Holiday ORT #1: Substacker/Terrorist Luigi, Church of Iron, Gentleman In Moscow, Passport Gets Butch

All readers welcome

it’s hard to find a mcdonald’s

Given the remarkable number of messages and e-mails I’ve gotten in the past day, I think the ACF readership as a whole must be feeling a bit bored. So let’s knock out a bonus ORT for Saturday — we will continue to have the traditional Sunday OT for paid subscribers tomorrow, in which we shall discuss the 2025 F1 lineup and much, much more!

He’s a tickler, but also a terrorist

you just know things went “sideways” after this, ahem

Instead of taking an easier route, Bragg correctly recognized that more was at stake in this case than the death of one individual victim. This killing appears to be a case of vigilanteism, with one individual serving as judge, jury and executioner for a pattern of corporate conduct that is not known to have violated any criminal laws. And that is a distortion of our system of justice.

We really don’t hate the corporate media enough — the above quote comes from MSNBC’s quite Pravda-like endorsement of New York’s decision to charge Luigi Mangione with terrorism. As nearly as I can understand from the meandering and arrogant article, the argument boils down to:

• Violence against the state for political means is terrorism;

• United Healthcare is, essentially, part of the state;

• And Brian Thompson was part of United Healthcare, therefore

• Violence against Brian Thompson is terrorism.

Hope you’re ready to start chanting “Percocets, molly, Percocets” along with me, because MSNBC has created a prime “mask off” moment here. Forget, for a moment, that NYC has ninety-three murders on the books from 2023 where no suspect has yet been identified, a full fourth of the overall death total, yet there was a nationwide manhunt for Mangione simply because his victim was a somebody. Forget, also, that the State of New York seriously considered setting up a special hotline for CEOs to report threats, only to walk away when the amount of ridicule became too much to bear.

MSNBC has managed to argue that corporate leadership and political leadership in the United States are so closely aligned that to threaten one is to threaten the other. L’etat, c’est moi! Whenever I make that argument here at Avoidable Contact Forever, a significant percentage of you chide me for being an Antifa-adjacent moron — but here it is in MSNBC, which at some point during the Obama Administration made an explicit transition to being “state media”!

Allow me to dismiss the terrorism foolishness with a single paragraph. If the information we have is correct, Luigi Mangione was suffering from chronic pain as a result of back surgery. He was in so much pain, according to one acquaintance, that he couldn’t even have sex with all the cute girls who liked him — surely that’s down around the fifth circle of hell, significantly worse than being pain-free and involuntarily celibate because, ya know, it also hurts. He blamed UHC (edit, might have been Anthem) for incompetently managing his care, so he chose to settle his account with the person who is literally, by his title and position, the man with whom the proverbial buck stopped. How is this anything other than a personally motivated crime? He wasn’t doing it out of sympathy with the oppressed UHC customers of the world. He did it because his back hurt. Calling this “terrorism” is a slope so slippery as to be Teflon-impregnated at its creation. It also reinforces my utter conviction that our Current Year blend of ultra-prog social positions and company-mining-town monopoly-economics actual fascism is the worst of all possible worlds.

Speaking of healthcare decisions

Other than being subjected to a recounting of a friend’s dream, there is nothing of less interest to the average human being than hearing the details of someone else’s “fitness journey” — but since there’s a Made In The USA component to it, allow me to briefly regale you with recent events here at the ACF compound.

I was born ugly and misshapen, a situation which has not been improved by breaking close to a hundred bones and spending a solid 45 days of my life in some form of ICU. Therefore I have never cared about my physical fitness or appearance except when it was related to a particular goal, like winning BMX races or making weight to race Grand-Am in 2009. There is no potential future in which I am handsome or fit-looking, plus I’m now 53 years old so what’s the point in vanity. I once had a same-aged friend whose wealthy wife forced him to stand on a scale once a week and confirm he was still at his college weight so he would remain eligible to have her pay all his bills and treat him like the tame little boy he is — but that’s not me, my success or failure on the distaff side has long been entirely independent of such mincing matters.

Six months ago, however, my tailor gave me the quite unwelcome news that I was now officially “portly”, meaning that my newest sportcoat would have no darts in it. I’d gone from being a 48 chest/37 waist at the age of 48 to a 50/44 at 52. I could only fit into my Radicals with significant breath-holding and effort. I was also burdening the scale to the tune of 269 pounds, which given that I fell a fraction below the 74-inch height mark with my 2015 leg surgery equated on all charts to: orca-like, grossly obese, fat as hell. I could do just ten push-ups without wanting to take a break and consider the matter over a fourteen-ounce filet mignon. I also had some health concerns that seemed at least adjacent to my status as a giant Loro-Piana-clad water buffalo. Worst of all, I was 0.8 seconds slower in the SR8 at Nelson Ledges than I’d been at 240 pounds. Something had to be done.

Fast forward to December 21, where I tip the scale at 219 pounds, knock out 50 imperfect pushups at a time, can bench my weight (just barely, and not every time I try), plus have slimmed my waist to the point that most of my bespoke stuff doesn’t fit because it’s too large. I did most of it by exercising 90 minutes a day and having a single daily meal consisting of whatever I wanted — there was a memorable stretch where I had the same 8-ounce Texas Roadhouse filet for eleven days in a row. In-between those daily meals I eat nothing “Chomps”, the 100-calorie, no-sugar beef stick, and mozzarella cheese. I don’t eat salads, count carbs, or make any healthy decisions whatsoever. I have no advice to give to anyone else on these subjects.

Here’s the fun part: Last year I bought a Body-Solid lever machine for various weightlifting exercises, and I’ve long had the holy trinity of elliptical, recumbent bike, and True treadmill in the basement for cardio, but as a reward for recent mild success I’ve allowed myself to have a couple grand’s worth of Rogue barbells and weights, all made in the USA. Rogue was kind enough to customize my main barbell through their Zeus program with polished stainless steel sleeves and a lime-green Cerakoted grip surface, on which they wrote “In the desert…” from the Joseph Conrad (it is actually Stephen Crane, I memorized it in 1989 and have consistently misattributed it since) poem:

In the desert

I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

Who, squatting upon the ground,

Held his heart in his hands,

And ate of it.

I said, “Is it good, friend?”

“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it

“Because it is bitter,

“And because it is my heart.”

Well, that’s me: an old, bitter, bestial man sitting in his basement raging against everything from his younger and fitter rivals on-track and elsewhere to his own unreliable heart. Rogue makes much of their equipment in Ohio and Michigan. Country of origin is clearly labeled in their materials. I also have the Rogue specialty curl bar arriving soon, all the better to have those Instagram-worth biceps. After that will be a set of kettlebells; my father, who like pretty much every other Baruth in recorded history has been impeccably fit for his entire life, has gently suggested that I could try additional exercises besides bench, curl, and similar. We will see. Anyway, here’s an action shot of sorts so you can see my setup, it was kind of funny and miserable because my son deliberately took the better part of thirty seconds “getting the photo right” and also laughing behind his hand. This is only 140 pounds of USA-made mil-spec crumb-rubber bumpers plus the 44.1-pound bar — I don’t bench above 195 without a spotter, unlike most of you studs. Right now I’m using Dad’s 1983-vintage Berry’s Barbell rack from the 80s but I’ll get a new Rogue one sooner or later.

look what ‘the bumble’ can do

Expect this to be the first, last, and only time I’ll discuss what the English used to call “physical culture” on these pages for a long time to come. Unless I somehow manage to put up 300 pounds clean and unspotted, at which point I’ll rename the site to Testosterone Diaries and start giving Andrew-Tate-ish advice to all ACFers under the age of 30. Let’s get back to the primary focus of the site, which is to discuss more elevated matters than the performance of exercises which can be better done by any gorilla or chimpanzee.

An unmitigated delight, but is it literature?

Netflix has adapted Amor Towles’ second novel, which is set in Revolutionary-era Russia, but to the consternation of many they’ve decided to cast Black actors in several roles. Objectively speaking, this is no more or less ridiculous than, say, casting the 100% Jewish James Caan as “Sonny Corleone” in The Godfather, but I personally think it manages to demean both the source material and the actors involved. There are many great Black stories to tell, and many great Russian stories to tell. We needn’t try to hybridize them. We can enjoy the book without worrying about Netflix and the “woke” stuff, so:

A Gentleman In Moscow, Amor Towles, 2016: Some books are meant to challenge the reader, others to educate him, and still others to confound him. This 480-page confection is none of the above; it is intended to be consumed from beginning to end with unrestrained delight. The plot is simplicity itself: rather than execute a minor Russian aristocrat, the newly-ascendant Communist regime chooses to confine him within a Moscow hotel for the rest of his life, largely because he once published a poem that was held to be properly revolutionary in tone. As one would expect, there follows intrigue a-plenty, arch but beautiful women, precocious children, Americans who may or may not be spies, and many delightful meals, lovingly described.

Anyone who has ever felt himself to be surrounded by earnest but boorish idiots will readily identify with Count Alexander Rostov, who comes dangerously close at times to a pulp-fiction hero but who is nevertheless introspective and self-aware enough to escape being a mere parody on the page. The author does not shy from the hardest aspects of the era. People are imprisoned, shot, and given the “Minus Six”, a uniquely Russian punishment that both prevents the recipient from international travel and prevents them from entering the six largest cities in Russia on pain of death. The prospect of an immediate and violent end is never more than the arrival of a “Black Maria” away.

It requires no great skill in writing fiction to predict that the Count will test the limits of his confinement in various manners ranging from the clever to the tragic, nor is the ending all that difficult to see ahead of time — but if you want self-conscious literary trickery, read The Tidewater Tales, all 655 pages of it, as I once did while in a State confinement not quite as felicitous as that of Count Rostov. The purpose of A Gentleman In Moscow is to amuse, and it never fails in that. Expect memorable characters, charming dialogue, and the occasional diversion into painfully heartfelt musings on human nature. One must master his circumstances, or be mastered by them. Many references are made to great Russian literature and poetry, from Pushkin tidbits to the opening line of Anna Karenina and a lovely poem by the suicidal poet Mayakovsky that ends like so:

Always to shine,
to shine everywhere,
to the very deeps of the last days,
to shine—
and to hell with everything else!
That is my motto—
and the sun’s!

Solid advice indeed. None of this is literature, in the same way that fine photography of a beautiful car is not really “art” because there’s no critical component, but that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying it, as it did not stop me. Highly recommended, doubly so if you have enough French in your pocket to be amused by Towles’ occasional detours into the language. Grade: A

In which an unwanted tweener finds a purpose

oh yeah, they’re totally all going to end up doing this stuff

Do we have any Passport owners in the club? I seem to recall we do. I don’t mean the old Isuzu Rodeo in drag, of course, although if anyone has one of those you should speak up. Rather, I refer to the cut-down, five-seat Pilot that appeared in 2018 and just got heavily revised for a 2026-model-year debut using the platform of the new-for-2022 Pilot.

As a former Honda assembly-plant drone I can tell you why the Passport exists on the supply side. Honda has long classified its assembly plants by platform width. Marysville was optimized for American-sized Accords, East Liberty could do anything on the Civic bones including the Element, and so on. In recent years they’ve built out a lot of “truck-wide” production capacity which must be used for something in the Odyssey/Pilot/MDX class. The Passport offers a way to squeeze a few more units out of these lines, and also offers a home for continued usage of the mighty SOHC J35 V-6. Making Passports out of Pilot parts is not difficult; they’re basically Crown Vics to the Pilot’s Town Car.

From a purchaser perspective, the case is less clear. The Passport isn’t any cheaper than the Pilot, and you lose two seats or the equivalent cargo space. Coastal private-school moms might dig the fact that it’s eleven inches shorter, thus nimbly fitting into those Starbucks parking slots, but we’re not talking the kind of difference that makes Tahoe owners out of so many women who test-drive Suburbans. Compared to a CR-V, the Passport is five inches longer and considerably thirstier to operate while really having no extra interior space. I don’t see the point of it…

…unless it can somehow get all sporty and cool. Cue the 2026 Passport, which gets a longer wheelbase for more interior room, a sophisticated new AWD system with off-road pretentions and “GOAT-mode” computer control, plus a 10-speed automatic. Most important is the styling. I don’t think anyone expected the Ford Bronco Sport to be as successful as it’s been — 127k units in the past year! — and all of that has to be laid at the doorstep of the ultra-butch styling. So the Passport now looks like a Bronco Sport, but it has two significant advantages over the square-rigger Ford, namely:

0. It’s a Honda

1. It has the J35. (Edit: it's the new DOHC six, but still)

I think it’s gonna blow up like crack in the 80s, so to speak. Honda moved 40,000 Passports last year. That could double. While your humble author is in no way a Passport intender — I could see owning a Ridgeline, maybe, or the new Pilot — this is clearly the case of the right car at the right time. And Honda’s characteristic conservatism means that it’s a 285-hp V-6 facing a flotilla of turbo fours. That’s a recipe for success. Consider this Passport stamped for success.