The Sleep Of Reason*

I'M VERY DISHEARTENED, but not all that shocked, that retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters' call for the U.S. military to abandon a captured soldier in Afghanistan didn't get more traction in the mainstream press. Then again, this past week was virtually subsumed by yet another racial Rorschach test, Gates-gate -- the controversial arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates by Cambridge police for disorderly conduct. All news seemed to pale in comparison to President Obama calling the actions of the arresting white officer "stupid," and it was obvious the story wasn't going away any time soon -- at least until a round or two of beer diplomacy at the White House by everyone involved set for Thursday afternoon. And we can all drink to that.

In case you hadn't heard and/or weren't paying enough attention, according to MSNBC.com, on July 2:

"An American soldier (Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl) is believed being held by the Taliban after he walked off his base in eastern Afghanistan without his body armor and weapon, officials said Thursday. Initial reports indicated that the soldier was off duty at the time he went missing, having just completed a shift."

This is where five-star wingnut Peters comes in. He made an appearance on Fox News on July 19, right after the Taliban released video of a shaken Bergdahl in captivity. Channeling his inner Cheney, Peters cautioned that we shouldn't be making a hero of this soldier, who after all is engaged in anti-American propaganda:

"We must wait until all the facts are in to make a judgment, but … he is an apparent deserter. Reports are indeed that he had abandoned his buddies, abandoned his post and walked off.”

“I want to be clear. If when the facts are in we find out it’s through some convoluted chain of events he really was captured by the Taliban, I’m with him. But if he walked away from his post and his buddies in wartime — I don’t care how hard it sounds — as far as I’m concerned the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills."

Peters' odious diatribes are usually confined to the fairly unbalanced op-ed pages of Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. But back in May, he outraged decent people everywhere in a different forum: asserting in the "Journal of International Security Affairs" that, in the future, "godless" journalists criticizing the glorious war effort just may have to be sacrificed on the altar of a Pax Americana Uber Alles:

"The phenomenon of Western and world journalists championing the "rights" and causes of blood-drenched butchers who, given the opportunity, would torture and slaughter them, disproves the notion--were any additional proof required--that human beings are rational creatures. Indeed, the passionate belief of so much of the intelligentsia that our civilization is evil and only the savage is noble looks rather like an anemic version of the self-delusions of the terrorists themselves. And, of course, there is a penalty for the intellectual's dismissal of religion: humans need to believe in something greater than themselves, even if they have a degree from Harvard. Rejecting the god of their fathers, the neo-pagans who dominate the media serve as lackeys at the terrorists’ bloody altar.

Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow's conventional wisdom.

The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win. Our victories are ultimately in humanity’s interests, while our failures nourish monsters."

Call me overly sensitive, but I detect a subtle anti-liberal bias buried in there somewhere. In a nutshell, and where else would you find a crackpot like Ralph Peters, this is the standard neocon credo: the future consists of eternal, endless war against whatever bogeyman we're demonizing at the moment, and if you get in the way of the War Machine, you too will be demonized and ultimately destroyed. Because according to Peters, "Our failures nourish monsters." This guy's hateful, overheated rhetoric fits right in alongside Joe Goebbels and Joe McCarthy.

Not surprisingly, Peters has seen as much actual live combat as I have: zip, zilch, nada... He was forced to admit as much a few days later on an appearance with fellow chickenhawk Bill O'Reilly, who seemed crestfallen at the news that Peters too was a war virgin. Peters then regained his footing, calling the captured soldier "mentally disturbed," and O'Reilly quickly chimed in that the guy "must be crazy." Ironically, the only people who fit those labels more than Bill O'Reilly and Ralph Peters usually wear straitjackets to the dinner table.




















*El sueno de la razon produce monstruos
(The sleep of reason produces monsters)
Francisco de Goya
1797-98

Rider In The Sky

JOHN "MARMADUKE" DAWSON, founding member and driving force behind country-rock pioneers New Riders of the Purple Sage, passed away Tuesday at age 64 from cancer.

The group was originally conceived as a side project for Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart and Phil Lesh to indulge their country & folk interests. By the time the first New Riders album was released in 1971, the lineup was independent of the legendary psychedelic band, although Garcia plays throughout the record on pedal steel guitar.

The Adventures of Panama Red, the New Riders' gold album from 1973, featured the marijuana-fueled adventures of the title character in the group's best-known song, written by Peter Rowan. Dawson contributed two plaintive ballads to an almost perfect record (one drawback is the flimsy running time, a mere 29 minutes, 51 seconds): "One Too Many Stories" and "You Should Have Seen Me Runnin'."

Panama Red spent as much time on my turntable as any other record in the collection back in those "heady" days -- my mellow Deadhead phase: New Riders, Hot Tuna, Marshall Tucker, Charlie Daniels Band, Poco, Pure Prairie League, etc. This is the kind of music I was listening to at the time... before the metallic-sharp Punk Rock phenomenon would slice through my wooden Americana doors of perception a few years later.

All Music Guide gives Panama Red short shrift, awarding it only 3 out of 5 stars, then almost makes up for the slight by sagely pointing out:

"The freakiest thing is that the record segues together so beautifully and the songs are so tight with nothing extra between, it feels like it's a lot longer than the mere 29 minutes it is. The listener feels satisfied that after 11 songs it's all been said and done in a delightful way ... Musically it can do a lot to teach modern-day alt-country cookie cutters something about knowing the rules before trying to break them." Amen to that...

Their first album's 10 songs were all written by Dawson. The rollicking "Henry" chronicles an enterprising young pothead's trip to Acapulco in search of "twenty keys of gold" -- with "fifty people waitin' back at home for Henry's load." "Glendale Train" is Dawson's detail-oriented embellishment of a famous 19th century train robbery -- where the robbers "MADE CLEAN OFF WITH SIXTEEN G’S AND LEFT TWO MEN LYING COLD" and "THEY FOUND AMOS WHITE IN FIFTEEN PIECES, FIFTEEN MILES APART."

Dawson also had a hand in one of the Grateful Dead's most enduring songs, co-writing "Friend of the Devil" with Garcia and Robert Hunter. In fact, future Riders Dawson and David Nelson make key contributions to that American Beauty record, along with its companion Workingman's Dead (both released in 1970).

I saw the Riders play in Central Park circa 1975. Looking back, NRPS were at their absolute live peak at this time. They would stay together for another five or six years, and after the original lineup disbanded in 1982, it was Dawson alone who kept the name alive, with a revolving cast of new members, for another 15 years.

Unfortunately, the NRPS selections on YouTube are underwhelming at best. Here's a "video" of "I Don't Know You" from the 1971 first album. A year later, of course, The Eagles would release their own debut album, offering a safer, more mainstream version of what the New Riders were doing, but it was The Eagles who would go on to ride country rock to the corner of Fame and Fortune -- a cross street that eluded the more visionary New Riders of the Purple Sage.

And here's a touching video of a frail Dawson with the 2007 version of NRPS, performing "Portland Woman" from the first album; it takes a while for the band to get going -- only for the video to cut off abruptly. Boo, hiss...

.

The Original Moonwalk

TONIGHT MARKS THE 40th ANNIVERSARY of the human race's singular technological accomplishment -- bigger than Twitter, even more impressive than the George Foreman Grill: sending three men to the moon and back. On July 20, 1969, sprawled in front of my aunt's living room color console in New Jersey, I watched in awe as the Apollo 11 spacecraft touched down and deposited Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the moon.

If we could somehow time-travel back through the miracle of the Interweb to that miracle summer of '69, there could not have many kids more into Apollo 11 and the whole space program than my 9-year-old self. Put it this way: Leading up to the big event, I began to fill a shoebox with articles I'd clipped from newspapers relating to all things space exploration. I also had this huge book on astronomy passed down to me from my older brother, and I knew a helluva lot more back then about the planets, their moons and orbits than I do now.

I remember keeping the shoeboxes on the floor of my bedroom closet, and at the slightest interest evinced by anyone in my vicinity, I was ready to break out the clips and go over each one while providing a running commentary. At a moment's notice, I'd have my Apollo 11 model set up for a detailed demonstration of precisely how the Eagle landing craft separated from the mother ship Columbia before oh so lightly touching down in the Sea of Tranquility. I was kind of a geeky kid before I got into sports a few years later.

Sadly, the man most of us watched narrate the whole incredible lunar landing passed away just a few days short of the anniversary: Walter Cronkite. There's that famous clip of Cronkite right after the Eagle landed exclaiming, "Man on the moon... Oh boy!" and then removing his glasses as if in disbelief of what his eyes were showing him.

For centuries Man had dreamed of somehow escaping the bounds of Earth and reaching the moon. For a country mired in an unpopular war thousands of miles away from home, the lunar landing was the ultimate feel-good moment and the payoff to an 8-year commitment set in motion by JFK -- albeit with the help of scientists with rather unsavory pasts.

But somehow I think the late great Cronkite got it wrong when he said: "500 years from now they will be celebrating the first landing on the moon and the first walk on the moon." Acknowledging, yes, the way we mark Lewis & Clark's voyage of discovery in the history books or Chris Columbus' three jaunts across the Atlantic on the calendar; but as far as celebrating and being emotionally involved across the next five centuries, I don't see it. Interest in the space program peaked that very night 40 years ago, and it's been steadily waning ever since. Ask yourself what got more interest: the actual moonwalk or Michael Jackson's moonwalking across a stage?

Sometimes I gaze up at a full moon and have a real hard time believing it's possible to land a spaceship on such a distant body, whether manned or unmanned, over 240,000 miles away. Now, just to be clear, I'm not a moon hoax conspiracy advocate. But it's the sheer implausibility of it all -- looking up at that big hunk of cheese in the sky and imagining a spaceship taking three of your fellow human beings there and back -- that undoubtedly drives many a moon landing skeptic. And as you might expect, there's no shortage of interesting fabrication scenarios.

Fueling the fertile minds of the roughly 6% of Americans who doubt the landing actually took place, just four days ago NASA admitted that 45 videotapes recording the actual landing were erased sometime ago -- meaning precious little actual footage remains of perhaps the landmark event in history. So the timeline goes something like this: Three years ago NASA couldn't find the tapes, then they turned up a few days ago demagnetized -- evidently some bureaucrat's idea of a cost-saving measure. And now as a consolation, just in time for the 40th anniversary, NASA is releasing digitally restored highlights.

But the signal the TV stations were broadcasting that July night 40 years ago came from network cameras filming the NASA monitors in Houston, hence the extremely low picture quality -- while the much clearer direct feed from the lunar camera to mission control has never been viewed by the public, and now in all likelihood never will be because of the tape-erasing fiasco. You can see where skeptics might wonder whether a government agency is deliberately withholding the visual documentation because it doesn't want a high-tech examination of its veracity.

The blueprints of the lunar module and rover have also gone missing. One major question mark voiced by the landing deniers revolves around whether the Eagle craft's foil-thin walls and the astronauts' spacesuits were advanced enough to withstand the dangerous radiation levels of the moon.

As for all the moon rocks the mission brought back? Well, the conspiracy crowd has an explanation for that too: The rocks brought back from the Moon are almost identical in composition to rocks collected in documented expeditions by NASA scientists to Antarctica two years earlier (led by ex-Nazi Wernher von Braun). Throw in a little Stanley Kubrick post-production, and you've got one mind-blowing covert operation! But if you're one of the almost 90% of Americans polled who believe we indeed landed those men in funny white suits on the Moon, tonight's your night to go a little loony.

World Still Turning

Impassioned letter in the current (July 15-21) Village Voice criticizing its contribution to the off-the-wall Michael Jackson media circus. Proving great minds indeed think alike, Adam Laten Wilson specifically took aim at the Voice's eulogizing scribes -- the shameless, almost textbook case of revisionist history by '60s anachronism Greg Tate, and singer Jean Grae's delusional gibberish about MJ's magic. (In the same issue, Jessica Hopper did some good-old-fashioned reporting: going back to Gary, Indiana, to trace Jackson's roots and influence in that downtrodden community.)

Let's check the actual letter first, followed by some more "regurgitation and synthesizing of the news" and in all likelihood "snarky commentary," whether faux or otherwise.

"The Man in Our Mirror" by Greg Tate might pass for a pseudo-neo-Hegelian-post-Soul tractatus on God-knows-what. Nonetheless, it has nothing to do with Michael Jackson and is atrociously self-indulgent.

The claim that Jackson is (despite his entire career of continual transmutation) nothing more than the latest installment of "The Real Soul Man" is an absurd form of conceptual masturbation that disrespects Jackson's true brilliance.

And "In Defense of Magic: A Solo Bed-Stuy Dance Party" is not only an example of horrendous journalism, but also a pretty meaningless diary entry that ought to have been burned immediately after writing.

What your writers don't seem to understand is that Jackson was not simply a genius, but also a failure and freak. Mr. Tate almost touches on this point when he compares him to Icarus. Unfortunately, he then wonders if it's not a blessing that we are now freely permitted to forget he ever fell.

I find it telling that in '82, the populace applauded Jackson for pretending to be a zombie, but when he actually became one . . .

Since he appears to have died more than 15 years ago, last week's memorial feature seems woefully behind the times.

Back on July 8, if you missed it the first time, Warden's World, ahead of the pack as usual, harshly but rightly singled out Grae's column as perhaps the most notably ludicrous example of Michael Jackson canonization:

Speaking of psychobabble, if there were an award for Most Cringe-Inducing Commentary on Michael Jackson's death, rap "artist" Jean "I need that Grammy" Grae would definitely be a contender, given her gushing, near-hysterical column in last week's Village Voice:

"I'm lucky and blessed to have been one of the millions who received Michael's magical, awesome, immortal presents/presence ... I'm not going to speculate on any of the controversy, the darkness--we all have, all of us. I can't judge anyone, and I won't ... No, I never met Michael Jackson. No, never even got close. But if he wasn't the most brilliant sliver of magic alive, I don't what is or ever will be."

Wilson took Tate's rambling, overwrought column to task as well, no doubt bothered as I was by
all the glorifying gibberish, such as the following representative non-gems:

The absolute irony of all the jokes and speculation about Michael trying to turn into a European woman is that after James Brown, his music (and his dancing) represent the epitome—one of the mightiest peaks—of what we call Black Music. Fortunately for us, that suspect skin-lightening disease, bleaching away his Black-nuss via physical or psychological means, had no effect on the field-holler screams palpable in his voice, or the electromagnetism fueling his elegant and preternatural sense of rhythm, flexibility, and fluid motion. With just his vocal gifts and his body alone as vehicles, Michael came to rank as one of the great storytellers and soothsayers of the last 100 years ...

His orgies of rhino- and other plasty's were no more than an attempt to stay ahead of a fickle public's fickleness ...

Critical sidebar: I have always wanted to believe that Michael Jackson was actually one of the most secretly angry Black race-men on the planet.

Put down the fucking bong, Greg... or at least pass it along. As we used to say back in the day when confronted with such fantasies: AND THEN YOU WOKE UP! Well, the Tate article is chock-full of similar nonsense -- thereby a worthy exemplar of the insufferable oversaturation, overanalyzing and overrating of all things Mike Jackson. Hopefully we're done with all that now, until the suckfest of the inevitable American Idol Michael Jackson tribute. Bank on it, because the flock of sheeple will undoubtedly demand it.

Back, In Full Attack

Jonathan Swift: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

Boxer Found Dead

CALL ME CYNICAL, but this doesn't seem like your typical, run-of-the-mill "ex-boxer gets strangled to death at a Brazilian resort by his wife using the strap of her handbag" story. Yet according to police, that's exactly how Arturo Gatti, the 37-year-old former world champion, was killed over the weekend.

Gatti moved to Jersey City from Montreal in 1991, and earned his nickname "Thunder" fighting in nearby Atlantic City. His career record of 40-9 included 31 knockouts -- with seemingly all of them on HBO! His three 10-round battles with Micky Ward for the junior welterweight crown from 2002-03 were legendary fights. Gatti was the definition of a fearless brawler -- willing to trade 5 of his blows for 10 of yours anytime -- which made the match-ups with a fellow high-motor puncher like Ward so intriguing.

The first report I saw, from the Daily News Saturday, did not mention the wife, 23-year-old Amanda Rodrigues, as a subject of investigation, but did state that the police suspected foul play upon discovering his blood-spattered body around 6am Saturday; after all, it's not like you can chalk this case up to natural causes. By Monday Rodrigues was the only suspect, with reports that she may have bludgeoned Gatti before strangling him. The couple were in Brazil on a second honeymoon, and leave behind a 10-month-old boy in the wake of this brutal slaying.

Ironically, Gatti -- who retired two years ago -- was scheduled to provide testimony this week in New York for a lawsuit filed against the New York State Athletic Commission by a former opponent. Joey Gamache, knocked out in 2000, alleges Gatti outweighed him by almost 20 pounds at the time of the fight. Hopefully, the inevitable Lifetime TV movie will tie up all these loose ends.

Grief & Folly

SOMEBODY WAS BOUND TO SAY what a lot of other people were thinking, and just because that someone was narrow-minded, reactionary blowhard Peter King, the Republican congressman from Long Island, doesn't mean his remarks were totally bereft of merit. King has made more than his share of outlandish statements over the years, but none caused a backlash quite like his Youtube video about the Michael Jackson media circus:

"Let's knock out the psychobabble. He was a pervert, a child molester; he was a pedophile. And to be giving this much coverage to him, day in and day out, what does it say about us as a country?"

You can question the timing of the comments -- but considering that half the country and most of the media seem to have lost their mind over the last 10 days, I thought if nothing else King provided something of a balance to all the over-the-top idolatry. I mean, pharaohs have been buried with less ceremony and adulation. But then of course as far as we know the King of Tut never busted out the moonwalk, did he?

Speaking of psychobabble, if there were an award for Most Cringe-Inducing Commentary on Michael Jackson's death, rap "artist" Jean "I need that Grammy" Grae would definitely be a contender, given her gushing, near-hysterical column in last week's Village Voice:

"I'm lucky and blessed to have been one of the millions who received Michael's magical, awesome, immortal presents/presence ... I'm not going to speculate on any of the controversy, the darkness--we all have, all of us. I can't judge anyone, and I won't ... No, I never met Michael Jackson. No, never even got close. But if he wasn't the most brilliant sliver of magic alive, I don't what is or ever will be."

Writing about Jackson but refusing to deal with the child molestation charges or talk about his tortured visage is like mentioning Richard Nixon but avoiding the Watergate scandal. By the same logic, when Phil Spector dies, I don't want to hear anything about his personal flaws or murder conviction... only uncritical, non-stop coverage of all the hits he produced in the '50s and '60s and the joy he brought to millions. Anything else would be disrespectful to his family and fans.

By all means, feel free to call me a "playa hater," but Jamie Foxx has always struck me as an unfunny, arrogant, ignorant, overrated, overbearing-narcissist-even-by-current-Hollywood-standards, jive-ass fool -- if I can still say that on the Internets -- so his remarks at the Black Entertainment Awards came as no surprise to me, but I'm glad others took notice of his needlessly exclusionary remarks: "We want to celebrate this black man," Foxx said while wearing an absurd Michael Jackson costume. "He belongs to us and we shared him with everybody else."

Perhaps most disturbing was the almost unhinged tone in Foxx's voice as he spat out those words, channeling the vitriolic rhetoric of a Malcolm X as opposed to Jackson's lifelong message of racial inclusion and tolerance a la Martin King. Put me down in the camp that hopes Foxx's career bombs from here on out.

Continuing the charade, P. Diddy lent some much-needed ghetto gravitas to proceedings with his astute historical observation: "Michael is one of the reasons Barack Obama is president." Let me guess, P: your own career spent mumbling hip-hop cliches into a microphone and coming up with mad whack beats is another reason, right? I guess we all voted for Obama because we just knew his moonwalk put McCain's outdated dance routine to shame.

Rent-A-Reverand Al Sharpton was predictably omnipresent, holding court at seemingly every ceremony, offering more of his tradmark overgeneralizations and exaggerations:

"Michael Jackson made culture accept a person of color way before Tiger Woods, way before Oprah Winfrey, way before Barack Obama ... Blacks never abandoned Michael. When Michael had the problem with his catalog, he came to Harlem and we marched with Michael. When Michael was indicted with the molestation case, black people stood by him, all the civil-rights leaders, and were criticized for being there."

At the Tuesday memorial, Ervin "Rent-A-Center" Johnson used his 3 minutes at the podium to relate that Michael Jackson somehow made him a better basketball player, and that he believed white fans brought his jersey into their homes because Michael was already there. Then Magic became the first person to work a product placement into a memorial service -- admitting that the best moment of his life was learning the King of Pop ate Kentucky Fried Chicken. Would it surprise anyone if it turns out Johnson was paid by KFC for the plug?

There's no other way around it, so I'll come right out and say it: After that garish funeral-palooza at the Staples Center, there are an awful lot of folk who need to take a good long look at the Man in that Mirror we've all heard so much about the last two weeks.

Looking back, that surreal tribute to Michael Jackson in a Philippines prison on June 27th was a dignified, classy celebration compared to what our own twisted celebrity culture had in store for us.

For me, the prevailing image of the whole spectacle will remain Joe Jackson -- an octogenarian ludicrously sporting a hoop earring -- repeatedly plugging his new record label -- only because someone else brought it up first, mind you. Four days after his son's demise, here was Joe and his business partner, the equally "opportunistic" Marshall Thompson, announcing the formation of Ranch Records -- because that's that Michael would have wanted.

In one clip, a CNN reporter repeatedly asks how the family is holding up, while a distracted Jackson appears far more concerned with bringing up the record label. Nice to see the gruesome exploitation continue after death.

Paul Mann 1960-2009

BOY OH BOY, lately it's been one downer after another. I hate having to write this, but I just learned via Facebook that one of my high school classmates was found dead today on the shore of Oregon's Columbia River after an apparent drowning. Paul Mann was a fellow Class of 1978 alum from long-defunct McBurney School in Manhattan. He helped out the football team as a manager, and was one of those guys who was truly well-liked by everyone: the Jocks, the Brains, the Freaks, the Stoners, you name it.

His father was the legendary jazz flutist Herbie Mann, who died six years ago. But you would never know his dad was a world-famous musician, as Paul was as down to earth as they come. Coming after we lost Tony Tortora about a year ago, this kind of sad news really brings home how fragile life is.

Body of paddle boarder found near Hood River this morning
by The Oregonian

If you click to enlarge this pic of our '75 football squad, Paul's the shaggy-haired fellow wearing the light blue jacket on the far right, just to the left of #74 (Ralph Tucker).

R.I.P, Paul.

Steve McNair 1973-2009

THIS IS NOT THE WAY star athletes are supposed to perish -- shot four times, twice to the head, with his mistress, 20-year-old Sahel Kazemi, lying dead next to him in a Nashville apartment. The 2003 co-MVP and a three-time Pro Bowl selection, Steve McNair exemplified toughness during a superb 13-year National Football League career with the Houston Oilers, Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens. Just 36, he leaves behind a wife and 4 children.

Police are ruling that Kazemi shot McNair before turning the pistol on herself. Kazemi was driving a 2007 Cadillac Escalade with McNair in the passenger seat early Thursday morning when Nashville police pulled the couple over and charged her with driving under the influence. Two days later, the apparent murder-suicide occurred in the early morning hours of July 4.

Alexis Arguello 1952-2009

ONE OF THE MOST skilled boxers of any era, Alexis Arguello held titles in three different weight classes (lightweight, junior lightweight and featherweight) and almost captured the welterweight crown. He later entered politics, becoming mayor of his hometown Managua, Nicaragua in 2008.

He was found dead in his home Wednesday, gunshot wound to the chest, apparently self-inflicted...

Back in the revolutionary 1970s, he had most of his property seized by the Sandinistas. Yet when Arguello ran for mayor of Managua last year, he had that party's support in the election, which he won amid charges the vote count had been rigged.

Arguello was far better known in the States for his epic fights against the likes of Ray Mancini, Aaron Pryor, etc. Standing 5'10" but weighing in at only about 130 pounds, Arguello forged a career record of 82-8 and was nicknamed El Flaco Explosivo, which seems to lose something in the too-literal translation: The Explosive Thin Man. In 1978, a boxing magazine proclaimed: “Alexis Arguello is regarded by some people as the perfect fighter. He is thought to be--pound for pound, inch-for-inch and punch for punch--the best puglist in the world...a fighter without a flaw.”

N.Y. Times obit here: Alexis Argüello, 57, Boxer and Politician, Dies