Happy Holidays!

Remember the "Reason for the Season," and I hope you get lots of presents.

Oh, Tiger, you Tiger you!

I'll say it right off the git-go: I've never been a Tiger Woods fan. He always seemed like too much of robot--so perfect, so bland, so much the corporate shill. Image Is Everything-- and Tiger's image is that of the totally-in-control, unflappable golfer. Over in NASCAR, Jimmie Johnson elicits the same response from me: You want the guy to have a personality, cut loose. Johnson grew a beard for a while. How cutting-edge. Tiger wouldn't do that--it might upset his Gillette sponsor.

But Tiger's in-control life. . . it just got more and more out of control through the weekend. First were the National Enquirer reports of an affair with a New York "party girl." Which the party girl denied. Right after that, the accident in the driveway. Sounded a little fishy. Coincidental. Like, what a shitty weekend he's having. Where was Tiger going at two in the morning? To get in line at Best Buy for the Black Friday sales? Hardly. And then we get the police report where Tiger's Blonde Norwegian Super-model wife heroically came to her husband's aid, smashing out a back window of their Escalade and pulling him to safety with a GOLF CLUB! At that point, the whole story lost credibility.

"Hero my-ass, " I thought. "She must've opened up some king-hell can of Norwegian whoop-ass on Tiger," I thought.

And, apparently, she did, scratching up his face and, one imagines, chasing him out of the house and into the Cadillac, coming after him with the nine-iron, breaking out the window, and distracting the World's Greatest Golfer--always calm, even under pressure--so much that he careened off the driveway, drove into a fire hydrant, and caromed into the rough. The Escalade came to rest against a tree. Game over. Tiger was subsequently ticketed for a bit more than $150, but this will someday prove to be one of the most expensive traffic citations of all time.

I'm guessing Tiger attempted to smooth things over using the Kobe Bryant method: a trip to Jared. But the Blonde Norwegian Super-Model wife isn't so easily bought-off.

Now, a few days later, Woods faces Bimbo Explosion after Bimbo Explosion. Not only was there the New York Party Girl, there was the Tool Academy Girl and the Vegas Nightclub Promoter as well. And who knows how many more will be coming forward? Their Sugar Daddy has been exposed; there will be no more luxury suites, fancy weekends away, and spectacular gifts--not to mention sex with the World's Greatest Golfer--so, really, what do these girls have to lose by selling their stories to the Tabloid Press? Fame is fleeting--grab for the golden ring while you can. New York Party girl, who originally denied, denied, denied, sees that the other hoochies are in line for their part of the golden ring--and suddenly, she's ready to spill the beans, too.

What the fuck was Tiger thinking? Did he REALLY think that, down the road, these women would remain discrete? That voice mails wouldn't be shared with friends? That e-mails wouldn't be saved to very hard drives? That he could keep these liasons secret? Maybe Tiger DOES lead too sheltered a life--did he really think his bubble of privacy would never be breeched? Or that his wife wouldn't get suspicious and look through her idiot husband's phone for evidence? (You would think he'd have been smart enough to have assistants to take care of the Girls on the Side, wouldn't you?)

So far, the advertisers who had backed Woods are standing pat. And why not? Consider the audience they're trying to reach by hiring Tiger? The almost-middle-aged businessman! The kind of guy who is likely married to a bored trophy wife who stays at home with the kids while he's out of town a lot on business, drinking on a company budget, taking corporate golf junkets (maybe joined by these golf partner/whores?), maybe having an affair, maybe just wishing he could get away with an affair. You can't say that their Hero Tiger, World's Best Golfer with the Blonde Norwegian Super-model Wife, didn't just gain a couple of notches of admiration in their book for his extracirricular activities. If anything, one analyist said, the incident may increase his appeal to advertisers: Tiger is only human! Just like us!

So, Kobe Bryant can bang a manic-depressive concierge at a Colorado Resort and lose his advertising contract with McDonald's--basketball's primary marketing appeal is to the young. Michael Phelps is caught smokin' a little weed--that was drugs, afterall, so he has to do the mea culpa, and loses Kellogg's Cereal as a benefactor. But Tiger's target audience are EXACTLY the men who dream of having the Buick and the blonde Norwegian Super-model wife. . .and a bunch of 20-something chickies on the side.

That's the country we live in. Tiger will pay the price, hire the lawyer, either divorce or not, but essentially, his marketing empire won't suffer a bit. Middle-aged American males admire a guy like Tiger--and the message is they admire him even more now that he cheats on his wife. If you don't believe me, check out some of the messages left on the golf.com website. I'm no prude, but I do believe in honoring vows, something that apparently isn't very important anymore in this country.

Crazy 'bout the Buff. . .

B-52H flying over Spokane, Washington, 1993. . .

The big annual Alliance Airport airshow was a couple of weeks ago, and we dragged the boys down to watch some of the planes fly in for display, arriving just as a big, magnificent B-52H from Barkesdale AFB in Shreveport glided in for a landing.

B-52 "Stratofortress" How's that for a name! Though the headline act for the weekend was the Navy's Blue Angles, I really wished a squadron of B-52's, accompanied by a KC-135 air tanker, would've made a flyby instead. Amazingly, the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat Fucker) has been in service for 54 years--over half the era of manned flight! If one can get a soft spot in their heart for large aircraft specifically designed to carry nuclear bombs, the B-52 has done it for me. There's just something so bad-ass about a big bomber that a hot-shot fighter plane can't possess. . .it's a no-frills, no-nonsense aircraft designed for a specific purpose that has survived because the Air Force has adapted its role in post-Cold War times.

The B-52H we saw glide in for a landing was one of 744 built since 1952 in several variations (and of the last series of planes delivered in 1962). At their operational peak in 1963, they were deployed at 38 air bases under the Air Force's Strategic Air Command. For nearly 40 years, a number of B-52's were constantly in flight, not too far off Soviet airspace, ready to strike at a moment's notice; on the ground, flight crews were in a constant state of readyness, prepared to scramble if necessary. Along with SAC's ballastic missile capability, the B-52's formed the backbome of a US strategy of nuclear deterrence--the notion that Russia wouldn't launch a surprise attack, knowing that relaliation from the US would be just as devestating.

Here's a newsreel from the 1950's on how SAC fought their "blood-less, deterrant war." Check out that SAC television control room! That's how it was done, baby, before computers and desktop monitors! And check out that monster tele-copier to send weather maps--we were the leader in world technology!



Gradually, the Buff's role changed as the US relied more and more on missile defense. The B-52's were adopted for heavy conventional bombing during the Viet Nam War, and equipped with long-distance nuclear cruise missiles which wouldn't require the planes to fly into enemy airspace. With the fall of the Soviet Union and nuclear arms reduction treaties, over 300 B-52's were chopped into pieces and left in the desert for verification by Russian satellites. From a huge, all-powerful fleet of heavy bombers, today, less than 100 B-52's, all of them the latest "H" variation, are left in service. the Buffs are assigned to only two air bases today, Barkesdale and Minot. The Air Force expects the B-52H to remain in its inventory until 2040--by then, there will likely be nothing "original" on any of the survivors as they approach their 80th birthday in service!

I mostly remember them from my years spent living in Spokane, Washington, near Fairchild AFB, home of the 92nd Bombardment Wing and its B-52H's and KC-135 tankers. It was humbling to see them flying above the wheatfields and wondering if they were carrying nuclear weapons. The jets made a distinctive whistling sound as they flew, and earlier versions of the plane often took off leaving a black cloud of smoke from their eight jet engines when using "water injection" to provide more power during takeoffs. I was working for the Spokane newspaper at the time SAC ordered a permanent "stand-down" from 24-hour readyness after the Soviet collapse, and visited the crew quarters at Fairchild.

The B-52's left Fairchild soon afterward, the last one unintentionally going out in a horrible blaze of glory when a hotshot wing commander flew one into the ground while practicing for an upcoming airshow (I vividly remember that day, as I was ready to fly to Kansas City to interview for a position in Burlington Northern's train dispatching class and saw the big plume of smoke west of downtown). The story of the events leading up to the crash, the personalities involved, and the dynamics of military leadership make this a fascinating story (one that, given the cinematic reviews that follow, would make a great motion picture).



The B-52--and its SAC predecessors, the B-36 and B-47--were photogenic machines, and figured prominently in a number of Hollywood movies. Most notable, perhaps, was director Stanley Kubrick's 1964's "Dr. Strangelove," a dark comedy in which a SAC base commander goes rogue and orders his bombers to attack Russia. Peter Sellers, George C. Scott and Slim Pickens star, but to me, the B-52 is the real headliner, with a realistic depiction of life on the flight deck during a "full out, toe-to-toe, nuclear engagement with the Rooskies." Who could forget Pickens as Maj. "King" Kong riding a nuclear bomb, rodeo style, out of the bomb bay?



Three other movies, of a decidedly more pro-SAC tone, just joined my film library: 1955's Strategic Air Command, starring Jimmy Stewart; 1957's Bombers B-52, starring Karl Malden and Efren Zimbalist Jr., and 1963's A Gathering of Eagles, starring Rock Hudson and Rod Taylor. None of these three films are particularly great movies, the three sharing a common theme in a time of Cold War that, by God, our SAC crews are ready at a moment's notice to defend you from Russian bombs, damn it, and even in peacetime, we can't let our guard down! The scripts aren't particularly great, nor the acting. The musical score is at times too rah-rah military. But what makes these films great fifty years after their release is the historic footage of SAC and its aircraft.



Strategic Air Command features the big, new B-36 assigned to Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth. Stewart plays a reservist pilot recalled in the early years of the Cold War from a successful baseball career to an operations officer. And, of course, his wife doesn't like him being gone all the time flying, but he's got a job to do to keep America safe from Russia. He crashes a B-36 in the frozen north after leaking fuel catches the plane on fire, and eventually is assigned to the flashy, new B-57 at McDill AFB in Florida. Spectacular footage of the massive B-36 and its "six turning and four burning" prop/jet propulsion. Glimpses of what was once rural land around Carswell back in the 50s. Wonderfuly Paul Mantz aerial photography. And the head of SAC is obviously modeled after Gen. Curtis "Bomb them back to the stone age" LeMay.
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Bombers B-52 is a love triangle between Karl Malden's career maintenance sergent, his young hotshot wing commander (Zimbalist) and Malden's too-young daughter (Natale Wood), against a backdrop of B-47's and new B-52's at Castle AFB in Merced, CA. Malden isn't too happy his young boss is tapping his daughter, and this friction is contributing to a decay of our tactical nuclear readiness. This time, in-flight malfunctions include a stuck landing gear (requiring Malden to climb into the wheel well to fix the problem, very reminiscent of the Pickens scene in Strangelove), and a malfunctioning "secret troubleshooting control panel" which goes up in flames, requiring most of the crew to bail out as Zimbalist bring the crippled plane in for a landing. Malden is missing after bailing out, and Zimbalist strikes out to find him, finally earning Malden's respect and Malden's daughter. And, there's another LeMay clone.
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A Gathering of Eagles stars Rock Hudson as a go-getter assigned as commander of a B-52 wing at Castle. He's replaced his well-respected predecessor after his wing failed a surprise inspection. Hudson arrives and shakes things up, pissing off his underlings, getting officers demoted, transferred or outright booted out of the Air Force in an effort to improve the wing's performance. This time, the in-flight contretempts is a leaking air-fueling coupler which nearly results in the plane catching fire mid-air. Rock is right on it, though, bringing the plane in safely and dressing down his maintenance chief for not delegating authority. Through the whole film, the idea of constant readiness is pounded into our heads: there might not be a war, but how can we make a war movie where there isn't a war interesting? Good coverage of the state-of-the-art SAC headquarters in Omaha, and more great footage of B-52's in their prime, including a spectacular sequence of a half-dozen Buffs taking off in a Minimum Interval Take Off. Oh, and there's the required LeMay-like General as well.

For the film buff, this trio of mid-century movies aren't any great shakes. They view more like Air Force recruiting films. But no matter: it's the jets that are the stars here, and they're preserved in beautiful full-color, wide-screen glory. They're a great journey back to the wonderful days of Civil Defense, Duck-and-Cover, and nuclear brinksmanship. Back when the Buff ruled the sky and they were much more than just a side-show in the Air Force arsenal.

Ain't got no power!

So the computer failed to start up the other morning. Our power got knocked off in a storm, and the computer was dead. My superb trouble-shooting skills led to me believe that the the storm wasn't so much the cause of the problem, but rather coincidentally the power supply had given up the ghost (thankfully not the motherboard). After 20 minutes of on-line snooping off the other computer, I determined that all this idiot needed to do was pull out the old power box and plug in a new one. Which is really all that was needed. A quick trip to Best Buy and problem solved. Sometimes i'm so proud of my mechanical abilities. . .

The bigger issue here wasn't the computer not starting up. . .it was the helplessness one feels when the power is out. It wasn't a particularly big and nasty storm, but the power was off for two hours.

First: at 11pm, you realize how deadly quiet things are in the house. No fan. No refrigerator. And how dark: no glowing LED's of various plug-ins and appliances. No hallway nightlights.

Second: I had no entertainment! No television or radio. No computer--not even the laptop, since the wi-fi needs power to throw out a signal. If I were a true pioneer I'd read by the glow of an oil-lamp (and in the future, who knows if that will be possible when all our books are on Kindle.

Third: We're wimps. How could we survive without electricity? Eventually, even our cell phones need to be plugged in to recharge. We can't cook (at least without cans of sterno), we can't spend money (who has cash anymore? it's all plastic cards, and when you DO need cash, you usually get it from an electrically-powered ATM machine). We couldn't get gasoline at the mini-mart (the days of gravity-fed gas pumps are aroudn 60 years in the past). Take away our water supply, and we'd really be up shit creek. It was bad enough that the DVR wasn't able to record the ending of Mad Men or Breaking Bad this week. . .

E. was awakened by the storm and came downstairs and joined me in the dark, on the couch. I held him and I told him how fortunate he was to live in a time and place where temporary power outages were merely an inconvienence. Be thankful, I said, we don't live in a place where power is a luxury only a few can afford, or that power has been knocked out entirely because of war.

Without electricity, we'd all soon become a bunch of refugees. And pray that that doesn't happen. Can you imagine, millions of whining Americans in relocation camps?

Visit from the Tooth Fairy. . .

E. is a couple of bucks richer today after the tooth fairy paid him a visit last night. He finally lost a front tooth that has been loose for weeks. The new one finally pushed the old one out of the way. He's not normally this goofy looking; Mary's camera just has a really wide angle lens. . .

Michael Moore: Not a Left-Wing Kook
Documentary film-maker Michael Moore is usually depicted by the Right Wing fringe element as a kook, in bed with the Nancy Pelosi/Barrack Obama/Barney Frank troika being blamed for "ruining" our country.

Those so afraid of Moore should spend 26 minutes of their angry lives and watch this interview with Charlie Rose from last week. Moore's latest movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story" is out in theaters, highly critical of the Wall Street community and their too-cozy relationship with the goverment. . .and that would be the government of both Republican and Democratic presidents.

To Moore, the U.S. economy has changed from a self-sustaining one rewarding production, manufacturing, and innovation to one more akin to a pyramid scheme with a very few at the top sucking up all available wealth at the expense of a destroyed middle class. Our country doesn't produce anything anymore, and Moore argues this puts our country at great risk. Rather, the business of America has become a complex financial Ponzi scheme where wealth is created not through hard work, but through obtuse economic mechanisms that exist to squeeze the middle class. . .and that few in Washington really understand to begin with.

The Dow just topped 10,000 for the first time since last fall's economic "collapse." But unemployment figures continue to spike upwards and home foreclosures continue--one every six seconds, says Moore. And since the Democrats took the White House, not a single law has been passed to reregulate or extend oversight into the banking or mortgage industry. Change? Obama has to show me change. There's been no change at all, a year later, and after $200 million as been spent by the banking industry to lobby against any change--money, I'd guess, the Government gave them non-strings-attached to aide "recovery." Oh, and Wall Street bonuses are even high this year than in 2007. The Republicans started this mess under Ronald Reagan; Democrats continued it and accelerated it with Bill Clinton; the Republicans moreso with both George Bushes; and Obama has inherited it but so far, apart from flourishy rhetoric, has done nothing to slow it, let alone stop it.

Right-wing nut jobs: Give Moore a chance. He's not the enemy. It's the bankers and Wall Street tycoons who have the ear of Washington that are the greatest threat to our freedom in this country since the Cold War. THESE are the people you should be afraid of, and you should be turning your hate and anger THESE people, not towards the female leader of congress, the black preisident or the gay senator who are Democratic leaders. It's easy to get caught up in partisanship and name-calling and business as usual--but those raiding this country's coffers are not the patriots they paint themselves to be.

Again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4djfc9qlQa4

Mad Men: Don Draper's an asshole. . .
What, he really fired Sal last night? Then he goes and sleeps with his kid's school teacher? Not that Betsy is much better. . .

A splash of art. . .
. . worth $15,000,000. Now I know what Manga is all about. I don't think this would go over big in the living room.

Vin Scully. Rugby. Not-Dollar-Movies.

The Master at work. . .

MLB network carried the Dodgers-Rockies game Friday night. The winner would claim the National League West title; the loser, the Wild Card slot in the National League playoffs starting next week. The Dodgers won, 5-0, but the outcome really didn't matter to me, simply because I tuned in for Vin.

Vin Scully.

He's been the Dodgers' play-by-play announcer now for 60 years. SIXTY! Think about that. It's the longest tenure for a single professional sports team in history, and, apart from Tommy Lasorda, has been with the Dodgers organization longer than any other person. How long has he been there? His tenure long pre-dates the Dodger move to California--it was Vinnie, in fact, who was at the microphone when the Dodgers won their only World Series championship in Brooklyn, in 1955.

To hear him on network television anymore is a rare treat. Scully calls only home games and Dodger road games west of the rocky mountains anymore, and since I don't have the MLB package or satellite radio, I hardly get the chance to listen to his broadcast artistry. He's a rarity among baseball announcers: working solo, without a color man. With Scully at the mike, who needs it?

It's Scully's voice that has been part of so many memorable baseball moments. Don Larsen's 1956 perfect game in the World Series. . .Sandy Koufax's 1965 perfect game. . .Hank Aaron's 715th home run in 1974. . .Bill Bucker's error at first base in 1986. . .Kirk Gibson's walk-off home run in 1988.

And now Vin stands alone as the last of his generation. The other Greats--Jack Buck, Ernie Harwell, Jack Brickhouse--are all gone. The 81-year-old Vinnie has said that 2010 will be his last season. If you have the chance to just sit back and listen to the Master at Work, please do so.

He's not a screamer, nor a puker, nor a homer. Throughout his career, Vinnie has realized that often, less is more. I'm hard-pressed to think of a tradmark phrase he's known for. . .if anything it is the slience that he allows to infuse his broadcasts, the rare ability for the man hired to speak to the masses to just be quiet and let the ambience of the moment say it all. He isn't just an announcer--he is an artist, a man who can paint pictures with words. His words have the pacing and deliberateness of a great mystery writer. Listen to him call the ninth inning of the Koufax perfect game, and tell me chills don't run up your spine!


". . .there's 29,000 people in the ballpark, and a million butterflies. . ."

Tyler Kepner, of the New York Times, wrote: "Scully could read an instruction manual and
make it interesting." Indeed. Here's a great profile of Vin from Salon.com.


Melbourne Wins!
So, watched the National Rugby League Grand Final yesterday on Spike. Melbourne Storm beat Paramatta Eels 23-16. It was clear that Paramatta was in over its head from the start, and rather amazing, actually, that they only lost by 7 point. After a lackluster first half, the Eels returned in the second half with a vengence, but failed to even the score in the last minutes with an impressive final drive that fell short.

I'm sure my mate Rick is in a good mood this morning--he the Melbourne fan who accompanied me in April to the Storm-Tigers game in Sydney. And his man Bill Slater came through with a crucial try.

Myself, I'll remember the barely contained ferocity of Paramatta's Kiwi-born back with one of the greatest names in professional sports: Fuifui Moimoi. It just rolls off the tongue. I could easily imagine him a defensive back in the NFL. Think of the money he could make in the states!

Unscrupulous Basterds
So the kids were out of school early Friday and we thought we'd take them to a movie. That "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" looked like somethiing they'd want to see, so off we go to the Star Village 8 Theater in Lake Worth. Granted, it's 2:30pm--Matinee times. And these bastards want to charge $9 EACH to see this movie. That's $6.50 PLUS another $2.50 because it's in 3-D. THIRTY SIX BUCKS for a matinee show? They've got to be kidding. We decided it'd be a Blockbuster afternoon. Where do these crooks get off thinking we're unlimited wells of money. It's not enough they can charge $12 for a tub of popcorn and a soda. . but then to charge us $2.50 because of the "specialness" of 3-D. It's all about sticking it to the customer. And we won't go for it.