Can you say "Mayaguez"?

 My dear friend Alice Green is trying to encourage me to abandon anger in my life.....Anger at idiots, morons, and the socially inept or actual sociopaths does seem to be right up there with Caligula sending his Legions against the sea......Alice has a point.

Here is my point:  Doesn't Evil and Stupidity need to be confronted? Too many people don't seem to even notice either....much less confront them.  Looking at the available tools.....Anger seems to be the most useful.

So....deep breath.  Hold that breath for four months......At some point I defer to Bob Dylan: "What kid of price do we have to pay....to get out of going through all these things twice?"

What ever happened to intelligent dialogue?  Facts, history, experience, respect, the thrill of battle against opposing ideas and the glory of compromise that moves us all forward?

Done and dusted.....

My dearly beloved brother Rob was at one time entranced....or at least attracted.... to John McCain for his various feisty, principled stances on policy.  Rob died in 2001, and so did any sense of propriety and reality in anyone connected to Senator McCain...

Every single thing that President Obama is now trying to move forward with is now being tied up by Republican opposition.....not from any rational argument, just because.  Because....?

I am not a huge fan of the President.....I am on record as saying in print that Leon Panetta has a tiny little penis for continuing the attacks on privacy and personal freedom that started with Dick Cheney and George Bush....and were enthusiastically continued under our current President.

Don't start me on Medical Marijuana.....

Or ICE and Immigration.....

Democrats have always sucked.....They just suck less than modern Republicans....

But.....

Senator McCain and his buddies continue to bring up Benghazi as some kind of boogie man and tar-baby that is supposed to discredit every appointee that President Obama makes....no Secretary of State, no Secretary of Defense, no head of the CIA will be allowed because Obama did not rescue four guys in Benghazi in September, or Obama somehow lied about it.

We (Cachagua General Store) are locally famous for putting thousands of crosses on Carmel Beach to recognize our lost sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines on Memorial Day.  Our display was only made possible by help from some of those very Marines who did the groundwork.  I have kept track of them...most are OK.  Some not.  (We won't talk about the never spoken of effect of getting hit by an IED and surviving....and having your balls and dick blown off a few months after your wedding to your sweetheart....No one wants to pay that bill). Or even acknowledge it......

Others of my Marines are in task forces hovering in various places....some in the Med.  These guys and gals are ready to respond to any crazy thing that might happen anywhere from Rome to Malta to Cairo....to Benghazi.  Helicopters, jets, bombers, Special Forces, Seals, Delta.....whatever.

One thing they don't do.....and no one in the military will do.....is randomly fly into somewhere with our overwhelming skill, bravery and technology without local knowledge of what is going on on the ground.

Why?

Common sense.....and the "Mayaguez".

After the Vietnam War was over...way back in the day in 1975.....some random Khmer Rouge idiots captured a US container ship off Cambodia.

Long story short.....our response was unprepared, hyperbolic, with little info on the situation on the ground....and we wound up losing more Marines in the rescue than those sailors exposed on the ground.  Not one of the captives from the Mayaguez died....but the rescue crew was frankly humiliated.  Three captured Marines were executed in public, and the US could do nothing about it but watch. Not to mention the ten killed in the uniformed assault.

From Wikipedia:


The Mayaguez incident took place between the Khmer Rouge and the United States from May 12–15, 1975, was the last official battle of the Vietnam War. The names of the Americans killed, as well as those of three U.S. Marines who were left behind on the island of Koh Tang after the battle and who were subsequently executed by the Khmer Rouge, are the last names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The merchant ship's crew, whose seizure at sea had prompted the U.S. attack, had been released in good health, unknown to the U.S. Marines or the U.S. command of the operation, before the Marines attacked. It was the only known engagement between U.S. ground forces and the Khmer Rouge.

For John McCain to use the Benghazi incident as a bludgeon against President Obama and his appointees and his policies is an act of breathtaking hypocrisy.

Ever been to the Vietnam Memorial?  It will still your heart......You will sob like a schoolgirl.  So many dead young people. 

And when you get to the end......the kids from the Mayguez.

Killed by bad intel, no intel....political over-reaction......and letting the civilians get in the way of the pros. 

Obama and Secretary Clinton are only guilty of having learned from history, and having decided to not repeat it....regardless of the temporary cost.

Senator McCain......what can I say?  When hard core, life long, Republican gung ho Marines are embarrassed by your behavior because it is against all rational modern military tactics and policy.....Just to score "political points"......You have jumped the shark, buddy.

There is a reason not a single one of his fellow residents of the Hanoi Hilton in Vietnam supported his bid for the presidency......

If our carriers had responded to the attack in Benghazi.....and we had Marine helicopters shot down and lives lost, and captives executed.....hours after any realistic possibility of helping our four State Department workers.....what would he have said?  Support for the President's decision to send in troops with no intel?  I am so sure......

Oh.....and the ultimate hypocrisy: Senator McCain voted with his "brothers" to cut the security budget for the State Department as part of their crusade to cut "wasteful" government spending.

Once an authentic hero.....maybe. Or not.

Now just a rancid piece of shit stuck to all of our shoes......

Sad......

Now denying the approval of a Secretary of Defense....during wartime.....for the first time in the history of our country.

I think "shit" would be offended to be compared to John McCain......

Let's Roll.....

Not to be a drag at the party....as an irregular handball fan (oops, I mean football...they do kick every now and then) I was looking forward to looking back tomorrow for the Super Bowl.

I remember being on the road to a famous 49'ers house (YA Tittle) for a party when "The Catch" happened. Joe M and a bunch of Niner's crashed the dinner party.  If you ever want to buy a Porsche, I have the hook-up.

 We did Jim Plunkett's wedding..... with all the Niners present (I gave Randy Moss his own bottle of Jack and he fell down and broke his leg). The full story involves: a six-pack of piss, chocolate hand prints, Farmer's Market pasta.....

We used to rent a house at Alpine on MLK/Super Bowl week and ski and ski on empty slopes, just checking in from time to time as the Niners beat the Bengals or whoever bothered to show up. Being a Niners fan was being close to God.

 Bill Walsh was a client...we served him dinner four days before he died.

Still, the air ran out of my balloon when Idiot Boy Culliver went on his anti-gay rant the other day.
"I ain't into the sweet stuff....no room in our locker room for that shit".

Really?

I was impressed at the Niner brass response.....and then:

Two other knucklehead Niners realized that the video they made for "It Gets Better" was directed to bullying yes, but specifically anti-LGBT bullying.....and withdrew their support, and even denied having made the video!  South Pacific Islanders being paid millions of dollars a year are not cool with bullying....some group of people....but not gay people.  Perhaps they didn't notice that in Polynesian culture there are actually at least three sexes....and last year one of the "other" sexes actually made a local national soccer team.  

Well, reading is really hard.....

Every sport team on the planet made an "It Gets Better" video....even Canadian hockey teams. (Love Canada and hockey (Ken Dryden....the Abraham Lincoln of Canadian hockey is my fraternity brother from Cornell).

 Did these morons ever hit the bars in the city they play for? Are they so dumb that they don't realize the hottest chicks they ever got a lap dance from this year weren't probably actually "chicks"? Have they even checked in with their own culture?

I am grumpy and depressed. I just had to write an essay about my near miss with 9/11 for a book (I was drunk on good champagne and great Calvados and missed Flight 93). 

The main guy behind "Let's roll!" on that flight was a gay friend of mine from PG who played on the gay rugby team out of Berkeley....and, like all rugby players, any other team he could find. Even lame-ass straight alcoholics in Monterey. (I wound up at CHOMP for alcohol poisoning after my first practice. Practice....not a game.)

 He was a lock...meaning a big guy who would kick your ass and run like a deer. 

 Rugby doesn't need pads....it's flesh to flesh, and bone to bone. Or time-outs. Pussies need not apply. There is a keg on the sideline and a jar of Vicodin, not oxygen tanks, Culliver. We play for 45 minutes straight....no pun intended...without commercial breaks and time to gasp. 

 No rugby player I ever met ever disrespected a gay player.....I guess the dregs drift towards "football".

Go Niners......

Let's roll......

Get thee hence.....

In deep Carmel Valley the few businesses that still operate... generally work in an environment that is so cooperative and mutually supportive that it would give any hedge fund manager the heebie jeebies. Wineries trade glass, fruit, materials, staff and expertise. Restaurants exchange staff, fish, suppliers, deliveries, etc and rarely even tally up the pluses and minuses. 

 "In fifty years....none of this will matter!" Pierre Merle, Ithaca, NY (1972) 

This extends to town.....I am thinking of Mundaka. 

When a local business acts in a way that is so violent, egregious and contrary to both to our local economic world, but more importantly to our social and familial world....this business needs to be ostracized. 

Cauterized. 

Cast out....for fear of infecting the stability of our creative world. 

Silvestri Vineyards is that business. 

I will go on in exquisite detail later.....but suffice it to say that if you purchase one of their wines, or allow it to pass your lips, please consider yourself no longer my friend.....or my acquaintance....or someone who is even welcome to set foot in my humble business. Your money and custom are toxic to me and the other quality business in our Valley. 

If you buy or drink their wines you will not only upset our local, cooperative, pacific world view.....but I have doubts about the safety of your soul. 

Seriously.

The General and I...

General George Patton is one of my cultural heroes...you know, the guy you say you want to meet if you could meet anyone in history.  OK, Jesus, Mohammed, Einstein, Edison....whomever.  I have my William Blake, Vatel, Vercingetorix, Sir John Moore, Captain James Cook....and Patton.


George is at least on my short list. I have my reasons, at least three: 1) George was an asshole, I am an asshole...it is like Rotary, or Elks; 2) I met my first wife on a blind date to see his movie "Patton", a date that ended with English  racing bikes and a high speed police chase, successful evasion...and three beautiful children 30 years later; and......3) George's raspberry jam swap.

General Patton was too successful as a general during WWII.  He made Monty look like an idiot more than once, caused Ike political problems with his tactical skill and success.....and was therefore relegated to the Bavarian, Bohemian and Austrian part of the US Army's finishing push in WWII.  Like getting the table next to the kitchen after putting out fire in the fat fryer and saving the restaurant.

Patton was a good enough general that there are still statues to him in public squares in Prague and Vienna....Go try to find a George Bush statue anywhere in Iraq or Afghanistan. Or a Reagan statue in Grenada.....Or a Clinton statue....anywhere outside the porn store.


Anyway, at the tail end of the war, somewhere east of Vienna, George's III Corps finally linked up with the Russkies coming from the East, and the Brits coming from the north and west.  All kinds of politics ensued, among which was the raspberry jam trade.  

The Brits had agreed to trade some canned beef to the protein-starved Russians in exchange for some jam.  What they got was 'orrible, salty, shite.  General Patton stepped in to stop the problem, soothe the anger.....and replaced the horrible, salty shite with good old Smuckers raspberry jam from Salinas. As part of the deal, George kindly took in the awful salty Russian shit to avoid offending the Commies.  Brits were ecstatic.  Russians were happy.

General Patton and his team wound up with a metric tonne of fresh Caspian caviar. Oh, damn!

We live on the northern slope of Tularcitos Ridge....looking across at Silvestri and Rancho Sin Frenos, the Wilson Ranch and Mount Diablo.  You can't see our house on Google because we are buried in oak trees.  This is great in summer...not so great in huge oak pollen years.  In spring, we all eat Sudafed like candies, and I am sure the FDA has a file on our household...because they don't give allergy medicine to just anyone.  

And this year is the biggest oak pollen year in human memory.

Last Tuesday I took a vacation in my own house.  

Picture that. 

I found part of the deck with nice sun, protected from wind and the neighbors by my Meyer lemons and my Aussie finger limes.  Sipped mango puree and champagne Bellini and read Berlin Noir novels for a couple of blissful hours.......and got second degree sunburn for my troubles...but hey.  

Today I came home from work and set out to groom my little spa area.  Maybe another day off in the picture! Pounds and pounds of oak pollen and leaves everywhere.

As I was cleaning up the mess I had to think about Noma...now the best restaurant in the world after the closing of El Bulli...in friggin' Denmark, of all places.  The chef there, Rene Redzepi, bases his cuisine on all the weird plant, animal and sea life in his tiny country....and the whole world flocks to his door.  Wild rose hips.  Seaweed.  Brambles.

After a few minutes of pushing metric tonnes of oak pollen off my deck, and hoping that Gruet would be an equitable replacement for the pseudophedrine I have maxed out with Obama.... I started thinking about General Patton.

Back when the Masters of Food and Wine was good....when David Fink was in charge, and it was at the Highlands, and actual real chefs got to work together and exchange
ideas and grow our sport/livliehood....(as opposed to the LexusSwarovskiRolexAllClad Pebble Beach Hog Wallow we are cursed with now...)  one ingredient that David Kinch turned us on to was fennel pollen.

Like saffron, fennel pollen comes in small cans and is crazy expensive.  It is pretty, has....some flavor, and is cool. And beautiful.

And here I am sweeping metric tonnes of indigenous oak pollen off my decks with a vengeance.  And thinking about George Patton and the caviar v raspberry jam trade.

So...General Patton's ghost and I are willing...for a small price, possibly in exchange for Caspian caviar, fennel pollen, saffron, Danish wild rose hips or brambles...or Smuckers Raspberry jam....to let go some of our stash of Native Californian Wild Live Oak Pollen. 
If I can hire a master chef with 30 years experience for ten bucks an hour from IHOP....I am sure I can find a recent under-employed Cal Poly Ag grad, or a similarly under-employed Stanford poetry grad to describe the incandescent, ethereal yet visceral essences of our Native Wild Live Oak pollen.


 Contact our agents.

Flap vs Skirt.....The Horror!

Last Monday we had a customer send back his Mesquite Grilled "Skirt" steak in a rage....because it was patently NOT a skirt steak.

He would not eat such an abomination, wouldn't pay for it, and was taking it home to his dog. And...... he wants to have a long talk with me about meat.

He has a meat company, you see.....

Not sure how he figured all that out, but he was right. We serve a "Flap" steak, not a "Skirt".
.
At the same time, during the same meal service, another customer was having our "Skirt" steak. The next day, her husbandcalled me up....(Oh, Jesus, no!)...and kept me on the phone for 30 minutes going on about how it was the best piece of meat he or his wife had ever eaten.

Oy!

So here's the deal: we are the Cachagua Store.

We are in Cachagua, not Manhattan, or Paris, or even Carmel. We bust our balls to give nice food at a nice price....and with luck......only moderately hostile and incompetent service.

If you actually want to know everything about every ingredient in our menu go to www.realtimefarms.com and you can see all our sources.

On the other hand, if you are at a table, in Cachagua...with Heather or Shavaun taking your order....time is of the essence. We are the culinary Dutch boys with our fingers in the holes in the dike. There is not a lot of time for education and explanation...and we hope that there might be at least some degree of trust in a diner that has driven 45 minutes into the mountains to eat.

We sometimes lie.

As do all restaurants, butchers, fishmongers and grocers. Lying about your food is not a crime...since none of the food from any of the above is packaged. Lying about your food is bad, but it is not a crime. As a diner or shopper you can get redress through the courts...but with a civil lawsuit, not through poor beleaguered Sheriff Miller.

And, should you be successful in your lawsuit, you will only be entitled to the difference between what was promised and what was served or sold. So, if Whole Foods sells you farmed salmon worth $5 a pound instead of Scottish wild at $15, you can sue them for the ten bucks........assuming you have paid the $200 for the lab processing of the DNA sample to prove your case.

(I have the address of the lab if you want to go this route. I have done it, and no one cares. Well, Sam Farr cares...DiFi, Boxer, Potter, Maldonado, Bill the Thrill Monning and the other poseurs representing us could care less...but that is another story).

Ditto Sand Dabs.....No one in Monterey serves real Sand Dabs....it is all frozen shite from China. We serve real Sand Dabs...and we can only get them once or twice a month. We pay $2 a pound....less than the frozen shite you are buying at your corner bistro. If you sue them for misrepresenting your dish, you will have to pay them a few dollars if you win. Real sand dabs are cheaper than fake sand dabs.

Really.

Anyway...back to flaps and skirts.

Back in my soccer coach life I found that I had to become a certified trainer just to keep my kids on the field. Most were Mexican kids with no hope of ever seeing a medical doctor, or Carmel kids with no hope of ever seeing a medical doctor. I became a certified sports massage therapist at M.I.T....Monterey Insitute of Touch. (Highly recommended).

I also am a recovering body builder (hey....she was really hot! And smart!)....and a life-long Latin speaker. Catholic. Altar boy. And a recovering apprentice union butcher in New York City.

Anatomy is the main deal in massage and sports medicine...and butchery. We humans, and our companion animals, are just big, soft Erector-Sets.

And..... all meats from all animals have been organized by union labor into a series of codes....... defining each cut and each section of anatomy involved. Each code has been laboriously pounded out on the battlefield of worker vs. grower vs. processor vs. consumer. NAMP codes. North American Meat Processors Association

For instance...a filet of beef is a NAMP 1190. With the silverside off it is an 1190a. Center cut filet, silverside off is 1190b. Lamb rack chops are 1204b...and the bone cannot be more than 3 inches from the eye. When I first came to California I would saw off the extra bones on my lamb racks and send them back for credit....everyone was amazed, and stopped selling me lamb racks.

You will not be shocked to know that none of these codes apply in California....... where almost all meats are processed by non-union labor.....who could not identify the codes in English numbers.... with a gun to their heads.

Back to beef.

Our most famous Central Coast only cut of beef is the tri-tip. We locals are all bored with tri-tip, but it doesn't actually exist outside of California, and a few places in Texas where vacationing Texans have brought it back. This is crazy, because tri-tip is clearly a NAMP 185c or 185d......available, in theory, to all union meatcutters all over the world.

In New York City it was known as a Newport, because union butchers all smoked Newports and the Newport logo is a triangle. And the tri-tip presents as a triangle.

The tri-tip is one of my favorite cuts of beef...and one of my favorite muscle names: tensor fascia lata. I love saying "tensor fascia lata".

Tensor fascia lata is your hip pointer....it runs between your oblique muscles on your lower torso and your upper thigh. It attaches at your illiac crest and inserts in the IT band that runs down the outside of your thigh. The IT Band is the one where the massage therapist puts in her elbow and you scream like a little pig.....

Now...on to skirts and flaps.

The skirt steak is either the straight diaphram muscle of the cow, with the peritoneum removed (outside skirt), or more commonly the inside skirt, which is the transversus abdominus. This is NAMP code 121c or 121d.

The TVA, as body-builders know it, attaches at the lower six ribs, the illiac crest, and inserts down at your pubis. If you want to work your TVA you move your belly button in to your spine...without sucking in. Hold it, and feel the burn. The TVA helps with breathing by contracting to inhale, and expanding to exhale.

The flap, on the other hand, is the obliquus abdominus internus. Flap is NAMP code 185a. Flap, or rather, obiquus abdominus internus, has a Facebook page!

Bodybuilders call it the OI. Here is the bodybuilder take on ab muscles.....

It, the muscle....not the Facebook page..... is located right next to the TVA. It runs from the lower four ribs, the illiac crest, and down to the pubis. It also helps with inhaling and exhaling, and also helps turn and flex the torso.

Sound familiar?

It does also attach at the lumbodorsal fascia...around by your lower back. And it nestles next to our old friend tensor fascia lata.

When removed from the cow (or the human) it is collected with the lower back and upper leg muscles....and it actually flaps.

It's very near neighbor, the skirt, is typically trimmed out when the filet and the other upper body muscles are removed.

Both the flap and the skirt attach to the inguinal ligament in males....as in "pucker up"....pull in your balls!

Finally...Americans are dicks when it comes to language. We like short names. Pommard as opposed to Savigny-Les-Vergelesses. Chateau Du Cru Beaucaillou only became popular when hedge fund dickheads started calling it DuCru.

Pinot is so much easier to say then Cabernet. Forget Zinfandel. Probably socialist.

Flap is a short name...but a horrible name. The other name for the cut is "Bavette". This sounds like a sleazy French guy trying to sell you cow balls and assholes with a fancy name....and you would not be far wrong. "Bavette" names a half dozen different cuts in France.

And.....our flap is Akaushi.

With us, even though there are a dozen varieties of Wagyu beef, and we serve Akaushi...we will sometimes call it "Kobe"..........just to not have the conversation about the differences.

Americans like "Kobe". Akaushi sounds scary, and probably socialist, like the Zinfandel.

And by the way, good Zinfandel is awesome with Akaushi.

Obama probably likes it.

Obliquus Abdominalis Internus Akaushi...as opposed to "Kobe Skirt"?

Shut up.

So....now you know all about the difference between "flap" and "skirt".

Do you want to hear all this when you are out with your honey?.....

Or do you want to just enjoy your experience...... and trust your friends....and their expertise?

In Ireland we say: "Why have a dog and bark yourself?"

We will take care of the anatomy, the Latin, the politics....and it will be delicious.

Living the dream......

Posting this without permission.......from a friend seeking work as a "stage" (ie, free kitchen worker...) in Spain. He tracked some of our favorite spots, even worked in them.....and hated some for being horrible scumbags......

I am posting this because I find Eric's thoughts charming.....if way overly self-deprecating.....and the mere fact that he is actually thinking, working and struggling gives me hope.

The 99%, right? We should be so lucky......and maybe we are.

Hi Michael,

In your last email you said it was good to hear that I’m living the dream, and in my last email I too felt like I was living a dream – the Spanish cooking adventure – but you probably noticed that my dreaminess also left me giddy and confused – dreaming in the wrong ways – and that there was a certain basic stupidity to the way I was going about things. (Immature, unprofessional, naïve, et cetera). I mean, my plan was to start staging at a handful of places that I really didn’t want to be staging at just because by that point I had gotten desperate for anything, and I suspect that I seemed like a child lost in the dark to you as I tried to convince myself (vicariously, through you) that I would be happy and learn a lot and be on my way to bigger and better things if I just got started somewhere, anywhere…your silence has actually been very helpful to me. Not the night-light of encouragement I thought I was looking for (as I stumbled around groping the walls, trying to find my way to the kitchen) but something better: a different kind of light, a light for me to turn inwards and examine the reasons why I’m stumbling around looking for the kitchen in the middle of the night anyway...and I realized that maybe the cookies in the cookie jar aren’t really so great as they sound, and maybe I should be looking for other things instead…

Real life: after one week of staging at that first place – the place with the traditional and innovative mix, where the chef wasn’t so great but living with his brother was interesting – I quit. I couldn’t handle it. I mean the food was shit, but probably more importantly for me the people were shit, so the whole experience was shit, and I realized (inward light) that I don’t have enough genuine cooking integrity to persevere through such things. I’m too picky, too idealistic, too sensitive, and probably ultimately just too weak. I don’t want to work in anything but my ideal conditions, which is an impossible way to start building a career, and (more inward light) by this point I’m 99.9% sure that I should be looking for whatever it is I’m looking for (a “good life,” I guess) elsewhere.

So I left that restaurant and spent a few weeks at a farm/restaurant in Bordeaux, and now I’m back in Spain at another farm. Outside-living, and working hard without an asshole-boss, and getting dirty and tired and cooking/eating good food (instead of shitty staff meals) makes me very happy. I think farming would be a good way for me to live, but also a difficult way to provide for any kind of uncertain future…so I’m thinking to start studying existential psychology in London in January. Maybe this sounds crazy to you (the lost child in the dark again), and sometimes it sounds that way to me too, but also I see it as a good way to deepen my focus on what matters most in life. For me cooking was always mostly about trying to get to the essence of human life anyway. (Which of is a fine idea, but of course another bad way to start building a career in professional kitchens).

The jamón we have curing here, the wine fermenting in the bodega, the rabbits we slaughter and eat with potatoes slow-cooked in the ashes of the fire; the fire from the oak-tree we cut into pieces on that sunny afternoon with the Pyrenees filling the horizon and the cold wind sweeping down their snowy slopes and blowing at my face – this is much closer to the “good life” I’m looking for than the endless compromises and petty bickering that seems to constitute life in most restaurants that serve their guests anything like a decent meal.)

Anyway, don’t want to take too much of your time. Hope you’re doing well.

All the best,

Eric

Fuck Me Silly....

It may be hard to imagine....but I have probably spent more time and energy coaching sports and working with kids than cooking and working with food in the last twenty years.

This may be why I get hourly calls from my scumbag subprime mortgage holder....and why the only car I own from this century has been languishing at the Jaguar shop for six months....while I pound around in a car older than Dylan.

So.....I can't let the whole Joe Paterno thing go without at least a comment.....or two.

People seem to be lining up on both sides of the St. Joe issue: Hey, he reported to his superiors....let the game go on, get over it; and Hey, he never called the cops, fuck him to the wall.

The Penn State students have given their verdict: riots, overturning media trucks, etc.

Nittany Lions are Everything......

If you want to get the straight story about this whole deal.....I suggest you follow (as usual) the European media. Go crazy....actually read the Grand Jury indictments. Notice that the link comes from an English newspaper.

If you read the indictments......you will need Maalox and an aspirin. And possibly an automatic weapon.

The child rapist coach, Jerry Sandusky, involved in all this was known on campus as a pervert going back to 1998, and before. Around that time a temp janitor found him sucking off a ten year old in the coaches' shower. The janitor was a Korean war vet who had managed to get through that lovely experience (disemboweling of friends, body parts flying around, folks freezing to death in rivers of shit....) without too many problems. His encounter with Coach Sandusky's blow job of the 4th grader put him over the edge. He collapsed, nearly had a heart attack and was a sobbing wreck who needed medical intervention.

But, hey....he was a temp, scrubbing showers in the greatest football program in America. Football at Penn State provided the gym, the fields, the year round programs that provided his job...and the jobs of all his co-workers. Still, he obviously reported the incident to his supervisor...who had to call an ambulance (for the temp janitor!).....and his supervisor's supervisor. They all got together to decide what to do.......Basically, shut up for fear of being fired.

See, the coach in question was up to replace Joe Pa as head coach in the multi, multi million dollar operation that is college football in State College, PA. Janitor vs Head Coach? A no brainer.

Still, word got out. Everyone knew. Coach Sandusky lost his chance at being Head Coach, and quietly resigned. With a pension, an office, a parking place, free access to all campus events, keys to all the buildings, etc.

The list of his victims marched on......The most egregious violation was the ass-fucking of a ten year old witnessed by a grad student four years later. The grad student also melted down, and reported the incident to his dad (a friend of Coach Sandusky) and eventually to Coach Paterno, all the while trembling in fear of losing his job and his place in Penn State Football. These gents volleyed the report up through the channels of the administration, but no one ever called the cops.

The indictment lists Victim 1-8 with various levels of nude showering, back rubbing, knee grabbing, dick sucking, etc. The first two kids....including the ten year old that got ass fucked in the shower by a 6'4" adult jock....are not even part of the indictment.....since no one ever bothered to figure out who they were!

Nobody called the cops.....their best effort at justice was to ask Coach Sandusky not to do it anymore. He kept his office on campus, kept his keys to all the buildings on campus, kept his pension, kept his full free access to all campus events, kept his parking pass and parking spot outside the gym with the showers......

Word will be coming out in the next few days that Coach Sandusky pimped out the kids in his care to high dollar donors to his youth ministry.....

For all those that are horrified that a great man like Coach Paterno got fired because of other peoples' actions......

No. Coach Paterno created an organization with so much power and influence....an organization devoted to kids playing a game, let us not forget......that the second most powerful person in the organization's penchant for ass fucking ten year olds was much less important than even ever finding out the name of the ass-fucked ten year old.

Please remember that all this took place at an institute of higher education. Ummph, higher. Ummph, higher.....oh, yeah.

Joe Paterno does not just need to be fired....he needs to be jailed....for creating and supporting a continuing criminal organization.

Before anyone in GPS proximity to me here gets all righteous about those bastards in State College, PA.....we have a similar continuing criminal organization right here in town. Some people call it Carmel High School.

Actually....I can't say that it is still continuing. I have lost contact with the CHS culture some years back...but I don't have high hopes. The same judgements that put institution over child have been going on here for decades, and see no sign of slacking...because no one has ever called them out or acknowledged them. In fact, the best way for a teacher at the High School or Middle School to find themselves out of a job is to go to bat for a student against the powers that be.

I have know three different women who were sexually harassed by the same teacher at CHS in each of three decades. Another freely admits that she had sex with English teacher when she was 14 or 15. And one of our clients married her English teacher directly out of high school thirty years ago. Not a scientific sample by any means...... At least one called the Sheriff, involved authorities....supplied inappropriate voice mail recordings, had her dad confront the guy parked across the street from her house late at night.....

Nothing happened. Zero.

Full disclosure: I was fired by CHS as a soccer coach for......something. So, I am not completely without rancor towards the Carmel Unified School District.

My last year of coaching, my superior....the athletic director....was having a full blown affair with a junior in the school. The affair affected his work, his marriage.....and his ability to do his job as AD. Everyone on campus knew of the affair. When I was not able to get messages through to the guy, I asked my players what to do. They told the girl to have the guy call me. It worked. I complained to the principal about the situation.....He stopped taking my calls.

I was fired as coach. The AD guy was hired as soccer coach.....the GIRL'S soccer coach.

Another coach (married) started an affair with his assistant....a counselor at CHS. Rather than actually coach...they would repair to his truck and fuck themselves silly in full view of the teams they were supposed to be coaching. Windows steamed up, truck a rockin'.....kids a laughin'. The behavior was only stopped when the coach's daughter went to the principal and complained that she was being humiliated. Neither coach (a teacher) nor the counselor were fired or otherwise disciplined.

In the past few days the internet was all abuzz about two teachers who harassed a fat girl in their class, ridiculed her, abused her, forced her to run on a stair climber between classes. The girl's parents wired her up, recorded the abuse and a scandal resulted.

At Carmel Middle some years back there was another abusive teacher. His office was papered over for privacy, and he was famous for having his girl students sit on his lap and bounce on his knee. Not to mention the private meetings in his papered over office. One of my guys was also a student.....a fat kid with attitude who wasn't shy about pointing out these proto-perversions. The teacher constantly abused him for being fat and short. The kid asked me what to do....and I wired him for sound. Sure enough, really terrible verbal abuse resulted. Zephy turned the tape into the school office, expecting.......justice?

No....the principal called in the Sheriff and had him arrested for illegally recording the teacher. He was grilled for two hours by deputies before his mother was even allowed to see or talk to him, much less a lawyer...and he eventually was suspended for a length of time for his violation of the teacher's rights.

He was eleven.

Ooops.....I used his name. You could talk to him about this whole thing....except he is not here anymore. A kind, funny, bright country kid...... died of his various abuses last year at the ripe old age of 24.

The girl who called the Sheriff is still around, as are many of the others. The girl is a toughy....a hard core fighter for what she holds dear and what she believes in. I still detect some damage under the waterline, though. Just because you survive something, doesn't make it right.

And....isn't school supposed to supply a completely different kind of education?

All the Occupy X movements now are a bunch of random folk finally standing up for principles of right and wrong....and it's about time.

I submit that it is difficult and uncomfortable to stand up against social and economic wrongs at the hands of the powers that be.....and much, much more difficult to stand up against sexual and physical abuse at the hands of the powers that be.

Banks are one thing....they are supposed to be cocksuckers.

But schools?

Once the power and supposed value of an organization....especially a educational organization...completely overcomes the value of the lives and the well-being...and even physical safety....of those it was created to serve.....it is time for a restart.

All Penn State's officials and coaches should be fired and jailed. The program itself should be banned for some years....and start over in Division III or IV, with no scholarships, no TV, no Bowls, no perks.....

As for Carmel High.....the principal involved in almost all these terrible decisions I named above.....just ran for school board. And many of the same board members, and many of the same teachers......who were all complicit..... are still there. I hold out zero hope for any change in that environment. I am just grateful that my own kids are gone.....and that they were boys. Not that that was any help to the Penn State kids.

As for the Cachagua kids for whom I still feel responsibility.....especially the girls....especially the jocks who are girls.....I just shake my head.

And walk away.