Michael Vick - In the Dog House

Photo - Getty/Jonathan Ernst
Michael Vick has found himself in the dog house of the National Felony League. According to Federal prosecutors, Vick and a couple of his buddies were running a dog fighting ring out of his Virginia kennel. The betting was in the hundreds and thousands of dollars. Pit bulls not deemed strong enough to fight were killed either by electrocution, hanging, drowning, or being slammed to the ground. The offence carries a 6-year sentence and a fine of $350 000 dollars.

First, the crime: it’s brutal. If guilty, Vick and his buddies deserve everything that they get.

The uproar from the community shouldn’t come as any surprise. There’s an old rule in the screenwriting business that if you want to show a villain as truly evil, don’t have him shoot the grandma. Show him shooting the family dog. The audience will hate him forever. Having NOW or Greenpeace on your case is as nothing compared to the angry hoards that make up PETA. These people want to burn you at the stake for eating a cheeseburger, let alone hurting man’s best friend.

Second, the penalty: Vick’s celebrity status might work against him on this one if he’s found guilty. $350 000 might sound like a hefty fine for some backwoods dude that runs a two-bit dog fighting ring. For Michael Vick, who earns about ten million dollars a year, that’s less than two quarters of football. By the time he hits the locker room at half-time, he’s earned well over half a million dollars. The judge, weighing this, might throw him a prison sentence just to make a point.

Third, the choice: I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Like he needs the money,” upon getting the news that Vick might be involved in this crime. But money has nothing to with it. Have you ever seen two dogs fight in the street? It’s scary. Carnal. The sounds alone are terrifying. Now imagine betting on it, cleaning up the blood, and hanging the dog that didn’t do as well as expected. Ask yourself what kind of man could do that, and you will have a better picture of the spirit that burns inside Michael Vick and others that breed pit bulls for battle.

It’s extremely dubious that Vick was doing this for any other reason than entertainment. He wasn’t forced to do it, and he didn’t need the cash. He simply likes dogfights.

We’re always looking for reasons to explain the activities of others. Why did they do it? Why do they feel that way? Sometimes, it’s simply because that’s the way it is. I’m already getting tired of hearing how Michael Vick should have stopped hanging out with his pre-football friends. They are the ones, this theory goes, that led him astray.

Michael Vick was the Atlanta Falcons’ number one draft pick in 2001. That’s six years ago. We’re not talking about some rookie who hasn’t had time to think about his ‘mistakes.’ We’re talking about an adult professional who likes his hobby. In this case, dog fighting.

Pit Bull
Vick could have dumped his friends, or put them through college, or ratted them out to the cops, or told them to go home, or bought them a house in New Zealand, or whatever. But he didn’t. Remember that this was going on at his kennel, not in some parking lot on the outskirts of town. Vick wasn’t caught up in anything. He was chiefly responsible for it. The dead dogs are buried on his property. The kennel, incidentally, was bought by Vick in 2001 for a little over $34000. With a flair for prophesy, these clowns named it Bad Newz Kennels.

The sycophantic sports writers are in quite a dilemma over this. Dog beats athlete for America’s heart every time, and the sports writers are in a pickle. They are, after all, writers, not reporters. There is no such thing as a sports reporter. Like me, emotions run their version of typing. They have steadfastly refused to investigate steroids in baseball (have you seen Jason Grimsley’s name lately), or football. While Barry Bonds cheats his way past Henry Aaron, the sports writers go whistling through the locker room as if nothing’s amiss. Now they have a problem: America likes dogs.

What to do? It’s easy. Become a mouthpiece for the other athletes, the ones that will protect Vick. Emmitt Smith, Allen Iverson, Michael Irvin, they’ve already had their press and their interviews. None of them have talked about crime, only ‘mistakes.’ Emmitt Smith is claiming that Vick is a target because of his fame. And yes, he might have made a mistake. Right. Vick made an ‘error’ in drowning dogs and watching them rip each other’s throats out.

I’ll give Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly a break on this. Years ago, in a face to face meeting, he asked Sammy Sosa point blank if he would take a steroids test. There was a great deal of controversy over whether Reilly should have asked the question. Not much controversy, though, over the fact that Sosa did not say yes or no. He still hasn’t. He just ignored it, it went away, and the sports writers let it, just as they let his corked bat slip from memory every time they discuss his homerun totals.

NBC’s Jim Gray also deserves a break. At the 1999 All-Star game, he asked Pete Rose if it was time to come clean about betting on baseball. Pete was not amused, players and fans called Gray a jerk, and the sports networks backed them up. Five years later, Rose published a book about…how he bet on baseball.

That is what is going to interest me about the Michael Vick drama. Not what penalty he pays for it (it will be too stiff for some; not tough enough for others), but how the sports writers spin it. Get ready. You’ll be dizzy by the time it’s over.

I guarantee you this: no matter what happens, if Michael Vick returns to the NFL and wins a Super Bowl, you will hear these words: “What a comeback for Michael Vick. Perhaps this will put the demons behind him.”

Dog beats athlete, but pigskin beats dog.

Here, Kitty

I've gone on the record as saying that Bordeaux is my favorite city in Europe. Just maybe not this week. I think I'll wait until Ringling Brothers recruits this furry friend before I wander around the outskirts of the town.

A "Hero" From the Ashes

From Breitbart.com:

Filming started Thursday on a movie starring Tom Cruise as the real-life mastermind behind a plot to kill Adolph Hitler, amid German grumbling about the high-profile Scientologist playing a national hero.

A "national hero." That's rich. The Germans didn't think so then. Take another look at William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and you'll find plenty of instances where the German people in general, and the army brass in particular, had plenty of chances to bring Hitler down, yet didn't.

The film is going to follow the story of Count von Stauffenberg, the dashing Nazi officer of glorious Prussian stock (his great-grandfather fought against Napoleon). He would lose an eye, all of one hand, and a piece of another fighting the allies during WWII.

In 1944 he was shot as a co-conspirator in the plot to kill Hitler. He wasn't just any co-conspirator. He was the one who put the bomb under Hitler's table prior to a meeting, only to be thwarted by an army officer, General Brandt, who moved the bomb behind a table leg.

The assassination attempt lends itself to cinema: The bomb is inside a briefcase. Stauffenberg places it to the inside of one of the table's two end-supports. He then excuses himself from the room, while Hitler and other officers go over a map. Just then, General Brandt leans in to get a better look. His feet hit the briefcase. He tries to shove it aside with his foot, and finally picks it up and places it on the other side of the large table support. In doing so, he unknowingly saves Hitler's life. Moments later, the bomb goes off and Hitler is wounded but not killed. Brandt, his accidental saviour, dies, along with a few other officers. Stauffenberg and his accomplices are later rounded up and shot.

All well and good. But for the Germans to regard Stauffenberg as a national hero is a joke. Americans, Canadians, British, and other allies might give a tip of the hat to Stauffenberg on their way by, but the Germans have no right to claim him as a hero. The Russians certainly wouldn't.

Notice the date of the attempted assassination: July 20, 1944. Almost two months after D-Day. Stauffenberg and others involved in the attempted putsch didn't get around to their overthrow bid until the war was virtually lost.

While there is evidence that Stauffenberg was anti-Hitler, don't kid yourself in thinking that he was part of any German "resistance" (the Germans have the gall to call it this; at Bender Block, there is a memorial to these supposed, and fabricated, heroes). Stauffenberg was only anti-Hitler well after fighting in Poland and France. When he was shifted to the Eastern Front and saw the calamity there, he began to change his tune. Prior to that, as Shirer says, "he threw himself into [the war] with characteristic energy."

The results of a Stauffenberg-led overthrow make for interesting reading. It is not as heroic as the German revisionists would have us believe. In hero-dreamland, Stauffenberg would have assassinated Hitler, got the Allies on the phone and said, "We quit."

Not quite. The plan was to kill Hitler, install a social democratic government, and assure the Western Allies of a peace settlement under a new United States of Europe. That is, the lands that Germany had conquered would not be returned immediately and intact to their own deserving peoples, but would become a new state altogether. Further to that, the war in the East would continue, the conspirators believing that the Americans and British would aid them in their fight against Russian Bolshevism.

No unconditional surrender, no repayment to the conquered countries of Western Europe, and no end to the war in the East. These were the results the conspirators were after.

Some heroes. These were men who saw the end of the war coming, and that they might swing from a rope for all the trouble they'd caused. No matter what the German revisionists say now, these men were Nazis. They had been Nazis for years. They were an integral part of a German war machine that killed millions of men, women, and children. It was only after the war looked lost that they went into action. To suggest that they were anti-Nazi heroes is ridiculous. They were criminals looking for a plea bargain.

Today, some German people seem taken with the idea that they can pretend this is not their past. They can't. Calling an opportunistic Nazi a hero doesn't change a thing.

Only five years ago, German Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin made an allusion to George W. Bush using the tactics of Hitler. Talk about the pot and kettle. I've got a line for her. It comes from Hans Frank, the Governor General of Poland during WWII. He was hanged at Nuremberg. He said this:

"A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased."

Looks like it took only sixty. But its still a guilty history. Read it and weep.

1408 - Review

Director: Mikael Håfström
Writers: Matt Greenberg/Scott Alexander
Starring: John Cusack/Samuel L. Jackson
Runtime: 94 minutes

1408 is a gutsy little suspense movie, and it works. I wouldn’t call it the best in its genre, though in the first twenty minutes, I wondered if it might come close. That’s the trouble with stories: can they pay off?

This film, based on a Stephen King short story, makes a good effort, and manages to avoid a lot of the clichés that destroy others of its kind.

The film stars John Cusack as a haunted house writer. He’s an iconoclast. He tours the country and stays the night in creepy hotels, trying to find evidence (or lack of it) of ghosts. At the beginning of the film, we learn that he has never stayed in a bonafide haunted house, and that the task bores him. He doesn’t believe in ghosts or haunted houses, so staying the night in a creepy place doesn’t bother him in the least. Once he has compiled a bunch of articles on various places, he publishes them, and makes a buck.

Then comes The Dolphin, a hotel in New York City. He receives a postcard that tells him not to stay in room 1408. Curious, he goes to NY and tries to check in.

Tries, because the hotel manager (played by Samuel L. Jackson), attempts to dissuade him with stories of the horrors that await in the room. Over the years, more than 50 people have died in the room, either by suicide or “natural” death. One man poked his own eyes out. Several have jumped to their deaths. Another slit his own throat. Jackson has the photos and documentation to prove it. He declares that Cusack won’t last one hour in the room. Cusack, ever the sceptic, checks in anyway.

And that’s the setup. Jackson more or less disappears from the film after that, having done a turn as ‘office cameo.’ Office cameos are amusing. You know the actor had some time on his hands and that the producers wanted another name on the marquee. So for a day’s work, Jackson picked up a bunch of money to play an office scene with John Cusack.

I’d knock it, except that it is a very good scene. Jackson plays it very well, and doesn’t act as if he’s just walked onto the set for a quick money grab. It’s also a hard scene for an actor: you know Cusack is going to check into the room no matter what Jackson says, otherwise there would be no movie. It’s an exposition scene, put there for backstory. Scenes like that can be good, or they can be transparent and boring, like painting by numbers. Cusack and Jackson make it good.

After Cusack checks into the room, all kinds of things happen, not many of which I will go into here. It would ruin the film to talk about specifics.

The reason I called the film gutsy is that it is a hard story to film. Movies have a tough time keeping things interesting when shot in one location. The most famous movie for that was 12 Angry Men. Starring Henry Fonda and J. Lee Cobb, the film is about a group of jurors who spend the entire movie arguing the guilt or innocence of a man on trial. I’ve heard film directors say that filming a restaurant scene is tough, because nothing is more boring than a group of people sitting around a table. That’s just one scene. In 12 Angry Men, the entire movie is about people sitting around a table.

That’s hard to keep interesting, but it worked, because the director, Sidney Lumet, used areas of the room as different locations. He split the characters up by the watercooler, in the coat room, in the corner, whatever, and used these spaces as locations. The fact that he had a stellar cast didn’t hurt, either.

In 1408, the same problem exists, but it’s even tougher: Cusack has no one to talk to. He’s alone in the room, except for the various ghosts that come along, and the psychological stuff that takes place in his own mind. The director, Mikael Håfström, gets around this by using the bedroom, the bathroom, the lounge, and the windowledge as different locations for different “scenes.” He also has John Cusack, a fine actor who has been accused of playing himself, but if “himself” means good, so what?

Cusack also carries a tape recorder with him, giving him a chance to speak. This is an old device, but a necessary one. In Cast Away, Wilson the volleyball wasn’t there to give Tom Hanks a friend. It was there so Hanks could speak without sounding like a lunatic. It’s an odd truth: why do you appear more crazy for talking to yourself than for talking to a volleyball? In any event, whenever a film has a solo cast, look for the character to start talking to something – anything – in a fairly short time.

1408 sloshes around a bit in the middle, which is forgivable. A feature-length film tops out at over 90 minutes, and it’s tough to keep a lonely Cusack occupied for that long. I did take issue with a couple of the spooky characters. The film seemed more interested in scaring the hell out of John Cusack than in telling the story behind the room.

1408 is an enjoyable chiller. Cusack is very good considering he had no actors to act against, and the ending of the film is satisfying. It leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but it doesn’t cheat you, either.

Side note: The previews showed that Rob Zombie has directed a remake of Halloween, which will be released next month. Hollywood feeds off itself yet again. Its lack of fresh ideas is getting more depressing by the day.

David Beckham Go Home

Photo/Reuters

Man, that's gotta suck.

That line is reserved for a friend of mine. We were on the phone yesterday and she said that Argentina was going to beat Brazil in some kind of soccer tournament, because Brazil was missing their best players.

News to me. I didn't know that the Copa America (America's Cup) final was even being played. Turns out that Brazil beat Argentina 3-0, even though they were missing Ronaldinho, Lucio, Kaka, Ronaldo, Ze Roberto and Adriano. I just copied and pasted those names from a website because, like you, I don't know who plays for the Brazilian team and nor do I care. I do find it cool, however, that a man can strut around a field while wearing Kaka (pronounced the way children say the word 'shit' without swearing) on his back.

The soccer tournament involved all of the qualifying countries in the Americas, including the United States. Canada didn't make it because Canada is so involved in soccer that they suck at it, ranking out of the top 50 countries in the world. When Bosnia-Herzegovina (28), Morocco (35), and Guinea (50) are better than you at a sport, you know it's time to stop asking when that sport will become popular in your country.

I flicked on CNN this morning and they were talking about David Beckham's arrival in Los Angeles. He used to play for Manchester United and Real Madrid. He's now come over to play with the LA Galaxy. Headlines on Yahoo are asking if he can save US soccer. The rest of us are asking if he can get out of the way so we can get another look at his hot wife.

Every couple of years, this soccer issue rises to the surface, bubbles for a few moments, and then goes back down the drain where it belongs. It is phony-hype, as the Beckham arrival indicates.

I don't know too much about soccer, but it's doubtful that David Beckham is here in order to save US soccer. It's more believable that the guy just needs a job. He was cut as captain from the England team, and Madrid obviously didn't want his services. If he was still the premier player he once was, he wouldn't be coming to the United States to play as Mr. Nobody. He'd be in Europe signing autographs every time he steps out of his house. Him coming here to save US soccer is like saying Matt Lainert should skip the NFL and go play in Germany to save Deutsch Football.

And how, exactly, is David Beckham going to save US soccer? I didn't know US soccer needed to be saved. I thought it was one of those fringe sports. Illegal immigrants and 10th generation English people might want to watch 11 of their favorite players jog around a field for 90 minutes, but the majority of Americans couldn't care less. And again, it doesn't matter if a lot of kids play it when they're younger. That does not mean that they are going to play it when they are older, or even watch it on television. As I said last year:

"To the Euro-weenies, let's put something on the record: the kids who play soccer are there because their parents won't let them play a violent sport. Football and hockey are out, and fastballs scare the hell out of mothers, so baseball's out, too. Unless you're over six feet tall by the time you hit grade 11, basketball is also a no-go. That leaves soccer. Your passionate game of kick-the-ball-around is there to raise the self-esteem of children that wouldn't have amounted to a damn on the grid iron, and to keep hockey players in shape during the off-season.

People are not going to watch soccer in North America. It's made up of all the people that got cut from the other sports. Sure, there might be a few kids that played soccer as their first choice, but who the hell wants to watch a guy like that play anything? And just because we did something as kids doesn't mean we're going to keep doing it as adults. Using the old 'you show me yours, I'll show you mine' might have worked while hiding in the cushion fort, but it doesn't go over so well on the nightclub circuit.

This argument is so old that it's no longer an argument. It's more like an article of faith, like the second coming of Christ. When I was a kid, people were saying that more kids playing soccer meant that it would be huge a few years down the road. When I was in high school, they said the same thing. When I was in my 20's, ditto. I'm now over 30. I still don't watch soccer, and neither do my friends. When I am old and decrepit, some damn nurse is going to give me my orange juice and say, "My son plays soccer. So many kids are playing it, it will be huge in a few years." And I will die screaming.

Honestly: when is the last time you said to anyone, I need to get home by 7 o'clock because the soccer game is on? As for me, I use the webpages to see just how popular soccer is. On Yahoo Sports, the soccer tab is tenth in line, right behind tennis and right before boxing. On ESPN.com, soccer comes in the 14 hole, before tennis, but behind such items as women's basketball and NHL hockey, which won't be played for another two months. The Sporting News website doesn't even have soccer on their menu bar. Must have been a misprint.

Here's a nice look at the joys of a game where ties are victories, scoring is non-existent, and it's considered good play to roll around like a wimp when someone comes within five feet of you. Beckham's in this clip, too. He's twelve steps from the goal and misses it by 50 feet. Gotta love the "beautiful game."

The Sun Also Gores

Every time I get the urge to be Hemingway, the traditional running of the bulls in Pamplona rolls around and convinces me otherwise.

Click here to see what I'm talking about. Warning: the first pic in the slideshow is a nasty one, as a genius from Norway gets it in the leg.

This photo from AP/Alvaro Barrientos

Live Free or Die Hard - Review

Slight spoiler warning: the ending isn't blown, but a secondary character's demise is talked about. Still, if you've seen more than one movie in your life, you'll know it's coming a mile away.

Director: Len Wiseman
Writer: Mark Bomback
Starring: Bruce Willis
Runtime: 2 hr 10 minutes

Die Hard in its first version changed the landscape for action movies in Hollywood. It still remains the quintessential film of the genre. Live Free or Die Hard undermines all of the work the franchise has done since, and comes out as a regular ho-hum actioner, complete with terrible clichés, bad dialogue, and a cowardly plot.

One line from the latest instalment completely sums up how tired the Die Hard franchise has become: “They’ve got my daughter.”

And that is all you need to hear from the film to know that it is a complete waste of time. They’ve got my daughter? You can’t get more tired than that, unless you use such lines as, “They killed my partner.” Or perhaps, “This time it’s personal.”

Though it appears a good 70 minutes into the film, I don’t think I’m giving much away with the “They’ve got my daughter” line. We meet John McClane’s daughter in the first five minutes. Surprise, surprise, she hates her father. He catches her making out with a teenage boy, there’s a father/daughter argument, and she walks off in a huff, disappearing from the movie. Any thinking audience member has got to be groaning at this point, because we know that we’ll see her again, only it won’t be at a birthday party. It will be in the hands of some maniac, whom McClane will kill, saving the world and his familial relationship with one quick bullet.

I was hoping that Live Free would be the first movie to take on Al Queda. Hollywood is so politically correct that not one film has been made where the hero is specifically trying to outwit and outfight America’s arch enemy: militant Islam. Hollywood’s aversion to calling Al Queda and militant Islam an ‘enemy’ is beginning to border on the pathological, if not the downright obscene.

Since the 90’s, Islamic terrorists have bombed the World Trade Center, blown up two US embassies in Africa, killed American sailors aboard the USS Cole, knocked down the World Trade Center, flown a plane into the Pentagon, crashed another in Pennsylvania, killed scores of civilians in Madrid and London, and most recently tried to detonate another couple of carbombs in Piccadilly Circus. Nevermind the havoc they’ve played in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Far East.

What does Hollywood have to show for it? A play-by-play of Flight 93 with no moral judgement in it whatsoever. A film about two firefighters trapped under the rubble of the Trade Center and keeping each other company until help arrives. A movie about the bad boy history of the CIA which ends in the 60’s. One movie about Iraq where the soldiers delight in masturbation, sit around in the desert, but don’t shoot anyone. A story about a US sniper who is framed by a US Senator for trying to kill the President. A release coming out later this month about a pilot shot down and taken prisoner in Vietnam.

Gutsy stuff.

The amount of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam movies prove that Hollywood could talk about America and its enemies at length. So why does militant Islam get a free pass, especially when they are the only enemy to have ever specifically targeted and killed US civilians, the same civilians that buy movie tickets? Vietnam movies and history lessons about the 1950’s CIA are not exactly ripped-from-the-headlines stories that we should expect from filmmakers.

With a title like Live Free or Die Hard, one would think that it would be a story about defeating today’s enemy that is opposed to freedom. Instead, the title is merely a pun taken from a New Hampshire license plate.

In the first Die Hard, the robbers posed as terrorists. In Live Free, the robbers…pose as terrorists. But these terrorists are not Islamic. The head honcho, Thomas Gabriel (played Timothy Olyphant), is as WASP as the character's name suggests, and guess what? He has a beef with the US because he used to work for the Pentagon. They fired him for saying that their security was lax. Now he’s out to prove it. In other words, it’s all America’s fault. Again. If they had only listened to him, they wouldn’t be in this fix right now (he messes up the communications systems, gas pipelines, and generally throws a monkey wrench into the infrastructure of the country, all with a few handy laptops and some computer-geek American cronies).

Not once in the film are the words Al Queda, Islamic terror, or bin Laden mentioned, if only to lead the audience down the wrong track. The words are ridiculously conspicuous by their absence, since you have to believe that at least one person working for the FBI might casually say, “Hmmm. Maybe this is an Al Queda attack.” In the world of Live Free, as in the world of Hollywood, Al Queda and Islamic terrorists do not exist.

The robber/terrorist’s girlfriend is an Asian woman. Willis as McClane reminds us of this on several occasions, by calling her an “Asian bitch.” Indeed, one of the biggest fight scenes in the movie is where Willis and the woman beat the crap out of each other, and Willis delights in telling her boyfriend that his “Asian” girlfriend is dead.

Well. What are we to make of all this? It would seem Hollywood is afraid of being called racist by showing terrorists as they are today (Islamic fundamentalists), but they aren’t afraid to be racist against Asian people. Imagine “black bitch” or “Mexican bitch.” Even “black girlfriend.” The hue and cry from the media would be appropriately loud, yet Asians can take it on the chin.

This is not new. I was in an LA comedy club some years back, where three comics in a row had all kinds of jokes about Asians. One talked about what bad drivers they were, and made slant-eye gags and jokes about how Asian people can’t see properly. The audience chortled and giggled, while a friend and I blanched. I am not surprised to see that the LA anti-Asian culture has seeped it’s way into a summer release with nary a whisper from the Hollywood media.

The filming of Live Free as a high flying actioner is so-so at best. You don’t need the credits to tell you that John McTiernan didn’t direct it, as he did two of the others. The effects are fairly lame, especially a sequence involving a fighter plane that is pure fantasy (a cross between a Harrier jet and an F-15). The banter between McClane and his sidekick buddy doesn’t remotely come close to the dialogue and chemistry between Willis and Samuel L. Jackson in Die Hard: With A Vengeance.

The Die Hard franchise has indeed died hard, and not with a bang, but a whimper.

All Of Us: Strangers

The other day I was on a flight from Washington DC to Toronto. It was a puddle jumper of an airplane, but it had jets, so it was noisy as hell in the cabin and the seats were too close together.

A little girl was across the aisle from me, looking out the window, and she turned to me and asked me how long the flight was going to last.

And I didn't know if I should say anything.

Such are the times we live in today, where speaking to a lone child is not something to cherish (the child might learn something; for that matter, so might you). Rather, speaking to a child makes you look over your shoulder, to see if anyone thinks you're some sicko who's trying to take advantage of a young innocent.

Poor kid. I told her that the flight was about an hour long and that we would be there in no time. And I went back to my book.

"Do you live in Toronto?" she asked.

I looked at her and she wasn't smiling or frowning, she was just doing what kids have always done: saying what was on her mind. She hasn't learned how to bullshit beyond I-didn't-hit-him in the playground. She wasn't making small talk. She just wanted to know if I lived in Toronto.

"No," I said. "But my family does. I'm there a lot." I couldn't help myself, so I said, "Where are you from?"

"New Orleans," she said.

"Cool," I said. Cool? Whatever. Back to the book.

The flight went on for a while and my mind was bouncing with questions. I never learned not to talk to strangers, and maybe this kid hadn't either. I wanted to asking how New Orleans was doing these days, and if she was there during Katrina. I wanted to ask her what she thought about all that, and if she'd been scared, or if she even remembered it.

"I'm Whitney," the kid said.

I already knew that, because it was hanging from her knapsack in the form of a plastic nametag, roughly the size of a credit card. It was the same knapsack that the plastic stewardess had rifled through. She was making sure the kid wasn't bringing fruit or meat across the border, lest the customs officials put the kid against the wall and arrest her for an agriculture infraction.

"I'm Sean," I said. And, not knowing any better, "Do you have family in Toronto?"

She smiled. "Yes," she said, "My cousins live there. I go every summer for two weeks."

Every summer. To a kid, that must sound like a lot.

"How old are you?" I said. And I looked around, trying to see if anyone thought I was some lecherous bastard.

"Nine," she said.

So every summer for maybe the past two summers, her family has put her on a plane to see her extended family in another country, and little Whitney thinks two summers is 'every summer.' Which I thought was the best news I'd heard in ages. Nowadays there's a virtual traffic jam in front of the elementary schools, or even high schools, because parents won't let their offspring walk five feet without them, nevermind sending them 2000 miles to a different city. But maybe after Katrina, the parents of New Orleans are thinking, "Screw it. Let the kid live a little."

The flight continued. It crossed my mind to ask Whitney if the stews were going to make sure she got to the customs terminal all right, or if she wanted me to show her there myself. And I thought, what a crazy question. You simply do not accompany children anywhere today. If you look cross-eyed at a kid in a restaurant to make them laugh, the mother will cluck her tongue and turn the kid around.

I wonder how many lost children are completely ignored on streetcorners and in malls because people are afraid to touch them? To help them? I bet it's a lot. Help a kid find their mother in a mall parking lot and they'll have an Amber Alert on CNN with your face plastered to it in no time.

We started our descent. The kid pointed out the window and asked me, "Is that Toronto?"

I wanted to say, "You come here every year, shouldn't you know?" but I decided to cool the smartass stuff. So I pointed out the window and showed her the CN Tower ("I've been there," she said), Rogers Centre ("I saw a game there," she said) and Lake Ontario, to which the kid said nothing, reminding me that kids couldn't care less about geography.

The flight landed. I pulled out the customs card and then reached into my pocket. Damnit. I searched in my bag. Damnit. I looked to the kid.

"You got a pen?" I asked.

She did. More responsible than me. More helpful than me, too.

When the plane got to the jetway, I stood up and told the kid to have a nice time with her cousins. She smiled from ear to ear, and it was a great smile. Then I left her standing there in the aisle, without once asking if she was going to be all right, or making sure that the stews hadn't forgotten her. I still feel bad about that.

The modern world is beating us down slowly but surely. No vices, no passions, no joys, no humanity. Making us into insular automatons, where the environment in Brazil is worth more than a human anywhere. Mind your business, and for God's sake don't reach out to anyone. Why, just this month in Kansas, a store video showed people walking over a woman who'd been stabbed. She was lying on her stomach and no one asked her if she was all right. They just walked over her and into the store to buy their beer, Coca-Cola, and tampons. And she bled to death.

I don't like kids. I don't get along with them very well. But I miss them sometimes.

Lift the Lid

I was talking to a girl the other night, and she told me that "all good things end, so what's the point?" She was talking about some relationship that had blown up in her face.

I felt sorry for her. She's twenty-five years old, cute as a button, funny, and has a butt like an East German gymnast. For someone like that, life should be all sunshine and roses. But of course it isn't.

When I visited Henley-on-Thames last year, I was confronted by a storybook English town, complete with quaint bridges and people that said good morning to strangers. After staying there a week, I'd seen drunken debauchery, a fight, adultery, mudslinging at a wedding, and a dude whose doctor told him to quit the sauce or he'd die drunk.

Both of these are examples of looks being deceiving. Nothing new there. But it still surprises me what can happen if you lift the lid off something and peer underneath. You might like what you find. Then again, you might not.

Life is funny like that. Take the Austrian girl, the one with the glorious butt. I was sure that she was a hell of a nice person, with a gracious smile and a quick laugh. And I was right. Yet she doesn't see herself that way. She told me that she is 'angry.' When I told her that I saw no anger in her whatsoever, she replied that I didn't know her well enough. It's been another couple of weeks, and I still haven't seen it. I've talked to her about all kinds of stuff, and there's no cynicism there, just a touch of sadness.

Mmmm.

I've heard this story before, and it came from me. And I can tell you now that this young lady is not angry, no matter what she thinks of herself. I used to think I was an angry young man, but on the whole I would say I am happy about 90% of the time. Yet sometimes I want to be angry. I think she does too, but she can't pull it off because hers is not an angry soul.

The truth will out. We may see ourselves as something (a quaint town, an angry person), but that doesn't make it true. Our own conceit can get in the way time and again, blinding us to the simple fact that we are who we are, if we're brave enough to admit it. We were formed sometime in our childhood, and we more or less carried on from there.

Yes, you can change, at least a little bit. When I was a kid I was brought up to believe that fighting was bad and that violence didn't solve anything. I got pushed around. Sometime around the age of 18, I punched somebody in the face and haven't look back since. It was a life-changing moment, and a good one. I'm not recommending it to everybody, and I certainly didn't become a bully, but I did learn that you have to stand up for yourself. That was a good thing.

But on the whole, I'm more or less the same person I was back then. Older, maybe a bit smarter, but not altogether different. If I look under the hood, the same engine fires. Maybe yours does, too.

I'm not talking about maturity. Saying that I am the same person as I was in University does not mean I still like sleeping on a lawn while covered in beer, or that I like to pull on someone's brastraps. But the desire to seek out the world and the willingness to laugh at it hasn't left me. And okay, sure, I still like a good party now and then. All right, all right, mostly now.

The trouble with looking at yourself is the looking. Being bold enough to examine yourself, to be honest about what you see, is tough. I think it was Freud that said no one can psychoanalyse themselves (he also said the Irish are impervious to psychoanalysis, so I guess they can forget my whole point), but it's worth giving it a shot now and then.

Scary proposition. Along with the old line of looks being deceiving, don't forget its partner, "Truth hurts."

Spare Some Change?

Gay marriage is good; anyone against it is a homophobe. I'm not sure how to talk about this subject, lest I get accused of being homophobic. I still don't know what that is, since in Latin it would means something like hating myself, but I get their drift: if you don't think gays should e allowed a marriage or an adoption, it means you hate them.

Accusing people of being homophobic simply because they wish to discuss one of the biggest possible changes in our cultural history is irresponsible. It is no different than the women that declare you're a pig if you want to discuss another massive change that's already happened: women not being at home raising children.

Change for change's sake, or change simply to appease the feelings of a minority should not be taken lightly. Because really, that's what this is all about. It is certainly not about rights. When people think of gay marriage, they aren't thinking about taxation laws, inheritance tax, welfare, life insurance, etc. They're thinking about the love felt between two of their gay friends. And they think it is unfair that those friends and others like them can't declare that love publicly, and have it sanctioned by the state.

People that get upset when someone wants to talk about such a big issue, and have a good debate about it, aren't worth my time. When feelings drive laws, you should be very nervous. Today's good feelings about gay marriage could be tomorrow's bad feelings about not having Jews own supermarkets, blacks teach school, whites swim in pools. Seem ludicrous? 30 years ago, so did the very idea of gay marriage.

Maybe the bogus climate change subject got me thinking about change in general. You often hear people say that "change is good," but this is usually said by someone when a friend tells them, "Becky dumped me," or "I just lost my job." When we say, "Change is good," it's because we don't want to say, "Damn, your life's going to be a mess for the next month. Call me then."

Change is just change, but our perception of it is on a pendulum. If the change is good for us as an individual, or matches our ideals, then it is good. If it doesn't, it's bad. The collateral damage of change (other people) usually doesn't enter into it until much later, and then only philosophically. When change occurs, the first person we naturally think of is ourselves because human beings are at root an animal, and all animals are selfish. Call it a survival instinct or whatever you want, but the most important person in our lives is us, with the exception of our children, who are an extension of us. Spouses, to judge by divorce proceedings and the myriad ways that parents fight for child custody, are a lot more expendable than children.

Even so, child custody cases can be seen as selfish acts: only I can raise this child properly, I can't live without the child, the child would be better off with me, he/she doesn't deserve the child as much as I do. All of these are subjective statements, provided the other parent isn't abusive or negligent. A man or a woman that cheats on their spouse is simply a bad spouse; it doesn't necessarily make them a bad caretaker of children.

Change is unsettling only if it means something bad for us. Rarely do we argue against change if it means we're going to be happier. When it is change of the happy sort, we're also the first to take credit for it. This amuses me. Our successes are claimed as victories, while our defeats are usually somebody else's fault.

Think back to school, when people received their marked essay papers . You'd ask a friend how they did and they'd say, "I aced it," or "The bastard flunked me." Notice the difference. Very rarely did you hear somebody say, "I wrote a total piece of crap and he recognized it." Nor did they say, "I've been kissing his ass all year. He knows I'm an A-student, so he passed me without looking at it."

School is where we first learned how to deal with change. Receiving good marks and pats on the back taught us that good change (graduating from one class to the next; receiving an award; winning popularity through a touchdown pass; getting put in the 'good books') was done through our own achievements. We never questioned this, and took it as only right. Bad change, of course, was something to be protested. A failing grade meant a trip to the teacher's desk to ask for a re-test, or a grade bump, or anything, as long as we didn't fail. When we didn't receive it, we called them a bitch. Their fault, not ours. "I'm a starter on the basketball team because I'm a good player." Versus: "The coach benched me, the jerk."

Yet good change may not have been our doing. Some years ago in Chicago, more than a few teachers were caught cheating on tests. Not their own tests, but their students' tests. They were rubbing out the wrong answers and putting in the right ones, to bump the test scores and make the teachers look like better teachers.

These cheating teachers were caught and they were punished. But I wonder how many students today, if reading that, would feel bad if they were one of the assisted students. Would they return to school to re-write the test? If you were in a similar situation, would you?

The effects of change are all in our perceptions of it. Winning the lottery: good change for you, bad for the jealous neighbour. Losing an election: bad change for you, good for the people that voted for the other guy.

This next example of change gives you some food for thought. In recent years, there have been a few high profile cases of husbands killing pregnant wives, and mothers killing their own children. Now think of a traffic accident, where only one family member is left. Maybe the father. He loved them, and now his life is a living hell. That auto accident is a bad change.

But take the wife-killer. Let's say the day before he plans to do her in, his wife is killed by a drunk driver. Suddenly, in his mind, that auto accident is an excellent change. And we'd never know it.

That's what scares me not about change, but in people's reaction to it. If perception decides whether it's good or bad, we have to take people's word for how they feel about it. They could be lying. It's doubtful that a hateful mother whose children die in an accidental fire is going to turn around the next day and say, "Well, it's for the best, because I wanted to drown them, anyway."

Cultural change is the same as individual change. That is, when a change happens in our lives, we are very selfish about whether it is positive or negative to us as individuals. Cultural change has the same dynamic.

I had an argument with a friend some time back about gay marriage. No matter how many times I said I wasn't against it, the friend was still upset with me for saying that we shouldn't just run it into the legal books overnight. I said there needed to be a good, open debate about changing one of our fundamental institutions so drastically.

No matter. The friend has a personal stake in seeing gay marriage happen (she is not gay, but some of her good friends are), and that was that: from cultural to personal, a good change all the way around.

I don't see it that way. I'm as opinionated as anyone else, but it doesn't mean that I think my beliefs should hold true for all people, even if my beliefs happen to be a political hot topic at the time. The trouble with massive change is that once you change it, it's extremely hard to change it back if you think you've made an error.

Imagine talking to a child some years from now, after gay marriage has been passed nationwide. In a conversation with the child you say something like, "Back when Elvis was the king of rock," but instead you say, "Well, only men and women could get married in those days."

The implied logic for the child is that marriage is malleable. Divorce laws may have hurt the idea of marriage for everyone in my generation, but make no mistake that gay marriage will completely change (destroy?) its meaning for the next one. When something is malleable and ever-changing, it loses its sanctity. It becomes just another bit of politics.

Gay marriage troubles me because it will change the very meaning, the essence, of a cultural institution. Once that has been done, it is easy to tweak it just a little more, and a little more, and a little more.

When a bigamist shows up at the door from name-a-religion and says you're discriminating against him, will you let him marry three wives?

Let's discuss.

Chilling

I was reading this article by R. Timothy Patterson a few minutes ago and thought some enviro-boobs would enjoy it, too. Not because it backs up their claims that mankind is killing the planet (how do you, for instance, "murder" a rock?), but because it gives them more ammunition for their fear-mongering fundraisers.

In this piece, the professor is trying to say that climate change has happened throughout history, and will continue to happen long after we're gone. In fact, he says, things in the short term are probably going to get cooler, though through no fault of our own.

Poor guy. He's sane, but he doesn't get it: it no longer matters if the air gets cooler or warmer. All that matters is that it changes. Now that 'global warming' is called 'climate change,' the enviro-boobs and others of their mindless ilk can point at a thermometer or a thunderstorm any day of the week and say, "See?"

Personally, I can't decide which is better: global warming, so the babes are in bikinis throughout the year; or global cooling, so the babes want to spend more time cuddling in the Jacuzzi.

Anyway, interesting piece. Give it a read, and I'll see you on the beach. Or in the hottub.

Some from France

Stained glass - Honfleur.

Dodge the tourists.

In Bordeaux.

Angry horses.

Going places.

Friends in Honfleur.

Fountain - Bordeaux.

Dog in a basket.

Bordeaux.

Rolling

I was online with a buddy of mine a couple of weeks ago, and I was telling him that everyone we knew back in high school has kids. I'd received one of those invitations from a reunion site, and on a whim I went on there and dug around.

From the jocks to the nerds to the snobs to the saints, practically all of the old faces are married and have kids. I also noticed an interesting phenomenon: you don't have to look at a woman's bio to see if she's married with children. If she's got short hair, she's married. If she's got long hair, she's not. Works about 9 out of ten times. For men, it's weight: a few extra pounds means he's recently tied the knot, and a spare tire indicates a fifth anniversary.

Anyway, I was telling my buddy this news, and I thought he would come back with some deep thoughts on life. Something like, Well, we all get older, or, Yeah, I've been thinking of settling down myself.

What I got instead was: Losers! Ha!

I busted a gut at that one. God knows what I'll do if he ever ties the knot. Me and my buddy are diametrically opposed when it comes to politics, eating habits, and how to pick up women (he's Mr. Nice Guy; I, to your probable surprise, am not), but we've more or less used each other as validation for not giving a damn about backyards and potato salad.

Seeing all of these long-gone faces with kids gave me an interesting thought. Back in high school, I'm pretty sure we all wanted to get laid, but it rarely happened. Now, everybody's getting laid and they can't wait to post photos of the evidence all over the internet. It only took sex ten years to go from being the aw-shucks-red-in-the-face-sweaty-palms act it was, to a humdrum event you can now discuss over dinner.

That really is what separates the married people from the single people (besides the empty pizza boxes, cheap scotch, and strangers' underwear found under the cushions). Married people can talk about screwing all the time, while single people are supposed to be discreet. Which is to say, don't tell your friend about the bimbo you shacked up with at the last office party; wait till his wife is out of the room so you can tell it in detail.

Now before the ladies write in telling me how uncouth I'm being, give me a break. I learned more about sex by eavesdropping on girls in the cafeteria than I ever did in a classroom. Tuesday morning at Starbucks might as well be an adult Sex Ed class. One look at the cover of Cosmo will tell you how much women think about sex, and according to the women I know (married and single), the ladies can really go into detail when in a locker room mood.

Sex and age. Depending on what you mean by that, it can be an interesting discussion, or an unsettling image. Let's go with the first one.

I feel sorry for the women that hear it from their parents and grannies all the time, that the clock is ticking and they need to have kids. Personally, I regard it as rude. Whose life is it, anyway? It ain't yours, ma, or aunt, or grandma. You told your daughters to go out into the world, be who they wanted to be, dream big dreams, and get a fulfilling career. And now you want her to get on her back and do the one thing that you told her not to do when she was growing up? Not only is it rude, it's hypocritical.

Leave your daughters alone. Telling someone to have free will, and then blackmailing them for it, isn't love and it isn't guidance. It certainly isn't cute over Christmas dinners. It's disrespectful. Further, it's pathetic, wanting to live your life through that of your offspring. I find it odd, and a little frightening, when women tell me that their parents and grandparents still do this sort of thing. Not one woman is telling me about a parent saying that they want them to find love. It's all about the kids. Well, if it was all about that, why didn't they let daughter stay out all night with Johnny when she was 17?

Oh, I forgot: because then maybe you, dear grandmother, might have had to help out with the child. It seems that overbearing parents don't talk about sex with 17-year-olds because at that age, sex is about pleasure. They do talk about it with 30-year-olds because by then it's merely procreation.

Since when? Last time I checked, a 30-year-old woman liked sex as much, if not more, than she did when she was younger. Is she now supposed to feel bad about the act itself because it isn't leading to mobiles and Pampers on special?

Still, for those that go down that road, motherhood seems to be quite enjoyable. Flipping through the bios of old friends and enemies, I saw a lot of, "I love being a mom." I bet that's true. The pictures show smiling faces, on mother and child both. And that's great. But you've got to admit, it's kind of creepy seeing a woman with a child and knowing that not too long ago, you threw her down a snowbank. Back then it was funny. Doing the same thing to the same person years later, nobody would laugh and you'd probably get arrested.

My friend and I don't have any kind of a pact against marriage and parenthood. I read once that George Clooney and his modern Rat Pack had something like that going on, where they swore to just hang out, party, and be men's men for the rest of their lives. That smacks of phoniness and protesting too much, and besides, being a man's man is a hell of a lot easier with George Clooney's bankroll. The financial costs of marriage might be high, but being single isn't exactly a road to early retirement, either. If you've been on a first date lately, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Fact is, me and my friend have been busy. I don't see him very often, but that's the whole point: we've been moving around a lot. The rolling stone gathers no moss deal is a very true expression. Anyone who sees that as a shallow point of view doesn't get it: you're not necessarily rolling to avoid things, you're rolling because you're busy doing something. A by-product of that is not being in one place long enough to meet someone special and think, "You know, I'd be all right with building a swing set and arguing about where to put it."

So yes, my friend is wrong, though I know he was just kidding around. The married with kids folk are not losers. They went their road and gathered some moss. If the evidence is correct, they're glad they did. As a live and let live kind of person (as long as I get an opinion on it, naturally), I am fine with that.

But for the women out there that aren't ready yet, and who are listening to a clock ticking in the form of some bigshot family member's pacemaker, my advice is this: keep rolling.

You've got company.

Happiness Murmur

Aristotle thought it was the goal of life. George Harrison believed it was a warm gun. The framers of the US Constitution thought it was something worth pursuing, and the large woman driving too slow in the fast lane with the bumper sticker thinks it is yelling, "Bingo!"

I'm referring to happiness. It's an elusive and very elastic word, and as the examples above show, anyone can use it any way that they want. When I first read Aristotle's deal on happiness, I more or less got the point. It was only after I'd read a bunch of other guys analyzing Aristotle's thesis that I became confused.

I Googled Aristotle this morning just to brush up, and I was confronted by a bunch of know-it-all's telling me that this is what Aristotle meant, not that, and "of course Aristotle didn't mean what we mean today," and on and on and on. Which I think is a load. When I read his discussion on happiness years ago, I thought it was a little windy, but I got the gist: people want to be happy. Happiness is not a state of being, it is an activity of the soul. There was some more stuff in there about not disgracing your ancestors, but by that point I had achieved true happiness: I'd found something else to do besides read more Aristotle.

Not that Aristotle's message isn't uplifting. Nietzsche's version of life's main pursuit (power), reads a lot more depressing than Aristotle's does. Problem is, Nietzsche's sounds more true, because happiness is such a subjective idea.

When I say, "happy," you could envision all kinds of things. Maybe it's the wife and kids. The new job. A nice car. A long vacation with a supermodel. Whatever, they are all symbols of a state of being (at the time you drive the car, sleep with the model, so forth) you could call "happiness." But the dictator has his choice words, too: torture, death, mayhem. Brutal power. And it makes him "happy."

The more I look at it, the more I think that life's pursuit is a combination of the two, with a little more of the pie belonging on power's side. It is possible to have power without happiness, but not the other way around. Though Orwell said that a boot in the face (forever) is the ultimate symbol of power, one could disagree with that. Power doesn't always have to be something evil or distasteful. Power is simply power. Power over one's life, or what we might call freedom.

It depends which person's life we're talking about, and what they perceive as happiness. Hitler's quest for happiness as an activity of the soul couldn't be further from Mother Teresa's, but at one time or another I bet they were both truly happy.

Bordeaux

I've found a new favorite city in Europe.

It surprised me. Travelling to a lot of places makes you somewhat jaded and hard to impress. You get blase about statues, waterfalls, street mimes, "authentic" this, and "genuine" that.

But Bordeaux impressed me. It's a beautiful place, where every building looks as old as Louis XIV. Most ancient cities have a bogus 'old town' which is surrounded by skyscrapers. Bordeaux is all old town. The streets are wide and the monuments aren't covered in graffiti. It's very busy and noisy one minute, and dead-quiet the moment you turn a corner.

Bordeaux has an atmosphere of urban adventure to it. You can wander the streets for hours, some of them only a few yards long. There was one street, Rue Ste. Catherine, that was maybe twenty feet long and seemed to serve no other purpose than to provide space for a sign that says Rue Ste. Catherine.

The shopping district would have North American ladies in stitches. I must have walked the main shopping avenue for fifteen minutes before stopping for a coffee. I still couldn't see the end of it, and I didn't much care to. Fifteen minutes of walking had taught me that Bordeaux has everything a man or woman could ask for, especially if you're a fan of shoes. If you're a Converse All-Star fanatic, then you're in luck: I haven't seen that many pairs of All-Stars in the windows since I was in fifth grade. I didn't even know they made them anymore.

Smokes are cheaper in Bordeaux even after taking the Euro into account, and the beer is reasonable. Unless you order Guinness. I don't know what the Irish did to piss off the people of Bordeaux, but a pint of Guinness will run you 8 Euros, while a pint of Stella is half that. I bought one anyway, just for the hell of it, because I was in an Irish bar. It turned out the lady behind the bar was from England. She'd come to France years ago, married a Frenchman, and spent the rest of her life living in various French-speaking countries. She said she liked Bordeaux, but then again, she pretty much liked them all.

That's a good attitude, and I can agree with that. I've liked most places for one reason or another. What I dig about Bordeaux is that it is beautiful, and it takes care of itself. Venice, no matter what the postcards say, is more or less a craphole. Graffiti all over the place, people chucking cigarette wrappers into canals which smell like a sewer. I heard once that Venice is sinking, and I couldn't help but be grateful. It needs a bath.

In Bordeaux I saw not less than three street sweepers in the space of five hours. They're a lot smaller than the ones they use in the big American cities, but they get the job done. They drive down the streets, walkways, pathways, and they gobble up garbage and sweep up filth in no time. Moments later, they're gone, and so is the day's trash. That might not sound like a big deal, but it is. Just as people generally act the way they dress, I firmly believe that a city's people will reflect their environment, and vice versa. It's an endless cycle. Let a city go to hell, and the people will, too.

And that's what makes a place: the people. The first time I stayed in France some years ago, I was struck by how much I liked the French. Previous experience with French culture involved reading about Napoleon, learning about the Luftwaffe pounding French cities to rubble, and dealing with assholes from Quebec.

I stayed in St. Nazaire and Pornichet for a few months, and I loved the place. Loved the people. I often tell this story of what happened to me one day while in St. Nazaire:

I had to go to the pharmacy to pick up some drugs. I had the address, but I didn't know where the place was, and France is low-low on taxis. I wandered into a bar and show the bartender the address. He started pointing and jabbering, but he knew I couldn't understand him.

Just then a guy at the bar gets up and motions me to follow him. I thought he was going to take me into the street for more jabbering and pointing. Instead, he walks to his car and points to the passenger seat. I demure, saying no, you don't have to do that. He keeps pointing, shrugging his shoulders, not understanding why I won't get in. So I get in.

He looks at the address on the paper and drives me there. My French then was awful, and we don't say a word the whole time. We arrive at the pharmacy and I get out of the car, waving good-bye and saying "Merci," about five times. I go inside and it takes the lady about ten minutes to put the prescription together. I walk outside, and there the guy is, still sitting there. He waves.

I get in, saying "Merci," another five times. He just shrugs. We get back to the bar. I go inside and buy the guy a beer. He looks happy as hell. The bartender raises his eyebrows to ask if we found the place. I hold up my little baggy of drugs, and the bartender nods in satisfaction.

That's France.

I've met some damned kind people in France. The hype about France being an anti-American (and they all think I'm American when I talk) stronghold is merely that: hype. It stems from the people in Paris whom the French don't even like, and from past nonsensical French politicians. The French people, to my mind, are some of the most generous and gregarious people you will ever meet.

I don't think that merely from that one episode. I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have never felt shunned because I can't speak French or because they think I'm a Yankee. In Quebec City, you get treated like a jerkoff if you can't speak French. In France, they either try to use some English, or they use a lot of sign language. Either way, they don't make you feel like you're in Hull. I was out on the town in Quebec City one night with a French dude, and I asked him why people around the coat check were pointing and laughing at me. He said, "Because you're speaking English." Just like that. And in a nice gesture he said, "Losers."

Anyway, Bordeaux. I went to a couple of clubs there and struck up some pigeon-French conversations with the locals. Like all people, they want to know what you think of their city. And I was being quite honest when I told them that it was a great city and that they should be proud of it. My French has improved, but it doesn't really matter. The people in Bordeaux switch to bad English to compete with my bad French, and generally you can get the point across. And the point is the same the world over: people are people. Nevermind the politicians and the movie stars and the terrorists and the maniacs. The vast majority of people are just people. They want to be happy, and they want you to be happy, too.

It was nice to come back. Years ago, I had written down somewhere that I would have no problem living in France if it came down to it. Bordeaux reminded me why.

Some Spain and Portugal

Here's a few pics from Spain and Portugal. Click to enlarge. I'll try to type up a few articles in the coming days, but things have been busy.


Friends on the beach.

Triumph. Barcelona, Spain.

Busker Rehearsing.

Balance.

On the rocks - Spain.

Starting line.

Trampled Under Foot. Statue, Malaga.

Waiting. Lisbon, Portugal.

What's The Matter - La Coruna, Spain.

Crab. La Coruna, Spain.

Laura on the beach. Cadiz, Spain.

Laura - B&W.

Church. Spain.

Woman with dog. Cadiz, Spain.

The Med

A few shots from the last couple of weeks in the Mediterranean. Click to enlarge.

Big beers. I love the look on Tony's face (at right) in this photo.

Leaning.

Jodi and Laura, hanging out.

A few buddies in Sorrento.

Scooter walk.

St. Tropez.

Unplugged

From One News (New Zealand):

Mercury Energy sent a technician to Folole Muliaga's home to disconnect the power as the family was behind on their power bill.

Folole, 44, was suffering from a cardio-respiratory complaint and needed oxygen from a breathing support machine to survive.

Family spokesman Brendan Sheehan says the technician who arrived at the house to disconnect the power supply spoke to Folole and she told him she needed electricity to operate the machinery. Sheehan says the technician said he was just doing his job, turned the power off and left.

The woman died a few hours after the power was disconnected.

That has got to go down as one of the biggest "oops" moments in electrical technician history. For its part, Mercury Energy says that no one told the tech that the woman needed electricity to stay alive. The real story will probably never be known, as it is a he said/she said affair, and the she in this case is dead.

How much did the woman owe Mercury Energy? $170.

There's two ways we can look at a story like this. The first one that everyone seems to be taking is to say that big business and big government are a bunch of jerks that don't care about their customers/citizens. Killing a woman that owes you $170 dollars when you make millions a year in profit is not exactly looking out for anyone's best interests. Except your own.

But there's another way to look at this case. If you're on an oxygen machine that requires electricity to keep you alive, do you pay the bill on time, or not? And if some guy comes over and unplugs the juice, do you just sit there and die? What about picking up the phone and telling someone, anyone, that you need to borrow their power outlet or you are going to bite the dust in a few short hours?

People need to stand up for themselves. This case will have all kinds of trials and recriminations, all of them saying that the power company was evil and at fault. Who knows, maybe they were. But the woman would still be alive today if she had taken things into her own hands. First by paying the bill, second by getting help when things turned soured.

Don't sit. Stand up. Act.

A Few Pics

A fountain in Genoa's town center.

These three dogs spent the evening cruising around Sorrento's town square. They either own the place, or think they do.

Me trying for a James Dean in Monte Carlo.

These dudes woke up Sorrento one morning by roaring through.

This Italian woman stopped for a smoke and a chat in Sorrento.