Gooooooooooood Morning Vietnaaaaaaaaaaaam!!! (again)

[DFW]

I nearly gagged at this one. My friend, Adrian Cronauer (the real one, not Robin Williams) sends me these gems from time to time. Some of them are really good. THIS one was better:

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Adrian will turn 76 this year. His sense of humor is as sharp as it ever was.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I love it, my dear DFW!

A great play on words!

[pinboy3niner]

2. Ha!

I saw him at the annual Vietnam Veterans Reunion in Kokomo, Indiana one year. He spoke about some of the creative license taken by the film--but he did deliver that famous line.

[DFW]

3. "Creative license" is putting it mildly

Adrian said that if he had done half the things the Williams character had done in the film, he would have spent half of the rest of his life in a stockade. He also says that the reason he dragged out his introduction was because the tech outfitting was so primitive that he had to set up most of the equipment himself while already on the air. He dragged out his opening line so he could have time to align the mikes, light up the control panel and get the settings ready for broadcast.

[hlthe2b]

4. I hope, DFW, you are writing YOUR memoirs...

So many experiences and interesting people you have in your circle!

[DFW]

5. You're not the first to tell me that, but somehow....

After all that, I still get the impression that I am just passing through. Sort of like the story of the 100 year old man who jumped out the window an disappeared. I do enjoy the chance to hang out with interesting people, but that's only because they are more fun than uninteresting people.

Some of the interesting people I know are famous--far more of them are people who you'll never hear of. Yes, it's cool, in retrospect, to be friends with Adrian and Howard Dean and the like, and there has never been anyone like Helen Thomas. But it's also been cool to have been friends with Michel Prieur and Raymond Looren, whose names will mean nothing to you. Raymond, for example, was a Frenchman of Dutch ancestry, and looked like a promising sweet Aryan kid to the occupying Nazis in northern France in the 1940s. At night, at age 14, he was shooting machine guns at them as part of the French Resistance. Knowing a guy who did stuff like THAT is every bit as cool as knowing presidents and Senators, I promise you.

[hlthe2b]

6. Sounds like you should write and give them THEIR due as well...

I agree. I meet lots of people whose names will never be known but who have a fascinating lesson, experience --or entire life-- to share.

[DFW]

8. You might have something there

Two of my ancestors--one born in South Carolina who migrated north and worked his way through Harvard as a janitor to pay his tuition, ended up as a minor personality in New York, another who sent out a Christmas card with a photo of himself at age 99 with the caption "Compliments of the Seasoned." His ancestors came to America in the 1840s and 1850s and had to flee the Mississippi Delta to escape gambling debts. There are a LOT of interesting characters out there whose stories will never be told if we don't.

[rurallib]

7. Cheeses, christ!

[pinboy3niner]

9. Gouda one!