I knew that I wanted to include something about "candy stripers" in the header, just because that peculiar form of headgear was so indicative of the poorly-thought-out situation of the Special Forces in the early Eighties.
The problem was that my brain immediately seized onto the craptacular 1978 porn movie of the same name, which may well have been my first encounter with the genre as a junior in college; remember, in the Seventies porn was not the ubiquitous magilla it is today, where the entire Internet is effectively a monstrous vehicle for conveying into your home images of two strangers fucking. You actually had to go to a real theatre to see these things and encounter the trench-coated masturbaters and speculate on just exactly what on the floor was so sticky. It certainly made the whole business less...businesslike, and a lot more ridiculous.
So as I was recounting the history of the SF, circa 1981, every so often I would break out in spontaneous chuckling thinking about the, um, intersection of the hard men of the Green Beret and the hardcore women of the Silver Screen.
There's no real excuse for this, and I have this problem a LOT; it's just how my mind works like flypaper - anything and everything sticks to it, and is likely to get stuck together in inappropriate ways.
Sorry, but there it is.
17 comments:
Well, it may not be silver screen. ... but a Green Beanie boyfriend told me a story that would surely amuse you.
He was stateside-bound on a jet with a plane load of returning guys from Viet Nam. He said this one guy just kept eyeballing the stewardess with peculiar intensity.
Finally, when she bent to pour a drink for the guy in the seat across the aisle, this poor bastard just lost it. He grabbed her hips in both hands and BIT her on the ass!
Yeah, they took him off the jet in Hawaii.....
I think, if he were game, Jim could chime in here and provide us further and supporting SF intersections to your highly allusive thought process.
What say ye, Jim? Labrys provides a bit of the puzzle (ppor felloe; poor stewardess), and we are all friends here, after all ...
(yikes: "poor fellow")
Labrys: Ah, yes, GIs...the heart and soul of romance, if your idea of romance is a quickie in the parking lot outside the Alvin C. York Theatre...
And I have to admit; part of my problem is having BEEN a GI, and therefore finding the story of the freedom bird and the ass-biting grunt effing hilarious - not that I don't have room for sympathy for the poor woman holding the ice bag to her butt...
But, sadly, a bit part of this is just me; my brain is hardwired in some very wrong ways, and although about 99.8% of the time I can successfully simulate a normal human being, it's that 0.2% that gets me in trouble...
I find amusing that porn back then had very high production values and (in some) a sense of humour. Not that I watched any, I'm a good, moral, upstanding citizen. I'm just reporting what a, uh, friend told me.
Chief:
I regret to inform you that there are no normal human beings. Furthermore, even if there was a "normal" human being, by definition, that would make then very un-normal.
The mathematics of natural variation are quite clear on this. Even Greg Mendel and his wrinkled peas were called out on this one.
Wake up in the darkest hours of the night, what they call the madrugada, and jump on the computer to see what happened to the SF. Instead Chief wants to talk about 40-year-old porn movies. And he don't even mention the best of the lot -- "Jeepers, Creepers, Mr. Peepers."
I regret to say that I was once driven from one of those raincoat-wanker theatres because I was making too many "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" smartass remarks about the action going on on-screen. I was...ummm...breaking the concentration, shall we say, of those who were there to appreciate the artwork of the auteurs of the one-reel tug flick.
Then again, I was forcibly silenced during a showing of "Ghost" for doing the same thing but since the shush-er was my then-girlfriend I took it with better grace and less derisive laughter.
I am, in many ways, if not peculiar (pace Ael...) at least a very evil human being...
Hell, Chief ("a very evil human being" don't be so hard on yourself. If Goethe could say that he never read of a crime in a newspaper that he couldn't have committed, evil is within the range of all of us.
If "peculiar", then only in the best possible way, and certainly not evil.
(Paul, if you're quoting Goethe, you're not all that "podunk", eh?)
Lisa,
I read Chief's self-description and took it literally. How stupid of me. But am under a bit of stress, since it looks as if we'll lose our house here, a few miles south of Veracruz. It's a beautiful place and I'll miss living here. Plan to move down the coast to a rural community near San Andreas, and live with the our maid's family. Hope to move the shop down there too and teach one of the kids how to weld, do machine work, fix cars, that sort of thing. Good place for the tools, some of them dating back to the 1920s. And probably a good thing for the kid, who should be able to make a living with them. It's also neat for an old guy to be able to pass on stuff he's learned. There's no much call for these sort of skills in the States -- machine work is automated. But in Mexico we still twirl control handles and read micrometers.
As for Podunk, it's a tough neighborhood in northeast Houston, one railroad track away from the Fifth Ward, the Bloody Fifth. Grew up there, probably in an environment not much different from Ranger's.
I once took the family to a viewing of a "sing along" version of The Sound of Music. The songs had sub-titles and the audience was supposed to sing along. When we handed in the ticket, we were given a party popper with instructions that everyone was to use it the first time Maria kissed the Captain.
We all did that (except for my youngest son). He held on to it until the graveyard scene where Rolfe threatens to shoot the Captain. During that moment of extreme tension, with the audience absolutely silent, he set it off with a loud bang. The entire theater jumped as one and then dissolved into laughter and wild looking around for what had caused the noise.
Nobody but my wife noticed an eight year old boy sitting absolutely still wearing a grin that would make the Cheshire cat envious.
Hey Paul,
I was only complimenting your apparent lack of "podunk-ness" in your Goethe quote (I didn't know from whence the handle.)
Sorry to hear about things, but I'm glad you're in a place where you can enjoy and ply your trade. Hope your move goes well as possible.
Thanks, Lisa,
Have always wanted to immerse in an alien culture like Ruth Benedict or, for that matter, Obama's mother. This is an opportunity to do so. These Indian folks have almost nothing: they live off their gardens and the occasional odd-job. There's a lot of laughter and, if I read it right, a lot of anxiety in their world. It's amazing that they would invite some gimpy old gringo to share their lives. Of course, I'm rich in the context, but they insist that Don Paul will never have to pay for anything, which is ridiculous but, just the same, touching. Of course, one must be careful about giving, so as not to undercut the dignity of the recipients. Need, real, no bull-shit need, seems to be the criteria.
Sounds like a great adventure -- buena suerte!
Paul: Damn. Sorry to hear that, and hope things take a turn for the better.
Lisa: I can only reply that my admiration and respect for your thoughtful grace might manage to get me a squeak of mercy from a just and implacable Fate, so in that I am a better man than I might be...
You are too kind. Your generosity has always moved me, and -- yes! -- I have even felt protected from afar. That is a great gift you give.
I believe the ability to show care and kindness is our saving grace, and if so, you have been saved many times over.
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