The Explorers Club
№ CCXL - Jason, Part I: the quest for the Golden Fleece.







Operation AXIOM
One year ago to the day, 27 June 2010, the Magnificent Moustache Malarkey came to an end. The final curtain fell on the Banzai Beard Bonanza II: Bonsai's Revenge. I would spend the remainder of the summer of '10 without whiskers, due to a necessary period of reflection following the Bonanza/Malarkey; the achievement of Objective ZED ALPHA (a.k.a. my appearance on Jeopardy!); & a desire to let Mrs. Skeeter, Esq., a vociferous critic of my beard/moustache, see me cleanshaven at the running of the Crim (a.k.a. Objective FINNLAND of Operation ÖSTERREICH). A year ago plans were already being drawn up for the Banzai Beard Bonanza III: Third Time's the Harm & the Banzai Beard Bonanza IV: Four For Forty. Now that I sport whiskers for the foreseeable future, whatever will become of these bonanzas? Bah, that's a concern for another day, another post. For now, a year has passed since the end of the Malarkey. Did the year pass swiftly? Did the year pass slowly? Was it a good year? Much to ponder.

Banzai!

The Queue
I'm moving up in the world: in only a fortnight I've gone from № 68 in the G.D.L. queue for Carte Blanche to № 59. (Please please please let this not be a repeat of Devil May Care.) For the nonce, onward with late Victorian/Edwardian fiction!

Recently
Drew Karpyshyn, Star Wars: Darth Bane: Path of Destruction
E. W. Hornung, The Complete Raffles, Volume One: The Amateur Cracksman & The Black Mask
Greg Rucka & various artists, Queen & Country: Operation: SADDLEBAGS & Operation: RED PANDA

Currently
Anthony Hope, Rupert of Hentzau

Presently
John Buchan, The Thirty-nine Steps
John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy
John le Carré, Smiley's People
...
Jeffery Deaver, Carte Blanche

This Week in Motorsport
The seventh round of the F.I.A. Formula One World Championships, the Grand Prix du Canada, was run a fortnight ago, I watched the race a week ago, & I am commenting upon it now. The Canadian Grand Prix was run only a few hours after the finale of the 24 Hours of Le Mans; my decision to tape record the race & watch it at a later date was motivated more by the fact that I had been too busy watching Le Mans to watch F1 qualifying than by my manifest fatigue following the Grand Prix of Endurance. For the serious aficionado like your humble narrator qualifying is an integral part of a grand prix weekend, a necessary part of the experience I am unwilling to forgo. On the Sunday of the race (12 June) I did check my tape recording in progress & discovered that the race had been red-flagged (suspended) due to excessive rain. Unsure if I would capture the full race on FOX, I decided to tape also an edited rebroadcast of the race later in the week on Speed. (Both are part of the News Corp. empire, so Speed is to FOX as E.S.P.N. is to A.B.C.) Last weekend I watch qualifying & the edited race, only this past weekend did I watch the mostly rain-delayed red flag period that I recorded live on the day of the grand prix.

The Grand Prix du Canada was won by '09 World Champion Jenson Button of McLaren (Mercedes), who had an extraordinarily eventful day. Much praise was heaped on Button for what he called the "best win" of his career; I, openly admitting to a loathing of the man, take a different view. Is Jenson Button a good driver? Very much so. Did he drive well on that soggy day in Montréal? Yes, he did. But several factors must be considered. There were multiple safety car deployments during the grand prix (the racing gods were merciful, all were due to the rain, not massive shunts), which bunched up the field, meaning Button never fell as far behind '10 World Champion Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull (Renault) as he would have on pure pace. Left to his own devices, Vettel would have disappeared into the distance. Button knocked both '08 World Champion Lewis Hamilton of McLaren & '05 & '06 World Champion Fernando Alonso of Ferrari out of the race through collisions that left Button's car unscathed. Given the damage he inflicted on the others his escapes were owed purely to chance, not to any skill on his nefarious part. Both Hamilton & Alonso would have otherwise been significant obstacles to Button's charge to the front. Button was assessed a drive-through penalty for an infraction during the first safety-car period. This sent him to the back of the grid, making his drive to the front all the more impressive, yes? No. The drive-through was before the two-plus hours the race was under the red flag. When the race started up again under the safety car Button was not nearly as far from the front, in physical distance, as he otherwise would have been. Nevertheless, Button's performance was praiseworthy; he did propel himself up to the front of the field so that he was in a position to snatch the race lead on the last lap with Vettel made an error & went slightly off track. But it is also necessary to recognize that the stars aligned for Button, & without several pieces of staggering good fortune he would never have been in a position to capitalize on Vettel's misfortune.

Sport is the one area where the B.B.C. most resembles the loathsome American media. McLaren is a British team, & both Button & Hamilton are British drivers; a clear & annoying bias in favor of McLaren is evident in the B.B.C.'s F1 coverage. B.B.C. Sport was most obnoxious in the fortnight following Canada. (Most of the Formula One teams are physically based in Great Britain, including the Austrian-registered Red Bull, the Indian-registered Force India [Mercedes], & the Malaysian-registered Team Lotus [Cosworth]. But McLaren, even though founded by the New Zealander Bruce McLaren & formerly owned by those Kraut bastards at Daimler-Benz, is considered thoroughly British. When Vettel of Red Bull wins, two national anthems are played while he stands on the podium, the German national anthem for him & the Austrian national anthem for Red Bull. If the driver & team are both "from" the same country, a single anthem is played; so, when Hamilton won the Chinese Grand Prix & Button the Canadian Grand Prix only one anthem was played: "God Save the Queen.")

Fast forward to this weekend & Formula One returned to Europe for the second of the two races in Spain, the European Grand Prix on the streets of Valencia. Vettel reestablished his dominance, claiming the top spot on the podium over Alonso's Ferrari in second & the sister Red Bull of Mark Webber in third. The much-praised Button finished a distant sixth. Vettel's lead over Webber & Button, tied for second in the championship standings, is such that were Vettel to score zero points in the next three grands prix, & one of either Button or Webber to win all three, Vettel would still hold a slight lead. The chances of this seem all the more remote when you consider than Vettel's worst finishing position of 2011 is second, the spot he claimed both times he was denied the top step, in China & Canada. Has Vettel sown up the Drivers' Championship? Have Red Bull sown up the Constructors' Championship? By no means; after all, we're not quite halfway through the 2011 campaign. But some observers, & even some of the top drivers, are beginning to despair that the other twenty-three drivers on the grid have been consigned to a separate competition… for second place.

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
Dressy Bessy, "Just Once More" from Dressy Bessy (T.L.A.M.)

Sonntag, 26 Juni
Dressy Bessy, "This May Hurt (A Little)" from Dressy Bessy (T.L.A.M.)

Samstag, 25 Juni
Dressy Bessy, "Baby Six String" from Dressy Bessy (T.L.A.M.)