I almost forgot...
Celebrating Independence Day in theater is interesting. I'll talk about that a bit, but first, read this.
For one thing, we didn't celebrate it on the fourth. We celebrated on the first.
It involved some things traditional and some things not so traditional. Here's a list:
Traditional:
Cookout with steaks, burgers, hot dogs
Nontraditional:
Lay's potato chips packaged by Saudi Snack Foods, Inc. (Why is it that there is no Arabic word in common between Nacho Cheese Doritos and French Cheese Lay's?) Almost all of the packaged foods have Arabic on them.
Traditional:
Rock music
Nontraditional:
Rock Music played by a band in uniform (3ID's Surge)
Traditional:
Waterside deck
Nontraditional:
The water in question is a moat surrounding a palace
Traditional:
Fireworks
Nontraditional:
Payloads in the fireworks designed to give you a bad day and pointed in your general direction
Traditional:
Beer
Nontraditional:
Non-alcoholic
Traditional:
Aircraft
Nontraditional:
On their way to a nearby LZ
Definitely different, not bad, really, but different. The band was very good. The steaks weren't charred black on the outside and dry grey on the inside like all the beef served in the DFAC, but nice and rare. I tried a couple of different varieties of near beer, nothing compelling, but we make do with what we've got. Thompson cigars provided free smokeables, so a few of us stood over near the water and smoked some good cigars and talked about how fucked up it was to be able to do something like that in a war zone.
The best part of the afternoon for me was standing on the water's edge with an LTC, seeing a pair of blackhawks flying in over the water, looking at him and saying, "This is your Robert Duvall moment."
He lived up to it.
"You either surf or fight! That clear?"
All we needed was Wagner.
For one thing, we didn't celebrate it on the fourth. We celebrated on the first.
It involved some things traditional and some things not so traditional. Here's a list:
Traditional:
Cookout with steaks, burgers, hot dogs
Nontraditional:
Lay's potato chips packaged by Saudi Snack Foods, Inc. (Why is it that there is no Arabic word in common between Nacho Cheese Doritos and French Cheese Lay's?) Almost all of the packaged foods have Arabic on them.
Traditional:
Rock music
Nontraditional:
Rock Music played by a band in uniform (3ID's Surge)
Traditional:
Waterside deck
Nontraditional:
The water in question is a moat surrounding a palace
Traditional:
Fireworks
Nontraditional:
Payloads in the fireworks designed to give you a bad day and pointed in your general direction
Traditional:
Beer
Nontraditional:
Non-alcoholic
Traditional:
Aircraft
Nontraditional:
On their way to a nearby LZ
Definitely different, not bad, really, but different. The band was very good. The steaks weren't charred black on the outside and dry grey on the inside like all the beef served in the DFAC, but nice and rare. I tried a couple of different varieties of near beer, nothing compelling, but we make do with what we've got. Thompson cigars provided free smokeables, so a few of us stood over near the water and smoked some good cigars and talked about how fucked up it was to be able to do something like that in a war zone.
The best part of the afternoon for me was standing on the water's edge with an LTC, seeing a pair of blackhawks flying in over the water, looking at him and saying, "This is your Robert Duvall moment."
He lived up to it.
"You either surf or fight! That clear?"
All we needed was Wagner.