Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 151

Last of the Morans

In the early part of this decade, the fair city of Melbourne, Australia was embroiled in a violent gangland war, pitting a speed trafficker named Carl Williams against the notorious Moran clan. The spat, which started when one of the Morans shot Williams in the belly, ended up claiming at least 34 lives; it also became a lurid topic of fascination among Australians, as well as fodder for a top-rated crime series.

The bad old days supposedly ended years ago, when Williams was sentenced to life. Bu

Upset of the Year

With March Madness about to commence, you’re likely to hear a lot about mammoth upsets in the coming days—no hyperbole will be spared when a 14-seed inevitably knocks off the likes of Wake Forest or Gonzaga. But such triumphs pale in comparison to what went down in Gainesville, Florida over the weekend, when Bob Tasca III won the Funny Car division of the ACDelco NHRA Gatornationals. It was Tasca’s first professional win, and it came against no less august an adversary than the legendary Tony Pe

Madagascar Backstory

With DJ-turned-politician Andry Ralijaona finally seizing the mantle of power in Madagascar, after weeks of bloody turmoil, it’s worth linking back to this post from last month. It helps explain why Ralijaona felt his time was now—and what the whole situation has to do with South Korea’s brutal business culture.

Yachts and Copious Hairspray

The recent Snuggie fad has got me thinking about the infomercials of yesteryear, which provided invaluable companionship during my frequent bouts of insomnia. How I marveled at those knives capable of slicing through tin cans, or Ron Popeil’s dynamic range of chicken cookers. But nothing sticks in my mind quite like the oeuvre of Tom Vu, who charged yokels $1,000 per day for seminars on buying and selling distressed properties. Vu’s whole spiel, always delivered in his thick Vietnamese accent, w

If You Plan on Visiting Galveston…

…be sure to refrain from using the F-word. Particularly if you’ll be dining at Salsa’s Mexican and Seafood Restaurant on Seawall Boulevard.

Pre-Columbian Stitches

Over the weekend, I finally got around to seeing Mel Gibson’s hyper-violent Apocalypto; it’s been on my list for a while now, primarily because I need to study up on jungle chase scenes for the Now the Hell Will Start screenplay. The flick is every bit as brutal as I’d heard, and then some—don’t think I’ll be able to shake the human-sacrifice scene for weeks or months. But it’s also a crazy masterpiece of sorts; much respect to Gibson for pursuing such an odd and striking vision. Rare is the fil

Monkeys and Their Crayons

As Microkhan’s regular readers know well, Fridays ’round here mean it’s time for hilariously negative movie reviews of yore. This week’s victim is John Travolta’s Scientology-infused sci-fi stinker Battlefield Earth, which remains the great blemish on Forest Whitaker’s otherwise amazing career. How the man behind Ghost Dog and Charles Jefferson got suckered into this disaster remains a question for the ages.

Battlefield Earth was, of course, roundly criticized for its hamfisted plotting and gener

Lingvo de Paco

Several decades too late to the ballgame, I finally got around to watching Lawrence of Arabia last night, as part of my ongoing David Lean tour. An utter classic, of course, but one with significant flaws—chief among them the fact that all the Bedouins seemed to speak flawless English. I don’t recalls a single word of Arabic being spoken throughout the whole movie.

That directorial judgment call got me thinking about the promise of Esperanto, the language that was supposed to unite the world as o

The China Conundrum

Sorry to play Captain Bringdown on a Friday, but a promise is a promise. Microkhan recently vowed to explore the female suicide rate in China, and by golly, that’s what’s gonna happen in this here post. If you want sunshine and ponies instead, click here; otherwise, read on.

China is the only nation in which the female suicide rate exceeds that for males. (Both are relatively low, however, at 13.0 per 100,000 for the men and 14.8 per 100,000 for the ladies.) Even researchers who’ve dedicated the

Time to Pull the Goalie

Looks like it’s curtains for the Richmond Renegades, of the scrappy-yet-venerable Southern Professional Hockey League. The team will call it quits after this season, having fallen victim to Depression v2.0. According to Renegades owner Allen Harvie, one of the big problems is Richmond’s parochialism:

The Wiley Bridge and Route 288 and the new malls at Stony Point and Short Pump have helped us because people cross town to go to the new shopping centers, but there are still people in Midlothian and