Jesus Christ, the NFL and The Lonely Grave of Ron Mexico

Back when the egg on Michael Vick's face only came from his alter ego's genital luggage, the Mexico moniker was a source of extreme embarrassment for the NFL and it's somewhat paradoxical sense of purity. However, since the real bomb dropped and the Eagles have taken their perplexing leap of faith, that very same alter ego could be a manifestly useful symbol. To hear all parties involved, from Roger Goodell to Jeffery Lurie down to Donovan McNabb, Vick is going to bury the dark half and what could be better than having a name on the tombstone. I watched the press conference live by chance on August 14th, and it whacked me like a hammer just how important this game has made itself to America.

Lurie was first to sit and after laying down the rules of engagement, he made a well thought out and impassioned speech about Michael Vick. He and his organization were offering Vick a hand up, and he wanted to make damn sure nobody left the room thinking it was a hand out. Success in this endeavor would not be measured on the field, but in the community where Vick would be making a real difference all the while suffering the slings and arrows of his justifiably angry detractors. Only if that happened would the chance the Eagles took be a good one. America is a place for redemption, and Michael Vick would get his chance to be redeemed, but it would not be automatic and it would not be easy (though in fairness a seven figure contract might offer some cushioning). Lurie said that this wasn't about football, it was about giving Vick the chance to right wrongs and the evidence would give the claim some credence. The Eagles have a dedicated, image friendly and clearly spectacular quarterback in Donovan McNabb, who had not only signed off on the idea of acquiring a potential rival, but instigated it. While one cannot ignore the benefits of getting a back up of Vick's calibre on the cheap, Vick's landing in Philadelphia is sure to cause a measure of distraction a team bent on a Super Bowl can always do without.

Vick appeared next flanked by Andy Ried and Tony Dungy who each spoke afterwards and fielded questions. Dungy, the league's answer to Jimmy Carter, was of course the perfect and perhaps only person to be the spiritual representative of this ceremony. His character and moral standing are beyond reproach and more impressively, genuine. If Lurie evoked America, Dungy cut deeper into the matter and talked about the Lord and Christian forgiveness. Dungy has formally stretched his neck out real real far on Vick's behalf, and if that alone isn't enough pressure to make #7 walk the line, one is led to believe nothing else will be.

Andy Ried may have looked like he'd rather be at the dentist than the press conference, but all parties insist he was willing to take on Vick. Even though it might have been on account of McNabb's insistence, Dungy told the cameras that Ried called him (though he was ambiguous enough to suggest "about a dozen coaches" had expressed some measure of interest). It's worth mentioning that Ried was the only handler to talk about his abilities on the field as more than tertiary to Christian philosophy and the SPCA.

Clearly embarrassed and ashamed of himself, Vick spent his time at the microphone thanking all parties involved in his return and repeated his boss's talking points about helping more than he had hurt in his "pointless activity". Vick said all he could be expected to say and gave no indication of insincerity. The stage is set and now he has to prove good to his word.

A good many important people have circled the wagons around Michael Vick where they could as easily have left him to the crows. A black superstar quarterback may be one of the rarer commodities in the National Football League, but its hard to believe that it could trump the league's good name and image. The cynic in me screams that this is a matter of dollars and cents and saving face, or that the league in the end just didn't take his crime seriously, but I can't rule out that X factor my gut says can move mountains, just maybe they did it out of love.

Harlot's Ghost,

*SPOILER ALERT*  JFK gets assassinated

 

In my circle the CIA sits pretty well synonymous with evil.  It's like KRS-1 (who incidentally isn't amongst my circle of friends) said, Criminals In Action.  To read Mailer is to see the agency as a brand, like a Wu-Tang Clan where Method Man might not know exactly what Ghostface is up to.  In fact RZA and GZA might be at work undermining U-God unawares that they are actually puppets to Inspectah Deck's master plan.  They may work under the same umbrella, but the ship sails on the winds of leverage and everybody is keeping secrets from everybody.  Yes, just like a hip hop group, only they work on the public dime and topple democratically elected governments.

      

      The story is told through the eyes of a young company man named Herrick who stems from New England mid level aristocracy, who through 2 parts nepotism and 1 part talent gets his fingers in a lot of messy pies, from Berlin in the fifties to rubbing shoulders with KGB big wigs in Montevideo up to the Bay of Pigs invasion and John Kennedy's most famous visit to Dallas.  Herrick is moral, tough, reserved, loves America and is mainly confused by the deviance and chicanery that surrounds him and chips at his weakest parts.

Apart from a host of interesting superiors and peers, Herrick really takes his orders from his Dad Cal (who between running the far east and the Castro assassination party planning finds time to arm wrestle Hemingway and obsess over the great American obituary page) and Harlot.  The title character is easily the book's most intriguing.  Harlot is a spy's spy who seems to know everything about everyone, has the run of the entire agency, and just might be completely insane, or worse, a soviet.  The better part of the book is presented as secret correspondence between our narrator and Harlot's wife, who is understood to have divorced her husband for his underling after the events of the novel.

Apart from showing equal parts disdain and admiration for the Central Intelligence Agency, Mailer explores the idea of strong personalities steering history with grandeur and often with spite.  We are led to believe that perhaps the whole course of American history could be wiggling under Harlot's thumb.  A large and amoral character who acts as a philosophical foil to Herrick named Dix Butler sums it up neatly when he expresses his hatred for Castro.  Not on the grounds of his revolution, but under the understanding that Castro has accomplished more than him in the same time.  The fearless Butler explains that there can be only twenty or so amazing men in the world, and that he is setting to work on being number one.

This of course is contrasted with the convolution of politics, self important but petty double agents, and most importantly, Oswald.  Mailer doesn't give any serious credence to conspiracy theories concerning JFK's death, but the slim possibilities are insidious and so many that his narrator chooses to believe in a long gunman because the alternative would mean a quick fall into insanity.

It is worth noting that this theme is taken up in Mailer's last novel The Castle and The Forest where a fictitious article written by Mark Twain laments the assassination of the Empress Elizabeth in Geneva.  Albeit with a more religious bend, there is a greater theme that weighs pettiness and chaos against the machinations of powerful men.

The novel opens up on a cliff hanger that is never resolved and even after 1200 odd pages promises "to be continued."  Not too many of the greatest American novelists get to pull a Back to the Future ending and hold their title, but I'm willing to let it slide if you are.

You sendin' The Wolf?: An Eternal Loop of Violence

I settled an old old score this week.  A South American war of attrition spanning more than two decades was finally put to rest.  I rescued all five "high value" hostages, massacred hundreds of soldiers, and sent one Russian prototype super helicopter to that great junk heap in the sky all with deftly thrown grenades and a barrage of M16 fire.  When I flew out of that airport there wasn't one commie motherfucker left to launch so much as a pea shooter.  When I returned stateside, a prototypical CIA head (or was it supposed to be Ollie North?) gave me his congratulations, a whole mess of greenbacks and a swift kick in the ass right back out into the shit to do it again. 

I have been genuinely trying my very best to beat Operation Wolf since a buddy got it for Christmas in the mid eighties.  It finally happened, I just picked up my wiimote, sat down and beat the game.  I am old enough to appreciate the skewered context on which the game is based, though all the same my first instinct after mission completion was to hit up limewire for Van Halen's PANAMA and start smoking big expensive cigars.  It happened pretty unceremoniously considering the scary amount of hours invested but every time I think of it I get a tinge of pride that says my cumulative years of effort were not in vain.  It's my soldier of fortune Stanley Cup.  So many games I've played are cinematic in nature and make ultimate success a matter of patience alone, this game made me bleed, sweat, and cry.  Even if it was a half-assed 8 bit payoff, I'm infused with this grim pride that Killing Liquid Snake for the fifth time can never equal.  

VIVA LA NES!