The Phillies ballpark. Beautiful, safe, and friendly. Photo credit, my talented wife.

In 2011, GQ did a top ten list of the worst fans in America. The top two spots they assigned to Philadelphia, calling out both Eagles and Phillies fans.

The Meanest Fans in America

Over the years, Philadelphia fans have booed Santa Claus as well as their own star players. They’ve even booed a guy who just helped the city win a friggin’ World Series title—while he was getting his ring. Boooo! Admittedly, there are some things fans have cheered. Like Michael Irvin’s career-ending neck injury and a fan being tased on the outfield grass. Things reached their nadir last season, when Citizens Bank Park played host to arguably the most heinous incident in the history of sports: A drunken fan intentionally vomited on an 11-year-old girl. The truth is this: All told, Philadelphia stadiums house the most monstrous collection of humanity outside of the federal penal system. “Some of these people would boo the crack in the Liberty Bell,” baseball legend Pete Rose once said. More likely, these savages would have thrown the battery that cracked it.

You must know this is true. Every ESPN announcer repeats the refrain at every opportunity, usually with a knowing smirk. It’s sports gospel. So true it’s possible to reaffirm with a mere wink.

I’m thinking of it now because my birthday present from my wife was a trip to Citizens Bank Park to see the struggling Phillies, now 11 games under .500 heading into the All Star break. The Phillies were playing the Washington Nationals, whose roster includes Jason Werth, the player cited above who was booed when he got his World Series ring.

He got booed again Saturday night. My wife was sitting on my left. She booed loud and long. The man on my right cheered. The second time he did it, I exchanged words with him. I reminded him that Jason Werth was beloved in Philadelphia, that he left for a $30 million contract, and has done little to earn the money since. “It’s a business,” the guy said. “It isn’t all business,” I said. “I watched Mike Schmidt, the greatest 3rd baseman in history, play his whole career in a stadium that compared to this one was a back alley asphalt basketball court. He could have left. But he was a Phillie.” The guy looked at me. “I did too,” he said. Which was demonstrably a lie. He was at least 10 years younger than me, probably more, meaning Schmidt’s career was mostly history to him, and he was wearing bright white sneakers, the ineradicable stamp of the eternal 9 year old. “Like Jimmy Rollins,” he added. No. Not like Jimmy Rollins. Who is milking a fat contract and doing absolutely nothing to earn it.

I didn’t mention that. I told my wife only later about the exchange with my seat mate on the right. She said, “I didn’t boo about the $30 million. I booed because he trashed Philadelphia fans the first time they asked. Because he thought it would endear him to Washington fans.” You see, Phillies fans routinely come close to outnumbering Nationals fans at Washington home games. They’ve even gone so far as to refuse to sell Nationals tickets to Philly zip codes. Because we’re such awful fans.

Why are we so awful? We boo. We don’t throw batteries at players. That would be a New York thing. We don’t beat opponent fans into a coma in the parking lot. That would be a San Francisco thing (“arguably, the most heinous incident in the history of sports”?!!) We just boo when we don’t approve of what’s going on.

[Vomiting happens at every stadium when people have enough cash to get drunk on $8-12 beers. Einstein is dead. No one can explain this particular mystery of the universe. But it’s hardly confined to Philadelphia. Maybe GQ never sat in the bleachers of Fenwick Park. : ). Tasing is fun btw. And Michael Ervin trashed Philly plenty before he flopped in that game. Get a grip.]

And actually we’re slow to boo, though we all know exactly what’s going on. A couple minutes after right seat guy dared to compare Jimmy Rollins to Mike Schmidt, Rollins executed a swinging bunt that died at the plate and the ump called it fair. The catcher was caught off guard and groped for the ball. Rollins made no attempt whatever to run toward first base. The silence in the park was sepulchral. I heard a sharp intake of breath from right seat guy. He only expressed himself verbally when the next batter, Chase Utley, manfully tried and failed to beat out a grounder at top speed on his aged legs. “Way to run it out,” he said.

The next time Werth came to the plate he didn’t cheer.

The next time Rollins came to the plate, no one booed. Except in our hearts.

See, Philadelphia fans know their sports and they care, care, care about them.

The Phillies have no chance this year. They suck. But on Saturday night the park was nearly full. They’re our team. We love them. No team in professional sports has ever lost more games than the Philadelphia Phillies. Fact. But they’re our team. And we support them.

But all we hear about is booing Santa Claus. Which happened 48 years ago. Any Philadelphian under the age of 60 couldn’t possibly have consciously participated in this sacrilege. The booed Santa was a skinny, drunk, unofficial fella who phinagled his way onto the sidelines and got booed for a bad act. That makes us permanently, inveterately mean?

A figure of universal honor and praise, yo?

Really? Why is a bad Santa half a century ago more significant than the present reality of, arguably, the best mascot in professional sports? (Hockey doesn’t count and the San Diego Chicken is just plain lewd; explain his act to your kids.)

A force of nature. He fired his hot dog cannon straight at me, but a gifted athlete leaped and snagged my rightful dog. Oh well. At least I had a $12 beer.TAKE THE LINK

Some PR hack a few years back decided to expiate the ancient sin by bringing Santa to another Eagles game. He got booed. We don’t like being patronized or played for fools. We boo when we detect fraud, lack of effort, lack of sports sense. And we don’t kill people in the parking lot.

For the record, our experience at the game was outstanding. Beautiful facility. Everyone polite. At the 200 level where we were, I didn’t hear a single shouted obscenity.

I ask you, not rhetorically, when’s the last time you went to a sporting event and didn’t hear the F-word? When? I can’t even say that about an Ivy League football game.

But Philly fans are brutish Neanderthals, right? Unless they aren’t.

Or just do what the ESPN Jumbotron tells you to. Photo credit to my lovely wife.

Missing Man Formation, old style. The biggest hole in Americana. The homegrown Shakespeare we confuse with Wes Craven and campy Vincent Price movies.

Twice in the last couple of days I’ve encountered the void in American self knowledge represented by Edgar Allan Poe.

Thought I’d share. Very very briefly. First, a Brit or PBS documentary on Sherlock Holmes, subtitled “How He Changed the World.” Mostly true except for leaving out the part about how the first fictional detective who functioned by reasoning rather than beatings was omitted entirely. There was no mention of the predecessor who beat Holmes into print by 40 years. His name was C. Auguste Dupin.

Second, I saw a documentary derived from Museum Secrets called Church Secrets or some such. All about eerie happenings surrounding the death and burial of Edgar Allan Poe. Interesting enough except for the glib summary of Poe’s career as a writer of horror stories. Even the iconic poem The Raven was used as an example of a horror tale.

So I’m calling foul. Here’s a link to a post I did long ago at the original Instapunk. Please read it and take all the links, many of which still work.

If you won’t do it for intellectual curiosity, do it as a birthday present to me. I added another candle to the cake last week. Which I’ve now done 21 more times than Poe had a chance to do. Although I’m convinced my funeral will be just as well attended as his.

Not complaining. I DO know my place. Why I bow today to a master who, were it not for bad luck, would have had no luck at all.

What you want your 8 year old son to see.

A Philly story. But given the geography of Independence Day, a national story as well.

Here’s the background:

On Friday night, aka the 4th of July, Nicki Minaj, Jennifer Hudson, Ed Sheeran and the Roots took to the stage in front of the Art Museum for a pre-fireworks concert. It was a fun show, but what the [expletive deleted] was with all the cursing?

With the exception of Jennifer Hudson, who proved to be a class act all the way, one by one, the acts hired to entertain the crowd of many thousands (a crowd that included plenty of children) couldn’t refrain from dropping the F-bomb. Oh, there have been some slips of profanity in years past, but this year seemed particularly problematic.

Concert broadcaster 6 ABC didn’t just bleep out the profanities as Roots frontman Black Thought dropped the curses left and right at the start of the show — they cut out the entire transmission, video and all, switching to a 6 ABC logo until it was safe to return.

But that was nothing compared to Nicki Minaj, whose buxom getup no doubt inspired some wishes for a wardrobe malfunction. Minaj managed to fit “bitch,” “shit,” and “motherfucker” into her set many times over.

When concert closer Ed Sheeran took the stage, I had guessed that our delicate ears would be safe. But no. The ginger-haired British pop guy treated the masses to his new tune “Don’t.” The hook (they used to call that a chorus, FYI) repeats the line “Don’t fuck with my love.”

Oh, and then there was comedian-host Marlon Wayans. I guess you can’t really expect a comedian to class things up, and Wayans certainly didn’t. In addition to all of the cursing, he also peppered his lines with “nigga” this and “nigga” that. And he just had to make a dick joke, because, hey, this is Philly. Happy fucking 4th of July, America!

Listen, I’m no prude when it comes to the English lexicon. Anyone who has an office within earshot of mine has heard plenty. I can curse with the best of them. But I don’t do it around my kids or around other people’s kids, and I expect others to act the same way, especially on a national holiday and in the place that started it all.

And here’s what the black mayor of Philadelphia had to say, as reported by Philly.com:

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

POSTED: Monday, July 7, 2014, 5:14 PM

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Philadelphia’s mayor is promising a review of the city’s July Fourth concert after several acts used expletives during their performances.

Mayor Michael Nutter tells KYW-AM that concert organizers are contractually obligated to make the free concert suitable for families. He says the city will work to make next year’s “Welcome America” concert more family-friendly.

Friday night’s televised concert featured Nicki Minaj, Ed Sheeran and other performers.

Nutter apologized to anybody in the audience who was offended but also pointed out they were free to go.

Free to go. Free to go? Free to go! I’m gone. Don’t go to Phillies games anymore because I’m tired of hearing the F-word hollered in my ear and the ears of kids who should be watching a baseball game.

Tired of a lot of things. This was supposed to be the post-racial administration. What I’m not allowed to say. This administration and all its succubi in politics and the media have done nothing but reaffirm the worst of the old stereotypes. Lazy, lying, freeloading, foul-mouthed (what other administration has had a foreign policy doctrine like this?), know-nothing do-nothings who are riding the ride as long as it lasts. Worse, we’re supposed to accept the premise that some are athletically and sexually superior while the rest of us are inferior precisely because we know something about culture, music, philosophy, religion, and history.

This administration has guaranteed that the presidency will never again fall into the hands of these particular heirs. As I predicted long long ago.

As I said, 2008 was 1865. But I’ve said a lot of things. I trust you all not to bring down the wrath of the world on me. Sure I do.

Yeah. That’s Rex Harrison. A Brit. I’ll explain. The traditional trailer is here. Man suspected of wanting to kill his wife. How unusual. Call Miss Marple. Only possible Aussie difference could be, well, we’ll get to that.

No, I’m not going to wait. I know better. I’ll produce the list now.

Rake He’s the Rex Harrison from down under everywhere. Not a conductor trying to kill his wife. A barrister trying to keep from killing himself by accident or misadventure. Come to think of it, also a conductor of sorts. Some US network tried to duplicate it, but you can’t make the orchestration of drugs, gambling, wanton promiscuity, and legal brilliance work if you don’t have some kind of ultimately suave center. Greg Kinnear wouldn’t know that center if it hit him in the face. Richard Roxbrough surfs on that center.

Miss Fisher’s Mysteries. Well, gee. She’s a rich, promiscuous, flapper detective. What else do you want? Okay. Her duds are lovely, her car is a Hispano Suiza, and there are, as far as I can recall, nude scenes. Clever. With good music.

The Strip. They don’t pretend. They’re cops on Australia’s Gold Coast. Constantly hot and constantly on the case. More fun than most US cop shows put together.

The Castle. See the clip in the older post. Might remind you of the American Dream.

100 Bloody Acres. A typically Australian twist on the horror movie genre. Biggest surprise? Happy if unsettling ending.

Snow Town Murders. What’s it really like to grow up and become a serial murderer? No sheets of lightning. Just increments of pain. Well done if a bit slow.

Unfinished Sky. American romances involve small talk and sudden lurches between the sheets. This one’s different. I know it’s useless to be patient. But try.

Under Hill 60. See the video in the post before. I’m not over WWI yet either.

Lore. Also discussed previously. But you probably didn’t know it was Aussie.

MacLeod’s Daughters. Australia’s version of the old western series Bonanza. Only instead of a bunch of gun-toting guys, you’ve got a bunch of boob-thrusting gals. I know which I like better. Longest running series in Australia…

Dead Calm. The ultimately scary movie that made Nicole Kidman a star.

The Road Warrior. I don’t need to defend Mel Gibson. He’s the Road Warrior. He’s supposed to have a bad attitude. So do I.

None of which explains the greatest actress of our time, an Aussie named Cate Blanchette.

Or Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Geoffrey Rush, Chris Hemsworth, Toni Collette, Heath Ledger, Naomi Watts, Hugo Weaving, Simon Baker, Eric Bana, et cetera, et cetera.

Okay. I also loved the movie where the American killed the Englishman in Australia. But that’s only because I’m a racist chauvinist bastard.

I love’em. Honestly. I know they’re embroiled in an on-again off-again love affair with socialism, but that’s part of the Dead Man’s Burden they inherited from the U.K. I know they’ve got a broad streak of anti-Americanism, but I understand the historical context, which is maybe the only reason to read the ponderous works of James Michener.

See, at the outbreak of WWII, the Aussies enlisted en masse to fight for the King in Europe. When the Japanese Empire trashed the U.S. Pacific fleet and started gobbling up the entire South Pacific, there were hardly any troops left to defend Australia. Which is when the Americans showed up and started taking advantage of lonely Sheilahs. Who wouldn’t hold a grudge?

But of all the nations on earth, Australia is the most like us. They are irreverent, independent, vulgar if not coarse, and used to doing things their own way because of an isolational accident of geography, more extreme in their case than ours. They also have the same kind of specific original sin as a nation we do — a system of subjugation and apartheid against a specific native population that stands out like a sore thumb. Consider the Brits. They oppressed and subjugated everyone everywhere, but they are somehow more virtuous because you can’t call it racism. They persecuted and exploited everyone equally. Ditto the French, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Russians. Their business was conquest and domination, imperialistic rule. Only Americans and Aussies are cardboard racists. (Excepting maybe Germans and South Africans. But they’ve got much better PR representation these days. Not to mention the Muslims. Because nobody anywhere does. These days.)

Still. Americans and Aussies are the two nations founded principally by expatriate castoffs from the prevailing order. We were religious and economic refugees, fleeing a tyrannical faith, famine, and inherited inevitable failure. The Aussies were convicts exiled to the bottom of the world.

Why I have a long list of Aussie movies and television series Americans really should seek out and like. Has it escaped your attention how many movie and TV stars are actually Aussie?

Well, I’ll save that and the long list for next time. My intro is already too long. You could prompt me to deliver sooner by looking into the question on your own. A couple of identifications and movie/TV nominations could energize my memory spectacularly. Because I’m sitting on some true gems here, ones guaranteed to strike a chord with even the most xenophobic…

The first not the second World War.

Unless you’ve got something against 1920s femme fatales packing golden guns in their stockings.

The full movie is available on both Youtube and Netflix. It’s a tightly focused window on what it is to be a Scot. Personally remote, paradoxically passionate, contradictory. The greatest fly-tying artisan of all time did not fish.

The movie is curiously captivating. They don’t want to show her to us until very briefly at the very end. It’s immaterial. What matters is her vision, dedication, and extraordinary precision and perseverance. That her protege describes her with simple brutality as “a man in a skirt” doesn’t matter.

After all, doesn’t that suffice to describe all Scots? Sometimes beauty is a beast.

Hope you still feel you have something to celebrate.

Yesterday I made a passing reference to Wendy O. It made me realize I’ve never mentioned her in ten years of blogging. But without her, I wouldn’t ever have conceived of the Queen of Punk City.

Her name was Alice Hate.

Alice is the sleeping beauty of the South Street punk mythology. A bow to Arthurian legend, as the best book I’ve ever read on the subject speculates. Guinevere, a Pictish warrior queen, dies long before the climax of Arthur’s reign but must be preserved. The wall of thorns surrounding her is a linguistic reference to where she was interred, a castle in Scotland whose name means thorn. It was the French, centuries later, who made up the scandal of her affair with Lancelot, whom they made French but was probably a Scot named Angus. Zut alors!

So I’m acknowledging my personal debt here. The bare breasted kickass queen of Punk City was absolutely inspired by a real life rock star named Wendy O. Williams.

But that’s only part of what I need to do today. I realize she is missing almost completely from the history of pop divas we have been taught and believe. Consider this a teaching moment.

Wendy O is dead, as she would have to be. As the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, herself a secret sybarite, wrote, “The candle burns at both ends, it cannot last the night. But ah my foes and oh my friends, it gives a lovely light.”

She’s not here now to lobby as Deborah Harry does that she’s the template for female pop stars. So I am here to speak for her.

Without Wendy O, there would be no Madonna, no Joan Jett, no Courtney Love, no Lady Gaga, no Mylie Cyrus. And in all likelihood you’d never have seen Janet Jackson’s tit at the Super Bowl or up Beyonce’s dress all the way to there.

Patti Smith survived her youth. She began as a groupie and plugged her way to record deals. Wendy O was just a Roman candle who burst on the scene and did things no woman had ever done on stage. In that respect she’s as important as Jimi Hendrix was to the evolution of the electric guitar. In both cases, there’s simply before… And after.

Why some of us old guys just shake our heads at the antics of youngsters who think they can shock us. You can’t. You’re just so ignorant you don’t know that when Gaga wears meat, we remember Wendy wearing nearly nothing. When Mylie twerks, we remember Wendy jacking off a phantom strap-on. You’ve got nothing left to shock us with. Why we yawn.

She died in 1998. She was not a nice girl. You can read about her here.

I’m not positioning her as some saint. But it’s become a habit with you young’uns to forget where you came from and who you owe for your manufactured poses. Mostly you’re not even aware of the important areas where you know nothing and care less. But if you’re a growly take-no-prisoners singer or a half naked caterwauling bitch on stage, then you should light a candle at both ends in honor of Wendy O.

Breitbart reports:

Monday at the White House while hosting a reception to observe LGBT Pride Month, President Barack Obama call his White House Pastry Chef Bill Yosses “the crust master” because the president said, “I don’t know what he does—whether he puts crack in them.” But the president continued he had to adopt a no weekday pie rule.

Laughing and applauding, the first lady Michelle Obama added, “There’s no crack in our pies.”

Hmmm. I’m inclined to believe there is crack in Obama’s pie. It would explain a lot. But I’m also inclined to believe there isn’t any crack in Michelle’s. She smiles so seldom. Maybe she needs a more vegan chef.

Possible she’d prefer this. Even if
it’s not baked in a WH oven.

The chef’s name is Sara. Worth a try? Who knows? “We” might like it. Especially during LGBT Pride Month.

She’s a killer. He didn’t know.

Whatever you do, make sure you find the video of Megyn Kelly’s cross-examination of Bill Ayers. She took him apart. It goes on and on. And on. His little old man earrings were quivering. Like all sociopaths, he took the stand believing his great intellect was proof against the inferior who would be questioning him. She took him apart. This is only an excerpt and there is more, but enjoy this till I post the rest.

And, uh, don’t forget what he looked like when he wasn’t a precious old professor trying to impress co-eds a third his age.

An arrogant lout is an arrogant lout. No exceptions. And age does not improve the vintage. If you start with piss and vinegar, you’ll never produce wine. Just piss.

A doubt I expressed ten years ago, well before Ayers became famous again.

But we do hear voices of regret and even shame. Oddly, there seems an almost complete schism between the perspectives of the two sexes of Weathermen. The women, including the once fiery spokesperson Bernadine Dohrn, seem sorry that the Weather Underground failed to make any real difference. Yet they remain politically active, principally in feminist and environmental causes, and they seem to yearn for a return of the heady days of revolution. Naomi Jaffe and Laura Whitehorn both said on camera that they would do it all again. The men were a different story, with the possible exception of Bill Ayers, who is married to Bernadine Dohrn and and didn’t speak with the same depth of emotion as the others. David Gilbert is serving a life sentence in prison for a post-Weatherman crime he committed with an organization called the Black Liberation Army. He pointed out that he has not complained about his sentence and implied that he has gotten what he deserved. More interesting still are the perspectives of Brian Flanagan and Mark Rudd. Both appear to look at the defining events of their lives with a kind of shocked puzzlement. They use terms like “crazed,” “kind of crazy,” and “overwhelmed by the war” as they grope for explanations of their actions. Flanagan makes open comparisons between their state of mind and that of the 9/11 terrorists. “When you believe you have right on your side, you can do terrible things,” he says. Mark Rudd is candid about his own anguish. “I feel shame and guilt,” he confesses. “We were full of hatred. I clung to my hatred.”

Before I close I should probably mention that I once attended an SDS meeting when I was a freshman at Harvard. I was curious. I’d seen their mimeographs blowing across the Yard. They couldn’t be that monotonously dimwitted, could they?

There were about thirty people in a class space designed to hold 200. They were wearing army greatcoats and fuzzy beards. They were every bit as dimwitted as their mimeographs. Only problem was, all the esteemed undergraduate institutions at the college shared their political views. They were the ones who won the war SDS thought it was fighting.

I realized that right away. But I’ve always had an inconvenient knack for insight. I look at Ayers and all I can think is I don’t have earrings and I can still look at myself in the mirror. Except for the getting older part. Which is okay. I’ve never killed anyone. Not even inadvertently. Though I’ve been fighting a war they’d recognize for all of my life.

There’s a sense in which I’ve been walking out on that first SDS meeting for 45 years. Going on 46. Idiots never get smarter. They just get older. And they get their deaf ears pierced.

UPDATE. Here’s Part 2 of the interview.

Do not pass Go. Just wait for your government check. Or
go directly to jail. And wait for your government check.

So the other day this guy positions himself as a prophet of the collapse to come. I’m okay with that. He’s right.

Martin Armstrong Warns Civil Unrest Is Rising Everywhere: “This Won’t End Pretty”

The greatest problem we have is misinformation. People simply do not comprehend why and how the economic policies of the post-war era are imploding. This whole agenda of socialism has sold a Utopian idea that the State is there for the people yet it is run by lawyers following their own self-interest. The pensions created for those in government drive the cost of government up exponentially with time. The political forces blame the rich and this merely creates a class warfare with no resolution for the future. Even confiscating all the wealth of the so-called rich will not sustain the system. Consequently, we just have to crash and burn and start all over again.

The Guardian reported that some 50,000 people marched in London to protest against austerity. They cried: “Who is really responsible for the mess this country is in? Is it the Polish fruit pickers or the Nigerian nurses? Or is it the bankers who plunged it into economic disaster – or the tax avoiders? It is selective anger.”

The exploitation by the bankers has been really a disaster. They have been their own worst enemy and in the end, they have become the symbol that inspires class warfare if not revolution. They are not the representatives of those who produce jobs. They are merely those who wanted to trade with other people’s money for free. When they win, it is their’s, but any losses are passed to the taxpayers. Bankers should be bankers – not hedge fund managers who keep 100% of the profits using other people’s savings…

The solutions from politics will always be the same – grab more power. We are in a downward spiral of liberty and how far we go down this path to the future will be determined by the people and if they at least wise up and see this is not class warfare, it is the people against government. This is why I say career politicians are dangerous for they can be bought way too easily as Clinton was to open the flood gates for the bankers.

This is not going to end pretty. The question is when does society wake up? Just how high will this price be that we have to pay? They will blame the rich and the idiots will cheer – get them. What will happen when there is no more wealth to hunt? We end up with a communist state by default – no wealth, just career politicians who blame everyone but themselves.

Yeah, I quoted almost the whole thing. What is fair use? I expect he wants the alarm to get out. So I’m doing him a favor. Also, I’m going to follow him up with my own copyrighted material from 1991. Fair? I think so. This is from the Book of Adam, which gets to a remarkably similar point very quickly:

CHAPTER 32
1 In fact, thanks to advertising, the Americans will make still another breakthrough discovery about Capitalism,
2 gWhich is that you don’t really have to create new value to create wealth,
3 For yourself, anyway,
4 Because Capitalism works just as well for people who create the appearance of value,
5 hEven if there isn’t any.
6 When this discovery has been proven in the marketplace,
7 By about five or ten thousand manufacturing corporations,
8 It will lead to the invention of many new industries that won’t make anything of value at all,
9 But will sell services instead,
10 iAnd tell everybody how great their services are,
11 Until everybody believes it,
12 Just like a religion.

CHAPTER 33
1 And so it will come to pass that the American Capitalists will invent industries that nobody ever heard of before,
2 Called management consulting,
3 And public relations,
4 And life insurance,
5 Not to mention advertising,
6 Which won’t make anything at all,
7 But they’ll be very well paid for not making anything at all,
8 Just like banks.

CHAPTER 34
1 And since they’ve come up, it’s important for you to know that banks will be an incredibly important part of Capitalist societies like America,
2 jBecause every Capitalist Nation will always need a whole bunch of boring avaricious people in blue suits to watch everybody’s money,
3 kBecause the most important principle in every Capitalist Nation is the principle that nobody can be trusted,
4 Ever,
5 Except for banks, of course,
6 aWhich are extremely trustworthy,
7 bOr why would they have so many boring drones in blue suits to watch over your money all the time?
8 Besides, if banks weren’t trustworthy, why would people give them money and let them lend it to other people,
9 Without even asking the people who gave them all their money in the first place?
10 Not to mention the fact that if bankers weren’t trustworthy, they’d probably get involved in a lot of risky financial speculation that could cause a huge depression someday,
11 Which wouldn’t do Capitalism any good at all.

CHAPTER 35
1 That’s why it will be such a good thing that banks will always lend money to the people who deserve it,
2 And will always use impeccable business judgment,
3 cBecause who could possibly know more about business than a know-it-all in a blue suit who thinks you earn money by lending other people’s money to still other people who will do all the work and take all the risks,
4 While he sits in a giant office upstairs at the bank thinking up ways to get more money?

CHAPTER 36
1 Eventually, there will be so many great bankers that they will build a city all for themselves,
2 Called New York,
3 Which nobody will be allowed into who actually makes things,
4 Except skyscrapers, that is,
5 Because the banks and life insurance companies and brokerage houses who deal strictly in money will all need their own skyscrapers,
6 dWith their names on them in giant letters,
7 Just so everyone will know that they really do make things,
8 Even though they really don’t,
9 eWhich has a lot to do with the appearance of value,
10 And everything in the world to do with American Capitalism,
11 Which will have its headquarters in New York,
12 On Wall Street.

CHAPTER 37
1 In fact, Wall Street will become the world capital of Capitalism,
2 fAnd will become so fantastically successful that the people who work there will eventually forget practically everything you ever said,
3 Because they will know better than you,
4 About everything.

CHAPTER 38
1 For example, they will forget about all your quaint old definitions,
2 gBecause Capitalism isn’t about creating wealth by creating value that didn’t exist before;
3 Instead, it’s about getting rich by getting hold of more money than other people,
4 Which is why value doesn’t matter,
5 aSince what really matters is being the swiftest,
6 bAnd the fittest,
7 cAnd getting up earlier than the other guy,
8 So that you can take his money while he’s still asleep,
9 dAnd use it to buy stocks on a margin,
10 In the kinds of companies that can’t help but succeed,
11 eWhich you can always identify because their stock prices keep going up,
12 Which is why everybody else is buying their stock on margin too,
13 And so it’s a good idea to buy yours earlier than the other guy,
14 So that you’ll make higher profits,
15 fAnd more money.

CHAPTER 39
1 Actually (said the pen),
2 I have some not very good news for you,
3 Because when I told you the bad news about your ideas before,
4 I overlooked some,
5 Which I have been suddenly reminded of,
6 gBecause Capitalism will also lead to something really awful that people will blame on you,
7 Something called the hGreat Depression,
8 iWhich will start on Wall Street,
9 With a tremendous noise,
10 jWhich will sound like a single gigantic crash,
11 Even though it will actually consist of thousands and thousands of little crashes…

Until it all falls down. You can read the rest of the Obama story here. All the same plot points apply — class warfare, more government power, and the pretense that politicians give a rat’s ass what happens to the people they are gaining more and more control over, as well as unrest and tea parties and such. Beautiful, isn’t it? No such thing as a people not dumb enough to make exactly the same mistake three generations later.

If you still care. At this point all I care about is the opportunity to say, “I told you so.” A quarter century ago.

Flukt. Learning how to fight is sometimes a life and death issue.

You thought I’d have wisdom about the conservative SCOTUS rulings? No. The beltway shell game continues. If you want more than that, inquire in the comments.

But I’m taking this opportunity to announce that I’ll stop seeking comments. Doesn’t matter. I’ll post what I think is of value and you can all make of it what you will, with no prejudice against silence. Silence has been my own inclination for a while now. How can I hold it against you?

We’ve reached the point where there is no news or commentary more insightful than Drudge headlines. Two out of three of the network newscasts couldn’t be bothered to cover the 1Q decline of 2.9 percent in GDP. Republicans remain in their longstanding circular firing squad. Democrats are stone crazy — Pelosi welcoming TB-infected children across the blown up southern border like a pro-abortion Mother Theresa, and foreign policy officials nattering about Global Warming, increasingly faint redlines, and the utter meaninglessness of Benghazi. While the world is exploding under their very noses. Which are still too much up in the air to detect the whiff of death.

Even the luminaries of National Review are gasping, literally, for breath. There is no more fuel for their intellectual fire. Absent passion, they’re reduced to repeating themselves, mumbling twice, thrice, about matters entirely moot — the IRS, the VA, the case for, and impossibility of, impeachment, the precise legal definition of lawlessness in umpteen instances NBC deems less important than the World Cup, the dire consequences of destroying the American economy and foreign policy at the same time, the ridiculous choice between creepy Rand Paul and creepy Chris Christie, etc. Thing is, they either made or refused to make all these arguments long ago, and what’s left is filigree on the funeral statuary of the nation.

Which is where Netflix comes in. Diversion, distraction, restorative retreat, whatever you want to call it. It’s not trivial. Most entertainment from the old sources has been taken away from us, bit by bit. ESPN used to be a haven from increasingly naked political agendas exemplified by dozens of Dick Wolf Law & Order spinoffs that have become cause of the week items of lefty propaganda. Now ESPN can’t go five minutes without lecturing us about Redskins, the N-word, gay athletes, Redskins, guns, domestic abuse, the sickening violence done by concussions to the great brains of NFL wide receivers, and did we mention Redskins?

Even the back channels are now devoted to reeducating us. We’re Honey Boo Boo, they’re the Logo and Bravo Channels, where us trogs are supposed to learn the high points of culture from homosexuals. The Discovery Channel is in the Global Warming business and the Thanatos of end of humanity fantasies, and the History Channel is endlessly inventive in finding new ways to attack the Judeo-Christian tradition. A forensically speculative reconstructed Jesus looks like a Palestinian terrorist. The supposedly rediscovered Gospel of Mary is run and rerun despite having been conclusively debunked. And, hey, look at these idiots who are STILL searching, like the complete idiots they so obviously are, for the Arks of both Noah and the Covenant. While Joan Rivers advances the cause of promiscuous feminism by using every obscene word you know, and some you may not, in the longest-running routine of vagina and penis jokes you could possibly imagine. She keeps raising the stakes waiting for someone to stop her but no one does. They just snigger at her latest whore/cunt/cock/anal-sex one-liner. Not to mention the gutter double entendres that constitute the script of every single sitcom on the air. I won’t. And have you looked at all at the “family fare” being produced by Disney and the ABC Family Channel? Don’t. You’ll never let your pre-teen daughter out of the house again. On second thought, look.

As I said. Where Netflix comes in. The streaming service has gems that take you away from all this if you know how to find them.

I’m not saying this is Netflix’s mission. They are building a library. Two out of three of their homegrown productions are strictly in line with what I’ve described above. Do I seem angry? I am. Conservatives who profess to be disapproving of the coarsening of American culture continue to shock me, as they did with their adoration of The Sopranos, with their confessions of binge watching Breaking Bad (now available on Netflix), House of Cards, and the new kid on the block, Orange is the New Black. Really? I’ve made two attempts at Orange. I lasted five minutes the first time, enough to see eight boobs, a fairly explicit sex scene and a pee scene, complete with discreet female wiping afterwards. Really?

That was before I read one of Hotair’s hard line conservative contributors announce his bingeing on the show as a prelude to a market argument as to why Netflix shouldn’t make a whole season available at one time. So I tried again.

Sorry. After the initial flash of tits and pee, it turns into a standard prison melodrama, one I’ve seen a hundred times before, fear and alliances and missteps and grudges and complete bullshit. I’ve even seen the female version before, way back in the post punk era, when the infamous Wendy O (of the Plasmatics) played the villain and told the heroine she was a “shit stain on the panties of life.” {Hey, kids. Whatever you think you’re breaking through with your crappy millennial music, we wuz there long before yas.}

House of Cards is a vile wallowing in the most cynical view of politics, cribbed (as usual) from a much better Brit series of the same name. Unspeakable. So I will speak no more of it.

Breaking Bad is tragedy as long-running soap opera. Only without the tragedy. Innate evil that surfaces and mutilates the lives of everyone around him is not a tragic flaw in a tragic hero. It’s the masturbatory fantasy of people who pretend to be good because pretending is all they know. That’s not just a flaw. Their fascination is a fatal triple failure — of imagination, true moral understanding, and courage.

I liked Lillehammer. Because it’s actually novel, funny, and a double satire on both instant gratification us (as in U.S.) and the strange Scandinavian disconnectedness from the immediacy of consequences. Everyone involved is a joke. The cultural divide just makes for different punchlines. Redeemed by the fact that it never once presumes to be a serious commentary of any kind. The timing is usually impeccable. In that regard it’s a comic masterpiece akin to Dylan Moran’s comedy series Black Books.

I know, I know. Why explore Netflix, then? I’ve taken up enough of your time. So for now I’ll give you a handful of examples of what you can find there you won’t find anywhere else.

Salamander (a series worth bingeing on)

You think you’re paranoid about government? Try being Belgian. HQ of the EU. Jack Bauer never knew he had it so good.

The Imaginary Witness (a documentary about Hollywood and the Holocaust)

Surprisingly honest and even-handed. And illuminating.

Escape [aka Flukt] (see the trailer above. Makes Hunger games look like the twaddle it is)

An Unreal Dream (another documentary that might remind you of the blessings of a belief in God, whether he exists or not.)

Horrible as it is, it’s still inspiring. Honestly.

Lore (a beautiful, terrifying movie that will remind you what life, and film, is or can be)

Her name is Hannelore. Is there forgiveness? She’s sixteen. But you’re never too young for trial by ordeal.

I promise I’ll come back later and give you thumbnails on each of them. But look them all up on IMDB.com. If you’re going to use Netflix for your own edification, you’ll have to learn how to find the needles of gold hidden in the haystack. It’s a huge haystack, though. And the needles can pierce your heart.

In the meantime, ponder this: I continually ask you to rediscover your American roots. Why would I recommend works by Australians, Belgians, Germans, and Norwegians? Regardless of all that has happened, would you rather be us or some other?

Feminist Icon…

You might recall this, which cited an essay at RealClearPolitics by Carl Cannon that trashed Hillary but promised a sequel that would explain why she will still be elected president. It’s out. Here’s the payoff.

Eight years later, voters will have the chance to put another iniquitous legacy behind them. I think they will take it. The polls show Hillary leading all the likely Republican nominees, and I think that support is solid, particularly among women. Millions will demur to their husbands or more conservative colleagues, fib to pollsters and quietly fill out their ballots. America will find that its women have long memories.

It was in 1897 that Susan B. Anthony wrote, “There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers.” More than a century later, Nancy Pelosi had those words — and the words of others — in her mind when she became the first female House speaker.

In a story she has told many times, Pelosi recalls going to the White House as speaker for the first time. She felt her chair “getting crowded” as though others were sitting in it with her.

“I swear this happened,” she said. “And then I realized Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Alice Paul, Sojourner Truth — you name it — they were all in that chair…and I could hear them say: ‘At last we have a seat at the table.’”

Some conservatives made fun of Pelosi’s ghost story. I don’t think this was a good idea. I think Pelosi’s allegory means that American women have unfinished business in politics, along with the right flesh-and-blood candidate to complete their dream.

Please tell me. How many women out there are NOT grossly offended by this kind of argument? You’re going to vote with your ovaries? For another rank, unscrupulous incompetent?

I don’t believe it. I refuse to believe it.

…though somewhat blonder now. Otherwise exactly the same.

Hee hee hee…

…hee hee hee.

Pretty funny. The Republicans thought the IRS Commissioner might express some regret or remorse for the flagrant flouting of congressional authority by his agency. They thought wrong:

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Friday there is no need for his agency to apologize amid accusations of a cover-up in the targeting scandal of conservative groups after claims surfaced that ex-official Lois Lerner’s hard drive was destroyed and emails from several other officials also have gone missing.

I could have told them that.

Can’t wait for the 200th pledge drive rerun!

It would be kind of sad if it weren’t so perfect somehow.

On cable, we have at least four channels representing various PBS outlets. Always the same thing. 20th century political pundits ranging from the antiquated News Hour to the downright saurian Bill Moyers, spinning and respinning the New Deal of the 1930s, followed by NOVA warnings of Global Warming and Frontline discovering new kinds of minority oppression. As well as five year old rebroadcasts of BBC shows like Foyle’s War, Midsomer Murders, and what’s the new one? Squiggly Manor? Uh no. Downton Abbey. Beautiful retread of Upstairs Downstairs, which funded PBS during its glory years. Yeah. Sigh.

Until the pledge drive season. When suddenly it’s time to rally the check writing troops and we get a spate of Great Performances reruns featuring Streisand from 1968, Bob Dylan tributes from 1992, and of course retreads of Sarah Brightman and the Blind Tenor, who was never quite in the same class with Domingo and Pavoratti, just close enough to tickle the generosity of pseudo intellectuals in Darien, Lake Forest, Beacon Hill, and Grosse Point.

Stuck in time. That’s my point. PBS is supposed to be the shining light of quality television, the TV that the best educated watch when they watch, presumably only so they can support the most intellectual and culturally polished aspects of the culture.

What a crock. PBS is actually a mirror of the ossified state of liberal/progressive mentality in America.

Watching PBS in any of its venues is akin to being pinned to your grandmother’s couch in the sixties watching the Lawrence Welk Show. It’s all for old people who don’t want anything to change. Yesterday’s news, yesterday’s opinions, yesterday’s entertainment, and constant reruns. Call it the Hillary constituency.

Without abundant government subsidy, the jig would already be up. PBS is being squeezed to death from three different directions. Forget the doddering pledge drive guys with the cultured voices and grey toupees. Forget the outrageous offers to buy DVDs for three times the price they’d be at Best Buy. Forget even the nerve of taking 15 minute chunks out of programming the octogenarians presumably want to see in favor of wide shots of young Marxists answering telephones while you wheedle your dwindling audience for more money.

Here’s the thing for all you hyper-intellectual progressives to take note of. The game is over. Done.

First. BBC America shows every sign of being a capitalist, profit-seeking network. PBS ain’t going to get a shot at Orphan Black or even the later versions of Doctor Who. BBCA haven’t even tried to show Downton Abbey. That tell you anything? They seem perfectly happy selling ads for shows people want to watch. Odd, eh? No sententious introductions listing foundations, trusts, and other nonsensical phantom sponsors of their programming.

Second. Netflix doesn’t have all the good stuff, but they have a lot. All of Midsomer Murders, most of Inspector Morse, all of Foyle’s War, and more Miss Marple than you can shake a stick at. And the biggest hit BBC1 has had in 10 years, Call the Midwife. Oh. And almost all of Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect. Without pledge drive interruption. And show after show after show that never turned up on Masterpiece Theater. Did American intellectuals ever actually have anything to contribute to television? Except Dick Cavett, of course. You know. The lofty view.

Ah. The third and most deadly source of squeeze. A living, breathing example of what public television could and should have been lo these many years. The Ovation Channel.

I’ll give the conservatives a breather here. Right wing as I am, I love the Ovation Channel. I’m sure most of its producers and creative lights are leftist as can be. But I don’t care. They sell ads and they are purveying art in every possible form. They roam the country looking for talent. They spotlight aspects of artistic endeavor you’d never think existed, and they make the creative, intellectual aspect of life vital again. They make it live again. What PBS should have been doing during my lifetime and never did.

I won’t run down the list of their programming, some of which is cheap fill in the blanks stuff but much of which isn’t. It’s new. I’ll direct you only to a surprisingly wonderful three part series called Big Ballet.

It’s a perfect microcosm of the channel’s mission. A diminutive former professional ballet dancer decides to stage Swan Lake with dancers who never got their chance because they were too large, too, well, fat. His partner is a former successful ballerina who was considered too tall. Together, they undertake this mission.

Reality TV schlock, right? No. It works. This isn’t about kicking people out a week at a time. It’s about the delicate balance between being demanding and kind. What should be the best in us. Three episodes. Spoiler. The finale, the performance, will bring tears to your eyes. Art should be accessible to everyone. It doesn’t belong only to the bluenoses of PBS.

Why the squeeze will probably finish off the mummy of government subsidized culture TV.

There’s always a recipient.

This won’t take long. Every email Lois Lerner sent was received by someone else. The files will still be on their systems or backups, regardless of how much criminal skulduggery occurred at the IRS.

The NSA has been collecting “metadata” all this time. They have the capability to determine who Lois Lerner was emailing. They don’t have to produce the actual text, even if they have it. They just have to produce the names and email addresses of her correspondents. Then subpoenas can be issued for all of her email correspondents.

Why has no one, on either side of the aisle, brought this up?

What kind of evil kabuki is being performed before our glazed eyes?

We soccer “haters” need to sit out the next round. Apparently.

This time, even conservatives are ganging up on Americans who don’t care for soccer.

Including right wing Breitbart, which ran a piece titled WORLD CUP: American Football is a Sign of the Nation’s Decline:

Every four years, large swaths of the world pause to enjoy the World Cup, a tournament of the 32 best national teams in soccer. Like clockwork, American sports writers and fans mark the occasion with loud commentary about how “stupid” they find the sport. Barrels of ink are spilled and vocal cords strained assuring everyone that our “football” is better than soccer and, more American. Project much?

Setting aside whatever Freudian motivations necessitate such screeds, perhaps the question merits consideration. Is our “football” more American? I wish it weren’t true, but, sadly, I’m afraid these writers and fans are probably right.

Professional football in the US is, after all, a government-protected monopoly. A rapidly growing city can’t just field its own team, but must first get approval from the cartel of football team owners. These cartel members can also usually count on taxpayers to foot the bill for building their stadiums. This cartel also ensures that teams can enjoy staying in the league regardless of performance. In the English Premier League (soccer) and most other leagues, the worst performing teams get thrown out of the league every year, until they can earn their place back. Americans of an older generation will remember this concept as a meritocracy… Et cetera, et cetera, harrumph.

And Hotair, currently featuring the essay Conservatives shouldn’t hate soccer just because Europeans like it:

World Cup 2014 is upon us, which means you can count on two things: First, Team USA will lose to Ghana. (Oh, that didn’t happen this time?) Second, some conservatives will argue that soccer is a socialist game and they want nothing to do with it.

Of course soccer is socialist. There are … teams! They’re … Europeans! And the announcers even use the collective plural — as in, “England are playing well today.” Which is just wrong.

But soccer reflects conservative values better than baseball or football — two games I personally love and watch far more often than soccer. Here are four reasons why…

The body of the piece enumerates the reasons, which are cleverly done to be sure, but the more interesting part is the comments section here. Read it for fun. There are lots of reasons people don’t like soccer, but in aggregate it would seem to be more about the game than the politics.

Why I’d remind you that I have some credentials of at least longevity on the subject. I wrote about the World Cup beginning in 2006. I slightly updated my perspective in 2010. That year, I even invited hockey fanatic Puck Punk to live blog a soccer game. Plenty of laughs. Not much of what you’d call hatred.

Don’t think I’ve ever hated the game for reasons political or otherwise. For example, I wrote about the 2008 Euro Tournament and offered suggestions about how to make the sport better.

Mighty ESPN also sank as low as devoting hours and hours of its precious airtime to the 2008 European Soccer Tournament. Worse, we actually watched some of it. Mrs. CP got a modest kick out of watching the hated Orangemen of Holland lose in the closing moments to Russia while I was mostly busy grilling burgers outside. And, then, on Sunday, out of a pitifully unfounded hope that something interesting would happen in the Italy-Spain quarter-final, we actually watched our second soccer game in one weekend.

The shame of it. What can I say? I am personally fond of Italy. There was nothing else on. The weather map insisted we were under imminent threat from severe thunderstorms all afternoon (which never came). And, yes, I should have known. As Instapunk regulars know, this site has assessed the appeal of soccer in some detail. But I, personally, had never sat there and watched an entire game of world-class soccer.

You’ll never know. Words are inadequate. They played the entire 90 minutes of regulation with no score. Then they played two 15-minute overtime periods with no score. For the math-challenged, that’s two full hours of “sport” in which nothing whatever happened. There are no ‘plays’ to speak of. One team starts out kicking the ball down the field, passing it to one another as if they have something in mind. But the other team always takes it way from them before anything can happen, and then they do exactly the same thing. Every once in a while two players make contact, one of them falls down and begins shrieking as if he’s just been hammered into the turf by Brian Urlacher (no f’ing way, Jose) and the ref gives the guy who touched him a ‘yellow card.’ Then there’s a ‘free kick,’ which is about as free as all other things European; the kicker faces a solid wall of opposing players between him and the goal. So he kicks the ball over their heads, over the goal, and into the crowd. Then they start again.

The only entertainment value is a kind of expanding wonder. What do they use for highlights on TV news/sports coverage? Crowd shots? Clips of players rolling around on the ground pretending to be hurt? Refs dealing yellow cards as deftly as Vegas poker sharks? All those kicks that go way left or way right or way o-o-o-ver that gigantic net? What statistics do the soccer encyclopedias compile? There’s nothing to count or keep track of that might be a finite accomplishment or ‘play.’ Number of pointless steals of a ball from the opposition? Number of pointless losses of the ball to the opposition. The ratio of pointless steals to pointless losses? And what do their career statistics look like? A Hall of Famer like Beckham makes history by scoring, like, uh, three goals lifetime? And, uh, he played 19,000 hours of goal-free time in regulation?

I don’t know. I don’t know why the rules are systematically designed to prevent scoring. I don’t know why players and teams are disqualified in the next game for routine fouls committed in this game, thus preemptively destroying the purity and fairness of tournament competition. I don’t know why the rules deliberately remove the suspense of a down-ticking clock by adding unknown quantities of penalty time after regulation play, thus ensuring a built-in, premeditated anticlimax. I don’t know why hundreds of thousands come to watch and weep and wail and sing and cheer. I don’t know why I watched.

Somebody eventually won. On penalty kicks. Which, as far as I’m concerned, they could have done without wasting 120 minutes of running around futilely on the field beforehand.

Of course I do have some suggestions. I honestly believe, having watched, that there is a good game rattling around somewhere inside the boneheaded bore the current rules mandate. Adopt hockey’s penalty box/power play format (pay now, not tomorrow), jettison the yellow card/red card bullshit, and penalize fakers just as sternly as those who commit fouls. (Who really wants to watch professional athletes making deliberate pussies of themselves? Not even Europeans should get off on that…) Quit adding penalty increments at the end of regulation. And, for God’s sake, allow the fast break that makes basketball such a volatile and momentum-driven game. Let the lone superstar go one-on-one with the goalie in the heat of play on the field, as opposed to the artificial stasis of the post-game penalty-kick snore. If your game can’t be decided by being played with all players on the field, it’s not much of a game. It may be a kind of theater. But it’s not a sport.

I understand why ESPN is pushing it so hard. In the past couple of years, they have become unwatchable.

Although the network was coming off of rating highs in the early parts of 2011 and 2012, 2013 brought multi-year lows in the ratings department. In the second quarter of 2013 ESPN was down 32% in primetime and 20% in total day average viewership compared to the year before.

They used to cover sports. Now they repel sports fans with blather about gay basketball players, gay football players, big guys being bullied by big guys, concussions, N-word controversies, and fiery editorials about the (yawn) Washington Redskins. In this context, the World Cup is comparatively more interesting.

But please remember, this is not really a metaphysical issue to most of us. People are allowed to not like soccer. It’s as simple as that. If you think there’s some kind of political incentive or cultural lesson involved in what we sports fans decide individually, here’s your red card.

A few years back.

My wife isn’t a big fan of the Brit motorhead show Top Gear. Mostly for good reasons. The three co-hosts share the arrested development of many many men, seemingly stuck at age nine, despite gray hairs and creeping paunches. Also, the car thing doesn’t fascinate her, which is acceptably common among women. I know her eyes glaze over when I start talking about internal combustion engines, etc.

But we had an exception last night. A standard Top Gear segment is “Star in an Average Priced Car,” which is exactly what it sounds like. TV and movie stars show up, receive some training from the show’s resident racing driver (“The Stig”), and then try to turn in the fastest lap they are capable of on the show’s tricky home track. The car is the constant. Everyone drives the same vehicle.

The results of their efforts are revealed to them in the Top Gear studio, where they and the most acerbic of the TG co-hosts, Jeremy Clarkson, are perched on car seats surrounded by an active studio audience. There is a permanent running record of the times recorded by all the stars, and there are a lot of stars. Whether you know it or not, this test is a rite of passage for a very large number of both British and American actors. Where action stars in particular have to prove their mettle in real life.

So. On the episode we saw last night, Jeremy Clarkson, notoriously anti-American except when he has American stars in the studio, was clearly star struck by having both Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz on hand. They were obviously promoting their movie Knight and Day, which Clarkson may have shown a clip of. Mostly, though, he was interested in Cameron Diaz, Cameron Diaz, and the Hollywood glow of the two of them together.

The man who continually asks Brit stars why they live in New York or Los Angeles when they could live in the one true kingdom went so far as to declare that Cameron and Tom looked like the genetic future of the human race, when all the defects had been eradicated from the species.

He asked Cruise about the reporting that he does most of his own stunts. True. He asked if that was hard and if it ever hurt. Cruise said yes, it often hurts; he’d broken his nose twice, most of his fingers and toes, a leg, and multiple ribs. Oh. How about Cameron? Well, not because of stunts but she’d broken her nose four times, beginning at age eleven. “Shit just has a way of finding my nose,” she said.

Talk about personal cars. Cruise rides motorcycles mostly these days. He has a 1934 Indian once owned by Steve McQueen. Cameron has a Prius. Clarkson made a face. She gave him a nasty grin.

Then to the laps they both did. There’s in car video of these laps. Cameron was obviously taking the competition seriously. While Jeremy was asking how anyone could actually look that good in a helmet, she was setting a TG record for most uses of the F-word in a Top Gear lap. Which is not easy to do. The stars are very colorful in their language while driving. She also mentioned in passing the real handicap American stars are under in the competition. Right hand drive means you do all your shifting with the left hand, not how Americans have learned to shift. “Damn English gears,” she said.

After they’d shown the video, Cameron wanted to know her time. Clarkson gave his Cheshire Cat grin and said it was time to see Tom Cruise’s video. He was also clearly committed, so much so that his line was at times on the verge of loss of control. On the final curve, he actually managed to come so close to rolling that both left hand wheels visibly left the ground. He was shaking his head at his own performance when the video ended.

Clarkson’s big moment in this segment always. He has the times and he tortures the stars, asking them how they think they did, who they’d like to beat on the long board of star times. Cameron didn’t know. She just didn’t want to be humiliatingly bad.

With painful slowness, Clarkson revealed her time. She had beaten everyone on the long board. The top star time.

Cruise immediately embraced her, laughing and cheering her accomplishment.

Clarkson fixed him with a beady stare and said, “That’s a nice show, but you’ve got to be crapping yourself right now.” Cruise smiled and leaned forward, waiting, which all the stars do, no matter how big and famous.

Cruise’s time was doled out even more slowly than Diaz’s. But the end result was worth it. Cruise bettered her by a full second. Cameron squealed, they embraced again and then both stood up and received a standing ovation from the studio audience.

“You Americans,” said Jeremy Clarkson. “You Americans.”

In case any of you needed a bright moment today.

CORRECTION: I overstated my wife’s lack of interest in cars. Lately, she was the reason we watched the Monaco Grand Prix and the Canadian Grand Prix. She was riveted. And she’s waiting for the next one. I think a fan has been born. If that’s not a rush to judgment.

The compleat argumentation of the progressive perspective.

I did the most accurate post about who the left is and what it wants you’ve ever read.

No comments. Do you wonder at my scorn and escalating uninterest in anything but private hells?

What we call background. In case you start feeling superior to your friendly neighborhood Instapunk. Don’t ever do that.

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d; 50
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv’d, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries—
So rainbow-sided, touch’d with miseries,
She seem’d, at once, some penanced lady elf, 55
Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne’s tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman’s mouth with all its pearls complete: 60
And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?
As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air.
Her throat was serpent, but the words she spake
Came, as through bubbling honey, for Love’s sake, 65
And thus; while Hermes on his pinions lay,
Like a stoop’d falcon ere he takes his prey.

Left to herself, the serpent now began
To change; her elfin blood in madness ran,
Her mouth foam’d, and the grass, therewith besprent,
Wither’d at dew so sweet and virulent;
Her eyes in torture fix’d, and anguish drear, 150
Hot, glaz’d, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear,
Flash’d phosphor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear.
The colours all inflam’d throughout her train,
She writh’d about, convuls’d with scarlet pain:
A deep volcanian yellow took the place 155
Of all her milder-mooned body’s grace;
And, as the lava ravishes the mead,
Spoilt all her silver mail, and golden brede;
Made gloom of all her frecklings, streaks and bars,
Eclips’d her crescents, and lick’d up her stars: 160
So that, in moments few, she was undrest
Of all her sapphires, greens, and amethyst,
And rubious-argent: of all these bereft,
Nothing but pain and ugliness were left.

*************

Short version: Keats is very long winded. In this case by design. Long ago, Instapunk was nearly killed by a beautiful mythical monster. Instapunk is still alive because nothing can kill him. Whatever comfort you can take, take from that.