Nbc @ MindSay

NBC's Tim Russert Dies of Heart Attack

 

:(

 

I loved this guy. He looked like and reminded me so much of my favorite public relations professor and mentor at WCU, Dr. Lordan. Russert's passion for politics and journalism was inspiring; he was one of few reporters who had managed to spark my interest in and actually made me understand somne aspects of politics.

 

It's just not going to be the same come this fall when the presidential election really starts to get hot and heavy, and Tim won't be on every news station to cover the events. :(

 

 

iFeel:  sad

iTunes: co-workers unpacking

4. I squee over fictional characters on my favorite TV shows when they wear golf clothes and have long-term plans and drink beer and make out with their girlfriends in the middle of the office as their co-workers do the "Bow-chicka-bow-wow" music and their boss creepily stares at them.

Speaking of boss, boy was Michael's douche meter dialed up in this episode. I wanted to punch him in the face. Though I did love this little number when Pam stood up to him: "You said, 'Pam, Pam, Pam, Pam,' then sneezed in my tea and said it doesn't matter 'cause it was just allergies. Do you remember that?" The mental picture on that one is great.

Hour-long season finale next week. Lotsa things to wrap-up here (Michael/Jan relationship, Toby leaving for Costa Rica, Dwight/Angela/Andy triangle, Jim/Pam proposal, cokehead Ryan...). Gonna be a good one!

*ahem* Anyway, we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.


iFeel: anxious
iTunes: "ER"

Well, I watched it. The "Knight Rider" movie event on NBC, that is.

Was it cheesy? Hell, yeah.  But there were moments where socKs and I laughed out loud. And where we thought the car was neat. True -- it would have been cooler if voiced by Will Arnett, but Val Kilmer did a satisfactory job filling in.

And yes -- there is a special appearance by David Hasselhoff in the two hour movie event.  Sadly, he appeared only as Michael Knight -- not, as I had hoped for, as the evil Garth Knight. What I did find ironic was that Michael Knight and Mike Traceur, apparently father and son, look a bit alike. This, however, should not have been the case, as Michael Knight's true face died in the first episode of the original series when his appearance was altered through reconstructive surgery.

The final scene gave me something unexpected. Bravo for that...

Would I watch this as a series? Yes. Even if it gets really dumb.  I'm still a sucker for a talking, wise-ass car.

We were housed at Khobar Towers waiting to get our movement orders to a desert location. During our time at Khobar Towers, we would do our daily cleaning, weapons checks and walk around the Khobar area in our free time. We would wait in long lines to make a phone call to home, or go to the PX. These facilities were located in the basement of some of the buildings.

We had our 'boonie hats' embroidered with slogans like "Desert Storm .. Never Again." Would have palm trees or swords sewn onto the top of our hats and so on. I think everybody starched their boonies. Most of the time everybody was pretty bored. We were waiting for the war to kick off. Eating MREs [made-ready-to-eat meals] most of the time began to get old, it forced me to go out to one of the vendor trucks to buy camel-burgers. First time eating one, the meat had a particular dull smelling odor to it, after awhile, smell of the meat didn't matter anymore.

During this time, January 17, 1991 at 0300 hours, an Iraqi Scud Missile struck near the Dahran airport, exploding loudly, waking all of us up. We jumped up in the dark, scrambling for our duffle bags to retrieve our NBC [Nuclear,Biological and Chemical] gear, hearts racing with the fear that the missile may have had some chemical in it. Saddam was known to have a large supply of deadly chemicals. Not long afterward, the "Air-Raid" Sirens began sounding off.

Another Scud was seen flying over our heads ... as we stood outside on the balcony [seven stories] up watching the show. During this same time we saw a Patriot Missile launched upward to blow the Scud up. "BOOM BOOM", two explosions, we ran back inside of our quarters from the balcony, knowing 'what goes up must come down'.

We were now suited up, hung our chemical strips up for chemical detection, when we got the order to move downstairs. Several units including our own were all housed in the same building, and began running hurriedly downstairs in the dark, in NBC gear and dodging other soldiers hurrying down the stairwell. Panic and confusion at its best.

When we arrived to the ground floor, we were told to fall in formation. Looking around, everybody looked like "Darth Vader" lookalikes. Kind of comical, trying to listen to all the yelling through an M-17A1 mask is not easy. Somebody gave the order to 'lock and load'. Thinking to ourselves, Lock and load? what are we going to do, shoot these Scuds out of the air with our M-16s?"

All I can remember thinking was hoping that a Scud didn't make a direct hit on us, my NBC gear was airtight, and chemical proof. It was madness everywhere, soldiers screaming orders and calling names out, that it was a good thing a Scud didn't hit. After being scared, I began getting angry, thinking to myself that I didn't want to be here in the first place ... now I'm probably going to lose my life here .... before even hitting the Desert or seeing who my enemy was. During our stay at Khobar Towers, we witnessed eleven Scuds over a two or three day period, but only nine were shot out of the air by our Patriot Missile Batteries. Two of the Scuds didn't drop altitude, so they were allowed to continue flying toward the Gulf, and maybe into Iran.

After that experience, it woke me up to the reality of possibly dying and being scared severely. We finally got our orders to move out and into the Desert. We were thankful for that, sitting around as a stationary target for the Iraqi Scud bunch wasn't my idea of fun. At least the open Desert gave us a stronger sense of safety and security. I still get a chill in my bones when a stateside Emergency Siren goes off at 12 when testing their equipment, No more wars or campaigns for me thank you.

Disabled Vet
Jim Heitmeyer

Well, I just finished watching Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien's first new episodes without their writers.  I must say, it was better than I expected.  A little rough... you could definitely tell they were making things up on the fly... but overall, not too bad at all.  It will be interesting to see how long it takes them to run out of ideas over the next few nights.  Now granted, Carson Daly has been on without writers for a month... but he's bad no matter what, so he doesn't count.

Just a little random TV commentary on a Wednesday night.