You can count the Dan Gable International Wrestling Institute and Museum among the many victims of the flooding to sweep across the midwestern US. An article in the Des Moines Register–got the link from Dave Meltzer’s inimitable “Wrestling Observer” site–goes in depth about the damage suffered by the building. Vince McMahon should write them a big check as penance for his stunt last Monday.
Last night was another one of those “busy work” evenings for a local constabulary that apparently has nothing better to do than harass relatively innocent club-goers. The raid on TSI was followed by another semi-raid on a houseparty in Springfield. When the house owner (who, like Roy, was celebrating her exit from this town) asserted her rights not to let the cops in without a warrant, she was hog-tied and thrown wailing into the back of a car, where her cries filled the night air for blocks.
The police should understand that they are being set up for failure. Their real enemies are the ones making sure they can’t do their jobs properly, but underfunding the department and diluting their manpower by sending them off on wild goosechases like the nonsense last night. Upwards of two dozen cops’ time was occupied on a busy Friday night doing work that had nothing to do with crime-fighting. The only thing “accomplished” was the shutting-down of a club that some really decent people worked their asses off to make a viable prospect, not to mention the continued erosion of the police credibility and and the respect they command among the younger citizens who are increasingly carrying more of the load, in terms of being tax-payers and revenue-generators in the city.
It’s really pathetic. These poor cops have to jockey and politick just to get the overtime hours that are necessary to raise a modern family on a policeman’s wages, yet still some of them have to seek government assistance. They don’t see their kids enough, risk their lives routinely, just to have their efforts spit on by the same politicians whose policies created the criminal underclass that is now punking out JSO on a daily basis. Their undercover operations have been stymied, now that it’s become impossible to tell the difference between cops pretending to be civilians and civilians pretending to be cops. And the worst, for them, is yet to come–wait until they start retiring: All their pension/401(k) money is gone!
What, precisely, is the benefit from gutting one of the few active club districts in town? There is something ironic about condemning the building for code violations, when it sits across the street from a courthouse that could literally collapse at any time, and just down the street from a police station with mold, leaks, vermin, plaster falling from the ceiling and a bunch of disgruntled cops who are having to work more for less money and fewer benefits. But the city has $5,000, give or take, to run on operations like that. Let’s all remember nights like that after the next terrorist attack, when the authorities are acting so surprised!
All in all, the authorities’ performance last night came off as resolutely small-time. It was an embarrassment to Jacksonville and a shitty final memory of this place for people who’ve been positive members of society. With the resignation of mayoral aide Susie Wiles earlier that day, Mayor Peyton is now a lame duck for the next three years, and Jacksonville officially has no established authority or leadership anymore.
Below is an update from the club, copied from the Myspace:
We are sorry to inform you of the following and would like for you to understand that the following situation is being resolved as quickly as possible.
***TSI will be closed as of last night till an undeterminable time***
This includes the Wet Hot American Summer Party and The Art & Music Mixer
We want to be sure to put the actual events out there to clear up any speculation and assumption.
Last night (Friday) at 10:30pm, just as the first band was scheduled to take the stage, TSI was subjected to a random raid. These are common.
JSO’s Drug Abatement Response Team aka D.A.R.T. along with several code inspectors entered the nightclub, ordered all customers to line up and exit the building. They randomly checked ID’s of those leaving. One individual presented a false ID to the officer, was then searched and was in possession of a small amount of Marijuana. He then admitted that he was in fact only 19 and was arrested thereafter. The building was then posted with a “D.A.R.T.” posting declaring the building condemned.
The building received this posting because of the fact that drugs (though a small amount and on a customer) were found in the building. The building in general was also in violation of city codes, which can be repaired.
AS FOR NOW….
TSI will remain closed until these issues are resolved.
We sincerely apologize to all of you who came out last night to see the bands and to say farewell to Roy. We are also sorry if this put a damper on your party schedule.
We recommend that you all throw your own personal Wet Hot American Summer Parties.
–
Brendon Clark
Booking & Promotional Manager
The professional wrestling industry exists in relative obscurity to anyone who doesn’t follow it regularly. Names and affiliations tend to change faster than the companies’ TV deals, it seems. A few wrestlers are known to even the most clueless observer, such as Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan and Dwayne Johnson (aka the Rock). Another name now etched into their minds: Chris Benoit. He was a technician without equal, a shaman of the suplex, a paragon of powerbombers, someone whose name was once synonymous with quiet excellence, rigid discipline and relentless perfectionism. All of that is forgotten now.
The death of Chris Benoit, his wife Nancy and son Daniel was the lead story across America at this time last year. The tragedy exploded onto TV screens with seemingly no warning, and fans who had watched Benoit’s work over the previous 20 years (ten or 15, from the prespective of American viewers) were left with no explanation outside of the self-interested speculations of WWE or their media apostates, both of whom were quick to present the debacle as the result of one or two isolated factors. The humanity of Benoit and, most troubling, his innocent victims, never really factored into anyone’s coverage.
Now, just in time for the anniversary, the new book by Matthew Randazzo V has hit the shelves to the kind of response John Cena gets from the audience: a roughly even mix of cheers and boos. Ring of Hell (Phoenix Books) is written in that “purple prose” one expects from a true-crime author, with enough errors in spelling and grammar to suggest a rush job on the editing, probably to be sure it was out by June. He clearly set out to bury the business in print, but has in fact produced one of the best books ever written about professional wrestling–certainly the best ever written by a non-wrestler.
Author Randazzo has all the right tools for a task of this kind. His parents were both corporate lawyers, and their son works on the legal side of redevelopment projects in his native New Orleans. His main writing gigs tend to center on organized crime, fine preparation for covering an industry with roots, branches and fruit in organized crime. If everything is the book was true, and it’s impossible to confirm or deny all of it since so many of the principals are dead, then the author is entirely in his element.
By telling the life story of Chris Benoit, Randazzo tells a story of pro wrestling’s evolution over those short but strenuous 40 years. Benoit’s sole ambition was to be a wrestler–specifically, a modernized version of his idol, Tom Billington, whose exploits as “the Dynamite Kid” made it possible for shorter, lighter workers to get exposure in the size-conscious American scene. Both men consumed massive amounts of steroids whose salubrious effect on muscle growth was more than balanced by the havoc they wreaked on their bones, connective tissue and their personal lives.
The core of Randazzo’s thesis is that Benoit had serious mental issues dating back to the earliest years of his career, issues related to self-consciousness about height, an emphasis on technical perfection bordering on OCD, and a propensity for cruelty whose limits were apparently nonexistent. These issues–the latter, in particular–were only made worse by his indoctrination into the highly political and ultraviolent wrestling subculture, with its PSYOP-worthy pranks and lethal hazing. Randazzo paints his trainers in Stampede and New Japan as professional sadists who took pride in breaking their students’ bodies and their will. Benoit learned his lessons well, and would mature into a legendary taskmaster who had no problem making a grown man cry on national television if he felt it was necessary to “protect the business”.
Benoit made his bones, as they say, in New Japan as a standout in its light-heavyweight division, and would probably still be there, wealthy and reasonably sane, had he never come to work in America, Randazzo asserts. Instead Benoit and colleagues Dean Malenko and “Latino Heat” Eddy Guerrero played a huge role in the explosion of pro wrestling in the 1990s, with catastrophic consequences for their physical well-being. This is the most entertaining part of the book–the fun and games of ECW and Monday Nitro, when the idea of half the cast being dead in a decade was simply unthinkable, because nothing like it had ever happened before. The combination of prescription drugs, alcohol and steroids killed 50 people and almost killed 50 more. People like Scott Hall, Sunny, Shawn Michaels, Konnan, Juventud Guerrera and Raven–who allegedly rolled on ecstasy for 14 straight days, with the dose doubled daily–are alive practically by accident.
An already-dark story gets darker after the deaths of Brian Pillman in 1997 and Owen Hart in ’99. Both had trained with Benoit in Calgary, and they were the first in what would become an unbearable string of losses for Benoit. The clearest contrast is drawn by Randazzo, between the Benoit who wrestled a tribute match to Hart and the Benoit who did the same for Guerrero just six years later, in 2005. After the death of Guerrero, which is still the saddest moment in wrestling history, the death of Benoit was probably inevitable, but the way it happened was too bone-chilling to be believed.
To write Ring of Hell, Randazzo leaned heavily on the research of others, including a lot of the wrestling media, absorbing 22 books, 38 videos and countless websites. He also cites ECW head Paul Heyman as a primary source along with several former WWE writers, whose takes on the company hierarchy are laugh-out-loud funny. It’s to be expected that many of his sources, including any active wrestlers he talked to, opted not to be identified; if Bob Woodward can do it, why can’t he?
Randazzo’s tone and word choices throughout the book make clear not only that he is not a wrestling fan, but that he harbors serious contempt for both the wrestlers and their fans. He seems unable to understand what could drive wrestler to make the sort of foolish sacrifices required for success in the modern wrestling business, although they aren’t anything that would be unfamiliar to, say, a pro football player or a musician. The awesome body count that came immediately out of 1960s rock, ’90s grunge or the rap scene of the last 15 years makes for an incomplete argument against the music scene (outside of evangelical circles, that is), but the persistence of death among wrestlers is presented by Randazzo as a sufficient reason to shut it all down, or at least to disparage anyone who can still watch the stuff.
Ultimately, what sells this book is the same thing that sells any book about wrestling: the stories. Even the most ardent fan must admit that pro wrestling is one of the shadiest industries this side of the Beltway, and Randazzo offers readers a veritable feast of frighteningly weird tales. One hesitates to go into much detail, since 1) it would be unfair to the author, and 2) paraphrasing does no justice to this stuff. Suffice to say that this ranks right up there with the infamous “wrestling sleaze” thread. Randazzo’s abs are probably in their best shape in years, given the hours he may have spent laughing as he wrote some of this stuff, even though it all ultimately wraps up awfulness that still sinks the spirit when read about now.
When first told of her son’s plans to become a pro wrestler, Chris Benoit’s mother thought “He’ll be hurting by the time he’s 40.” She was right, of course, but Benoit, who excelled in his chosen field, got over one more time on his colleagues. Unlike Pillman, Hart or Guerrero, Benoit actually lived to be 40 years old–for 34 days, at least. In life, as in death, Benoit had a little bit extra.
2008 Presidential also-ran Ralph Nader cut a promo on Obama in the Rocky Mountain News. Just when one wonders why Obama hasn’t acted to engage him, he upbraids the guy for not being sensitive enough to the issues affecting black communities in this country. The critique itself is very much debatable, but it’s not really one that a non-black can make with any credibility–it comes off as the sort of passive reverse-racism that crops up among white liberals, often a case of overreaching to show empathy.
The plague of gangsterism forced onto black youth by corporate media (specifically, Interscope, Viacom, Clear Channel and Time-Warner) results largely from the efforts of misguided whites to embrace and, indeed, sponsor a narrow slice of the African diaspora as a uniform standard. Just as whites are constantly pressured to conform to stylistic norms through the idealized projections of mass media, black have been pressured to be a certain way over the last 20 years–the men, especially. Among black men, the rate of attrition has been unprecedented for populations not under direct assault–but, of course, they are, and that’s one of those things that cannot be said in print.
Obama spent many years doing good work in, around and for the streets of Chicago, and so it is inevitable that he may know as many casualties of those years as most black men his age do. Anyone who thinks he does not, or will not take those memories and lessons with him into the future is a mark. For Nader to play that card makes him look ever more that way. For his sake, one hopes that he is saying such things to help Obama by torpedoing an argument someone else might have made with more finesse later.
I’ve always felt the Wright “scandal”, for example, was a net positive for Obama because it fleshed out his backstory, floating a bunch of memes that he may or may not agree with, baiting his opponents into overstretching and squandering resources on the chasing of false leads, wasting tons of TV time and reminding minoriy voters how gullible some of the media elite think they are. The scandal revealed two things: 1) Chicago is shady; 2) the media just realized that.
Sonny Rollins is one of a handful of artists universally regarded as a master of the tenor saxophone. Only John Coltrane and Coleman Hawkins (who put the instrument on the map back in the 1920s) outrank Rollins on the totem pole of tenor men, and many fans will offer credible arguments for why Rollins belongs at the very top of any such list. Even contemporary players like Joe Lovano and Branford Marsalis fall well short of the standard set by Hawk, Trane and Sonny–and they would be first to say so.
The phrase “silent weapons for quiet wars” reminds me, oddly, of the battle waged between Rollins and Coltrane for the top tenor spot in the 1950s. Trane, of course, had spent a formative few years working with Miles Davis, who set him up for his epochal run with Thelonious Monk in summer 1957, while Rollins had broken in as part of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach unit. After Brown’s death, Rollins hung around to record Max Roach +4, one of the best albums to come from Roach’s recorded peak, before launching his own solo career, which caught fire pretty quick. Comparing the albums recorded under their names in the 1950s, the Rollins stuff is vastly superior to Coltrane’s; this included masterpieces like Way Out West and Saxophone Colossus. It wasn’t until Coltrane began his run with Atlantic Records (documented on the appropriately-titled box set The Heavyweight Champion) that he achieved true creative parity; by the time he died in 1967, his legacy as the greatest tenor player of all time was secure.
Rollins’ career is now in its sixth decade, giving him unprecedented longevity to match a tone that reveals itself as his from the first note. His post-9/11 live album Without a Song introduced Rollins’ music to a new generation of fans, many of whom could be forgiven for thinking he is no longer among us. Thankfully, he still is, and shows no signs of slowing down as he marches toward 80. While we wait for a new album from him, we can slake our thirst for his music by reviewing some of his older, classic titles.
The Freedom Suite was recorded in March and April, 1958 for the Riverside label. Concord Records, which bought out Riverside some time back, has rereleased the album as part of the fifth series of their “Keepnews Collection”. Orrin Keepnews produced the album and helped run the label; he returns to oversee remastering an provide some “inside baseball”-type anecdotes for the liner notes. As such, the series could be viewed as analogous to Blue Note’s “RVG (for Rudy Van Gelder) Collection”. This record, like Saxophone Colossus, was recorded as a trio, with bassist Oscar Pettiford and drummer Max Roach, who is inexplicably labeled on the back of the CD as the trumpeter for a session with no trumpet. These two make for one of Rollins’ most sympathetic rhythm sections, and listening to them makes one appreciate the excellent job Rollins has done in picking sidemen and collaborators over the past half-century.
Assuming that the CD sequencing (bonus tracks aside) matches that of the original record, then “Freedom Suite” took up side one, running nearly 20 minutes, while “Someday I’ll Find You”, “Will You Still Be Mine?”, “Till There Was You” and “Shadow Waltz” take up side two. While the whole record makes for credible hard-bop, it is the title track that deserves the listener’s focus. Rollins was one of the first to really exploit the freedoms afforded by LP technology to play at extended lengths–the sort of thing now synonymous with Coltrane. “Freedom Suite” arrived shortly after the sublime “Blue 7”, and nearly a decade before his East Broadway Rundown record with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard.
The hero of this album is Pettiford, who would be dead within two years. Pettiford was one of the top three bass players of his time, alongside Mingus and Paul Chambers, and Freedom Suite offers the best setting for appreciating his work that I’ve ever encountered. One of the three bonus tracks is a duet take of “There Will Never Be Another You” that he and Roach recorded while waiting for Rollins to arrive. It was my introduction to Pettiford’s playing, nearly 15 years ago, when it appeared as a bonus track on Roach’s Deeds Not Words album, and it still sounds fresh today. The poignancy of the title, when one considers that it was one of his last sessions, makes it the definitive Pettiford, and a key part of Roach’s recorded legacy, as well.
The Freedom Suite marked the beginning of an intensely political period in jazz music. Artists had already begun to follow Art Blakey’s lead in converting to Islam, and the civil rights movement offered the first real chance for serious expression of the African-American “situation” since “Strange Fruit” 15 years earlier. By 1960, Roach was releasing his We Insist! Freedom Now Suite for Candid, while Charles Mingus was offering the first substantive challenges to the mostly white-run music industry. This album would be a classic by any name, but its organizational concept raises it up to seminal status.
Timing, it seems, is everything. WWE Vince McMahon has made a legitimate fortune playing fast and loose with the laws of both physics and social decorum. His company has become known as a repository for more shadiness and dysfunction than any business outside of the US Congress. On the Monday night “RAW” show that aired Monday night on Spike TV, McMahon hit yet another unprecedented low.
Backstory: this week marks the one-year anniversary of what was probably the darkest day in the history of pro wrestling: the infamous Benoit Family Tragedy, which has been covered in vast, unscrupulous detail all over the place and needs no recap here. The new book by New Orleans lawyer and “true-crime” specialist Matthew Randazzo, “Ring of Hell,” uses the story of Chris Benoit as a template for crafting the most dense compilation of so-called “wrestling sleaze” outside of an old internet comment thread that was itself taken down after the BFT opened the business to greatly enhanced scrutiny by both federal authorities and the mainstream media–which has always carried a grudge against the business, perhaps because their beloved cable news shows struggle to match ratings WWE programming that is sometimes stunningly, suspiciously bad. My review copy arrived on Monday morning, just in time for RAW.
What made the Benoit debacle all the more jarring was that McMahon had faked his own assassination in an exploding limousine the week before it happened, and that Benoit had participated in a show the next night in which the “death” of McMahon’s character played a central role in the storyline, complete with “ten-bell” salute and taped encomiums from colleagues. Recall that Benoit, more than any other wrestler, completely broke down on-air following the death of best friend Eddie Guererro, on two consecutive nights of TV tapings. The following Monday night show was planned as a three-hour tribute to the McMahon character, but instead it aired as a tribute to the Benoits that was renounced by the company the next day, contingent with the purging of all Benoit-related video from their public archives. That of course necessitated losing a lot of their best material of the last decade, including key matches with people like Guererro, Steve Austin, Kurt Angle, and much of Ric Flair’s stuff from the period when Benoit was a Horseman.
McMahon has recently been giving away money on the air, calling up viewers who registered online. Vince doles out $1 million per week to those who recite the week’s password. Randazzo has reportedly claimed that the PR stunt is being done to counter negative publicity from his book, which is selling respectably in a pretty specialized market. That theory was personally obliterated by McMahon Monday night, with one of the most dangerous stunts ever attempted on TV. After the battle royal in the show’s last segment, McMahon gave away $500,000 to a viewer who said “I love you, Vince.”
McMahon replied “I love you, too,” and shortly after a massive lighting rig fell from the arena ceiling, landing a few feet away from McMahon–an eerie reminder of the death of Owen Hart in 1999. He was standing at the podium, looking confused, while what looked like a pyrotechnics mishap occurred around him–an eerier reminder of the real pyro mishap that injured dozens of people at WrestleMania in Miami three months ago. He then stumbled, like he was fainting, and fell off-camera, off the back of the stage through what may have been a table or something. No one seemed to know what was happening, but then Vince got up from where he’d fallen and started walking around in a daze, briefly, before the gigantic steel rig that held up one of their massive digital video screen literally collapsed on top of him.
From the moment the lighting rig fell, about three minutes passed by in which any reasonable viewer could have concluded that Vince McMahon had just become the first major celebrity to die on live TV. But it was apparently all planned in advance. Wrestlers ran up and worked together to free the chairman (who looked unmarked and at one point appeared to be smiling, perhaps grateful to God for an unlikely success) and help EMTs ease him gently out on a stretcher. Vince broke character by addressing real-life son-in-law HHH (whose on-air character is divorced from Stephanie McMahon and has been a constant thorn in her father’s side) by his real name of Paul, crying out that he couldn’t feel his legs. This will presumably be a key storyline in coming weeks, assuming that no wrestling superstar dies for real this week.
The level of risk is absurd. Anything rigged to fall at a specific time could fall at any time, which they know, and the lighting rig was right above the main ramp for wrestlers coming to and from the ring. Pyro is pyro, and the uncertain mechanics of that set collapse could have been a disaster. Unlike the exploding limo stunt, which merely involved airing Vince’s pretaped entry just before the live explosion (which still looks fairly seamless), this time he actually stood there and let it happen around him, and in the process probably cheated death for real. To have his wrestlers on and around the fallen structure while fresh pyro popped off from it made things worse. He’s lucky he didn’t start a damned riot!
It was a shocking end to a night of wrestling action that was weird even by the singular standards of WWE, a night that turned often on injuries, real and fake. Shawn Michaels went face-first into the edge of a table, compounding a fake eye injury received weeks earlier from Chris Jericho (in a feud built around Michaels’ history of faking injuries). Melina Perez did injure her leg while teaming with Victoria against Beth Phoenix and Natalya Neidhart, and former squeeze Batista was busted open after a violent collision with Edge during the battle royal. The cut was probably self-inflicted, but the sound of their heads cracking each other had me briefly worried about Edge’s surgically-fused neck. (He went on to win, though.)
The obverse view, of course, is that Vince indulged this madness as a gesture of trust for a technical crew that had gotten a lot of bad publicity after the WrestleMania accident. One hopes he wasn’t consciously referencing past tragedies, though he must have been aware of the accident that killed a tech worker for rival company TNA about a month ago. All in all, it was really fucked-up, and it could have easily become something that eclipsed the BFT–if such a thing is even possible.
We all spend what is probably disproportionate time online, and much of that time is spent looking at websites we view regularly. I can only think of a few sites that I visit specifically once a year, and the site for the Sonoma-Marin County Fair is one of them. Why? Because they are hosts of the annual World’s Ugliest Dog Contest, which makes for guaranteed good fun. Although the winner has already been declared, this is a contest with no losers, expect perhaps the people who have to clean these beasts.
Slate’s Paul Collins has an excellent piece on the semicolon–well worth reading. I take especial interest, in part, because the Cathy Lanier thesis mentioned elsewhere on this blog (and most likely again and again) has some of the most egregious misuse of the semicolon I’ve ever read anywhere. Her use of semicolons, commas and dashes borders on the interchangeable, such that it’s hard to imagine her professors at the Naval Postgraduate School could miss one of the few real shortcomings of an otherwise essential text. I am further surprised to even have cause for recommending anything by Slate outside of the Hitchens column.
According to the delightfully tacky, yet unrefined UK Sun, “egghead rockers” Radiohead got the gas face when trying to give out tickets to a recent show in France. Apparently the deal was that 50 free tickets were available to anyone who claimed them from the office of a label affiliate, XL, in Paris, but to get them you had to arrive by bicycle. Amazingly, 35 of the 50 tickets were unclaimed. I can only assume there was bad weather in Paris, because it makes no sense that a band capable of selling out a 17,000 seat arena would have trouble giving away an extra 50. The media, of course, spins it as a rejection of their environmentalist ethics, rather than simply a poorly advertised promotion. It’s hard to imagine Radiohead giving away tickets to any show in the US, and not being deluged with a critical mass wherever they wished.
This (in bold) was forwarded from a reader, who had made inquiry via the Governor’s office:
Thank you for writing to Governor Charlie Crist with your concerns regarding House Bill 173/Senate Bill 390 The Marijuana Grow House Eradication Act filed by Representative Thompson and Senator Oelrich that passed the legislature during the 2008 Session.
The Governor appreciates hearing your views and has asked that I respond on his behalf.
The federal Drug Enforcement Agency has stated the national average street value of a processed indoor Cannabis plant (which yields approximately one pound of marijuana) is approximately $3,000.
Florida has found that the street value of 25 plants could range from $50,000 to $125,000 depending on the area and local market.
Such a street value would seem to be a reasonable basis for the presumption that there is an
“intent to sell.
” This Act adds to existing law prohibiting the cultivation of Cannabis plants for “personal use” by lowering the threshold for the definition of trafficking in marijuana.
Please be assured that the Governor will keep in mind your views and those of all Floridians when he is presented with the bill.
Thank you again for sharing your views with the Governor.
Sincerely,
Warren Davis
Office of Citizen Services
Executive Office of the Governor
As far as a response to that, it’s worth noting first that any estimates of the street value of marijuana or any other drug must be weighed against the inflation of street value resulting from its prohibition. In this regard, pot stands out as different from other schedule 1 narcotics like cocaine or opiate derivatives in that it can be cultivated in this country as easily as anywhere else. The bulk of the retail cost of almost any product available to US consumers, legal or illegal in any commercial sphere, is contained in the cost of transporting the product from its point of origin to the marketplace.
US policy over the last 30 years has tended to de-emphasize the role of domestic production in crucial areas like textiles, machine tools and heavy agriculture. The costs of paying fair wages to workers, with benefits commensurate with the profit margins US business has traditionally run, were suddenly too much, and the appeal of exploiting workers dragooned into slaving away for pennies on the dollar, under thumb of well-known tyrannical regimes, inspired the wholesale dismantling of the family farms and much of the major manufacturing centers up north. Many of the core industries that helped win World War II are gone now, as are most of the people who remember how it was done.
It is thankfully still unclear whether this nation could rise again to another existential crisis of the magnitude of what was faced before, but the wholesale misappropriation of funds represented by this silly anti-pot hysteria leaves this country wide open to horrors yet unseen. Maybe if we had legalized the stuff in the 1990s, back when states around the US were passing medical marijuana laws–a trend that continues in places like California, where no one can tell Schwartzenegger what to do–we might have had the resources to actually focus on the terrorists who spent ten years cutting promos on America, launching bitchy little sneak-attacks on quasi-official targets, random slaughter, practicing for the wickedness of 9/11, where all the targets were overwhelmingly civilian.
It’s a little odd, how the peaceful people get hurt first in this world. But history has recorded that the US did have a trillion dollars to waste locking up nonviolent drug users.
It makes perfect sense that arguably the first member of the law-enforcement community to implement any serious maneuvers to offset the spike in violent crime on the streets of this beleaguered country is a woman. Cathy Lanier, age 40, is Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia. She dropped out of ninth grade to have a baby, worked two jobs and got her GED, joined the department at 23 and has since held command of Major Narcotics, Vehicular Homicide, the Special Operations Division, the (incredibly shady-sounding) Special Threat Action Team and the Office of Homeland Security and Counter-Terrorism—all while earning a BA and MA at Johns Hopkins and a second Master’s from the Naval Postgraduate School.
Yeah. She’s a serious figure, with serious problems. Her 3,800 officers—of whom 25% are also female—are now pressed for a response to an already hot, bloody summer in Washington DC. It’s hard to tell from all the hype, but homicides are actually on pace to decline from 2007’s total of 181. The district made incremental gains over the years; homicide totals have been under 200 per annum since ’04, after holding in the mid-200s from 1998-2003. Not even the most cynical observers expect anything like a return to the early-‘90s, when 400-500 people were killed there yearly.
After seven people were shot dead a few weekends ago, Lanier and DC mayor Adrian Fenty announced a plan for “Neighborhood Safety Zones,” where police would restrict access to certain areas on a supposedly limited basis. Of course, they know no limits in Washington, so the project has been tarred with brushes labeled “racial profiling” and “martial law.” Local pols, who misappropriate police resources with one hand while begging for more with the other, should scrutinize it themselves, since they will be adapting the policy to our city soon enough.
There are obvious and substantive questions worth asking, in terms ranging from the individual to the collective. The project will certainly inconvenience some residents, though hardly any more than twice-weekly funeral processions, and many will feel more threatened by the police than by the criminals. It is unclear how any police force could do such things under their current (i.e. shrinking) budgets without revising their mandates—which they would do if the civilian pols allowed them to. The potential for abuses is hard to discredit, as well. Lanier’s critics at the ACLU, the NAACP and other organizations that once mattered, make more useful points than their gangsta mascots can count. One might even be sympathetic if their childish infatuation with the criminal class didn’t put them in direct conflict with their clients’ many victims.
The worst-case scenario, unfortunately, is probably unavoidable: a major shoot-out between police and criminals that leaves people on all sides dead and civilians caught in between. We all hope nothing like that ever happens, but it’s been common in places like Italy, Mexico and Colombia for 30 years. Domestic cases have been so far limited to small groups of individuals who engage the cops only as a means to escape, and who rarely do so with the kind of deliberation they might apply to planning their crimes. It is the lingering nightmare in the heart of many cops: the moment when they cease to be mere obstacles to their adversaries and become the primary target. The public reaction would be volcanic, and careers would be ruined.
Lanier’s initiative (defined however you like) presents a difficult set of choices for law-enforcement officers and the politicians, led by Fenty, who must try to maintain at least the appearance of oversight. Fenty, 37, is a rising young star of the Democratic Party who could become a national name if he is able to escape his current job without heavy scandal. His first year in office included a battle with federal courts over revisions to the district’s gun laws and a fire chief who was trading lucrative overtime assignments for sexual favors from his male underlings—allegedly. Fenty chose Lanier for police chief, and if all goes well she will succeed him. But if the crime thing gets out of their control, a factional split could occur. They aren’t like our local Johns, Peyton and Rutherford, whose public personas are equally powerless and thus equally secure. It is far too rare that we are presented with opportunities to look at the policies coming out of our nation’s capital with anything other than flat contempt or, increasingly, fear. Cathy Lanier has stepped up on behalf of the common people, and put her own ass on the line in what may be an ill-fated effort to save some lives. Let’s give her some credit now, while she’s still around!
sdh666@hotmail.com
June 10, 2008
Update: The debut of “Neighborhood Safety Zones” in Washington DC had results that can be interpreted in multiple ways. There was no serious violence in the Trinidad neighborhood where Cathy Lanier’s crew had posted up. There were eight people shot in adjacent areas, which opponents of the project can attribute to crime being pushed out of one region into another. However, on the crucial point Lanier can claim success: no one died there. That might count, in some metric or another.
A recent report in the occasionally useful New York Times spotlights the harsh contradictions related to the execution of drug policy in this country, with the halogens focused squarely on the Sunshine State. According to autopsy results released this week by the state’s medical examiners, marijuana played no role in any of the deaths documented by state authorities last year. On the other hand, prescription drugs, which have been certified as contributing to the deaths of people like Heath Ledger, Anna Nicole Smith and Chris Benoit, are being abused at a rate roughly double that of ten years ago.
Quoting (in bold print) from the NYT story: “The Florida report analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids — strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin — caused 2,328. […] Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466 — fewer than cocaine (843) but more than methamphetamine (25) and marijuana (0). […] The study also found that while the number of people who died with heroin in their bodies increased 14 percent in 2007, to 110, deaths related to the opioid oxycodone increased 36 percent, to 1,253.”
It goes on to state that “Florida scrutinizes drug-related deaths more closely than do other states, and so there is little basis for comparison with them.” This is good news for anyone supporting this ridiculous state of affairs; imagine having such data compiled from all 50 states to confirm what is suggested by the study out of Florida. A cynic might wonder aloud if the MEs will be allowed to continue such research this year. It seems like the kind of things that could be eliminated through budget cuts.
Poor Charlie Crist, in his misguided zeal for a national name, has quickly undone whatever good will he had among the regular people of his state. He has gone against his citizens by reversing himself in favor of off-shore oil drilling, which will only increase the environmental instability in the super-heated waters off our east coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, for the benefit of multinational gasoline firms who will ensure that most of the profits flow like liquid away from taxpayers of the state.
Any casual observer understands that the prohibitions against marijuana only ensure that the profits to be obtained from this most beneficial crop are concentrated in the black market, where there are no taxes and no accountability. The current policy has the effect of simplifying the nature of the various substances and their effects, and leaves authorities increasingly powerless to counter the international criminal syndicates that are taking up more and more of the drug business in the US.
The insipidly named “Operation D-Day” (column reprinted below) shut down over 100 alleged grow-houses across Florida, netting 130+ arrests and upwards of $40 million worth of the dreaded herb. The bust was timed to coincide with the passage of a draconian escalation of penalties for pot-growers, which Governor Crist signed into law this week. One struggles to see how the state benefits from adding to an already overextended criminal justice system, while simultaneously subtracting from the rolls of tax-paying citizens and property owners.
Florida had just under 100,000 prisoners in 2007, up 2.3% from 2006 and 4.5% from 2000; expect to see a recorded increase of about 3% when this year’s numbers come out, next year. Of course, this counts only those held in state or federal custody, and not the thousands more being held in local jails, juvenile facilities or mental-health centers related to charges. Perhaps if the government hadn’t allowed such wholesale rapacity as was seen in the bad-faith manipulation of interest rates in recent years, and not tied down so many people with bullshit possession convictions that undermined their ability to earn legal livings, maybe some of those owners and renters wouldn’t be need extra income that badly. But that’s just speculation.
America’s Most Blunted
In these rapidly changing economic times, even drug dealers are feeling the pinch—literally, in some cases. Take, for example, the ridiculous Operation D-Day, months in the making, where state and local law-enforcement executed simultaneous busts in 48 counties across Florida. They shut down about 100 suspected marijuana grow houses, made 135 arrests and seized at least $41 million worth of that sticky green.
It says something about the state of leadership in Florida that they would dare to cheapen the legacy of the Allied invasion of France—a truly necessary undertaking that cost thousands of American lives but probably helped save millions from certain doom at the hands of the Third Reich—by attaching the name “D-Day” to their latest assault on individual liberty. If there are any WWII veterans still alive to read this column, one can only apologize, on behalf of our government, for pissing all over their sacrifice.
The operation was timed to maximize publicity for the “’Marijuana Grow House Eradication Act,” which was already being hyped through a series of alarmist stories that ran on local Florida stations that week, including the resolutely straight-edge First Coast News. The same willing dupes who claim that buying drugs supports terrorism are the ones who have made sure that America’s dope market is controlled by foreigners.
The fallacious and foolhardy nature of the Drug War is borne out by the simple fact that if the current laws were to be applied retroactively, at least one President—George Washington, a pioneering pot grower—would be sent to prison for the rest of his life. Imagine DEA trying to run up on Mount Vernon! Given that the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and many of the founders’ personal papers were printed on hemp paper, and that our first flags and some uniforms of the Continental Army were crafted from hemp cloth, a case could be made that today’s laws against the cultivation of hemp amount to a repudiation of America itself.
The silliness of it all becomes most apparent as we traverse the national political landscape of 2008, where at least one presidential contender—Barack Obama—is on record with a history of drug use that would have automatically disqualified either George W. Bush or Bill Clinton, had rumors to that effect been proven. The governors of two of our biggest and most profitable states, California and New York, are controlled by men (Schwartzenegger and David Paterson, respectively) who openly admitted to having smoked pot. History now leans in the direction that the sainted JFK smoked, too. Now, if the point of the Drug War is make sure that no one like Bush, Clinton or Kennedy is ever able to become president again, that would make sense, but it would not explain Obama, whose past is apparently out-of-bounds since he obliges the Drug War too.
Honestly, now: if the Drug War is legit, then why has Snoop Dogg never taken a possession rap? A cynic would argue that, since his work has consists of leading young black men down a road that leads directly to prison or death, he is performing a service to the government, and thus roams free. But as for the rest of you, don’t expect mercy from government unless you’re a child molester or a terrorist. The authorities know the limits of their power, and are careful not to press anyone who might press back. Parents, take heart: if you put a bag of marijuana in your kids’ backpack before school, the cops will follow him around all day, and he might actually live long enough to graduate!
It can never be said often enough that the political leaders of today are so far beneath their predecessors in every single possible category—from intelligence to physical strength, to say nothing of intangibles like wisdom and experience—that their only option for retaining their spots is to aggressively destroy any possibility of dissent. And that is why the criminal penalties against marijuana have been progressively jacked up while the rest on the world has moved in the other direction.
There is not much sense in making a decriminalization argument based on civil libertarian or humanitarian grounds. No case can be made on William Buckley-esque conservative grounds, since the folks who bullied us into Iraq have done to conservatism what Pope Benedict and the perverts who serve under him have done to Catholicism. In the old days, one could at least quote the founders, but as America cedes its place in the global hierarchy, the founders’ appeal has begun to wane, as well. Besides, the political leadership of today (especially in Florida) appears to derive more inspiration from Tom of Finland than Thomas Jefferson. I’d call them traitors, if I could afford a lawyer.
sdh666@hotmail.com
May 5, 2008
Al Gore’s endorsement of Barack Obama was a foregone conclusion, as it’s impossible to think of any GOP candidate who could challenge for the votes of Gore and his many acolytes. As nominee, Obama has begun to consolidate the Democratic machine, and as his effort proceeds he will take note of Gore’s failure to do the same in 2000, and the disastrous consequences that had for the world. He benefits from having the rub from Gore, but the private counsel could be just as valuable.
The third act in Gore’s political career has been a study in how a single person can exercise real power from the outside. Arguably, no politician in American history is as versed in the core scientific and technological issues that will be crucial for shaping the species’ future heading deeper into the century. Look for Gore to augment his facility with energy, climate change and Internet policy–positions that will need to be fleshed-out in the immediate weeks and months ahead–with a growing interest in biotech and nanotech, and to be even more omnispresent on these subjects than he’s been already.
I will never forget sitting halfway back inside the historic Sunshine Theatre in NYC, with “?uestlove” Thompson’s afro only slightly obstructing the view, watching “An Inconvenient Truth” in summer 2006. To see it early on, before the subsequent hype that confirmed the theory, was to see a new Al Gore, a man of vast political potency. Gore saved the climate change issue from a culture that would happily sacrifice all hope of peace in our time for a few more years’ worth of a depleting unrenewable resource. Without the cadres that coalesced around him, the topic might be as “third rail” as the epidemic of violence against women and children by state-sponsored predators has become.
All this begs the question of what Gore’s role inside an Obama administration would be. Suffice to say that he could have spot he wants, but he would be unlikely to take anything that didn’t involve real action. No cabinet spot offers such power–my bet would be as Secretary of State, the role Adlai Stevenson (who ended up as our greatest UN Ambassador) wanted with Kennedy. If Gore could be persuaded to be Obama’s running mate, that would be better; he might be a better sell than the Hillary Clinton to the hordes of haters in their party who fear her more than they do the uncertain future we all face.
The shocking premature demise of Tim Russert on Friday the 13th leaves NBC News, the nation’s best network news operation in awful shape heading into this most epochal of elections. The professional loss of their most respected on-air figure, and the man who directed their DC bureau for 20 years, is easily calculated as incalcuable. Consider also that their people may be traumatized after the scene at their office, and Monday will be for some the first time back since Friday. Situations like that often trigger thoughts of one’s own mortality, and certain of his colleagues may have already decided that this is the ride for them.
Russert’s death was noted with sadness by many people who might be scarcely inclined to comment if similar fates had befallen most of his peers, including celebrities and political observers in other countries. Under his watch, “Meet the Press” was easily the most credible political show on TV; after the retirement of David Brinkley, Russert owned that time slot and nothing ever came close again. Since the Sunday shows on CBS and ABC have been weak for years, with the shows on cable not much better, it seems possible that the entire franchise of Sunday-morning political chat has died with Tim Russert.
Russert’s achievement will probably never be duplicated–but worse, his workload may prove impossible to approximate in the crucible of this year. Election cycles always bring big turnover in the media ranks, and with all the heat building around this contest, the potential for catastrophic fuck-ups and melt-downs is high. Unlike many of his peers, Russert’s singular job was secure, since he defined its parameters and made it something no one else could do. It’s worth wondering how much time the bureau chief spent in recent months mediating the public feuds between star MSNBC talkers Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, or keeping David Gregory from bolting over his place on the network totem-pole.
If there was anyone in America who could step in now and keep NBC News competitive, they would probably be welcome, but the baggage attached to that job could keep quality contenders away. They would do it, but they know they can’t. This leaves the immediate problem, though, of “Meet the Press”. Viewers will be interested in transitional matters for a while, but brand loyalty alone won’t get people up early on Sunday mornings. If the show is no good, viewers can cop the highlights later on replay or online. I have no idea what will happen.
Some of the best music I’ve heard this year has been at house parties. Case in point: the Good Idea House on June 15, where local standouts Helios Eye and After the Bomb, Baby bookending a couple of stellar acts from Buffalo, NY, who stopped off here between stops in Athens and Panama City. Rebecca Ryskalczyk and A Hotel Nourishing made their local debuts at the first show held there since 2007, and it’s hard to imagine anything better happening that night.
(Ironic, perhaps, that The Buffalo Tears was playing at Eclipse contemporaneously!)
Ryskalczyk’s name, despite the jokes, is easy to spell and easier to pronounce, even with a belly full of Anheuser-Busch products. She played solo in the den, with colored lights hanging from the chandelier, in a setting that would have made for fine pictures had I bothered to bring a camera with me. The mic stand was fashioned from a mop and a traffic cone, which made for good awkward fun while trying to clean up spilt beer later that night. Her voice cut through the crowd noise in a room where every sound seemed amplified, while her acoustic fingering was a precise and percussive as one might expect from a lady who shares a city with Ani DiFranco, who (while making exception to the vast hordes of quality bluegrass and gypsy swing-style players–something very much different) is arguably the most dynamic acoustic player this side of Hamell On Trial, whose playing can not and probably should not be duplicated.
Ryskalczyk’s set included her version of the New Order standard “Bizarre Love Triangle”, which goes in my book as the second-best version I’ve heard, behind Frente’s take from 15 years ago. (The original ranks #3.) While RR’s vocals failed to exceed those of Frente’s Angie Hart, she did open the song up by placing the last word of each line well behind the beat. Further, her guitar playing was far superior to any of the instrumental backings heard in previous versions.
A Hotel Nourishing, on the other hand, was pure power. Drummer Cam Rogers was the truth on his deep-blue Mapex kit, Watching them–a duo of guitar and drums–was a bit like what watching America Del Sur would be like after a couple years of serious playing. It was hard to hear Sonny Baker’s vocals, but the energy of the band’s delivery made it a moot point. Even the chandelier, swinging wildly like JFK on an acid trip, did nothing to sway their concentration.
Got to speak with them all later, and buy some CDs, before they collapsed in exhaustion on the floor of the Good Idea House. Such gentlemen to let Ryskalczyk take the couch!
I started a blog in 2002, and have blogged a little bit on the MySpace page, but with so much happening now and no serious outlet for many of my views on these subjects, it made some sense to return to the blog format. By way of a start, a few words about why the column is called what it is:
The “Money Jungle” column takes its name from the title of the album below. It was recorded in 1962, and marks the only time all three artists played on the same session. Ellington recorded mostly with members of his own band and in occasional collaboration with people like Coltrane, Count Basie and Louis Armstrong. In this case, United Artists made entreaty for a rare trio record, with sidemen drawn from the younger group of artists working the newer style, making for an instructive crossing between generations and methods.
Mingus and Roach were both masters by this point, and were then at critical junctures of their careers. Both had been employees of Ellington at separate times in 1943. Mingus lasted long enough to get fired after a fight with Juan Tizol (author of “Caravan”), while an 18 year-old Roach sat in for Sonny Greer for a gig.
Mingus had emerged as a force through his Jazz Composers Workshop, recording for labels like Savoy and Bethlehem before a short but phenomenal run on Columbia, a label he would return to in the 1970s. He was working with Impulse at this point also; his “Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” would arrive in 1963. Roach had plowed through the 1950s, first as Charlie Parker’s drummer of choice (appearing on most of his late-period Verve stuff), then as co-leader of a quintet with Clifford Brown, who died in 1956, and then as sole leader of successive bands that did a ferocious amount of work for Mercury and related labels, including two basically perfect jazz albums: “Max Roach+4” and “the Max Roach 4 Plays Charlie Parker”. He’d recorded at least seven albums in 1958-59 alone; much of that is documented on a Mosaic Records box set, reviewed elsewhere. He had just recorded his “Freedom Now Suite” for Candid, and was in the midst of an association with Impulse that produced records like “It’s Time” and “Percussion Bitter Sweet” in 1962; the “Money Jungle” sessions would be soon followed by his last trio recording, with The Legendary Hassan.
As far as I know, Ellington coined the phrase himself on occasion of composing the title track, which is the album’s strongest. My understanding is he wanted to evoke the harshness and drama of NYC, a place that exists as testament to the sustained power of global capitalism. There was an interesting book released last year by Rutgers University Press using that title, playing the theme against redevelopment action in the Times Square area, and the economic contraction has led the occasional journalist to use it, too. And there was also a film by that name, which does in fact center on global capitalism. It may be inevitable.
While I can’t claim credit for inventing the phrase, I do claim credit for being first to jack it from Ellington.
Money Jungle Safari 