Let the games begin! John Oliver introduces us to FIFA, the World Cup™ governing body, and Michael Palin introduces us to Brazil

Following a collage of clips from various countries where it's claimed that soccer is a "religion," John jumps in: "And they're not exaggerating. When David Beckham got a tattoo of Jesus, the response of most soccer fans was, 'Well, that's, that's huge for Jesus. That's, that's a big deal for him.' "

"I know that in America soccer is something you pick your ten-year-old daughter up from. But for me, and everyone else on earth, it's a little more important."

-- John Oliver, in last night's report on "FIFA and the World Cup"

by Ken

Last week I encouraged you to watch the whole of John Oliver's amazing Last Week Tonight rant on the gathering assault on net neutrality, which enough people seem to have watched and taken to heart that it's now theorized to have been caused the FCC's website crash. Last night it was the turn of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), the Zurich-based governing body for, most importantly, the World Cup™ -- or the FIFA World Cup™, as FIFA likes to call it.



With 2014 World Cup™ Brasil about to begin, John introduces us at the outset to his personal World Cup™ dilemma: that while the World Cup™ is for him one of the most important things in the world, it comes to us via FIFA, "a comically grotesque organization" that he proceeds to show us is so thuggish and corrupt that thuggery and corruption seem to be its actual businesses.

As observers point out, the World Cup™ isn't an economic boon for host countries, but only for FIFA. For host countries it's usually an econonomic nightmare. Brazil has spent something like $1 billion on the games, including "investments" like the $270 soccer stadium built in the Amazonian metropolis of Manaus, which will be used for four World Cup™ games and after that for pretty much nothing that can fill it, en route to becoming, as John puts it, "the world's most expensive bird toilet."

And don't think that FIFA contributes anything in taxes. It pays none whatsoever to the host country, in the case of the 2014 games a windfall for FIFA -- and a deprivation to Brazil of some $250M. FIFA is a supposed nonprofit that happens to be sitting on a bank balance of a billion dollars, which we hear described in the report by FIFA's president since 1998, Sepp Blatter, as "a reserve."

For thuggish clownery, though, it may be hard to top FIFA Secretary-General Jérôme Valcke, who journeyed to Brazil as an enforcer to put an end to any foolishness about the FIFA World Cup™ possibly being subject to Brazilian law, specifically a 2003 law banning alcohol from soccer stadiums, a law put in place in the hope of putting a dent in then-out-of-control stadium fan fatalities.

"The only problem is," says John, "Budweiser is one of FIFA's key sponsors, and they sell a product they reflexively insist on calling 'beer,' and FIFA seemed anxious to protect Budweiser from a law designed to protect people, which is why FIFA's secretary general went to Brazil with a simple message":

I'm sorry to say, and maybe I look a bit arrogant, but that's something we'll not negotiate. I mean, there will be, and there must be as part of the law the fact that we have the right to sell beer.

You'll have to see for yourself John's take on possibly-a-bit-arrogant Jérôme, but rest assured that FIFA got what it insisted on -- what's known as the "Budweiser bill," ensuring stadium beer sales. "At this point," says John, "you can either be horrified by that or relieved that FIFA wasn't also sponsored by cocaine and chainsaws."


ON A HAPPIER NOTE, JUST IN TIME FOR THE WORLD
CUP™ WE HAVE BRAZIL WITH MICHAEL PALIN

And a new Michael Palin travel film should in itself be an occasion for joy. In my neck of the woods, at least, PBS is showing the first two parts of Brazil with Michael Palin tonight and the last two parts tomorrow night.

Here's a preview from the episode "Into Amazonia":


From my PBS station: "Join Michael Palin in Brazil, where he travels from the lost world of Amazonia to the buzzing metropolis of Rio de Janeiro, meeting the people and visiting the places that shape this South American nation. Monday, June 9 at 9 p.m. and Tuesday, June 10 at 9 p.m."

#

TV Watch (among other things): It's been a quiet Thanksgiving Day here in the Big Apple

With all three DVD players loaded for action, one of today's TV Watch objects was Michael Palin's most recent travel series, New Europe, his look at the eastern part of the continent, previously so little known to him, and the location of the largest amount of change on the continent in recent decades.

by Ken

It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon . . . no, wait, that's that other guy's franchise. What I meant to say was, it's been a quiet Thanksgiving Day here in the Big Apple, or anyways in my little corner of it. I haven't been out of my apartment, and haven't even done the media plug-in to find out how the Macy's parade turned out -- there was much anxiety in the preceding days over whether the winds would be stiff enough to ground the parade balloons.

I don't need to go outside, since it's quite cold enough inside to give me a feel for the season. The days are long since past when NYC landlords pumped up so much heat in winter that a person had to open windows to keep the inside temperature manageable. Last winter, I got weary enough of resorting to an overcoat (over a sweater) and a knitted cap to make the indoor freeze bearable that I invested in a couple of those cheapie digital thermometers, sure that my landlord must be shamefully below the city's legally mandated temperature minimums, only to find out that in fact the readings were pretty consistently well above those minimums. Which was small comfort to me, huddled in my winter outdoor garb.

This morning, though, when I finally dragged myself out of bad (what a joy it was not to have to answer an alarm's summons, as I've had to do lately even on weekends, thanks to planned activities), I had the inspiration, in the interest of going along to get along, that no law prevented me from wearing two sweaters -- and, yes, the knitted cap. That served me well enough to get my holiday kitchen labors accomplished, to the accompaniment of the first DVD of the complete Larry Sanders Show box set that's been sitting unwatched for ages. And what a treat to reencounter that wonderful cast -- no surprise in the case of Garry Shandling himself as Larry and the inimitale Rip Torn as his producer, Artie, and so much of the supporting cast, but I found that much as I'd previously admired Jeffrey Tambor's performance as announcer "Hey Now" Hank Kingsley, I hadn't properly appreciated a truly majestic piece of work. Hank himself is such an, er, problematic character, that even such a transecendantly accomplished performance comes out looing, well, problematic.

As it happens, I had discs from assorted DVD boxes loaded in the DVRs of all three TVs. This is thanks to the successful near-conclusion of an infinitely complex shuffle that followed my second TV acquisition in less than six months, which included the forced retirement of an ancient 19-inch Sharp TV I've had for nearly 40 years (and in fact bought used from the neighbor of a friend, who I thought shamefully overcharged me, little imagining that the thing would still be in use all these decades later, simply refusing to die) and the shift of a 20-year-old 31-inch Panasonic into its spot in the kitchen, where it just barely fits. That 31-inch Panasonic has for some years been held together with bubble wrap and duct tape, following a seemingly catastrophic forward tilt; I wan't able to reconstruct the plastic of the upper part (hence the bubble wrap), but in its ramshackle repaired state the thing has continued to function pretty well, and to be honest, I'm happy not to have to part with it.

But I've formed quick emotional bonds with the new HD TVs -- first a 40-inch Samsung for the bedroom (replacing what was the newest of my TV's, which died about a week before my scheduled knee-replacement surgery in the spring, at which point I decided it was too late to do anything about it and so had no TV in the bedroom during the early weeks of recuperation; well, it got me out of bed!) and now a 50-inch Toshiba for the living room. The terrible part is that a person becomes accustomed to the new state of the art so quickly that he's all too likely to begin taking it for granted. When in my life did I ever imagine I might ever have such a TV picture as the new set produces? (From, as it happens, the very same DVR cable box that I was using with the old 31-inch Panasonic, which turned out, as I discovered upon taking it in to Time Warner Cable for swapping and waiting an hour for help -- to produce HD as well as analog output.) And now after a week and a half I turn the set on and think I've always had a picture like that.

So from the kitchen I could venture into the living room, where I had the first disc of Michael Palin's New Europe loaded, or into the bedroom, where I had just loaded the first disc of my Amazon Gold Box Friends set. I've seen the Friends episodes a lot in syndication, of course. But now, starting from the start and watching them in order and uncut, I was more impressed than I expected. I always thought the show should have been a little better than it was. Now, by comparison with what the networks, both broadcast and cable, are dumping onto the air, it looks brilliant -- certainly a lot wiser about the process of discovering what Life is all about than Girls (but then, what isn't?)

Then in mid-afternoon there was an inordinately pleasant, and inordinatley long, time spent on the phone with Howie, which developed into another extended look back at our high school days, triggered in part by the conversations he reported recently which we each had with the peculiar classmate who, as best we can figure out, is going through the James Madison HS directory that was published . . . um, I don't remember when, let's just say it was published, and apparently calling members of the class of '65. In neither of our conversations did our long-lost classmate give any indication of actually remembering us, let alone knowing anything about our post-'65 lives. (In the interest of accuracy, let me correct Howie's attribution to me of a "photographic memory," unless the photographs in question are of the kind usually associated with pictures of the Loch Ness Monster. Yes, In once had a pretty good memory. Not great, but pretty good. Now, however . . . .

With the coast-to-coast time difference, Howie had been marking time till he had to leave for his traditional Thanksgiving-dinner hosts. Eventually he realized that after that inordinate time warp, he was now late. For me it was a remarkably pleasant bridge to Thanksgiving evening, with quite happy results for both the pea soup and the pork shoulder roast.

I hope everyone out there has had and continues to have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

#

TV Watch: The best thing showing lately on my TV has been Michael Palin's "Sahara" and "Himalaya"

I've just finished watching the 2004 film of Michael P's epic 2003 journey through the Himalaya and surrounding regions. The map above should be intelligible enough (you should be able to click to enlarge it) to suggest the scope of the journey, except that the copy of the book covers over the early segments in Pakistan and India.

by Ken

I've written about my excitement at rediscovering the early Michael Palin travel-trek series on British DVDs. (Even now that they're actually readily available in U.S. editions, the U.K. ones are still way cheaper.) Of course you have to have a multi system DVD player, but there's an advantage there as well: For HD, my Panasonics (I bought a second one during my recent medically induced hiatus) up-convert from the higher-lined PAL versions, and look pretty darned good on my first HD TV, another product of that hiatus.

And I had the new TV just in time to go back and rewatch the first episode or two of Michael's grand Himalaya series, where the scenery is so mind-boggling. I mean, the show starts in the Khyber Pass! I mean, I never dreamt I would ever see the Khyber pass, and now here it is, with Michael P standing right there talking about it, on my own TV!

Confession: I got stalled with the Palin videos some time back, when I ran into Hemingway Adventure. Even if one doesn't share that "thing" for Hemingway that Michael is far from alone in possessing, you'd think that locales like Key West and late-revolutionary Cuba would be interesting enough in their own right to get me through. And maybe someday I'll go back and find them so, but as presented, as reflections of this or that part of Hemingway's journey through existence, they drove me crazy.

And in this case, the accompanying book didn't help, because it's still imbued with Michael's Hemingway "thing." I find that not many people, even Palin fans, know about or understand the books that have been written and published to supplement each of his travel series. The books, based on his obsessively detailed diaries, are his own re-creations of the making of the journeys. Naturally there's overlap with the edited TV series, but usually even when the same visit or interview is present in both film and book form, there's information or perspective from one that amplifies the other. And there's a great deal in the books that doesn't appear in the edited series.

When I finally restarted my Palin-viewing habit, with Sahara, I was surprised to find that I hadn't acquired the book -- I thought I had them all waiting for me. But I found a really gorgeous hard-cover copy dirt-cheap on Amazon, and had it in time to supplement my televiewings, still on my old 31-inch Panasonic CRT TV, of course. (And the hard-cover version is definitely a plus. I've got paperback versions of some of the others, but for Basil Pao's photos, you want the better reproduction of the hard-cover.)

And Sahara is a fabulous journey. I had seen parts of an episode or two of the series way back when on the Travel Channel, but not enough to make sense of it. The series encompasses a staggering range of terrains and cultures, starting north of the Sahara -- starting in Gibraltar, where happily for us Michael had never been, then proceeding by ferry from Algeciras across the Strait of Gibraltar to Morocco, then across the mountains and finally encountering the Sahara (it fascinated Michael that this vast little-known terrain existed so close to Europe), spending time with the exiled Polisario rebels from Western Sahara and on southward, then swinging east and finally heading north through Algeria and Libya before Michael revisited the once place he'd been before: Tunisia, where Life of Brian was filmed, then across the then-still-highly dangerous northern coastal region of Algeria and eventually back to Spain.

As always with a Palin journey, the primary focus is on the people encountered along the way. The locals hired or pressed into service as guides are almost always fascinating, and nearly always Michael's own cultural openness and curiosity leads to glimmerings of contact with and understanding of people who live lives that seem, and sometimes really are, so different from our own. The people, however, aren't so different. And one couldn't ask for a better travel companion (or surrogate) than Michael, with all that gentle humor to go along with the insatiable curiosity about people.

When I finished Sahara, I was all primed for Himalaya, but despite the shock and delight at finding myself transported straightaway to the legendary Khyber Pass, I wasn't initially enchanted by the first couple of episodes. I mean, a grand gathering of locals from two fairly distant villages in, as I recall, the Pakistani Karakoram, for a no-holds-barred polo match? (The play without rules.) And then there was cricket -- or was it rugby, or soccer? Whatever the hell it was, who cares?

I applied a double rescue strategy. First, as noted, I now had the new TV in place, a perfect excuse to double back. But also, since I indeed already had the accompanying book (also in hard-cover!), and now I had the idea of reading the book ahead of watching the film, and I have to say, it did seem to give me a more involving sense of who the people encountered were and why we might care about them and their ways of life. And with the book under my belt, I was also happy to encounter a number of the "Extended Scenes" that are offered for each of the six episodes.

Indeed, I came to think that Himalaya represents such an enormous journey, encompassing not just the mountains to the west of the stupendous Himalaya, the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram, but a significant chunk of lowland Pakistan and India, and the pretty much the whole of the Himalaya range (with significant coverage of Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan), and the previously unknown-to-me far-eastern stretch of India bordering Myanmar (Burma), called Nagaland, leading naturally into the lowlands of Assam, and finally lowest-land Bangladesh, where such great waters of the Himalaya as the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers wash not just the water but the rock and soil of the mountains into the plain and delta emptying into the Bay of Bengal.

(In Bangladesh, the former East Pakistan, by the way, we get a vivid sense of how different the Bengalis are in their Muslim identity from their various Pakistani coreligionists. I should add that differences of and conflicts in religion and politics, which were rife in this region in 2003, when the journey was made, and of course still are, are handled with breathtaking evenhandedness and sensitivity.)

Do I have to add that virtually all of these are places I never imagined seeing? Tibet! (Everest is actually seen, not from the familiar south side in Nepal but from the far less known northern face.) And not just the Tibet Autonomous Region, as the former country has been known since it was annexed by the People's Republic of China, but additional portions of the massive Tibetan plateau in the PRC itself. It's such an immense journey that boiling it down to six hours of TV must have been agony.

It may seem contradictory to suggest that at the same time an awful lot of the people and places visited aren't all that memorable, and yet have to be represented to fill out the picture of the travel path -- and again the combination of book, film, and DVD extended scenes proves immensely helpful. One common thread is that in countries that are heavily Muslim, heavily Hindu, and heavily Buddhist, there is an enormous amount of religion, about which Michael is magnificently tolerant and inquiring, but a viewer may be a lot less sympathetic. The thought of visiting one more temple or one more monastery becomes all but unbearable. Ditto the assortment of pointless festivals we partake in along the trek. It is, of course, what people do to fill out their lives, and I don't mean to suggest that their versions of these things are less meaningful than ours. Quite the contrary. But it does take its toll on one's armchair-travel stamina.

In the course of watching these six packed hours I did a lot of backtracking, but I suspect that the whole thing may look very different the next time through, and the next. There is, by the way, an extended interview added to the special features on the third DVD in which Michael talks about the whole journey, including the story (also told in the book) of how they managed the final shot of Michael sailing off in a tiny boat into the sunset on the Bay of Bengal.

Already in Himalaya, filmed in 2003, Michael displayed a keen awareness of having turned 60, and of the group aging of his entire little travel family -- after all, by then he had been traveling and working with largely the same production team for decades, and none of them were getting younger. I'm cheered by the thought that still ahead for me is one more Palin journey, New Europe.

Do I have to add that it's unimaginable that American TV would ever undertake anything remotely like these journeys? There is, after all, no obvious commercial payoff to any of them. The BBC, however, has garnered not only strong audience response to these series, but continued income from sales of the books and now the DVDs. It's not the kind of money that would impress a Hollywood mogul. Luckily that's not the standard at the BBC.


CARTOON UPDATE

In the comments on my Thursday post, "Bob Mankoff names his 11 favorite "New Yorker" cartoons -- at least as of that particular moment (and we sneak a peek)," a reader shared that his favorite New Yorker cartoon is the one below, which was found by our friend me. It turns out to be by the great David Sipress -- and here it is! (Click to enlarge.)

#

For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."

The moral of this tale from Michael Palin? Maybe that the world is both bigger and smaller than we usually think?

A gamelan orchestra accompanies this traditional
Javanese dance from the court of Yogyakarta.

by Ken

I'm still in my Michael Palin Period, and at the moment have just crossed with Michael from Indonesia to Australia and New Zealand in the companion book to his travel series Full Circle, his 50,000-mile 1995-96 journey around the Pacific Rim, starting from the Alaskan island of Little Diomede in the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia (we've actually watched the kickoff of the trip), then moving counter-clockwise around the Pacific: to Siberia and on around the Pacific Rim of Asia and on to Australia and New Zealand, then across to the southern tip of South America and up the Pacific coast of the Americas, all the way back almost to Little Diomede, stopping in all the countries that border the Pacific except North Korea, to which he got as close as he could via a visit to the Korean DMZ.

One of the things that puzzled me about the series as broadcast was the disconnect between Indonesia and Australia. After Michael and the BBC crew made their way across the length of Java, from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta in the west to Surabaya in the east, the plan was to continue finding small boats to travel a mere thousand miles across Indonesia and the short hop across the Timor Sea to Darwin in the far north of Australia. But at that time of year they were unable to find any captain willing to take them any farther east. Only then, there they are in Darwin!

It turns out that two members of the party, Michael and crew member Steve, made the trip via London, for family concerns. While still on Java, each had received fairly terrifying news from home. Steve, who thought his great concern was the imminent arrival of his third child, learned that one of his daughters had fallen and hit her head, extent of injury unknown (and then several hours later his third daughter was born). Michael had learned that his wife Helen, suffering unbearable headaches, had been diagnosed with a benign meningioma near the brain, for which immediate surgery was indicated.

After intense consultation with his wife and the doctor, Michael had agreed that there was no point in his dropping everything and making the round-the-world trip home, where there was nothing for him to do before the surgery, which the doctor considered relatively straightforward. On arrival in Yogyakarta in central Java, Michael had found out that the surgery was successfully completed. ("Textbook" is what he's told half an hour after the surgery, and when he sends his love, "she is already conscious enough to send hers back.")

Meanwhile, in the heart of gamelan country, the Full Circle team finds that, as another consequence of their traveling through this predominantly Muslim country during Ramadan, "the recitals of gamelan -- the best known and most admired of Java's traditional music -- have been suspended. A large blackboard explains, crisply: 'During Ramadan, there'll be no music, no dance'." And yet, to Michael's pleasure, they get "a chance to hear a gamelan orchestra at work at an impromptu session organized in the garden of a house in a quiet neighbourhood not far from the centre of Yogya." And this scene ensues:

While [the musicians] are warming up under the mango and jackfruit trees that offer some cover from the occasional drifting shower, I make a phone call to the surgeon who has performed Helen's operation and who has been so patient and reassuring with all my questions over the past few days. He confirms that all went well, that the meningioma was benign and has been completely and successfully removed. Then he breaks off and asks me what the noise is in the background.

"It's something called a gamelan orchestra," I begin, about to embark on a long explanation.

"I thought so!" he exclaims. "The man who's teaching me to play the saxophone leads a gamelan orchestra."

"In London?"

"Yes."

This unlikely piece of synchronicity is oddly comforting. Ridiculous, I know, but when I go back into the garden the music of Java reminds me of home.

(We learn in the first entry from Darwin that while the crew found their way, presumably by whatever air connections they could make from Surabaya to Darwin, Steve and Michael had made the trip via London. At the small cost of 16,000 miles added to the 1200-mile distance from Surabaya to Darwin, and "the short, sharp shock of exposure to a northern winter," before plunging right back into the tropics, both travelers have been well rewarded. Michael found Helen recovering well, and Steve found his daughters "old and new" fine.)

[Note: The DVD issue of Full Circleis available by itself, but if you have any interest in Michael Palin's other remarkable travel series, you should instead get the nearly complete Michael Palin Collection.As we've discussed several times, though, if you can play regionally encoded PAL DVDs, you should buy directly from the U.K. The newer Travels with Palin set includes the Around the World in 20 Years sequel and costs a fraction of the U.S. price. For that matter, Amazon.co.uk is currently listing the Full Circle DVDs for £7.47 (less than $13) as opposed to Amazon.com's $45. Both Amazons list an abundance of copies of the Full Circle book (here, for example) at ridiculously low prices.]

#

And now for something completely different: Midnight calling, Monty Python-style

Michael Palin's Pole to Pole journey begins, logically enough, at the North Pole. But in the Pole to Pole book Michael explains that, while most of the journey took place between July and December 1991, no pilot could be found foolhardy enough to risk landing on the increasingly treacherous Arctic ice as late in the summer as July, and so the first leg of the journey, from the pole as far as Tromsø, Norway, was in fact carried out and filmed earlier, in May 1991.

by Ken

In my ongoing project of establishing myself as the world's most shameless Michael Palin toady (that link is where where we saw the start of of MP's third travel series, Full Circle, his journey around the Pacific Rim; but also look here and here), I've stumbled across an anecdote I can't resist sharing for the benefit of Monty Python fans.

The anecdote is from the early going of the second of MP's big serialized filmed journeys for BBC, Pole to Pole, which began at the North Pole and over the second half of 1991 was designed to work southward, as closely as possible along the 30th-degree East meridian, through Scandinavia, the Soviet Union, Turkey, and the whole length of Africa, and on to the South Pole. (That, I stress, was the design. The actuality proved different in a number of ways.) Pole to Pole had been preceded by a 1989 trip Around the World in 80 Days, which fell into Michael's life serendipitously (he was at best the BBC's third choice, though they didn't mention this to him at the time) but in fact fit a longtime life plan he had formulated, as we read in his now-published two volumes of diaries: Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years and Diaries 1980-1988: Halfway to Hollywood (apparently still not published in the U.S.), which takes us literally up to the day of his Around the World departure.

That plan, based on his considerable professional success in his 20s and early 30s, was to retire at 40 and devote himself to writing travel books -- that is, the kind of travel books he would want to read. Now I don't know if we could call what he's done these last 25-plus years (he turns 67 in May) "retirement," and he was already 45 by the time he boarded the English leg of the Orient Express heading round the world, but I think it's safe to say that he wound up doing something even better: inventing his own form of video travel series -- and, yes, publishing a book on each journey. And the books, based mostly on his diaries of those periods, complement rather than duplicate the actual series, as I'm in the process of discovering.

PALIN'S TRAVELS ON DVD

By the way, since we last talked about the DVD editions, when I noted that the U.K. Region 2 PAL edition of The Michael Palin Collection could be had for a fraction of the price of the U.S. edition, the availabilities have changed somewhat. There is now an American Michael Palin Collection (on 19 DVDs) that includes all the series through New Europe, offered by Amazon.com for a mere $224.99; other Amazon vendors are selling it for a bit under $192. However, in the U.K., the 19-CD Palin Collection has been superseded by a 20-CD set called Michael Palin's Travels, including in addition the 20-years-later sequel to Around the World, which Amazon.co.uk is selling at the moment for £46.98, or about $74. If you can play Region 2 PAL DVDs, this might be a time to spring into action.

Note: U.S. shoppers need to beware of the "bargain" combo package Amazon is currently offering: the 19-CD Palin Collection, which of course includes New Europe, plus a separate copy of New Europe, plus -- I swear this is what's listed and pictured -- a copy of the original Around the World (I presume what was intended was the new 20 Years Later show, but if they ship you the original series, don't be surprised; it's what they promised, after all) -- all for a combined price of (are you ready for this?) only $314.97! What did P. T. Barnum say about the frequency of suckers being born?

Oh yes, the anecdote! Sorry about the distraction -- er, distractions.

At this point in the Pole to Pole journey, Michael and his traveling crew have made their way down from the Arctic port city of Tromsø in the north of Norway, first farther up the northern coast in order to be able to get into Finland, then down the length of western Finland -- necessarily straying well to the west of the 30th East meridian -- to Helsinki. After arrival in the Finnish capital, and an afternoon and evening with no planned activities, and an opportunity to enjoy the luxuries of "civilization" after the rigors of the Scandinavian leg of the journey, Michael has gone to bed, hoping for the benefit of a full night's sleep.

At a quarter to midnight the telephone rings. It's a particularly insistent Finn who wants to talk to me for his university newspaper. In vain I point out the time, the fact that I was asleep, and the work I have to do tomorrow.

"I am down here in the lobby," he persists.

"I am doing an article, please, on John Cleese and I think you know him . . ."

That does it.

"I am in bed. I have four months' traveling ahead of me, and I have no time to talk about John Cleese!"

Somewhat surprisingly, this seems to amuse my caller greatly, and only then do I recognize in the cackle of non-Finnish laughter the unmistakable tones of a tall fellow Python.

"I just rang to see how you were getting on," wheezes John cheerfully . . . and I remember how much he enjoyed doing Scandinavian accents.

A younger Mr. Palin and Mr. Cleese find themselves famously unable to reach agreement as to whether the "Norwegian blue" parrot under examination is dead or merely "resting" ("tired and shagged out") -- or perhaps "pining for the fjords"? (Note: We saw a complete version of the legendary Parrot Sketch here. We also watched here as Mr. Cleese, now as Basil Fawlty, tried to cope with the profoundly hard-of-hearing Mrs. Richards, who you'll recall refused to turn her hearing aid on because she didn't want to run the battery down -- in perhaps the same way, I was trying to suggest, that so many Americans prefer not to turn their brains on.)

#

"America -- land of the free and the armed and the crazy"

by Ken

When I came across this December 1980 entry in Michael Palin's newly published Diaries 1980-1988: Halfway to Hollywood and realized I had to share it, for a moment I was disappointed that we'd missed the anniversary by just a week-and-a-bit. Then I was relieved; it's not an occasion I would want to feel as if we were "celebrating."

As the entry begins, Michael is on the railway platform near his home in northwest London, waiting for a train that will eventually take him to Southwold on the Suffolk coast, where his mother lives. He runs into a schoolmate of his 11-year-old son Tom, who delivers news that alters his world.

Tuesday, December 9th, Southwold

At Gospel Oak station by a quarter to nine to combine a visit to Southwold with my first opportunity to thoroughly revise the Time Bandits for publication at Easter. [Michael had co-written the Time Bandits screenplay with the director, fellow Python Terry Gilliam, and also appeared in the film, which had been shot but was then still in postproduction.]

It's a dull and nondescript morning -- the shabby, greying clouds have warmed the place up a bit, but that's all. I reach the station in good time. Holly Jones is waiting for her train to school, having just missed the one in front with all her friends on. It's she who tells me that over in New York John Lennon has been shot dead.

A plunge into unreality, or at least into the area of where comprehension slips and the world seems an orderless swirl of disconnected, arbitrary events. How does such a thing happen? How do I, on this grubby station platform in north-west London, begin to comprehend the killing of one of the Beatles? The Rolling Stones were always on the knife-edge of life and death and sudden tragedy was part of their lives, but the Beatles seemed the mortal immortals, the legend that would live and grow old with us. But now, this ordinary December morning, I learn from a schoolgirl that one of my heroes has been shot dead.

My feelings are of indefinable but deeply-felt anger at America. This is, after all, the sort of random slaying of a charismatic, much-loved figure in which America has specialised in the last two decades.

Once I get to Southwold I ring George.* And leave a message, because he's not answering.

I work through for a five-hour stretch and we have a drink together by the fire and watch tributes to John Lennon, clumsily put together by newsroom staff who know a good story better than they know good music. And Paul McCartney just says 'It's a drag' and, creditably I think, refuses to emote for the cameras.

What a black day for music. The killer was apparently a fan. The dark side of Beatlemania. The curse that stalks all modern heroes, but is almost unchecked in America -- land of the free and the armed and the crazy.

*George Harrison was a passionate Monty Python fan, and from the group's inception had been eager to find ways to work with them. Unlike your average show-biz phony, he followed through, devoting both time and money to Python-related projects, eventually serving as an executive producer on a number of movies by Pythons jointly and separately. Michael P developed a cordial relationship with him, and paints an affectionate portrait in the first volume of his diaries, Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years.




FAN-WORSHIP POSTSCRIPT

By odd chance, a week-and-change later Michael -- in agony with a foot problem that seems to become more painful after each treatment -- hobbles with his wife (who "has looked in her books and is bandying words like 'toxaemia' around") to an opening-night showing of Woody Allen's Stardust Memories, which is steeped in its creator's discomfort with his too-admiring fans.

The cinema is full and I like the film very much indeed. But I can see that my appreciation of some of the scenes depicting horrific excesses of fan worship comes from having experienced this sort of thing and viewed from the other side, this could be seen as Allen kicking his fans in the teeth.

Though my foot still throbs angrily, I feel the worst is over. I have been cured by a Woody Allen movie!

#

The real scandal of Climategate is, once again, the Right's self-declared right to lie absolutely at will, without any obligation to truth or reality

"Farewell, Diomede, see you in a year!"

-- Michael Palin, as he began his circumnavigation of the Pacific Rim on Little Diomede island in the first episode of Full Circle

by Ken

I know the Right-Wing Noise Machine is in its famous full-screech mode over Climategate, the bogus scandal it has manufactured around a heap of e-mails stolen under extremely suspicious circumstances (oh, come on, we know they did it, don't we? on the Right stealing no longer even qualifies as an act worthy of comment, let alone a crime -- as long as they're doing the stealing, of course), which with their usual combination of basic gut-level dishonesty and all-consuming ignorance of anything relating to reality, facts, or truth, which they regard as their mortal enemy, as well they might. I gather that Rush and Sean and Glenn and all the others are crowing that they have proof that by-now-well-established theories of climate change -- whose reality is of course on public display in both the Arctic and Antarctic for all to see, except those who use every muscle in their bodies to squeeze their eyes shut as they screech, "You can't make me see nothin'!" -- is a cunning deception.

Of course, as usual they're lying with every breath they draw. Some of them undoubtedly know they're lying their foul heads, while the others are pathetic dim-witted bullies who have simply had their brains filled with shit, but I'm becoming less and less interested in the distinction. What they have in common is a psychotic hatred for truth and decency, and some way to combat their evil influence needs to be found.

I don't claim to be scientifically qualified to rebut their pack of lies, and of course since they insist on the right to maim anyone who challenges their right to lie, and since their ignorance of scientific inquiry in absolutely every aspect is total, there's no way of arguing with them, especially since their lies are perfectly tailored to the appetites of people who don't understand anything about science and resent it for being so far outside their understanding. So I've been stockpiling sources. The best I can offer at the moment is this updated compendium of resources compiled by Josh at EnviroKnow: "The SwiftHack Scandal: What You Need to Know." To give you an idea what you'll find there, at the top of his post, Josh provides this list of subject headings:

The scientific consensus on climate change remains strong.
The impacts of catastrophic climate change continue to rear their ugly head.
Hacking into private computer files is illegal.
All of the emails were taken out of context.
The story is being pushed by far-right conspiracy theorists.
Scientists are human beings and they talk frankly amongst themselves.
Statements from Scientists.
Statements from the Obama Administration.
Statements from Members of Congress.
Pieces of General Interest.

Instead I want to talk just a little about the Good Palin and the Bad Palin, and how they reflect the difference between a sincere desire to understand the world around us and an implacable insistence on obliterating any information that conflicts with the lies and bullshit a person hasallowed him/herself to have stuffed in his/her brain.

Just a few weeks ago I wrote about my pleasure in reencountering, via DVD, Michael Palin's Full Circle for the first time since it aired on PBS more than 30 years ago. I pointed out that even after all those years, the Full Circle images of American-owned Little Diomede island and its Russian-owned neighbor, Big Diomede, were clearly still lodged in my head at the time then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- the Evil Palin -- delivered her beyond-idiotic blitherings about her special insight into Russia because of Alaska's closeness to it, including the below-moronic raving that she could see it from her porch.

We learned soon enough in the course of the presidential campaign that Princess Sarah lies literally all the time -- or, perhaps more accurately, appears to have no idea what makes some statements true and others false. Just like the people who adore her, she seems to think that truth is what makes you feel good, and correspondingly if something makes you feel bad, it must be a liberal lie. Since her mind is a swamp of religious shibboleths and political propaganda, and at some point in her life she made a decision never to use her brain for anything but regurgitating the bullshit she filled it with, the odds are pretty overwhelming that almost everything that "resonates" with that morass of ignorance will be untrue.

When I last wrote about Full Circle, as I made my way through the splendid DVD Michael Palin Collection, starting with Michael's two Great Railway Journeys and his Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole, I hadn't yet gotten to the final episodes of Full Circle, which in fact I had never seen. So I honestly didn't know that as a matter of fact, Michael Palin -- the Good Palin (as he was at pains to point out at the time his alarming namesake became a household name, they are not related) -- never did get back to Little Diomede, and so never quite completed the originally intended "full circle" of the countries of the Pacific Rim.

In the clip above, it looks as if the Bering Strait -- which separates the Western tip of mainland Alaska from the eastern tip of Siberia, and is where you will find the two Diomedes (what geologists assure us was once a land bridge between Asia and North America -- is the gentlest of ponds. Why, it looks as if you could swim from one island to the other.

However, in the final episode (and if you've never seen Full Circle, watch out -- what follows is a spoiler), it turns out that Michael and his crew never do make it back to Little Diomede. When they found themselves stranded on the Alaskan mainland, unable to find any way to get to the island because of the far more typical weather and sea conditions, he recalled that he'd been told at the time of his original visit how atypical those serene conditions were. Not even with the good offices of the U.S. Coast Guard, which took them aboard a cutter that happened to be in the area, were they able to be dropped on the island. Conditions were simply too dangerous for the captain to attempt it.

Now, I insist that already on that first visit to Little Diomede, simply by observing, by listening to the local people, and by doing fundamental research, all as a result of a basic curiosity to understand, Michael Palin understood more about at least the present-day existence of Native Americans in remote parts of Alaska, and about the physical as well as political relationship between Alaska and Russia, than Princess Sarah could ever learn, for the obvious reason that she has no interest in learning, only braying her prejudices louder than anyone within earshot.

And then, on the attempted return visit to Little Diomede learned more. Of course it was something he'd already been told, but that's often how human knowledge works: We don't necessarily get it on the first go-around. But as long as you remain open to and curious about more and better information, you stand a chance of improving the state of your understanding.

Rush & Co. don't work that way. They start with their prejudices and screaming points and, more or less like Alaska's gold-rush panners did, sift through mounds of useless raw data looking for anything that can be twisted into buttressing those prejudices. And now that they have declared their permission to lie at will, there really doesn't seem to be much to stop them. Facts don't seem to help.

#

Too cheap for HDTV? A multi-region DVD player lets you watch Michael Palin for a song and thank gawd he's not Sarah P

With a Palin bonus: The parrot sketch!

A view from Sarah Palin's porch? No, it's a satellite image of Big Diomede and Little Diomede islands in the Bering Strait between the easternmost tip of Asia (Siberian Russia) and the westernmost tip of North America (Alaska).

"I know I'm here for only a very short time, but I hope I'll learn something."

-- Michael Palin, to Sokun, the abbot of the Zen Buddhist temple of Buttsuji in southern Japan, in episode 2 of Full Circle, the "good" Palin's 1995-96 filmed journey counterclockwise around the Pacific Rim

by Ken

Full Circle actually begins in Alaska, on the U.S. island of Little Diomede, in the Bering Strait, opposite the uninhabited Russian island of Big Diomede, the famous closest point between our two countries. On the evidence of the scenes shot on Little Diomede, and then in Nome, and on the still-very-Russian Kodiak Island, I get the distinct impression that Michael Palin knows more about Alaska than the Other Palin (no relation, as he has been at pains to point out).

Having just watched this episode for the first time in many years, I was reminded that a subliminal connection between the Palins has been operative in my brain since the Unfortunate Palin came to my attention.

As a longtime geography buff -- it's one of the things that Howie and I have always had in common, though it's led him to do all sorts of actual traveling and me not so much -- I of course knew the names and geographical significance of the two Diomedes. I never expected to see them, though, or even to come as close to seeing them as I now have in Full Circle. I not only doubt that Princess Sarah has come this close, but doubt that she has the slightest interesting in doing so. It was, I think, her very lack of interest in anything outside the orbit of her sequestered brain, that led her to make such a grotesque hash of the actual physical relationship between Alaska and Russia. She barely knows where Alaska is, and probably can't imagine why anyone would even want to know where, uh, that other place is.

The word I'm circling around is "curiosity," and of course it's one of the defining characteristics of Michael Palin's travels. His curiosity may not be exactly infinite, but it's quite large enough to encompass any people and places his travels take him to. I'm quite sure, for example, that at least as of the time of his visit to Little Diomede and Nome, he knew more about the people who would one day be Governor Palin's constituents than she ever did.

Michael Palin is also the most congenial of traveling companions (it's hard to imagine anyone enjoying the company of Princess Sarah except desexed men who enjoy the fantasy that she might at some point jump their desiccated bones), and one of the funnier. In the second episode of Full Circle, as he makes his labyrinthine way, suitcase in tow, to his meeting with the abbot of the temple of Buttsuji, he notes the effect on his awareness of how much he's traveling with, reflecting, "By the time I climb yet another flight of stairs, I'm ready to renounce all worldly goods, beginning with my suitcase."

Of all Palin's TV journeys, Full Circle is the one that, until now, I had seen most of. Now, however, I've just knocked off his Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole (a trip intended to take him from the North Pole to the South Pole along the 30th-degree east longitude meridian, before a couple of rather large detours, one large and the other massive). After years of coveting, I've now got my very own copy of The Michael Palin Collection, which brings together, in addition to the three titles already mentioned, a pair of Great Railway Journeys, Hemingway Adventure, Sahara, and Himalaya. The more recent New Europe I bought separately.

What set me to coveting the Palin travel set, beyond how much I'd liked the parts I'd seen and how much I hadn't seen, was the existence of this set, at an incredibly modest price -- in the U.K. Back when I started scouting this stuff, most of the Palin travel films weren't even available in the U.S. The problem with buying them from the U.K., of course, is that they're in PAL and have incompatible regional coding.

I see now that the Palin Collection is actually available in the U.S., for something like $225. Back in the day, who knows? I might have paid it. In fact, I paid about $70, and about another $17 for New Europe. What I did was, finally, after years of coveting, to buy one of those increasing number of DVD players that play all TV systems and all regional codes.

You can get them incredibly cheap, but with electronic equipment I'm often almost as afraid to pay too little as too much -- there's an awful lot of crap being sold. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised to find a model as tempting as my new Pioneer DV610AV-S, which even plays SACDs, for $100 including shipping. (Just to be clear, this is a model that's not intended for the U.S. market, and is presumably not warranted by Pioneer. But I trusted that the vendor would back up the merchandise, and in fact it has worked perfectly out of the box.)
Naturally, once I committed to ordering the multi-region DVD player, I had to have something to play on it, which in my mind amounted to an "all systems go" for placing a whopping order with Amazon.co.uk -- starting, of course, with the Michael Palin Collection. But there was a ton of other stuff that either isn't available here or is available there at a fraction of the U.S. price.

Like the complete Inspector Morse mysteries, with a price differential, as I recall, similar to that of the Palin set. And there were the great Le Carré Smiley miniseries, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People. Tinker Tailor was actually the first thing I watched. (I own bootleg VHS dubs of both series in a PAL-to-NTSC conversion so appalling as to be unwatchable -- but I watched them, a bunch of times.) And there were a couple of BBC Dickens minseries, and the original Brideshead Revisited, the British Queer As Folk, and the remake of The Forsyte Saga (I'm still scouting U.S. vs. U.K. editions of the original series), and the complete Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister (which I've got on VHS, but do I watch? and it was so cheap!).

I've already got a shopping basket (in the U.K. it's a "basket" rather than a "cart") brimful of more goodies: seasons 1-3 of the Inspector Lewis mysteries, a tribute to the Two Fat Ladies, the complete Kavanagh Q.C. and Hustle and The Office (which I like much less than the American version, but it's cheap, and maybe it'll grow on me), a set of three BBC Oscar Wilde films (again too cheap to resist), and a preposterously cheap collection of 14 Hitchcock films. Of course the prices keep changing while the stuff is in my basket, but I think of it as like playing the stock market, except with no money at risk. Every time I log in to see my shopping basket, I get an announcement of prices that have changed, usually a matter of 20p or 30p. I've also had price drops of £5 to £7; those were my good days in the market. Not long ago some item -- I think it was one of the many versions of the "complete" Monty Python -- went up £5, and I chucked it right out of the basket -- I still don't know which of the many U.S. and U.K. editions to buy anyway.

I realize that if I were allocating my televisual dollars (or pounds) wisely, I would be saving up for a nice new HD TV. But I'm OK with my present TVs, including the 19-inch Sharp in the kitchen that I bought used in the early '70s from the neighbor of a friend, and was sure I'd overpaid for -- except that the damned thing is still working OK 35 years later, and refuses to stop working.

I don't really have either the asking price or the proper space for the kind of HD set I'd like. I guess I finally decided that the money would be better spent on stuff I actually watch. For what it's worth, my Pioneer DVD player up-converts to however many lines the righteous folk with HD sets enjoy. When funds permit, I'll probably buy another multi-region DVD player for my other "major" TV, so I can watch the PAL DVDs on either.

Meanwhile I continue studying my financial reports. The British complete Rumpole isn't necessarily cheaper than the American, but it reportedly has subtitles, whereas the American edition apparently doesn't -- and for British TV in particular I find they come in increasingly handy. Hmm, a quandary. Maybe I should just get back to Full Circle. Michael was headed for a ferry from Japan to Korea.


A MICHAEL PALIN BONUS: "PINING FOR THE
FJORDS"? YES, IT'S THE DEAD PARROT SKETCH

With the great John Cleese, of course (and brief appearances by Terry Jones and Graham Chapman):

#

Before we get to news from the good Palin (Michael), is there any chance the Troopergate report will make the bad one (Sarah) disappear?

Who's out to get Safety Bear? Gov. Sarah "Danger Moose" Palin freaked out when she heard that her archenemy the infamous Trooper Wooten would be at the 2007 Alaska State Fair when she attended. Turns out he was volunteering, as he often did, to play the ever-beloved-by-children Safety Bear. (Thanks to Blue Tidal Wave for the photo.)

by Ken

So it's official. According to investigator Stephen Branchflower's report to Alaska's Joint Legislative Council, as released yesterday, the governor (and now GOP vice presidential candidate) abused her powers. Howie has gone over the ins and outs of the report in some detail in his post below.

In the end, the thugs who run the McCranky campaign would probably have done better to leave the thugging to the locals, who at least know the territory. The McCrankyites, channeling the bipartisan spirit of Genghis Rove, brought in their squadron of city-slicker goons for the express purpose of clamping the lid on the legislature's originally bipartisan investigation into the Palin Gang's Troopergate abuses, but as usual with the McCranky campaign, they screwed up. Oh, the GOP slickers produced their usual quotient of intimidation and left their expected amount of carnage. But mayhem is about all the present McCranky brain trust seems capable of creating.

True, many of the potential witnesses suddenly decided not to bear witness, but the ones who mattered had already given their testimony, and it doesn't seem to have been especially difficult for Branchflower to piece together what seemed pretty clear from the evidence already made public: that the Palin Gangsters routinely lie, cheat, and steal -- and above all bully anybody who gets in their way, under the delusion that they're marauding in the name of some psychotic, satanic God -- because that's who they are. Ignorant, megalomaniacal ideological wackos.

Of course neither the Palin Gang nor their new Rovian masters in the Lower 48 will accept the Blanchflower findings. As true 21st-century Republicans, it's not just their right but virtually their obligation to make poopy on the truth. These people, after all, have a "higher truth," which they imagine is delivered to them by their gargoyle of a God, who would presumably smite them if they ever acted in accordance with the dictates of truth, decency, or authentic morality.

SPEAKING OF KARL ROVE . . .

My weekend plans include trying to catch Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, a documentary that I'm hearing from all sides not only is remarkable in its own right, helping us understand the life's work of the father of modern gutter-style campaigning -- and guru to slimemaster Rove -- but is invaluable for understanding the kind of campaign we're seeing now being thrown up against the wall by McCranky campaign "genius" (and Rove disciple) Steve Schmidt.

Lee Atwater is best remembered for "Willie Horton"-ing the 1988 presidential campaign of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis into oblivion. It's also remembered that during his terminal struggle with a brain tumor, he saw and repented of the evil he had done in his professional life.

So naturally they bellow like wounded hippos about shameful partisan politics! This is what happens when ultra-partisan right-wing loons look in a mirror. They're the ones who reflexively behave in accord with shameful partisan politics. Or should we say shameless politics? Because these people are surely incapable of shame. Quite possibly in their degraded brains they really believed they were doing the Lord's work when they did everything in their power -- well, actually well beyond their lawful power -- to settle their score with Governor Sarah's former brother-in-law, Trooper Mike Wooten.

Now I'm prepared to believe that Trooper Wooten isn't a great guy, although I have to say that when all the evidence comes from the mouths of the Palin Gang, its total evidentiary value is roughly zero. But the measure of their ruthlessness and truthlessness isn't what they did, or tried to do, to the hapless trooper. It's their single-minded devotion to their only discernible Guiding Principle: Getting What We Want When We Want It. Which meant that they had to mow down the man who stood in the path of their vengeance, doing his job. State Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, who appears to be as upright and universally admired as you'll find in public service, steadfastly resisted the relentless (and, he believed, illegal) pressure from First Dude Todd Palin and assorted other Palin Gang henchpersons to fire Trooper Wooten. And so, eventually and outrageously, he had to be fired himself.

I suppose I should qualify that description of Monegan as "universally admired." That was the case before the invasion of the GOP slickers, who promptly set about sliming him. Of course you realize that as spiritual heirs of Karl Rove they had no choice. One gaping hole the cover-up could never cover up was the absence of a remotely plausible reason for Monegan's firing. The serial lies put out by the governor became increasingly more pathetic.

But that's why Rove disciples never travel without vats of slime. You get the feeling they take special pleasure in trashing the reputation of a good man. So, everyone in Alaska knew Monegan to be both competent and principled, eh? For low-lifes like the Palin Gang and the McCrankyites, that probably just adds to the satisfaction of bringing the sumbitch down.

Poor Walt has been vindicated but still faces the task of picking up the pieces of his reputation. Rachel Maddow asked him about this when he spoke to her on her show last night, and he really didn't seem to know how he's going to do this.

I realize how crazed and hyperbolic I sound talking about the right-wingers as, effectively, spawns of Satan. I sound as crazy as I'm accusing them of being. The only difference is that they really are.

In other words, I'm stuck in the same position I was not quite a month ago when I wrote a post called "Can we really have a presidential election in which one side does nothing but lie? (Apparently so.)"

I expect that many people who read the piece assumed I was being hyperbolic or metaphorical, if not downright hysterical, in proclaiming that new-school Republicanism requires total abandonment of truth, substituting what we would like to be true or in some cases what we think ought to be true. Alas, no, as the Rs have continued to demonstrate since I wrote the earlier piece, they are entirely off the truth standard.

Meanwhile our beloved Infotainment News Media, as always, report this as a case of "both sides exaggerating," or "both campaigns stretching the truth." So when it comes to sliming, "both sides" are doing it, and never mind that the charges against McCranky are pertinent and true, while the vilifications of Obama are psychotic tissues of lies, innuendo, and irrelevance.

Now, of course, the insanitization has reached the point of actively fomenting violence, to the point where even dead-to-the-world McCranky felt obliged to pull back. Make no mistake, though: He is the candidate of hatred, ignorance, bigotry, criminal thuggery, and outright violence. And the people who support him are doing everything in their power to turn the country into an ungovernable cauldron of ignorance and hate.

There's a tendency among pundits to minimize the significance of the Troopergate charges. Of course now we know conclusively that this charge of political abuse in Gov. Danger Moose's administration is true. And the more we look at the Palin Gang's track record at both the local and the state levels, this wasn't an isolated instance -- it's the way the gang does business. Most important, the whole stinking mess is a function of the appalling judgment of the pathetic McCranky, clutching desperately at his last chance for the presidency.

Electorally speaking, however, none of this matters much. In all likelihood, the Troopergate report is just another nail in the coffin of the McCranky-Danger Moose ticket, courtesy of the economic catastrophe brought on by decades of the kind of governance Young Johnny has fought for so passionately for so long. It's looking highly unlikely that the Crankyman will be spending any extended time in the White House.

But does that mean Gov. Danger Moose is going to sink back into the much she crawled out of? Or that the crusade for ignorance and thuggery of which she has become the perky heroine will magically disappear? I wish it were so, but I don't think so.


MICHAEL PALIN WANTS IT KNOWN: HE'S NO RELATION
TO YOU-KNOW-WHO -- HE'S "SAHARA" (NOT SARAH) PALIN

I know I'm not the only one who did a double take on first encountering the name of Alaska's scumbag governor. The only other Palins I've heard tell of are the family of legendary Monty Pythonite (and more recently master traveler, having invented his own genre of travel film and book) Michael Palin, one of the globe's more treasured inhabitants.

Of course it seemed improbable that there was any connection. But for a lot of us "Palin" is a brand name that stands for something. It came as something of a jolt to discover that our Michael has been been undergoing a sort of identity crisis himself.

For his far-flung network of fans, Michael sends out too-infrequent but periodic e-mail updates (you can get information and sign up on the Palin's Travels website, www.palinstravels.com), and one just went out yesterday, presumably occasioned by news of his latest travel project -- 80 Days Revisited, a return journey ("the first I've ever attempted") after 20 years in which he will attempt to find as many shipmates as he can from --

one of the best-remembered sequences of any of my travel adventures, the dhow journey from Dubai to Bombay, episode three of Around the World in 80 Days. As we sailed agonisingly slowly down the Persian Gulf on board one of world's oldest surviving traditional sailing ships we formed a unique relationship with our Indian crew. Mutual incomprehension gradually gave way to friendship and affection, as we accepted the fact that our lives, and the success of our journey Around the World in 80 Days was in the hands of this band of ragged, under-paid sailors from Gujerat.

Now that's the serious-news part of the new e-mail. Easing into the news, Michael tell us:

I'm conscious, as ever, that a lot of water has flown under the bridge since my last message. Since then I've been working hard at an edit of my Diaries 1980 -1988 in time for publication next year, whilst watching Archie grow up and trying to come to terms with my identity theft by a hockey mum in Alaska. And no, Sarah Palin is not my sister, daughter or alias. And I'm Sahara Palin not Sarah.

In case you don't know, Michael did a fascinating trek across the Sahara which produced the series and book of that name.

By the way, the new project ("currently called 80 Days Revisited") "will hopefully be shown as a one-hour special on BBC-1 around Christmas." Which means we'll get it, well, goodness knows when and where. There's also a revised edition of the Around the World in 80 Days book in the works.

#