Limbo!
This entry was posted on 5/17/2006 7:49 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
Sorry I’ve taken a break from posting. That has a lot to do with having spent several days trekking across western Iraq on a series of chopper flights, and spending the time between flights watching the day go by in old airplane hangars. I generally have pretty good luck with air transport, but hit a couple snags along the way that slowed me down. Way down. Yesterday I spent the afternoon watching Happy Gilmore. And the first half of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, mercifully ditched in favor of KingPin. And The Patriot. And Ocean’s 11. And Fight Club. All of a sudden you can’t figure out why it’s 1 am.
I’ve noticed, having spent a lot of downtime in the company of soldiers and Marines, that Braveheart is probably the most popular DVD. It makes sense; the message of the movie is that some things are worth dying for. You don’t become a soldier or a Marine unless you’re willing to organize your life (and have it organized) around that principle.
The Patriot is another blood-soaked Mel Gibson extravaganza in which the English act like Nazi storm troopers and the hero suffers horribly. Since you can’t get people in a killing mood over the Stamp Act anymore, The Patriot doesn’t just have Mel Gibson fighting against taxation without representation. He has to fight a villain who kills children, burns down buildings, and caps it off by burning down a building with children inside. I saw it in the theater a few years ago and it seemed pornographic then. Midway through a 12-hour layover I appreciated the diversion.
I started wondering if all the movies I was watching could be tied together thematically. Yes, it was stupid. But it took me five days and four chopper flights to get from al Qaim to the Green Zone, so I’m cutting myself a little slack. What do these films teach us about mortality? Starting with the last film I started off strong:
Fight Club: “First you have to know—not fear, know—that someday you’re gonna die.”
Ocean’s 11: “Congratulations, you’re a dead man.”
The Patriot: “Before this war is over I’m going to kill you.”
When I couldn’t come up with anything remotely appropriate from KingPin, and when the only thing I could remember from Happy Gilmore was Adam Sandler losing a fistfight to Bob Barker, I gave up.
I’m back in Baghdad for a few days to unwind and write up the stories I found over in al Qaim.
In the meantime the San Francisco Chronicle has published the story I wrote about the Marine CASEVAC helicopter team. There’ll be more where this came from soon.
