Monday, March 08, 2004

war War may be terrible.  War may be hell.  But when you're a little boy, you think that war is cool. I know I did.  I used to love to draw pictures of war when I was a kid.  I drew scenes of tanks blowing up buildings and planes blowing up boats.  When you're not too hung up on human suffering and other touchie-feelie crap, war is just awesome. That's why I was pretty disappointed with the state of world affairs when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s.  It seemed like all the really cool wars happened a long, long time ago.  I was too young to remember the Vietnam War and after that our country went into this long dry spell as far as wars.  I watched the evening news with my parents almost every night and there would never be a war. The first thing I remember that was even close to war related was when Jimmy Carter tried to rescue our hostages from Iran in '79.  I remember seeing this cool picture on the front of the St. Petersburg Times that showed US Army helicopters and Marines in action.  But the news article that went with the picture was a terrible letdown.  Jimmy Carter's helicopters and Marines just crashed in the desert in the middle of the night without firing a single shot.  I guess after the one failed attempt Jimmy Carter just gave up on the hostages and said, "oh well." Partly because of this, Ronald Reagan got elected the next year.  Ronald Reagan was supposed to be tough and if other countries messed with us he was going to go to war.  I was pretty excited to see if we would go to war.  After a while, someone did mess with us.  Some terrorist blew up 300 of our Marines in Beruit.  Finally it was time to go to war.  But here is what tough Ronald Reagan did: he told the rest of the Marines to pack up their sleeping bags and canteens and come home. Finally one day Ronald Reagan did go to war and kick some ass.  He went to war against an island country called Grenada with about two buildings on it.  I guess one of those two buildings was a fourth rate medical school for people who couldn't get into a real medical school.  Some of those fourth rate medical students were Americans, and when the Grenadans starting messing with the Americans, Ronald Reagan went in there and killed the Grenadans. When I saw the first headline about the invasion of Grenada I got really excited.  I couldn't wait to see a real war.  But Grenada didn't really have an army or a navy or anything and the war only lasted a few hours. Not so many years later I joined the Army Reserves on a whim.  The weekend drills were really boring and miserable.  Army Reserve soldiers would just kill the time by smoking cigarettes or taking naps or drinking beer.  I really hated it and wished I had never joined.  But finally during this time, our country got into a real war.  George Bush took us to war to kick Iraq out of Kuwait.  Not only did we send thousands and thousands of regular army troops, but we sent lots of Army Reserve units too.  In fact, George Bush sent over every single Army Reserve transportation unit in Florida except one.  The one Army unit George Bush didn't send was the 231st transportation unit.  That was my unit.  I remember a lot of the guys were really disappointed that they didn't get to go to war. I was glad though.  I would rather just watch the war on tv.    7:27:05 PM    comment []

centerfold One of the first hit song's I became engrossed with as a kid was "centerfold" by the J. Geils' Band.  When I was about ten years old, that catchy tune buried its way into my young brain and lived there for weeks like a virus or an amoeba. It possessed me to call our local top 40 station, Q-105, over and over again to request the song, even though the song was being played every fifteen minutes already.  I remember the phone would just ring and ring and ring and ring and after twenty minutes, sometimes the line would just go dead. Other times the DJ would suddenly pick up the phone. "Can you play "centerfold?" I would say eagerly. "I think we can get that on for you," the DJ would say. One time when the DJ actually picked up the phone he coached me into doing a quick little radio skit for him.  Actually, I guess I was just setting him up to tell a joke and make him sound funny.  The DJ told me to say, "whatever happened to that Cat Stevens guy?" I forget the DJs joke, but I wouldn't have gotten it anyway, since I had no idea who Cat Stevens was. Come to think of it, I had no idea what a centerfold was either.   7:44:49 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Mark Michaels. Last update: 4/1/2004; 8:13:49 AM.