A Gilded Cage

There is much to admire about Roman Polanski the artist.

Brilliant, perceptive, eloquent and courageous. Part of the 60s and 70s cadre of auteurs who's work continues to excite and enthrall. A child of the Holocaust, escapee of communist Poland, bereft husband of the doomed Sharon Tate. He would normally be a sympathetic figure, an inspirational and star-crossed survivor.

But here is an inconvenient truth. In 1978 while he was 44 years old, coming off the masterpiece that was Chinatown, the acclaimed director plied a 13 year old girl with alcohol and drugs. Over her repeated protestations and objections, he then proceeded to have sex with her.

Faced with the prospect of a balky judge who seemed set to renege on a soft plea agreement and instead impose a long term prison sentence, Polanski fled to the safe confines of his native France. There, a limited extradition treaty meant that he could live out his life free of the consequences of his actions in far away California. Until his recent arrest in Switzerland, he may well have done so.

The foibles of the rich and famous are such that they're often just one unfortunate decision or act away from plunging into personal chaos. And when the inevitable occurs, it's almost understandable that those who inhabit the world of the well-off and well-connected look after each other's interests. As their excesses lead to brushes with the law, they close ranks and protect their own. This is particularly true with people blessed with some kind of artistic talent where those who come into contact with greatness are too willing to give reprehensible behavior a pass in light of the body of a person's work.

Polanski's friends and admirers in the business have leapt to his defense, demanding that he be released. The irony of no less than Woody Allen, the subject of his own brush with questionable pubescent coupling, signing a petition to that effect says a lot about the tone deafness of the denizens of the entertainment industry. The director should be spared prosecution because so much time has passed and besides he is, after all, blessed with the kind of gift we all wished we had. Even the victim in the case, then as now, just wants the whole sordid affair to go away.

While the prosecutors in Los Angeles seem determined to make an example of the fugitive, the burning question as to the long term efficacy of delayed justice is one that must be asked. The open and shut case of 30 years ago has further devolved into a battle between those who think that nobody is above the law and those who think that no purpose is served by dredging up decades-old wrongs.

There is an argument to be made that we are all imperfect and don't fulfill the lofty ideas we hold, or in Polanski's case, the transcendent art we produce. History is, after all, replete with examples of colossal men with feet of clay. The acknowledgement that someone can be flawed in one way yet inspirational in another represents a mature and sophisticated understanding of human nature. That a middle aged man forced himself on a girl barely in her teens challenges our notion of just how much deviation from the tortured artist script we're willing to accept.

Whatever his achievements, Roman Polanski is a rapist. Given the circumstances of the crime, living a life of swanky comfort, personal fulfillment and adulatory bliss hardly seems like justice.

Ok, I'll Say It...

...they can pretend he never existed as much as they want to, but just as I feared, Manchester United have no way of replicating the impact of having Cristaino Ronaldo on the pitch.

It's early days in the season and the standings say that everything is fine. They managed to thump the Spurs while short handed and triumphed on derby day to overcome some spectacular defensive blunders, but what I've seen of the team thus far gives me reason to be concerned. Berbatov has nowhere near the selfless work rate requisite for a striker in the premiership. Sir Alex Ferguson's infatuation with the one dimensional and unrepentantly negative Park continues to mystify. The reliance on Scholes and Giggs, legends now in the twilight of their careers will be costly. The flatlining of Nani and the failure of Anderson to emerge as our version of Michael Essien or Javier Mascherano. Not to mention that Ben Foster evokes the very worst of Fabien Barthez.

But nothing worries me as much as the lackluster play of the midfield.

With CR in the lineup, we had a player that the opposition feared to the point where he would draw constant attention and disrupt the shape of the other team. With the versatility to play right or left, supporting or attacking midfield, or out and out striker, he could befuddle you and leave your defenders scrambling for position all afternoon long. His presence led to acres of space for the other midfield players to rove and dominate. No more. They lack the room to play, the creative spark and yes, the imperious arrogance that we've been accustomed to for the last few years.

Valencia's instincts always take him wide, he just doesn't seem to have the willingness or ability to cut inside looking for shots on goal. Owen is injury prone and it remains to be seen if he can be the impact player he once was. The gamble that these two in combination can replace the irreplaceable is one of the great challenges of SAF's career.

Never thought I'd miss the diving, whining, annoying, supremely skilled, spectacular bastard as much as this. But I do.

"He wasn't a ninja"

The words of Baltimore City police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi describing Johns Hopkins student John Pontolillo after the NJ native went medieval on the ass of career criminal Donald D. Rice. The comment was simultaneously an assessment of the lethal skills of the young man and a tacit acknowledgement that all's fair in love, war and the defense of private property.

Not so fast. The story has elicited responses that are dismayingly predictable.

On the one hand you have the law and order crowd who believe that frontier style vigilante justice rules the day. The kid was just preserving the security of himself and his possessions against the ravages of those too indigent, unambitious and unmotivated to work hard and obtain the material trappings of life in a legal manner. The deceased was a repeat offender on the streets only because of a revolving door legal system that fails to protect its citizens from an obvious menace to society. If Seth Bullock can't impose order then Al Swearengen surely will.

On the other side we have the bleeding heart liberals and the perpetrator's family. Even though he had a long criminal record, the guy didn't deserve to die in a pool of his own blood when all he was trying to do was flee the scene. He only went there to steal and he would never really have hurt anyone. When you find someone committing a crime, call the authorities and let the law sort everything out in a civilized manner. The cops / homeowner / businessman didn't have to kill him to stop him.

In a scene that plays out with alarming regularity, the family wails in grief before the cameras for the nightly news. The agony of an inner city mother bemoaning the loss of her progeny, gunned down by a would be victim is real. Her defense of the fallen relative as being merely a harmless hustler is a wrenching level of naivete given her constant contact with the ravages of street violence.

Should the swordsman end up escaping indictment for the events of that tragic day, there's more to fear from the fallout of this incident. Chances are that the family of the thief will drag the student into court seeking redress for the slaying. Look for the anguished invoking of all the elements that make the story so sadly American. Class, privilege, race, cultural influences, vigilantism, inequality, injustice. All will be laid bare as a sharp legal team scorches the earth in search of a payday.

Pinned against a shed on a late summer night, Donald D. Rice was not a saint, but John Pontolillo shouldn't exactly be elevated to the status of mythic urban hero either.

Sublime

Robert Carlyle is one of my favorite actors. Trainspotting, Ravenous, The Full Monty. He always brings a rouge sensibility to his roles.

In this ad directed by Jamie Rafn for Johnny Walker, the Scottish actor delivers a pretty amazing technical performance. And that's not to overlook the small army of crew and the logistical precision it must have taken to pull this off. A bold concept, some serious planning, lots of dogged implementation and 40 takes later, you've got a mini masterpiece on your hands.

Kudos to the cheeky flourish of doing a dolly-zoom (around minute 4:00), using a handheld camera on a rocky, uneven path and with a subject advancing towards the camera. Outstanding.

Come on lads and lasses, how about we lift a wee dram to this tour-de-force bit of movie magic?

Repulsive Redirects Repel: We're from Comcast and we're here to help you...

Score another one for the corporate overlords who unilaterally dictate the terms of the minutiae of our daily existence.

Seems that Comcast, Verizon and apparently a host of other ISPs have decided to embark on an altruistic crusade to save us from the tyranny of misspelled urls. Incorrectly type in an address in your browser and get a bland message saying that the site doesn't exist? That's so 2003. Do the same thing as a Verizon or Comcast subscriber and up pops an ISP branded search page with some suggestions as to sites similar to the address for which you were looking. And by the way, you may also be interested in these "sponsored" results related to your search.

What's that you say? You weren't actually doing a search? You just mistyped something? Silly customer you are. We know what you REALLY want. Irrelevant suggestions with only the vaguest connection to your incorrectly entered address. Advertising for sites, products and services that bear not the slightest connection to what your clumsy, Cheetos encrusted fingers pounded out on the keyboard. Sure we might make some revenue by breaking the way the internet was designed to work, but who needs the pesky tenets of Net Neutrality anyway?

Bonus points to Verizon for making the procedure to opt out of this service suitably arcane enough that your average MIT grad might find it challenging. Further credit to the marketing arms of these benevolent giants for the wonderful terms "Domain Helper" (Comcast) and "Domain Assistance" (Verizon) used to describe this marvelous new service. The more friendly the misnomer, the more hostile the underlying intent. Welcome to the pantheon of linguistic flavored corporate savagery, you're worthy entrants to these hallowed halls.

Just Another Anti Texting-While-Driving Rant

Sat in traffic once with a lady in a red sports car behind me. I could see her with her phone in her left hand, a lit cigarette AND lipstick in the other hand, while simultaneously trying to shift gears. Didn't hear any reports otherwise so I'm hoping that she managed to get to her destination without maiming herself or some poor innocent Saul on the road to Damascus.

For as transformative a technology the ubiquitous cell phone has become, our good sense hasn't been anywhere near as pervasive. Sure there were people before who caused accidents while rummaging around in the glove compartment of fiddling with the radio, but more and more I see examples of reckless driving with folks who are too distracted by their voice or text conversations to pay attention to what's going on around them. Purely anecdotal perhaps, but I don't have the heft of a massive study of the effects of all of this behind me, so what do I know?

Maybe the sextant and astrolabe weren't as sophisticated as our very helpful GPS units, but ancient mariners weren't known to run aground while trying to break-up via text messages either. The cell phone companies haven't exactly worked hard to deter these practices. Perfunctory warnings about texting or calling while driving are geared towards protecting against lawsuits and are not the least bit interested in saving us from ourselves. I'll wait for an aggressive, industry sponsored public service campaign discouraging texting-while-driving with baited breath.

Put down the phone and keep both hands on the wheel. Or at least if you're intent on killing yourself, do it with cigarettes, booze and Twinkies in the comfort of your own home.

Clown Car Vaginas

Step Right Up, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...The Duggars!

Far be it for anyone to criticize the procreation choices of others, but our loopy fascination with multiple birth families shouldn't be this mystifying.

After all, with Jon and Kate and Nadia Suleiman current media sensations, the modern incarnation of the Dionne Quints suggests that we have yet to move beyond the most primitive freak-show preoccupation. Multiple media appearances with fawning interviewers marveling over the smiling mother's blessed fertility, cheery optimism and breezy insistence that this was "God's will", project to the world a charming naïveté that belies the sinister selfishness behind the fierce spawning of cascading progeny. Every sperm is, after all, sacred.

Make no mistake about it, spewing out as many children as you can is an act of willful aggression. The usual arguments that providence (or public assistance) will provide, or that the parents can afford to do it, or that the world's insatiable appetite for information about them will be a never-ending source of income, may all in fact be true. The belligerence of these actions are however wreaked on those of us who observe the proud parents with head-shaking disbelief.

In a world marked by dwindling resources, economic uncertainty, environmental degradation, we can hardly afford to take seriously the biblical approbation to be fruitful and multiply. Yet that seems to be the draw of families with all those kids running around. How are we to seriously address issues such as poverty, inequality and teenage pregnancy when the media exults over the Duggars and the Gosselins? We profess to be appalled at teenage mothers and 30 year old grannies in the inner city or Appalachia but yet we exult over the actions of people who crank kids for shiny faced exhibition on the Today Show.

The carny element to the spectacle is undeniable. The Duggars may be alternatively charming or appalling depending on your point of view, but they are essentially a short step above the Elephant Man or the bearded lady in curiosity and relevance.

Holy S**t!

Not being too hip in the ways of the modern Irish state, I have to say that this is a truly weird development.

And here I was thinking that all branches of the major religions had their foundation in schisms that could be fairly interpreted as being blasphemous. It certainly would be unfortunate to be arrested and fined for claiming, as Jews do, that Jesus isn't really the son of god. You won't hear me saying that Scientologists are kooks over a pint of Guinness at the corner pub in Limerick either, I just don't have that kind of pocket change to spare.

Something tells me our religious right is casting envious glances over the pond. Pass the potatoes and we'll also take some ample helpings of state sanctioned religious dogma please.

Conspiracy Theory

The persistence of the "Birther" movement illuminates a phenomenon that is neither new nor particularly unique to this country. When it comes to the underpinnings of their belief systems, people will show a flagrant disregard for reality. Instead we view any empirical evidence that contradicts our interpretation of the stated version of events as just more evidence of the deviousness and brilliance of the conspiracy.

AIDS was created in a government laboratory.

The CIA invented crack cocaine to decimate black communities.

The Moon Landings were faked.

The Holocaust never happened.

Hannibal didn't really cross the Alps with elephants. Nobody actually SAW him do it.

etc., etc., etc.

The difference today, of course is that modern communications and the net enable people of like mind (or out-of-their-minds as the case may be) to reinforce their theories by congregating around self proclaimed authorities on the subject. In a world where anyone with web access, time on their hands and a willingness to disregard inconvenient facts can develop and promulgate their interpretation of a documented occurrence, everyone is suddenly an expert. This is, of course, not necessarily a bad thing. Distrust of power and questioning the official line regardless of who it comes from keeps us all on our toes and is a buttress against those who would manipulate us towards achieving nefarious ends.

Skepticism is healthy, rampant disregard for the truth is another matter.

Our disdain for the findings of career journalists and other professionals, along with the rise of technologically enabled demagoguery, renders meaningless the important distinction between fact and opinion. The current media and academic landscape is littered with those who have fostered lucrative careers playing to the innate desire to know the real story surrounding anything that has piqued our interest. The email that was forwarded to me says that Obama is a Muslim. It comes from truthaboutobama.com. It must be true. Pass it on and watch that magical adsense counter rise.

In a world where everyone can generate an audience by proclaiming to know the details of some secret plot hatched by the tri-lateral commission, the signal-to-noise ratio seriously impacts our actions. How do we become well informed when the purveyors of knowledge learned everything they know from a google search? In a perverse inversion of the old saying, is everyone now entitled to their own facts? The echo chamber of self-reinforcing pronouncements is deafening.

Have to go line the hat with tinfoil now. The radio signals are beginning to give me a headache.

We're Not Stupid

Once upon a time, before he was elevated to pop icon status, David Beckham was just a soccer player

The recent revelations in the much discussed Grant Wahl book about the world's most famous metrosexual aren't exactly news to people who follow the game here and abroad. Poor captain, indifferent teammate, entourage heavy off the field and performance light on it.

Maybe the particulars are amusing, but the overall result of this import could have been predicted. Beckham was always about selling replica shirts and raising the profile of the MLS off the field. On the pitch, he's clearly past his best and he's been a disaster.

Now he wants to tell us that his recent public courting of a permanent spot at Milan should all be swept under the rug since he's committed to the LA Galaxy and MLS. Should we be shocked that an international star wants to ply his trade in a an environment where soccer is actually taken seriously? When are we going to learn that the US is just the last stop on the careers of the elite of the world's game? Maybe someday we'll get to see a Ronaldo play here regularly in his prime but something tells me that day may sadly never come.

Back to Europe with you Becks, and don't the the door hit your arse on the way out.

The Unbearable Weirdness of Werner

One thing that always struck me about legendary German director Werner Herzog is his open mindedness. With a curiosity of the world around him that has been the driving force behind his work, he seems to be forever searching for the truth, whatever it might be. His work is infused with pronouncements of a world view that is simultaneously gloomy and uplifting.

But as much as I've followed his dramatic films, documentaries, appearances, interviews and other musings over the years, I feel like I hardly know the man. With the recent release of the book Conquest of the Useless, perhaps that is about to change.

The infamous jungle adventure that brought us Fitzcarraldo was just as remarkably chronicled in the amazing documentary Burden of Dreams. The nightmare of a shoot saw Herzog battle the elements, indigenous tribes, a gargantuan steamboat and the certifiable Klaus Kinski. Watching Burden of Dreams is a riveting experience for anyone who loves the movies and the pursuit of a singular vision that is the hallmark of our most gifted filmmakers. Towards the end of the doc, he delivers a sardonic, bleak monologue about the travails of making movies the way he does that leads one to believe that he will never set foot on a set again. Thankfully for all of us, he does continue what has been a remarkable career.

Herzog's contemporaneous account of the experience of making Fitzcarraldo may give me some more insight into this complex character or I may end up feeling that I've only managed to embellish the conclusions I have already drawn. His work has taught me more about myself than it has about him.

Grey Gardens

Haven't seen the HBO production or the musical but the documentary is a personal favorite of mine.

Hopefully the emmy noms for the HBO movie will rekindle interest in what is one of the more moving, emotionally wrenching docs I've ever experienced.

Separated at Birth?

Fernando Torres might be one of the world's premier strikers but he's GOT to do something about the hair.

I do personally prefer Bruno's spiky do from the early days, but that's just me.

Were are the Tigers?

Sad

We've got such a long way to go.

The Apache

I've always been a fan of Carlos Tevez. Tough, instinctive, and with the swagger born, not bred. Now he's gone and fans of Man U are left wondering what went wrong.

Sir Alex Ferguson's doghouse is not a nice place to be, yet Tevez for all his industry and endeavor seems to have had his backside firmly planted there for the better part of two seasons. Hard to read the sometimes inscrutable Scott but I'm speculating that maybe this is a case where they know something we don't. Or maybe the combination of the weirdness of Kia Joorbachian's financial innovations (credit default swaps, anyone?) and the nouveau riche City doomed any prospects of keeping Carlos at a realistic price. Whatever the case, this one stings.

Now if only they can get someone to take the brooding Berbatov off their hands. What's Bulgarian for "sulky striker" anyway?

Do I Have Anything To Say?

I've held out for long enough. Perennially late to the party, I've arrived carrying a fondue pot and wearing my hippest grunge get up.

I suppose I'm blogging for the same reason that millions of others are. To get something off my chest. To share the minutiae of my daily life. To find answers in need of questions.

Enough of this self absorbed, navel grazing crap. Just get on with it already.