Visions of London: Olympic Events you Know Nothing About, Week 3 (Deliverance edition)

Third, CANOE/Kayaking



Slalom

4 events

1. Men's Canoe Single 
2. Women's Kayak 
3. Men's Canoe double 
4. Men's Kayak

 Men’s Canoe Sprint

A few events

I'm sorry but this shit doesn't really intrigue me or anyone else for that matter unless you're the Winklevoss twins or went to an Ivy. Even hardcore kayakers probably don't pay much attention to the restrictions of these Olympic events, mostly because for the most part they're hippies and hate organized competition. Either way, there are a few men's and women’s singles and doubles events but, unlike horse racing, these sprints are not considered the most exciting minutes in sports. Speaking of which,  shout-out to the potential triple crown Winner I’ll Have Another. This generation needs to see one. Damn you Smarty Jones.

 Alright, so this might be the most difficult event to compare to any one iconic individual. Going back in time, the original canoes were crafted by real renaissance men out of a hardwood tree trunk. Originally created by the natives in North America,  it took a lot of pain and suffering to make this small wooden vessels.  Nowadays they're pretty prominent in extreme videos and are used strictly for recreational purposes and obviously have no use as a form of transportation with the development of such minor transporters as planes, trains, giant sea vessels, trucks, etc.... Either way, they are enjoyable when you're trying to leave the social restrictions of society and become one with the surrounding beauty of nature. It truly has a calming effect, slowly paddling, possibly throwing out a line, and forgetting that time exists. 

While it can be calming, there are those daredevils who utilize a form of canoes, also known as kayaks, to huck off of 40 foot waterfalls. It’s pretty fucking cool to see these individuals move and drop down to the bottoms of the falls or maneuver through treacherous rapids. Also, the Olympic kayak/canoe slalom part is pretty damn cool. It reminds me of the Invisible Boat Event on Nickelodeon’s Guts, only cooler. Also, instead of a piece of the Aggro Crag, the winner gets a freakin' gold medal and world supremacy.

Now, let's take a look at the best in the men's slalom because let's be honest, the course is fuckin' amazing. Essentially, you watch individuals take on man-made rapids while winding through an altered river. Located at the Lee Valley White Water Centre, it was the first newly-constructed Olympic venue to be completed. Personally, they should take it a step forward and add sharks with freakin' laser beams or at least mutated sea bass but the IOC just never listens.

As mentioned above, the sprinting portion of the canoeing discipline is boring so we shall stay as far from this as Calista Flockhart does from food . I would also like to state the qualifying has not finished yet, so essentially the individuals I mentioned below, while the tits, still might not make it. 

Team Kayak-Hochschorner twins- Peter and Pavel  have dominated the sport, winning the last three Olympics and, without much decline, they're still the top seed. While in most sports it’s nearly impossible, a four-peat is not out of the question for these two. They're considered the best Slalom C2 team ever. Below are their list achievements. Coming from a family of canoers, they were bred to compete in this event and to live on the water. They probably don't make any money but fuck it, go with your dream and rock the boat. Now the biggest question is who can I compare to these two legends. Sure Deliverance has its share of canoeing, and I already mentioned the Winklevosses, but it would not be ambitious of me if I went with something so obvious as there are no sure options. I’m going to take the brotha’s who instead of dealing with outdoor hillbillies or computer genius’ got high as hell. One of which even dominated the boring event of canoe sprinting. Silas and Jamal, aka Method Man and Redman, ended up smoking their boy’s hair and received acceptance into prestigious Harvard. While there, Jamal joins the rowing team, and with the help of his altered ganja and runs the that shizznit. 

Where was I? Oh yeah, here's the achievement of those twins and stuff.

CATEGORY ACCOMPLISHMENTS / ACHIEVEMENTS / COMPETITIVE RESULTS
1999: Gold Medal, C2, World Cup
2000: Gold Medal, C2, Olympic Games, Sydney, Australia
2000: Gold Medal, C2, World Cup
2001: Gold Medal, C2, World Cup
2002: Gold Medal, C2, World Cup
2002: Gold Medal, C2, World Championships
2003: Gold Medal, C2, World Cup
2004: Gold Medal, C2, Olympic Games, Athens, Greece
2004: Gold Medal, C2, World Cup
2006: Gold Medal, C2, World Cup
2007: Gold Medal, C2, World Cup
2007: Gold Medal, C2, World Championships
2008: Gold Medal, C2, Olympic Games, Beijing, China
2008: Gold Medal, C2, World Cup

Maybe even pot-smoking hippies DO have a place in the Olympics?

- Kyle

Hemingway and Smellhorn: How Tony Soprano Ruined A Story About the Last Real Man

I once had a friend tell me he didn't like Hemingway because Hemingway was misogynistic. I explained Hem was far from misogynist, that if you read his novels you'll see they're peopled by women just as tough as the men and in some cases tougher: the ex-pat a man loves but can't be with because he lost his dick in the war and she loves sex so he just stays all bound up (THE SUN ALSO RISES); the girl who fought her troubled childhood and now fights Franco's fascists (FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS); the tough old ruddy wife who authoritatively runs around town trying to find out about the shootout in her husband's charter boat (TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT). And so on and so forth. The women Hemingway created were flawed but transcendent, like goddesses of old, full of scars but flawless, strong, immortal. And as such in real life Papa was often let down by women - and for that matter men but you expect less out of the men you love than the women.

His sentences, every one is like a shotgun blast to the chest. No delicate little target shooting or rat-a-tat machine gun blasts. They take one shot and destroy everything in their path. As such there are plenty of haters, usually women who don't understand what he was trying to say about his generation and its gender roles. though there are also detractors in the form of men afraid of confrontation, who see manhood as fully detached from any semblance of toughness or self-reliance; the ones who can't handle a shotgun blast to the chest but prefer delicate little .22-caliber pellets in elaborate fanciful tessellations. And I can understand that; just like most modern literature reads to me like some whiny little pussy whose parents needed to make him do more yard work and maybe smack him on the ass a few times growing up, there are men who dislike Hemingway because, perhaps in spite of their protests otherwise, he really does make them feel emasculated. Yes, I can accept this. I just didn't think that James Gandolfini was one of those men.

Just like the movie goes from vintage footage (some of which they insert Hem and/or Gellhorn into, like one scene where he runs off with a rifle into battle and it looks like one of those horrible old movies where somebody's blatantly running in front of a screen) to black and white to sepia to vivid color off and on seemingly without reason, so too are the characters and the writing a pointless mess.

From a technical perspective it's a mess. Nicole Kidman's brogue sneaks in a few times and her character comes across as so smug and self-satisfied one has to wonder why she was ever enamored with Hemingway at all. Clive Owen speaks throughout as if he were John Wayne, not Ernest Hemingway. There's no feeling of character development, but rather this story it jumps around so much and never once gets into anything below the surface.

Let's talk about the characters. In this movie they make Hemingway look like a doddering old fool (that intro scene, fishing on the Pilar, almost looks like a cartoon) while Gellhorn looks like some great legend - blue blood upbringing and daintiness be damned, she WILL travel the world telling stories about local children in war. And instead of talking about the real thing going on here - the old adage that no relationship can handle two writers - they tried to paint Papa Ernest Hemingway as some alcoholic manchild with no real importance to the world, even just barely touching on the writing and publication of his masterpiece FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS while paying way too much time on stale dialogue and stiff love. It's like they figured they could just throw two famous (debatable for Gellhorn) people together against the backdrop of the American 40's and BOOM, there's a movie.

As it ends and you see it's going to paint Gellhorn as the long-suffering brilliant one while he's more of a drunk blowhard (I find it interesting they include a scene where she goes drink for drink with him yet otherwise never do you really see her drinking hard - as if just by sheer will she handles all that booze). But then she runs out and he meets Elizabeth Banks (who just dropped a few rungs in my book thanks to having anythign to do with this) with a line like "I need a woman who can take care of a man" to which she responds "I can be that woman". And there's the real message - they figured all the scenes where he wanted his wife at home, where he wanted to keep her safe but also where he was competitive with her and as such got in her way towards the end, as well as showing him drunk and swaggering like John Wayne, they figured all these scenes didn't outright get their point across - that he expects a woman to be at home taking care of him. As such, the best thing is to share some canned expository dialogue that even Banks and Owen don't seem to be able to make feel even slightly real. Hemingway, a master of dialogue himself, would've been appalled at this miserable writing.

Never is it mentioned that Mary Welsh, who Banks is playing, is a writer for Vogue and that Hem likes her because she's not as much as a shrill bitch as Gellhorn. Gellhorn finds her and Hem in bed after a drunk driving accident (never seen that in any other autobiographies) and he chases her, saying people will be reading him long after she's eaten by worms. To that outburst I can only say It's not grandstanding if it's true.

Then they jump forward like 20 years to make sure to show Hemingway catatonic as Welsh spoons his gruel, a truly broken man, finally, bring great papa down to a level where we can see him, where we can jeer and say "look at us, look how mobile and not-crazy we are." They don't mention the FBI hounding him for years accusing him of communism because of his time in Cuba. They don't show him on safari in Africa or surviving a plane crash, nor do they give Mary Welsh any credit for her journalistic achievements (she was in Paris prior to WWII and London during where she reported on Churchill and bedded Hem). They just jump forward to Hemingway broken down and tired as if to say "he was lost and killed himself because he lost Martha Gellhorn".

There's so much to dig into here. He was in love with a  nurse when he fought in Italy and she left him for another man - some say he never got over that. Then Pauline, the woman leaves for Gellhorn, she stole him from his first wife Hadley with her money and joie de vivre and yet is the one who seems most jilted.

All in all, this can be summed up in one word: rot.

The performances were rotten. I read an earlier draft that was a bit more factual, all around better but it seems like somebody got ahold of it who decided instead of being about a clash of titans it would be about taking down this damned literary hero Hemingway, make him look like a fool, a clown, a petty bastard undeserving of his great reputation. An aside is that Gellhorn was a horrible rager in her own right, with a disgust for intimacy and a borderline MOMMIE DEAREST thing going on at home and yet in this she comes upon as the poor, oppressed angel with gumption and spirit and smarts Hemingway only too obviously was jealous of.

Rotten as well is Gellhorn's holier-than-thou voice, no doubt established by the brilliant writers Jerry Stahl (uhh, last movie he wrote was BAD BOYS II but he did have 3 years writing on ALF, surely a man to encapsulate Hemingway) and Barbara Turner (a washed up actress whose written mostly unheard-of indies, though I did enjoy her movie about POLLOCK, though it also seemed to be about tearing down the artist) who probably fucked Hem once back when she was an actress and still has a bone to pick about him not calling back. The funniest part of this whole fucking embarrassment is the end, in which she says she's not just some footnote to somebody else. Because she is. Because in 100 years nobody will know who the fuck she was except as Hemingway's 3rd wife. Not even a first or last but just one of the middle ones.

When history looks back on great female journalists of the 20th century they'll conjure Christiane Amanpour,  Janine Zacharia, Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, Nancy Hicks Maynard.On the other side, rarely do people remember ANY journalists, male or female. Journalistic style is often found stale by the next generation and as such often the ones seen as the best of their time - who report objectively based on the zeitgeist of their current time - are little more than iterators of facts. As we see from Wikipedia, while the facts will live on, the ones telling them unfortunately do not. Can any of you name any journalists from the 19th century who never wrote novels? Perhaps Woodward and Bernstein will survive the 20th century because they essentially broke the Watergate scandal - and Hunter S. Thompson will as well because he blended journalism with fiction to create works in some preternatural limbo between novel and essay - but for the most part, unfortunately, journalists are rarely immortal. Especially ones who simply relay events instead of actually shaping them.

I expected more out of Philip Kaufman, the director of THE RIGHT STUFF and THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING and even the similarly-titled HENRY AND JUNE (about writer Henry Miller and his 2nd wife, June). I expected it to be epic, to have passions flaring and yet it all felt canned, contrived, made to serve a purpose it couldn't tell honestly. With Hemingway's vow that one should simply write truly and it will feel true, it's very obvious that such was not the case here. The original script was more of a story about their joint struggles, not about how Gellhorn was a much better person than Hemingway. They took away such great lines as, when Gellhorn meets up with Hemingway in Paris he's at the Ritz, inviting her to toast to the fact that "We've liberated the Ritz!". And again, the changing from B&W to real footage to sepia to full color did nothing but irritate me, just another uninspired move no doubt done with the idea of making it poignant and unique since it was obvious the story and performances wouldn't do that.

Huffington Post's glowing article about it is as predicted: a female reporter happy to see Hemingway put in his place, misquoting brilliant Hem lines like "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at your typewriter and bleed" as "...All you do is sit down at your typewriter and type." Maybe that's why Arianna Huffington was demoted from her new job to go back and supervise her staler-by-the-minute blog. Because they misquote fucking TV movies, a true sign of amateur hour.

This is, then, James Gandolfini's fault because he's the producer. And as a supposed "guy's guy" and, even more, as a man whose whole career was built on truthfully portraying a powerful and yet ambiguous and confused gangster, I would've expected more. With such 3-dimensional characters, including one who was one of the last bastions of real masculinity in an incredibly de-sexed America, to have portrayed them as 2-dimensional cliches is just a fucking crime.

There is still hope, though. HEMINGWAY AND FUENTES has just begun pre-production. A much more profound story about Hemingway's later years, from his love affair with cuba and fishing to his friendship with his boat captain Fuentes, the inspiration for Hem's Pulitzer and Nobel-winner OLD MAN AND THE SEA. With Andy Garcia as Fuentes, Anthony Hopkins as Hemingway, and Annette Benning as Mary Welsh look for something amazing to emerge. Certainly having a cast, director, and writer who are still working regularly in the business already pushes this ahead of the crew of has-beens who through HEM & GELL together like a bunch of monkeys combining shit on the wall. It just needs to come soon. Because this rotten HBO TV movie is so bad it literally made me violently ill. Like a hangover from bad, cheap booze but without the semblance of a good story to tell in the morning.

To James Gandolfini, Jerry Stahl, Barbara Turner, Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman I have one thing to say - fuck you. The world will remember Ernest Hemingway LONG after they've forgotten about you or this piece of trash you pulled together.

- Ryan

American Fighting: Commemorating Our Boys' Commitment to Death, Defense, and Loyalty

"A man doesn't win a war by dying for his country. He wins a war by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." - General Patton

Flashback:

It was May 30, 1868. The war with the most American casualties - that is, the great American Civil War, inspiration for re-enacters and old history buffs alike - had just ended and as victors, the Army of the Republic (that is to say "The North) had proclaimed it a national holiday to remember the Union Boys who'd died. It was Decoration Day, the first Memorial Day.

Though the south claimed celebrations of their fallen Confederate brethren too. Some families commemorated sons who fought for each side. And this began to spread so by the end of the 19th century it had become Memorial Day in honor and memoriam of all American soldiers who had fought and died.

 This would go on to include WWI, with its long barbed-wired trenches, soldiers hucking grenades across the expanse hoping to hit the enemy and occasionally getting the old "over the top" order to just fuckin' go for it.

WWI was the most perfect example of what happens when one is a bad winner. In spite of the war being fought by several countries, in fact begun by Austria-Hungary invading Serbia and whatnot, their allie and European powerhouse Germany was the hammer that inflicted the most pain on the France/UK/America forces. America wanted the blame to go around a bit more fairly but the French, angry about their many losses and desirous of getting back the territory of Alsace, and the British, afraid of Germany returning to their former power as witnessed in the Franco-Prussian war, threw most of the punishment at the Germans, both demoralizing the Germans' sovereignty and ruining their economy and bankrolls. Such a scenario's an easy recipe for mass discontent and when people are hungry enough and broke enough they'll do drastic things at the vocalizations of a well-spoken madman - and such began WWII.

World War II, while perhaps avoidable had the allies not been such dicks after WWI, was fought for noble reasons. The main reason here was the Holocaust, which doesn't need to be explained. And then the general tussle necessary to keep the Europeans living comfortably together, like a house of distant relatives who need to blow up at each other once every year just to re-establish boundaries and let off some steam (currently this seems to be happening in a type of economic cold war, and it must be noted that it's now Germany as leader telling the others how they have to run their countries). Of course there was American involvement, fought like a true hero - after taking a sucker punch from the enemy, we turned around and cleaned up the whole fucking mess, takin' out the bullies, the shifty ones, th' haters and dictators. And when we won, goddamn was there a celebration. That began the American Golden Age; with the rest of the civilized world in ruins, a bunch of horny victors impregnating women at a rabid pace like the returning golden boys of yore, and an infrastructural change towards job and production skills for all (including women) as well the crowning achievement of having developed technology to rival anything seen before, USA was A-Ok.

Technology, that's a big key, something to look at here. Technology is born through war. Merrimack and the Monitor, the first iron-clad ship naval battle, a predecessor both to modern ships and submarines, was one of the highlights of the Civil War.

Fighter planes allowed for heavier air battles during WWI, adding a whole new plane for battle.

Nikola Tesla's radar between WWI and WWII changed how we could track incoming enemies, via land, sea, or air.

In WWII you had the last blend of old and new war and as such it's truly to be noted. You had battle lines. Tanks would lead the way in, sometimes with bombs or blitzkriegs before (an evolution of the old cannon artillery leads, which evolved from catapults and longbows opening up volleys) but these would be followed by long lines of soldiers, yelling "Hold the line" and such.

The Russians used the same strategy they'd used during previous incursions, lure the enemy into the Russian winter and let them freeze to death (apparently Hitler, for all his claim of intelligence, had never heard of Napoleon). A true cold war and yet in no way similar to the following Cold War, in which Russia would need to change tactics to meet a changing world.

WWII you had the introduction of U-boats and American submariners. 2 wars being fought in traditional "take a territory, move on to the next territory" movement. And yet able to airlift in large amounts of troops and supplies, men able to jump from the sky with parachutes to slow their descent, better weapons and such.

And of course the Manhattan project, the development of the atomic bomb like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence that was already finished, an American superweapon thanks to the genius of a German ex-pat who moved to America to escape Hitler.

And that was the last well-respected American war.

If it wasn't for MASH who would even remember that Korea even existed? But and yet Korea was the result of WWII spoils (like East Berlin, communist because it was the part of the city awarded to Russia for their heavy losses). America had the south, Russia the north. The North became communist, South became capitalist. China finished a civl war and feeling discontent joined the Russians in support of Communist North Korea and suppressed voting. Thus started the first Asian war over communism, the evil spectre that wasted American time and attention for most of the Golden Years and may have driven Hemingway to suicide. As such this also began the Cold War, which gave us James Bond but took away the ability to buy Cuban cigars legally.

Korea ended with both sides agreeing to disagree and thus we have Kim Jong Eun's closed-wall North Korea and our smart and proud but a bit nervous allies South Korea.

The Cold War was little more than back-alley diplomacy a game of wits and grandstanding between the two most powerful nations in the world, two former allies who were also the only two to have cracked the nuclear code.

But this year Memorial day specials have spoken little about the World Wars. Never does it have anything about Korea. Cold War - ehhh. No this year has been all about the Vietnam war and as such it's truly a turning point in warfare.

War has always been an inspiration for art but the sheer volume of songs (from Country Joe and the Fish's I'M FIXIN' TO DIE to Neil Young's OHIO, though that was indirect - a reaction to murders of protesters at an anti-vietnam rally; almost anything by Bob Dylan was in some way a war protest) to books (of all the war novels I've read, from THE ILIAD to FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS to NAKED AND THE DEAD, it's the novels A RUMOR OF WAR, DISPATCHES, and THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, about the Vietnam war, to which I most felt I could relate) to movies (APOCALYPSE NOW to the better parts of FORREST GUMP) this war especially bred some of the most indelible images of the modern era.

The war was the beginning of the military age in which we currently still reside - a war against insurgents on all sides, fighting without respect to "lines" or territory or classic engagement - ambushes and bushwhacking and, at times, heavy sacrifice of their own people to serve the purpose of their military, instead of the military serving their people. A war where the woman with the baby in the corner could be an enemy just as much as the soldier in the green fatigues.

There was little reason for the war and few people can explain why we were there. Ho Chi Minh said "They will kill many of us; we will kill few of them; and they will tire first." And so it went.

If you haven't been watching Nat Geo and History channel this weekend, I suggest you do - countless real time footage of the war. This being the other big development and something which changed warfare almost as much as any weapons - press coverage.

When you see rebel's brains blown out and 19-year-old boys screaming in soul-wrenching pain as flesh hangs ragged where the kneecap used to be, then you start seeing that perhaps war isn't as beautiful and romantic as we were lead to believe. See a young girl running out with her skin burning from the napalm the Americans dropped on her village hoping to flush out the bad guys at the expense of the civilian villagers they were hiding behind. Watch a hill be fought over, maybe even fight over it yourself and then a week later read that it's been retaken by an enemy who doesn't care about victory of defeat, you can't defeat a virus you don't know how to fight; it'll just keep coming back.

We all know of the Vietnam war. How we had no business getting in the middle of their civil war and how now we can go visit for smiles and cuisine that makes Anthony Bourdain hard.

But also now we are fighting against local insurgents not trying to defend a line or territory but an ideal, fighting to preserve their lifestyle and laughing as we try to roll big lines of men with guns when they can strike without honor or front lines and kill us almost as easily.

In HEARTBREAK RIDGE Clint Eastwood played a Marine Sergeant who's reminded his track record as an American soldier is 0-1-1. No wins, tie with Korea, lost to Vietnam.

The Vietnam war was the first time the people protested the government out of war. And yet, as is normal with people, they also misdirected that frustration to the soldiers, who, in spite of whether or not the cause was the right one, they enlisted to join what had been a long line of proud fighting men - or were drafted, in which case it definitely wasn't their fault - and had just tried to do the best job with what they were given. It was everybody's hero JFK who started the Vietnam War in the first place, hell.  As one of the guys in an interview on one of these Vietnam specials said "When you're out there you're not fighting for the flag, not fighting for the MArines, not fighting for the President or even America, really; you're fightin' for that guy fightin' alongside you."

And so that brings us to where we are now. Two "victories" which are questionable because we still haven't been able to say who we're at war with. If Iraq was the enemy, why? How did it serve us? And aren't there a lot worse countries out there if we're claiming simple infringement of civil rights?

Is it the Taliban, the Afghani warlords we trained and equipped to fight the Russians in the waning of the Cold War (that pesky Cold War, there it is again - fucking communism wars are bullshit, I tell you)?

Last I checked it was Al Qaeda who bombed our Trade Towers. But these people aren't fighting for land, not for territory or a larger swath of desert - no, they're fighting for an ideal. For a Moslem Allah who the men at the top have convinced the ones at the bottom hates our Capitalist ways and consumptions. A Moslem Allah who - isn't this interesting - wants AUSTERITY FOR ALL. Perhaps we could get the Germans to help, Angela Merkel lecturing the rest of Europe with calls of austerity. And perhaps some on the right can align themselves with them, the Tea Party preaching government austerity, or something like that. Or Occupy preaching corporate austerity.

No, now I'm just playing word games. These mean different things. Al Qaeda and Taliban hate us like the kid who brings a gun to school hates the jocks who ignored him and the cheerleaders who won't date him because his clothes are second-hand and smell like too much fabric softener. We can try to talk him out of hating us but the damage has already been done, unfortunately. No, he's clearly our enemy now and will be until we kill him. And "he"'s not even a person but a philosophy, easily spread to people who've felt the shit end of the Capitalist stick (look how easy it was to spread hate through the Germans in WWII and they were all literate and relatively well-educated). And as such, it's taken a while but our military has finally adapted to the new face of warfare. And it's even more shocking to all the hawks that the person who brought that about is an intellectual black man from Hawaii.

The killing of Osama Bin Laden was a flawless combo of special forces and CIA, one of the first such operations of this magnitude and done across lines of a company with which we weren't at war. Because this war doesn't have boundaries that exist on a paper map. This country moves with its nomadic citizens and they can live in one cave as easily as the next.

Obama has increased importance on drone strikes, on intelligence forces, on changing tactics from wasteful "shock-an-all" troop deployments to strategically-aimed strikes which kill the snakes head instead of wasting so much damn time attacking the meaty tail. What began with guerilla warfare in Vietnam is now finally being given its time in the sun, the new leaner, meaner, tighter, more precise, more intelligent military. You can't destroy a weed by bombing your garden. You destroy it by strategically plucking it out of the earth.

So as we remember those soldiers who died before, let's look at everything they've contributed.

They've defended our nation so valiantly, from the Revolutionary War to the War of 1812, Civil War, and even, to an extent WWII.

They've defended our allies, loyalty being a most important part of creating a better society, in WWI. Made the world a better place in WWII.

They did what they were told to, even when they might not've understood why they were there. They inspired us to greatness, inspired many of our greatest works of art.

They gave us iron ships and nuclear power. Gave women jobs and made black men and white men discover they're all the same when sitting in a foxhole with a bunch of other white or yellow folks tryin' to shoot off your ass.

They advanced what is possible in the worlds of aeronautics and space exploration. Gave us the examples and techniques which would lead to another great evolution in military history, one more directed and, as such, possibly more abetting towards diplomacy and, maybe, eventually, possibly, some dreamy day, war peace?

As you have your last few hours of freedom and prepare for the drudgery of work tomorrow, think of something your brave boys and girls in blue have given you. The fucking sacrifice. On top of everything else, every fallen soldier gave that which is the most expensive for all of us - he gave his life.

Yes, there is an ugly side to it. Horrible wars of conquest (without which many of you couldn't live or even travel comfortably anywhere you want within this huge country) and subjugation. Wars of ego. But for today let's forget those. Look to the good. For better or worse conquest and expansion are part of mankind. And when you look at the big picture, well, we're better than most.

Love or hate the military industrial complex, agree or disagree with all the last few wars, there's something you must be proud of - our soldiers are the best, the strongest, the smartest, and most loyal in all the world. God Bless.

- Ryan

How Red Bull Is Pushing Man's Limits and Ambitions

We've all seen those commercials. The one that goes from ridiculous T. Rice snowboarding clips to a dirty surfing lip bash and then some MMA dudes and cars racing and by the end you're out of breath. Or the new one, with the dancers and skaters, the mad urban stylee of lifestyle redefining what's considered sport. Seriously, I stop my DVR when I see these commercials come up and I've noticed I'm drinking more Red Bull.

These bull-piss-fueled bastards are smart about how they're doing this. They know they're already well-established amongst party people looking to mix some super-uppers with their vodka or Jaegermeister or rum (Jesus, Red Bull seems to mix with everything). The next A-adopters they need to get in with are the crazies and luminaries, the athletes pushing the boundaries of what's possible as far as human intensity, toughness, explosion. And they're doing this by building a goddamn media empire for pennies because, other than their Wild World of Sports-esque NBC extravaganzas, Red Bull's new extreme sports lifestyle series (and what's Red Bull all about if not living life to the extreme?) have all been created for their own goddamn web channel, using no distribution channels more complex than fucking YouTube. A brilliant marriage of content with consumers, a brilliant marketing move that skips the bloated broadcast networks and goes to work reaching out to the real movers and shakers and A-adopters who are actually out living.

Here's just a little rundown of a few ways in which Red Bull is re-shaping the world of athleticism, entertainment, and physical and technical possibility:

• Again, I'm well aware of the fact that I've all but vaunted Travis Rice to the level of a demi-god. But in my defense he is. And while I've rambled on and on about how extreme sports are the future of athletics, in my defense the kings of the actions sports world are proving it is. Check out T. Rice in this Bleacher Report video combining some of his highlights with a run down about why he snowboards and how it's going through a revolution right now. Most of the most vivid footage was made possible by Red Bull bankrolling his paradigm-changing mind-blowing ART OF FLIGHT and certainly the extensive travel, money-is-no-object plethora of aircraft.
• I wrote about the Jackson Brothers' ambitious new web series roadtrip from AK to Chile shredding and surfing everything in between, BROTHERS ON THE RUN. Just in case you're not following, here's Week 2: Epic Alaska Shredding. One of the smartest and coolest parts of this: eschewing standard practice of having all snowboard teams on steep and deep Alaska runs, they've thrown big time (and big wave) Red Bull surfer  Ian Walsh into the mix. Not only does he still rip it up, but he gives an average snowboarder like myself a taste of how it would be to be thrown into lines that will most likely only ever exist in my dreams. His concerns before, his concerns about the fact that the line looks a lot different from up top than when you were down below (it really does), his gut-check charging of the line anyway, and finally his effusive rantings that this was the best day of his life.
• Which transfers nicely to just another brilliant series, this one following surfers (see how I did that? snowboarder to surfer/snow crossover to surfer? That's called a transfer, very important in such sports). Following reality show format, it follows 4 surfers each at a different point in his career. Showing the struggles of being at the top of one's game, of going beyond the game into entrepreneurship, of struggling with a freestyle sport that has to become serious to make a living at it, and of being a kid and an international globe-trotting extreme sports star. With requisite footage of pro hos, exotic beaches and dirty waves, this is sure to keep the kids riveted.

  
And then  there's their guy who's gonna skydive from the stratosphere. And a globetrotting motocrosser. And the snow-hijinks series named after my favorite mountain. And their "all-alternative-sports" series Momentum. And they have a site for photography. And an airplane racing league.

And so on and so forth, all mindblowing, life-affirming, limit-busting, sanity-questions fucking fan-fucking-tastic. This is the future of sports, no doubt - without limits, without lines, without a safety net. And Red Bull's fucking bankrolling it.

Not to sound like a corporate shill but I'm just gonna put it out there: if you're need an extra boost, why not pick up a drink where you know at least a portion of your purchase is going to advancing what's possible for mankind as well as exploring and discovering a world of athletics more colorful and diverse and life-affirming than anything that's ever existed before?

Happy Friday. Get out and do something this weekend, you lazy fuck. (Red Bull)

- Ryan

Visions of London: Olympic Events You Know Nothing About, Week 2 (HUNGER GAMES edition)

Second, Archery

Alright, as a follow up to week 1's rundown on top sharpshooters, I thought I would continue my theme of random sports using a deadly weapon in the Olympics. This week, I’m profiling archery because, in my opinion, any man/woman can shoot a gun but it takes a real badass to kill with an arrow. There are countless icons throughout time that have wielded this mighty weapon, from Paris (of Greek fame) to Red Cloud to my Uncle Lou. In the Olympics there are simply four events for archery. It’s located this year on Lord’s Cricket Ground which sounds as if Robin Hood himself will be out there teaching lessons and winning the archery contest in a disguise. Either that, or he'll be out poaching the king’s deer. Fuck it, they should just rename it Sherwood Forrest and call it a day. The events for Archery Include the Men’s Individual, the Women’s Individual, the Men’s Team, and the Women’s Team. Personally, I think they should add extra elements to Archery and will continue to demand these changes until they come into fruition.

 

My suggestions include, but are not necessarily limited to:

• Shooting while on a horse. This would be fucking awesome and would truly show how focused an individual can be. Dothrakis learn to shoot from horseback from a young age.
• Shooting at a moving target or shooting while running an obstacle course would add an extra element, similar to that of the clay shooting event and/or the Biathlon from the Winter Games. Legolas would surely dominate this event. 
• Something involving flaming arrows.

Now back to reality. Here are two archers to keep an eye out for. And to avoid if you're ever in an arena match to the death and they have a bow.

 

Men’s Individual-Brady Ellison- If you thought the world’s best archer was from the UK, then you're mistaken. Sure they've waged wars with this weapon for ages, and Robin of Locksley was supposed to be English, but the number 1 ranked shooter in the world is a country boy from the good ol’ US of A. Brady Ellison, the 23 year old from Arizona, is a true outdoorsman, growing up hunting and chasing all type of critters. The country boy athlete, who just recently quit dipping, is the type of man who can and does shoot animals from around 90 yards away. He probably loves Dale Earnhardt Jr. He has been training at the US Olympic Development Center since the age of 16, when he left high school two years early. For the past two years he's been ranked #1 in the world winning a remarkable 35 of 37 events he entered last year. How the fuck does this shooting prodigy, who might end up being considered the best ever, go unnoticed? Oh yea, archery is not a mainstream sport. Well actually, while that might have been true, with epic movies and books being recently released with lead roles who tote this weapon, there has been an increase in attention. So now, Brady Ellison can shoot standing straight quickly, but he's no match for a certain super hero. Hawkeye is a Marvel Superhero known for his ability to handle a bow. Although extremely accurate, he also had countless “trick” arrows that would cause more damage to their enemies. Although completely different persona-wise, both individuals are known for their bow skills. Additionally, does anyone else think Ellison and Renner kind of look alike?

 Women’s Individual- Alejandra Valencia- She's still young, but she's already the princess of the 2011 PanAm games, where she women two gold Medals. At the sprightly age of 18, she has some serious completion, but could potentially be the Cinderella story of the games.  With her undeniable talent and her age, she's the Olympic version of the one and only, Katniss Everdeen, if Katniss had darker skin and black hair. Just to clarify who Katniss is, because I’m not sure if anyone has heard of the book “The Hunger Games”, but the heroin in this Trilogy is the deadliest shot with an arrow. She spent most of her years hunting, which made her able to shoot any animal right between the eyes. Katniss Everdeen is the baddest chick with a bow and arrow for sure. Now, only if they had mixed doubles like the Junior Olympics games, it would be the Gail and Katniss show for sure. Yes, that was another reference to another HUNGER GAMES character.


Here's to hand-launching deadly barbed spikes at high speed with frightening accuracy.


- Kyle

An Electric Daisy Grows in Jersey: 1 Weekend, 3 Music Festivals, and 1 Writer's Recap of A Head full of Depravity and Music

This weekend the New York City Metro was a haven for music festivals. With three decently sized outdoor parties captivating the Empire State, music lovers had their choice of styles, venues, locations, drug of choice, and price. As the music festival becomes a staple of the American summer and standards like Bonnaroo and Coachella blow up beyond all semblance of intimacy, it makes sense that more smaller but no-less-fun festivals should be springing up all over the place. Still, this weekend was truly an amazing one for a New Yorker. Here's just a quick rundown of the three big music scenes that kept me and my associates well-entertained all (hazy) weekend long. Followed by a long rundown of my own sordid experience at the best of all three, ELECTRIC DAISY NYC.

Bamboozle

Located beachfront at Asbury Park, NJ, this three day festival probably had the most eclectic music options ranging from alternative rock to hard dubstep. Located a little over an hour away from Manhattan, this gritty hometown to the ‘Boss’ Bruce Springsteen had countless travel options between the New Jersey Transit system, renting a party bus, driving, riding a festival shuttle, or the good old bus. It was also the second cheapest festival of the weekend, with tickets ranging from $65-$495 per day pending on which day and  package , but with the amount of bands and sounds heard, it was probably the best deal of the weekend. 

Headliners and Big Names

May 18^th-Skrillex, Incubus, MacMillan, and V-Nasty

May 19^th-Foo Fighters, My Chemical Romance, Boy Sets Fire, Jimmy Eats World, and All American Rejects

May 20^th- Bon Jovi, Brand New, the Gaslight Anthem, Spacehog, and Boys Like Girls.

A full list is on their website and the amount of bands that played was pretty epic, but besides Skrillex, most of the big names were cool in the 90’s or early 2000’s; some even earlier. Sorry, as great as high school was, I’m over it.  

The Great Googa Mooga

This inaugural concert has some growing to do, from what I hear. Actually, this is an understatement, as from everything I heard and saw it was disaster. Basically, this was as big of a bust as Ryan Leaf or Greg Oden. They started the marketing early by allowing you to register months in advance for a free ticket, which created one hell of an overstuffed, under-prepared two days. From the few I know who attended this clusterfuck, they said they had to wait an hour for anything to eat or drink or whatever and when the time came and they succeeded in waiting long enough to make it to the front, the tents were out of what they wanted. I would be fucking pissed. That said, this was the easiest to attend from the NYC boroughs as it was the closest and cheapest. Located in Brooklyn’s Finest, Prospect Park, it had potential for a very solid and very chill environment. It was the most diverse of festivals and while it had the least appealing line-up with the Roots and Hall and Oates headlining (I barely even recognize any of the other bands), it had other amenities. Even though the music was lacking, it contained a variety of options that neither Bamboozle or EDC had, such as great food options (They had a Spotted Pig Tent for god sakes), the weird and yet always entertaining Silent Disco, and restaurant business seminars including the infamous Anthony Bourdain as a guest speaker. The potential is there, they just need to get their shit together.

Electric Daisy Festival

This is the wild, neon world that I decided to explore and during this adventure one thing stayed consistent - with each passing hour everything seemed to change drastically. Here, described like my wonderful adventure on the first day of March Madness, is the raw and uncut story of a day filled with booze, music, and things not so legal. I did the best I could to capture the essence of this festival while the specific details started to diminish as toxins took over.

I woke up at around 8am after a hydrocodone-induced slumber. That previous Monday I slipped down my stairs while being a model American and taking out the recycling. And hippies say recycling is healthy. I was subjected to a potentially-broken finger and a piece of glass wedged deeply in my shin muscle, also known as the tibialis anterior, and some cuts and bruises. While I was aware that the 8 stitches clasping the deep wound closed, and the broken finger, would cause some setbacks, I still knew that I could handle the continuous standing, dancing, and partying. The excitement I felt was reminiscent of my Preakness mornings, which coincidentally, also took place this weekend. 

After grabbing breakfast at a little granola shop near my apartment, Atlas, I headed back to clean my leg, make another cup of coffee, grab essentials at the corner store, and put on the armor, a canary yellow T, khaki shorts, sunglasses, and a leg wrap. I felt like I was getting ready to enter the battlefields. 

With a mid-70's-and-cloudless day, the anticipation was beginning to boil. We could not have asked for a better day to be outside.  My friend Bob joined me and two of my roommates, Larry and Meghan, as we steeled ourselves and went out into the day. After taking 40 minutes to get from the East Village to Mid-Town west side due to the congestion created by a bunch of random ass street fairs that become a constant in the concrete jungle during the spring through the fall, we needed a drink and a smoke. We quickly went up to Nelson and Alf’s rooftop and engaged in some drinking and heater crushing, “situating” ourselves for entry through the guarded gates, and engaging in banter more targeted to ripping on each other than friendly. A few of the true warriors were there, heroes who'd raged the night before and were discussing their conquests. There's nothing better than pre-gaming at 11:30am for an all-day booze fest.

Finally our three limo buses arrived at around 12:30pm in order to transport this motley crew of 26 misfits on a quest to pretend that nothing else matters in the world besides what will occur on that day. Everyone worries constantly throughout a typical day, especially the older you get. We have to deal with finances, rent, debt, health, and work, among countless other issues that clutter our minds. What music festivals or all day parties do that's irreplaceable and essential is that they eliminate these worries. Your focus lies strictly on your friends, some mesmerizing upbeat music, and a shitload of illegal and legal substances. 

So anyway, we knew we were close after passing the American Dream Meadowlands, a retail and entertainment complex with an indoor ski slope that came down to a crashing halt (just like the actual ethereal American Dream) after a subsidiary of the bankrupt Lehman Brothers missed payments causing several others to withdraw and thus losing approximately $500 million worth of construction funding. After this setback and a fuck-up in the shape of a collapsing ski wall, they finally got back on track with some other streams of revenue. Apparently, the debacle will be finished before the Superbowl in the Meadowlands in 2013. 

We were let-off in the parking lot about a 2 minute walk from the entrance. Here we set-up shop and continued our debaucherous habits by shot gunning, throwing around a football, and getting our feet wet with whatever substance we had that was not planted in some sort of security-free body orifice.

Finally, around 1:45ish, we made our way to the entrance. Before getting into the security and ticket line we detoured to a stand to get an over-21 bracelet that proved worthless throughout the rest of the day since you were still ID’d whenever you ordered a beer. It was a waste of time, but there was no fucking way of knowing. The security line lasted around 20 minutes and was tight as international TSA. Two members of our crew, Fonzie and Kenny, had to throw out their bags due to the fact that they were too large. I must say that while the line lasted for fucking ever it was for the better. As a responsible anonymous party concert go-er, I can handle my shit and know how to partake in a daylong haze but a lot of underage kids and people with way too many substances can be a recipe for disaster and could ground the concert for years to come. It also ruins your buzz when you look over seeing a 15 year old comatose on the pavement. They were even not allowing open packs of cigarettes or bags too large to enter the gates. In all honestly, though, it wasn't difficult to sneak in the necessary amount of shit to get twisted responsibly. 

Finally in, we made the festival entrance ‘pro move’ which consists of taking a piss, buying some beers, and setting up a home base. This ended up being on the front right corner of the main stage. After putting the blanket down on the hot concrete floor, which did not look in the least bit enticing, I decided to take in the sites with Larry, my large manchild of a roommate. We perused the scene and noticed scantily-clad smokeshows, a few rides including a Ferris wheel, and another stage inside of the actual stadium which was pretty sick since it was firmly planted on the field. It never gets old standing on the field and looking up into an empty pro stadium. It usually looks a lot smaller when not filled with hammered fans. There were also two other stages, but I can safely say that I have no fucking clue where they were located.

After each of us purchased two 10$ beers and a 5$ water, we finally made it back and rocked out to Chris Lake. He was solid, but after he left the stage, shit started really taking off. At 3:15, next up was Cazzette, a Swedish DJ Duo, who might have been my favorite show of the day, with a blend of chill and fire beats. They absolutely crushed it with remixes of "N**gas in Paris", " I’m Coming Home", and Adele’s "Set Fire to the Rain". The stuff was kicking in, the beers were seething through the veins, and the music was taking over. The energy was electric. After Cazzette ended at around 4:30 Alesso took stage, who also did a great job, but at certain points throughout the day at these things the body needs to wander so I went on an expedition with my boy Ben and another one of our college buddies, Johnny. We decided that we needed to eat as we were getting close to stepping over the line of demarcation where the body forgets what it needs to sustain life. We ordered a bottle of water and a beer each and also two personal pizzas which we threw down our gullet more out of necessity than desire. Throughout the day we would walk past strippers, men on stilts, people dressed in bird outfits, and whatever else could possibly be called clothes. AND, the day went on.  

After refueling, our bodies were already feeling rejuvenated. Johnny went back to the spot while Ben and I went on an excursion to find his fiancé Ginny. This led us to the stadium stage where we passed a man, white as a ghost, being stretchered out. He was FUBAR. Inside, I ran into my fourth roommate, Jack, who, although making a late arrival, was taking major strides in order to catch up to the rest of us.

Finally, after the intense search that is a standard at these large music festivals, we found her dancing around solo. After connecting we did a few laps and further explored the festival. At one point while leaving the inner stadium stage I was hypnotized by the greatest hula-hooper I've ever seen. Hula hooping has become big among hippies and ravers but this hot chick looked as if she started the trend. Moving on. In a large group, you lose focus of your surroundings that you can only regain it solo or in a more intimate group. Our crew of three was able to absorb the ultra fun freak show. It was like taking a look into Tim Burton’s brain. At this point it was close to 6pm and with Calvin Harris about to start and being 6 hours deep, more skin was revealed, more individuals were fucked up, and the crowd was getting larger and livelier.

Calvin Harris was unreal. With his songs "Feel So Close", "Bounce", "We Found Love", and a bunch of other hits, he was absolutely killing it. I was pulled into his gravitational pull, engulfed by the music pulsating through me. In order to make sure I was still planted on the ground I engaged in minor conversations but spent most of the time vibing.

Next up was Sebastian Ingrosso who, like a majority of the top DJ’s, is Swedish and a third of the epic worldwide DJ phenomenon Swedish House Mafia. At one point one member at our crew had a VIP pass, which for a group of degenerates means we all have VIP entry. Our boy Kenny decided to grab a wrist band and shadily went to the edge in order to loft the band down to our waiting hands. It was working as easily as convincing Pamela Anderson to make a sex tape. The flawless plan consisted of wrapping the band loosely around your wrist and showing it to the bouncer quickly. Then once that person made it to the safe zone, he/she would pass it back to Kenny where the technique was repeated. After around 20 were able to use this technique, the Neanderthal of a gate keeper became wise and didn’t let in the last few. It only took 20 new people for them to realize.

Needless to say, the VIP section was fucking hooked up with a personal bar that actually had liquor that stayed open later than any of the carts, a close up view of the stage, and the ability to escape the masses, I would probably actually pay for it next year. I was finally at the summit induced by every substance kicking in, dancing in the luxury of a giant box next to the stage with a great DJ and our group of merry pranksters and still feeling the great vibes generated from Calvin Harris. Life couldn’t have been better.  I must say too that at this point my vision was blurry, my mind was rolling, and the lasers did combat with the sea of neon below to caused an almost tranquil effect. Looking into the masses of people, it resembled the ocean, with individuals swaying in unison to the music creating a wave affect.  Finally the free ride was over after our friend, Nelson, was kicked out due to not having a bracelet. Instead of going silently, he challenged every single bouncer, security guard, and wait staff to a fight on his way out. 

In our state of mind, it was the proper way to handle being kicked out of a section that was pretty vacant. They would have continued to make money off of our crowd since the bar was conveniently located next to us in that section. It never had a line and thus we would continue to bombard this place with drinks including liquor. They were no cheaper than they were for the peasants. Plus, we are goddamn very important people, but fuck them if they can’t take a joke.

 

After our stint with celebrity status, we were back to ground level but at this point too whacked out to know the difference. According to Jack, who stayed up in VIP, I was staring at him for 20 minutes with a vacant expression. Apparently, I was looking directly in his direction, but it was as if I could not compute it was him, or even a human being, as my eyes appeared to be looking through him. My recollection of this is nonexistent, but I have a feeling this is true for a lot of the day.

 

After 30 minutes of moving to beats of Avicci, including a great remix of "Somebody That I Used to Know", I knew that the night would soon be over, so I went to the bathroom and sought the ATM quickly as my wallet was empty. 10 minutes later I arrived back to where we were located but I couldn't recognize a single face. I made the cardinal sin of all music festivals which was to leave the group without telling anyone to stay put close to the end of the show. My phone, of course, was also dead from a day of roaming and the constant battery use from being logged into groupme, which is a great option when attending a massive festival. It allows you to connect to everyone so that one stray or even a few missing misfits can find their way back. It also destroys your battery like Adam Morrison’s NBA career. Panic struck me slightly until I heard Avicci's famous song "Levels" blast from the speakers. I was once again encapsulated in the bass. After he closed out with another "N**GAS in Paris" remix, the music ended, as did the night.  

 

Now I was officially fucked. I perused my surroundings, to no avail, and then made my way to the exit. At this point it was 11:15ish and not a familiar face in sight; I left the gates and waited at the entrance. There was no other way out. After another 20 minutes I walked over to the pick-up spot where, once again, no one I knew was to be seen. There were just clumps of human shells scattered in disarray. Finally, by 12pm and the crowd thinning, I found out that I was truly on my own. I felt isolated even though I was surrounded by thousands. I finally decided that my only choice was to cab or train it and I didn’t see a single cab anywhere and couldn't call one without a phone so I waited 30 minutes for the next train, which provided a free service to Secaucus. Then I had to transfer to the Jersey Transit for $4 in order to get to New York Penn Station. Sunburned, a finger swollen to the size of Kim Kardashian’s ass, and a leg more painful than watching Meghan Fox try to act, I finally arrived in Manhattan. Upon arriving at a familiar scene, I cabbed it home to a small party and an apartment filled with worried people. After listening to a bunch of apologies I flipped out on them for abandoning me, then passed out.

 

It was a great day and, during the hangover recap, the few individuals who also attended Coachella told me they had a better time at Electric Daisy. The weather was better, the attendees didn’t make them feel like they were the old group just being allowed out of the Senior Retirement Center for a day of fun, and for the most part everything ran smoother. Plus, after 1 day of utter debauchery, coming home and recovering at the comfort of your own home is priceless. I watched four movies in all on Sunday. And by Monday was at least a halfway functional human being again. A good deal all around.

God bless Electric Daisy. A neon ride of twisted sonic perfection.

 

- Kyle

What Mark Zuckerberg could learn from Nikola Tesla

So Facebook’s just 3 days into its IPO and already lostalmost 20% of its valuation. I’d been talking to a few co-workers about this last week, predicting there was no way it could keep a 100 billion dollar valuation. But nobody wants to see this. In a struggling economy, Facebook was looking to be a sign that things are good, that big moves can still happen, that wealth was still being created. And then to have such a dismal Initial Public Offering – it’s just another massive turd to pile onto the heap of shit we currently call Wall Street. But it harkens back to another post I wrote about how things have changed. How virtual everything is, how companies no longer need to make physical products or even income to be worth absurd amounts of money. The thing is, recently the Interweb has been sprouting a whole lot of new billionaires. And I can't help but think that perhaps Facebook is just the first sign of a redux of the original great dot-com bubble (there's a reason Warren Buffett won't touch 'em) where companies were worth tens and hundreds and even thousands of their annual income. 

In that post I talked about how the previous generation had to build something, something physical, a product or commodity that was worth only what the most basic formula for determining worth could illustrate - namely, how much it cost to build its product subtracted from how much the product sold for which is then multiplied by how many products were sold. As much as everybody tries to find new ways to get around this, tries to discover new shortcuts, invent fancy ways to create value and wealth virtually based on such unquantifiable factors as reach and cultural importance, it always comes back to this. 

Let's take a company like Apple, the current business king (which had a stutter a few months back and now is blasting full speed ahead, though it stock is falling). Apple can get over hiccups because it made $26 Billion in profits in 2011 and has just had the best quarter to date. Apple's money is tied to a physical product it builds and sells to consumers. So if people want to lower Apple's values by trying to manipulate stock price by selling a bunch of shares or the price gets freakishly low due to generally incorrect human psychology, Apple can just buy them back. The basic functioning of Wall Street is that money is put into companies to make them better. 

Now let's take Facebook. They made $1 Billion dollars in profits in 2011. Even more, that money isn't paid by consumers but by advertisers. Does anybody know what the first line item is to get cut in a struggling company? That's right, its ad budget. Also, has anybody heard of marketing metrics? Basically there are ways to measure how much of an impact ad have, especially over the internet. Even more, people use Facebook to talk to friends and look at pictures. It's not like an online magazine or blog where somebody is reading about something this person might decide to buy because of the content, in which case an ad for said product appearing nearby would make sense. No, Facebook is where people go to connect, not shop for shit they don't need. That's why GM is pulling their ads from Facebook.

So Apple $26B. Facebook $1B. Apple is worth about $520B. Facebook is worth $100B (per IPO). Which means people are trying to say in spite of Apple pulling in 26 times more money a year than Facebook, it's only worth 5 times more. Which is just wishful bullshit thinking. 

Now yes there are a lot of other factors. Google makes its money mostly off advertising and they have nothing to worry about (though there is a growing contingent of naysayers out there). And Apple's stock has been diving as a correction of their freakish 93% rise over the past year (which one can say Facebook's drop is merely a correction to its oversized IPO valuation). But there's a very basic lesson here: Steve Jobs' Apple goes for product over hype. Their software is simply to support their hardware. The real bread and butter, the place where they've been best recognized for innovation and forward movement is in building new products that hold the software more stable, that allow accessibility anywhere, that increase creativity and possibility. A lot of people have said that Steve Jobs is the new Thomas Edison but he isn't. For all intents and purposes, Steve Jobs is more like the new Nikola Tesla but this time around, he got the credit he deserved. And, to be honest, comparing Jobs to Tesla is giving the man too much credit. Tesla is perhaps a bit closer to Leonardo Da Vinci but without the painting.

Just a few things Tesla invented: AC power. The radio. The remote control. Wireless electricity. A machine that could create lightning. The first real X-ray machines. The modern electric motor. As well as the basis for modern radar systems. Ideas for communication with extraterrestrials. He was even working on a paper about gravity (which as of yet nobody has fully explained) which was never found when he died before completion.

Tesla was born to Serbian parents to Austria. He tried his hand at formal education but found himself unable to finish. Instead he dropped out, much to the dismay of his family, traveled around, read and memorized whole books, and disowned his family (similar to Jobs' disowning his longtime girlfriend/baby mama and mostly running away from his adoptive parents). Unlike Jobs, though, Tesla had the colorful tinge of madness at all times which, when combined with genius, usually makes one's contributions less like a creative spark and more like a multi-directional explosion. He studied engineering. He traveled around, to Budapest where he worked for a telephone company. He invented whole worlds in his brain, preferring that to writing the ideas down. He invented what some think might have been the first loudspeaker. Then he moved to America where, with little more than a letter of recommendation, he got a job with Thomas Edison. Edison apparently said "If you can improve my motors and generators, I'll give you $50,000." Tesla did this and Edison said he was just joking, bestowing instead of the fifty grand a ten dollar raise. Like Jobs who was forced out of the company he made into the super force it was, Tesla wouldn't take this insult lying down and quit, preferring to dig ditches and live like a common immigrant than work for the bastard.

Tesla and his coil

Tesla then started his own light bulb company and was kicked out by the investors when he kept harping on his crazy ideas about alternating current electricity (versus Edison's more-accepted direct current). He created the Tesla coil, which Frankensteins used to shoot electricity through their monsters. He experimented with vacuum tubes and discovered and experimented with early X-rays though he lost most of his research and some dude named Roentgen a few years later got the credit for inventing them. 

Then Tesla really went crazy. He just couldn't stop. He invented wireless energy transmission as part of experimentation with electromagnetic energy, eventually creating the first radio transmission which was quickly covered up by the much more charismatic (read: not crazy mad scientist) Giuseppe Marconi. Tesla, almost 10 years before Marconi made his big splash, was mostly thought to be insane - I mean imagine, transporting sights and sounds through airwaves?

Eventually Tesla, now an American citizen, finally got the patents to experiment with and create powerful alternating current electricity. As the country worked on implementing a power grid, Tesla went head to head with his asshole old boss Edison. Edison had mocked Tesla's alternating current pipedream. Yet AC power could produce much more energy that could travel over much larger distances with much thinner cables. This lead to the epic War of Currents during which Edison went head to head with Westinghouse backing Tesla. Edison did everything to disprove him, from lobbying congress to executing stray dogs and cats and horses, even an elephant with AC power lines to try and show the danger of AC power. Eventually, thanks to these propaganda films America adopted the electric chair as a form of execution, even though Edison preached that he was against execution. What a dick. Yet in the end Tesla did win, one of his few victories. Tesla even pioneered hydroelectric power, helping set up an AC plant at Niagara Falls that powered the city of Buffalo, which back then was actually a happening metropolis (versus the ghost town it is now). Today AC power is used in all power lines, DC relegated to small distance-based products revolving around batteries and such. 

Tesla laid the groundwork and built early induction motors. In 1898 or so he showed the US Military a boat he controlled by radio waves, thinking they might want to use it for torpedoes or such and built robots that could be controlled similarly; that is, he invented remote control. The military wasn't smart enough to begin adopting it until after WWI but as such imagine how it helped our targeting and spy tech during WWII. Tesla made a spark plug to start up internal combustion engines which is still how we start our cars.

Tesla moved to Colorado Springs to send wireless telegraphs to Paris (what a crazy idea! the predecessor to the cell phone) and experiment with the sending electricity through the ionosphere and communicating with aliens.

He made charged particle beams (like laser guns or ion cannons) and had a machine that could shoot 100+ foot bolts of lightning by tapping into the earth. He patented an idea for a vertical take off and land planes and had all the details worked out on a full theory of gravity. He became madly OCD and holed himself up in the Waldorf Astoria (would this have been Jobs' end had he lived to older age or had he never received the credit he was due - it should be noted Tesla never received the Nobel for Physics, though Marconi won it in 1912 for inventing the Radio, interesting since in 1943, a few months after Tesla's death, the US Office of Patents upheld Tesla's claim that he, in fact, was the first to invent radio, only admitting such to avoid paying Marconi's company for usage of Marconi's radio patent).

He wrote articles about science and about Post WWI Europe; rallied against the League of Nations and translated Serbian poetry. This man contributed so much to our modern era in the worlds of both theoretical and functional science, war technology and consumer technology, art and philosophy and yet people hardly know his name. He died alone in a New York hotel having received credit for easily less than half his contributions to the modern world. But he wasn't in it for glory or money, seemingly; he was in it for the love of science, for the exploration of what's possible. 

Today such a man would be great, somebody truly needed to help move us forward and yet such a man doesn't seem to exist. Partially it's because of men like Tesla and Edison - these guys advanced so many brilliant ideas that to move them forward scientists feel they must specialize in one area. Also, society doesn't like the idea of a general renaissance man. Everybody speaks about specialization. Just look at schools - less and less often do they allow varying undergraduate degrees for advanced degrees and yet for your degree to be worth anything it must be particular and limited (think "Degree in Marketing" instead of "Business Degree" and, increasingly, "Degree in Business Practice in Emergine Markets"). There is hope, though. Websites like Innocentive that understand our embrace of specialization won't advance humanity since often it's hard to see clearly the object so close under your nose; that understand our drive to specialization could actually have been retarding us and are now trying to allow people from various knowledge-sets to cross-inspire. Tesla jumped around, looking to make great new products and experiments and inventions. Jobs invented the personal computer, studied with Ram Dass, created various software companies, helped pioneer computer animation, and studied calligraphy before returning to that original company which he transformed into something new and fresh and ground-breaking only thanks to having been and seen so many other things. But most important was his application to our modern lives, to making accessible all these ground-breaking innovations and such that he saw in his LSD-fueled visions (Tesla found a lot of his ideas in visions also, though his were more often associated with temporary insanity). And not only do these innoventions apply to how we currently live but also to how we should live. We should all be a bit more creative. We should be able to bring our tablets with us (while I still prefer to carry notebooks and draw by hand, I can embrace the fact that most have grown up on and prefer the computer). We should be able to share ideas through as many avenues and apps as possible. The computer and the iPhone are simply tools for improving the world around us - how many young animators and filmmakers came up creating on MacBooks (Final Cut Pro, anybody?) and how many more will begin newer, fresher artistic quests now as it becomes easier and more accessible?

Which brings me back to Facebook. What is Facebook? It enhances our life in that it allows us to communicate with each other but it's not really a good place for communicating complex ideas. That's still better done in person or over the phone. It allows us to see what the other person's up to. But is virtual socialization little more than reading a picture book published about somebody? We know what people are up to but we no longer know who they are. Which is the whole point of socialization, reaching out to somebody else's identity. Tesla didn't go for socialization, at least not as a goal. It was a means to an end. He made many interesting and diverse friends but he shared ideas and experiences and ambitions and brilliant ramblings with them. Not just a few binary-encoded quips and pictures of him on vacation that he tried to pass off as socialization. I do this, yes, this Facebook thing. And I'm not saying it's bad. It has given me access to a lot of people I would've lost complete touch with. But this online socialization cannot be everything. Facebook is a tool. Not a valuable commodity.

And now to the final point. Facebook's value. Facebook is not worth $100 billion dollars. It does not create anything. It does not advance the world. It allows for a shared narcissism coupled with a new alternative of communication, of course important. But the fact that Mark Zuckerberg, no doubt a genius, has made only one thing - a communication tool - and is now resting mostly on his laurels is surely due to the fact that he's been told this one thing is so god-awful invaluable as to ensure a legacy; that is, as inventor of Facebook he never has to do another damn thing for the rest of his fucking life. Tesla revolutionized communication by inventing the radio. Then he went on to revolutionize medicine (X-Ray). And both military and recreation in one fell swoop (radio control). And the way we power the world (just imagine what the fuck you would do if the electrical power grid shut down - food goes rotten in a few days, no more Facebook to communicate or Google to find things, hell no more cellphones). And laid the groundwork for what we currently take for granted (radar, electromagnetic understanding, communication and how Wall Street can be utilized for innovation if the bastards just would use it as such).

Facebook by itself is just one little tool. It will be replaced soon if it stays as it is. And nobody will miss it when something better comes along - and something better always comes along in the internet world. So Mark Zuckerberg, here's MY ADVICE for you:

1. Take that buttload of money you have now and that brain of yours. And start investing in real, substantial concrete-infrastructural products. A more efficient trans-continental cargo train. Better synced traffic lights. A type of annular fusion powered by plastic waste and even the waste of its own process (thanks INFINITE JEST).

2. Buy Innocentive if you wanna buy something. Because you will never be able to support your company with Instagram and other profit-less websites that, while fun, do nothing that a bunch of other applications can't do just as easily.

3. Take Facebook from being little more than a tool for virtual back-slapping and voyeurism and figure out some way for people to really share ideas, concepts, experiments over it; like a global conference room think tank limited only by the vast universe of the internet and Facebook's global reach. It's not an end but a means. Don't forget it. This is a valuable tool and you're letting it stay little more than a kid's gossip tool.

And maybe, maybe, by learning from great men like Tesla and Jobs, Zuckerberg will be able to stave off the collapse of Facebook's stock. Because the loss of $100,000,000,000 worth of valuation is the best way to ensure you return to being that geek standing outside Porcellian Club.

- Ryan