Sunday, April 22, 2007

22 April 2007: Yankees Suck!

Red Sox sweep! First time the Red Sox have swept a home series over the Yanks since 1990! Now that's what I call awesome news! And let me add to that - Yankees Suck. Would you believe that AFN (Armed Forces Network) aired every game of the series? Sometimes AFN completely drops the ball (no pun intended) on their programming. However this past weekend was glorious. It's difficult to stay up real late or get up real early in the morning to watch baseball. I do it though because it was the Red Sox putting a hurt on the Yankees. What about the rest of my Sunday?

Sunday is a day for personal time. Unless we actually have a training event scheduled my team takes the day off. For me that meant sleeping in till around 0730. Ok, that's not sleeping in for some of you but those who know me realize that's late. During the course of the day I cleaned up my hooch, ate chow, got in a killer workout, ate some more chow, and went to the movie. It was "Letters From Iwo Jima". Now I've read the book "Flags of our Fathers" and also saw the movie. The book rocks and the movie is good (not great). "Letters From Iwo Jima" was rather sappy and I found myself bored for long stretches. It had some good moments. Anyone watching the movie who knew nothing of the battle would assume the island was defended by about 100 Japanese soldiers who all wanted to surrender but for a few sadistic officers. For the record, if you have seen the movie but only have what you saw as a reference let me correct something. There were over 25,000 Japanese defenders equipped with hundreds of artillery pieces and thousands of automatic weapons. A hundred or so (or less) survived the battle. The last soldier to surrender did so three or four years after the war ended. LTC (Baron) Onishi, the Olympic Gold Medalist, died leading a suicidal charge near the end of the battle. His body was found still holding the riding crop he had used in the Olympics. Unfortunately, the movie relegates his death to a much less respectable fashion - ie suicide. Truth is that if you really want to watch a classic war movie that shows both the American and Japanese side of the battle then dust off "Tora, Tora, Tora". It's an old movie but is very historically accurate and portrays both sides honorably without cliches. But you know if I was a legitimate movie critic I'd have my own show. However if you go back and look at how the Phoenix rated "300" you'll see that they viewed it as the same homoerotic manfest that I saw. So maybe I have a future rating movies for the Phoenix.....

Alright this posting didn't have much to do with soldiering in Anaconda. Or did it?

2 comments:

Patrick said...

I got your last e-mail, so this is more of a response to that.

It's hard to comment on your blog. I do enjoy reading it and I check it everyday. I even told a couple friends of mine about it. I love hearing about all the things you've experienced and your thoughts on the war or GI behavior. I haven't read a single blog that was boring. It's good enough for me to hear from you daily. Don't worry about entertaining anybody, just write whatever you want. It's your blog. I noticed that you don't get too many comments, so I'll try giving you more input. I love you.

Renee said...

Can you define "homoerotic manfest"? No, never mind, I don't think I want to know. And, I don't like the idea that you actually know what it means. Kind of scares me. LOL. Love, Renee