I was drinking "sidecars" during the game, in honor of the end of the first world war ( one story is that the drink was named in Paris, after the sidecar component of the WWI motorcycles...the sidecar being a shot glass of booze left over from making the original drink).
It is easy to raise a glass and honor the sacrifice and heroism of those who gave their lives, limbs and sanity in the battles of that war.
But it is not so easy to think well of any of the leaders of the involved nations, nor of their commanding officers. Ordering troops to run into machine gun fire just doesn't make sense to me. Not an inch of ground was gained, and family after family was torn apart. For year after year.
The core reasons behind the war made no sense to me either.
And, as history has shown, the "peace" that was finally achieved by the "suits and royalty" at Versailles, soon degenerated into WWII. At the cost of more millions of lives. Warriors and civilians. Young and old.
Today, those nations who murdered each other..... in and out of the trenches of WWI.....not to mention during the unspeakable destruction and horror of WWII... are all playing soccer together.
So what was the fucking point? Does anyone " in charge" ever think?
As for my quantitative contribution to baseball, I started doing some " sidecar" math:
Giancarlo Stanton is touted as the " exit velocity" king of MLB...due to his mammoth ( though rare ) home runs. However, if you factor in the exit velocity of his strike outs ( estimated at zero mph ), he is no longer King but Pawn....an impoverished fucking pawn.
That's something to think about.
Have a sidecar everyone!
Whenever I hear "sidecar", I think of Salt Lake City, pre-Olympics. Almost impossible to get a drink, and when you got it, you thought it looks like it's already time for a refill. The only way you could get close to a real drink was to order something on the rocks, with a sidecar of the same -- which for some reason was permitted.
ReplyDeleteIt was easier getting a real drink in Dubai during Ramadan.
I gonna drink up, no worries about that.
ReplyDeleteCashman would have fit in nicely on the German General Staff or French High Command. A bloodless mediocrity, incapable of understanding that his application of "cutting edge" techniques is already obsolete.
ReplyDeleteI agree with that, Alphonso.
ReplyDeleteWW I was, in some ways, the most horrifying of wars. The antagonists were the richest nations in the world, they controlled most of the world, they had nothing to gain, and they had nothing really against each other.
And as you say, the tactics were even more senseless. Running infantry into massed fire—a tactic that had been thoroughly discredited 50 years earlier, in our Civil War, with exponentially less deadly weapons at that time...But they went on and on with it. And at the end, came another war.
WWI was the first mechanized major war, and the generals didn't know how to cope. Plus, yes, it was unnecessary. The combination made it, in the context of its time, the most horrible war ever.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the best films about war are the WWI films. I just rewatched "Ace of Aces" yesterday with Richard Dix, and while the ending was lame, the opening was terrific. Dix gives an impassioned speech about why he wasn't going to enlist, resisting all the patriotic propaganda and madness around him. You don't see that in WWII movies, at least that I recall.
As for Salt Lake City, Rufus, my wife and I got stuck there overnight when the weather prevented the second leg of our flight back from Californy. It was a Sunday, yet, so we didn't hold out a lot of hope for a decent dinner and any drinks at all. But there was a restaurant that was open that had a nice atmosphere, good food, and--glory of glories--a full and accommodating bar. What a nice surprise.
But the streets are holdovers from cattle drive days, wider than any I've experienced in other parts of the U.S. You better have the light when you cross, even if the traffic is light. Otherwise, you'll never make it.
P.S. I imagine you don't see those impassioned peacenik speeches in WWII movies because it was the only U.S. war in the 20th century that made sense. There was no other way to stop the fucking fascists. So, there's that.
ReplyDeleteJM, don't forget WWII movies made during the war were made by the US government, so unlikely to have dissenting voices on any subject.
ReplyDeleteAnd SLC got a *lot* better during/after the Olympics. Beautiful views though.
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