Somehow, Sacha Baron Cohen, in the guise of a British would-be gangsta with a penchant for malapropisms and misunderstandings, managed to secure another passel of interviews with people like former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman (who conceded that, yes, whale feces “have got to be massive”) and archconservative Patrick Buchanan (who said that Saddam Hussein “was using BLTs on the Kurds”). In one episode, Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of the CIA, found himself debating whether terrorists could drive a train into the White House.
How can so many supposedly media-savvy operatorsÑeven members of the intelligence communityÑstill be so easily fooled?
. . .
One source, who declined to be named, provided Slate with a copy (click on the thumbnail for an expanded view) of one such letter, which explains that an entity named Somerford Brooke Productions is creating a six-part series called “The Making of Modern America (working title).” Lauding the recipient’s “unbridled reputation,” the letter invites him to appear on a show that will “present issues in a fresh and innovative way that will engage young viewers.” It says that the producers hope the show, ahem, “won’t just be seen in the UK but world-wide.”
In other words, it’s all fastidiously accurate, but vague.
[Respek! How does Ali G keep conning famous guests? ; Slate, By Sam Schechner, September 20 2004]
And completely different:
No one has hunted harder than Mike Law and Wendell Flint. For 33 years, the two friends drove, hiked and thwacked their way through hundreds of miles of cragged Sierra forest in search of Sequoiadendron giganteum. As for Flint, “he’s been doing it for 15 years prior to that,” says Law, an apple-cheeked wall-design painter from Temple City.
Law often speaks as if Flint were still alive, scoping out a new specimen around the next bend. He died of diabetes complications two years ago, on a day he and Law were planning to take a trip into the national parks’ Giant Forest grove once more. Flint was 82 and blind.
“He couldn’t see the trees,” Law says, “but he could smell ’em.”
Flint and Law never did find the Big One, but they painstakingly measured 61 other giants, putting them on “the list.”
Law’s quest this year in the Sequoia National Forest is as much about a lost companion as a phantom tree. He wants to discover one more giant, and name it for his old friend. Wendell Flint would take his place on the list alongside Old Job, Chief Sequoyah and the others.
. . .
“This is it. This is our tree.”
It is impossible to comprehend the size of a truly giant sequoia, 3,000 years old or so, until you are underneath Ñ head thrown back, gazing at a tree larger than the Statue of Liberty. The bark alone is 30 inches thick.
Each aging behemoth assumes its own shape, a grizzled totem sculpted by gales, lightning and wildfire. Law eyes the new specimen like a jeweler appraising a rough-cut diamond.
“That middle trunk certainly packs a volume,” he says. “It’s not a particularly tall tree. About 200 feet.”
He takes a few steps closer.
“I don’t know what it looks like in the back. It’s very impressive, though, very stout. Robert?” he hollers to Flint’s nephew, along for the hunt. “Has it got a downhill buttress?”
A buttress, a lower section of trunk that swells when a tree anchors itself into steep slope, adds considerably to its bulk Ñ and record-setting potential.
Bergen disappears into the tree’s enormous shadow, then hollers back, “No!”
Law slumps. He hobbles around the lower side.
“This isn’t it,” he says in a flat voice. “This is a very large tree, but it’s certainly no competition to the Sherman.” There is no point even naming it or putting it on the list, Law says, appraising it soberly.
[“Greatest Show on Girth” ; Los Angeles Times, by Janet Wilson, September 20 2004.]
