Most Dangerous Job in the World?

Formula 1 driver. Marlboro smoker.

Sir Jackie Stewart: “In the 1960s, the chances of a Formula 1 driver being killed were one in three.” That’s killed, ladies and gentlemen. Dead. Lethally, fatally so. Hard to believe when you watch the F-1 guys breeze around Sepang or Spa or Dubai these days. Cars spin into the air, smash barriers, flip and flip again. And a driver gets out and waves at a cheering crowd.

In an interview with the retired World Champion and racing celebrity Jackie Stewart, the Scotsman commented “The most important thing to me is to live to be a very old man”. The era of racing he came out of, however, was notable for the truncated lifespan of its competitors. “His high-profile safety campaign changed the sport forever.” Well that’s a rather extreme statement.

I got married in 1962, the same year that I started racing. My wife, Helen, and I decided to wait a couple of years before we had kids, just so I could try and get a few quid in the bank. Our eldest, Paul, came along in 1965 and Mark in ’68. I had my first big accident in 1966 and I’m pretty sure that’s why we only had the two kids. I started to wonder what it was like for a family to lose a father. I hated the idea of not being there for the people I loved. As we sit here today, that might sound melodramatic, but if you were racing cars in the late 1960s, you had a pretty good chance of getting killed [between 1966 and 1970, 18 Formula One drivers lost their lives].

I lost a dear friend in 1970, Jochen Rindt. He crashed and I was with him when he died. They took him to hospital, but I knew it was too late. Just over half an hour later, I was in my car and put in the fastest lap I had ever done at Monza. This is going to sound crazy, but when I was racing, it was a case of “visor goes down, lights go out”. I’m not saying I’m proud of that, but when you get inside the car, it consumes you. You shut everything else out of your mind. After I came into the pits, I burst into tears. My friend was dead.

Not long after Jochen, I lost another great friend, Jo Bonnier. The kids at school — using childhood logic — thought that all racing drivers died. It was part of the job. I tried not to let it affect me, but I know that things like that used to hit Helen hard. Back then, it was very tough on the wives and girlfriends. Tougher than it was for the drivers. When a driver was killed, it was the other wives and girlfriends who flocked round to try to help the family deal with the tragedy.

Wow. That calls for a drink. Ya Udah Bistro is ready for you. “Waitress!” The Indonesian equivalent of the Oktoberfest Mädchen glides up with the brews.

Therefore, dear7 YaUdah Bistro Eaters’n’Readers, I bet you’ll never guess the single most dangerous profession in the world (at least these days), at least in terms of statistics. (And no, it’s not motor racing.)

Burp, crack, glug glug, chomp. Sorry to disturb you – patrons busy eating our fine selection of YaUdah Bistro pasta, meats, salads and murphys, washed down the dark gullet by your selection of frilly shakes or lethal firewater: Euro-beer, Aussie/Indo wine or even a half-liter of Michelada Sinaloa, a powerful 330 ml concoction of 12% strong brew, tarted up with lime, orange & tomato juice – and a dash of Worcestershire Sauce (yes yes, pronounced like “Bertie Wooster”), enough to drive a Sinaloa Cartel Sicario off his rocker. Sorry to interrupt your nice, nicely-priced meal with tales of

…but it’s really quite interesting to consider that LOGGING ACCIDENTS are the Number One cause of death, statistically speaking, with 135.9 fatal work injuries per 100,000 workers.

Then there is commercial fishing. I ran into an old pal on the streets of Vancouver. “What are you doing?” “Nothing.” “How come?” “Just taking it easy – four months on, eight months off. Bought me a house and a car – looking to hook up with a cute young girl as well.” “Wow, that’s something. What – did you rob a bank?” “Nope. My brother found me a job on a fishing boat off the B.C. Coast – I made nine grand a month for four months.” “That’s not bad.” He grimaced and looked away. “Yeah the bad part is that I know four guys who were killed in the past two years on those boats. That’s why the pay is so good.”

Commercial fishing is far from the relaxing days at the lake that you might picture. As the second-most-dangerous job of 2019, commercial fishermen have a work fatality rate of 86 deaths per 100,000 workers. The cause of the deaths can usually be attributed to weather conditions, transportation accidents, or failing machinery.

And then there are the airplane drivers.

While driving is often thought of as more dangerous than flying, when it comes to fatality rates on the job, the pilots rank higher. On average, the occupation has a 55.5 fatal injury rate, which breaks down to 75 fatalities in a year, and almost all of them were caused by plane crashes.

Crashes are not the only worry for air crews either. Nope: these days you can catch a ferocious dose of Coronavirus real easily just by breathing the air in the passenger cabin of a commercial jet aircraft or touching that stinky fold-down table. Or just sitting in a passenger seat.

Don’t you think the pretty stewards and pretty stewardesses are worried about this invisible, dangerous threat much more than the unlikelihood of smacking into Planet Earth?

That’s enough danger up in the Wild Blue Yonder, thanks.

Why should we spend time and effort listing the rest of the boring, dirty, dangerous jobs famous for bonking you, like #4 Roofers, #5 Garbage collectors (surprise!), #6 Structural Iron & Steel Workers, #7 Truck Drivers, #8 Farmers, Ranchers & Agricultural Workers (cotton-picking slaves) but HEY!

Here we display the “Heavenly Host” of rappers, “musical artists” (sort of) who have gone to meet their Maker, are resting in peace, ate lead, bought the farm, have gone to their reward, left the building, gave up the ghost, got whacked, kicked the bucket, went belly-up, departed this vale of tears, are in a better place, took up residence in Deadsville…

Most recently, an alleged house invasion and robbery led to the passing of this fresh young star, pictured here posing with the obligatory pouty puss (rappah don’ smahl..):

A man believed to be 20-year-old rapper Pop Smoke has been “shot and killed” in a suspected armed burglarly on Wednesday morning (19 February).

According to Los Angeles police, a number of masked men broke into a property in the Hollywood Hills.

Pop Smoke, whose real name is Bashar Barakah Jackson, was at a house in the Hollywood Hills at approximately 4:30am when two men broke in, according to TMZ.

The publication reports that two men fired multiple shots, critically wounding the rapper. The men were reportedly witnessed fleeing the scene on foot.

Pop Smoke was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in West Hollywood where he was pronounced dead, according to US media reports. It is unclear if he knew the shooters.

Now how to treat seriously the story of a performer called “Pop Smoke”. Nope, ‘tis no joke. Smoke no joke. Smoke dead as doornail. He now joins the celestial choir of rappers pictured above. But why? How come these dudes (and a few ladies as well) are such bullet-magnets?

Is it the music? Does someone find this ghetto-garble offensive enough to silence the musicians?

How come nobody is MURDERING  the Stars of Polka?

Millions of people just HATE polka music.  Legions of serious music lovers (blues, jazz, classics, pop) would love to annihilate polka, murder tubas, rub out accordians, whack polka dancing – they even scorn polka dots.
 

Hmm, let’s see. Could it be, well, you know… the rappers are mostly ghetto-bred BLACK folk and the polka enthusiasts are corn-fed middle-class WHITE. That’s a start… Still there is a lot of enthusiasm for both… It is a sad mystery…

No, maybe no mystery after all. Just youthful, reckless exuberance:

Now wait a second:  “Despite being accused of horrific abuse by an ex-partner, XXXTentacion enjoyed massive popularity before being killed in 2018 aged 20 as he was robbed outside a Florida motorcycle dealership.”

Now the picture is becoming clearer. Polka artists are not known to be notorious drug-dealers, gun-runners, wife-beaters;

Just to demonstrate that there is no racist subtext, here’s a cute white boy (looks so white he could be a spook) who took too much medicine, even though he was not ill: “Lil Peep, who died from an accidental fentanyl and Xanax overdose.” Oops. No more sing-song for you. One of the lyrics (on his 2017 track “The Brightside” went “Everybody tellin’ me life’s short, but I wanna die”. Life not only imitates art – it gets its revenge…

So it’s not just violent death – could be an accident as well, or a rash personality that commands the impossible: both Aaliyah and Kobe Bryant forced the pilot of their private aircraft to take an aircraft off the ground in highly-unsafe conditions. Both paid the price for this rashness and arrogance.

Is it character? Young black men are often cited for a lack of impulse control; combined with jealousy of the reputed wealth and reputation of a rapper they could just be looking to “settle the score” or “score the swag”. ‘

The drug culture is also blamed: drugs like cocaine and amphetamines inflame emotions, lower inhibitions and make those taking them commit reckless acts they might be averse to otherwise. Like shooting somebody.

If the drug culture plays a pervasive part of rap music, so does violence. While most major rappers have rapped about violence in their lyrics to a certain extent, the vast majority have also said that violence in their music is more of a fantasy than the reality of their lives. However, for some of hip-hop’s biggest names, the violence became too real and ultimately led to their deaths.

As far as we can ascertain, polka bands do not customarily sing about murder, illegal drugs, the female private parts and the acquisition of wealth at any cost. So is art – the art of the drug dealer, the shooter – spilling over into real life?

On the night of September 7, 1996, Shakur was shot on the Las Vegas Blvd. following the Bruce Seldon vs. Mike Tyson boxing match at the MGM Grand. While some suspected rivals from the East Coast, others suspected gang members from Los Angeles looking for vengeance. Yet no one was ever formally charged. The murder remains unsolved to this day. Many of Tupac’s recordings were released following his death- again, to strong critical acclaim. As of 2019, Tupac has sold 75 million records worldwide and been posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

And the profits from those seventy-five million recordings? Tupac Shakur has made someone else very happy. Unwittingly, alas.

This very thoughtful academic study looks at the different genres of music and attempts to relate the lifespan of musicians to them. Inexplicably, however, and tragically, it fails to mention… polkas…’

So here’s a caution: if you happen to be toying with the idea of becoming a rap star, don’t tell anybody your address, be very discreet where your purchase your illegal substances, get a heavy-duty bulletproof vest and armored Cadillac … or better yet become a polka player. The money’s nowhere as good but life is much less stressful.

OK, time for some heavy-duty eats, with a fine choice of many meat & veggie delights, available seven days a week, dawn-till-the-wee-hours, at Ya Udah Bistro, now in Serpong as well as Menteng. Plenty of pasta, well-roasted pork & just-right potatoes to wash down with beer, wine or other stuff – all at a fair price.

Thanks very much for reading our blog and drinking our grog and eating our grub, Bub.