges) starts off the movie as a video arcade operator, squeezed out of ENCOM (hmm, sounds like ENRON) by Dillinger (Warner) who stole his game, “Space Paranoids”, and has basically taken over not only the firm itself, but also its system, with his ominous Master Control Program (MCP), which had started out as a chess program (ZZZ).  Flynn meets up with Alan (Boxleitner) and Lora (Morgan) who still work at ENCOM and find Dillinger’s management practices and policies less than ideal.  They sneak Flynn into ENCOM after hours.

Flynn tries to break into the system, and is digitized into the computer itself.  This is where the fun and magic – and confusion – begin.

In the virtual computer world, the programs are personified into people.  They either submit to the MCP or face off against each other in gladiatorial games, including a light cycle game and another one involving discs thrown around like jai alai (where are Crockett and Tubbs?  With G. Gordon Liddy as Dillinger!).  Flynn and his comrade Tron (the computer version of Alan), meet up with another program, Ram, and escape from the games.  Eventually they team up with Yori (Lora’s virtual counterpart) and set off to bring down Sark (Dillinger’s computer counterpart) and the MCP.

To be honest, I found the subtleties of the plot a bit hard to follow, both as a 13 year old in 1982 and as a 39 year old a few weeks ago watching the film again.  Suffice to say that the following things happen:

1.         Ram is de-rezzed (killed), but not before learning that Flynn is, in fact a user (real person and not just another program). 

2.         Flynn captures a Recognizer (nasty bad guy tank which looks like an unfolded staple flying around with its open end face down) and makes some progress in that.

3.         They steal a Solar Sailor, an incredibly cool ship which sails along a beam over cyber landscapes.

4.         Tron interfaces with an I/O tower with his disc and gets the necessary information from Alan in the real world, on how to defeat the MCP.

5.         Despite being captured, Flynn and Lori manage to escape and assist Tron in defeating first Sark, then the MCP itself, which explodes in spectacular fashion. 

6.         With the MCP destroyed, Flynn is re-digitized back to real life, Dillinger is discredited, and Flynn gets to take control over ENCOM.  And there was much rejoicing…

Special effects.  Even today, they hold up remarkably well.  In fact, the entire environment was unique; I haven’t seen anything like it since.  The clever part about this is that it’s MEANT to be a virtual world, not the real world corrupted and enhanced with special effects.  This is why “Tron” and “The Matrix” worked so well, and why “The Phantom Menace” worked so poorly.

            I’m not one of those people who tries so hard to discredit and slam films with substantial special effects, as if to say “uh, you don’t impress me.”  I try to enjoy them and appreciate their role in the picture.  Unless the plot totally and completely sucks, and the movie makers clearly intended to bootstrap the film relying on the special effects – which seemed to be the case with “The Phantom Menace” and the subsequent Matrix films – I can handle them.  I will agree that in some cases, like the recent “Spiderman” films with Toby Maguire (spectacularly miscast as Peter Parker, in my opinion), the special effects are overwhelming even with a passable plot.   It’s all a matter of balance and execution, but ultimately the appreciation and entertainment element will be subjective.  We all have different tastes.

Video games.  I never liked the standalone arcade version of this game.  The video games we really got into with this were the three Intellivision games, “Tron Deadly Discs”, “Tron Maze-A-Tron”, and “Tron Solar Sailor”, the last being one with the IntelliVoice system. 

            Although well done and impressive, “Solar Sailor” was a bit ambitious, and I don’t recall playing it more than 2-3 times, much less completing the game.  “Maze-A-Tron” was alluring and tempting, but I found the scrolling feature to be annoying as hell, as was the MCP challenge phase.  Even if you defeated the MCP, you still got sent back to the maze phase.  So what was the point?? Remarkably, it was “Deadly Discs”, the crudest and simplest of the three, which I found most playable and enjoyable, and which we played by far the most.  You simply throw the disc at the three opponents, block their special discs, knock the doors open, defeat the Recognizer, and after a million points, avoid the bad guys with their paralysis sticks.  This was a game you could play for awhile without getting bored, and one of the better Intellivision games.

Jeff Bridges.  I’ve already mentioned the 1976 King Kong film.  I have to say I generally like his roles, particularly “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” (w/Clint Eastwood), “The Big Lebowski” (w/John Goodman), and “Tucker”.

David Warner.  Remarkably, this guy is STILL alive and still doing movies, though nothing I’ve seen him in lately.  Like Patrick Stewart, he’s a Shakespearean actor who found himself immersed in science-fiction roles. In addition to this film, his other great bad guy role was as Jack the Ripper in “Time After Time”, the 1979 sci-fi film which featured “your humble narrator” Malcolm McDowell as effete, shy, bookish H.G. Wells instead of the nasty, ultra-violent Alex from “A Clockwork Orange”.

Cindy Morgan.  My brother pointed out that she was also the slut in “Caddyshack”, perhaps not as recognizable here with no golf courses, Chevy Chase, or Bill Murray in the Tron virtual world.

I hear they will be making a sequel to Tron, possibly involving Jeff Bridges.  I’ll certainly watch it.

See You In Court

The new
Fairfax County courthouse is now open! Woohoo! Another palace of justice! I get the same feeling going into a newly opened courthouse as I did when I was a kid on the first day of school (and the last day, of course). The new complex is a big rectangle with a tropical botanical garden in the courtyard. The cafeteria is now a 5 star Brazilian churrascaria, with a Vocelli’s thrown in, and the judges are totally awesome. You can even have the pizza delivered to the courtroom, Jeff Spicoli style, in the middle of a trial.

Some of the above may be a little exaggerated.

The top “palace of justice” in this neck of the woods is still the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division (I’ve never seen the ones in other three divisions). Glass, dark wood, escalators, and 10 floors, even a little cafeteria. It’s justice in style and luxury. Too bad I rarely have occasion to go there as I don’t handle federal cases very often (like once every 10 years). Get caught smoking pot on Fort Belvoir, or drive a little too fast on the GW Parkway, and you may get the pleasure of meeting the velvet glove US Attorneys at this place and getting hosed – or better yet, acquitted.

Arlington’s courthouse opened up around 1995 or so. I was just starting out as an attorney when the older courthouse was still up, which had a real 60s CIA-Langley kind of style. The new one is also clean, light and airy, and well polished. It still looks brand new. The Marv Alpert trial was held there. My ex-boss fixed Greta Van Susteren’s cell phone when the media circus had come to town there. Despite its luxury, it lacks a cafeteria, which even Prince William County has. Fairfax’s cafeteria is huge, and tends to be a staging ground for cases and a great place to settle instead of going upstairs to try a case.

Alexandria (pictured above) is one of the few Colonial-retro courthouses around. Inside and out it looks like it belongs in Colonial Williamsburg. You even have the “bar” fences separating the gallery from where the counsel tables are and the bench, with the little swinging doors, so you have to “pass the bar” in the original sense. Remarkably, they handle all their business with just 4 courtrooms for General District Court and 4 for Circuit Court. Fairfax was bursting at the seams with 16 Circuit Court courtrooms.

Prince William County recently expanded its relatively modest facilities, where they get the J&DR Court, the General District Court, and the Circuit Court all into one building, and like Alexandria managed to cope with only 4 courtrooms per section. This was the site of the Bobbitt Trial (Lorena and John), about the only piece of notoriety Prince William ever seemed to achieve. Neither Manassas nor Woodbridge are much to write home about.

Loudoun County (Leesburg) recently opened up their new, and totally confusing, courthouse. Non-Euclidian geometry? Somehow they managed.

Over in Maryland, Monkey (Montgomery) County still has its 70s era main building and a 30s era District Court in Rockville. I went to the District Court as a kid on a school trip, and now – every now and then – practice there as an attorney. The 60s CIA-retro style District Court in Silver Spring was recently bumped in favor of a glass and IKEA wood new one just two blocks away. I noticed that they conduct many of their criminal hearings, when the defendant is in jail, by closed circuit TV, instead of the usual deal of having someone in a jail jumpsuit make a brief appearance, handcuffed, in the courtroom before being led back into the jail. One of the district courts in Baltimore, on Patapsco Ave., uses a similar system and the courthouse also looks the same. If IKEA designed courthouses, they would look like this.

Prince George’s County has been trying to renovate their courthouse, but a huge fire (“Didn’t you hear? There was a huge fire, the court burned down!”) set that back a bit. Upper Marlboro is kind of way out, so I’m not sorry that I don’t go that way often. This was one of the first courts to use computerized bulletin boards to show the docket, instead of the paper lists tacked to the bulletin board. Fairfax has only recently upgraded, but waiting for the docket to scroll screen by screen can be annoying, and less efficient than actually looking up on the paper.

Baltimore City’s court is located downtown, deep in the heart of the financial district. You may have seen it in “Die Hard 4” (supposed to be in DC but obviously in Baltimore) or “…And Justice for All” with Al Pacino.

Baltimore County, on the other hand, has a huge 60s Langley thing going on. It’s all the way up in Towson, somewhat of a long drive. Actually, having cases there helped me later, as I ended up driving past the Recher Theater and seeing where it was. It came in handy when I went to see Tesla there in 2004.

DC. I’m not licensed in DC, so I rarely have occasion to go to any of its courthouses. The Superior Court over on Indiana, is pretty big, and now has all sort of lighted boards there like airline arrival/departure boards. I went there a few times checking up on the DUI case of a PI client’s nemesis. The chairs in the courtroom, instead of being the usual benches, were single buckets which folded up – like in movie theaters. Some of the smaller courtrooms at the Montgomery County Circuit Court have similar seating. The US District Court (for DC) is more like a 30s retro deal, like the Dept of Commerce or the District court in Rockville.
Some of the courts have their own style, but mostly they fall into certain patterns. The continual upgrading and opening of new courthouses makes practice a bit more interesting than it otherwise would be. Not quite SSDD…

Saigon West

Before May 2002 my interaction with Viets was limited. Then I got a job representing Vietnamese, and my exposure increased dramatically. Before then I knew all about the Vietnam War, as my buddy from high school was a huge fanatic about that: Tet this, Khe Sanh that, “Apocalypse Now”, etc. Now it was my turn to get inundated with Viets at a personal and professional level.

Apparently Northern Virginia has the second largest concentration of Vietnamese living in America (California is #1). Seven Corners is the center, with a mall, the Eden Center, which flies the south Vietnamese flag (yellow with three horizontal red stripes down the middle) and is full of Vietnamese restaurants, karaoke bars, jewelry stores, and travel agencies. My office was 5 minutes away, and frequently clients were given directions from the Eden Center as a landmark. I’ve eaten there a few times, and even sampled its club, the Diamond Club, a few nights, though not recently.

I tried several times, but could not manage to learn Vietnamese, beyond a few phrases. All those accents throw me off, and I think I’m past the peak of years where absorption of a new language is something my brain can handle. Portuguese is still locked in at #2.

For that matter, I’m not a big fan of the food either. Much of it, like most Asian food to my palate, reminds me of the Star Trek episode where Riker tries to sample Klingon cuisine. Uggh. Using chopsticks is a no-win situation: obviously they’ll laugh at you if you can’t seem to manage it, but even if you do get it right (as I do) they’ll laugh at you with wonder – “wow, the monkey did it!”.

I also got to know something of the Vietnamese personality. Unfortunately, the more I learned, the less I liked it. Like most Asians, Viets don’t seem to understand the Western notion of “objective reality”. The “truth” and “honesty” are alien ideas, the province of stupid, naïve, childlike Americans too foolish to lie effectively. An honest Viet is hard to find – either they’re Catholic or heavily Americanized. They’ll tell you what you want to hear and get pissed if you don’t behave the same way. [However, the guy who painted my car is 100% redneck, yet shares the same “tell him what he wants to hear so he doesn’t get completely pissed off” way of doing business. He does great work, he just takes forever to get it done. Despite that, he’s a nice guy. People are pretty complex.]
One of my secretaries dated a Vietnamese man who constantly checked up on her at the office – insanely jealous. She thought it was endearing and cute. And this same girl warned me: there’s a good reason why Vietnamese men are so jealous of their Vietnamese wives and girlfriends (“where there’s smoke, there’s fire”, was how she put it). One of my cutest clients was the victim of a husband who ruined a great thing by being too jealous; damn idiot couldn’t deal with it, but given how attractive she was, I could understand how he felt. He just took it too far.
I’m not a big fan of Asian women, who all too often look as though they never even went through puberty. I’m into women, not girls; occasionally some of them seem to actually have a figure, breasts, etc. Many of them seem to have a mean streak and ability to spend money like it’s going out of style. A former secretary’s sister had a shirt that read “You Better Make More Than I Can Spend”. Another secretary, only one-quarter Vietnamese, pointed out that the girl should have a shirt that says “Size Doesn’t Matter As Long As You Buy Me Stuff”. Add that to the lying, unfaithfulness, low attractiveness, Klingon cuisine, a majority preference for Vietnamese men, and the odds of finding a decent Vietnamese woman are pretty low, which is why I’m not even looking. Most of the offers seem to be regarding someone’s sister or cousin back in Vietnam who needs a green card. All too often, American men are only good as husbands to get a green card or provide unlimited amounts of cash to spend on their wives’ Vietnamese lovers behind their backs. Hell, Viet women cheat on their Vietnamese husbands – what chance does an American husband have expecting the woman to be faithful? [To be fair, though, a certain Eastern European country on the Black Sea does a remarkable job of producing beautiful women who are just as greedy, deceitful and unfaithful as Vietnamese women tend to be. But that’s another story.]

The Viets vary considerably on their level of assimilation. Some speak almost no English at all despite having been here since 1975. They only eat Vietnamese food, won’t watch a movie if there are no Asians in it, and have to drive a Honda, Nissan or Toyota. At the other extreme are Viets who have been here for a long time, hardly speak a word of Vietnamese, and act exactly like Americans. My office manager’s oldest son is completely Vietnamese yet doesn’t speak a word of Vietnamese. To hear him talk, and the way he acts, he is completely American. All his wives have been white Americans and all his children are Amerasians. The rest seem to fall somewhere in between: using cell phones and shopping like Americans, but rarely watching US TV or movies or listening to any music sung in English. This is one department where I can’t, and won’t, paint them all with the same brush.

I’ll finish off with a few concessions. (1) I have never been to Vietnam, or anywhere else in Asia. My impressions on Viets are due to my dealings with the ones here. (2) I have met a fair amount of Viets who are outstanding and treat me fine. They’re not all slime. It was simply discouraging to see the same behavior resurface again and again, and find myself liking them less and less the more I got to know them. Maybe I should simply go to Saigon – accompanied by someone, as I don’t speak Vietnamese and have no hope of fitting in – and wrap up this chapter in my life.

Red Is The Color

I’ve just finished watching a few of Michael Moore’s movies, and my earlier conclusions and suspicions are confirmed. He is Red, Red, Red.

Roger & Me. This was his first movie. He went to Flint, Michigan (where he grew up) and busted on General Motors for umpteen minutes. GM created Flint, but also – so he claims – destroyed it by shutting down plants. As if it was GM’s duty to keep plants open just to give people jobs. I found his arguments less than persuasive.

Canadian Bacon. Fiction: the US trumps up a war with Canada when the Cold War peters out and the Russians refuse to play along. A bunch of stupid Americans try to invade Toronto, believing it to be the capital (try Ottawa) and various SCTV people get a chance to be in a movie. Dan Akroyd was quality as the trooper who advises them to repeat the nasty anti-Canadian slogans in French as well as English. Given that we haven’t invaded Canada long after the Cold War ended, I’d say this idea was pretty stupid, though it probably served to amuse a few Canucks.

The Big One. Moore goes on a tour of the US promoting his books, and stopping by various corporate headquarters along the way to hassle, harass, and embarrass various corporate PR people and media escorts. Not much happens, the highlight being his meeting in person with Phil Knight of Nike. Honestly, the odds of finding a plant full of Americans willing to put sneakers together for $5.50 an hour is pretty damn low.

The analysis here shouldn’t be how low Indonesian Nike wages are compared to US minimum wages, it should be how they compare to other wages in Indonesia. If they were paying less than the prevailing wage in Indonesia, why would anyone there work for Nike?

Then there’s this business of prison labor. How sorry are we going to be for prison inmates doing telemarketing or customer service for less than minimum wage? They’re in prison! I suppose the alternative is someone in India doing the same. Should I wonder, “hmm, this person doesn’t sound Indian. Are they in prison?” Does it really matter? Again, if Americans were willing to do this for the same price, we wouldn’t be hiring prisoners or Indians. Economics, pure and simple – and nothing wrong with it.

Bowling for Columbine. Thanks to Moore, we know who to blame for the shooting in Columbine. No, it wasn’t the two boys. No, it wasn’t Marilyn Manson. Hold your seats, people, it was K-MART! Yes, the chain was responsible. Lovable, boring, big-ass and cheap K-Mart was the merciless murderer of those poor kids in Colorado. We had no idea. Who will K-Mart murder next? Stay tuned.

Fahrenheit 9/11. More propaganda. In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes propaganda as, “don’t fight fair, fight dirty. Never acknowledge the other side’s points. Don’t argue rationally. Just cram your message down their throats, repeat the lies, and shout louder than the other guy. It’s a war.” Similar deal here. Whether it’s busting on Bush for Carlysle group connections or Saudi ties (which applied to past presidents, administrations, and Democrats), blaming Bush for Oregon’s State Police budget (try blaming Portland instead), trying to get us paranoid about FBI or sheriff’s snoops on harmless peaceniks (who were never even arrested) or simply busting on US troops in Iraq, Moore strikes out on every issue. Far from being left with a damning, smoking gun no-brainer indictment on 9-11, we simply have an incessant string of vague innuendo, tenuous connections, and mysterious allegations. When’s Moore going to tackle the Kennedy Assassination? I guess he hasn’t figured out which American multinational company to pin the blame on.

Sicko. Here he takes on the US health care system. All well and fine to slam the US system – which does have its faults – but to suggest we adopt what they have in France or Cuba? Come on. There is NO WAY the US taxpayer would accept the 90% tax rate necessary for these so-called “free” health care systems (which aren’t free, of course). So we’re back where we started.

TV Nation/The Awful Truth. I caught a few episodes of these, but did not watch them consistently. The one that sticks out in my mind was when Moore painted a tractor trailer red with a yellow hammer & sickle, and drove by various truck stops trying to elicit some sort of recognition from the trucking proletariat. Nope, not much class consciousness along the highways of US.

He also wrote an article for The Nation years ago (I wish I could find it) in which he slammed US leftist intellectuals for being snobs who wouldn’t deign to have a beer, bowl a few pins, or (God forbid!!!) hunt with Joe Sixpack, the American Proletarian. These are the American workers: how are you going to win them over writing obscure books full of Marxist jargon 99.99% of these people will never read? Don’t talk about “bourgeois”, “proletariat”, “capitalist imperialist exploiters”, etc. Simply ask them if they think they’re getting a raw deal from management. Paul Wellstone had the right idea. Fortunately for us, the Wellstones are few and far between.

Books. I haven’t read any of his books. His movies are annoying enough, why go through the hassle? Hell, it took me ages to see “Fahrenheit 9/11” because I wasn’t keen on giving Moore any of my money.

Ralph Nader. Before Moore, there was Nader, causing a stink. I recently heard him speak at one of these eco/green conventions in DC, badmouthing corporate America as usual. I’ve read his book Unsafe at Any Speed. Granted, GM was being a major dick with him, and the Corvair was a shitty car – an idiotic competitor to the Mustang, and far outclassed by the Camaro and Firebird which should have been GM’s answer in the first place. But he seems to ignore Volvo and other companies which voluntarily introduced safety features without government mandates. The reality is, if people want to pay for safety they will. But the fact that Volvo doesn’t have a lock on the market suggests that consumers sometimes have other priorities than safety. Maybe they’re not Nader’s preferences, but who cares what Nader wants in a car? He doesn’t speak for anyone except himself and the tiny minority of leftists. However, I do hope he runs again and draws off Osama/Clinton voters so McCain can win (even though Ron Paul is my choice).
Both Moore and Nader are clearly lefties (to use the food analogy I brought up last week, watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside). Moore never met a corporation he liked. I suppose if you wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, you could say that he simply wants to hold corporate America accountable and expose bad companies.

Fine. But why not show us good companies too? We know they’re out there. Why not show us a company that treats its employees fairly – or even one that’s employee-owned (you NEVER hear about them from Moore and Nader). The obvious reason for this is that his ultimate motive is to make us mistrust corporations as an aggregate and capitalism as a system. For that matter, neither have I ever seen Moore do the obvious thing: purchase stock in a company and show up at its annual shareholders’ meeting to bitch and gripe.

Nor does he spend much time talking about unions. Many leftists (including many of America’s various socialist parties) dislike unions because they represent an attempt to work within the capitalist system instead of overthrowing it. It’s a sellout to The Man, they claim. To the extent workers get tangible benefits and a decent wage from a union, that shows the system works, right? Why give us a totalitarian North Korean regime – or even watered down “market socialism” like Denmark or Sweden with 90% taxes – when we can get what we want within the US capitalist system?

I see the European model as being philosophically incompatible with American culture. Americans are the adults who moved out of their parents’ house in the 17^th century and grew up. Europeans are the 30-somethings still living at home, living off mom & dad. They pay 90% taxes and keep a small, nominal allowance. Mom & Dad pay their health insurance, rent, education, etc. and provide for their needs. After that, what more do they need?

Paul Weaver. Having busted on Moore, I’ll mention Weaver’s book, The Suicidal Corporation. (I’m still reading John DeLorean’s book, On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors, which I’ve momentarily misplaced and will finish when I find it). Weaver started out as a neoconservative who felt that Big Business got a bum rap from Nader and the left, and went to Ford in the late 70s to help them set the record straight. Once there, however, he learned that much of the shit that Big Business catches is well-deserved, and most of it brought upon itself by its own idiotic political maneuvering. Moreover, there was NEVER a “Golden Age” in which Big Business was pro-capitalist; for the most part of its history, since the late 19^th century, business has behaved badly, has never been pro-capitalist or pro-market, and has constantly sought government favors and protection. He describes a corporate atmosphere reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) with Cuffy Meigs, Orren Boyle and Jim Taggart, and uncomfortably close to Mussolini’s Italy. The book is dated from 1988, the tail end of the Reagan era (he wasn’t phenomenally impressed by Reagan) and is 20 years out of date. But many of its points are well taken, so I won’t call Moore and Nader 100% off the mark.

So where does that leave us? Capitalism does work, although it also, quite obviously, has problems. But that doesn’t mean the solution is revolution, as Moore and Nader so quietly shout (don’t get me started on Rage Against the Machine).

Black Is The Color

It’s time for another somewhat esoteric and abstract discussion, this time about something pretty vague: the color black.

For a long time, it’s been my favorite color. I can’t explain why; I suppose it’s just a matter of taste. I’m not even a goth, nor have I ever been.


Cars. I had my Formula painted black in 1997-78 (from its original dark aqua metallic), and having seen Knight Rider, it’s clear that few cars suit the color as well as a ’92 Firebird Formula, with its sleek body and asymmetric hood. It suits the car even better than it does ’76-81 Trans Ams, especially the Special Editions (aka “Bandit models”) as I’m not a big fan of black & gold. Car manufacturers report that black is consistently a popular color, ever since the Model T, which of course was only offered in black. Unfortunately for cars, black is the color least forgiving of dents, dings, and other imperfections – and white is the most forgiving, which is why pickups and utility vans are so often white. Any car looks best in black, but it’s most alluring and flattering for performance cars.


Guitars. My Gibson Explorer and Fender Stratocaster are both black. I’d have bought my Gibson SG in black too, but that particular model, the ’62 Reissue, was only available in cherry. Since Stratocasters have been available in solid colors – after the two-tone sunburst they originally came in, in 1954 – since 1956, black has been the one color, year after year, which has always been available. Eric Clapton’s famous Strat is black, and the color is now available for his signature model. The Les Paul Custom is traditionally black, although it’s available in other colors as well, notably white and silverburst (favored by Adam Jones of Tool).


Race. I suppose as a white person, my own preferences are irrelevant, but I prefer the term “black” to describe that race, better than the alternatives. Obviously “colored” and “negro” are out of fashion, yet “African-American” seems a little too stilted. Those of us of European descent don’t refer to ourselves as “Polish-American”, “German-American”, or “Irish-American”, etc., especially since with such heterogeneity among not only whites but also multi-racial mix these days, it would be cumbersome, inconvenient, and really stupid for any of us who aren’t complete pedigrees to insist on that. Of course, black people are more brown (aside from some from deep, dark Africa), but aside from albinos, white people aren’t really “white” (more like pink), and Asians aren’t really “yellow” either. I’ve heard the expression “oreo” (black on the outside, white on the inside); is there a “snowball” (white on the outside, black on the inside)? Or a “twinkie” (yellow on the outside, white on the inside)? Or “egg” (white on the outside, yellow on the inside)? We could go on with these food/race analogies for awhile. Be that as it may, I think as a racial description, black is best: it’s simple, descriptive, and devoid of value-judgments.


Music/Songs. “Fade to Black” by Metallica, “Back in Black” (song and album) by AC/DC, “Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones, not to mention Metallica’s self-titled fifth album, are just a few examples. Ritchie Blackmore tended to dress in black, but for some reason rarely favored black guitars. Black Sabbath also comes to mind. Then there's Spinal Tap....


Clothing. The black uniform of the Allgemeine SS (General SS) of Nazi Germany comes to mind, but these days, an all-black uniform is most likely the province of hair dressers. “Dieter” from Sprockets is long over…. I have a black suit, a black dress shirt, a black tie, and dozens of black t-shirts collected over the years of going to metal concerts, though I can’t say I wear black much more often than any other color.