A clockwork Marine

I have another association with the subject of yesterday’s post—the commentary by a colleague that his Marine-in-the-making son’s only association with the name “Gomer Pyle” was with Full Metal Jacket.

I love reading local, small-town newspapers—reflecting their readership, they give such a different perspective on things than I’m used to (having grown up in LA). And when I was in grad school, that local rag was The Virginia Gazette. And, to help them keep atop of the fast-breaking news in that swinging community of Williamsburg, Va., the Gazette had a hotline. This consisted of a phone number and an answering machine, where anyone could leave a message—anonymously—on any topic. And the paper would publish a compilation of the, er, printable ones.

(Children—this was in the deep, dark ages, before you could spew your crack-brained half-formed thoughtlets all over the Internet on forums, Twitter, FB, the Wall Street Journal, etc.)

I always thought that one of the lousiest jobs ever (and certainly the worst in the ’Burg) was that of having to pick up those messages off the answering machine every morning.

Well, one day, there was a rather lengthy rant (the answering machine evidently didn’t cut you off after 60 seconds) from a Williamsburg Public Library patron absolutely fulminating about having checked out a video of Full Metal Jacket and being outraged and horrified to discover that the content was vulgar, violent and offensive.

(He might have thought he was getting a sequel to No Time for Sergeants. I don’t know.)

He was appalled—appalled, I tell you—that the library should have such filth available, and he’d expressed these feelings by writing “filth” on the cassette before returning it.

Then he was further outraged that the library fined him for defacing library materials.

It was not his day.

I don’t know for sure, of course, but I’ve always imagined that the caller was one of the many, many retirees in the area,and he had no frame of reference for either the Vietnam War weltanschauung or Stanley Kubrick.

But, leaving aside the former, anyone who’d ever seen so much as a theatre poster for any Kubrick film—Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, Paths of Glory, 2001—ought to have twigged to the fact that it was just not going to be the very model of a modern major general.

Semper fi, y'all

Speaking of TV, as I was yesterday, a colleague of mine commented about a remark he made last weekend to his son, who went off to boot camp at Parris Island on Monday. Here’s what he said:

“I made a passing comedic reference to Gomer Pyle, USMC, and Chris was horrified. Say 'Gomer Pyle' to him and he thinks of the recruit who kills his drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket. He didn’t know where the character's nickname came from. Clearly I did not subject my children to enough re-runs.”

And all of a sudden I thought about all the times I’ve first encountered some man-made marvel—Galeries Lafayette, downtown Chicago, “The Raft of the Medusa”, the multi-product single-push soda dispenser—I just stood there slack-jawed and muttered, “Well, gawlll-LEE!”

Don't make me no never-mind that I have a master of arts from a stellar institution of higher learning. In Virginia.

I am also wont to chirp brightly—when some entirely predictable but unaccountably unplanned-for cataclysm befalls a project at work—“Su-PRISE, su-PRISE!”

I’m sure this endears me to my colleagues.

So perhaps it’s just as well that Chris doesn’t have the Gomer Pyle vocabulary; at least while he’s in boot camp.

Love story maybe; or maybe not

I don’t actually mostly watch TV commercials. I mean, the instant—the absolute nanosecond—that whatever I’ve got on cuts to a break, I tune out. Don’t even really need to hit mute; my attention is completely disengaged.

(Actually, I’m usually doing something else while the TV is on, so I’m almost never paying complete attention to what’s running anyhow. But back to my point.)

So, the first time this commercial penetrated to my brain (on The Military Channel, BTW), it was just ending, and I had that gobsmacked sensation that says, “What the hell did I just see?”

The website it’s advertising purports to be an “international dating experience” with “thousands of profiles”, all of women. They also assure us that they “conduct one-on-one interviews with each and every one of the women listed on our sites”, and “ensure that they have a genuine interest in exploring romantic relationships with men from overseas.”

Oh, and they’re “approachable, affectionate and beautiful”.

(I’m sorry—I just can’t stop repeating this stuff.)

Of course they are.

One wonders what the sad gits who pay for this service look like. & one won’t know because the site doesn’t mention any vetting of the sad gits who pay for this service.

Well, okay—I’m sure there’s a credit check.

I’m wondering that the marks—I mean customers—haven’t seen any of the many episodes of Law & Order (or SVU) that deal with the aftermath of “international dating experiences” when the online bride shows up in the US. Because this sort of thing usually seems to end up in the police files, not My Fair Wedding, if you catch my drift.

Plus, I can’t help thinking of that Discover® Card commercial—you know, the one where when you call customer service for any credit card except Discover, and you get “Peggy”:

I can’t get the picture out of my mind of some guy named Ted, sitting in Houston, IMing away at $10 a minute (or whatever it is) to…Peggy.

Does that make me a bad person?

More sorrow in South Dakota

Ah, another notable passing in South Dakota. Russell Means, American Indian activist and actor, died Monday of esophageal cancer. He was 72.

Means made news leading the American Indian Movement in the 1970s. His methods included flamboyance and violence at times. One of the most memorable protests was the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, S.D., the site of the massacre of 350 Lakota men, women and children by US soldiers.

But if you’re not politically inclined, you’re most likely to remember Means from the 1992 Michael Man film, The Last of the Mohicans. He played Chingachgook. Means and Wes Studi, playing Magua, were the embodiment of the destruction of indigenous New World peoples by European invaders. Whether you allied yourself with the English or the French, whether you were Mohican or Huron, whether you sought accommodation or revenge—it was basically a death march.

And you saw that all in the faces of Means and Studi, those stunning, evocative faces.

I was very sorry to hear about Means; and that type of cancer has to have been particularly awful for a man who was exceptionally articulate in support of his beliefs.

Sorrow for South Dakota

American politics should be mourning the loss of George S. McGovern. The former Senator from South Dakota died Sunday at age 90.

You can read retrospectives on McGovern pretty much anywhere. He represented the people of South Dakota diligently & for three terms in the US Senate, suffered one of the worst defeats in presidential electoral history & yet remained a public servant in the very best sense of that term.

(McGovern was the target of Nixon’s Dirty Tricks campaign of Watergate fame.)

The man was gracious, generous, conscientious, considerate. In fact, if ever there was a gentleman in US politics, it was McGovern. He, in fact, was a statesman.

From the time of his first Senate term, beginning in 1962, McGovern was at the forefront of US and global campaigns to wipe out hunger. He felt it was the duty of governments to help those of its citizens who were least able to help themselves.

What a concept!

I can’t think of anyone in either house of Congress who comes within the same Area Code of McGovern’s sense of honor & duty. American politics should be mourning that.

But they’re not.