[Books] Book Look: Holidays in Heck, by P. J. O'Rourke

Book Look: Holidays in Heck, by P.J. O'Rourke: Good ol' P.J. You can always depend him for good humoured, but keen, insight. He previously documented his time as a correspondent in some of the most dangerous places in the world in Holidays in Hell. Now in his sixties and forbidden by age and spouse and good sense for pressing his luck in further in yet another hazardous rat hole somewhere, he's turned his attention to old late middle age in general and the family vacation in particular; trying but not terrifying, hence Holidays in Heck.

That's not to say the stories here are lightweight. Although there are entertaining tales of skiing in Ohio (yes, Ohio) and less than glowing reviews of a couple of leviathan museums (Field Museum in Chicago and the American History Museum on the National Mall), there is also a lengthy trip to China pre-Three Gorges dam, short jaunt to Kabul where he comes to the conclusion that nobody knows anything, and a two-part brush with cancer with mortality as the antagonist -- all carry weight but lightened by comedy.

It is perhaps not as high energy, ironic, or skeptical as his previous stuff, but that's also true to his years. If nothing else, P.J. is still everyman confronting an increasingly bizarre and incomprehensible world with wit and spirit and a deep appreciation of the absurd. Should you read Holidays in Heck? Heck yes.

[Books] Farewell P.J.

The best line from Matt Labash's obituary for P.J. O'Rourke: "Good writers make you want to read, Great writers make you want to write."  P.J. O'Rourke made me want to write. He had one keen eye inherited from Tom Wolfe, and one gimlet eye inherited from Hunter Thompson. But he didn't eviscerate his targets like Wolfe or stink bomb them like Thompson.  He simply laughed at them. No -- scratch that. He laughed with them. However ridiculous his targets came out, he never suggested that he was any better, in fact he often targeted the man in the mirror.  He once pointed out that Hunter Thompson schtick was being a crazy guy looking at normalcy.  His schtick was being a normal guy facing all the crazy.  As a result, no matter how incisive and biting his critique, you had to love him.  In the end, this made his words all the more powerful.  It was a remarkable thing to see.

Me taking up writing back then was me saying "I want to be able to do that."  I am comparatively weak sauce, but I like to think my first three books were absolutely in that vein.  You can get a feel for how much he influenced me by searching the early days of this blog (largely greater than 15 years ago) for all the references to him.

I'm lucky to have lived during his tenure on Earth, and hope he's found all the good bars in Heaven.

Link Dump: For when you know you should be working...

• PJ O'Rourke on celebrity: "America's media and entertainment industry has a gross (as it were) revenue of $316.8 billion a year. If we subtract the income derived from worthy journalism and the publishing of serious books, that leaves $316.8 billion."


• Gamblers betray Harry Potter. British bookies notice a distinct increase in bets on certain character's death coming from the town where the book was printed. A leak? If you don't want to know who they are betting on, don't click through.


• Speaking of disturbed athletes, it looks like Ricky Williams may actually return to the 'phins after all. Aaron Schatz, of Football Outsiders doesn't care. Schatz is right, of course, but I wouldn't be quite as quick to write off Ricky because I am a great believer that a year off can help heal all sorts of little injuries. Although it also means you're a bit out of shape. Ricky could come back strong in the following year. And let's suppose after the defensive build up of this off season, Saban uses next off-season to build the o-line. Then the 2006-7 'phins could have something. And Maria Sharapova could return my phone calls.


• Speaking of weed breathers, two of them got hold of Jimmy Buffett's cell phone. Turns out he had some pretty eminent phone numbers in there, including Bill Clinton and George Clooney. Get this: "We were sitting around smoking weed and strolling down the list on Jimmy's phone, going 'Wow!' " [Jason] Martin [the busboy who stole the phone] told Page Two. He said he didn't call anyone on the list. But according to the police report, Martin said some of his friends may have crank-called former President Clinton...Martin, 22, said he found the $500 phone at 4 a.m. May 29 outside the Cuban joint Brisa Atlantica. Buffett was spotted going wild on the dance floor earlier that morning. No one seemed to miss the phone until May 30, when a Buffett minion dialed the cellphone's number, and Martin answered..."He said I was a thief and a liar," Martin said. "Then I called Jane's [Buffett's wife] number, and she was nasty to me. So I told them I wouldn't give it back." Ah, the mind of a reefer addict. So instead of collecting reward, he got fired and the Secret Service was on his ass over the Clinton call. But frankly I'm more disturbed that Jimmy, who must be pushing 60, was "going wild on the dance floor." Could not have been pretty.

That To Which I Have Been Up: I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things (Vegas lingers), by that I mean I'm giving in to distractions again. The re-design is going slowly, the latest problem being that the new design renders reasonably in Internet Explorer, but unreasonably in Netscape/Mozilla. Chalk it up to a learning experience, right? I guess I needn't be in any rush, since it's a re-design for re-design's sake - and to force me to learn some new HTML/CSS techniques.

Again, I find myself distracted by the twin Japanese imports of author Haruki Murakami and the band Pizzicato Five. I've been engrossed with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle which you can get a taste of from the reviews at Amazon. It is as at least as fascinating as is sounds. Meanwhile, Pizzicato Five's super-expensive import This Year's Model is playing on repeat in my car CD player. It's delightful. Yes, the lyrics are in Japanese and so I don't understand a word, but the exuberance shows through. Lucky they have a big catalog to keep me going for a while.

I've also developed an deeper interest in the NFL, which I haven't really had since I was a wee lad. It got me wondering why. Part of the reason is that my favorite boyhood team, the Miami Dolphins are monstrously good this year (so far) and part is that I got sucked into a minor fascination with betting on the games in Vegas (therein lies a tale for the future), but I think the main reason is ESPN Page 2. The sportswriting there is terrific, it goes way beyond standard sports journalism - it's packed with wry commentary, sarcasm, hyperbole, and all the stuff that makes reading fun, along with some genuine insight. As I began reading Page 2 a few months ago, I wasn't really clued in to sports enough to pick up on every reference, but they were having so much fun that I wanted in on it. That's what made me realize what the source of many interests I've adopted over the years. It's the quality of the writing.

Years ago I found myself interested in libertarianism, even though I have very little interest in political philosophy anymore. But I was attracted to the writings of people like P.J. O'Rourke, Florence King, David Brooks, etc., who just seemed to be having a blast while writing some really clever, refined stuff. Before that, I remember reading all sorts of books centered on WWI after I stumbled on the excellent, The Great War in Africa, by Byron Farwell who is a great storyteller in addition to being fine a historian.

I don't think I could overstate the affect the written word has had on my life.

So anyway, my current fascination is ESPN Page 2. Try Greg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback:

The Rams have forgotten how to block. (Note to the Rams O-line after watching the Monday night game -- the trick is to stand in front of the guy you are blocking. Do not step out of his way and watch him go by! Try to get in front of him. It's a technique thing.)

Or anything by Bill Simmons:

I'm ashamed to admit this, but Monday night I went to see the new Drew Barrymore movie "Riding in Cars with Boys," accompanying the Sports Gal as part of our "She won't bitch about the fact that I spend seven hours every Sunday watching football if I escort her to an occasional chick flick and don't bitch about it" deal. Savvy, huh?

I only have two hopes with chick flicks: that they're short and that there's a cute actress prominently involved. Needless to say, since "Riding in Cars" lasted for 140 interminable minutes and the wheels came off the "Drew Barrymore is a babe" bandwagon about three years ago. I spent the last 45 minutes trying to pull a piece of metal off the bottom of my seat so I could jam it into my jugular vein.

Oh, and then there's an odd fellow named Hunter S. Thompson.

Dig in. Have fun. Great writing. Atrocious editing (S. Thompson Hunter????), but I can forgive that.

And if I start making obscure sports references, you'll know why.

Fairness, Idealism, and Other Atrocities: It's graduation time, so all around the country poor, unsuspecting shlubs are being given sheepskins and maudlin advice from semi-famous people. As usual, you can't do better than P.J. O'Rourke. My favorite lines:

Idealists are also bullies. The idealist says, "I care more about the redwood trees than you do. I care so much I can't eat. I can't sleep. It broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I'm a better person. And because I'm the better person, I have the right to boss you around."

and

I am here to advocate for unfairness. I've got a 10-year-old at home. She's always saying, "That's not fair." When she says this, I say, "Honey, you're cute. That's not fair. Your family is pretty well off. That's not fair. You were born in America. That's not fair. Darling, you had better pray to God that things don't start getting fair for you."

I wish I could sum things up so perfectly.

Quotables

Quotables: Smart sentences and clever comments I've encountered.

Stephen Fry on travel -- "Travel is about two things, and two things only. Bowels and laundry." (source)

Haruki Murakami on fitness -- "I think that one...condition for being a gentleman would be keeping quiet about what you do to stay healthy. A gentleman shouldn't go on and on about what he does to stay fit." (source: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)

P.J. O'Rourke on his encounter with cancer -- "I have, of all things, a malignant hemorrhoid. What color bracelet does one wear for that?" (source)

Government Motors Round-up

Government Motors Round-up: That's all she wrote for GM, eh? Is there anybody with greater than two brains cells to rub together who honestly believes the conflagration of the Treasury Department and the UAW are going to be able to run a company that makes a profit? If I ever turn to non-fiction it will be to write a book about how wishful thinking destroyed the world. Near as I can tell, the dreamers have decided that GM can only survive by the government financing UAW salaries while building electric cars that make no money. And if you can dream it you can do it, right?

Big losers:

Us. We were told letting GM be liquidated would be too costly to the economy. The tax drain over the upcoming years will dwarf any liquidation losses.

Ford. I thought they were smart to refuse Xerxes offer of kindness and to stand when others knelt, but now they look like the last business on the street that hasn't paid Tony Soprano for protection. Legislation that benefits GM and hurts Ford is inevitable. Not only that, are they going to get a labor contract comparable to the contract the UAW negotiates with itself at GM? Will the myriad regulations and arbitrations be inflicted on the two equally? There is the potential for Ford to get buggered in a million little ways.

Michigan. Note where the GM plant closings are. Note the nasty infighting going on between Detroit and Warren for the headquarters of what's left of the company. (This battle was rendered moot when the President, who was going to keep politics out of the running of GM, decreed they would stay in Detroit.) The urban, and eventually suburban, areas of this State are going to empty out. Not that this bothers me other than to the extent I will have my taxes raised to cover their loss. I would much rather see a small population Michigan that is run along the lines of Utah or Nevada or one of the other Western States than the current disaster we have. So maybe this is just a short term loss.

Big Winners:

President Xerxes. Of course. GM becomes a positioning tool for his re-election. He can strengthen his base by pointing to his green credentials or to shore up his labor support. If he needs to look tough, he can lay down the law to GM and the rest of the country (who are resolutely against the bailout) will think that he really just wanted to give them a chance before being the stern daddy and clamping down. He is kind, the God-King, but imagine what horrible fate awaits his enemies when he would gladly kill any of his own men for victory. Exceptionally well played.

The UAW. They live another day, and with perhaps even more power. If this decrepit, pointless, corrupt monopoly knows how to do anything it's survive. It is second to none for shamelessly protecting its own interests at the expense of everyone else. I would say their ownership stake is their ultimate triumph, their endgame, but whenever you think they can't get any more surreal, they do. Again, exceptionally well played.

Karl Marx. Just ask the Russians.

It amazes me to think that when I was finishing undergrad business school -- let's call it the mid-eighties -- any of us would all have killed for jobs with one of the Big Three. You couldn't buy an appointment with one of their recruiters and the only ones who scored careers there already had family or other connections on the inside. Now those people are looking for jobs. Meanwhile, I work for what at times seems to be the only company in the State of Michigan that's profitable and hiring. Life is a marathon, not a sprint, eh?

Three more articles of interest to round out the topic:
P.J. O'Rourke thinks the US car industry was killed because driving became a chore and "pointy-headed busybodies" took all the fun out of it. I love P.J., one of my favorite writers in all history, but he's wrong about this. There is still plenty of love for cars out there.
Megan McArdle can't see how the hell a government takeover is going to work, proving she has greater than two brain cells to rub together.
Paul Niedermeyer sharply observes that GM has been a zombie for 17 years, surviving on government favoritism and GMAC finance income rather than actually selling profitable cars. All true.

[Good Links] Link Dump

Link Dump: I haven't done a link dump in ages, so here's some good reading to distract you from work....

I hate politics, but P.J. O'Rourke is just too good and funny not to read. On a recent trip to Afghanistan, he brilliantly gets to a core issue in all of journalism (and one of the reasons I hate the news media), which is that nobody knows what the real truth is and whatever "angle" is taken on the story reflects the reporter's biases more than any external reality. But I guess you can't write endless stories about how you don't know anything.

Under the heading of things I never thought I'd see, in Brooklyn cops and citizens team up to catch a bike thief. A stolen bike came up for sale on Craigslist and the owner noticed. Cops actually set up a sting with the victim to catch the perp. Awesome. I'm frankly amazed that she didn't just get a "come on in and fill out a form" response. Good on the Brooklyn PD.

Like many people when given a public forum, Roger Ebert tends to spew some embarrassing socio-political commentary. Diarrhea of the mouth, as Rocky Balboa would say. But never ever doubt his ability to write a beautifully crafted and insightful movie review like his recent revisitation of Lost in Translation.

A Shatnerian epic. Gave me the giggles.

And if you still don't want to get back to work, I offer a collection of The Best Magazine Articles Ever. I highly recommend Gay Talese on Sinatra. The one of phone phreaking, Secrets of the Little Blue Box, is great for the retro geek in you. Great stuff.

The Month That Was - July 2011

The Month That Was - July 2011: So the summer peak has passed. It has been the hottest July on record for this area, but there is no denying the growing shortness of daylight. For this month, let me tell you about what I am not going to tell you about.

I am not going to write about the long weekend I took in Rehoboth Beach, DE. In terms of activities it was little different than the trip I took there back in February (apart from a somewhat disastrous 5K run with an overarching Penn State influence). I am not going to do any book reviews. I have been reading, of course. Specifically: It's All Greek to Me by Charlotte HIggins, Half-Made World by Felix Gilman, Driving Like Crazy by P.J. O'Rourke, The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Playback by Raymond Chandler. I will drench you with comments on these and others in the near future, but I have been putting too many book reviews up so -- a break from that this month. I am not going to talk about my writing project since I left it in percolation mode (that means I ignored it) all month.

Most importantly, I am not going to talk about my lawn.

[TV] Comedies Tonight
[Tech] Phone Fristration
[House and Home] Critter Wars
[Good Links] Premium Clickage

Doing Donuts in the Garden

Doing Donuts in the Garden: P.J. O'Rourke reviews a trio of books about three days of abject asshattery that happened in upstate New York 40 years ago. How can you resist?

Laboring Day: No day off for me. Way too much going on to lose momentum. But, I did complete three book reviews over at Blogcritics: Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, by Garrison Keillor, The CEO of the Sofa, by P.J. O'Rourke, and Tricky Business, by Dave Barry. Now I have to get ReadApplePie updated since it's re-release is imminent.

But I just have to share this with you because it make me laugh whenever I think about it.

What Up:  Apple Pie inches closer to re-release.  Misspent Youth inches closer to being about half done.  This site inches closer to redesign.  Summer inches closer to Fall.  (And I inch closer to the grave.) 
 
I am in the process of reading three funny books that I picked up in the remainder bin.  CEO of the Sofa by P.J. O'Rourke, Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 by Garrison Keillor, and Tricky Business by Dave Barry.  All will get a good review once I finish them.
 
Yes, that's right.  Unlike many reviewers I actually read the books I review.

Links-a-Plenty: All these poor wittle sites just lying around hoping to be linked to.

• A lively interview of P.J. O'Rourke at the Onion. Always worth reading. And don’t miss his latest Diary of a Country Gentleman in Forbes.


• Another interview, this one with Joe Bob Briggs, the king of B-movie hosts. One of the few people who appreciate the difference between high quality trash cinema and plain old trash cinema.
  
• This is a wicked optical illusion. In fact I'm not sure I would have believed it if I hadn't used my color checker on it.


• Take this job and…give it to someone else. The Worst Jobs in Science. I didn’t get past Flatus Odor Judge (aka professional fart-sniffer). "…refuses to divulge the remuneration, but it would seem safe to characterize it thusly: Not enough." Uh-huh.


• For the Pixie, who is a Monopoly maven, the Probabilities in the Game of Monopoly. And here I thought is was just a matter of evicting widows and orphans.


• Economists at work.


• Are the Detroit Tigers the worst ever? Nope. They came through in the end and dodged the record. They even failed at being the worst.


• Idiots like this EBay scammer should be peeled and rolled in salt.


• These kids with their Maxims and their FHMs. Didn’t have no silicon or airbrushing in my day. All we had was swanky prose and cheesey graphics. And we were grateful.


• I'm Greg Brady, the real Greg Brady, all the other Greg Bradys are just imitating…


• Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny imropetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

Pillory Hillary: Not surprisingly, P.J. O'Rourke has little good to say about Hillary Clinton's book. But in fact, she's got no one to blame but herself for saying stuff like this:

One snowy night during my freshman year, Margaret Clapp, then President of the college, arrived unexpectedly at my dorm. . . . She came into the dining room and asked for volunteers to help her gently shake the snow off the branches of the surrounding trees so that they wouldn't break under the weight. We walked from tree to tree through knee-high snow under a clear sky filled with stars, led by a strong, intelligent woman alert to the surprises and vulnerabilities of nature. . . . I decided that night that I had found the place where I belonged.

That sort of prose makes Dan Quayle seem sharp and witty. She is blandly free of anything remotely resembling a soul or personality. Check out this quote:

Ireland invigorated and inspired me, and I wished we could bottle up the good feelings and take them back home.

Has the woman never heard of Guinness?

Hippies, Nostalgia, Etc.: I have been (very mildly) taken to task about my characterization of Ben Fong-Torres as a nostalgic ex-hippie (in this post). I suppose some clarification is in order.

Ben Fong-Torres is the former news editor of Rolling Stone magazine. In response to that, many of you young'ns are saying, "And?" Well, you have to understand that back in the late 60s and through the 70s, Rolling Stone was very different from the slick, high-style glossy it is today.

One of my hobby horses is the way in which high-quality, vital prose, especially journalism, is key to any activity coming to the forefront of popular culture. Rolling Stone did this for Rock and Roll music back in those years. To this day I can remember some of the stories I read back then, specifically I remember coverage of a Rolling Stones tour that captured the drug and groupie hedonism of that time, and I remember reading some intense early coverage of the London punk rock scene and how it flew so defiantly in the face of the cocaine and disco scene (which included my high school). It was also where I first read Hunter S. Thompson. Truly great stuff. (Do I sound nostalgic?)

Rolling Stone still tries to stay relevant - they gave P.J. O'Rourke a regular job, so they can't be all bad - but now it's loaded down with skin, fashion and spring break trendiness. MTV in print, and that's not a compliment. Yes, they try to be more edgy than, say, Teen People, but in the context of the superficiality of the magazine, anything weighty seems like a calculated attempt to impress.

For example, remember this post (can't find the original story, sorry), wherein we find Joan Jett was dissed with a mere mention whereas Britney and Mandy got all the coverage in a Women in Rock issue of some sort. Well, in the latest issue, we get a mea culpa, and they print the open letter complaint I quoted from in that post. I'd guess some focus group results indicated it was time to show they were hip after all so they took the opportunity. This is me being cynical. The point is that this is not what that magazine was like in the time Ben was there.

Anyway, Ben left Rolling Stone in 1980 (do any of you even remember 1980?) and has been intimately involved in music media ever since. Check out his web site for details. Most recently he was involved in a now defunct venture called MyPlay. MyPlay offered on-line storage lockers for your music files - the idea being you can access to your music collection from anywhere you can get to the internet. Visiting your friends and want them to hear that great CD you just bought? MyPlay to the rescue. OK, that may not sound like much, but it has a very powerful idea behind it.

You see, I don't want to own any CDs, or any DVDs, or any magazines, or any sorts of media. That's just clutter. What I want is to have access to the content when I want it from anywhere - home, office, car, Motel 6, and so forth. If broadband and wireless connections were ubiquitous, a service like MyPlay would be invaluable. Sadly, that's still years off. And then there DMCA to worry about...ugh.

The clarification I've been staggering towards is that Ben Fong-Torres has spent most of the duration of my life as a driving force in music media and is still standing and working and creating and flourishing in spite of the dire state of the contemporary music industry.

Which is what I meant by 'nostalgic ex-hippie'.

Walk Like an Egyptian: P.J. O'Rourke visits Egypt and finds, not surprisingly, he's got the tourist spots to himself. "The traffic is too scary. We Americans, who invented traffic, are always being startled by the forms into which it has evolved around the world. (God, if he's a Darwinian, may be similarly aghast at life.)" Also read the follow-up interview.

Linkapalooza: The usual random assortment of HTML musings.

• Heaven is middle management - at least compared to those jobs. My favorite is from 2001. I wonder if that's the official title. How do you make that sound good on a resume?


• It's a matter of fitness - I'm actually quite glad they don't have these classes at my gym. My gym shorts don't have pockets for twenties. Those of you in LA may want to attend the 7pm Wednesday class. Pass along a full report.


• A Rogaine moment - I know a girl who once said "if Ben Affleck was any hotter he'd be on fire." Perhaps his hair burned off. I have to laugh.


• Good, Bad, Ugly - Quick reviews of books, music, and news from web-writers of all flavors.


• Life's a beach - If you read about my Florida vacation and you need a bigger beach fix, visit the good doctor.


• Duck! - P.J. O'Rourke takes life in hand and teaches his ornithophobic wife to hunt birds. Bravest man in history.

Like a Boomerang: I'm afraid I have a good deal of non-weblog aspects of my life that need attention, so sporadic updates at best for the next couple of weeks. As always, I will return quality material you can't get anywhere else - all at blowout prices! I have a new essay coming, another book review, a bit of site re-work (I want to do something about the heading layout), and among the other ideas I'm kicking around is doing weekly NFL picks (yes, it's football season again); not that I know all that much about football, but I think I could have some fun with it. For now, here's some stuff that turned up in my web wanderings.

• Drink to me - but only if you're over 34 (male) and over 55 (female). Another good thing about getting older.


• A fond look back at one of the funniest movies ever.


• You probably know this by now, but the big bad meteor isn't coming to get us after all. Not that I was ever scared, I spent my youth in video arcades training for just such an occurrence.


• P.J. O'Rourke looks on the bright side of corporate scandals.


• Obviously, the legislative branch didn't read my rant (July 30) about obesity foolishness.


• Just so you can never say I don't link anything I disagree with: an overly brutal assessment of Six Feet Under.


• Ever wonder how some novelists get so much done? Apart from having big contracts so they don't need day jobs, and not having weblogs to keep up with, they just don't do the writing. I may have a lot to say about this in the future.

And if that's not enough, here are some sites for good reading while I'm scurrying about aimlessly.

• Arts and Letters Daily - food for yer mind.


• For sports - ESPN Page 2 is the bomb.


• A new site everyday at Yahoos daily picks.


• The Obscure Store for news of the weird.


• There's good shopping deals, especially for tech stuff, at GotApex.


• If you need weblog fix, check out SheriSHOT. She keeps a lively 'blog with funny hotel stories (she works in a hotel) and general comments about life, the universe and everything.

I'll be back before ya know it, so don't go changing your bookmarks.

Hello, I Must Be Going: No let up yet. Life got more complicated when my radiator decided the hottest week of the year so far was the appropriate time to develop a leak. The car's days are numbered - as soon as I get my check from my refinancing, I'll be in a bright and shiny new car - so instead of getting it fixed I invested in a few gallons of coolant and I've resolved to top it off every morning.

Plus, I think my A/C (in my home) doesn't work. I know it didn't work last summer, although I think there were only like two days I really needed to use it, and I can't remember whether I got it fixed or not. I think not.

Sheesh.

Anyway, my life is currently subtitled No Time For Weblogs, and will probably continue to be for another week to 10 days.

For now, let me recommend you once again to one of my favorites Forbes ASAP, where you can read a series of very insightful articles including this one, about why everyone in the know feels the need for reform to the patent and copyright system.

My own introduction to the realities of the patent system came in the 1980s, when my client, Sun Microsystems--then a small company--was accused by IBM of patent infringement. Threatening a massive lawsuit, IBM demanded a meeting to present its claims. Fourteen IBM lawyers and their assistants, all clad in the requisite dark blue suits, crowded into the largest conference room Sun had.

The chief blue suit orchestrated the presentation of the seven patents IBM claimed were infringed, the most prominent of which was IBM's notorious "fat lines" patent: To turn a thin line on a computer screen into a broad line, you go up and down an equal distance from the ends of the thin line and then connect the four points. You probably learned this technique for turning a line into a rectangle in seventh-grade geometry, and, doubtless, you believe it was devised by Euclid or some such 3,000-year-old thinker. Not according to the examiners of the USPTO, who awarded IBM a patent on the process.

After IBM's presentation, our turn came. As the Big Blue crew looked on (without a flicker of emotion), my colleagues--all of whom had both engineering and law degrees--took to the whiteboard with markers, methodically illustrating, dissecting, and demolishing IBM's claims. We used phrases like: "You must be kidding," and "You ought to be ashamed." But the IBM team showed no emotion, save outright indifference. Confidently, we proclaimed our conclusion: Only one of the seven IBM patents would be deemed valid by a court, and no rational court would find that Sun's technology infringed even that one.

An awkward silence ensued. The blue suits did not even confer among themselves. They just sat there, stonelike. Finally, the chief suit responded. "OK," he said, "maybe you don't infringe these seven patents. But we have 10,000 U.S. patents. Do you really want us to go back to Armonk [IBM headquarters in New York] and find seven patents you do infringe? Or do you want to make this easy and just pay us $20 million?"

After a modest bit of negotiation, Sun cut IBM a check, and the blue suits went to the next company on their hit list.

The story (if accurate) speaks for itself.

But it's not all business over there, there are articles on Nano-Khakis, a brief rant on cell phones from P.J. O'Rourke, and the latest rendition of Best of the Web, with enough links to keep you exploring all day.

Nobel Prize for Slap-downs: My favorite, P.J. O'Rourke, has taken a moment to dismantle a stunningly pompous statement, signed by a gaggle of Nobel Prize winners, designed to seem charitable and noble while solely serving the purpose of inflating their bloated self-images. All I can say is "heh, heh, heh."