rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

well. I’ve ignored this thing long enough to slough off all of the hangers on, the fakers, the only marginally interested. that should be all of you.

I am in my new apartment in Washington. my very own. it’s of decent size … I’ve got a couch, a television, and an internet connection. my shower curtain has a map of the world on it. the unit i’s on the second floor of the building, and it looks west into wide alley. the view sucks and the neighborhood is iffy, but the silence is golden. I’d put pictures up, but let’s be honest: I’m not going to get around to that. so use my poor description, and let your imagination fill in the rest.

onward! the family church in Indiana turns a century this year, and like all churches do, they’re producing an anniverary book. I convinced my poor, trusting mother to allow to me to take a first pass at the brief biography of the parish’s longest serving priest, Benjamin Kedrovsky, who spent 47 years of his life as pastor there. from 1911, to 1958. that’s a long goddamn time, man. I can barely hold down a job for a month.

anyway, for a man who spent nearly half a century as the pastor of a small church,  he lived a pretty interesting life. so here is his bio that you would only be able to read should you purchase a 100th anniversary book from St. Mary’s. but you won’t, understandably, because you don’t go to church there. I left out the descriptions of his brothers’ missionary work in the Aleutian Islands at the turn of the century, and the allegations of him being a socialist sympathizer and drunk who didn’t properly venerate the czar in his hymns, because it’s that kind of detail that a church anniverary committee is looking to avoid, but now you know — so keep that in mind when you consider his early years. and please, read on:

Benjamin Kedrovsky was born in the village of Votcha, Totemskii district, Vologda Oblast in the Russian Empire on August 28, 1888. The Kedrovsky family’s home parish was St. Michael the Archangel. Benjamin’s father, Nicholas Kedrovsky, was a deacon in the church. As was customary at the time, young Benjamin and at least three older brothers followed their father into the clergy.

In 1902, he entered the Vologda Ecclesiastical Seminary to begin his study for the priesthood. but in the fifth year of his studies, Benjamin was expelled. In correspondence between his brother and a church superior, it was explained that Benjamin’s association with student activists during this tumultuous period in Russian life — and his reluctance to identify his classmates to administration — led to his dismissal from seminary.

Eager to continue his education and to continue on the path toward priesthood, Benjamin emigrated to the United States on July 3, 1909, at the age of 21, Three months later, the young man was working as a choir director and reader at an Orthodox parish in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Within a year, Kedrovsky moved across the state to Pittsburgh, and in October of 1910 began serving as choir director at St. Michael’s Russian Orthodox Church on Reed Street while continuing his studies.

It was here he met who was to be his wife. Born in Pittsburgh in 1892 to Galician immigrants, 19-year-old Julia Dmitrievna Varnovskaya and the new choir director courted and were married on August 4. It was then only three months before Julia’s new husband concluded his studies, traveled to New York City, and was ordained into the priesthood on October 29 in St. Nicholas Cathedral. Eleven days later, Father Benjamin Kedrovsky arrived in young city of Gary, Indiana. It was November 9, 1911.

Fr. Benjamin assumed pastoral duties over Gary’s newly formed Russian Orthodox parish on November 22, 1911. He would go on to serve as the priest at The Protection of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church for 47 years — during which time the congregation constructed a church building at 17th and Fillmore streets in 1912; purchased the land for the parish cemetery on West Ridge Road in 1919; renovated and refurbished the church in 1922; and expanded at an almost exponential rate, much in the same way that the city itself boomed. Into this church the Kedrovskys raised four children of their own — sons George, Victor and Vladimir, and a daughter, Vera. Fittingly, to quote Fr. Benjamin himself: “Once could say that the city of Gary and the parish grew up at the same time.”
 
Fr. Benjamin was very involved in the faith. He was very active in the church school, held in the basement below the rectory built on church grounds, where he promoted an understanding of Orthodox faith and of greater Russian culture. Notably, he served as president of the Midwest diocese’s Chicago Deanery from 1917 until 1958, and was also a regular contributor to the American Orthodox Messenger.
 
Fr. Benjamin’s efforts at promoting Orthodoxy culminated when Gary declared a “Russian Orthodox Day” in October of 1928, when the nation’s Metropolitan, as well as the bishops of Chicago, San Francisco and Canada arrived to celebrate Divine Liturgy.
 
Hearkening back to his time as a choir director, Fr. Benjamin was especially proud of the parish’s excellent choir that won renown after placing first in the 1930 and ’31 Gary and Chicagoland Music Festivals. And In 1931, upon the 20th anniversary of the parish’s founding and during Gary’s silver jubilee, he published a book: “On God’s Field,” a history of St. Mary’s and his observations of a life doing God’s work. 
 
In 1951, after decades of service and on the parish’s patron saint day, Fr. Benjamin was elevated to the rank of Right Reverend by the Holy Synod of Bishops and granted the honor of wearing the mitre. He continued to lead the parish until his retirement in 1958, just before its move to its longtime location at 45th and Maryland streets in the Glen Park section of the city. At his retirement, the congregation named him Pastor Emeritus for his nearly 50 years of faithful stewardship.
 
On Nobember 25, 1968, not long after the church celebrated its 57th anniversary, Benjamin Kedrovsky passed away. He was 80. But his contributions to the early success of the Protection of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church cannot be understated; Fr. Benjamin left an indelible impression on the parish’s life and its growth, and that of the city of Gary, Indiana, itself. May his memory be eternal!

from the above book:

The racers were ready at dawn. Fine sunrise over the desert. Very tense. But the race didn’t start until nine, so we had to kill about three long hours in the casino next to the pits, and that’s where the trouble started.

The bar opened at seven. There was also a “koffee & donut canteen” in the bunker, but those of us who had been up all night in places like the Circus-Circus were in no mood for coffee & donuts. We wanted strong drink. Our tempers were ugly and there were at least two hundred of us, so they opened the bar early. By eight-thirty there were big crowds around the crap-tables. The place was full of noise and drunken shouting.

A boney, middle-aged hoodlum wearing a Harley-Davidson T-shirt boomed up to the bar and yelled: “God damn! what day is this–Saturday?”

“More like Sunday,” somebody replied.

“Hah! That’s a bitch, ain’t it?” the H-D boomer shouted to nobody in particular. “Last night I was out home in Long Beach and somebody said they were runnin’ the Mint 400 today, so I says to my old lady, ‘Man, I’m goin’.” He laughed. “So she gives mea lot of crap about it, you know . . . so I started slappin’ her around and the next thing I knew two guys I never even seen before got me out on the sidewalk workin’ me over. Jesus! They beat me stupid.”

He laughed again, talking into the crowd and not seeming to care who listened. “Hell yes!” he continued. “Then one of ‘em says, ‘Where you going?’ And I says, ‘Las Vegas, to the Mint 400.’ So they gave me ten bucks and drove me down to the bus station . . .” He paused. “At least I think it was them. . . .

“Well anyway, here I am. And I tell you that was one hell of a long night, man! Seven hours on that goddamn bus! But when I woke up it was dawn and here I was in downtown Vegas and for a minute I didn’t know what the hell I was doin’ here. All I could think was, ‘O Jesus, here we go again: Who’s divorced me this time?’”

He accepted a cigarette from somebody in the crowd, still grinning as he lit it up. “But then I remembered, by God! I was here for the Mint 400 . . . and, man, that’s all I needed to know. I tell you it’s wonderful to be here, man. I don’t give a damn who wins or loses. It’s just wonderful to be here with you people. . . .”

Nobody argued with him. We all understood. In some circles, the “Mint 400″ is a far, far better thing than the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby and the Lower Oakland Roller Derby Finals all rolled into one. This race attracts a very special breed, and our man in the Harley T-shirt was clearly one of them.

Dallas won the NBA championship tonight. a more entertaining finals I cannot recall — and that’s nothing to say of the readymade villain Miami offered up.
in honor of IU grad Mark Cuban’s accomplishment, I’d like to offer up the Bundy tenets:

A Bundy never wins, but a Bundy never quits.
A Bundy never eats.
A Bundy never learns.
A Bundy never cares.
A Bundy never dies.

keep rolling, blog:

there’s a story bannered across the Washington Post’s website right now:

“Among GOP, an ironclad anti-tax orthodoxy”

it discusses how almost every congressional republican has signed a pledge not to raise taxes, ever. this creates problems, as electives to our federal government struggle with ways to reduce the burgeoning deficit. 
this is something that I’ve come to notice recently, what with my incessant workplace reading of economics blogs — but its something more, I think, when it’s a featured story in the Washington Post.
how did such a hardline ant-tax policy come to dominate Republican politics? the article delves into that, explaining that the GOP of the 50s and 60s kept taxes high as a way to fight deficits, inflation, and pay for wars they supported, and it notes how the party recognized the power of anti-tax sentiment as a political tool in 1970s California, and how Reagan used this to fuel his election campaigns in the 80s – despite his policies’ stupifying economic effects. 
but the real gem of the article is undoubtedly the Americans for Tax Reform chieftan Grover Norquist’s recollection of the early beginnings of his anti-tax pledge:

The germ of the pledge came to Norquist, he said, when he was 14 and thinking about a teacher’s comment that no one knows who their congressman is. If Republicans were known as the party that never raised taxes, he recalls thinking, they would be spared spending “millions of dollars explaining to you who they are and what they stand for.” They could just “stand up and say, ‘I’m the Republican.’ And you go: ‘He won’t raise my taxes and he won’t steal my guns. Got it.’ ”

and here we are. $14.3 trillion in the hole, and one of the two major parties in American politics has slowly let its economic policies come to be governed by a brain fart Grover Norquist had while in the throes of puberty. so that we are prepared for the government’s collapse under the weight of so much concentrated and willful stupidity, I suggest we all learn the Hobo Anthem:

in the big rock candy mountains, all the cops have wooden legs,
and the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft boiled eggs.
the farmer’s trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay.
oh, I’m bound to go where there ain’t no snow,
where the rain don’t fall and the wind don’t blow
in the big rock candy mountains.

it’s been a hell of a national holiday. I hear Rolling Thunder was in town. I got to a baseball game with Aarti and a few relatives this afternoon. Had a pretty good time. and with that being said, I think that’s as good a reason as any to draw the eye back to one of the greater moments in professional sports history.

you can read, I know. but an introduction is in order: this is William Ligue, Jr.
on a balmy September night in 2002, Mr. Ligue, attended a baseball game in Chicago between the White Sox and the Kansas City Royals. and at some point in the game (and after what had to have been a dozen beers), Mr. Ligue decided he had had just about enough lip from Royals first base coach Tom Gamboa, the asshole know-it-all son of a bitch. …
so he and his similarly shirtless 15-year-old son rushed the field, clobbered Gamboa from behind, and gave it their all to deliver upon him a stomping worthy of the best that White Trash America has to offer … before the visiting bench descended upon the pair and beat them stupid.
so. god bless alcohol abuse, bad parenting, and America. I hope you are all sleeping okay out there.

everybody’s got a blog these days, and nearly without exception they’re better than mine. these people get paid to do this shit, after all.

here’s one I just read:

Last Friday, the sixty days that the War Powers Act allows for a President to carry on military action before getting Congress to sign on expired—turning the President’s prediction of “days, not weeks” into months—with about as much effect as the end of the seven thousand years Harold Camping calculated between this past weekend and Noah’s flood. Jay Carney, the White House’s spokesman, tried to explain:

Q: Do you have a legal justification that you can share with us to sort of—that you guys have sought on this, just to make sure—MR. CARNEY: As you know—

Q: I know you’re not a lawyer.

MR. CARNEY: —I’m not a lawyer.

Q: But can you share something—

MR. CARNEY: There is a—there has been a long debate about—in this country about—and which we do not need to replicate here because the amount—the stuff written about the War Powers Resolution over the years could fill this room and none of it would be conclusive.

a couple years ago, I got a headline into the Progress that read “Man suffers gut wound.” I was very pleased with it – it was to the point; nice, tight; had “gut” in it. really, all the pieces were there. 
this is all to say: after effectively spending four years of my life slacking off, barely getting paid and writing headlines, I appreciate an amusing headline – or “hed,” in industry parlance for all you copy-editor groupies out there — when I see one.
so here’s a headline I just stumbled upon on ESPN dot com: “Ray Lewis says crime will rise if season lost.” 

I guess there’s only so many ways to write that, a hed describing what must be the most interesting tidbit to arise from a wide-ranging interview with the veteran middle linebacker and violent ape under contract with the Baltimore Ravens. but however you cut that cheese, you’re obviously gonna come back around to recalling Mr Lewis’ much ballyhooed run-in with the law back in 2000. oh yes, obviously.
this fact is not lost on the crack journalists at the cable network who make money like men posessed for The Mouse, which is why it’s the headline. after all, I’m sitting up at 12:15 on a monday morning writing some bullshit about their editorial decision. no doubt my actions would make them happy. I mean, it’s not even really a story; Ray Lewis is just a stone moron who said something stone stupid in front of an ESPN camera, and yet I’m compelled to pontificate upon it anyway.
I don’t even know what I’m trying to say here. maybe something about the simple science behind writing an enticing headline. but I don’t think that’s it. more likely it’s that Lewis isn’t even my favorite player on the Baltimore defense. it’s obviously Ed Reed. everybody loves my man Ed. everybody. and obviously.

I have been fucking off on the whole blogging thing for a while now. readership may well have fallen into the single digits. that’s bad news! 
so, in the interests of providing me a readymade topic to get the, uh, juices flowing, let’s us go back to the metaphorical well: let’s talk about Sunday afternoon in the greater Las Vegas area with Neil, Pat and mister body hair himself, Mike Smith.

I always began bitching about Las Vegas as soon as I get there. I know it’s some childish shit to do; because what did I think I was going to be doing in Las Vegas, if not walking around and spending a lot of money to get drunk? why bothering getting  indignant about it after you’ve arrived? the right move would to be to shrug, and just go with it. take it as it comes.

well, there’s the right move, and the wrong move, and then there’s something in between. and, as with most choices, the third’s the one you make.
so what I did was I got good and stone drunk, and tried to block out the noise of Las Vegas, the dirty, corporate grandeur as best I could, and took in the sights, such as they are in the dumbest city in the country. and in hindsight, I mostly overcame myself, and lending heavily to the company I had a very good time. this was also due – I’m swinging back around,you see — to Red Rock Canyon.
I had no idea this place existed. a national conservation area, under the direction of the Bureau of Land Management, and about a 30-minute drive from the strip, and it costs all of about $7 to get in.
on Sunday afternoon, after a late evening, we piled into the ol’ rented Toyota Yaris. I was driving. Smith, shotgun, Neil behind me next to Pat, who was was still working on the last night’s choices. we stopped southwest of town to buy Gatorade and get In-N-Out … because what kind of road trip is it until you sample the regional fast food staple (and that reminds me) … and then, after drive-thru lunch we were at the park. all in about 20 minutes. 
once there, I’d normally stop and read every goddamn sign that I came to, and find out all sorts of minutae that would clutter up huge tracts of my suconscious. oh, but not this Sunday. all I needed to know was: you can get out of the car and hike. so that’s what we did.

the old adage — and it’s not either old or an adage, it’s just something I regularly paraphrase about Vegas — goes “you’ll only want to stay in Las Vegas for about 48 hours before you’ll need to wash the stink off.”
this remains true. but, if you factor in a solid few hours spent at a place in Red Rock Canyon, a place that seems so effortless in its ability to overshadow the strip, and to remind you that the west is vast, and red, and really, really easy on the eyes … if you factor it in, Vegas can easily be stretched out by another day. holy shit! this changes the city completely for me.
so we climbed up into the rocks, Mike threw the ol’ bat signal up, and we sat alone in a wind channel for about ten minutes. the clouds were moving fast overhead. the rocks dwarfed us, and climbed straight up. and I managed not to lose my hat.
when we got back to the car, Neil suggested driving music. and Mr. Evans has a good ear. so he played this tune, which I had never heard of, and for about … four minutes? four minutes … everybody shut up. even me. and there were no cities, no jobs, no traffic, no bank accounts to worry about. and that wouldn’t be so bad, I don’t think.

I went to Las Vegas. and because of the profound and emotional connection I shared with Neil, Smith, Pat, and Pat’s suitcase full of beer, I’ll have to collect my thoughts for another week before I really think about putting pen to paper on the subject.

I got a good, six and a half-mile run in today. my leg is cramped up, just a litle bit, so I may forgo a run in the morning. I need to stay on this pace, need to get some miles beneath me now, while it’s still May, if I’m going to be anywhere near ready for the race in five months.
while I was stretching, “Way of the Dragon” came on.
it got me thinking, for reasons that will soon be obvious, about Chuck Norris.

we know much of Chuck Norris, ubiquitous shitty film star. his movies are not gray affairs; you’re rarely unaware of which way the moral compass points. be it a “Missing in Action” movie or an episode of “Walker: Texas Ranger,” “Invasion: USA” or “The Delta Force,”  Norris consistently plays the lodestar of truth, justice, modesty, martial arts violence, and the American way.
and he wears his personal politics on his sleeve, as well: he supported Mike Huckabee in 2008, and writes a weekly column — which is quite conservative, and may be a contributor to any perceived cooling of his cult-icon status.
for a while, Chuck Norris memes were popular online, especially the cascading, neverending list of Norris “facts.” to wit: 

1. Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.
2. Chuck Norris counted to infinity — twice.
3. If you can see Chuck Norris, he can see you. If you can’t see Chuck Norris, you may be only seconds away from death.

and so on.
anyway, like I was saying, I was watching “Way of the Dragon.” and here’s a fact that doesn’t get repeated nearly enough: Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris fought in “Way of the Dragon” and Lee beat Norris’ bum-ass to death. it gets extra solid aroud the three-minute mark.

this movie is legit. and god damn, did I hate that brief cultural phenomenon.

it’s been a busy week. and I’ve been giving a big ol’ FU to the blog as of late … 
… and that trend will have to continue. I’m going to spend a dumb weekend in the dumbest city in the country: Las Vegas. oh yes. the last time I went there resulted in this and this and this.
so as this quiet absence continues, let’s all continue to handle the latest news concerning international terrorism with the grace that befits our great nation:

thanks be to my friend Ashley for showing me this wonderful video.