Blogging on Meds

Dickheads

Jeremy Scahill, The Nation writer turned Blackwater book writer/expert, linked to a post of mine the other day. My post recapped an NYT blog write-up that said Blackwater, a North Carolina-based “security contractor,” was moving out of the mercenary biz, according to a spokesman. Blackwater’s comments came a day after Sec Def Gates wondered, “Why have we come to rely on private contractors to provide combat or combat-related security training for our forces?”

Sachill, in a piece headlined “Media Goofs Again,” says the story is a bunch of hype:

It seems that executives from Blackwater Worldwide, the Bush administration’s favorite hired guns in Iraq and Afghanistan, are threatening to pack up their M4 assault rifles, CS gas and Little Bird helicopters and go back to the great dismal swamp of North Carolina whence they came. Or at least that’s how it is being portrayed in the media.

Among the headlines of the past 24 hours: “Blackwater plans exit from guard work”, “Blackwater getting out of security business”, “Blackwater sounds retreat from private security business”, and “Blackwater to leave security business”. One blogger slapped this headline on his post: “Blackwater, worst organization since SS, to end mercenary work.” [The last one was my headline.]

Frankly, this is a whole lot of hype.

But I don’t think the Blackwater spokesman saying of security work, “If I could get it down to 2% or 1% [of total business], I would go there,” is a non-story. In fact, combined with Gates’ statement, this is great news.

I hate Blackwater and the entire concept of combat outsourcing almost as much as I hate Nazism. The fact is, US tax money is spent on Dogs of War who are not operating under rule of law—aka we support state sanctioned murder. We’ll be regretting allowing this to happen as long as we’re a nation.

Now, even the head of the Pentagon is angry about it. That’s damn good news to me. 

Of course, Blackwater has over the years become a multi-billion dollar defense contracting beast. Their CEO is from an old guard Michigan GOP familia. They’ve made enough cash and high-level State and Pentagon contacts to keep their business going.

Sachill writes, “Anyone who thinks Blackwater is in serious trouble is dead wrong.” I didn’t see anyone writing that. Unfortunately, as best outlined by PW Singer in Corporate Warriors (Cornell 2003), the privatization of war is here to stay.

But the fewer assholes with guns running around the better. And both Gates and Blackwater seem to be moving towards a mercenary downsizing. Sachill says this is in response to Obama’s 16-month withdrawal plan being celebrated by the world this week:

The company may be bracing for a possible shift in policy should Obama win in November. Blackwater could be contemplating resignation before termination. On the other hand, Obama has sent mixed messages on the future of war contractors under his Iraq policy. While he has been very critical of the war industry in general — and Blackwater specifically — he has also indicated he will not rule out using private armed contractors at least for a time in Iraq.

In a perfect world, US troops may be able to disengage from Iraq on large scale in the near future. I still don’t believe that’s possible. Iraq’s security gains over the past year are tenuous. If elected, Obama will likely have to keep a force of 80,000 or so in Iraq through his first term. How he would deal with providing diplomatic security for Green Zoners is unknown—will he keep the mercenaries or take MPs off the battlefield? Still, if Gates is trying to move away from privatized force protection now, the better the chances for a policy shift. And that’s not hype. It’s good news.

About 420,000 gallons of fuel oil spilled into the Mississippi River after a barge collided with a tanker. As of right now, 100 miles of the riverway are closed to traffic, as crews attempt to clean up the spill, which could take several weeks to several months. This follows a 58,000 gallon spill in San Francisco Bay last November.

The Mississippi spill occured as McCain’s been calling for more offshore oil drilling. Here’s what he said recently:

As for offshore drilling, it’s safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston.

The good folks at ThinkProgress took the time to debunk this obvious falsehood.

John McCain’s “gaffes” aren’t really looking much like honest mistakes anymore. They’re looking like more and more like flat out lies. I’m just saying…if it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck, and it drowns in oil-filled waters like a duck…

Unlike in 1962, I seriously doubt the White House is worried about reports that Russia is thinking about using bases in Cuba to refuel its Tupelov-160 and Tupelov-95 nuclear bombers. A Russian newspaper closely aligned with the Kremlin broke the story. Clearly, Russia isn’t about to make such a provocative move. Not only does it have more to lose than to gain, but as a defense analyst in the Guardian put it, it makes no strategic sense.

Russia’s ageing nuclear aircraft have a range of 2,000-3,000kms – allowing them comfortably to fire a nuclear missile at the US from much further away, defence expert Pavel Felgenhauer said. “Frankly in Cuba they would be sitting ducks,” he added.

Russia is still fuming over US plans to house a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic (not Czechoslovakia, John McCain), so this seems like nothing more than the Russians trying to make some noise. Still, this is something to keep an eye on, because the Russians seem willing to up the ante to prevent the missile defense system from taking root in Europe.

AP

The speech itself was nothing special. Obama didn’t really break any new ground or make any bold policy statements, but the fact that an estimated 200,000 people showed up to hear him speak in Berlin is pretty damn impressive, especially for a guy who’s not even the President…yet. Check out all the American flags waving in the photo…

Rainer Jensen/EPA

Compare that photo to the reception that Bush got in Germany in 2005…

Meanwhile, to counter Obama’s speech in Germany, McCain had lunch at a German restaurant called Schmidt’s Sausage Haus und Restaurant…in Ohio.

A British court awarded Max Mosley, the head of Formula One, £60,000 (about $120,000) in his privacy case against the News of the World paper. Mosley, who paid 5 prostitutes £500 each for a 5-hour sadomasochistic sex session, was secretly videotaped by one of the domintraices. NOW paid “Woman E” £12,000 to film Mosley’s spanking session, and then splashed photos of him on its cover, proclaiming that he was involved in a “sick nazi orgy.” Their basis for this claim was that he and the women reenacted a concentration camp scene where he played guard and victim. He also spoke German at times, and one of the women said “We are the Aryan race - blondes!” The judge’s ruling:

I found that there was no evidence that the gathering on March 28 2008 was intended to be an enactment of Nazi behaviour or adoption of any of its attitudes. Nor was it in fact. I see no genuine basis at all for the suggestion that the participants mocked the victims of the Holocaust.

There was bondage, beating and domination which seem to be typical of S&M behaviour. But there was no public interest or other justification for the clandestine recording, for the publication of the resulting information and still photographs, or for the placing of the video extracts on the News of the World website – all of this on a massive scale.

Of course, I accept that such behaviour is viewed by some people with distaste and moral disapproval, but in the light of modern rights-based jurisprudence that does not provide any justification for the intrusion on the personal privacy of the claimant.

So, the NOW invaded his privacy, but the judge ruled that the paper held an honest belief that the session had Nazi elements, so it didn’t award Mosley “exemplary damages.”

All in all, a good day for s&m lovers everywhere.

Welcome to the first installment of What’s In Your NPR Bag?, a weekly column where we ask the fashionably green what the fuck they are carrying around in their canvas bag.

Fellow Mediciner Rachel Elder brought it to my attention that the proper name for this phenomena sweeping the nation and specifically Brooklyn was the NPR bag. I’ve noticed a massive spike in men carrying these bags, this can be attributed to several factors :

1. Perfect size for record shopping.

2. Says that you care about the environment but not in a hippie way, unless you have a yoga mat poking out.

3. Less “faggy” than a really corporate Murse® aimed at the metro / Details mag set but still nothing that a jock would carry chewing tobacco or energy drinks in.

4. Another surface to communicate your likes and dislikes, you’re a walking beacon for whatever you choose to promote or disrespect.

I hate even carrying a wallet or keys so I was more interested in what could be in a dude’s NPR bag. Call it coincidence but I ran into long time friend of Meds, Ethan Snell at small party in Brooklyn and picked his brain.

“My NPR bag? Ohhh my tote, yeah man fuck this one is brand new, my girlfriend screenprinted these for an indie craft fair and I just started carrying it a few days ago, it’s so convenient and of course I’m a huge fan of her design work so that’s a perk!”

Though the bag was brand new there was a dusting of Drum tobacco already lining the bottom where some pens, lighters and keys rested next to some freshly signed paperwork for a brand spanking new Condo on the park (co-signed by Dad, I peeked sorry!) Congrats though Ethan, a copy of the New Yorker, a few of those nasty free subway condoms, a Luna bar wrapper and an empty Kombucha bottle.

“Yeah I guess I’m ready for anything with bag” Ethan remarked “though I still need to get a few bare essentials in there, gum, iPod, The Believer and my journal, I’m a designer and I’m constantly inspired by my surroundings, you see so many interesting images and graphics in Brooklyn, in a bodega, a tag on a wall or even just some of the interesting looks you see in Williamsburg, it’s like a constant living breathing reference book so it’s essential to make notes in between brunch and happy hour!”

Thanks to Mr. Snell for letting me snoop around your NPR bag.

From Heartworm :

We are proud to announce that Jonathan Shaw’s Narcisa is released today and is Heartworm #21. Narcisa is a 360 page beautifully designed memoir and Shaw’s first leap into the world of shock literature.

This book was released in an edition of 1,000 copies. Please visit the Heartworm
STORE to order a copy.

According to Johnny Depp, “If Hubert Selby Jr., Charles Bukowski, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Neil Cassady, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, the Marquis de Sade, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Gilberto, Edward Teach, Charley Parker, Iggy Pop, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, R. Crumb, Robert Williams, Joe Coleman, Dashiell Hammett, E.M. Cioran and all of the Three Stooges had all been involved in some greasy, shameful, evil whorehouse orgy, Jonathan Shaw would surely be its diabolical, reprobate spawn.” With a fan base that includes Lydia Lunch (who provides an introduction), Depp, Jim Jarmusch and Iggy Pop, it is already a much-anticipated debut.

We also released two photo/collage zines by Dan Murphy- Stuck On The Map and William Boone- Suicidal Tenants (Heartworm #17 and 19) and there are a few copies of each left.

Founded by Wesley Eisold and based in Philadelphia, Heartworm has released an impressive string of projects ranging from books and zines to limited albums and artist prints. Narcisa is the latest must have as all the releases are in limited runs. Quit reading gossip and or jerking off and hit up their site now and buy it along with their other releases before they vanish.

With most releases reaching “out of print” status within days, you’ll have to scour and dig to find some of their gems but it’s worth your time and effort. The recent casualties make up and unholy trinity that you’ll need to avoid purgatory :

The Father :The Cold Cave Demo 12″, a collision of synth, dissonance and melody.

The Son : Max G Morton’s sweat, spit and acid soaked diary set to the Void side of the Faith/Void split Indestructible Wolves of the Apocalypse Junkyard

The Holy Ghost : XO Skeletons‘ Bored By Heaven Lp pressed on vinyl with sketchy layout and your own piece of the gospel to read before your dreams of fetish and licorice.

Digital is convenient, but objects are forever. Someday we’ll have to buy a “convertorator” to turn our mp3s into mp33s and catalog our jpegs into the latest and greatest form of ones and zeros but your Heartworm wares can be stored conveniently in your hope chest at the bottom of your altar for your perusal sans wifi connection or electricity.

Visit the site often as it’s constantly being updated with new saccharine for your cavities.

In one of the best magazine stories of the year, David Samuels embeds with a Cali pot dealer and his different “scenes” for the New Yorker. I love that this was cool with the editors:

Water pipes were passed around, and everyone got high. After four hits on Nick’s bong, the slogans on the refrigerator started to vibrate with uncommon significance.

The whole story is worth reading. And Samuels deserves a National Mag Award nomination. Guy spent six months reporting this one…

The New Yorker is taking an increasingly liberal approach to covering pot and potheads. Remember the blunt-in-hand Weezy pic (see below) that ran as a full page last year? It was the first time the magazine had ever run a picture of someone smoking weed. Now Samuels writes 8000-plus words and is admittedly stoned during much of the second half of the story.

First time New Yorker ever ran a pot smoking pic, Lil Wayne from last year…

This is rich. Apparently, Bjork’s music might cause a revolution:

Foreign entertainers who have taken part in activities that China deems a threat to its sovereignty will not be allowed to perform here, according to new rules posted Thursday on the Web site of the Ministry of Culture.

…

The rules on performers may have come about after an outburst in March by Bjork, the popular Icelandic singer. She used a concert in Shanghai to advocate Tibetan independence. She shouted “Tibet! Tibet!” after performing “Declare Independence,” a song from her 2007 album, “Volta.” The outcry drew sharp criticism from Chinese Internet users and praise from international supporters of an independent Tibet.

AP

John McCain, the same guy who once called the media his “base,” today accused the media of being biased towards Obama. He put out a video of various members of the press fawning over Obama. I have to admit that the video is actually pretty funny. Still, this whole line of attack shows you that John McCain is truly desperate. He’s trying to divert attention from recent events that have driven a stake through the heart of his campaign, which rests on his foreign policy “experience.”

• Iraqi PM Maliki said that Obama’s 16-month plan sounded pretty good, and even after the White House said he’d been misquoted, Maliki’s spokesperson repeated it. Then, after McCain amazingly tried to claim that he knows Maliki and Maliki didn’t really mean it, Maliki said it again.
• Bush recently sent the third-highest US State Department official to a meeting that involved Iran and European nations, the most high-level US-Iran engagement in nearly 30 years. Obama’s been calling for dialogue with Iran for some time now.
• Obama has said for a long time that we need more troops in Afghanistan, a position that McCain adopted (and then quickly revised) after hearing that the military has also called for more soldiers as the situation worsens there.

So, all of his main talking points on foreign policy have been repudiated, and Obama’s gotten stronger during the Mideast portion of his trip. McCain is right to try to turn attention to something else — wouldn’t you if people suddenly found out your opponent’s ideas make far more sense than yours — but does he really want to pick on the media? The media have consistently treated numerous McCain gaffes as jokes instead of examples that show how utterly confused he is about basic world affairs and domestic policies (just today, he talked about problems on the Iraq-Pakistan border, two countries that don’t share a border). If he turns on the media, they might actually do their jobs and scrutinize him a bit more. He can’t really afford that right now.

Here’s the video:

Obama Love

Everyone knows about Southie, the Boston white ghetto made famous by Good Will Hunting and The Departed. But did you there was a place called East Boston, another white ghetto, that’s filled with Italians not Irish? Pretty neat huh? And Eastie rules. They had an Italian Fest this weekend and these two women, Gabby Rizzuto and Christin Skane, were captured by the Boston Globe.

Best news of the day! NYT says Blackwater to end “security contracting” “business.” Steroid sales in Iraq and North Carolina to plummet 40%…

Blackwater is giving up on the business that put them in the crosshairs of an astonishing array of parties, from the insurgents it expected to face in Iraq to the Iraqi government itself, along with the American public, Democratic members of Congress and investigators from several agencies in Washington.

Gary Jackson, Blackwater’s president, described plans for a withdrawal from security contracting in an interview published last night by The Associated Press:

In 2005 and 2006, security jobs represented more than 50 percent of the company’s business. The security business is down to about 30 percent of Blackwater revenue now and Jackson said it will go much lower.

“If I could get it down to 2 percent or 1 percent, I would go there,” he said, adding that the media have falsely portrayed much about that aspect of the company. “If you could get it right, we might stay in the business.”

This comes a day after SecDef Gates wondered, “Why have we come to rely on private contractors to provide combat or combat-related security training for our forces? Further, are we comfortable with this practice, and do we fully understand the implications in terms of quality, responsiveness and sustainability?”

Batman Goes Bateman 2
LAT.com does not have anything up top about Batman’s arrest. In a town where the movie business is the only show in town, when the star of the biggest movie ever gets arrested two days after its record opening, which was propelled by the death of another of the film’s stars, wouldn’t this be a lead story? Still, despite not getting top of site billing, Bale’s arrest is the third most emailed story on LAT.com.

A lot of turmoil has stricken the LAT of late, but they’re entertainment coverage is second to none. Here’s a great story on Da Dark Knight’s gross potential:

“I think that’s not going to be a difficult task,” Warner Bros. domestic distribution chief Dan Fellman said of “The Dark Knight’s” prospects to eclipse both “Iron Man” ($314.4 million to date) and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” ($312.6 million to date). “I think we’re going to be way up there.”

But how high? Some rival studios said Monday that they are confident “The Dark Knight” could gross more than $400 million by the time all tickets are counted. The highest-grossing film of all time is 1997’s “Titanic,” with ticket sales of $600.8 million. But only six other films ever have grossed more than $400 million in domestically, a list that includes the original “Spider-Man” and “E.T.”

“The Dark Knight’s” Sunday sales — a record of $43.6 million for the day — suggests that family, adult and ethnic interest in the film is unusually high, as the end of the weekend tends to be an especially good moviegoing day for those demographics.

I wonder if the Bale arrest is going to help or hurt ticket sales? I say help…You know he’s gonna release the best statement ever, like, “The immense pressure of making this film and Heath’s death has contributed to my mental instability at this time.”

Batman Goes Bateman: Real Life Insanity Clouds the Dark Knight

I hate you mom!!!

I was trying with all my energy not to write about the new Batman move, The Dark Knight, which just had the biggest opening weekend in history ($158 million). Last spring, one its stars, Heath Ledger, who plays the Joker, overdosed on a pill combo that included OxyContin. Now Batman himself, Christian Bale, gets arrested in London for beating up his mother and sister. In effect, a movie that cost $180 million plus another $100 million for marketing, and then grossed more than any film ever, has been hijacked by its stars’ insanity. That’s a lot of precedents.

British police sources tell TMZ Christian Bale has been arrested and is still being grilled on allegations of assaulting his mom and sister Sunday, the night before the London premiere of “The Dark Knight.” 

Bale went to a London police station this morning by appointment and was arrested there.

A recent stat showed the number of drug deaths in the US jumping from 800 to 2500 between 1999 and 2005. This jump is largely due to a legal painkiller, OxyContin. Ledger’s death, for all its media coverage, hasn’t spurred any talk about the fact that one opiate, which was falsely marketed by Purdue Pharma as non-addictive, is killing so many people. (Last year Purdue lost a $2 billion lawsuit for false advertising.) So many people my age know of folks who have had their lives ruined or ended by OCs. If Hollywood had any balls, they’d use Ledger’s death not just as a vehicle for Dark Knight dollars but also as a way to confront the FDA for tighter regulations on opiates.

Bale, well, he’s played a lot of “dark” dudes, most notably Patrick Bateman, maybe the best psycho in American literature. Anyone else beats his ma and sis, I’d say it would hurt him, but the Batman numbers and Bale’s “Psycho”-background make him an unprecedented franchise. Even this shouldn’t hurt him.

Now if they’d only turn Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns into a film and let Bale kill that poon Superman.

I can read your vibes…

I somehow missed my friend and Guru, Paul Manza, brother of Jamie (aka Senor Awesome, Mons Ziti, Big Queso etc), in New York Magazine a few weeks ago. But Paul showed me this feature at his 31st b-day on Saturday (where Skye Manza cooked the best wood pizza ever!!!). Sarah Bernard writes:

Picking a yoga practice in New York, where the options are limitless, is not such an easy task. You can crisscross the boroughs, bankrupting yourself while figuring out whether you like Vinyasa or Ashtanga or Hatha or some hybrid form. Pure Yoga, a massive studio opening June 25 on the Upper East Side (203 E. 86th St., nr. Third Ave.; 212-360-1888), offers a logistical solution: nineteen different types of yoga under one very spalike roof and a flat $140-a-month fee that allows unlimited classes. There are straight-from-the-ashram practices for purists (Iyengar fans: There’s a rope wall!) as well as options like Bollywood Fusion (the title speaks for itself) or Acroyoga, a partner yoga, and something they’re calling Zenyasa, which mixes yoga, push-ups, strength training with Thera-Bands, and guided meditation. Master teachers like Yogi Vishvketu and Twee Merrigan will be flying in to teach alongside well-known locals from studios like Jivamukti and Om Yoga. Below, a few instructors assume their positions.

While reporting the story, Bernard spoke to Paul for about 30 minutes. NY Mag wound up placing him dead center on the page, looking Zen as a motherf*cker, in pink shortz, while all the other featured Yogies are pretzel-bent and way less Guru-y. Paul’s quote:

“Half-lotus lets you sit completely straight without any effort. The hard work is doing all the other poses so that can happen.”

The Barry Files

Pic by US Army

Anyone else wake up most mornings, look at the news, then think with a smile: Is this guy really going to our next President?

Senator Obama is in Iraq right now. Here he is cruising in a Blackhawk with General Pertaeus. Last week, Iraqi PM Maliki endorsed Obama’s Iraq plan. After Obama hits Israel later this week, we can start to review his Mid East-Afghanistan trip in full, but so far he’s gotten a great response and head of state treatment.

Shawn Young in Port au Prince. 

Going to Haiti doesn’t cost much—just airfare to the DR or Part au Prince, which runs about $500 with taxes—but the experience of visiting the Americas’ poorest nation and most failed state is akin to setting foot on another planet. You have the oldest (and maybe the best) culture of the Americas stuffed onto a resource starved half-island with no functioning government; a population of 8 million-plus, with 80% living on less than $2 a day. Tropical heat. Voodoo. UN blue helmets. Shawn Young was just there, and here’s what he saw:

The total journey to Port-au-Prince took about 2.5 hours. But along the way I had to get off and find new rides in Croix de Bouquets and at another point just outside of central Port-au-Prince. I walked most of the distance through Croix de Bouquets—about two miles—to get to the next stop where I could catch a ride further along.

As I reached the other side of town, it was a very strange feeling to be standing on a street in shorts and a t-shirt and see a convoy of armed UN troops in flak jackets roll by in white trucks. The deeper in I went, the scarier it felt, and the more removed from help I imagined myself being if anything went down. I just wanted to keep moving. I jumped on the next “tap-tap” (the characteristic multicolored buses and converted mini pick-up trucks in Haiti) and got going.

Thirty minutes later I was in Port-au-Prince. I caught another ride further in to the center, about a mile along. And the further along I went, the more shocking the scene became. Burned out buildings, unfinished construction never to be finished, people everywhere selling junk and nobody buying, piles of garbage and filth…squalor, ruin, desperation—my uneasiness from fear started to shift into something new: an increasing sobriety about the world and human reality, informed by what was starting to become (and would soon be) an absolutely unbelievable environment of social ruin. The truck stopped. I hopped out and gave the guy 50 gourdes. I walked further down the street, towards where it got more crowded.

It was incredibly crowded. There was a large truck trying to push its way up an extremely crowded street. People were selling anything they had to sell: used clothing from the United States, brightly-colored plastic household items, soap, rice, fish, crabs, meat…everything was motion, congestion, noise, heat, humidity, stench. Chaos. It was like a Hieronymous Bosch painting…things happening everywhere in every small and large place, with no overall theme or idea but that of a thousand horrible individual stories being played out simultaneously. At the macro level, it was all just static on the TV screen. I saw an old woman selling underwear out of a large basket and sitting quietly on the ground in the middle of all the turmoil; I saw another person selling rotting food; I saw people unfolding huge bundles of clothes to lay out on the ground and sell; I saw piles of rice, polluted water, flies, and garbage everywhere. A man was struggling to pull an old engine on a wagon that looked older and heavier than the engine itself did. Nothing made sense. The buildings seemed disproportionate and empty, yet filled with people. Everything was in disrepair. I noticed paint peeling off of balustrades maybe 20 or 30 feet above. I thought that I should be taking photographs of all these things—but then taking pictures just seemed intensely trivial and irrelevant in the middle of such an incredible, horrible, and very immediate situation of other people’s lives. And I didn’t want to actively draw attention to myself. I was the only light-skinned person that I had seen in hours in an unfamiliar and dangerous place, and had moved like a specter thus far on my journey. I had to get out of there.

I walked up a hill and glanced behind me. With some distance between me and the place, I saw it there, in the pit of it all, at the center in all of its decaying glory: the old slave market. It looked like something out of a nightmare. A hot, crowded, smelly, midday-sunlit nightmare. God damn…this place truly was a disaster…a giant social disaster extended out of a disastrous history. It was like I had descended into hell, and it was very much like Sartre said: Hell is other people…

UPDATE 10:44AM Tuesday, July 22: Brian Ristau accurately pointed out that Rama Mayo also released the first Ten Yard Fight 7″.

Rama Mayo released my then-college roommate Steve Pica’s LP back in 98. A decade on, the design holds up. 

As some people have noticed, the Medicine Agency homepage has been updated and redesigned. The site is now two separate entitities: a marketing, art, and design agency, and an editorially independent blog. The agency-side, from what I understand, is to be headed by Rama Mayo, a childhood chum (and business associate) of nearly all Med A’s writers.  John Lacriox will continue to oversee Med’s overall development.

The content on this blog has nothing to do with the agency. Our goal remains the same: to cover relevant international news, politics, and culture with a youth-y voice. We are editorially independent. You will not see posts hyping anyone or anything that is not newsworthy. We will, of course, cover our own contributors’ work if it is news (case in point: Anthony Pappalardo’s book, Radio Silence (Powerhouse/MTV 2008), which went live on Amazon last week). 

While a formal mission statement and press release is forthcoming, Mayo and the agency’s work will be transparent and support the content side. Mayo grew up in Boston, and has been in LA since the early 2000s. He spent time in the late 90s helping launch Jimmy Eat World, At the Drive In, Piebald, The Explosion, Fastbreak, and others. He’s since worked in fashion, marketing, and production.  

I’m not going to condone felony hit-and-run on the 55 in a monster truck. Nor am I going to make light of driving said monster truck (complete with a giant picture decal of yourself) down the wrong way of a crowded Balboa street “causing pedestrians to flee in terror.” Running red lights, crashing into cars, driving on the median and almost killing innocent people in Newport Beach… none of these things constitute normal behavior. I can’t even begin to speculate on what caused the UFC and PRIDE fighter, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson to freak out like this last Tuesday, but I sincerely feel for him.

It’s easy for even the most compassionate people to dismiss a guy like this. He beats people up for a living, he’s testosterone personified, a giant ego with a giant truck to match… I get it. They attribute his actions to steroids and/or drugs and claim it was his choice but don’t bother ask if there could be a bigger, more complex problem that not only made this possible but even probable.

I met Quinton after I moved to Huntington Beach, California around early 2000. I was running my gear company, called Next Level – designing and marketing merchandise and starting to sponsor fighters. I was also training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu almost full-time and backstage at a lot of fights. A bunch of gyms at the time were either in location limbo or wrapped up in partner politics, so I was a constant visitor to several simultaneously around Orange County and LA. Quinton had moved to HB recently as well, his goal was to become a professional fighter but he was basically living in his car he was so broke. But he was always a nice guy that never complained, he was never too good to learn from anybody smaller or less experienced than him, never too prideful to ask for help, never too egotistical to see his own flaws and never too tired to work. He got hyped when you caught him in a knee-bar and was quick to congratulate you, but he would only let it happen once (true story). When it became pretty obvious that all the pros were buzzing about him and those top pros that visited were starting to get their asses kicked by him in training, he still talked humbly about his aspirations and his kids. He later beat almost all of those pros in Pride and UFC rising quickly to the top.

It’s fair to ask if steroids or drugs were involved when it pertains to the mixed martial arts world - steroids are fairly common throughout the professional social ranks and the in-crowd of hobbyist fighters in the United States and even more in countries like Brazil and Japan where the sport is absolutely huge and winners are national heroes. Up until somewhat recently, MMA was considered an outlaw’s sport in the U.S. with ex-military fighters from fallen third-world countries (where drugs and roids are plentiful) and old-school juicers dominating the top international levels of the sport. Sympathizers of Baseball’s (or cycling’s) steroid problem take notice - all excuses apply, ie: the pressure is too much, everybody’s doing it, can’t be competitive without it, we’ve got hungry mouths to feed, etc. The most serious painkillers are around too; you just have to ask anybody on the mat if they know a good sports medicine doctor and you’ll soon be drugged up enough to giggle through arm-lock training with your torn rotator cuff.

See Mark Kerr shooting up opiates in the HBO documentary “The Smashing Machine” or Rico Rodriguez’s first episode on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew for good examples.

A couple of weeks ago, Quinton lost the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship to Forrest Griffin. Then Tuesday something we don’t yet understand obviously triggered Rampage to freak out. We don’t know if it was drugs, roids, depression or some other serious problem but in time we will find out the truth. If you’re so quick to judge Rampage as guilty of his own vices and condemn him to bad karma, you should have your “compassionate” card pulled.

Dana White, President of the company that owns the UFC was on a plane reportedly in 17 minutes to help. To the best of my knowledge, companies don’t usually show that kind of love for their employees and that might just be what this industry and many others need. After being released on $25,000 bail on Tuesday, Quinton was 5150’ed (committed to a mental hospital) for a three-day mental evaluation on Wednesday. White mentioned that Quinton been fasting - drinking only energy drinks and effectively not sleeping for a few days straight.

Before we move on to labeling Quinton “crazy” let’s just slow down and compare this to other famous freak-outs. If Quinton were a comedian, where would your prejudices lean? After Dave Chappelle walked away from like $50 million with Comedy Central and went to Africa, the press and the public called him crazy only when they weren’t alleging hard drug abuse. After the dust settled, Dave came back for an interview on Inside The Actor’s Studio where he used the example of Martin Lawrence to put this subject into perspective. “The worst thing to call somebody is crazy, it’s dismissive,” Chappelle said. Dave asked how Martin Lawrence, having survived great success and a stroke with a smile ended up screaming on the street waving a gun? Seems like a valid question to me.

“These people are not crazy. They are strong people. Maybe the environment is a little sick.” Chappelle said

Barack Obama is in Afghanistan! NYT…WaPost…