Caught!
November 6, 2007
John Lewis was arrested today, in Miami, for killing Philadelphia police officer Charles Cassidy. Lewis fled to Miami on a Greyhound bus. Interestingly, Miami’s police chief, John Timoney, had ordered increased vigilance in an effort to find and capture Lewis.
Timoney was Philadelphia’s police chief under former mayor (current PA governor, Eagles post-game analyst) Ed Rendell. He was hoisted when the current administration took office. Now, eight years later, with violent crime at its highest marks since 1990, the most wanted criminal in Philadelphia is captured, without incident, by our former police commissioner.
Irony, oh how we love you.
Mr Thursday’s Book Shelf: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
November 6, 2007
Over this past summer, at some point, I read my first Cormac McCarthy novel, Blood Meridian, which is a wild sort of Western novel starring a Kid and a Judge and their harrowing deeds. I didn’t review the book here largely because I didn’t know what to make of it. At times, the book seemed meandering and lost, which some critics seem to dismiss as a non-problem, but I, however, like a tight, aggressive narrative, which Blood Meridian, at times, failed to provide. However, the book did possess some spectacular prose and one of the most interesting characters I had ever read. When the book was good, it was fantastic.
I assumed I’d re-read Blood Meridianat some point to try to grasp it better, but I didn’t give Cormac McCarthy much thought otherwise, until I saw the trailer for the Coen brothers’ film, No Country for Old Men, which is, in fact, based off a McCarthy novel by the same name. The trailer is fantastic, and this coupled with the high points of Blood Meridian led to an Amazon package on my front doorstep two days later.
No Country for Old Menis the story of Llewelyn Moss, a sniper in the Vietnam War, who comes across the aftermath of a drug deal gone sour in the Texas border area. While investigating the scene–two trucks, a few dead bodies–Moss finds a sack full of money. Over two million dollars. Soon enough, a cold and vicious man named Anton Chigurh is chasing him, with intentions to reclaim the money and kill Moss. In the wake of their destruction is Sherriff Bell, an aged, small-town lawman, who is always two steps behind Moss and Chigurh, but provides a moral relief for the story.
Unlike Blood Meridian and, from what I understand, most of McCarthy’s other works, the language of No Country for Old Men is of a simple, stripped down nature. Few words are spent on scenery. Nearly every word furthers the plot, every paragraph a step in the book’s relentless action. Deep breaths are only occasionally taken with Bell’s occasional diary-like entries, talking about life, and love, and the law.
For a book with so much action, the climax is strangely indirect, off-stage, as it occurs, and is then re-told from one minor character to Bell, after the events. To repeat, the action has occurred, and we roughly understand the nature of the climax, but we only get its details after we know its results.
It would seem that the novels main protagonists are Bell and Chigurh, although Llewelyn Moss seems like the obvious main character at first glance. But Moss is surprisingly static, by the end, whereas Chigurh and Bell seem to find extra depth. I honestly don’t know what to make of it. From page 1 through just before the climax, the book reads as a thriller, and a good one. From the so-called climax onward, the book is not thrilling, but instead contemplative and reflective. Such a tonal shift is hard to grasp, even as both tones ring strong and loud.
No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy
Paperback: 320 pages
Vintage Publishing
Other People’s Words
November 6, 2007
Just a handful of links.
Who cared about a Japan series perfect game? [Joe Posnanski]
I don’t know if Great Moments in Backup Singing is the best thing happening in the blogosphere right now, but it’s certainly the one I’m most looking forward to each week. [Extrapolater]
Attytood pens a missive to the Presidential wannabes who “debated” at Drexel last week about the crime problem in Philadelphia. [Attytood]
A columnist for Detroit News, Chris McCosky, writes a column (obviously) that lights up the Curious Mechanism’s irony board. We emailed him to ask about it, but he hasn’t written back. [Big Lead]
Streee-rike Two!
November 5, 2007
This post is only called “Stee-rike Two!” because on Friday, we did “Stree-rike!”, in which all your Curious Mechanism related fears involving the Writers’ Strike (which is no longer impending, but, in fact, “here”) were resolved. It’s Monday. Unionized writers who get paid to do their thing are watching soap operas, while we are at work, looking over our shoulders in case our bosses catch us writing for this blog.
Anyway, we’re offering to resolve, in a small and temporary way, the strike. How, you ask?
I’m offering my services as Scab Extraordinaire.
I will boldly cross picket lines (I write on the Internets, so, really, the “boldness” is relative) to write for your show, to keep it on the air, and to keep the sponsors coming back. TO KEEP THE MONEY FLOWING LIKE BOXED WINE AT A SORORITY PARTY.
What I will not do, however, is write shit. The LA Times has done a standup job of posting a grid with every show on TV that will or will not be affected by the strike. You want me to write for your show, I’ll some demands, damnit.
100,000
November 4, 2007
Sometime in the middle of the night, we hit 100,000 page views, according to WordPress’ counter. So, thanks everybody for coming by, especially all you people who came here accidentally through Google Image search. Love ya.
No Barry
November 3, 2007
Barry Bonds, well, I don’t hate him. And, in this case, I really sympathize with him. Mark Ecko, who possesses Barry Bonds 756th home run ball, has decided to brand the ball with an asterisk, and give it to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. The Hall of Fame, for its part, has decided to accept the ball, though has not announced their intentions with the artifact. Bonds, however, has declared that he will boycott the Hall of Fame–his inevitable induction ceremony, and everything involved therein–if the ball is displayed with its asterisk.
There is a common perception that the Hall of Fame, the Museum (where the ball would be displayed) and the Major Leagues are all one entity, or at least, closely knit branches of the same entity. This is, mostly, dead wrong, as a quick analysis what they do will show.
Major Leagues - facilitates the playing of baseball. Is a business, designed for generation of revenue, primarily.
Hall of Fame - Place of honor for the very best in baseball history.
Museum - Place where baseball history is documented, good and bad, both noble and unflattering.
Barry is saying that he won’t play nice with the Hall of Fame if the Museum doesn’t tell the story of the Major Leagues the way he wants them to. Now, if the asterisked ball genuinely tells part of baseball’s story, then, yes, he’s wrong. If it doesn’t, however, if it’s barely more than a stunt of a piece of propaganda, then there’s nothing wrong with Barry being upset that an institution meant to honor his accomplishments is, instead, giving commentary.
Without the asterisk (or with the asterisk hidden), the ball documents the greatest achievement by, arguably, the greatest slugger in baseball history. Bonds faced some of the toughest starters, and certainly the toughest relievers in baseball history, and played in one of the least homer-friendly ballparks in the league. It is the marker of a historically great accomplishment in baseball.
With the asterisk, the ball represent that accomplishment, but in a different light. Instead of being the marker of an absurdly high accomplishment, it marks the cultural response to Bonds’ actions. It, in a way, represents the constant torment Bonds received from fans during road games, the accusations made and confirmed in sealed courtroom transcripts. It represents Game of Shadows. It represents an entire era–the Steroid Era or the Doping Era or the Canseco Era or whatever you want to call it–of baseball history. But it is the era as it took place in the media, in offices, in the bleachers and the newspaper stands. It is no longer, primarily, a document of the game on the field.
So that’s the question the curators of the Museum must ask. Do they tell the story of the game on the field, of glory and home runs and magic? Or do they tell the larger story of what the people thought about Bonds and about the records lost to those thought to be doping?
I don’t know which answer is correct, nor do I have any insight as to what the Museum will chose. I imagine they’d prefer to show the ball, but have to consider the cost of losing Bonds at his own induction ceremony. But it’s a question with an interesting answer, for baseball, past and future.
No Sympathy
November 3, 2007
I spent most of my high school years in what was considered, in my hometown, as part of the “rough crowd”. Hoodlums. We dressed poorly, we got arrested, we swore, we did drugs, we smoked cigarettes, and we traveled in packs. Some of my friends, at the time, dealt drugs. Some of them are in jail, and have been there for a while for dealing drugs. Some of them have gone through rehab. Some of them are dead–died from overdosing, or from getting drunk or high or both and going for a drive.
Now, I have somewhat mixed feelings about drug use and the legalization of drugs. I will freely admit that I’ve partaken in smoking pot before, and that I’ve tried a few other things, too. But among the few rules I had, and that most of my intelligent peers had, too, were these: 1. Know what you’re doing. 2. No cocaine, no crack, no heroin.
Why were these the rules? The first one existed because, if you didn’t know what you were about to smoke, you might not be smoking what you think. It sounds like common sense, but every couple of months some idiot would get messed up after smoking pot that was laced with something, or eating acid that was “supposed to be” a Percoset.
The second rule? You can smoke pot all day long, and not do too much damage to yourself, other than becoming an irredeemable asshat. Coke and heroin is what people did right before they messed their lives up. Overdoses, problems with drug dealers, getting arrested for serious things. That’s what happened to people who switched from grass to harder drugs.
From what I can saw, heroin, at least, works like this: a person tries it, and the high is uncomfortably huge. They are blown away. They resolve not to do it again. A month few months later, they do it again. They are blown away. They resolve not to do it more than once a month. So they do it on the first of the month. But then, it’s the first of the month, and a week later, it’s your birthday. So you do it twice that month. And twice the next month, ya know, for someone else’s birthday. And so you resolve not to do heroin more than once a week. More than once a day. More than twice a day. Oh, fuck it.
Heroin works slow in its addiction, but it works. Anyone who was dumb enough to do heroin in the first place, was dumb enough to get what’s coming to them.
The gentleman pictured above is Garrett Reid, the son of Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy Reid. He has an addiction strong enough that 89 pills were found in his jail cell, as reported yesterday by KYW news in Philadelphia. How’d they get in there? The pills were “secreted from a body cavity”. That’s to say he transported the drugs anally.
I feel bad for the Reid family, but not so much for Garrett. This is a tough time. Garrett is a full grown adult. It’s not Andy’s responsibility or place to hold Garrett’s hand every day to make sure he stays out of trouble. The only person for Garrett to blame is himself. And that’s a damn shame.
Cradle No More, Part 2
November 2, 2007
Philadelphia was once given the nickname The Cradle of Liberty, because it is where the United States began, philosophically. In recent years, this city has taken a turn for the worse. This is our second entry looking at the violent crime in our hometown. The first is here.
Three Philadelphia police officers were shot this week. The third among them, Charles Cassidy, was killed when he was shot through the forehead as he walked into a Dunkin Donuts. Philadelphia’s police commisioner, Sylvester Johnson, said that Cassidy was coming into the doughnut shop on a routine check, as the shop had been robbed on September 13th. Frankly, I don’t think his presence needs to be justified or explained. If he went there for the stereotypical doughnut and cup of coffee, that’s fine with me. Police have tough jobs, especially in this city, lately. If they need some food and caffeine, that’s fine by me. Hell, let the city pay for it, even.
The thought is that, with the murder rate so high, thugs have stopped considering whether or not they’ll get caught. They have no hesitation to just turn and shoot a police officer. There’s a million things that need to be done to stop this.
Philadelphia’s mayor is John Street, who is the worst mayor of any major city in the country. He is corrupt. He is arrogant. He is offensive. He never gets into the news because he’s making some kind of grand announcement about new businesses or events in Philadelphia, or for bragging about some of the great things in Philadelphia. No, he makes the front page of the papers because just about every member of his staff has gone down around him, arrested by the feds for various forms of scandal and corruption. It’s incredible that he hasn’t been arrested, too. He makes the local news for wasting a day in line to buy an iPhone (he couldn’t send an intern?). Or for spending a day in a wheelchair–instead of coming off compassionate and interested in the challenges that the handicapped undergo–he comes off as stupid and lazy. John Street, to the best of my knowledge, hasn’t killed a soul, but if anyone is to blame for allowing this epidemic of murders to occur in Philadelphia, he’s at the top of the list.
Thankfully, Street’s incompetence will be soon replaced by Michael Nutter. Nutter, like every “serious” mayoral candidate in Philadelphia for past 40 years, is a Democrat. Nutter grew up in West Philadelphia, where he still lives. He went to the University of Pennsylvania. He has spent his life in this city, as part of this city, and as this city is bleeding, we are desperately turning to him now. He can’t take office soon enough. The election is next week. He takes office in January. Nutter “won” the mayoral race back when he won the Democratic nomination, in the spring. He won the nomination because he came across not only as intelligent, reasoned, and articulate, but he came off as willing to do everything necessary to combat the city’s problems. (Full disclosure: Mrs Thursday works for Nutter, but we were big fans of his anyway).
The hallmark of this determination is his “stop-and-frisk” program. Under Nutter’s leadership, the Philadelphia police department will have the right to stop and frisk anyone at their discretion. If anyone frisked it found to possess an illegal weapon (or, I imagine, any other illegal nonsense) they can be arrested. Most of (if not all) of his Democratic challengers opposed such a plan of action, defending the rights of citizens. They lost, because there are two types of people in Philadelphia right now: people with something to hide, and people with nothing to hide. If you defend the right of privacy and convenience as you oppose something that might stop crime, then you support the crime itself. That is how bad things have gotten.
I do wonder, however, how viable Stop’n'Frisk is if the city’s thugs have no discretion about shooting cops. If some clown–like the one who shot Charles Cassidy–is stopped for frisking, what’s to prevent him from avoiding the search by pulling his gun on another officer? There’s certainly a hope that people who own illegal weapons will carry them around less, but if Philadelphia starts using this technique, I truly hope it is with caution and vigilance.
Some people blame the US Government, which has taken money away from local law enforcement in order to combat terrorist attacks. You’ve seen 24? Yeah, well, Jack Bauer’s paycheck is preventing police from being able to do their jobs properly. In school, children are taught to wear their seatbelts all the time, even on short trips to the store, because most car accidents happen within a couple miles from home. This, of course, is common sense, as most of the driving people do is within a couple miles of their home. Short drives to the store, the movies, to school, to the bank, to church. Likewise, you know who’s going to murder people in Philadelphia? People in Philadelphia already. Terrorists, to the best of my knowledge, are responsible for zero deaths in the city of Philadelphia this year. By June, Philadelphians had killed well over 200 of each other, and I have no idea how high that total is by now. The stupid, violent people that are already here are going to be the people who fire stray bullets that hit children and parents and students and cops and, I don’t know, cab drivers. Just random people going about their days. Philadelphia does not have a terrorism problem. It has a regular, old-fashioned, horrific local-violence problem. Money, time, energy, manpower and brainpower need to be spent to combat first the symptom, and then they need to vigorously attack the structural causes of this problem. (Update: 339 homicides in Philadelphia as of 11/02/2007).
What are the problems in Philadelphia? Economy, for one. There are a lot of poor people Philadelphia. Education, for another. 48 percent of Philadelphians do not graduate from high school, well above the national average. Only 18 percent of Philadelphians have college degrees, well below the national average. Education is a mechanism for upward social mobility. In a city like Philadelphia where jobs are not easy to come by, the amount of education an individual has can make or break their future. Philadelphia used to be a blue collar town where high school drop outs could still expect to advance in their industries. Now as service has trumped manufacturing as the major industry in Philadelphia, those high school drop outs are turning to drug trafficking and theft.
Transportation is another problem. Philadelphia is a vast city. From West Torresdale in the farthest reaches of the Great Northeast, to Eastwick, way down in Southwest Philly spans more than 25 miles. From the Delaware River in the East to Chestnut Hill in the west, another dozen miles pass. Philadelphia has two subways: the Blue Line, which follows Market Street from 69th Street until Front (1st) Street, and then heads north along Front and then Kensington Ave; and the Orange Line, which follows Broad Street from Olney in the north to Pattison Ave and the stadiums in the south.
God willing, that link will take you to a map of Philadelphia. If it does, you should be able to see three lines on it. The big dark line is a very rough boundary of the city. I well aware that in a few places I’m off by a number of blocks–I’m just trying to give the rough idea. The blue line is, you guessed it–the Blue Line Subway. Likewise, the straight orange line is the Orange Line. Now, if you live in the city of Philadelphia, and you don’t live within a few blocks of one of those two lines, you have TWO options for getting around. The slow, expensive, and infrequent trains that run throughout parts of the city (perhaps we’ll draw a train map another time), or the superslow, somewhat cheaper, totally unreliable bus system. Well, I guess there’s a third option: own a car. I’m convinced this keeps poor areas of the city poorer, and, for that matter, more dangerous. If you people can get to a place cheaply, easily, and rapidly, then they’re more likely to go there. There’s a fantastic cheesesteak place way up in Torresdale (the place, Chink’s, is about a mile past the northeast end of the Blue Line), and I’m not going there too often because the commute is a bitch. The lousy transportation breaks the city into tiny communities (which is normal) that have, frequently, little interaction with each other (not normal). If the community is violent, then it’s likely to stay violent.
I love this city, but it has a lot of problems. Today, Michael Nutter was planning to have a rally to get his constituents excited before the election. With three city police shot in 4 days this week, the message changed from “Ra-ra, let’s go Nutter” to “Something will be done”. Unsurprisingly, neither John Street, nor outgoing police commissioner Sylvester Johnson were invited. In just a couple of months, Michael Nutter will be made responsible for the future of this city. Frankly, Mayor Nutter can’t get here soon enough.
In a show of support for our police forces, WMMR, a local radio station, is encouraging local businesses to display the above sign. We, at the Curious Mechanism, agree with this message and would like to pass it along. Please show your support for the men and women who serve our city.
