"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

It's Always Something - Rick Springfield (mp3)
Lose You - Pete Yorn (mp3)

Last Friday, Tax Day, the FBI shut down the three largest online poker sites in the United States.

Saturday night, I rewatched Chinatown for the first time in over a decade and watched one of the special features that came with the movie, where screenwriter Robert Towne and Jack “Jake Gittes” Nicholson were both interviewed about the experience.

Towne’s script was inspired by a number of very real experiences and conversations, which is how a movie originally titled “Water and Power” -- a great title, by the way -- could end up being named after a location which only shows up for the last three minutes of the film. Towne explained that, in conversation with a friend who had once worked law enforcement in Chinatown, the man had said the best thing for American law enforcement to do in Chinatown was “as little as possible.” Because they were surrounded by a people and a culture they couldn’t translate and couldn’t understand, they were never sure whether they were doing something that would benefit justice... or whether they were being played and manipulated by various nefarious forces.

Or, as SparkNotes puts it: “Chinatown, a place where secret organizations rule, the law is meaningless, and good intentions are brutally suppressed, serves as the symbol for the true nature of every city.”

If you haven't seen this amazing film and don’t feel like reaching back to what a panel of Guardian (UK) critics declared “The greatest film of all time,” then how about a reference to Die Hard?

“You asked for miracles, Theo? I give you the F.B.I.”

These are the words of Severus Snape (he went by "Hans Gruber" in 1988), smiling with maniacal glee as the feds follow their playbook and provide the criminals with exactly the help they need to rob Nakatomi Plaza of its precious store of barabonds (not to be confused with Barry Bonds).

In regards to the shutdown of online poker, the owners and CEOs of casinos all over this great land of ours are smiling maniacally, watching as the FBI follows its playbook and buffs out one of the biggest dents in their Indian Reservation business.

"These defendants, knowing full well that their business with U.S. customers and U.S. banks was illegal, tried to stack the deck," said Janice Fedarcyk, FBI assistant director-in-charge. "They lied to banks about the true nature of their business. Then, some of the defendants found banks willing to flout the law for a fee. The defendants bet the house that they could continue their scheme, and they lost."

I can’t personally recall the last time a high-ranking law enforcement suit, upon making a serious criminal bust, found himself or herself so tickled with puns. “Stack the deck”? “Bet the house”? I somehow doubt that if she had just busted a child pornography ring or captured a serial killer, she would be having fun using words involved with the trade. Strangely, she never chose to utter the phrase "victimless crime."

It’s just online poker. It’s hardly even illegal, really, otherwise we wouldn’t have entire cities and towns built around monstrosities erected merely for such activity, and we wouldn’t have hundreds of hours worth of TV programming dedicated to the “game of chance.”

It’s hardly illegal, but it’s illegal enough, and the FBI has every right to act. Even if Bugsy Malone and Noah Cross and dozens of wealthy shady figures sit in their back rooms, counting their extra money and laughing at how beneficial the FBI can be for their own business. I’m sure those men will kick a little extra here and their to some elected officials. Legally, of course.

As a regular online player who rarely won much and rarely lost much, online poker was merely a cheaper and more convenient way to throw away money than golf. It was cheaper than World of Warcraft or keeping up with the video game universe. It was a modestly-competitive but ultimately harmless game. I will miss playing it, but the system wasn’t getting rich off me, and I wasn’t getting rich off the system. My reaction to all this news was simple:

Forget it, Billy. It’s Chinatown.

What Does "I'd Do Anything" Mean?

When It Don't Come Easy - Patty Griffin (mp3)

One particularly forgotten aspect of the Tonya Craft trial in North Georgia has kept me awake several nights in the last month, and it's this: Her parents have spent virtually every penny they possess and have taken on substantial debt, to finance their daughter's criminal defense. The costs of the defense, according to the trial, is in the range of $500,000. (I guarantee it's over $750k.)

I can't tell you how many times I've heard parents say to me, "I'd do anything for my child." Hell, I've said something to that effect a few times myself.

Maybe we all mean it. Maybe we don't. Maybe we don't even quite know what the words mean when we say them in the comfort of our philosophical bubbles.

Some of the hypotheticals are easy.

If your house is burning and your child is inside, of course it would take battleship chains to keep you from going back in to get her. If your boat capsizes, of course you'd risk your life, or even gladly sacrifice it, to keep them alive. In fact, anytime a parent must choose their life or the life of their child's, it's a no-brainer for most of us. Harsh as it may seem, sacrificing your life isn't nearly the toughest call a parent would have to make. In fact, it's probably one of the easiest ones.

But how about this one? Your daughter is charged with molesting not one, but three children. She swears to Sweet Little Baby Jesus and all his kinfolk that she's innocent. And of course you believe her, because she's your daughter. If found guilty, she will probably still be in jail when you die, and she'll likely never see her children again.

Sure, you'd die for your child, but would you put yourself into such a financial hole that you'll never be able to retire? Would you spend every penny, cast off every possession, for the best criminal defense you could obtain, or would you just hope justice is blind and numb to money, and that justice would be served with a more reasonably-priced defense?

Or what about a problem a family we know from church, where they've adopted five children over the years, and one of them has clearly become a problem they are incapable of reaching. Everyone who knows this boy feels confident that a juvenile detention facility is only a matter of time. Meanwhile, he steals from the house and terrorizes his parents and his siblings. But he's barely 13. Just a boy. Do you give up on him? Can you, as a parent, justify deserting one for the needs of the others? Or must the others suffer while the wild child steals all the parental time and energy and sucks the last drop of potential joy from a household?

What if your child is 18 and chose not to go to college because she was umbilically attached her boyfriend, who plays in a band in the local bar scene? What if she lives in your house, only works two days a week at Chick-Fil-A, and uses every last drop of her paycheck to buy... well, you're not sure what she's buying, but it's clearly screwing with her mood and her appearance. She's lost more than 20 pounds in four months, but she's not dieting. And if you kick her out, she'll move in with that boyfriend who probably dragged her into his shithole in the first place. Or, worse yet, they'll break up soon after, and she'll end up skanking herself out to someone even lower on the totem pole to continue doing God knows what to her precious body and mind. Do you let her stay with you, perhaps slowing but passively condoning the inevitable self-destruction, or do you risk alienation by taking a stand, under the auspices of LOVE?

And then it gets even stickier.

What if it's not your child, but your spouse? What if -- and maybe y'all didn't do it this way -- you and your spouse stood up in front of God and everyone and swore that you'd stay by their side through thick and thin and rich and poor and all that shit? What if you said all those things when you were young and believed in unicorns and leprichauns and happy endings? What if you woke up one day and realized that you never imagined the kinds of conflict and discord that could weave itself into a marriage?

Societally speaking, we would rarely if ever damn a parent who just can't give up on their kid. But we look down on spouses who won't leave their screwed-up husband or wife all the time, don't we? Because the kid is blood. The kid you can't divorce. It's a bigger duty. Right?

Ironic, no? That we say vows for a marriage that we probably don't understand and don't always expect each other to keep, but we don't say any vows when we become parents. We forge a bond with this tiny mewling, utterly vulnerable creature without any promises or proclamations. Saying "I'd Do Anything" is almost easier than saying "I Do."

Here's to hoping we -- you and I, dear readers -- don't ever find ourselves in a situation where we have to pony up and prove we meant what we promised.

A part of the Tonya Craft case that should not get lost on people regardless of their opinion of her guilt or innocence is this: she was found not guilty because she could afford an amazing defense team. Some frightening and unknown number of innocent people are wrongly convicted every year of any number of crimes for the simple reason that they couldn't afford 1/100th of what Tonya Craft had.

Oh yeah. This is my all-time very favoritest Patty Griffin song ever.

Desperate North Georgia Housewives

Wrapped Around Your Finger (live) - Tori Amos + Bjork

In multiple, peripheral ways, I'm connected to what is the most unbelievable, soap opera trial to hit our notch on the Bible Belt in a mighty long time.

Tanya Craft, a former kindergarten teacher in North Georgia, is on trial for molesting three young girls in her home on various occasions.

What started as a case that no one seemed to question -- how rarely are criminal charges of child molestation anything less than open-and-shut? -- has emerged as the kind of story which once again reminds us that you can't even make up the kind of shit going on in reality, because no one would buy your story for it being too unrealistic.

Take the most twisted episode of Desperate Housewives you've ever seen, throw in a little bit of COPS and a little bit of the Jon-Benet Ramsey case, and add a dash of that old Holly Hunter movie, The Positively True Adventures of the Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom, and you might start to get some vague sense of the circus happening just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Here's the best and most detailed reporting on the case:
The Chattanoogan.com

Here's the best and most detailed TV crew on the scene (with TWO reporters!):
WRCBTV.com

It's the most popular local topic on Twitter!

And then there's the real twist. Sitting hundreds of miles away at a computer in Maryland is a man named William L. Anderson. Just a blogger.

Except Mr. Anderson is the kind of blogger that is, at least outside that courtroom and in the realm of public opinion, what can be considered a "game-changer."

A few years ago, Mr. Anderson made it his mission in life to prove, almost from the first day he heard about the story, that the Duke lacrosse players accused of raping a stripper were innocent. He has now turned his attention -- at the rate of two posts every weekday -- towards the Craft trial in North Georgia. He has no interest in appearing or acting unbiased. He is convinced the trial and the key players involved are a sham and an embarrassment. He has an untold number of people connected to the situation on his side and also providing him with details some random dude in Maryland could never otherwise get. And he has uncovered one after another of the most eye-popping small-town Roscoe P. Coltrain kinds of screw-ups in the justice system that make you scared to ever set foot in a small town.

• A Facebook status update written by the prosecutor, with comments left by witnesses for the pending trial.
• A mother claiming on the stand that her daughter had never taken acting classes, yet with information on IMDB that suggests she's taken acting classes in Atlanta (that information was dismissed by the judge).
• A lead child advocate in sexual abuse cases who doesn't even have a college degree, not even three years after the case began, who asked a girl 16 times on video whether she was molested, only to apparently be told after they left the room that it happened, who then failed to document in any way this admission.
• The judge sitting on the case represented the defendant's husband in their divorce but refused to recuse himself from the case.

It doesn't stop there. Just start reading the comments left by Bob's favorite person, ANONYMOUS, and Mr. Anderson's responses, and things get even wilder.

We might never know The Truth about what, if anything, happened between this woman and these little girls, but we can be certain of this: The Reality is seriously screwed up, and the truth doesn't seem to be all that important in a court of law.

The only thing that's certain, beyond the shadow of a doubt, is that three girls have been forever scarred and victimized. The only question is how and by whom, and whether it had anything to do with the adult in question touching them in sexual ways.

Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged

Informer - Snow (mp3)
By-Tor and the Snow Dog - Rush (mp3)
[NOTE: Songs removed under threat of blog death by the DMCA.]

Here are some questions about the Winter Olympics about which I could give less than a dingleberry:

• Are the Winter Olympics one of the last desperate gasps for white supremacy and segregation?
• Do the male ice skating fashion statements make Kyle from Glee seem humble?
• Is Lindsay Vonn attractive? Is she as attractive as she thinks she is?
• Is that a hairpiece, Mr. Costas? And what did you do with Melissa Stark?

But after watching at least half of what's been on so far in these games, I've decided to agree that a lot of that stuff isn't really a sport.

There are sports, and then there are athletes. Sometimes athletes play sports. Other times, athletes participate in competitive activities that aren't sport but require talent. Sometimes sports require almost no athletic ability and merely a ton of talent or technical skill. Many of these are lovingly called "leisure sports."

The Winter Olympics is full of athletes. Even Shaun White, that lanky, well-maned snowboarding lad, is a serious and amazing athlete. But anytime a "sport" relies on the judgment of others to determine how well or poorly you did, it's not a sport. It's just a competition.

The half-pipe. Moguls. Ice skating. Ski jumping. These aren't sports. They're competitions, much like the Oscars or Miss America. The only difference is that I'd watch Miss America if they all had to do the half-pipe or ski jumping, especially if they had to wear bikinis or evening gowns.

NASCAR, unfortunately, is a sport; it's just not a very good one. Golf, darts, pool, table tennis are all leisure sports. (Well, table tennis is a full-on balls to the wall sport, dammit.)

A sport requires a winner and a loser, or sometimes many losers. At its best, the winner is clearly determined the instant the action stops, or the buzzer goes off, or the bell rings, or whatever. When someone does their "sport" but then must sit and wait to find out whether they were better or worse than everyone else, it can't be a real sport.

Polo? Yes. Cliff diving? No. Boxing? Ooh. Tough one. Because a winner can potentially be determined without judges, I'll give it a pass. Same goes with mixed martial arts.

At the core of this is my intense dislike for the naming of three particular things as a sport: ice skating, gymnastics, and cheerleading.

Almost all participants in these competitions are amazing athletes, very talented, and could undoubtedly kick my ass from here to Timbuktu with one hand tied behind their back. But all of these sports can be gigged and gamed so powerfully by people who have absolutely no direct involvement in the action -- the Supreme Court of Deciders, if you will -- and that potential for corruption necessitates, for me, calling them something other than a sport. (Not to mention that gymnastics begat "rhythmic gymnastics" and ice skating begat "ice dancing" and cheerleading begat "synchronized swimming," which are all even shittier competitions that are even less sport-like.)

Sure, refs can be bought, and umps can be manipulated, and many an outcome has been screwed up thanks to the imperfect nature of a missed call or an official's error. Still, it is much more difficult for a ref to get away with so strongly controlling the outcome of a game -- especially on the big stages of the World Cup or the Olympics or the Super Bowl -- than it is for judges in these other competitions. You need only listen to the commentators during a gymnastics or ice skating or diving event to know that even people who spent their lives in a sport tend to think the judges can be blind idiots. Some of the scores from the couples' ice skating last week left the commentators wondering if they had watched the same routines. Yet no talk of instant replay or booth review is possible, because the fate of these competitors rests completely in the fallibility of a group's judgment.

That's why short track speed skating and those four-person ski/snowboard races are, for me, the coolest and most entertaining sports at this year's games.

(This isn't my idea at all. I've heard many people make a similar deliniation over the years. This is just my way of completely caving and agreeing with them.)

No Good Deed

Damn it Feels Good to Be a Gangsta - Geto Boys (mp3)
Don't Save Me (It's Alright) - Todd Thibaud (mp3)

In Texas, a guy working produce at a store heard a woman screaming that her purse had been stolen. He reacted instinctively, chased down the 15-year-old suspect, and held him for the cops. And he was fired for it.

Why? Because Randalls has a clause in its employee contract abjectly forbidding its employees to intervene in such criminal acts. Said their spokesperson, "We recognize Mr. Schafer’s good intentions, but our overriding focus must be the safety of all concerned."

Translation: You're a swell guy, but we'd rather hire that perp, 'cuz we can trust he won't screw with our liability concerns by rescuing old ladies' purses.

On nights (or OK, occasionally at work), I'll hop over to this site called Plastic.com. It's basically a news aggregator that tries sparking discussion and commentary from its members, focusing mainly on stories or subjects that have a controversial bent. This topic got plenty of commentary, and a lot of it really bothered me. Plastic's readership leans fairly liberal and atheistic, and like any site that welcomes pseudo-debates, people tend to flow towards more extreme views. When it comes to extreme liberal views about crime and punishment, the reaction generally involves not trusting the police and not condoning people defending their measly and meaningless property with excess (read: any) force. So, a good bit of the responses on this story were of the "Sucks that the dude got fired, but there's a reason those clauses are in employment contracts, and if you let employees wail on someone everytime they steal some crackers, you'd have a screwed-up society" variety.

Maybe it's my Scottish heritage. Maybe it's my Southern heritage. Maybe I've watched too many Clint Eastwood movies. I dunno. But I struggle to pity someone who acts in a predatory manner on a weaker or more vulnerable human being. Be it a rapist, or a mugger, or a carjacker, or a burglar, or a child molester. Anyone who uses their position or size or knowledge to take gross and immoral advantage over a fellow human being who is weaker or smaller or dumber should not have the right to expect completely balanced justice.

When you're on the wrong side of right, under predatory circumstances, you've lost your right to believe you deserve complete fairness. You gave it up when you stepped into someone else's weakness and preyed upon it. I'm not saying muggers deserve to get shot to death by the Po-Po or have their firstborns burned on an altar or something. But they put themselves into a river that's out of their control. If the current drags them out, or if there's some vicious undertow, well they didn't have to put themselves in that river. They might not deserve to drown, but they damn well shoulda known it was possible the minute they stuck their toe into those chilly rapids.

Do we want a society where we are forced to choose between an instinctive desire to protect and defend a weaker person and the need to hold onto our livelihood? I guess there's people who say "It's just a purse" and people who say "It's just a predator," and rarely shall the twain meet.

All I know is it aggravates the hell outta me.