The Long Shot

A real Mike Guy website

2008-07-15T09:47:00.004-04:00

I've been told that I should launch a normal website to serve as a flagpole to fly past articles I've written. I relent.

Now, after having proudly come in well under the planned budget of $40, mostly by "designing" and "coding" it myself, I have created a specimen of utilitarian worldwidewebbery that I'm sure you'll agree is altogether hideous, recalling the heady days of Netscape.

Thank you and enjoy.

http://web.mac.com/mike.guy

Happy New Year, Homeland Security!

2008-01-01T19:13:00.000-05:00

It's hard to say exactly who's to blame for the olympiad of idiocy that is airport security. I suppose if we wanted we could follow the daffy crumb trail right into the Oval Office. The Decider's decision to respond to 9/11 by forming the largest bureaucracy in the history of civilization pretty much sewed up our fate: Thrust upon us - and anyone wishing to visit us - is an impenetrable morass of bad security policy and ineffectual implementation.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Homeland's laughable security cordon at American airports. We remove our shoes because a half-wit named Richard Reid once tried to set his sneakers on fire flying from London to New York. What if Reid had been wearing an explosive bra? The most frustrating aspect of TSA's ineptitude is exactly what is so malignant about bureaucracy: it's rules are unthinking and arbitrary. There's an actual need for security that TSA simply doesn't fulfill. For example, nearly every terminal in the States has a $20 million "Explosives Trace Detection Machine", but the personnel actively screening passengers are paid $10 an hour. You get what you pay for.

I could rant about this at length, but instead I'll refer to something that Patrick Smith, a commercial airline pilot who writes a New York Times blog called "Jet Lagged", wrote last week.

"...The liquids and gels restrictions [were] introduced two summers ago following the breakup of a London-based cabal that was planning to blow up jetliners using liquid explosives. Allegations surrounding the conspiracy were revealed to be substantially embellished. In an August, 2006 article in the New York Times, British officials admitted that public statements made following the arrests were overcooked, inaccurate and “unfortunate.” The plot’s leaders were still in the process of recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers. They lacked passports, airline tickets and, most critical of all, they had been unsuccessful in actually producing liquid explosives. Investigators later described the widely parroted report that up to ten U.S airliners had been targeted as “speculative” and “exaggerated.”

It's a sad blowback of the 2001 terror attacks. How many billions have been wasted chasing our tail in airports? Sadder still, if you look closely at the other high-profile terror arrests that Homeland trumpets so proudly, and which shape its response to threats, they fall apart under the most cursory inspections. Remember the half-baked plot to blow up the Sear's Tower? How about the Albanian pizza deliverymen conspiring to over Fort Dix? Homeland Security is a heady combination of dangerous and laughable. And that means that the joke is most certainly on us.

Drunken Holiday Brawl on South Pole Leads to Evacuation

2007-12-28T12:10:00.000-05:00

It's mighty slow week here in Brooklyn. I'm sitting on the couch watching old Bruce Brown surfing movies in preparation for a reporting trip to Monterey next week. Otherwise, I'm doing shit. You might call it a lull. You might call it boredom. And boredom is bad news. Evidence:

McMurdo Station, Antarctica - Marathon holiday sessions of Asshole and Quarters at the US-operated Amundsen-Scott South Pole research station, at the heart of Antartica, led to what one scientist described as a "drunken Christmas punch-up," and forced researchers to airlift two injured men to a hospital in New Zealand.

It was a real whizzer. From the Guardian:

After reports of the fight reached staff at McMurdo station, the headquarters of the US Antarctic Program, an Air Force Hercules was sent to pick up the injured men.

They were flown back to McMurdo, but it was decided the man's injuries were too serious to be treated in Antarctica and he was taken on to Christchurch, New Zealand, accompanied by a nurse and a paramedic.

"There was an altercation between two people -- there's no indication of the cause or of the background between the two folks," said Peter West, spokesman for the National Science Foundation.

The injured man is an employee of Raytheon Polar Services, one of America's largest defence contractors. A company spokeswoman, Val Carroll, said an investigation into the incident would be held. She said it was company policy not to release names of the two men.

The Appetites of Artie Lange

2007-12-20T12:56:00.000-05:00

If you have any interest at all in reading a dark, revealing tale of drugs, alcohol, cash, and Devil Dogs, buy this month's issue of Playboy and read my profile of Howard Stern's tormented right-hand man, 'Riding High With Artie Lange."

Over Ambergris Cay, 12/13/07

2007-12-16T21:53:00.000-05:00

Landing in a storm, Ambergris Cay, 12/13/07

2007-12-16T21:45:00.000-05:00

Landing in a storm, Ambergris Cay, 12/13/07

2007-12-16T21:41:00.000-05:00

Downtown Miami, 39th floor, 12/10/07

2007-12-16T21:37:00.000-05:00

The Swaying of the Meats

2007-12-16T14:11:00.000-05:00

Dan Dunn is a Wine and Spirits Journalist. He writes a syndicated column called "The Imbiber", and recently authored the elaborately-titled "Nobody likes a Quitter (And Other Reasons to Avoid Rehab): The Loaded Life of An Outlaw Booze Writer". In that sense, Dan Dunn is very much my polar opposite. One night last week Dan and I sat at the Infinity Bar of the Grace Bay Club in the Turks & Caicos with the hotel's General Manager, a felicitous gentleman named Nikeel. Dan braced himself against the bar as Nikeel's barstaff presented him with a tangy parade of literally dozens of martinis, rum punches, mojitos, and various esoteric subspecies thereof. Dan Dunn is a Pro, and he absorbed the booze with well-rehearsed techniques involving sipping, puckering, gargling, breathing rhythmically, and hopping gingerly on his toes like a boxer before the bell.

Then the waiters brought us hors d'ouvres, like the skewered beef filets with cilantro pesto seen above. I ate most of the food as a fog of alcohol, lime, sugar and pulverized mint leaves enveloped Dan Dunn. Through it, I could foretell the rest his evening - Dan Dunn staggers through horrified newlyweds at O Soleil, crashes the VIP room at the Fire & Ice party, lurches onto laps of glowing Caribbean debutantes, somehow emerges from the fog just before dawn and wins $1000 at blackjack in a seedy Caicos casino.

Such is the life of a professional Wine & Spirits Journalist. Good luck in your continued quest to avoid rehab, Dan Dunn.

Marcus Gronholm turns a corner

2007-12-02T16:51:00.001-05:00

Gronholm retires from WRC racing after the Wales Rally. This is my last view. At the beginning of the video, you can hear the brake compound squeaking as he left-foot brakes into the corner.

Ripping through the Welsh forest, 10:10 am, December 2007

2007-12-02T15:16:00.000-05:00

Norwegian Petter Solberg, the 5th ranked rally driver in the world, slides past in his Subaru STI on the first stage of the WRC Rally of Wales. I was one of what seemed like 100,000 who scrambled through the muddy, mist-enshrouded forests to glimpse the best drivers in the world race in the last World Rally Championship of the year.

Xavier Pons passes the crowd, 10:20 a.m.

2007-12-02T15:13:00.000-05:00

Stage Six, 5:15 pm, December 2007

2007-12-02T15:09:00.000-05:00

Solberg later described the conditions to me as "mud and shit." The rain pissed, the North Sea winds raged, the filthy slurry of mud grew and grew. As I wandered among them, happily tanked Welshmen thumped me on the back and uttered incomprehensible Welsh aphorisms. The rains came in earnest after dark, turning the sixth stage into a chaotic and muck-slicked mess, like Woodstock, I suppose, but without hippies giving birth.

I found a spot in a growing pond of muck and discarded umbrellas, which were useless in the sideways rain and wind, and had a good view of the cars hitting a jump and skidding up a hill. I stood in a good foot of water, away from the crowds. The water was even deeper elsewhere. The fenceline I leaned against was collapsing, and crewmen approached to fix it. One took a wrong step and disappeared under the water. When he re-emerged a moment later he yelled in a thick Welsh brogue, "Was it determination or stupidity?"

2007-12-02T15:05:00.000-05:00

2007-12-02T13:12:00.000-05:00

Here I go after a week of Rally Racing school. Note my use of a technique caled the "Scandinavian Flick", which transfers the car's weight outside before a skid turn. It's a key to rally driving, kids.

In-car cam captures pass!

2007-11-20T12:35:00.000-05:00

2007-11-19T07:55:00.001-05:00

We Drove Like Hell: Notes from Baja 1000

2007-11-19T07:49:00.000-05:00

I raced in the 2007 Baja 1000 last week in the Full Stock truck class with the Rod Hall Race Team, and this week I pay the price. My neck is torqued, my back is bent, my eyeballs googly and internal organs intermittently backflowing. I see strange patterns on walls.

The desert terrain – 1,296 miles from Encenada to Cabo San Lucas – was unimaginably brutal. Lead driver Josh Hall’s day job is training the Special Forces in tactical driving and for Josh (the oldest son of Rod Hall, who is the winningest and wisest Baja racer of all time) the Baja 1000 is war. And war is hell.

Our front differential exploded at mile 380, just after dawn on Wednesday, knocking out the truck. We'd just climbed and descended the rocky, craggy summit of Coyote Mountain, which was a junkyard of broken machinery and dazed drivers stumbling around their rigs. Before the diff cracked, we passed dozens of trucks, buggies, bugs, and bikes. We were on a tear. We would have owned own our class.

Here's what the race feels like: A 10-hour-long airplane crash. The beating you take is unbelievable. It's a miracle I didn't puke the whole way, or that my aorta didn't separate from my heart over the hoopties. Just two hours in, I was so physically exhausted from the abuse that I found myself struggling to keep my eyes open as I called out turns.

Meanwhile, lots of weird details, mostly in fragments: We nearly had a head-on collision at 85 mph with a pickup truck driven the wrong way down the course by a drunken Mexican. We also absorbed dozens of hurled beer bottles - some full - and rocks as we surged through thick crowds of spectators and cactii. We passed a lot of crashed race trucks, bugs, buggies, trophy trucks, etc - even a helicopter, which hit a power line over the course at mile 130 when we were at mile 100, and crashed right onto the track. Three occupants died in the wreck, with many more people rumored to be hurt on the ground. We passed the scene so fast all I could process was a smoldering black wreck with chopper blades. In a bizarre coda to the crash, a gang of heavily armed thugs later broke into the morgue in Encenada, stole the bodies of the dead occupants, and killed two policemen as they escaped.

The Mexicans love their spectating. It was unnerving to race full out through the crowds at the start as people leaned their camera phones into the track to get a good shot. I saw at least one person leaning out taking a photo with the camera in his laptop. Not sure how many people lost their hands, arms, not to mention their lives. The tracks were sometimes very narrow, and the trucks traveling up to 125 mph. Authorities are calling it the bloodiest Baja 1000 ever, and almost stopped the race 12 hours into it.

Stay tuned for the next installment, "The Many Vile Days of Dakar.”

2007-11-18T17:54:00.000-05:00

Downtime for a gas man, 3:40 am

1600 Class buggy exiting a remote pit, 3:12 a.m.

Valiant attempt to repair the front differential on our Full Stock Class truck, mile 383, 11:20 p.m.

Start line, 12:20 pm, November 15, 2007

2007-11-18T17:51:00.000-05:00

The Lion's Back, Moab, October 2007

2007-11-02T13:23:00.000-04:00

Moab, Utah, October 2007

2007-11-02T13:10:00.000-04:00

My Clark's Desert Boot.

Maine Turnpike rest stop, October 2007

2007-11-02T13:08:00.001-04:00

A shiny new Airstream trailer.

Rockland Public Fishing Pier, October 15, 2007

2007-10-18T13:47:00.000-04:00

Polo, as viewed by wealthy Sardinians

2007-10-02T19:06:00.000-04:00

The sport of polo is not viewed by the poor, in Sardinia or elsewhere. Of course, I'm poor, and I viewed polo in Sardinia, but - as my old landlord, Robert, once told me as I handed him my sixth consecutive month of late rent - "[I] live life without worry, because [I] appear comfortable around the wealthy."

The polo players on this emerald tract four times the size of a soccer field, which is situated inland from the Costa Smeralda on the north end of Sardinia, each ride four ponies per match. The players are as brutal and aggressive as any athletes I've witnessed outside football. When the match ended, the clamor of a dozen helicopters echoed off the canyon walls as they fluttered in to pick up the players.

Three Quick Shots: Rome, September 2007

2007-09-27T10:00:00.000-04:00

Sant Eustachio, home of the best coffee in the world.

Colin McRae, 1968-2007

2007-09-19T11:44:00.000-04:00

I first interviewed Scottish rally champion Colin McRae at the 13th X Games in Los Angeles on Saturday, August 5. It was a busy day for McRae and the other rally drivers. They were fine-tuning the cars, fretting over the 75-foot span of the jump on the dirt portion of the race, and fighting boredom, bad food, and occasional attacks of sweating journalists. But McRae was nice enough to me, and answered my blundering, ill-informed questions about rally racing with a light touch. He had won 25 World Rally Races and a World Rally Championship. He was among the best drivers in the world. But he humored me for an hour or so in that air-conditioned trailer, probably happy to be out of the hideous heat.

Later that afternoon, I was eating lunch with Ken Bloch, another Team Subaru driver (and the founder of DC Shoes), when McRae and his wife, Alison, joined us. Colin told us about his first pro rally race, when he was 17, and how his two young children, Johnny and Hollie, were probably tearing their house apart back in Lanark, Scotland.

McRae was a very aggressive driver even by the standards of rally racing, and had over his twenty year career earned the nickname "McCrash". On race day he lived up to his name when he rolled his Subaru WRX in the X Game semifinals. It was his second roll in two X Game attempts. It was also his birthday.

By coincidence, I bumped into Colin and Alison in the Crown Club Lounge at LAX the next day. Both of our flights were delayed. He was disappointed that he'd rolled again. "No big deal. Just means I have to come back here next year," he said, and winked.

McRae died on Saturday, September 15, 2007, when the four-seat helicopter he was piloting crashed near his home in Lanark, killing McRae, his 5-year-old son, Johnny, and two friends.

2007-06-02T19:32:00.000-04:00

The Chile Relleno was Delishus

2007-05-29T19:42:00.000-04:00

What an asshole

2007-05-28T07:38:00.000-04:00

This is a whale watching boat in Bahia de Scorpiones, way south on the Baja peninsula in Mexico. It's also shaped like a Whale, although it has a dorsal fin, just like a shark's. The roof is made of heavy fiberglass, and I can imagine it was so unstable when tourists piled in and puttered seaward through the rollers that it's captain became afraid to pilot it.

The Long Shot also found three dead dolphins on this beach. Buzzards were feasting on their guts at sunset. At a cantina later that day, an American ex-pat told me red tide killed them. The ex-pat was mustachioed, opinionated and hateful toward American visitors - just like most ex-pats in Mexico, or anywhere for that matter. Never be an ex-pat.

Dusk on Rio Solimoes

2007-03-22T12:07:00.000-04:00

A 47-pound Tampaci, Manaus Fish Market

2007-03-22T12:05:00.000-04:00

The Long Face

2007-03-22T12:04:00.000-04:00

2007-03-22T11:52:00.000-04:00

Recently, the Long Shot went up the Amazon River. While he doesn't speak Portuguese, he knows the names of the obscure insects, menacing reptiles, mythical fish, wild cats, and monkeys. He has also become familiar - in a strictly reportorial sense - with an array of young women in miniskirts and "Rockstar" tees. He also had, briefly, an amoeba living in his intestines. Here is the photographic evidence, including shots of his subject, Martin Strel, a crusty, portly 52-year-old Slovenian who is swimming the entire 3,375-mile river, from Atalaya to Belém.

A True Story About A Lyre

2007-03-02T15:28:00.000-05:00

There was once a wounded harbor seal named Hoover who was rescued by a crusty old lobsterman somewhere on the Maine coast. The lobsterman nursed Hoover back to health, and the two became very close. So close, in fact, that Hoover learned to say his own name, "Hoover," and he did so with a thick Maine accent, which he got from his rescuers.

This ain't no Hoover. It's even better. This clip form the David Attenborough archives captures the mind-blowing Lyre bird as it demonstrates its ability to imitate any sound on the planet with perfect fidelity. Including: Camera shutter, motorize camera shutter, car alarm, chainsaw, falling trees.

Sit back and get trippy.

Thursday Reload: Rudy Giuliani

2007-02-22T18:06:00.000-05:00

This edition of the TLS Thursday Reload is brought to us by TLS political analyst, The Blue Fox. A lifelong New Yorker who can barely breathe clean air without passing out cold, Fox writes from Billings, Montana, where he’s busy slurping ground beef soup and charting the next stage of the Democratic Party’s political ascendance.

Today, Fox’s target is antebellum Rudy Giuliani, the thin-lipped snake that we elites know and loathe. While the rest of the country may swallow Giuliani’s meretricious self-reinvention as Galactic Prefect of the Events of 9/11, longtime Nyers aren’t taking the bait.

Take it away, Blue Fox:

“Some of you have heard me rant about the pre-9/11 Rudy. In Slate.com, Jacob Weisberg makes the case that Rudy was "a frustrated and not very popular mayor on Sept. 10," but Weisberg overlooks some of His Honor's more exemplary moments. For instance, his crusade against the First Amendment, such as when he had a street artist repeatedly arrested for selling caricatures of Rudy as Hitler (tasteless, yes; illegal, no); his release of the sealed juvenile records of a man who was accidentally shot by cops in order to impugn the victim; or his steamrolling of community gardens mere hours before he knew a court was scheduled to decide their fate in a case in which the city was a party. Then again, a retelling of Rudy's 1-27 record in the courts defending himself in civil liberties suits might rival Gibbon for length.

“If America's dismay over the state of the Bush Presidency is rooted in disapproval of Bush's chest-thumping foreign policy, intolerance of dissent, and aggrandizement of executive power, Rudy is not the antidote. In fact, on each of those counts if nothing else, his pre-9/11 mayoralty suggests he might just be worse.”

OK, last one.

2007-02-22T11:43:00.000-05:00

This is Kasey Kahne's haul trailer. I post it because he's my godson Eli's favorite driver. Unlike marquee Chevy drivers Tony Stewart, Dale Jr, and Jimmie Johnson, Dodge's Kahne actually finished the race, which works in his favor.

My last Florida picture, then I'm clearing the decks

2007-02-22T11:35:00.000-05:00

2007-02-20T08:55:00.001-05:00

On the ground is Jason Shapiro, the chief of Tony Stewart's #20 car. We're pre-race, waiting in line to get the rear springs and restrictor plate installed, then a full inspection. Jimmie Johnson's 48 car is in front of us, and Dale Jr's 8 is behind us. All three would wreck later in the day.

In the garage earlier that morning, the 20 car was up on blocks, and Jason unpacked his fly rod to kill time. They were feeling good about the car, so Jason cast a fly under the 20 car, which was up on blocks, and into the open lug drawer of the tool case on the far wall - a feat that spanned 40 feet and defied physics. When he's not chiefing the 20 car forty weeks a year, Shapiro catches bass. Lots of them.

2007-02-18T21:07:00.000-05:00

The Ironman Cometh

2007-02-18T21:03:00.000-05:00

Cal Ripken Jr. was nice enough, with a splashier wit than you might expect from a Hall of Fame athlete who played in 2,131 consecutive games. He told me that he's going through a midlife crisis, "but all that's off the record, muchacho." The woman taking this picture screwed up the first two attempts (there was too much light behind us, as you can see). Before each shot, I heard Cal say, under his breath, to himself: "Cheeeeeese".

I guess this is what the internet's for...

2007-02-17T15:54:00.000-05:00

I don't actually know anything about NASCAR, but I'm in the pits for the Daytona 500 anyway. This morning I drove the track and hung out with a couple drivers. Then look who showed up with her big ol' butt: Kelly Clarkson. I don't know anything about American Idol either, but she has a big, well-armed bodyguard. And that makes her photographable.

Your tactics, they intrigue me...

2007-02-09T11:12:00.000-05:00

The Friday Morning Impasse:

Who appreciates an acid attack more than The Long Shot? Who has more respect for activists that bounce around in extremely hostile waters, endangering themselves to protect endangered whales? Finally, who fucking loves whales? Who fucking hates whaling ships? TLS does. TLS does. So when the BBC reported the acid-attack-with-a-happy-ending story from Antarctica today, we decided to preserve it in our little bubble of internetian amber. The alignment of forces rings clear as crystal, sharp as a diamond.

Witness:
Two activists - one American, one Australian - splash acid onto the deck of a Japanese whaling ship. The two vessels collide, and the activists' inflatable dinghy disappears in the cold roiling seas, lost in the wintry fog.

Eventually they are found (assisted by the acid-splashed, blubber-sodden whaling ship, of course) and served steaming mugs of fair trade tea aboard their mothership, the SS Farley Mowat, which is named after a great, late Canadian author, and evidently an environmentalist of some renown.

Wondering what's the point of this post? Me too. I've actually forgotten whose side I'm on. Naturally whaling is a fiendish thing to do, but I was being ironic when I said TLS appreciates acid-splashing. What I meant to say is I acknowledge acid-splashing as an offensive weapon. And while I'm sure those activists are keeping it real, the detail of them sipping fair trade tea (which I, umm, made up) makes them seem like weenies, doesn't it? This Friday Morning Impasse might be a good example of why blogs are dumb. I relent.

TLS Weekly Stolen Book Review: "The Birthday Party," by Stanley Alpert

2007-01-24T17:37:00.000-05:00

Imagine this: The Long Shot regularly reads the book reviews of carnivorous, pepper-tongued Michiko Kakutani. Today's entry is the work of Michiko's more subdued colleague, William Grimes, who suckles "The Birthday Party," a memoir by assistant federal attorney Stanley Alpert. The book begins on Mr. Alpert's 38th birthday, during which he is plucked from a Greenwich Village sidewalk by three young black thugs driving a Lexus. The kidnappers plan on forcing Alpert to drain his checking account, but when they discover he has $110,000 in a savings account, they bring him back to his apartment (accompanied by three prostitutes - yes...), tie him up, and wait until the bank opens the next day.

Rotate street abduction into compendium of NYC paranoia (train crumple, germ release, airplane crash, edifice collapse, sewage eruption, rat bite, roach in ear canal, home entry, gas fire, careering FreshDirect truck, rampaging cop, spitting bum). Grimes loves "The Birthday Party", bless his heart, and he gives us a peppery [ref., Michikotian] glimpse at what (presumably) makes it so fucking great:

"There are many tense moments. Sen, without warning, begins raving, screaming out sick, violent fantasies of murder and mayhem. “I remained frozen in sheer terror, silent and unflinching, hoping he would not act,” Mr. Alpert writes. Gradually, he realizes that Sen is singing along to a Busta Rhymes rap on the radio."

America is Dying

2007-01-18T11:57:00.000-05:00

The Long Shot took this picture yesterday as he rode in a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter from lower Manhattan to the American Airlines terminal at JFK airport. Then he turned around and flew back, having caught a glimpse at how the fatter half lives: from office playground to steaming mug of gold-flaked cappuccino at the Ambassador's Lounge in less than half an hour.

At right wing: Reign of Blood

2007-01-10T11:39:00.000-05:00

The Long Shot went to a New York Rangers game last night with his cousin, Elizabeth. It was a pretty normal scene: Hefty, slick-haired mooks in hockey shirts belting out arcane chants about long-retired players and the utterly uninteresting grudge between the MSG faithful and those pests out in Nassau County. In short, baby-eating fans of the lowest order.

However, once the game started, TLS felt something different. Something Other. And then we saw it:

A closer look reveals the Prince of Darkness.

Happy birthday, ER.

Suspicions confirmed

2007-01-02T14:38:00.000-05:00

When I was wee lad, my parents knew there was something wrong with me, psychologically speaking. They brought me to Boston Children's Hospital where a soon-to-be noted child psychologist named Melvin D. Levine performed what is called, in the parlance of doctordom, a "bevy of experiments"*. Of this "bevy", I sadly remember just one: Dr. Levine asked me to draw something, and I drew a crude picture of a custom van, with A-Team racing stripes and a round window on the side. The results were inconclusive, until now. From today's New York Times:

"A bevy of experiments* in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control."

Holiday Sunset on Huron Street

2006-12-21T10:58:00.000-05:00

News Items: File under "Non-Cracksmoker"

2006-12-14T10:26:00.000-05:00

A couple teardrops in the vast pool of cultural conversation. The first is not really online, but it's got one of the TLS principal's names affixed to it, so it's worth a clickthrough. The other is about the filthy side of the written word. Long shot, indeed.

TLS Cracksmoker of the Week

2006-11-30T09:58:00.000-05:00

This news story was posted last night on the Orlando Sentinel's website:

MAN ON CRACK WHEN ALLIGATOR ATTACKED

LAKELAND -- A man who was attacked by an alligator this morning was naked and smoking crack at the time, Polk County deputies who rescued him said today.

The alligator had the man in his jaws when deputies arrived at Lake Parker in Lakeland about 4 a.m. today. They were called by nearby residents who reported hearing a man yelling for help.

Evidently, the Cracksmoker, a 45-year-old named Adrian J. Apgar, was tangled in the gator's toothy embrace for some time before the police arrived. One of his arms was hanging by a thread, the other badly broken, and his left leg had suffered "trauma". You pause for a moment to imagine fighting off an alligator - naked, chewed up, in the dark. But you can't imagine it because you haven't smoked crack lately. Me neither. But my instincts tell me whatever it is that makes crack cocaine so lethal-slash-appealing could be the same heady ingredient that gave Mr. Adrian J. Apgar such uncommon pluck.

Perhaps most remarkably, police arrived and heard Apgar yell, "I have two broken arms and an alligator's got me pinned. I can't move. Please help me." The man has ice water in his veins! He's chewed up, cracked out, naked as baby Jesus, yet he still has the wherewithal to (almost) correctly assess his wounds.

After deputies won what the Sentinel describes as a "tug-of-war" in a dark swamp with the alligator, Apgar underwent surgery to reattach his arm. Crash Derby and I at The Long Shot say bravo to Mr. Apgar, for never has a Cracksmoker so clearly earned back his severed arm.

A puzzle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in raw bird

2006-10-27T08:05:00.000-04:00

Do these men look like they just spent nine months and nine days drifting on a small boat in the Pacific Ocean, surviving on rainwater, raw birds and sea turtles?

The Offending Dish

2006-10-16T14:40:00.000-04:00

His Wife, Also Deep-Fried, Happily Demonstrated

2006-10-16T10:45:00.000-04:00

A local culinary sociopath at the 2006 Texas State Fair introduced his latest dessert innovation/assault weapon: Deep-fried Coca-Cola, served with whipped cream, sometimes on a stick.

According to one Texas TV station's website, "Gonzales deep-fries Coca-Cola-flavored batter. He then drizzles Coke fountain syrup on it. The fried Coke is topped with whipped cream, cinnamon sugar and a cherry. Gonzales said the fried Coke came about just from thinking aloud."

Usually I contain my harangues against obese America to private, untraceable conversations. But this dish - a particularly offensive addition to the Extreme Frying family, which already includes pizza, candy bars and whole turkeys - requires me to seek the purifying therapy of public discussion. Plus, there's a story of redemption hidden in the coverage: The TV station hosted an online poll, asking whether Joe Public would try deep-fried Coke on a stick. 33% of the respondents said "Absolutely!", 43% said "Heck no!"

And When I'm Done With It, I'll Mail It To Geneva

2006-10-15T21:29:00.000-04:00

I was munching on blazing leftover curried zucchini tonight when I noticed a mouse trapped in my wastebasket. In trying to escape, it managed to launch 12 or 13 inches up the side of the container, just a hair short of freedom. Ever the sportsman, I acknowledged its athleticism. Can you imagine if humans could jump 4 times our height from atop a pile of coffee grounds and apple cores?

But mostly I laughed at this mouse's miserable predicament. I hate mice, and I wish to destroy them all. So I finished my curry and cinched up the garbage bag, twist-tied it, and put it out for the morning trash.

My question is this: if I were to catch one and torture it for all the others to see and hear - say I leave it splayed out cruciform on a glue trap with a number painted on its tiny tummy - would it have deterrent effect on the other mice? What if I sawed its head off and placed it on a tiny pike? Is there a downside to taking the moral low road?

[Serial Fiction, Part 3]

2006-10-10T09:45:00.000-04:00

There is a woman on the floor

Chava stepped past the woman with a Pacifico in either hand. He still smelled like the shark boat and the rotting cotton nets. He was quiet on the dock that afternoon, and didn't have anything to say about Jesus Ramirez. Tonight, with the old woman lying unconscious, Chava couldn't stop talking.

"We caught plenty of tiburones before we lost the gear," he said. "There were eighty hooks in the water, and shark blood up to our ankles on the deck. Jesus was pleased about that. At night, he drank beer and performed a concert with an air guitar. Then he talked about all the black pussy he had last year on Islas Marias."

As I listened to Chava's quiet, steady telling of story, I noticed that the old woman hadnt stirred. The bar was dark, and flashes of light reflected inside from the fireworks out on the zocalo. The bartender walked around the bar and the handful of regulars stopped their conversations, though not Chava.

"There is a woman on the floor, Antonio," one said to the bartender.

"Yes, I can see that," Antonio said. And he looked at me through the darkness and the smoke from the cigars and the fireworks. I'm the only gringo within 60 miles. Maybe he thinks I'm a doctor.

[Serial Fiction, Part 2]

2006-10-08T13:08:00.000-04:00

Jesus Ramirez has died

I turned my head to the direction of the clanging and saw the old woman fall. She looked like a big cake, a spongy mass in a flowery sack. Have you ever seen someone fall unconscious to the ground? Have fate and folly ever given you such a gift? I’ve seen it. They go down in a controlled corkscrew, as though the core of their brain protects itself. The woman didn’t. Her head hit hard on the tile, and her legs splayed out like scattered sticks.

Outside on the zocalo a mariachi was leading the village in a rain-swept grito – “Viva Mexico!”, “Viva Zapatero!” I was waiting at the dock that afternoon and greeted Chava when he arrived. There was a crowd of fishermen waiting to hear about what happened Jesus Ramirez way out at sea, beyond Islas Marias. We tied up the boat and he said to me, “We don’t have to worry about freedom in Mexico. Let’s get drunk.”

[Serial Fiction, Part 1]

2006-10-06T17:41:00.000-04:00

La Tormenta

Chava had just ordered his fifth beer when the old woman collapsed onto the floor of the bar. He was holding the sweating Pacifico in his hand and the woman nudged against the bar from her stool and slipped to the ground. She was a big woman in a salt-stained flower camiseta. That afternoon on the town square she was sober, and I thought that she was a dignified old bird and graceful. But when the old woman fell at the bar she took with her a pile of camarone shells and an ashtray, which clanged on the hard tile floor and rolled out the open door and onto the street in the rain.

To be continued

The Great Spinach Massacre

2006-09-17T23:48:00.000-04:00

As of this evening, 104 Americans have E. Coli poisoning from eating tainted spinach. The television news unrolls lurid clips of vigilant grocers nationwide removing bags of spinach from shelves. Our heroes in the FDA warn us to avoid eating spinach or spinach-based products until the menace passes. Oh, that menacing vegetable.

Here's some perspective: There are 300 million people in the United States. 104 Americans are ill. Current odds of getting E. Coli poisoning from eating spinach: Around 30,000,000 to 1. Similarly, you have 1 chance in 23,000,000 of death by drinking detergent. More than 4,000 people die of snakebites every year. In India alone, more than 104 people are killed by elephants annually.

I'm going to take spinach's side on this. September is Leafy Greens Month.

A Watery Assassin

2006-08-18T08:16:00.000-04:00

TLS Writer-At-Large Mike Guy blitzing London

Hate Update!

2006-07-11T11:31:00.000-04:00

Perhaps you've already read this, World, but Hero likes to follow up: Zidane's sister claims Materazzi called Zidane, the son of Algerian immigrants, a "dirty terrorist." Materazzi responds that he couldn't have said that because "I'm ignorant," adding, "I don't even know the meaning of that word, 'terrorist.'" I'm willing to bet Materazzi doesn't know that Zidane is a Jew, either.

2006-07-11T02:40:00.000-04:00

2:35 a.m.: Moments ago, I was awoken by the desperate squeaking of a mouse caught in a glue trap under my fridge. I shuddered in bed for a while listening to it. Then I put on my hiking boots and rubber dish gloves, donned noice-cancelling ear phones, and selected the Band's "Tears of Rage" on the guyPod. I went to the utensil drawer and grabbed some salad tongs. I took a deep breath, leaned down and tonged the glued-up mouse, carried him briskly to the shitter and tossed him in. Wretched fucking fate, mouse.

Tears of rage
Tears of grief
Why must i always be the thief?
Come to me now
You know we're so alone
and life is brief."

Especially for mice. Once again: R.I.P. Kimchee, for all the vermin you presumably ate or chased off while I was sleeping.

I'm Just Going to Give Him a Quick Kiss

2006-07-11T02:18:00.000-04:00

School of Hits tells me that Zidane is an Algerian Jew, and I think that's probably the topic of discussion Materazzi (nasty guinea bruiser) used as Topic of Discussion leading to one of the wildest gladiatorial meltdowns caught on tape. Zizou's Fall is an unfortunate asterix to a distinguished career that included one of the best ever goals in club play. However, it offers us an opportunity to appreciate what I've always considered Great Britain's most impacting contributions: The Glasgow Kiss, king of the kinetic arts, the humble Headbutt, unfairly ghettoized in stinking bars in one or more of London's viler "Ends." Zizou deployed an exotic version of the upright headbutt with a crisp flair one would expect from one of the game's greatest finesse players. And if you're thinking it was a cheap shot, just go ahead and try smashing your forehead into some jerkoff's sternum with half as much accuracy. And while you're having a go at that, consider the restraint Zidane showed by not wiping the silly nose right off Materazzi's face. Humble indeed, Mr. Zidane. Here's to you.

TLS's Friday Pokey Roll Call

2006-06-30T07:17:00.000-04:00

Today is the final workday before we evacuate New York City and hide Upstate for the Fourth of July. I'm going to Livingston Manor, in the Catskills, for an experimental music conference and pool party. Then on Sunday I fly off to Austria and Slovenia to race Toyota rally cars all week.

But before I go, here's a slim tribute to modern America: the Corporate Patriot's Friday Prison Roll Call. Brace yourself, Sheila.

- IN Dennis Kozlowski, disgraced Tyco CEO, convicted tax evader, and neglectful dad (I went to the junior prom with his daughter, Cheryl), is still in prison. I have a great story about how he met his second wife and nearly got himself killed by the Rye, NH, lobstering community. It's a juicy, World, but you'll have to wait.
- OUT Even though he's not a Yank, he's rich enough to matter: Chung Mong-koo, Hyndai's chairman, posted a $1 million bond against charges of defraud Hyndai shareholders and embezzling money. Being of the innocent-until-executed type of corporate victim, Hyndai invited Mong-koo back to run the company until his trial.
- THE SYSTEM WORKS! Bernard Kerik, former NYPD commissioner, NYC Corrections chief, and illicit bedmate to proto-cougar Judyth Regan, is mulling a guilty plea for accepting $200,000 in gifts from the mob while heading Corrections. Should he accept the State's offer, he'll avoid prison altogether. But of course.

Bermuda Is a Race Riot

2006-06-27T09:08:00.000-04:00

I'll get the pro forma announcement out of the way: The Dreamcatcher won the race. 265 boats crossed the start line in Newport, and the Dream Team finished first in our class and 9th overall. Our closest competition was the US Naval Academy's Navy 44, Swift. Crewed by the brightest minds in the Navy, Swift shadowed us through the Gulf Stream and along 34 degrees latitude like a ghost frigate, mirroring our tactics and mocking our voyage-made-good. Each time we thought we'd lost them, their sinister masthead light appeared through a malevolent mist on the horizon astern. After 635 miles and 118 hours of brutal sailing, Dreamcatcher beat Swift in a squall by 4 seconds at the finish line. We were so close, we could see the light stubble on the young Navy skipper's chin.

Most significantly, World, and of much more import than Dreamcatcher's victory, is that your unflagging Hero comported himself with strength and courage. In fact, at the crew's celebration dinner in Bermuda Captain Kylander and several other crewmen toasted Hero's bravery, vigor, and seamanship. (I wasn't there; had to fly home early and work. Oh the grind the grind the grind.) In the photo, watch me climb the mast in Newport to check for chafe marks. First test passed with elan, thank you very much.

In the next episode: Horror At Sea; Hero Beats the Odds, Gets Queasy

Fuck you, Al Gore

2006-06-13T10:27:00.000-04:00

This may sound fashionable, but so what: Fuck you, Al Gore. Fuck you for Iraq, John Roberts, our 3-0 loss at the World Cup, and for Keith Richards falling out of a coconut tree. You're a boorish Southern queen with a Cindy lisp and a hairflip. You're a meretricious ass-slapper and a patrician prick. You have a repellent personality, and your daughter married a proctologist. You ran a cowardly and dunderheaded campaign in 2000 and conceded too easily. And even though your anti-war speeches in 2002 sound in retrospect like the maniacally concise utterings of Nostradamus II, they required little risk and offered no remedy.

Now there is a groundswell of Draft Goreism. And I suppose that if you announced a candidacy tomorrow, I'd still support you, Al Gore. I would. I would consider it my heroic sacrifice. But know this: If a certain vertically underendowed Jewish billionaire from Boston announced the day after tomorrow, I'd drop you faster than a dead cat in high summer. You jerk-off...

My Lycaon is Horribly Pictus

2006-06-09T17:22:00.000-04:00

For some people, talent is like a disease. This is one of my *philosophies*. With that in mind, my lover boys in the paleolithically-named rock band, Lycaon Pictus, are drooling and pustulant, a heartbeat away from a long, long dirt nap.

So there's my Friday Arts Recommendation: Lycaon Pictus.

Hero Re-Wets his Feet

2006-06-09T15:13:00.001-04:00

It's a white pursuit, offshore racing, and I'm a soul brother. But that's how strange life gets sometimes. Last week, a set of astral dominoes fell all in a line and landed at my feet: One minute I'm a rap star and street hustler, the next I'm a crewman on board a race boat. The race is the 100th Bermuda Race, 630-something miles from Newport to St. David's Head, Bermuda, starting next Wednesday, June 16 - Bloomsday, to you fellow alumni of Prof. Terence Dewsnap's course, Ulysses .

I'm chaff on board this vessel, a 48-foot lightnin' titan named Dreamcatcher. My older brother is the watch captain (that's how I got aboard), and I'm very much the new guy: Chaff, as I said. That's fine. Hero needs a touch of humbling after a high-flying Spring of seemingly Limitless Success. When will the easy days ever end? I've lately wondered, aloud to myself, while I cried in the shower.

Into the ineluctable reality of the visible...

Hard Lesson, Vol. IV

2006-06-08T00:28:00.000-04:00

Never set glue traps in the nude.

Countdown to futbol

2006-06-07T04:31:00.000-04:00

Brazilians pronounce restaurant, "Hesss-to-raunch". Ronaldinho has a fierce overbite and wets his bed on occasion. I can't look away.

Bike attack, unredacted

2006-06-06T19:33:00.000-04:00

Full disclosure. There's a coda to the bike attack. The coda retells the ending, wherein I don't pedal past the sons-of-bitches. In the real ending there is no popcorn, either. Nor is it a still midnight. In the real ending I'm dragged off my bike like a bag of spuds and two guys beat my head into the macadam. While it's happening commuters are beginning their trudge to the G train, and all day I thought I was one lucky bastard for not getting more hurt than I was. After a day spent filling out forms, having my head examined, and whining to unresponsive NYPD detectives, I go home and sulk and soak in the bathtub as blood pounds in my ears and my skull and nose throb.I'm not as charitable. I want to excoriate my fucking neighbors and beat Hispanics senseless. But I went to sleep listening to Mahmoud Ahmed's Ethopieste. Never do anything enraged. Let anger simmer and see what it tastes like in the morning.

Mira los Chicos Malos

2006-06-06T02:04:00.000-04:00

I was biking up my street tonight to get a box of popcorn. It was midnight, and the street was empty. Then two guys in white wife-beaters walked onto the street in front of me. At first I thought they were crossing, then I realized they were steering toward me. They lead guy was unsteady on his feet, and he had a weird, wild look in his eyes. He and his pal approached fast, like a couple of drunken Dominican guided missiles. I'm fast, World, and I'm wily. A tough target to hit. So I quickly weaved my bike left, over a piece of lumber lying on the street (where the heck did... Lumber?), and then made a quick right to avoid the second guy. Both were hispanics, with those queer manicured hairlines that are in style. Both lost balance trying to grab me, and each one tripped over the lumber in the road and fell. As I cleared them, I noticed a third man on the sidewalk, a white dude. Instead of lunging for me, he started laughing at his buddies lying on street. The funniest part of this very surreal moment was my reaction. As I was pedaling furiously, I said, in a conversational voice, "Easy, dudes."

BBQ Joint Closes; South Loses Charm, Appeal

2006-06-05T18:42:00.000-04:00

Charleston, Spring 1998. I'm on tour with my formerly famous rock band. We play a show in a filthy mechanic's garage on Spring Street, on the black side of town. The cracked wooden doors of the garage are open, and the traffic passes slowly by.

It's a poor neighborhood, and the paint on the row houses has peeled down to bare, bleached pine slats. Across the street from the garage, a parking lot serves a small row of businesses, including a wig store and a little family-run joint the New Orleans Connection, home of the Best Barbecue Ribs Ever Made.

The meat eaters in my band had loitered in the parking lot all afternoon, eating pork ribs as fast and James and Mabel Cumberland, the NOC owners, could cook them. The ribs were perfectly rubbed and slathered in NOC sauce, sticky with molasses. They crumbled in our hands and dissolved in our mouths. We dedicated every song of our show to them. Although the night ended badly for me, per usual - in a pile of junk on the floor of the van, bracing for a hideous hangover - I've been talking about the New Orleans Connection for 10 years. There is still BBQ sauce on my guitar.

Jump cut: Last week, I went to Charleston to revisit Spring Street and check up on the New Orleans Connection for a magazine article. The garage is still there, though there are no babbling, drooling punk rockers writhing inside. Sadly, the Connection is gone. All that remains is a flaking sign on the roof, the letters barely discernible. I stood for some time in the parking lot, sweating and feeling old and bland. I thought about going to the white part of town and eat at one of the new Charleston yuppie feed-troughs that have cracker food writers slobbering. But why bother? They're no better or worse than the new cuisine in Savannah to the south or even New York City way up north.

So the Hero poured a little Gatorade out on the parking lot in memory of James and Mabel Cumberland's pork ribs, then climbed into his Maserati QP Sport GT (that's another story). He programmed his GPS navigation system for the tiny coastal village of Darien, GA, where a new greasy plate ribs awaited.

I am not a Crackhead. I'm Futbol Fan.

2006-06-05T10:05:00.000-04:00

I restored my cable service this morning. And you're thinking, "How very unheroic, Mikey. More disaster television and tween reality while your tiny tower of underachievement topples." Actually, World, this time it's different. This time my cable subscription is a global statement. The World Cup is here, the matches start soon, and I ain't no filthy isolationist. I'm a global Doer, I'm a child of open borders and Airhitch. I root for poor countries and poor people and all their minor achievements. Hell, I am a poor person of minor achievement. Some say the British invented soccer and the Brazilians perfected it. Here's my amendment: the Americans broadcast it on four different cable channels. So here I am, World, doing my part. Now please leave me be.

Made by Frenchmen, but essential nonetheless

2006-06-02T09:19:00.000-04:00

This past winter, during the only decent blizzard of the season, I hunkered down and watched all 8 hours of the documentary mini-series, "The Staircase". In the pantheon of cinema which explores whether or not the effeminate husband beat his wife to death over the head, The Staircase is a shocking entry. The husband in question is Michael Peterson, an inelegant best-selling writer of historico-battle novels set in Vietnam depicting army buddies confiding brotherliness as VC bullets whiz past. One night, Peterson's wife, a chirpy VP at Nortel, ends up dead at the bottom of the staircase in their North Carolina McMansion. Police arrest Peterson, who is also a muckraking columnist in the local rag, and the DA charges him with Murder One. The wily French filmmakers manage to insinuate their cameras into every aspect of the proceeding investigation and the trial. The result is a very intimate and hypnotic document of a trial - and the upper-crust of the New South - that gets weirder by the day. Is he guilty? Is the DA getting sweet revenge? Will his children turn on him? What about the corpse in faraway Germany? What about the fireplace poker?

Thus ends the first installment of my Friday cinema recommendation: The Staircase, by some Frenchmen.

Look Out, Bubba: Here Comes The New Me.

2006-06-01T16:50:00.000-04:00

How's this for a friggin blog entry: I canceled my cable today. Yesterday I was writing a story for Poker Life magazine...

That's right. I said Poker Life. You got a problem with that?

.. Anyway, I was trying to write a story for Poker Life when I found myself unable to think of a synonym for the word "threatening". I sat and pondered this for some time. I turned the word over in my mind, I cogitated.

Then, suddenly, before I knew it really, I was prone on the couch, the dark wood shades drawn, the TV flipping between Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch" and the new "Laguna Beach" sequel, "The Hills". I was at ease, the contour of my fat ass blending with the lumpy couch. Now there's that reassuring crick in my neck, the one I get when I turn my head slightly to starboard - that's the best angle toward the TV. That's it. Yes, that's it... right there. Now I'm placing my thumb on that "last channel" button, the one with the aureole of dirt smudged around it. I press and press late into the night, ignoring the vibrating phone and my next-door neighbors' marital spat (her credit card bill irks him; he's a screamer). An opportunistic mouse scratches at a pasta box in the cupboard (R.i.p. Kimchee). I don't care. I'm at peace, watching a crab fisherman weep over a dead shipmate, swept overboard into the frigid water of the Bering Sea. I am no longer worrying over bothersome matters such as whether "apocalyptic" is a good synonym for "threatening". I have cable TV.

Or I did. It's gone now, and I'm on fire. A creative explosion of titanic proportions (maybe that's the wrong word). Baneful. That's a good synonym for "threatening". See how easy it is without cable TV? I feel better already.

2006-04-25T15:20:00.000-04:00

The Tao of Kimchee

2006-04-11T08:30:00.000-04:00

Kimchee died today, on April Fool's Day. She had been losing weight steadily for the past four months or so, and was down to 8.5 pounds from 12. Last week she started acting slow, slightly drunken, and I watched her fall a couple times. That was especially disconcerting. While Kim was no Irina Slutskaya, she was always proud of her posture and poise. One might even say excessively so. On Monday I brought her in for a checkup and a blood test at the Humane society, and they didnt seem too concerned. I thought we had been handed a reprieve.

Then on Thursday she abruptly set up camp behind my couch and refused to come out except to sample an occasional meal (cat food with lobster, no less). Hiding is never a good sign with cats. So on April 1 I brought her into the animal e.r. and they found a hidden litany of problems, including a severe heart murmur and acute renal failure. I was given the option of either admitting her, rehydrating on an IV for two days (risky, coupled with the heart murmur, and obviously expensive), and then entering a program of chronic renal maintenance, which means I'd stick her with an iv every two days for the rest of her life. Or I could put her to sleep. The decision was hideous, but I didn't think too hard about it. It was longer than a long shot. Kimchee would have hated the IV maintenance, and I wasnt about to torture her.

Putting Kimchee down was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. But she went out with dignity - not yet so sick she couldnt keep that ridiculous coat of hers clean, and not in that much pain. In fact, as I waited for the doctor in the exam room tonight, she fell asleep on my lap.

Reason #4 Not To Fear Arabs

2005-12-08T17:54:00.000-05:00

This afternoon I came across this photo of a family of sultans exhibiting their falcons. I'm trying to flush a story assignment out of Qatar. How exciting is falconry? Is it more exciting than waterskiing or fishing? It's hard to judge by looking at these sultans. I think they are proud of their birds. Very proud indeed. And a little tired too. Still undecided about whether this would make for a diverting read. Unless, of course, the falcons were to come hunt me. Hmmmmm...

Mother Nature's Gift Ideas for Sporting Spouse

2005-12-08T17:10:00.000-05:00

I'm freezing this week because i don't have a proper winter coat that fits. New York City's winter wind is a particularly brutal kind - unavoidable, swirling with vindiction and misanthropy. Country folks are getting soft, passing briefly from heated house to heated car. A commute to work from Brooklyn means a lonely trudge along an exposed sidewalk, a descent to a frigid, dank subway platform. Malodorous arctic chamber. Spilled coffee freezing on the pantleg. I have Pity for stranded cats and the shivering, dying homeless.

Luckily I don't commute, or else I would most certainly mail-order Cabela's Bridger Mountain Man Coyote Fur Hat. Then I would be shot as fast as a jabbering lunatic on a jet bridge. But when I do leave my house, I bundle up in rags, using an old horse blanket as outerwear.

Running from Nuns

2005-11-22T11:43:00.000-05:00

Because she is elderly, Sister Mary Joan Baldino writes me emails in ALL CAPS. The last email was a request for the email address of my editor at the New York Times Magazine. Sister Mary Joan has a story idea which she thinks is perfect for the Style section. Sr. Mary Joan is an ambitious woman.

Back to Amsterdam: Sister Mary Joan and I enjoyed a long dinner at the Crowne Plaza near Schiphol Airport. I'm not going to disclose the juiciest tidbits of the conversation because I'm willing to bet that her superiors in the New York Diocese google their more controversial nuns all the time. I will say this though: society's collective suspicions about the state of the Catholic Church - the corrupt patrimony, the thievery, the self-aggrandizement and high Machiavellian treachery - are all pretty much true and then some.

After dinner, Sr. MJ blessed me ("God bless you!" she exclaimed, with authority), and I took the train into the city center to walk among the bland filth and witness the commodified bad behavior that is Amsterdam. I've always hated this city, even before I had been blessed by a nun - and when I would have smoked the hash. I wish I had seen it before it became crowded with ugly drunken Brits and knife-wielding Arab teenagers.

The Hero had a coffee and a slice of pie along a canal, and it was a let down after that fine Roman espresso.

In Amsterdam, I Had a Nun For Dinner...

2005-10-13T17:18:00.000-04:00

My flight out of Rome was two hours late departing. Fog in Amsterdam, they told me. If you hurry, they said, you might just make your connection to Newark. So when we landed at Schiphol Airport, I ran its full breadth, from Terminal A to Terminal G, sprinting like a certain well-known running back through dazed Red Light refugees, through bickering, hungover conventioneers, through harried families, backpackers, flight crews, bums, skalawags & Frenchmen - and arrived at my gate one minute after Continental Airlines closed the door. I walked angrily to the window and looked into the cockpit of the aircraft, and I swear the co-pilot flipped me the bird and winked.

When I turned to face my impending night in the airport I found the terminal was empty, except for me - your sweating, newly-infuriated Hero - and a nun.

A nun! Sister Mary Joan of the Staten Island branch (or whatever they're called) of the Order of St. Paul Convent. That's the Paulines for short. Sister Mary Joan is 76 years old, born in Sardinia, resident of New York City for 53 years. A real spitfire, the Sister is, but it turns out she has bad ankles. Beigna gentleman, Hero grabs her bags, and together we re-traverse the full breadth of Schiphol Airport.

Here is a tidy piece of fortune: I get stranded for a night in perhaps the most morally unambiguous city in the world, and the Good Lord gives me a nun to keep me on the straight and narrow. Or does she?

Next episode: My Dinner With Sister Mary Joan

I can fit Rome on my fingernail

2005-10-02T11:44:00.000-04:00

It poured all day today, and water ran across the cobbles. Hero is in a funk, his bold and noted hair flat on his head. In the afternoon, Hero and his lovely hostess, Milena, ran through the slick drizzle to a market and found a tomato expert rumored to be a member of the banned Red Brigade. As we talked, he cut me and Milena pieces of tart cherries and fat rich Brandywine. The tomatoes are magic. They taste like none found in the US, where Americans believe south New Jersey's ripest. late-August beefsteaks are Great Produce. In fact, they are not. But it's no one's fault. The Romans have enchanted soil.

In response to the Slovenian poet, JW School of Hits, Hero has this to say: The Polarity Solo ran out of money. Gaps in required technology (such as the Inmarsat C) hung like a fog over our daily routine. But the problems went deeper than just money. Hero encountered more tragi-comical issues with each passing hour, including the inoperable liferaft strapped to the transom, the hand-sewn Frankenstein of a Solent, and the shredded genoa bunched in a molding pile in the sail locker. On the second day aboard, Hero initiated a debate with his reluctant skipper over the realities of PS's finances, especially in view of daunting equipment list. It wasn't long before Hero - who is a Hero because he is patient and generally good-willed - ran out of patience and good will.

to be continued...

Hero stumbles, lands dazed in city of Heroes

2005-09-29T09:00:00.000-04:00

Hero can hear the faint, distant meowing of his cat, Kimchee. All the way from Rome - that's right, Rome - Hero listens to the mocking meow of the cat, who says, "I told you so."

Alas, Hero's quest to race the TJV has amounted to a whole lot of thunder and precious little lightning. After training and fundraising as fast and loudly as is possible, capital-H Hero has run out of sea-room and called it off. The reasons are numerous and dull and somewhat humbling, but the most resonant is that Paul and I couldn't land sufficient cash or tech sponsorship in the short time we had. It's a shame, but it was a long shot, after all. Heroic Theorem of Squirrelly Occurrence: "Everything happens for a reason, especially in squirrelly, harebrained schemes with highly unstable quantities of squirrelliness and harebrainitia." If you'll recall, this whole program was launched by a phone call from a certified lunatic named Antonio (who by the way holds the record for youngest Spaniard to solo Atlantic). But then Tony was sent to the booby-hatch. As for the Brixton toro, Paul, I'd never met him before I boarded the Polarity, and whenever I see him again will be far too soon. (There I go shooting off at the mouth).

Antonio, meanwhile, is cooking up new plans and potential future Long Shots, including the King's Cup, in which he skippered a boat last year.

So, in answer to Jeff's and Kizz's concerns, the Long Shot finds Hero in Rome, where he is recuperating. Since he has sublet his NYC apartment until December 1, he's still trying to figure out his options. If anyone has any brilliant ideas, please let me know. The truth is, Hero doesn't want to go crawling back to his hypercritical cat with his tail between his legs.

The Magic Kettle

2005-09-22T06:20:00.000-04:00

Hero remembers vaguely the moment in Moitessier's The Long Way when the professor sermonizes about the pressure cooker at sea. Here's a Hero's elegy: It is the magic kettle. Place water and whatever the hell else you want into it -- rice, garbanzos, pieces of chicken, curry paste, tuna, a swatch of canvas -- zap it for 5 minutes after first steam and let it sit for another 4. Even if the boat is bouncing around like a cat on coals (oh, and it is! oh, yes, it is...) the cooker stays sealed. Throw it across the cabin and it stays sealed (if it hits your head, there's no guarantee your skull with stay sealed. More on that later.) It is also very gas-efficient, and ordains every dish with a mystical tastiness. The pressure cooker = magic kettle.

In other news: We worked on the assym yesterday in the mouth of the harbor, and went through the reefing system. A double-reef is the Solo's favorite configuration in force 4/5. Back at the dock I climbed the mast to replace the VHF antenna and the Winddex, and had a view right into the ladies showers along the pier. That should satisfy the desperate cries from married men for more salacious material.

In the evening I received news that one of the bigger cash sponsors we had landed had reconsidered. The rep cited Hurricane Katrina. It was a hard blow, and it gets us dangerously close to a two-year postponement. Anyway, I accept full responsibility for Katrina (part of the general law of probability, entitl'd "Mike's Law of Trans-Atlantic Occurence," stating that whenever I fly from NYC to Barcelona, something horrible happens in the States the following day: 9/11, NYC blackout, Hurricane Katrina).

Anyway, we managed to convince the TJV race committee to allow us to qualify with a Sat D+ system in stead of a Sat C. I had an offer last month from Marine Track for a Sat D+, and now they are balking. Looks like another weekend in Lisbon...

Hero on heaving deck, Polarity no longer Solo...

2005-09-20T06:28:00.000-04:00

Hero dictates to Paul Metcalf (PM) from deck. Second Polarity training run. Past dawn, have raised big fat new mainsail with two reefs and steam at 12 knots in moderate seas. [Please keep up with difficult lingo via google.] Hero also has a sunburnt neck and a badly bruised heel. Will never unless visibly undeniable admit to seasickness. PM an odd fellow, built like a Brixton toro , says words like "crikey", thinks all Americans are from Fort Lauderdale, has crap taste in music, smells like curry. The boat is a monster, a raging monster, eats waves with aluminum teeth and breathes heavy wind. Loud and vibrating, wet and dangerous. Not so much sailboat as hellsled. 5,500 miles to go. Thank God Hero is heroic. Plan to complete crash training Thursday and depart for Cherbourg and the French flesheaters. Still await Sat C. More later.

The hero departs, an ancient city weeps...

2005-09-18T09:55:00.000-04:00

This evening, ahora mismo, I'm finally leaving for Lisbon and the Polarity Solo. My hosts, Eric and Aurora, have been kinder than thye should have been. We have eaten many typical Catalan meals together, I have learned to conjugate five Catalan verbs and to form several sentences built around the word "cat". My only complaint is that the accomodations have been too palatial. Like Ellen MacArthur and Captain Willard, I have grown soft as flan here in Barcelona, and lost most of my tan.

The weather report on the Portuguese coast calls for a prolonged high pressure system with light winds and weather uncharacteristically felicitous for the region. Paul is going to meet me at the gas dock at Doca do Belem, in the port of Lisbon, at eight o'clock tonight, and we're off to an anchorage nearby. For the next few days, probably until Thursday. Meanwhile, we're keeping our fingers crossed that Stratos Global comes though with the Sat C, otherwise, we're going to spend our food money one and install it ourselves - which is what I suppose normal people do.

Now I'm off to the airport. Hope to post again before I depart Lisbon.

Hero falls ill, feverishly awaits turnaround

2005-09-16T12:16:00.000-04:00

Fever-wracked and forlorn, I'm on my sickbed. Flight to Lisbon postponed at great expense until Sunday; extraordinary patience of hosts Eric and Aurora confirmed to be limitless, having last night withstood a withering Force 8 gale of complaints from Mike. This afternoon I fired off emails to both of them at their P.O.W. (Places of Work) demanding they arrange for a nurse to help me through this difficult Friday night a-bed. I even suggested they contact a young monja I met two nights ago named Azahara. Still no word.

The state of my health hardly matters. Paul and the Solo are banging into 28 knots sustained winds on the nose, still 12 hours or more out of the Cascacis and Lisbon, Portugal. The appalling conditions contradict the weather report I read from the MET UK office yesterday, but what the hell do I know about weather? I'm sloshing about in manzanilla tea and breathing vaporized medicine. Fittingly, this morning I picked up the Solo's new medical kit. Assembled quickly by a local anesthesiologist, its eclectic contents reflect a keen, albeit well-intentioned, disregard for life at sea. For instance, it includes triply-redundant treatments for gastritis and diarrhea (both of which culminate thrillingly with the deployment of "Sipositorios de Glicerina"), yet it falls well short on the matter of seasickness (one packet "Biodramina") and infections (one envelope of Antibiotica Pomade, which is precisely what it sounds like and resembles a packet of McDonald's ketchup).

This afternoon my friend Almudena dropped off a DVD of Mutiny on the Bounty. "A little something of the sea for you to watch tonight, Miguelito." I find her humor vexing.

Rumors from a world I never knew

2005-09-15T15:15:00.000-04:00

Because nobody really reads this thing, and few who do really give a crap about open ocean racing, and because I don't know a soul in this race, not a soul - for all of these reasons I feel it's my duty to spread as much toxic, offensive, yet clearly very possibly true gossip as I can about the other racers. This afternoon I had lunch with a Spanish skipper, who told me this: Frenchies Anne Liardet and Karen Leibovici got into a shouting and shoving match during their 1,000 mile qualifier on the Open 60 Roxy II and consequently hate each other and barely even finished the run around Fastnet Rock and when they got back to Normandy Anne fired her and now difficult Karen is without a boat and pushy Anne is without a co-skipper.

Yikes! Tough break, ladies!

And! And, Ellen MacArthur, it is rumored, never really recovered from her circumnavigation, and those around her are worried that she's not mentally fit for solo racing. MacArthur is sharpening her blades and doing a drunken-and-bleeding- Captain-Willard-in-Saigon dance at her hotel in New York City, awaiting the right storm pattern to blow her and her 75-foot abomination clear across to England. If you're interested in taking any action on when precisely E-to-McA jumps off her journey into the heart of a terrible darkness, please email me at mike.guy@gmail.com.

I don't mean to pick on the female skippers. It's just that they're all rich and scary, as well as emasculating and castrating, etc. Except for Servane Escoffier, who is just a peach. (Those interested in gossip etc. about Servane please refer to my other, bluer blog.)

The Polarity Solo, 320 miles from Lisbon

2005-09-15T15:12:00.000-04:00

A wicked wind blows

2005-09-15T10:33:00.000-04:00

Paul is 350 nautical miles out of Lisbon. This afternoon he popped the assymetrical spinnaker to catch a freshening easterly. It all seems quite fucking felicitous. Meanwhile, here at Camp Polarity HQ, I have caught the sniffles, which appear to be freshening into a force 5 cold. This morning I biked to a yacht supply company in Port Vell purchase a winch handle, and choked on scooter smoke all the way back. Can't wait to get to Lisbon and take the Biscay punishment I so justly deserve. Considering his revised arrival time, it appears as though I may have to sleep on the docks in Lisbon tomorrow until the boat arrives. Lovely...

I love you, Ellen MacArthur!

2005-09-14T06:46:00.000-04:00

Do you know Ellen MacArthur? She is the most famous sailor in the world. She is very small of stature, but has a thick trunk and great big forearms and paws that give her the aspect of an elegant jackhammer, swaddled in Henri Lloyd. She was the star of the 04 Vendee, and will be the star of this year's TJV. She is a veritable vacuum cleaner of corporate sponsorship. I envy and loathe her so much that she now makes appearances in most of my most recent dreams. (When I say 'dreams', I mean edgy anxiety nightmares, which are what I now have. In last night's edition, Paul and I deployed an emergency sea parachute in the Biscay, and it kept lifting out of the water and catching the gale force winds. Ellen, meanwhile, cackled in the background. She is in New York City right now - where I live - waiting for the right weather to blow her and her obscenely fast B&Q trimaran to break Joyon's Transatlantic record. She may be sweet and successful and popular with Richies and the Rest of the World, and she may have never done anything to slight me in the least, but I loathe Ellen MacArthur.

Servane Escoffier is another TJV competitor (as are, apparently, most of her family). She is co-skippering a Class 2 Multihull, and I have no loathing for her, despite her being French. In fact, I think she's sort of cute, and am considering asking her out on a date before the race. Keep your enemies closer...

God lives in the Bay of Biscay

2005-09-14T06:40:00.000-04:00

Friday, I'm getting a reheading

2005-09-13T17:20:00.000-04:00

Despite the numerous unanswered sponsor questions and the annoying foot dragging of one Sat C company, I'm finally booked to fly to Lisbon to meet up with Polarity on Friday. The added week plus of fundraising stasis here in Barcelona has eaten through my cash reserves. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to unravel a long list of tech issues that, frankly (and don't tell anyone), I only sort of understand: tech sponsors for a battery management system, for VHF handhelds and an upgraded SSB, spare autopilots, a rig reheading, more nav equipment from Garmin and Silva. I'm also attempting to wrangle a free stability survey for the boat after we reach Cherbourg. i spoke with a Sir Ian Collett, of Ward & MacKenzie in London about this. He is a knight. When I said, "Cool," about a scheduling accomodation, he said, "Wot?" finally, I'm still and always after cash sponsors to help out with the millions of sundried, from a new genoa and assym to food, so that we don't end up eating French dirt and bread scraps for the month of October.

If let him choke, he would like me more...

2005-09-13T10:45:00.000-04:00

Here's my favorite irony thus far: The rarefied, cash-oodled, large-bucketed world of ocean racing runs mostly on donations and the generosity of others. My leverage is my meager charm, my ample hair, not much else. But no matter how compelling my pitch, or how fine the finer selling points - an aggregate 800,000 people will gaze upon the logos on our boat, including 200,000 or more on start day - a company's decision to donate cash or equipment is determined as much or more by emotion than by numbers.

The day after I arrived in Barcelona I met with a creaky old fellow named John Audabran. He is French, but quite sweet nonetheless, and when we sat at the table at the Royal Boat Club, the other club members called out to him warmly. Audabran is the principal of a new marina in Barcelona, called Port Forum, and I'm trying my damnedest to sell the space on Polarity's boom to him. Before our food arrived, Audabran swilled vermouth cassis ("a taxi driver's drink," he said), and when he choked mildly on a mussel I patted his back. Charm in action: a pat and a wink. Sales is not my strong point (that would be sailing: sailing is my strong point).

At the end of the lunch, he walked unsteadily to his Smart Car. It's hard to tell if I had found the proper emotional response. Shit, I might have saved his life when he choked on that mussel, but he was more embarrassed than grateful.

Polarity's whereabouts

2005-09-11T20:02:00.000-04:00

Paul called me today from Polarity's deck. After three days beating into a Force 5 headwind he laid into an anchorage at Cabo de Gatos. Winds remain over 25 knots from the southwest.

Mal de mer, and other French problems

2005-09-11T14:18:00.000-04:00

Last year, on a delivery up the Gulf Stream, my uncle Dave got very seasick. We were delivering my father's beautiful new Pearson 424 ketch, Ranger, to its new home in New Hampshire, and we rode some hard road. After a day or two on a frightening, confused twenty-foot following sea, Dave's tummy let loose, and he divided with rest of our time on the Stream expurgating over the rail and folded up in a wretched, waif-like state down below. It was difficult to watch. The only remedy - going ashore and walking it off - was not feasibel. Or possible. And while I'm quite sure Dave's not too thrilled I'm writing about it here, he'd likely agree it's an exceedingly unpleasant state in which to travel: offshore, in dizzying and noisy seas and irredeemably, hideously nauseous.

This afternoon, to celebrate Cataluna's loss to the army hordes from Madrid on September 11, 1714, my hosts brought me and Aurora's father, Amadeu, to hunt for porcini mushrooms in the mountains outside Barcelona. I sat in the back seat as our tiny VW threaded up the Montseny mountain roads. We were talking about Cataluna's bad luck and the new meaning of 9/11 in the US, when I felt a touch of nausea. Slight, creeping. We passed a car pulled over and a little boy was wretching into a bush, his mother patting his back. Before long, we were safely in the beech groves combing through leaves for porcinis, and the nausea had passed. But the image of my uncle and that poor little boy stayed with me: what happens if I get sick in the middle of a 4,500 mile, double-handed race?

In preparation for this race, I've studied seasickness, read countless accounts of how, who and why. In reality it's a crapshoot. My father has never been seasick in his life. He can sit in the wooziest rollers out there and slurp oysters without whiffif of ill-effects. Seasickness is most prevalent in juveniles, and among adults females are more at risk. Interestingly, people in good physical shape are more prone to it then their porky peers, though I've yet to read a convincing reason why. Obviously, people who spend more time at sea are more accustomed to the uneven motion believed to cause seasickness - how many times have you seen a lobsterman leaning over his transom and wretching? But in many popular accounts of open-ocean passages, this doesn't hold true: In Close to the Wind, Pete Goss's excellent account of his solo circumnavigation in the 1996 Vendee Globe, the former Royal Marine writes of battling through seasickness for the first few days of the race. Hard-boiled French sailing demigod Bernard Moitessier, who may well have had gills, wrote of experiencing mal de mer in his classic, The Long Way.

So obviously, I'm looking into prevention and remedy. During the Ranger delivery my brother Conor and I wore the Scopalomine patch, and neither of us had a problem. People swear by the old standby, Dramamine; and my brother Tim - the real sailor of the family - uses Bonine. People also swear by ginger, gin and tonic, and a hard-to-find wonder drug called Stugeron. Any other recommendations?

Wheeling and dealing

2005-09-03T14:05:00.000-04:00

I'm in Barcelona now, staying at the house of my very kind friends, Aurora and Eric. Ironically, success in the rarified world of professional deep-ocean racing seems to rely completely on the generosity of others. (More later on the subject of sailing and ironic abjection.) Paul has started sailing the Polarity Solo down the Spanish coast to our qualifying staging ground in Lisbon, and I'm hanging back here in B-town meeting with prospective sponsors - a marina called Port Forum, a champagne company called Codoniu, an athletic socks manufacturer (!), and a swank new UK-based internet music channel called Music Choice. (More later on my new life as a whore.) Primarily what I'm waiting for is news about the status of sponsorship for an Inmarsat C global tracking system, without which the TJV Race Committee won't allow us to begin the qualifier - a 1,000 mile run across the Bay of Biscay, nearly to the coast of Ireland, and then eastward to Cherbourg, France.

So I'm in a holding pattern until these loose ends are tied up. (If anyone knows how to get their hands on a cheap Sat C / GPS system, or knows of an Inmarsat dealer looking to get rid of one for cheap, please please please let me know: mike.guy@gmail.com.)

A slight change in plans

2005-09-01T11:43:00.000-04:00

Brooklyn, NY - I'm not going to cover every detail of the past two months. However, for the purposes of my story, I will say this: Antonio is certifiable. He and I exchanged dozens of emails about our plans for the race - acquiring the boat, the sponsorships to equip it, the training schedule on the French coast. Then suddenly, in August, he stopped responding to my emails. He had been staying at the estate of our main sponsor, a jewelry manufacturer from Monaco, when he started to lose grip on reality. He had intended to crew on a brand new Open 60 in the Rolex Fastnet Race, but the Jeweler said he was mentally unfit, and withdrew his name. It turns out that Antonio's family has a history of adult-onset schizophrenia.

I received an email from him after repeated entreaties by internet and phone, and he finally wrote me a strange missive - about magic keys, protective honey, gypsy camps across the river, a powerful waterwheel from which he draws power.

His father flew to retreive him, and he's since been diagnosed and treated in Barcelona. Because I'm a lucky sonuvabitch, and tenacious when I want to be, I secured a co-skipper spot on the Polarity Solo, captained by a nice fellah name Paul Metcalf. It didn't occur to me until a few days later that I had been recruited enter a race for which I'm just slightly underqualified by a madman. So what does that make me?

Welcome to my weird and watery new world.

2005-08-30T08:05:00.000-04:00

Brooklyn, NY - Last month I was a normal, slightly bland, American bachelor. I lived in my quiet New York City apartment with my cat. I ate eggs and drank tea and consulted the Red Sox schedule taped to my refrigerator. Sometimes I listened to music or NPR. I ran every day in the park. Then one day my old friend Antonio called me. He is a gutsy, impulsive, and strange man, and a singlehanded sailor from Barcelona. He invited me to join him as crew on a doublehanded race from France to Brazil, in something called the Transat Jacques Vabre. Now I'm not a fearful man. I get out there, I take bruises happily, I get knives and fangs flashed at me. I remote places. I feeled compelled. But I ain't no Chichester neither, no Shackleton, no Krakauer, certainly no Plimpton. I'm underweight. I read books and watch two movies at a time. I've never punched anyone, and only been kicked once - by an Argentine exchange student in the 5th grade.

But I love a real damn challenge. And caroming across the Atlantic is a whopper. So like any man would who feels he's reached a standstill (dark realization of the summer: I share my routines with my cat), I accepted Antonio's offer, and set in motion the dismantling of my normal life. I am going to race across the indifferent and violent tumult of the Atlantic Ocean, skit the African coast past over the equator, and swing into Brazil. Race starts November 5.