"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
My Boog Pages
Monday, April 18
Where's Waldo?
Okay, so it's been, like, over 2 weeks since I posted. No, I haven't joined the Foreign Legion or the Witness Protection Program, I've just been busy. Work, child rearing, dog rearing, etc. etc. etc.
But mostly I've been watching Band Of Brothers.
For those of you who don't know, this is the story of Easy Company, a small unit of the 101st Airborne division that fought at D-Day, in Holland, and, most famously, at the siege of Bastogne. The prime movers from Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks and Steven Speilberg, were executive producers on this one.
I wanted to see this series when it came out on HBO four years ago, but we were broke (as usual) and HBO costs money... but last Monday I was flipping around, and it was just starting on the History channel. So, despite the fact that I was tired (again, as usual) I stayed up and watched. Turns out they ran the whole 10-part series last week, two episodes per night. And it was great.
The producers made a point of casting actors who bore a resemblence to the characters they played, and they vetted the script with Easy Company veterans, so it was pretty damn authentic. Painfully so - the saddest moment was when Lt. Buck Compton sees two of his friends get their legs blown off during an artillery barrage in Bastogne. He had fought in Normany and Holland, but he couldn't take seeing the pain and death anymore and had to be reassigned.
It wasn't all fighting and dying, though. The 101st helped liberate France, and Holland, and when they got to Germany, they "liberated" everything that wasn't bolted to the ground. Of special note: when they captured Hermann Goering's house, Maj. Winters (no relation, Jim) gave his friend Lew Nixon first pick from Goering's wine cellar, which contained THOUSANDS of bottles of booze. Then he had each of the 9 companies under his command haul off a truckload. Not even the Crimedogs could drink that much (well, maybe Rickards).
Then, since the wife didn't have school yesterday, I spent the day doing fuck-all, mostly playing "MVP Baseball 2004" on my son's Game Cube. I play the San Francisco Giants, for sentimental reasons - I used to work for their minor league affiliate in Shreveport. They have since moved to Frisco, Texas, and they are now a Texas Rangers farm club, which is too bad. They ought to be the Frisco Giants.
