The tycoon in a men’s adventure setting each week. The famous raconteur will call a lucky viewer or journalist in each episode to tell a fantastic story and extend an invite to his jungle home
Resurrecting some bits I added in comments yesterday:
While Mr. McAfee seems determined to drag out his drama as long as he can, some of the journalists who have covered him say they have had enough. “People try to behave ethically,??? said Mr. Johnson. “And he milks that out of them until they get to the point where they’re like, ‘You know what, you’re just nuts.’ ??? “I know as a journalist I can’t say that, so I’ve got to get out of this story.???
Not half an hour after this hit the net the Hollywood Reporter ran a bit informing McAfee had sold movie rights while in jail, although one is dubious whether that meant any immediate windfall:
“U.S. anti-virus pioneer John McAfee, arrested by Guatemalan police and facing deportation to Belize, has apparently entrusted his life story to Montreal-based TV producer Impact Future Media.The TV producer is currently looking for investors and production partners which is tentatively titled Running in the Background: The True Story of John McAfee.???
However, it’s obvious John McAfee is in trouble it will be hard to worm out from under. The publicity and his blog haven’t accomplished whatever it is he actually wanted.
Dispensing with the nonsense in which he dubbed himself a “human rights advocate” on Sunday, McAfee’s in a cell for a straightforward problem — he crossed the border into Guatemala illegally.
It’s humorous. The wealthy white gringo, holding a press conference in Guatemala City, then eventually taken to jail after returning to his hotel.
Not quite like Border Patrol snapping up the poor illegals for detention cells here but …
And McAfee’s blog has made things worse, a chaotic mess with embarrassing photos, shady but trivial characters and weird semi-perverted stories he now probably wishes he’d held back on.
There’s no transparency with McAfee, just what he wants others to think.
It’s difficult to view him as any kind of genius. Indeed, with antivirus McAfee may have just been lucky. He was at the right place at the right time with a tool that worked good enough. And, of course, he had enough knowledge about computer viruses — which were a total mystery to the media — to write the story to his ends.
The viruses of 1992 did not come at you every day. Their only reliable way of travel was through the sharing of infected floppies and diskettes. It was a strength and weakness, the latter because the programs had to be written small to fit into the master boot record, plus occasionally, a few extra sectors. Removing them was, relatively speaking, a lot easier than disinfections are now.
And after McAfee’s SCAN was in the corporate workplace nationwide his fortune was assured. There was only one other real competitor in the US — Symantec. And conservative business behavior guaranteed McAfee Associates would remain a dominant force in the industry.
So rather than being a genius, McAfee was — perhaps — more lucky. Because after antivirus there’s been nothing except spectacle.
And finally, his disaster of a show in Belize. Which is most definitely not evidence of a shrewd operator, just the intrigues of a strange publicity hound with a lot of money.
John McAfee was the same in 1992. A sleazy manipulative salesman with, sometimes, a bit of offbeat smiling charm who never really changed. His fortune turned and, along with bad judgment, got the better of him. Most people don’t get nearly as much string in a lifetime.
1. “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what … who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims. … These are people who pay no income tax. … and so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” –Mitt Romney, remarks at private fundraiser, Boca Raton, Fla., May 17
2. “We took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet [in Massachusetts]. I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks?’ and they brought us whole binders full of women.”
The most loathed presidential candidate in our time, easy. And whatever for?
Here is an astonishingly good audio recording (for the setting — there are a couple moments of warble, one presumes a consequence of the aged analog tape) and better than fair video of the Highway Kings and me at the Four G’s Hotel in Bethlehem, ca. 89-91. Amusing, no? I still have the hat. (It was my father’s which probably makes it 60 or close to it.)
It was recorded and shot by Joe Hancaviz who made an amazing series of such recordings. They documented the independent music scene on the south side of Bethlehem, PA, from ’89-’91. The bands shot revolved around the Four G’s and you could often hear their records and tapes played by the community staff at Lehigh University’s radio station, WLVR, of which Joe was and is a member. It was grass roots modern rock, every bit as vital as what was going on in the big metropolitan centers of the country and Joe Hancaviz recorded the warp, woof and flavor of it. This was the CBGB’s of the Lehigh Valley in southeastern Pennsylvania.
I can only assume that for Joe it was a labor of love. He did it free of charge. Believe me, readers, it took time to set up and tend to during these evenings. And the patience needed to endure the unique atmosphere in the place? Well, let’s just say not everyone had it.
Years later Joe shouldered the job of restoring these old and deteriorated videotapes, digitizing them and uploading the results to YouTube, where they make an impressive archive.
On Facebook, he briefly described how he made the recordings back in the day:
I figured it out as I went along, using cheap equipment from Radio Shack. I did this one before I even had a proper mixer. I used a cheapo DJ mixer that only had two mic inputs. To get four more, I used the mic inputs on two cassette decks (set on record/pause) and ran them into the mixer through the RCA jacks. Necessity is the mother of invention!
I’d say!
Joe continues to shoot the locals in the Lehigh Valley, doing an extraordinary job.
The original studio version of Highway Patrol is here. By the time the video was shot we’d been playing it for four years and the live version had evolved into it’s own thing, distinct from the original.
What’s worth remembering goes a little deeper than what Americans are comfortable with.
It put the country into a war with the Axis Powers, Japan and Germany (and Il Duce’s Italy), the first two countries possessing militaries that could smash American forces.
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the most powerful naval force in the world on December 7th. And it would remain a dangerous and formidable foe for years.
Even after Midway, the Japanese fleet still had nasty surprises in store for American fighting men. In August of 1942, a Japanese heavy cruiser force utterly destroyed a US cruiser force off Guadalcanal in the Battle of Savo Island. It was the worst surface action group defeat this country has ever suffered.
The Japanese Navy fought at night, had deadly destroyer-launched torpedo tactics, and at Savo achieved complete tactical surprise.
James Hornfischer’s Neptune’s Inferno chronicles that battle and many others off Guadalcanal and in the Solomon’s at a time during the war when US fighting men often went into action out gunned, frequently with the expectation that they would die at the hands of the Japanese.
Today, all that’s lost in the memorial of December 7. To Americans it’s a day when the Japanese sneak attacked the US Navy, achieving a victory that’s flamingly chronicled in old movies.
And then we joined the war, kicked their asses and dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yaaaay!
It’s transformed into another ritual reference with virtually no meaning, particularly when contrasted with the country’s current relationship with its military.
The US military is the most powerful in world history and it never goes into action expecting to lose. And in the last twelve years it has never faced a capable opponent. Not even close.
It exists, and does its thing, whatever the current political leadership asks. This has no linkage relationship with what the US, and everyone, had to do in WWII in cooperating to destroy the Axis powers and preserve freedom in the west. Anyone who believes differently is a fool and insulting to history.
Wrote itself. Play loud. Theme and film trailer for the upcoming cable reality show on National Geographic, Living Like John McAfee. Promotional tie-ins: graphic novel and tell-all books, also available for Kindle.
Just in e-mail:
I’m worried.
You’re starting to become a news source for me.
How the new Jonas Salks and Wright Brothers of the modern American tech economy are boosting innovation and better living can never be overstated. Today, news again from the wire on the invention of the year, the development of a digital posh hotel room lock pick.
We booked hotel rooms in New Jersey where he did it again and again — at a Hyatt, a Ramada, a Doubletree Hilton. This security flaw is so alarming, even hotel managers are stunned. “That’s absolutely insane,” one said when we showed him …
The device is so small, thieves can hide it in a magic marker. And criminals are learning how to make it watching videos posted online.
“Do you have to be a computer whiz to build one of these?” we asked.
Anti-virus software guru John McAfee was arrested by Guatemalan police on Wednesday, for illegally entering the country, interior minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said.
Earlier today:
“Thank God I am in a place where there is some sanity,??? McAfee said. “I chose Guatemala carefully??? …
[Now], all the misdirection may be coming to any end. Asked if he feels safe, McAfee told ABC News, “Oh, absolutely. I feel like I’ve come home.???
Fun time’s over. Lonely war against Belize cut short.
The Republican Party was wiped out in California in the election. It has no political power to do anything in the state legislature, thus opening the way to the first significant change here in well over a decade.
But there are still red areas where the right white man sits, boiling in a stew of fears over the president, the imminent loss of freedom, the overthrow of the republic, non-white people and the homosexuals, too.
And the ferment has resulted in major gun sales for the Christmas season.
From the Orange County Register:
Californians are buying more guns than ever …
“I think it’s a direct outgrowth of the strategies employed in the recent election,” said John Eastman, a professor and former dean of the Chapman University School of Law who in 2010 sought Republican nomination for state Attorney General.
Eastman pointed to the discord brought by groups like Occupy Wall Street, which in some cases clashed with police. The breakdown in public order inspired more people to think about self-defense, he said …
“The National Rifle Association has done a wonderful job of demonizing President Obama,” said [one observer to the newspaper].
In fact, Blek said, Obama’s gun policies have either been nonexistent or a step backward in the eyes of safety advocates …
“A lot of people are just recently learning about what the Constitution says and the rights that we have and starting to exercise them now,” a [gun shop owner] told the newspaper.
“There is a big scare that guns are going to begin to get scarce,” [said another firearms store owner].
The newspaper added the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System had run almost one million background checks “related to guns in California” this year.
Want to give a God Save WhiteManistan T-shirt to the closet bigot in the family or office? Think of the merry conversation it could make at the holiday table!
If so, say so in comment. Perhaps I’ll put the image on-line at one of the insta-T-shirt printers!
I saw the professor deliver a March 2010 speech to California Tea Party activists in Buena Park during his failed attempt to win the Republican Party nomination for attorney general. Calling himself a constitutional scholar, he declared that if the state allowed gay marriages, citizens had a duty to “rise up and abolish” the government. Eastman also proudly noted his philosophical attitude could be summed up by the declaration Justice Thomas has on an office plaque: “I ain’t evolving.”
