Valentine v. Claudius

Two days until Valentine's Day. In ancient Rome, February 14 was the holiday to celebrate Juno, queen of the Roman gods and godesses and women and marriage. On Feb 15, the feast of Lupercalia began. Lupercalia is a whole separate topic. Anyhoo...on the 14th, boys and girls would be paired up to enjoy the festival.


At relatively the same time period, Emperor Claudius II, a.k.a. Claudius the Cruel, was in the habit of engaging in a series of nasty wars. As an aside, I am considering changing my nom de plume to "Purple Flag on Saturday the Cruel". Has a nice ring to it, no? Back to Claudius, he was having trouble finding enough soldiers for his armies, and he figured that it was because the fellas didn't want to leave their significant others, so he canceled all the marriages and engagements. It may also have had some connection to the fellas not wanting to get killed, but Claudius was a make war not love kind of guy, and he was the emperor, so he got his way. Go figure.


Now, back to Valentine, a priest, who was way into love not war, and was secretly performing marriages to hitch up all those Roman GI Joes and their nubile babe pals. Claudius found out about Valentine's righteous peace gig and, being a rather impatient sort, had Valentine arrested. Valentine was convicted (like there was any doubt about how that would turn out) and sentenced to being clubbed and beheaded. In that order, apparently, as clubbing a beheaded fella would be cruel and unusual.

The photo is the reliquary of St. Valentine. It might not be "the" Valentine, but the church that's showing this very weird stuff is happy with it, and I think it's pretty cool.

Now the pastors in Rome were trying to S.O.P.--stamp out paganism. What they did to further that was to use saints as the new headliners for the old pagan feasts. The new Christian martyr, Saint Valentine, thus became the poster boy for the former feast of Juno.

Goes around comes around: Marcus Aurelius Claudius, a.k.a. Claudius Gothicus, a.k.a. Claudius II a.k.a. Claudius the Cruel, ascended to power in the year 268 and croaked just two years later, probably from smallpox. Turns out that Valentine just had bad timing.

Giving New Energy to a Crummy Wednesday

The biggest news of the day is that some TV doctors may be going away. Katherine Heigl and T.R. Knight, two of the Grey's Anatomony actors, have apparently quit. At the same time, House, the Fox doc show, is floundering in the ratings and in danger of disappearing alltogether.

I stopped joining the spouse for Grey's some time back because it's a thinly disguised yes we really are doctors though this is about not-so-young people in a constant state of libidinous agitation. I quit watching House because I have a tendency to think I may have every illness that they profile and the lead character has become impossible to not despise.

Seems like the whole world is in a yawn/pause, and this space is no different. To remedy this, I am submitting a script for a two hour made for TV movie special, the premise of which will be a medical convention taking place in Cleveland. Yes, folks, Cleveland rocks, so they say. All the creepy doctors from all the crappy doctor shows will attend this convention. The convention's organizers will have a big group outing where all the TVMD's go ice fishing on Lake Erie as a team building exercise. As an added bonus, the event will be catered, out on the ice, by Brie Hodge's catering company, and since it's such a big job, all the Wisteria Lane women are being conscripted to help.

Once we have them all together out on the ice, the party area will crack off, just like it did in real life last Saturday. The difference this time will be that instead of a helicopter rescue, the ice floe will be enveloped in a dense fog for hours, as the winds push the ice further and further away from, um, oh yeah, Cleveland, blessed Cleveland.

The characters will be stunned, when, in the dark of night, the ice grinds to a halt, having hit land. When they scramble from their rapidly disappearing ice raft to the safety of land, they are amazed to find that their ice ship has transported them to...where?

Welcome to All Star Survivor 2009, my new TV show. Three crapfests combined into one spectacular marathon trek to nowhere. I get all the washed up characters reinvigorated in a new concept, and the struggling shows that they left get to introduce new characters in the old settings. Oh, yeah, I get rich in the process.

Win/win/win.

"...and the Emmy goes to...."

135 x Dumb

Ice fishing is an unusual pasttime. It requires, in its simplest form, that one go out in frigid conditions, venture onto an inherently unstable plane, then drill a hole in it and sit and wait. I have done this once or twice, for short periods of time, I must confess. Many do it in earnest, and there is all manner of ice augers, ice rods, ice shacks, heaters, just about every old thing that you might imagine, to enhance the experience. In many places, entire shanty villages spring up during the ice fishing season. There's one overriding rule that governs ice fishing.

You can't be exceptionally stupid.

This past Saturday, 135 Ohio anglers defied the rule and went for a wild ride. The air had become warm and the wind was blowing pretty hard. Defying nature, this crew headed out on the ice pack on foot, on snowmobile and via four wheeler. There was an ominous warning: a large crevasse in the ice sheet. Ever resourceful (this is not the same as intelligent) the anglers used old wooden pallets to build a bridge. They mighta shoulda brought out a few thousand more pallets and hammers and nails and old old Norwegian ship builder named Lars.

You've seen the story; the ice sheet cracked off and Ol' Ma Nature puffed and blew the dummies out into Lake Erie. There is no apparent truth to the rumor that the province of Ontario mobilized to repel an attack of ice invaders. Thank heaven for cell phones, the Coast Guard and helicopters. All were rescued, except for one man who fell off the hard part of the lake and into the wet part and had a heart attack. A number of snowmobiles, ATV's and other miscellaneous equipment were left behind and are, I assume, going to end up at the bottom of Lake Erie.

It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

How Do You Spell Greed? N-A-S-C-A-R

NASCAR, the ultimate blue collar spectator sport, appears to need a tune up. The sport with the deep country roots, the wonderful, colorful history written on the backroads of the southeast United States, the sport that has its stars return the embrace of its adoring fans like no other, has blown a gasket.

The Daytona 500 is referred to as the Super Bowl of NASCAR. In the middle of February each year, nearly a quarter of a million people come together in Daytona, the place where NASCAR was invented by Bill France Sr., to celebrate speed and the drivers who dance with the devil for a living. I have had the privelege to witness this incredible spectacle in person five times. The last few years, unable to attend in person, I have successfully resold my precious tickets, Sprint Tower, Section B, Row 44, the most spectacular view of the most spectacular sporting venue that I have ever experienced.

From those seats I witnessed the awesome daredevil driving of Dale Earnhardt through the grass in a sports car race, I saw the tragic passing a few days later of the sport's icon, I've seen Tony Stewart go inverted at 185 mph on the backstretch like Tom Cruise in Top Gun, I watched Air Force One fly over the track and wave its wings at the fans, I've seen the F-16 flyover at night (and scare me right out of my seat), and more, much more.

I'm probably not going to experience that particular perspective again. The reason is that NASCAR has been priced right out of the action. Reselling my tickets this year at a substantial loss cost me a lot of money, as the economy's slowdown continues to take a toll. Several weeks ago, the Daytona International Speedway, having difficulty selling seats for the 500, cut the prices on remaining backstretch seats by 50%.

You can guess what that did to the resale market. Prices fell right off the table. The problem was very simple. Regular people, the people whom NASCAR proudly points to as its strength, can't afford to go to the races. Saturday night, the opening show of the racing season, the Bud Shootout at Daytona, was sparsely attended.

It's not just the price of admission, not by a long shot. The locals have all cashed in, in the past. If you can deal with the price of the tickets, you'll choke on accomodations. Hotel prices in Daytona TRIPLE during Speedweek. This year, a lot of those rooms are going empty.

The price of the ticket package for the four days of Speed Week, Thursday through Sunday, has escalated meteorically over the last ten years. The cost of hotel rooms has done likewise. The Daytona 500 ticket that I'm giving up, the Sunday ticket alone, is $350. The sponsoring car companies are hurting, people are being laid off from work in staggering numbers, and the greedy are now left to figure out how they'll respond.

My response : I'll watch it on TV. Maybe.

It Takes a Thief: Bernie Made Off With Really Big $$$

Yesterday's Tribune published a list, several lists, actually, of the people scammed by smiling Bernie Madoff, the New York based thief who masqueraded as an investment advisor for a few decades and stole $50 billion. There's some pretty heavy hitters on the list, e.g.:

• Kevin Bacon - actor, rocker and Footloose guy
• Newton Minnow (as trustee)-the former chairman of the FCC
• Larry King-"Bernie Madoff...hello..."
• Sandy Koufax- famous Dodger pitcher from the 60's
• Kyra Sedgwick - actress. I see her all over, but what's she been in?
• John Denver - well, the estate of. Man, ripping off a dead guy?
• John Malkovich - scary!
• Steven Spielberg - movie genius, apparently gullible investor
• Elie Wiesel Foundation - like looting the widows and orphans fund
• A French investment bank, a French consumer bank and a French insurance company - insert your own punchline.

There's some discussion about whether Bernie is a psychopath. Hah!

Bernie's under house arrest--in his $7 million dollar Manhattan apartment. Hah!

Bernie has a 55 foot yacht on the French Riviera. Hawhnhh! (that's French for "Hah!")

Bernie has a $21 million house in Palm Beach and a 10 handicap. No more hah's. No more Bernie stuff. There is too much information to summarize, and it just gets sleazier and sleazier. But there's a happy ending: it's Friday, none of us had enough money to make Bernie want to rip us off and there was actually a bit of good in the Bernie story.

His sons turned him in.

Hah!