American Lament

You’d almost think it was a movie.

Two inmates in New Jersey escaped from jail a few days ago. Prison escapes are hardly common, but you hear about them often enough to supply TNT with enough “Based on a True Story” movies for the rest of eternity.

However, in this case, the method of escape is worth noting. The inmates, jailed for robbery and manslaughter, managed to remove two cement blocks from their cell and crawl out, then scale a 25-foot fence to freedom, even if that freedom was, on first glance, New Jersey. And how did these two inmates manage to conceal their escape route? They covered the holes with posters of scantily clad ladies.

In some sense, one wishes these two were in jail for things like embezzlement or petty theft, because you have to hand it to anyone as inventive as, say, a Hollywood scriptwriter to make such a daring and convenient escape. It’s a shame not to throw a few kudos to these fellows, except for that whole killing someone thing.

Elaborate prison escapes are a staple of armchair tacticians and overly creative dullards, the stock plot of countless movies and detective fiction. Fox’s Prison Break is a hit show about just that. Well, about a long, winding and boring lead-up to it, and then a complex and artificial set of plot lines to prop it up for a few additional seasons, but, hey, when you’re in the clink, what else you got to do? But when one of the scumbags actually pulls off such a stunt, we’re all outranged because he might hide out around in the woods and disturb the livestock or something. But back in our minds, we just got to hand it to the guys for pulling off a fast one in a compound specifically designed to prevent it. It’s kind of like the guy who mistakes an unprovable proof on the blackboard as a homework assigned then goes home and solves it, only with a lot more gunshots and profanity and a lot less never getting laid in college.

Even in the world of music, prison escapes are a popular theme, somewhere between the ingestion of LSD and detailing the heroic efforts of the crews of sinking freighters in the Great Lakes area. Elvis has a hit with “Jailhouse Rock,” which raised some eyebrows at the time. It was bad enough he was thrusting his pelvis and putting pressure on guys world-round to buy more brylcreem, he was glorifying criminality and, by extension, trying to overthrow the Pope and put fluoride in the water. Even Johnny Cash was fond of prisons, garnering a hit song from “Folsom Prison Blues,” which he wrote in honor of the one thing he cared about the most—Reese Witherspoon’s ass. Thin Lizzy and AC/DC also have jailbreak anthems befitting their repertoire, though one is remarkably less than surprised about that.

Still, despite the repugnance that street criminals are roaming about after being justly convicted, many of us hold a kind of latent feeling of awe at the prospect. There isn’t a much more stark contrast between authority versus subject in society than prison, and many of us can relate. Sure, we’re only talking about how our bosses make us work late or how our mothers forced us to wear ridiculous things to school no one this side of the western world has ever conceived of wearing, but we can relate at escaping the fascist grip of authority from our lives. Most of us take a pee-in-the-swimming-pool passive aggressive approach to sticking it to the man, but you gotta have brass one to accept the Physical Challenge when you’re up against government-contracted masonry, Homeland Security-funded security systems, and guards with personality issues and lethal weaponry.

And so it goes with our love-hate relationship with the prisoner. On one hand, they’ve broken the law, and most of them are violent thugs with little regard for law, life or, more importantly, private property rights. On the other hand, though, many people feel that most criminals are simply victims of circumstance, creatures to be pitied and rehabilitated rather than mocked and dismissed. In psychological terms, these people are known as “pussies,” and will forever remain as such up until the point when someone siphons the gas out of their hatchback. Then all of a sudden it’s a clarion call to plug in Ol’ Sparky.

The two fellows who pulled the Shawshank certainly had something going on besides bucket-headedness and adrenaline-based excuses at failing life. Most prisoners, given to their own devices, would simply stage a riot, taser a guard, or throw food loafs at the warden, usually with the end result of getting thrown in solitary or be forced to live off of paint flakes and mouse urine for nutrition. The criminal element is not usually made up of potential Jeopardy contestants. And yet there has to be a certain level of cognitive genius to pull off an escape, so making a blanket statement probably is a disservice to, uh, criminals. Of course, the mark of a true genius is not to be put in jail in the first place.

Is it just me, or have people become increasingly hostile?

First off, some stupid kid got himself tasered at a John Kerry event. Say what you will about it, but there’s only one way to get electrified listening to John Kerry is if someone shoots a couple hundred volts through your body. The stupid kid was upset when Kerry wouldn’t answer his question in a short enough time period. Not willing to shut the hell up, guards told him to come peacefully and, when he refused, was tasered.

His tasering has become a lightning rod (ha!) for protest, as many are decrying the fact that someone exercising their right to free speech was punished with physical force, and other are decrying that the security guards didn’t make him swallow his teeth.

This one is a tough call. To be fair, the guy wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, and many people believe that tasering the fellow was an overreaction. On the other hand, the guy was a complete douchebag, and the officers repeatedly advised him to shut his yap or risk getting a metal rod tapping your scrotum. He chose to keep on blathering, and then was shocked (ha!) when he was forcibly subdued.

There are few immutable truths in the world. One, of course, being that Lions for Lambs is going to be a complete load of horseshit. The other is that, if you are an individual, and you happen to come into the possession of a taser, you immediately have two options:

1) You will use the taser to electrocute someone.
2) You will not use the taser to electrocute someone.

Research indicates that every single person on the face of the earth since the very beginning of time, up to and including Quakers, kindergarten teachers, and Buddhist monks, will choose option number two. So the fact that this assgoblin got tasered really shouldn’t exactly be the most surprising thing on the face of the earth.

Speaking of people who need tasered, O.J. Simpson declared himself to be back in the news. And it’s not because he had someone ghost write a quasi-confession or he backed over a newborn or anything. It’s because he was connected with an armed robbery to recover sports memorabilia, which all in all is a pretty pussyish way to get back in the news for an accused murderer.

One can only imagine the dialogue that occurred before this heist:

Simpson: I think we need to break into that place and steal some stuff.
Accomplice #1: That’s a rotten idea.
Accomplice #2: (whispering) Hey, if we don’t do this, he will kill us.
Accomplice #1: Sounds like a plan.

Simpson initially claimed that he was simply recovering the items that had been stolen from him in the first place, which seems kind of silly since as soon as he admitted this, he would have to double-time it over to the Goldmans’s house and pony it up. It soon became apparent that this robbery, which apparently included no less than six dozen completely normal people, all of whom promised to not say a single word to anyone about the B&E being spearheaded by a famous football superstar turned double murderer.

It seems kind of odd, since robbery doesn’t really seem like Simpson’s M.O.—the murder he committed –cough, cough, I mean accused of committing—was famously a prime example of rage-fueled spontaneity. Still, Simpson wanted to take a stab at it (ha!) and see if he could recover the goods.

Still, it’s kind of disappointing that the Juice may be going away for armed robbery and attempted kidnapping. It’s like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. Everyone is hoping that he gets the chair for garroting a Subway sandwich artist or cracking open the skull of a theater usher with a sack of nickels in a fit of roid rage, but instead it’s because he’s trying to lift an autographed copy of the Criterion Collection edition of The Naked Gun 2 ½.

While Simpson is running around stealing trinkets, something a bit more in the way of large-scale destruction was happening halfway around the world. Vladimir Putin, Pending Emperor of the Russian Empire, detonated what is now classified as history’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb. It’s being hailed as a “vacuum” bomb, which seems a remarkably domesticated adjective for something that could easily decimate several former Soviet breakaway republics in a few seconds. You know, in theory.

One can only imagine the dialogue that occurred before this detonation:

Putin: I think we need to create the world’s most destructive weapon.
Cabinet Member #1: That’s a rotten idea.
Cabinet Member #2: (whispering) Hey, if we don’t do this, he will kill us.
Cabinet Member #1: Sounds like a plan.

This has raised some alarm in diplomatic circles. Putin has become increasingly despotic in his actions and words, and this is seen as a rather blatant power play to showcase his otherwise doldrumatic army, which is quickly descending into three parts listless hooligan and five parts mafia bagmen.

Still, while it may be a touch of overkill, Putin may have the most elegant solution of all. There won’t be any trials with which to pretend to not be able to fit into a glove, and there won’t be any signs of protest when a rent-a-cop shoves a cattle prod inside you. There will just be a lot of dust and a little bit less of the godless Siberia.