Third Time's The Harm

While watching The Third Man and daydreaming about being a war zone opportunist at the merciful Sunday finale to a two-day hangover, I began thinking about the number 3. So with my brain bruised and Orson Welles sprinting through sewers, I wandered in the world of Thirds: The great book, The Third Policeman; The Residents' classic record, Third Reich ‘N' Roll; the ubiquitous Third Way; plus the Big Third of VICE. Not a bad party mix, if I say so myself.

It is helpful to think of VICE as a Third Way. Not merely good guys or bad guys, but clandestine operators forging a new middle ground; a worldwide entity operating between the restrictors--not unlike the antihero of The Third Man, Harry Lime. This revolutionary bent can be painful however to friends and the competition and yes, even heads. Harry's epiphany at the end of the film points out the advantageous spoils of operating in the shadowy underworld:

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Ha. So today as we roll out another VICE Christmas celebration amongst ourselves, we will be thanking the good Lord for all the mayhem, all the high jinks and all the zany characters we have left ‘ass over teakettle’ in our own wake. Merry Christmas fools!

FYI: ‘ass over teakettle’ is the technical term used to describe what happens to honkys jacked to the gills on tequila and mechanical bull rides. In the UK, we say ‘ass over tit.’ This happens when your gyroscope turns into a collide-a-scope!