Mongolian Strongman Gets a Grip on the United States

I asked the Mongolian strongman what he likes best about the United States.

He and 40 of his kinsmen (dancers, musicians, horsemen, acrobats and contortionists) have been touring for six months as headliners for the 122nd edition of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

He didn’t have to ponder about his favorite sights. He was a steppe ahead of me:

Disney World (big, big grin); World Wrestling Federation (“It’s sport combined with art”) and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies (professional respect: one strongman performer to another.)

We talked (via translator) in Las Vegas after Friday’s matinee. After Las Vegas, the circus’ next stop is the San Diego Sports Arena, Wednesday through Sunday.

The strongman’s name is Amarjargal; he’s 38 and the unofficial leader of the Mongolian troupe. His face crinkles when he smiles and he’s proud but not boastful.

He wasn’t a born strongman. When he first applied to the Mongolian State Circus, he was rejected as too weak.

He spent three years in the Mongolian army pumping iron. He emerged with a Mongolian beefed-up body (5-foot-9, 220 pounds) that could block cannonballs and soon the state circus made him a strongman understudy.

His mentor retired and Amarjargal assumed a role that, culturally speaking, harkens back to Mongolian warriors and Genghis Khan and all that.

He anchors the acrobats’ pyramid. He tosses 70-pound weights like tennis balls. He twirls 180-pound barbells like a majorette’s baton.

For his finale, he keeps aloft four Mongolians and 840 pounds of weights: all told, 1550 pounds. Amazing stuff.

He also wrestles, sings and dances (a strutting step that simulates the national bird of Mongolia).

Before Friday’s matinee, the circus arranged for the Mongolians to celebrate Naadam, Mongolian independence day, with games and a barbecue.

In the wrestling finals, Amarjargal was pitted against a Mongolian opponent who lacked his strength but was more agile and had better leg moves.

The two struggled and sweated in the 100-degree Nevada heat. Several breaks were called.

Finally a draw was declared. Amarjargal was relieved.

When you’re a strongman, you’ve got a rep to protect.

Campaign Mathematics

San Diego City Atty. John Witt has repeatedly urged the City Council to tighten the city campaign laws to make campaign deficits illegal.

The council (brimming with self-interest) has declined Witt’s plea to outlaw what is a growing practice of running red-ink campaigns and then holding coercive post-election fund-raisers.

Now it seems that Witt held a $50-per-head fund-raiser of his own last week at a downtown Italian restaurant. The goal was to retire a $6,000 deficit from his recent reelection campaign.

Witt sees no contradiction between his preaching and his practice.

“We didn’t have a deficit in the sense that bills weren’t paid,” he explains.

“I paid all the bills myself (and the fund-raiser was to reimburse him). What I’ve talked about is changing the ordinance to ban deficits in which bills are unpaid as a way to get around the $250-limit on campaign contributions.”

This and That

The (final) word.

* San Diego business consultant Al Reese thinks he’s found the ultimate in environmental correctness.

A disclaimer on a fund-raising letter from the Union of Concerned Scientists: “All materials are printed in soy ink on recycled paper with high post-consumer content.”

He’s not sure though what “post-consumer content” means: “Sounds like something that’s working its way through your lower intestine.”

* Michael Kroll, a Pacific News Service editor who befriended Robert Alton Harris, has a (bitter) first-person account of Harris’s execution in the current edition of The Nation:

“Some of the witnesses laughed. I thought of the label ‘Laughing Killer’ affixed to Robert by the media, and knew they would never describe these good people as laughing killers.”

* Sports Illustrated says the bust of Ray Kroc at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium looks more like Gorbachev than Kroc. SI also suggests the bird-do be removed from the bust’s noggin before Tuesday’s All-Star game.