We’re headed into the long Independence Day holiday, and for some of us it’s going to be a longer weekend than for others.  In my case, it’s the best kind of weekend, because not only do we get Friday off, I’m headed offshore for my first marlin trip of the season – always a reason to celebrate.  There’s a birthday happening in there as well, but we’ll have more to say about that when we get back on the beach.

But I know my MarlinBlog readers, and while I’m sure you’re thrilled for me to be going fishing, there’s only one thing on your collective minds:

But Stan … what about the weekend eye candy?

C’mon, didn’t I just say I knew my readers?  Do you really think I’d leave you hanging for four days with nothing more than a picture of a couple of mating Porsches?  Hardly.

So, keeping in the spirit of the holiday, a little selection of what makes America great – hot chicks in flag bikinis.  Have a safe, reasonably sane weekend, everyone!

And is it just me, or does there seem to be an awful lot of nice cars running around the streets of Moscow?  Haven’t they heard there’s supposed to be a worldwide recession?  Guess they aren’t having to issue IOUs over there yet …

Here’s the line I’d like to be able to use to start this entry:

Saturday marks the beginning of the greatest sporting event on earth, the Tour de France.

There was a time when I’d have had no problem making that statement. Just on sheer numbers alone, Le Tour makes most athletic events pale by comparison.  During the course of three weeks in the July heat, 180 riders will cover 3500 kilometers of French plains and alps.  With only 2 rest days, it’s as difficult and daunting mentally as physically.  These are the greatest athletes in the world … period.

Problem is, like any high-end athletic competition, Le Tour has been plagued by scandal.  Long before there were drug tests, there were drug takers in the Tour.  Amphetamine use was so bad at one point that riders died in the saddle, and some of the most sophisticated designer performance enhancing drugs were created for Le Tour.  The late ’90s were particularly difficult, with entire teams banned from the event for blood doping.

The appearance of a post-cancer Lance Armstrong and his dominant US Postal Service team quieted the storm for the seven Tours he won, but as soon as he retired the controversy returned.  The winner of the 2006 event, Floyd Landis, had his title taken away after a positive drug test late in the event, and Michael Rasmussen was kicked out while leading the 2007 Tour after apparently dodging the drug testers.  So many leading riders didn’t even enter last year’s event that it ultimately came down to a battle of relative unknowns for the prized maillot jaune.

But, as they say, what’s old can be new again, and there’s a “new” rider in the 2009 event – Lance Armstrong himself.  Returned from a three-year retirement, Armstrong is riding for a revamped Astana squad – the very same team kicked out of the 1998 event for doping.  But this is very much Armstrong’s team, led by old friend Johan Bruyneel and populated by faces familiar to fans of the Posties’ Blue Train.  Lance has said that he’s not in the race to win, but rather to continue to raise awareness of the battle to cure cancer, and Astana indeed has a pair of potential podium finishers in Levi Leipheimer and Alberto Contador, the 2007 TdF winner.  But Lance has looked remarkably racy in his comeback events, the Tour of California and the Giro d’Italia, and if he gets his shot you know he’s gonna take it.  If nothing else, it should bring back the star power sorely lacking in the last few years.

As a side note, we’re going to try the Tour de Stance once again this year.  Readers of the SCMO Fishing News back before we calved off the MarlinBlog will recall that about five years ago I mirrored the riding of the tour, getting out on the bike each of the 21 riding days of the event.  Of course, I was a much bigger, less fit person than I am now, so if we’re gonna do this we need to do it right.  I’ll definitely mimic the type of stage – flat, mountain or time trial – but I need to figure out the right way to determine the distance for each day.  And, since I’ll be out fishing this weekend, I need to work in a couple of double days to make up for the two stages I’ll miss.  But those are just details – the key is to get out and ride!

Should be fun …

I’m a pretty easy-going guy. It takes an awful lot to really set me off, but when you do, I’m usually off for a while. Few things set me off as quickly – or thoroughly – as people who shirk responsibility for their own circumstances in life … particularly if they’re at the same time busily blaming others for them.

That kind of “responsibility blind spot” is nothing new, of course. It was on full display in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when the residents and anyone else who could come close to a microphone were busy blaming the government for everything from the speed and amount of relief to the presence of the hurricane itself. Never mind the fact their families had been living below sea level for generations – they couldn’t possibly share responsibility for their situation … could they?

Today’s news headlines includes three prime examples of that basic failure to even acknowledge that people in difficult circumstances just might share in the blame for their woes.

Yesterday, Bernie Madoff was sent to jail for what is effectively a well-deserved life sentence. He can’t possibly pay back the money he swindled away, but he at least stood up in court and took responsibility for his actions, such as it is. Meanwhile, a series of his victims tearfully stated their cases to the judge, explaining how their life savings had been lost, they’d been force to liquidate all their assets, or they’d been reduced to using food stamps.

Here’s the question I’d like to ask: sure, you’re a victim of Madoff’s crime, but don’t you feel some sense of responsibility for your position? Did you never question the unusually high rate of return or the wisdom of placing so much of your future in the hands of one man? A quick read of “Investing for Dummies” would have saved you from all this grief – unless just maybe greed got in the way? Don’t you feel at least partially responsible?

Next story – the mortgage meltdown. A lot of unscrupulous folks offered mortgages to people who couldn’t qualify for them and had no possibility of paying them off. The bankers knew this, of course, and factored it into the plan. The financial markets tanked, and they’re largely responsible for it. At the same time, thousands of people are at risk of losing their homes because they can’t pay the mortgage.

No one questions the crimes of the bankers, but why doesn’t anyone hold the homeowners accountable as well? No one forced them to sign the mortgages, or threatened to shoot their dog if they didn’t – they looked at the amount of money they needed to pay back each month and decided to go for it. How can this not be at least partially their own fault? The media is inundated with advertisements for law firms that will sue the banks to get your payments or balance decreased, but why is it not acceptable to suggest these people move into a home they can actually afford?

The last example is the state government here in California. Talk about your dysfunctional family – these guys are terminally screwed up. At midnight tonight, unless a budget is miraculously passed, the state will be out of money – again – and will try to pay its bills with IOUs. It’s not like they didn’t know there was a deadline or that there might be ramifications if they failed to act. But you have a bunch of dogmatic ideologues lining up against each other, perfectly happy to blame everyone else for the situation they – and we – find ourselves in. One side refuses to cut funding, the other to increase taxes. Of course, your average 6th grade civics student would tell you that it’ll take a combination of both to get the job done, but these guys won’t hear of it. Instead, they’ll start lining up in front of the cameras starting at around 11:30 to make sure that everyone understands it’s the other guy who’s to blame.

I’m all for holding people accountable for their actions, whether corporations, governments or individuals. But seldom is responsibility an isolated entity – like a mouthful of fresh peanut butter, it tends to stick to everything. You just can’t fling accusations at everyone else and not expect someone to point out when you’re splattered yourself.

But wait ... there's no more!

Damn – is it a tough time to be a celebrity or what?  I know what they say about celebrity deaths coming in threes, but what happens when they start coming in six-packs?

OK, so Ed McMahon wasn’t much of a surprise, since he’d been battling age and illness for a while now.  Farrah Fawcett and Fred Travalena were both fighting losing battles to cancer, so you knew it was just a matter of time.  Even Michael Jackson can’t be considered a complete surprise, considering the way he’d abused chemicals and cosmetic surgery over the years.

But how do you explain Billy Mays?  Like Jackson, Mays was only 50 when he was found dead yesterday morning by his family.  The preliminary reports are blaming his death on heart disease, and he certainly wouldn’t be the first guy to go down that way … but you just thought it’d be mid-pitch for Mighty Putty or something.  Making Billy’s death all the stranger, he’d been a passenger on a plane that blew out tires during a hard landing in Tampa a few hours earlier, and even mentioned to others that he’d been conked on the head by the contents of a overhead bin.  They say that it’s not related to the death …

Now, while we do make part of our living here at the MB on the follies of celebrity, we don’t spend a lot of time mourning their passing.  In this case, though, it hits unconfortably close to home.  Michael and Billy were both 50 … later this week, I celebrate a birthday.  Care to guess which one … yup …

I think I need to hit the bicycle …

So, you’ve got your morning coffee and you head over to the ol’ MarlinBlog to see what pearls of wisdom Stan’s gonna drop on you this morning. As the page loads, you see all the familiar landmarks, but … something’s not quite right.

I’ve been threatening to update the blogging software we use here at the MB for quite some time now, and I’m happy to say we finally did it.  No more worrying that the unsupported old software would go out of business – we’re on the good stuff now.  Following the example set elsewhere in the site, we’re only using the best from now on, and that means WordPress.  The software itself is pretty good, and as you can see we were able to beat on the design long enough to make it look pretty much the same as before.  All of the old postings are here as well, only now, we’re fully database-driven – no more 5,000 file backups for me!

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve worked out all the bugs yet, so expect some funny business over the next few days.  Pictures, in particular, are problematic, but I’ll find a way around that before the Weekend Eye Candy comes due on Friday!

Anyway, on we go.  You can expect the same old snark, and I expect the same old comments – maybe even more!  As always, if you have comments or questions, just let me know!

It was never easy to be Farrah Fawcett. Beautiful blonde model from Texas, she’s cast on “Charlie’s Angels” and they promptly develop a new term to describe actresses like her – “T & A”. She walks away from the show in a dispute over what that T & A is worth, and she’s blackballed by the industry for two decades. When she contracts as embarassing a form of cancer as you might imagine – anal – the folks at UCLA share that fact with the National Enquirer. Even when she dies, Michael Jackson kicks the bucket hours later, stealing her spotlight once again.

Here at the MarlinBlog, we remember Farrah from her first introduction to the world – that poster. You know the one I’m talking about – you probably had it on your wall as a kid. I know I did … and so did a lot of others, considering the sales. One of the ways you know you’ve made an impact on pop culture is when people want to imitate you; considering the collection at right, her impact is clear.

They’re going to rerun “Farrah’s Story,” the documentary Fawcett herself made about her fight with cancer, tonight on NBC. Watch it if you can; for now, we remember her as she was …

Unless you’ve been unconscious for the last 24 hours, you now know that Michael Jackson, the one-time “King of Pop,” has died. It’s a sad tale, of course, whenever anyone dies young, and Jackson was only 50. I’ll leave it to others to eulogize him, and to chronicle the worldwide mourning. I’d like to focus on a slightly different angle …

I’m not a conspiracy theorist by nature, but I can’t help thinking: Didn’t he die at just the perfect time?

Think about it – here’s a guy who’s a very frail 50, a full twenty years beyond the end of his relevant period as a pop star. He’s gotten backing from Philip Anschutz and company for a big comeback tour – fifty shows at Anschutz’s O2 Arena in London. It’s claimed that he’s working out like a madman, but at the same time has appeared to be one bad surgical experience away from the Great Beyond. They’ve already postponed the start of the concerts once, and now we’re only a couple of weeks away from finding out if he can really capture the magic. Hundreds of thousands of fans are ready to be enthralled – or reimbursed.

Ever see the movie “Capricorn One“? It was a cynically intriguing flick, and not just because they cast O. J. Simpson as an astronaut. The premise was the first manned mission to Mars – three astronauts in an Apollo capsule ready for the multiple-month journey. Problem is, it dawns on someone that since they went with the lowest bidder, the life-support system won’t survive the journey – and, therefore, neither will the crew. Rather than cancel the mission – and risk NASA’s funding being cancelled – they stage a huge charade, mimicking the landings and Mars-walks in a soundstage in the desert. That worked right up to the point where the now-unmanned capsule was destroyed during re-entry, making it a little difficult to explain the presence of three still-living astronauts. Cue the marksmen …

I don’t know. I don’t know if Jackson still had what it would take to moon walk his way through two months of shows, nor do I know if he could come close to achieving the glory he once had. All I know is that there’s a mystery doctor injecting him daily, and now it looks suspiciously like one of those shots – supposedly to help with the pain of performing – may have instead hastened his death.

I’m just sayin’ …

You’d think that in our litigious, it’s-all-about-me society, we’d seen pretty much every possible selfish abuse of the justice system. And you’d be wrong.

Back in January, USAirways Flight 1549 completed one of the shortest flights in commercial aviation, departing New York’s LaGuardia Airport and splashing down minutes later in the Hudson River. Among the passengers onboard that day were Tess Sosa and her family. While everyone agrees that USAirways has done a good job of dealing with the needs of the passengers, Tess isn’t happy. Why? Because they won’t keep paying for post-crash therapy for her … and her 4-year-old daughter.

Relief over her family’s survival can’t undo the trauma she endured after the January 15 landing, during which she had to scramble over seats with her infant son, Damian, in tow.

Water rushed into the plane as she turned and saw her husband, Martin, sitting at the back of the plane with their then-3-year-old daughter, Sophia. She recalled her husband “in shock with my daughter being held up high, the water coming in, and hoping they’d see me.”

Another passenger “bear hugged” her and Damian and escorted them to the exit.

Today, Sosa still remembers how she felt that day: “the possibility, the imminent death, just waiting to see if the plane was going to plunge any further in the river.”

OK, let’s level-set: You and your family all survived the accident without injury, received $5,000 each from USAirways, who also paid for three therapy sessions, and you have health insurance. But that’s not enough?

Here’s where the “all-about-me” syndrome surfaces:

“I expect my family to be taken care of in the very best way possible, and I don’t feel like that’s happening when you’re balking at my claims to a therapist and you are setting limits on that,” she said.

I’ve got a news flash for you, lady – in life, things happens. Every day, people get on airplanes or buses or trains or cabs and some of them don’t come home. Yes, there’s a basic obligation to take reasonable measures to insure your safety, but this was a damned flock of birds – rather than flapping your greedy gums, you should be kissing Captain Sullenberger’s ass that you still have a family to worry about.

Or perhaps you’d like to switch places with one of the families on Air France 447?

Even when you know it’s coming, it doesn’t get any easier. Farrah Fawcett, who battled cancer for the last three years, died this morning in Santa Monica at the age of 62.

There are few entertainers who can claim the term “iconic,” but Farrah was clearly one of them. From her role in Charlie’s Angels to her record-selling poster, she defined beauty for the Seventies. Her decision to leave Charlie’s Angels after a single season was shocking, but paved the way for the paydays enjoyed by so many stars today. She showed a lot of young girls the way to stardom, and a lot of young boys the way to manhood …

Though her star never burned as bright as it did in the early days, Farrah was seldom far from the spotlight. In “Burning Bed,” she shed the glamor image for that of a battered wife who’d had enough. In her fifties, she posed for Playboy, and she was recently the star of her own reality show.

It is probably her fight against cancer that will define her legacy. Unlike so many who retreat behind walls of secrecy, Farrah wanted the world to see what she was up against. Documentary cameras followed her through her treatments and the downward spiral of her life, and she hid nothing – you saw the good days and the increasingly bad ones. When staffers at UCLA leaked her medical records to the National Enquirer, she set up a sting that ultimately unmasked the perpetrators. To the end, she was Texas tough, and Texas proud.

Make room, God – here comes another Angel.

UPDATE: And in related news, many media outlets are reporting that singer Michael Jackson has been rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack. TMZ is saying he died, but they don’t have to worry about things like fact checking. Won’t be surprised if that turns out to be true, though – you can only put your body through so much in one lifetime. Safe to say that wherever Farrah ends up, Michael won’t …