Roman Holidaze

I must rant about Roman Polanski. For those living in a cloud, he is a famous, Oscar-winning film director of The Pianist and other critically acclaimed masterpieces such as Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby. He's a French-born Jew whose family endured the Holocaust, his mother was killed at Auschwitz and his father survived a camp somewhere else. His second wife, Sharon Tate, was killed in the famous Manson Muders of 1968. First 35 years of Roman's life, he had it tough, no doubt.

Fast forward to 1977.

The Story
He did a private photo shoot with a 13 year-old girl at Jack Nicholson's house, during which he gave her champagne as part of the shoot, the bubbly was spiked with quaaludes, and he proceeded to rape her anally while she used the word "No" many times, according to interviews the victim has given at the time and as recently as 2003. He pleaded guilty and was convicted. The attorneys reached a plea bargain to send him for 90 days of psychiatric care instead of jail. The judge rejected it and sentenced him to 50 years. He fled the country and returned to his native France. He has made a bunch of successful films since that time but has not returned to the U.S. for obvious reasons.

This Week
Polanski was arrested in Switzerland the other day and may be shipped to the U.S. to serve his sentence. Much of the Hollywood elite - particularly Harvey Weinstein who has initiated a petition to pardon the guy, to Harrison Ford who accepted Polanski's Oscar for the Pianist, naturally Sean Penn (whose outspoken activism I normally agree with and support) weighed in, and of course the aforementioned Nicholson who starred in Chinatown, plus a host of other Hollywood heavyweights - to support the notion that he should be cleared of all charges and not serve any time.

My Opinion, Part One
What amazes me more than anything, is that there is even a dialog surrounding this thing. The guy drugged and raped a seventh-grader. He pleaded guilty. And then he left the country to avoid jail time.

Irrelevance.
After receiving an undisclosed sum from Polanski, the victim has stated a preference that he doesn't serve a sentence. It has been said that her mother is/was a scumbag who whored the girl out, knowing what would happen given Polanski's apparent penchant for underage girls at the time. The judge didn't accept the plea deal that was arranged between the lawyers, and some have bitched about that despite the reality that no judge is compelled to accept any plea bargain. Some have argued that the age of consent should be lower, as it is in other countries. Some have used his early life hardship - a Jew whose family endured the Holocaust, that his second wife was murdered in one of the most public atrocities we've seen. Some have even stated that because he has directed some good movies, he should be exempt from the law as it would apply to any non-celebrity. Some have said that as he's spent the last 32 years in France instead of Hollywood, he has served a sentence and paid his debt.

My Opinion, Part Two
The things mentioned in the paragraph above are completely irrelevant. The notion that Roman Polanski has a served a sentence of any kind is laughable. He is a child rapist, and he should serve a rather unpleasant sentence. Period.

If Roman Polanski was a one-toothed plumber from Inglewood, or a six-figure-income nerdy CPA from Santa Barbara, he'd have been sentenced to 50 years and nobody would have any issue with it. But he's a talented, respected, arty filmmaker, so he gets a pass. Bullshit.

Two hundred years ago, 13 was nearly middle-aged - life expectancy in the late 1800s was 45 for men and 49 for women. Post-electricity, 13 year old girls are best characterized by chewing lots of bubblegum with their mouths open and ending most sentences with "and stuff." In 1977 when this happened, add a pair of roller skates and a Bee Gees album. She was 13. He was 44. He gave her champagne and 'ludes. She said No many times, according to a 2003 interview which has been quoted in tons of news sources this week. He raped her. In the ass.

Yeah, instead of incarcerating the prick, let's let him live in France, make movies, and give him trophies.

For a near-perfect musical representation of this item, CLICK HERE

Daaaaaaaa Bears.

My brother Ed works his ass off. As the owner of a nightclub - certainly the finest and arguably the only true rhythm & blues joint in all the Pacific Northwest, Highway 99 Blues Club - he works all the time. Anyone who doesn't appreciate how much a small business owner works has never been a small business owner. Anyway, Ed sometimes gets the kind of love normally afforded to bigger players, partly the result of him not having squeezed his vendors shamelessly during his days as a corporate GM and (in my opinion) mostly because he's just a great guy and a man of his word. On Sundays, he normally re-charges by sleeping all day, as anyone who works 18 hours a day for 3-4 consecutive days will. It's the only day his business is not normally open, so he uses it to rest, stay off his feet, and get all his accounting and paperwork done. This Sunday, he got Bears-Seahawks tickets from a beer vendor and took his brother (that's me!) to the game. I know how much Ed values his Sunday as a much-needed day of rest, and while he does love the Bears I'm sure that he scored these tickets more for me (football fanatic) and for the kind of Brothers Day our busy lives don't often enough afford us, than for his own personal desire to spend his only available downtime on what is a highly enjoyable but also quite exhausting occasion. What a guy, that guy. My brother's good deeds do not go unnoticed, at least not by me.

We couldn't find a third ticket for Champ, so he held down the Forte at home and chilled with the DirecTV Sunday Ticket and played with his toy truck.

We began with Troy and Sydney at our favorite sports bar, King Street Bar & Oven:

Then we headed into the stadium for a brat, a couple beers, and sat among some visiting Bears fans.



The Bears won the game with this awesome play from Jay Cutler to Devin Hester with 1:52 remaining:

And then I supervised Edward after the game.


Awesome day. Two brothers, mano y mano with cold beer, tasty brats, and a Bears win on a delightfully clear Seattle Sunday afternoon. Days like this... I bitch and whine a lot, but a day like this serves as a reminder that I have it pretty god damned good.

A Dissertation on Terlit Paper

Nice article on toilet paper in today's Washington Post: Right here, dude.

My .02: when using the higher-end soft paper like Quilted Northern, I experience a certain "smear factor" and wind up having to use a lot more paper to get the job done. I can't explain it, it just happens, the softer and fluffier the T.P., the more doody is redistributed within my cheeks - and we all know how much the Right hates that word, redistributed - hence, there is a correlation between the (perceived) quality of the paper and how much of it I have to use. I get more mileage out of the cheaper stuff, which tends to be on sale more often anyway. And the recycled stuff feels the same as the cheaper stuff. I most often use the recycled stuff, but sometimes I do buy the cheap non-recycled stuff when the price is significantly lower. My personal preference doesn't desire the soft and fluffy T.P. due to the aforementioned smearing issue. When I've used the "good" stuff, I end up going through so much more paper (i.e., spending more) and flushing the terlit 2-3-4 times per "session," when I could just be flushing it once like I do when I use the cheaper and (most often) recycled products.

Normally, I use this stuff, which is usually cheapest at my neighborhood QFC: Seventh Generation.

My tendency has more to do with personal preference than anything else. It's just a nice coincidence that my preference in this area is in alignment with the environmental issue mentioned in the Washington Post article. In general, I do not consider myself an environmental activist. I enjoy convenience as much as anyone else. However, when faced with a purchasing or lifestyle choice with environmental implications, I usually make a quick and qualitative assessment by asking "How much does my preference go against the environmental grain here, and how much inconvenience will I incur to alter my choice to be more environmentally friendly?" Recycling, for example, is a no-brainer. To me, it's as easy to recycle as it is to not recycle, throwing my stuff into three different bins rather than one. If driving someplace that's a mile or even a few blocks away will be more convenient and save time, I'll add to the air pollution and ride. But, where making an easy change like using my own canvass bag at the grocery store involves a negligible sacrifice (or none at all, in the grocery example), it's hardly a choice at all.

Prince is the Man

Do you like music? Do you appreciate a mind-blowing guitar solo? From the 3:30 mark, Prince simply OWNS this thing:

That is all.

Saturday Night Lights

I enjoy attending sporting events, especially when there's a certain electricity in the air. Bigtime college football is always exciting. As a kid, I went to a lot of Boston College games, and that really became fun during the Doug Flutie era. Attending Syracuse when they were a perennial Top 20 program, I was a 4-year season ticket holder. Living in Chicago for ten years, I went to a lot of Northwestern games. Here in Seattle, I've been guilty of not going to a lot of University of Washington games, despite Husky Stadium being 2.5 miles from home and Pac-10 football being a scoring-intensive brand of play. Tonight, the LSU Tigers were in town for the U-Dub opener, a nationally televised game and at 7:30pm the latest kick-off in Husky history. 20,000 of the stadium's 72,000 seats played host to the posteriors of visiting fans from the Bayou. I've never seen an SEC team play live and much of the most dynamic, balanced, furious football comes out of that conference. Last year, UW was 0-12 while LSU was in the national championship conversation until late in the season. This game was supposed to be a blowout. I wanted to go anyway. I've got a fever, and the only cure is more football. My father is in town, he's decidedly not a football fan but as it turns out, he was interested in the game for its blend of bigtime college football, the clash of Seattleites with the visiting Louisiana fans, and a taste of pigskin culture as the sun set on Lake Washington.

What a night. If you could bottle this energy, you'd really have something. Fate sat us in the LSU section and their fans were great, enthusiastic and nice people who traveled diagonally across the country in their team's colors, with pom-poms and signs in hand. Some UW fans sat in the LSU area. The tension normally associated with such a situation was replaced with a simple matter of people rooting for their teams, engaging in fun banter comparing the Bayou to the Land of Starbucks.

The Husky fans showed up, too.

The home team took the field to a raucous environment

and proceeded to not only make a game of it, but they outplayed LSU in all major categories. When the Dawgs spent four and a half minutes to march 85 yards in ten plays for a touchdown on the game's first drive, college football fans across the nation were surely stunned.
They continued to play with the heavily-favored opponent and went into halftime trailing 17-13, a point at which most pundits had predicted a multiple-touchdown deficit with the hometown fans heading for the exits. During the intermission, dad got some chowder from Ivar's and I enjoyed a jumbo dog and 20-oz. Dasani water for seven bucks (a food and beverage order which may as well come with a loan application at most pro stadiums). In a delightful surprise, the UW cheerleaders and band took to the concourse and gave us an impromptu show during the break.
The game remained tight throughout the second half and ultimately, LSU won 31-23. While the Huskies outdid their opponent in the trenches and in the box score (more first downs, 3rd and 4th down conversions, rushing yards, net special teams yardage, almost twice as many passing yards), LSU rose to the occasion at the crucial moments, twice holding UW to field goal attempts after first downs in the red zone, and a 39-yard "pick-six" interception return. Still, Washington can only be incredibly proud of its team, which had its only winless season last year, has been projected to finish 4-8 at best this year, and just played with - beat in every way south of the scoreboard - an LSU team that's only ranked #11 (AP) and #9 (USA Today) because two other teams in its conference are ranked in the Top Five and the pollsters try too hard to spread the ranking wealth across the major conferences.

A great night. Cool, Northwest weather. Football during sundown into nighttime. ESPN late game broadcast. Hometown Pac-10 underdog plays heavily-favored SEC powerhouse to the wire. Fans of both teams are happy, LSU for the win and UW for the long-absent display of great football. How to wrap this up? Right here:
$240 Worth of Pudding