The number-crunchers in Washington, D.C. might want to put down their abaci and direct their attention to the wisdom of Alexei Kudrin.

Mr. Kudrin, Russia’s finance minister, wants his fellow countrymen to chain smoke and drink to excess.

Those were not his words, exactly. But one can read between the lines.

What Mr. Kudrin said was, “If you smoke a pack of cigarettes, that means you are giving more to help solve social problems such as boosting demographics, developing other social services and upholding birth rates,” and, “People should understand: Those who drink, those who smoke are doing more to help the state.”

I have no fucking idea what he’s talking about, but I agree with him. Had he asked, I’d have told him to leave it at: “Those who drink, those who smoke are doing more to help the state.”

This all has to do with tax revenue, which makes Mr. Kudrin’s comments rather boring.

He should have asked Tatyana Golikova, Russia’s health-care minister (she’s also the “social-development minister,” for whatever it’s worth), to tell the Russian people the truth: that smoking is cool and goes hand-in-hand with drinking.

As many of you know, I smoke the healthy cigarettes, and I don’t mind paying more for them, particularly because I know that I’m “doing more to help the state.”

I’m certainly “doing more to help the state” than the joggers who seem to come out of nowhere whenever I’m reaching for the cigarette lighter in my car.

Anyway, I appreciate Mr. Kudrin’s candor, as I’m sure the Russian people do. Perhaps President Obama, during his prime-time address Tuesday night, should have lit a cigarette, downed a glass of Stolichnaya, and said, “Look folks, wars cost money. Lots of money. And, as you know, we don’t have any. Now, when I said, ‘Yes we can,’ I meant, ‘Yes, we can.’”

It’s been a long, hot summer — the longest, hottest summer I can remember. Thankfully, it is coming to an end. One of the few memories I have of this summer is reading a relentless stream of Facebook status updates telling me how much fun my friends are having. Am I the only one who isn’t having an amazing summer, or am I the only one who isn’t lying?

I’ve been very busy the past three months reading about and viewing photos of everyone’s summer of fun at the beach and the pool with their kids. There are pictures of the kids making sandcastles, jumping over waves, and eating ice cream sandwiches on the beach. There are pictures of the kids splashing in the pool, diving into the pool, and eating ice cream sandwiches next to the pool. Their mothers are lounging happily next to them with tans perfected from lazy hours spent baking in the sun. The pictures tell the same story: everyone is having the best summer ever.

But I don’t buy it. A picture is worth a thousand words, with a few hundred lies throw in. Have you ever brought a toddler to the beach? Or to the pool? It is the opposite of fun.

This is how a trip to the beach plays out for me. I apply sunblock on myself, which takes about 30 minutes, and then on my child, which can take another 30 minutes. Can’t miss a spot or those harmful UV rays will turn our skin a painful shade of reddish-purple. I wrangle my child into a swim diaper, and a special sunblock-reinforced swimsuit. Then I pack everything I can carry on one arm so I can carry him on the other arm, five blocks to the beach. I’m probably carrying 60 pounds. Did I mention it was a hot summer? The sunblock that has taken 60 minutes to apply is now dripping off my body, along with a stream of sweat.

Once we establish a beach head, we sit in relative silence for about thirteen seconds until the fun begins. My child rubs sand in his face, eyes and mouth. I keep applying sunblock, which just exacerbates the sand problem. I try to give him an ice cream sandwich, but he throws it in the sand. He runs out to the waves, so fast that I can’t keep up, and almost drowns. Then he starts running down the beach, kicking sand into people’s faces and jumping on their beach blankets. He’s having a great time, which of course I am happy about. But me? Not so much. After 30 minutes, I’ve had enough. I pick my son up kicking and screaming, carry the 60 pounds five blocks back to the beach house, and dunk the both of us in a tub of water.

I’m certainly not capturing that moment on film, let alone posting it on Facebook.

Although the pool eliminates the sand issues, I can’t say it’s much easier.  At the pool, I’m usually obsessing about us getting sunburned from any spots missed by the SPF 50. My son is hovering around the edge of the pool, daring to fall in. Of course I never signed him up for baby swim survival lessons, so he doesn’t know how to do the special baby float. He’s slipping and sliding all around the pool area, and his head is coming dangerously close to the pool’s cement edge. I’m also trying not to get impaled with a football that some dad and his teenage son think is a good idea to throw near the baby pool. To make matters worse, I’ve heard too many horror stories about “floaters” in the kiddie pool, so I’m keeping one eye on my child and one eye scanning the surface of the water. How about this for a Facebook status update — “Great time! We just evacuated the pool due to a floater and now the lifeguards are dousing it with toxic amounts of chlorine!”

Am I the only one missing the summertime fun here?

In addition to reading about everyone’s best summer ever, I’ve also spent these months following a group of women training for a triathlon. Nothing says summer like a bunch of tan, buff females giving us a gun show (and I’m not talking about firearms). I’ve viewed countless pictures of women looking fit and toned while running, biking, and swimming. Their skin is glowing from the endorphins. Or from the river sludge that they just swam in, I’m not sure.

Yes, it’s my own fault that I’m lazy and out of shape. Although I spent some of the summer with a heating pad on my ass nursing a back injury, I really have no excuse. I have the time to get in shape, but I just don’t have the motivation. I admire the triathlon disciples on some level, but as time goes by, I am getting increasingly annoyed by the self-congratulatory updates. I understand that training for a triathlon is all about setting goals, pushing your body to the limit, and making a commitment to yourself. But for real — just admit that you are selfish and it’s all about you. I do. And I don’t need the “training for a triathlon” excuse.

Is everyone really having this great a time training for triathlons in the relentless summer heat? Someone’s got to be lying, right?

Fortunately for me, I ended the summer on a positive note — a long weekend with my husband at an amazing bed and breakfast. No pictures of sandcastles. No ice cream sandwiches. No updates on the number of miles I ran that that day. No toned and tanned arms gleaming in the sunlight. Just two days of relative peace and quiet spent with my favorite person in the world, and a happy reunion with my second favorite person in the world once we returned home.

Despite those two days of glory, I’m altogether glad the summer is over. I’m happy that the pools are getting drained, the lifeguards are packing away their whistles, the triathlons ending for the season. I’m actually looking forward to the snowmaggedon, the cabin fever, and our collective cold-blooded unhappiness. I may be a miserable wretch, but at least I’m not fooling anyone with my lies of summer bliss.

Welcome back to another edition of “Audio Files,” where blind eyes look into the vapid maw of Jennifer Lopez and see greatness. There’s lots happening this week, so let’s teleport to Elysium, where fields of asphodel await our rumpled back-parts. Chin up, fellow travelers.

NEWS

• Can your radio station do this? (Warning: mammarian items, moving up and down, and Slovenian language.)
• On this day in 1989, “Ozzy Osbourne was charged with threatening to kill his wife Sharon.”
• “Sexsonica is the musical project of a virtual band whose music is sensual and erotic, with rhythms and sounds created exclusively for sex.”
• Some Oregonians are getting hush money so infrasonic death machines can murder bats and avian wildlife.
• Wet Riffs gathers guitar-in-the-shower photos and displays them online.

HEATING UP MY PLAYLIST

• Glenn Danzig, “And the Angels Weep.”
• Goldfrapp, “Number 1.”
• Prince & the Revolution, “Girls & Boys.”
• Stephen Malkmus, “Deado.” Generally, I dislike snide, aloof, cool, slacker, brown-pants, dude-their-first-album-was-great-and-then-everything-started-to-suck indie rock. The genre fills the brevities of my gymnastics with soiled shame and shriveled knackwurst. Still, life is full of paradoxes and complexity.  Which might explain my fondness for the music of Steve Malkmus. The guy has a gift for melody, and though his lyrics are full of smug, contemptible irony, the aggregate effect of a Malkmus song is good. Melody heals all wounds.
• The Dukes of Stratosphere, “Vanishing Girl.”
• The Kilimmanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, “Lobby.”

RANDOM SHARDS OF SONIC INFORMATION

• A water-powered musical instrument.
• Enter: The Church of Beethoven.
• Music-mapping Slayer.
• The shakuhachi’s value lies in its versatility — you can use it to create beautiful music, or you can bludgeon someone with it.
• Winners of the World’s Worst Rap Competition.

SAILING THE SEAS OF YOUTUBE

• Heavy metal church in Colombia rocks Jesus into your skull.
• Huge storms always happen when the Great Leader shouts. (Look at his stateliness — he sits astride a white horse. He is living light.)
• Operatic 10-year-old.
• The dangerous music of tesla coils.
• The ominous sounds of 9/11.

SYMPHONIC FLICKR

• Eva, nude on the sofa, with Korg synthesizers.
• Heavy Metal.
• Pin-up music.
• Stereo Lays an Egg.
• The Singing, Ringing Tree.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

It’s September 2. If today is your birthday, you are blessed to share it with Laurindo Almeida, John Zorn, Hugo Montenegro, and Kraftwerk’s Michael Rother. Happy birthday, you earthy, mutable Virgos, from me and Harvey Sid Fisher both. Additional birthday greetings come via the Monkees, and their Jack Nicholson-directed opus Head, a.k.a. the greatest movie of all time. Head had the best assemblage of actors in history too — Frank Zappa, Toni Basil, Annette Funicello, Teri Garr, and football legend Ray Nitschke (fun fact: I went to school with Ray’s daughter).

Anyway, the Beatles suck.

I have to admit that I requested this book based on the title. Angels, Vampires and Douche Bags is a title with a lot of potential. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations.

The book separates the people in our lives into three categories. Angels are the people who love you and take care of you. Vampires are the people who are sexy and seductive but ultimately bad for you, and Douche Bags are the people who make your life more difficult. Things can also be in these categories. The whole prospect is kind of muddled and unfocused. It just didn’t quite work.

Unfortunately, a lot of Carla’s humor didn’t work for me, either. For example, there’s this:

“I’ve always wanted to adopt, and I have given serious thought to adopting an older child. But so far, the only thing I’ve adopted is a British accent after a few glasses of Veuve Clicquot.”

Huh?  Maybe if she said a French accent, since Veuve Clicquot is a French champagne, but British? Maybe I just don’t get it, but I didn’t laugh.

I also didn’t care for some of her assumptions about women. In her chapter on how dogs can be Angels, she says:

“Of course, dog is man’s best friend, but I would argue that a dog is more accurately a white woman’s soul mate. Trust me, white women have an unholy dependence on canines. I think it’s because we have no inner compass: no barometer or gut feelings. Every other ethnic group seems to have this gift.”

What the? I don’t own a dog and my intuition works just fine, thank you. She missed the mark even more with this, from her chapter on the importance of girlfriends:

“I know every man’s fantasy is to watch two women together. Sadly, this fantasy doesn’t work in reverse. No woman ever wants to see two men together.”

One, it’s not every man’s fantasy — plenty of my gay friends would dispute that rather vehemently. A couple of my straight male friends with more…varied tastes would dismiss that as too vanilla to be of interest. And if she thinks a fair number of women aren’t turned on by the thought of two men together, she obviously hasn’t read a fanfiction site, seen women standing in line for Brokeback Mountain or talked to any of my friends. Not every woman’s thing, certainly, but sweeping statements like that are downright insulting when they don’t describe your views, and she managed to insult me more than once in a short span of pages.

I wanted to give Carla the benefit of the doubt. I checked out some videos on YouTube and other sites. I checked with some of my Canadian friends, and got responses similar to my own. One described Carla as the “Canadian Sarah Silverman” — relying heavily on the “I’m a cute girl saying really smutty things” vibe. I get that from some of the videos.

For me, this one was not a winner. There were a couple of things in the book that made me laugh, like her Kabbalah Drag Queen Name (YumYum Kippur), and I chuckled a bit watching her videos. Comedy is a subjective thing, and this didn’t work for me.

My copy of Angels, Vampires and Douche Bags was a review copy, provided free of charge.

My friend and colleague (and occasional When Falls the Coliseum contributor) Paula Marantz Cohen has a piece in the Huffington Post about her new novel, What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James & Jack the Ripper. I just started reading the novel today. It’s good fun so far, with the first chapter containing a dinner scene that includes a drunk, bloated (he prefers “corpulent”), distracted Henry James having to put up with Oscar Wilde’s quips. I look forward to reading more and hope our readers will give Paula’s novel a look.

The hostage situation at the Discovery Channel headquarters today was tragic. I’m not talking about the demise of the gunman, James Lee, who was shot dead by police. And I’m not talking about the three hostages, who made it out unharmed. I’m talking about the kids who had been in a day care program in the building when the whole thing went down:

A day care inside One Discovery Place was successfully evacuated, and the children were moved to a McDonald’s restaurant, authorities said. Witnesses said some of the children were in cribs on wheels, and that people pushed the cribs out of the building to safety.

These poor kids narrowly avoided being the victims of a crazed environmentalist who wanted the Discovery Channel to ”stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants.” This guy was so crazy, he demanded “that the Discovery Channel broadcast daily prime-time shows devoted to ’solutions to save the planet,’ perhaps in a game-show format, insisting, ‘Make it interesting so people watch and apply solutions!!!!’”

We’re talking four exclamation points of crazy here. Anyone who uses more than one exclamation point should at least be evaluated for mental illness. This guy uses four — FOUR — and, it appears, calls for the people we see on Family Feud or Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? to compete to save the planet. The least crazy thing about him is taking people hostage at gunpoint.

Yet somehow the children in the day care were saved. Tragedy averted. Or so it seemed. Then some uncaring, thoughtless humans (a species Lee described as the “most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture”) bring the kids to a McDonald’s — a McDonald’s!!!! — where they were certainly seduced into eating Happy Meals and promptly became fat diabetic slobs who would soon go on to destroy the planet. 

It was a tragic day for James Lee, for the kids in the day care program, and, indeed, for the earth.

Hello, all. Once again, I’ll take advantage of Dr. Spiegelvogel and offer a dream interpretation in two parts. First, I read and Spiegelvogel mimes:

Second, we have a brief therapy session:

By the way, I have a show in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival this weekend, September 3, 5, and 6. It’s a memoir/magic show, featuring true stories, magic tricks, and dream interpretations by the good doctor. For more information, go here: http://fred-manofmystery.blogspot.com/

“Here we believe in fate,” Tareq (Alexander Siddig) tells Juliette (Patricia Clarkson). In this film, what is fate, what is circumstance and what is choice is debatable, and is left to the audience to decide.  This is a small and quiet film, but the two compelling lead actors kept me interested in the fate of the characters.

Juliette (Clarkson) takes a trip to Cairo to visit her husband Mark (Tom McCamus), who works for the United Nations. But when the U.N. sends Mark to Gaza, to help deal with trouble in a refugee camp, Mark asks former employee Tareq (Siddig) to meet Juliette at the airport. Juliette spends a little time with Tareq, who is polite and respectful, as well as easy on the eyes. She wanders around Cairo in Western attire and is harassed, attends some dull U.N. functions with wives of diplomats and is bored, and then seeks out Tareq. Juliette frequently talks to her husband on the phone and even attempts a visit. She appears to love and miss her husband, but the more time she spends with Tareq, the happier she seems. They tour, eat and smoke a hookah pipe. But does emotional infidelity “count?” If so, who really pays the price?

The events in Cairo Time, and Cairo itself are seen through the eyes of Juliette. So we only see a little bit of the poverty, unequal treatment of women and a lot of the beauty of the pyramids and the Nile. But perhaps a woman who has trouble clearly seeing a country she visits would also have trouble clearly examining her own life.  Writer/director Ruba Nadda’s film moves at a leisurely pace. Cairo Time is all about the details, the texture and the characters. It is the small moments in this film that may change the characters’ lives.

I like the main characters, but there are a few flaws and inconsistencies in the writing here. Juliette seems so naïve and uninformed that she appears stupid. Despite the fact that her husband works for the U.N. in Cairo and that she writes for a magazine, she appears to know very little about the culture or the political situation. Juliette is obviously intelligent, but her actions are questionable. She walks around Cairo alone in revealing outfits and seems surprised at the reaction her blonde hair and modern attire elicit. She boards a bus to Gaza to make a surprise visit to her husband without ever considering the consequences. She seems surprised when Israeli soldiers stop the bus to check passports, although it is unclear if she knows they are Israeli soldiers or even knows the geography or political landscape of the this part of the world.  At one of the U.N functions, Juliette is befriended by Kathryn (Elena Anay), whose boyfriend works for the U.N. Kathryn is worldly and fun. Kathryn takes Juliette to visit Bedouins in the desert, and I enjoyed these scenes and the conversation between the two women. I was looking forward to seeing more of this developing female friendship, but then Kathryn disappears for the rest of the film.

But the actors overcome most of these problems. Clarkson and Siddig get almost all of the screen time here, and I never tired of them, especially the smoldering Siddig. Although Tareq’s attraction to Juliette despite his affection for her husband, seems somewhat out of character, Siddig makes this work. He shows Tareq’s complexities when he tells Juliette without rancor, “Underneath the façade, Cairo is still a dangerous city.” He is sexy and charming, but subtle and completely believable. His restrained performance never lacks warmth, but shows a character with a non-Western world view. When he surprises Juliette at her hotel, she asks him how long he has been waiting. “Not long at all,” he replies sincerely with a dismissive wave of his hand, “only an hour.” Clarkson takes a character that could be annoying and makes her sweet, kind and compassionate, with a touch of longing. She speaks Juliette’s lines softly and we can hear the love in her voice when she talks to her husband on the phone. When she shyly smiles at Tareq, we see the start of hesitant attraction. Siddig and Clarkson have an intense chemistry that is shown with lingering and silent looks that are as sexy as any explicit love scene. Their romance is happening on the inside, and these compelling actors had me hooked.

Some will certainly find the pace of Cairo Time too slow and the stakes too low. But I enjoyed the emotional complexities of the characters and the view of Cairo in this 90 minute film. I found the end of the film only partially satisfying and I still had questions about the motivations of these characters. But as Tareq says about many things in Cairo, “It’s complicated.”

Cairo Time. Directed by Ruba Nadda. Patricia Clarkson (Juliette Grant),Alexander Siddig (Tareq Khalifa), Elena Anaya (Kathryn) and Tom McCamus  (Mark). IFC Films, 2019-2010.

Gail sees a movie appears every Wednesday.

Ok, the most entertaining thing I’ve read in a long time was the recent New York Times Op-Ed “The Billionaires Bankrolling The TEA Party”, by Mr. Frank Rich.  It shows that the New York Times has learned an amazing lesson.  With the success of the National Enquirer and the Jon Edwards story, something which used to be the sort of stuff you might expect to hear first from such a prestigious organization as the Times,  the Times has learned and decided to emulate the National Enquirer!

Mr. Rich wrote:

ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.

Vive la révolution!

There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “deathpanel” warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.

The Koch brothers, Mr. Frank?  Really?

Wow. I’ve been to three TEA Party rallies thus far and I’m still waiting on that Murdoch/Koch reimbursement check for my gas and food…

I can see that I’m going to have to have a stern word with their secretaries.

Crap… I’ve lost my copy of the “Conservative Movement Bank-rollers Index”…

Can another of you conservatives please post Rupert Murdoch’s number for me? And not the normal phone tree number either, give me the “Conservative Direct Line To Rupert Murdoch’s Office” number, please. It should be the third one down on everyone’s phone number card…

Look, I don’t put any stock into the George Soros bogeyman that some conservatives love to bash. I don’t say that every single lefty movement is inspired by Soros money because of a single, simple fact: George Soros cannot pay every liberal in America, personally, to vote for him.

So what if “BIG MONEY INTERESTS” bought the permits and equipment for a rally somewhere? Who cares? It’s the people who show up of their own free volition that matter.

For example: Glenn Beck’s 8-28 over the weekend.

Does it matter that he put on a fund-raiser to make it happen? Does it matter that he invested a lot of his own time, both personally, on TV, and on the radio, urging people to come out to DC for it?

Or does the fact that 300,000 - 500,000 people showed up for no reason other than they believe demonstrate to us what really matters?

I went to the very first round of TEA Parties. They were held on April 15th, 2009, and there wasn’t anything fancy. There were no huge stages. No stars. No cameras to which the politicians could flock. In Memphis (where I attended because I was out of town with work and it was closest.  Only forty five minutes away.), there were about 2,000 people gathered together in the Audubon Park. No speaker. No lights. No agenda. Just a bunch of people who heard Rick Santelli’s impromptu rant on the internet and said “Yeah! That’s a great idea!”, then put action to their thought.

The original advertisement for the thing was this Facebook profile. I found it with a quick Google search after I got off of work, from my hotel room.  It certainly didn’t require the complete fortunes of some trio of nefarious billionaires to put it together!!!  Cheap and minimal hassle, that is how this movement started.

That was the birth. The start. The Genesis. And it was 100% totally grassroots. Just a bunch of yahoos on the internet.

Only after the first set of rallies, only after April 15th, 2009, when people saw how many of these things spontaneously happened all over the country, and how big they were, ONLY then did the conservative talking heads and the politicians come running.  Only then did money start flowing into the movement.

We had to prove to them that we were a substantial voting block before we got any attention whatsoever. They were all sitting in DC, seriously thinking that the ‘08 election had been a “mandate for socialism” until their base rose up and FORCED them to get their act together. The TEA Party has, and always will be, populated by the people who didn’t wait for the politicians and Big Money Interests to do something, but people who did something for themselves.

As befitting those of us who believe in doing for yourself and not letting the government do for you. That’s what we’re supposed to do. It’s common sense that things have happened this way, and there is no need to get all Area 51 on us and claim that we’re all just little marionettes dancing to the tune of the new version of the Bilderbergs, Rockefellers, the Illuminati, etc.  That’s not news befitting the New York Times.  It belongs on the cover of the National Enquirer, in the checkout line at the local grocery store, Mr. Rich.

Plenty of perfectly logical, valid reasons why this is not the brain child of three rich white dudes of whom no one has ever heard.

NY POST - Tiger Woods is now prowling the Big Apple.

Just days after finalizing his divorce, Woods moved into a downtown Manhattan apartment during the weekend, when he also was playing in a tournament just across the Hudson River in Paramus, NJ.

It seems that Tiger Woods is better fit to be single. Last weekend at Barclay’s, in his first appearance since his official divorce, Tiger Woods shot a 65, his best round of the year. He finished in 12^th, his best finish since June.

Is it coincidence that since his marital spat in December of 2009 his game and performance has declined drastically? He did not play at all in the beginning of the year. But in April he returned to golf at the Masters and finished in 4^th place. It seemed that his separation and time away from the game might have distracted him only a little. But that was before the “D” word. About a week after the Masters his wife Elin filed for divorce, and since then he has regularly shot in the 70’s and finished outside of the top ten. That is, until last weekend.

Divorce has not been the only thing to rattle Tiger. Apparently, marriage was not good for his game either. In 2004, the year he got married, Tiger had only 1 win and 0 majors in 19 events. Compare that to 39 wins and 8 majors in the eight years prior.

After illness or injury, traditionally the most well known distractions in life are divorce, pregnancy, moving, and getting married, in that order. Therefore, Tiger’s struggles are understandable. However, I don’t suspect that moving into a $25 million penthouse in Manhattan is an attempt to settle down. It does not sound like the best residence for a modern day Wilt Chamberlain.

My advice to anyone and everything professional golf is “watch out.” If my quasi-mathematical theory on Tiger’s scorecard and relationship status is even half-way applicable, then he is set to go on a tear the likes of which to this date are unheard of.

My advice to Tiger is to forget about Elin and to focus on his kids and golf. Date. Have fun. But be careful. There are a lot of crazy chicks in the City. You don’t want to miss the 2011 Masters with Hepatitis C. And you don’t want to wind up like Lawrence Taylor, or even worse, Steven McNair.

Before I hand out my weekly dose of celebrity advice, I’d like to thank the great people of New York for realizing that, as always, I was right and for choosing to view Manhattan over Serendipity at the Central Park Film Festival last week. I was worried but you pulled through for me. You’re a good bunch, NYC. Even you, Staten Island! Now, let’s talk about someone whom I am very proud to say is not a New Yorker: Paris Hilton.

To fill in those who do not follow such things (and why would you, when you have me to keep you informed?), that hilarious Hilton heiress went and got herself all arrested last weekend for felony drug possession. Kids! I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today! In her purse, police found some cigarette wrappers of the kind commonly used to smoka the ganja, some sort of pill called Albuterol, and, oh yeah, a baggie filled with white powder. When questioned, the Poor Little Rich Girl said the baggie contained — wait for it! — gum. Must be that new gum-in-powder-form that’s being test-marketed all over the country. I hear it’s a hit with fifth graders at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Seriously, Paris? I know you’re not good under pressure but the best you could come up with was “gum”? Stars may be blind, Paris, but so is justice, so you might want to come up with a better exculpation than “gum.” Here are some ideas for what your lawyer should say was really in that baggie:

Baby powder

The girl sweats, ok?

Sugar

See, Paris takes her coffee with lots of sugar, and she needs to carry her own. The only sugar you can get at Starbucks is that damn Sugar in the Raw crap. Have you seen that stuff? It’s brown! Ugh, being Paris is so hard!

Powdered sugar

Paris really loves coffee cake.

Currency

Argue that the baggie was filled with toy cocaine (purchased, of course, from the Play Drugs section of Toys R Us) that Paris was planning to pass off as the real stuff and use at the market to barter for goods. She only had $1,300 cash on her! What if she wanted to go out for pizza? What if she had to use the pay phone?

Rosin

Not many people know this, but the Hiltons are a ye olde vaudeville family. Some of her fondest childhood memories are of the long, lazy afternoons when Grandpa Hilton would teach Paris the old routines and talk wistfully about getting the act back together. You never know when Paris is going to feel the urge to do a little soft shoe but, when she does, that floor better not be slippery, dammit.

Dry Shampoo

Have you seen that mug shot? Her roots are clean and grease-free. Do you think that’s the result of good genes? Nope. Dry shampoo, people: It’s not just for old ladies anymore.

Fake snow

You know, being a celebrity socialite isn’t all fun and games. There are times when Paris gets tired of counting her money and starts to feel a little blue. When that happens, the only thing that cheers her up is to throw handfuls of fake snow into the air and sing “For we need a little Christmas, right this very minute!” Sometimes, Nicky Hilton gets a little too tipsy at Thanksgiving and tells the story of the time that she walked in on Paris manically throwing snow around and dancing to the score of “The Nutcracker,” crying hysterically and shouting, “I’m a ballerina! I’m a beautiful ballerina!” Sisters: One minute she’s your best friend, the next minute she’s selling you out to your cousin with the lazy eye as he passes her the candied yams.

Powdered eggs

Come on, people, there’s a recall going on!

The ground-up dust that represents the remains of Lindsay Lohan’s career

ShaZAM!

So there you have it, my dear. Feel free to use any or all of the above excuses. Good luck with this one, Paris. No, no; there is no need to thank me. Helping wayward celebrities out of jams like this is my job.

Let’s face it: Some celebrities could use good advice. Meg Boyle gives it to them every Tuesday.

Recently I’ve been reading Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yousef the oldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the founders of Hamas. Yousef is a Christian convert who worked for years for the Israeli Shin Bet, feeding them information about planned terrorist attacks and so preventing countless deaths. However, the fact that he wound up alienated from Hamas does not stop him from seeing the faults of Israel or understanding the suffering of his fellow Palestinians, who he clearly loves, even if most of them have disowned him. In short, Mosab is a brave and independently minded individual who risked his life to do good — not that this stopped some witless fucks in the administration from trying to deport him to certain death a few months back (fortunately some vestigial lizard intelligence prevailed).

Anyway, the book is fascinating on many levels and you should all read it. But I’d like to focus here on one short chapter set in a more or less Hamas-run prison. Don’t misread that: Mosab was not jailed by Hamas but rather by Israel for procuring weapons. But within the jails, the Israelis permit the members of the various Palestinian factions to police themselves. As the son of a Hamas leader, Mosab naturally wound up among Koran-thumping, Jew-hating theocrats, and quickly discovered that Hamas treated their own people worse than the Israelis did, torturing anybody suspected of collaboration like so:

“They usually put needles under his fingernails and melt plastic food trays onto his skin. Or they burn off his body hair. Sometimes they put a big stick behind his knees, force him to sit on his ankles for hours, and don’t let him sleep.”

Due to Israel’s success at uncovering Hamas members, the men in prison assumed that their organization was ‘riddled with spies’. Paranoia was all pervasive and torture rife. What Mosab noticed however was that those tortured for “collaboration” were rarely guilty of anything but rather were too weak to defend themselves — or without a family to seek revenge on their behalf. Internal Hamas security was thus largely inspired by fantasy and sadism — and something else, as Mosab notices when he is given the job of writing up the confessions:

Written on the thinnest paper available, the files read like the worst kind of pornography. Guys confessed to having had sex with their mothers. One said he had had sex with a cow. Another had had sex with his daughter. Yet another had had sex with his neighbor, filmed it with a spy camera, and given the photographs to the Israelis. The Israelis, the report said, showed the pictures to the neighbor, and threatened to send them to her family if she refused to work with their spy. So they kept having sex together and collecting information and having sex with others and filming it, until the entire village seemed to be working for the Israelis. And this was just the first file I was asked to copy.

Mosab quickly realizes that the confessions are totally absurd — the result of men in extreme pain giving their torturers what they want to hear in the hope that the suffering will stop. However, he has a further insight:

I also suspected that some of these bizarre interrogations served no purpose other than to feed the sexual fantasies of the imprisoned maj’d (the Hamas security wing).

Reading this I immediately thought of a pathetic scene in the preceding chapter. Mosab is watching TV when suddenly a wooden board attached to a rope drops from the ceiling to obscure the screen.

At the side of the room, a prisoner held tightly to the end of the rope. His job, apparently, was to watch for anything impure and drop the screen in front of the TV to protect us.

‘Why did you drop the board?’ I asked.

‘Your own protection’ the man said gruffly.

‘Protection? From what?’

‘The girl in the commercial,’ explained the board banger. She was not wearing a head scarf.’

Later Mosab reveals that some of the moral guardians were so zealous they would drop the board if even a cartoon character appeared without a scarf, as if the mere sight of Daphne from Scooby Doo could induce major wood in a Hamas man thus condemning his soul to an eternity in hell. In fact, there was a still greater fear lying behind this clumsy method of censorship as one of the emirs explains to Mosab:

‘Being in prison presents unusual challenges’ he explained. ‘We don’t have women. And things they show on television can cause problems for prisoners and lead to relationships between them that we don’t want.’

Mosab’s point in telling both stories is to reveal the fanaticism, irrationalism and cruelty that turned him away from Hamas. And yet for me, it was the space between these two stories that proved revealing, startling even. I found myself developing, if not sympathy, at least an understanding for the board wielding fanatic and even the sadistic torturers, sweating over their victims, squeezing their own fetid fantasies out from between their lips.

They were trapped inside not one prison but two. The first was external and physical, and it was possible, even likely that most of them would be released. The second however was the inner prison of a repressive moral code, and it was much harder to leave that one behind as it conditioned how they viewed their own selves and others. Place one prison within another and it produced an unbearable tension that resulted in the savage cruelty and bizarre porn Mosab transcribed for the files. Far more humane to let them whack off over the Teen Angels or explore the love that dare not speak its name.

But all that aside — do you think that after a sadist tortures his brother man into confessing his own secret yearnings for orgies, or sex with farm animals, he is able to stroll away and forget about it? I doubt it very much. Desire will continue to throb until it has been beaten into sticky submission. And guilt, and shame and fear of damnation will follow. And on top of that, the prison walls still stand. And God is distant, and an end to this suffering is far, far away. Such is the private loneliness, grief and anguish of the devout but sinful Hamasturbator.

Naturally I am concerned about overweight people. I am concerned because I have a big heart. Not an enlarged, unhealthy heart, like thickset people, but rather I am full of concerned feeling for them. I want them to be healthy. Even if they don’t want to be healthy themselves. I want this for them because I am healthy myself. I run almost every day. I eat healthy foods. And I feel great! Except for all this concern that I have for people who don’t run, and don’t eat healthy foods.

When I think of those butterballs, I feel sad.

But then I feel happy again when I think of the people who are actually doing something about our country’s obesity epidemic. People like me, who make enlightened food choices, and who exercise regularly. I am a lean and healthy 154 pounds, and at 6′1″, I am an appealing ideal to which others can aspire.

And then there are those who are affluent enough to make an active difference in others’ lives.

People like Anonymous Donor. Anonymous Donor is my new hero. She’s the 117-pound woman from the great, enlightened state of Oregon, who agreed to donate $1 million to a women’s college in Missouri.

An anonymous donor has promised to give $1 million to a Missouri women’s college if school employees collectively shed at least 250 pounds by the end of the year.

…

The donor, who weighs 117 pounds, told [Stephens College president Dianne] Lynch she could “lose a little weight.” Lynch agreed and suggested a $100,000 donation in exchange for meeting the graduate’s challenge.

The school president returned to campus and realized she should have asked for a larger gift. The donor agreed to a school-wide weight-loss campaign, which starts Sept. 1.

First of all, kudos to Ms. Lynch for not taking it personally when someone who is clearly in better shape than she is points out that she is suffering from an overabundance of flesh. That’s an enlightened position for a fatty to take, and her attitude only serves to further my own point:

That the most roly-poly of us need motivation to change their lives.

She heard the concern of this affluent and obviously, at 117 pounds, healthy woman, and thought to herself, Here’s a chance for me to lose some of this lard, and make a little scratch for the institution of higher learning where I work.

Second, I would like to congratulate Anonymous Donor for having the courage to call out a tubby to her face. If more of our healthy citizens did this, we might not be suffering from our current obesity epidemic.

She’s certainly inspired me. “You could lose a little weight” is going to be my new “Hello,” from now on. Of course, I can’t promise anyone $1 million, but I wouldn’t mind offering some unenlightened pudge five dollars to do, oh, let’s say ten push-ups.

That’s fifty cents apiece! But they’d have to do all ten. I wouldn’t give them four dollars for eight. In that case, I’d probably just lean down and pat them on the head as they lay gasping on the ground and say something encouraging like, “You’ve just taken your first steps toward a healthier life. Good luck!”

To be sure, Anonymous Donor’s actions are a welcome salvo in our country’s war on obesity (as a former surgeon general has said, obesity is as bad as terrorism), but it’s important that we not leave this fight only to those of us who are healthy and enlightened. After all, our ranks are “thinning” every day, as more and more people succumb to the disease of obesity. Add to that the fact that we’re all svelte (Anonymous Donor, after all, is a healthy but slight 117 pounds) and can be too easily crushed beneath the massive waves of flesh that roll over the bodies of poor, ignorant Double Downers, Krispy Kremers, and McRibbies. We need all the help we can get in our quest to educate the chunkies about their obesity.

Of course, that is where the government comes in. And, thankfully, government is stepping up. Our first lady has made the childhood obesity epidemic her main priority. The recent health care bill contained a provision similar to one in New York City requiring fast food restaurants to post calorie information on their menus, to inform the ignorant masses about what they’re ingesting. In Los Angeles, the city council has taken it upon itself to protect people who live in certain lower-income areas from the scourge of yet more fast food chain restaurants. In San Francisco, the city council is considering a ban on selling enticing toys at fast food restaurants. A tax on sugary drinks is also gaining momentum as a great way to curb people’s enthusiasm for unhealthy choices, while raising much-needed revenue for basic government services such as guaranteed return pension plans for retired government workers.

No one could seriously argue that the government doesn’t have a vested interest in ensuring the health of the people it serves. After all, there are laws to protect the citizens against bodily harm. Actions such as murder, rape, assault, drug use, and prostitution are crimes because the state understands that we must be protected. We implicitly accept the idea that it is the state that owns our bodies, not ourselves. That’s why it was so important that the government take over the health care system. It’s why we all have a vested interest in ensuring our neighbors take care of themselves. We are the state.

Remember, as the Constitution says, it’s a government of the people, by the people, and for the people that ensures our pursuit of happiness for four score and seven years. In other words, if we’re all going to be happy together, we need to use every tool at our disposal to protect our safety and health.

That’s what’s so inspiring about Anonymous Donor. And that $1 million? That is a small price to pay for 117 pounds of inspiration:

“If faculty and staff do participate, it will encourage students to also take on a healthy lifestyle, and maybe motivate students to change unhealthy habits,” said Amanda Roberts, director of career development.

Stephens is a 177-year-old women’s college best known for its theater, dance, fashion design and performing arts programs. It enrolls fewer than 1,000 undergraduates.

Stephens is a women’s college. As we all know, plump people are sad, but there’s really nothing sadder than a chubby college girl. Let’s hope that Ms. Lynch and the other swollen women on Stephens College’s staff will inspire those corpulent girls to change their lives.

Actually, I would like to suggest that Anonymous Donor is misnamed in the article. As Merriam-Webster tells us, a “donor” is someone who gives, donates, or presents something. But Anonymous Donor has done much more than that. Like Guy Grand, the eccentric millionaire from the film “The Magic Christian,” she is a teacher.

Anonymous Teacher, you have inspired so many people, just like me. On behalf of the rest of America, I say, Thank you.

At virtually any point during my childhood, if you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you I wanted to be a professional baseball player. I was okay as a player…nothing special. I got to pitch in little league, but that was mostly because my father was the coach. I never had any illusions that being paid to play was in my future, but it certainly would have been my choice if all it took was wanting to do it. In this desire, I was certainly not alone. If you watch professional athletes, though, it is clear that it is not all one big party. There are clearly aspects of that life that are less than desirable, particularly when it comes to being heckled by fans. It is a rare thing to actually see a player respond to hecklers, though. I assume they have had it drilled into their heads since they first stood out as athletes that they need to block out anything coming from the crowd. Occasionally, someone responds. Last week, Nyjer Morgan of the Washington Nationals was that someone.

The actual incident occurred last Saturday during the Nationals game against the Phillies. Morgan, a center fielder, was being heckled by some fans sitting in the outfield stands. I guess there was one fan in particular who was riding him pretty hard. I have to assume that it became more than Morgan could take, as he reacted badly. After catching a fly ball for the third out of the inning, Morgan turned and threw the ball at the heckling fan. That’s right, he threw the ball at the guy. This would be bad enough, but he actually missed and the ball hit a different fan in the side of the head.

I know that it must have been difficult to ignore fans who were very likely saying things that were way over the line. I have sat out in those stands, and people can be pretty harsh. I was at a different game against the Nationals earlier this season where some fans actually appeared to cause Adam Dunn, who was playing right field, to misplay a ball that was hit to him. Whether or not the fans were the cause of the error, Dunn never once turned around and acknowledged the fans in any way. Morgan would have been much better off following Dunn’s example. Major League Baseball has suspended him for seven games, a penalty which he is currently appealing. I don’t expect his appeal to be successful. I am pretty sure the league has no desire to appear in any way lenient after a player throws a ball at a fan.

It is probably just as well that I did not become a major leaguer. I would certainly have done many things to get myself suspended, I am sure.

Bad sports, continued:

2) Ambiorix Burgos, a former Mets pitcher and owner of a pretty spectacular name, has been charged with kidnapping and attempted murder after poisoning his wife. Burgos has a sordid history, including several violent crimes. My favorite part of this story is the overly understated headline that ESPN used, “Ex-Met reliever in more legal trouble.”

3) I don’t know about you, but I love when a baseball manager loses his mind during an argument with an umpire. Check out the manager of the State College Spikes.

4) It’s stories like this that make writing this column fun. An Oregon State football player, Tyler Thomas, was arrested for trespassing, criminal mischief, and resisting arrest after an incident at a home in Corvalis. The details are the fun part here: when the police arrived, Thomas got down into a three-point stance and charged them. Oh yeah…he was naked at the time.

5) It was an embarrassing week for golfer Jim Furyk. On Wednesday, he overslept and missed his tee time for pro-am event that was scheduled to be played the day before the Barclays tournament in Paramus, NJ. Oops. The PGA disqualified him from the tournament.

Good sports:

1) I feel like I need to include at least one good story. Cincinnati Reds minor leaguer Aroldis Chapman threw a pitch on Friday that was clocked at 105 miles per hour. That’s pretty fast.

Bad Sports, Good Sports appears every Monday.

10. For in-flight meals, the main course is whatever birds fly into the engines.

9. Pay toilets and a five-drink minimum.

8. During cold and flu season, all afflicted passengers are entitled to one suck off the communal lozenge.

7. Standing room only.

6. In-flight entertainment consists of three gay flight attendants doing their version of Streetcar.

5. Salted peanuts: Free. Bottled water: $10 a bottle.

4. Oxygen mask compartments replaced with overpriced vending machine snacks.

3. All meals: BYOB.

2. Copilots considered “optional.”

1. Seatbelt rentals.
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer today, our Frank Wilson takes on Philly’s blogging tax — a business license fee being charged to bloggers who have ads on their sites, even if the ads only make them $5 a year.

Remember when Morgan Freeman fixed racism in Mississippi schools (at least the issue of segregated proms)? Well, turns out that even the President from Deep Impact can’t get the Deep South to at least try to pretend like they know it’s the year 2010.

A couple years ago the greatest narrator of our time brought the issue of prom segregation to a national light. Unfortunately, if you’re not from the area you tend not to know about these things. I’m a middle class white boy from Western New York. In middle school I learned that racism ended back before cable TV was invented. I mean, the guy from Hoosiers and the Green Goblin defeated all the racists in Mississippi in 1964, right? Turns out Red from Shawshank still had some work to do, and he cleaned up the last remnants a couple years ago by shining the bright light of progress on the forgotten corner of America that still had a segregated prom.

Unfortunately, the old cop from Se7en may have to come to bat for his state again. Turns out middle school elections in Nettleton, Mississippi have pre-set races that are allowed to hold various positions. No big deal, right? I mean, the president of the class has to be white. It’s made up for, though, because the vice president of the 8th grade, the secretary/treasurer of the 7th grade, and the reporter for the 6th and 8th grades must be black. So it all balances out.

Wait, what? You’re not effing serious, are you? I mean, it’s only one source, right? Okay, so there’re a couple different sources…it doesn’t mean that their reasoning is racist, does it?

They told me that they “Go by the mother’s race b/c with minorities the father isn’t generally in the home.” They also told me that “a city court order is the reason why it is this way.”

Sorry, what did she say? I tried actually reading the quote I myself put in block quotes, but I know I misread it because it says that the reasoning behind all this is a court order. And I know that can’t be right because adults, presumably with some level of competence, are allowed to work in courts. And courts tend to have a penchant for following laws. I mean, in some twisted world this might be called Affirmative Action, until you realize that Affirmative Action doesn’t actively prevent a particular position from being held by someone because of their race. It diversifies the workplace and sometimes a company will hire over another because of race (to fill quotas, and all of this is an entirely different can of worms I don’t want to open right now), but it does not restrict a position by race.

This policy is being put to an end, which is great news. I mean it gives me confidence in our educational system that something like this was nipped in the ass before it could do any sort of real damage.

“[R]esearch was conducted that evidenced that the current practices and procedures for student elections have existed for over 30 years.”

Oh God damn it! Seriously? This little thing slipped by for 30 years? Really? For 30 years no adult that had anything to do with the school, be they a principal, a teacher, a janitor, a parent, an administrator, or somebody dusting off old court documents saw a problem with this system? It only outlines that only a white kid can run for president for Christ sakes! In plain English! It’s not even a full sentence, so most backwoods morons should still be able to comprehend it. Is there an argument out there that can justify anybody who is even 2 degrees of separation from that law keeping their job? Keep in mind that these people aren’t working for McDonald’s money…teachers in Mississippi don’t rake in the cash, but they’ve at least got a career. Seriously? 30 God damn years? They’ve only held 30 school elections under this policy.

Morgan Freeman, get your ass out from in front of the cameras and put on your narrating shoes. There’s work to be done.

A passing of note for me — and for all fans of anime, really. Satoshi Kon, a highly acclaimed Japanese anime director, died suddenly of cancer on Monday evening. He was 47.

Kon was not an early pioneer of the genre … nor was he its most prolific artist. But he had a special significance, a special impact, nonetheless. Like many in the west, I was introduced to his screen works in the mid-90s, when he directed a segment of Memories. This was followed by a short list of films (short, but every one of them a gem), and one of the better animated series to ever appear on American television screens.

The films were Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers and (my favorite) Paprika. The television series was Paranoia Agent.

Each one challenged us — the viewers — in different ways, and stretched our definitions of “cartoons” to the breaking point, and beyond.

Probably the best comment on Kon’s death that I’ve seen comes from a Tweet by jbetteridge, who wrote, “It’s not that anime will never be the same with Satoshi Kon gone. It’s now much more likely that anime will always be the same.”

So true.

I thought the election of Barack Obama would have made a difference by now. I thought that a biracial presidency would have helped improve historically distorted attitudes and perceptions of reality. I thought that white American conservatives might learn to respect black leadership. I thought that white American liberals might finally reconcile the fabricated social guilt that they walk around with. I thought that American blacks might desensitize a little. I thought that all Americans, Hispanics and Asians included, might be able to better reconcile common racial and ethnic distortions. I was naive.

This summer the NAACP accused an unfairly defined Tea Party of institutional racism, and Jesse Jackson described the behavior of a disgruntled NBA owner as that of a slave master. A few weeks ago, Al Sharpton implied that the investigations of maligned congressman and woman Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters were racially biased. Often those who criticize the President, support Arizona’s immigration law, or oppose a mosque at Ground Zero are called racist. And some prove they are, while most are not. So instead of racial enlightenment, we have racial obsession.

This heightened sensitivity, which in part can be attributed to a biracial presidency, has created a racism panic. “He’s racist. She’s racist. You’re racist. I’m not racist.” Everyone’s actions, attitudes, and dialogue are misdirected now because no one wants to say anything inappropriate. In addition, people come up with these stupid qualifiers, like “I’m not racist, my friends are black.” Or, “I’m not racist, I voted for Obama.” These qualifiers mean nothing.

This summer, during an all-too-brief stop in Philadelphia, I hiked down to the riverfront to visit, once again, the U.S.S. Olympia … at the time, I didn’t know that it may have been a farewell visit.

A grand old ship that stayed the course in the face of the Spanish Navy more than a hundred years ago, the Olympia has been ravaged by time, the relentless barrage of the elements and — admittedly — an inadequate maintenance program. She’s the oldest steel warship still afloat, and the last of her kind in all the world. But, barring a dramatic change in her fortune, she may soon go to the bottom forever.

The Olympia is a snapshot in time, and a glimpse of the revolutionary changes in the practice and technology of naval warfare that were taking place in the late 19th-century. Her gun turrets resembled those that were introduced by the U.S.S. Monitor during the American Civil War, though they were dramatically improved. She brought a new, larger and more lethal generation of deck guns into the fray, as well. Her armament also included above-surface torpedo tubes, which would see their heyday in later ships, in the next century. And while she was powered by a new type of coal-fired steam engine, she still had masts capable of carrying a set of sails for emergency propulsion. And she was one of the first of the Navy’s ships to have electricity and powered steering gear.

It was not only a transitional period for warship design worldwide, but one for warship policy in the United States, as the U.S. Navy’s focus shifted outward from coastal defense, to project our growing influence around the globe. The Olympia and others of her generation (including the U.S.S. Maine) were a preview of the Great White Fleet that would circumnavigate the world 15 years later, demonstrating America’s military power and “blue-water” navy capability.

In a number of ways, the Olympia would make her mark in history. She is perhaps best known for her services as Commodore Dewey’s flagship at the Battle of Manilla, during the Spanish American War. It was from her deck that Dewey spoke the famous words “You may fire when ready, Gridley,” launching the attack that resulted in the sinking or capture of the entire Spanish Pacific fleet, and silenced the shore batteries at Manila. I remember my first visit to the Olympia, as a youngster, scrambling up to the deck, and standing on the brass footprints that marked where Dewey stood when he said those words.

In the years that followed, Olympia was active in the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. She served as a training ship for the U.S. Naval Academy. She was a barracks ship in the port of Charleston, South Carolina, until America’s entry into World War I, when she went back to sea. She saw service in the Russian Arctic as part of the brief Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. In 1921, she brought home the body of America’s Unknown Soldier from World War I. Shortly after that, the U.S.S. Olympia was decommissioned.

Today, she is part of the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia. It’s been reported, though, that the museum is no longer able to fund the ship’s preservation costs. It’s been noted that “historic steel-hulled ships should be dry docked for maintenance every twenty years, but Olympia has been in the water continuously since 1945.” Essential repairs are estimated at $10-million – a staggering cost to say the least. The Independence Seaport Museum has set November 22 as the date it will close the Spanish-American War era battle cruiser Olympia to the public. What will happen to the national historic landmark after that remains uncertain. Plans to scuttle the Olympia, making her into an artificial reef are under consideration.

An independent non-profit corporation known as the Friends of the Cruiser Olympia was recently organized with the goal of preserving the Olympia. I wish them good luck and Godspeed in their efforts. In the “for what it’s worth” department, I plan to send a contribution to help them in those efforts … and I ask you to give thoughtful consideration to make a contribution, as well.