April Fools!

So, I'm waiting at Denver International to catch my flight to my next destination, which should be leaving here in about an hour. So I'm just chilling out in the glorious USO that is here. Quite possibly one of the nicest USOs I've ever been too.

Um, the thing is, I should have been at my destination a few hours ago.

Let me explain.

Whenever I have to travel anywhere, I get a little antsy the night before and can't sleep. Such as was the case last night. So I set my alarm for 0410 because I had a 6 AM flight I had to catch. I did my thing, and to doubly make sure that everything was set, I checked my alarm again. And accidentally shut it off.

Causing me to sleep in and miss my flight. And nothing makes you panic like thinking you missed a flight. As an NCO, I need to be more responsible about these things, shouldn't I?

So, I won't be flying into my destination until about 10 PM. A good nine and a half hours later then I should have been.

I just hope I don't miss any important briefings or what ever happened today. We're crossing fingers that this was a traveling day but I'm sure I'm going to have to make up for something tomorrow.

Don't you hate playing an April Fool's joke on yourself? Gah!

Meet Me in St Louis

I did mention I love the USO, right?

Well now that I finally made it to St Louis, I'm holed up in the USO for the night and will catch a bus to Fort Lost in the Woods tomorrow. I was wondering if I had gotten sent a little early to this school but turns out everything has worked out well. I'll get to Leonard Wood by around noon tomorrow and it will help me get settled in and give me time to get whatever I need like personal hygiene items and all that jazz(I had to leave a bag at home).

I had somebody ask me how long I had been in and when I said three months shy of eight years, they flat out told me I didn't look old enough to have been in that long. I don't feel like I've been in that long.

This USO is exactly the same as I remember it from that time, except more computers and the Television is more current. But the layout is the same.

I'm going to go pass out for the night now.

Who Loves the USO?

I do! I do!

I think the USO at the Denver Airport is one of the nicest I have ever seen. Apparently the Presidential Club offered some space for soldiers to relax and I'm currently kicked back in a leather recliner watching a big screen TV. It's nice!

I actually should have been on my way to St Louis, but they changed planes from the original plane and asked for volunteers to give up their seats in exchange for a free round trip ticket to be used in the next year.

Now usually, I can't do this when flying on military orders and ethically keep the ticket. Except I'm not actually being paid for my travel days and don't belong to the army until Tuesday, so technically I can do anything I want so long as I'm in Fort Leonard Wood by tomorrow evening, to play it safe. I also had to make sure my luggage would be all right. Nothing like showing up in St Louis to find that my bags were on the baggage claim for anybody to take. But they promised that my bags would be pulled and waiting for me. Ok, that's a relief. I'll take the ticket and get to St Louis sometime tonight.

If I get mobilization orders after I get my hat, that free plane ticket will come in handy.

ICW Wrestling

So, Wrestlers came by a couple of days ago to offer us an opportunity to get a handshake, and autograph, and what the heck, a few Kodak moments as well.

I'm not one for keeping up on wrestling and all, but I'm all for getting free signatures and posing with celebrities! So I thought, what the heck?



My NCOIC is a huge wrestling fan and went into a huge spiel with them on wrestling and all and it brought tears to everybody's eyes. I didn't have a camera when one of the guys went up and gave SSG D a big giant bear hug.

So when I went and got their signatures and thanked them for coming and supporting us in what we do, I couldn't help but get another goofy pic from them as well.

How Cool Is This?!?

So I posted a few weeks back about the USO tour that brought Leeann Tweeden, Colin Quinn, Jeffrey Ross and Gale Sayers, right? Well, because of the limited amount of time, I didn't get to actually meet Gale Sayers or Leeann Tweeden and get their signatures.

Well, Gale Sayer's Business Partner found my blog and wrote me this Email.

"I saw your blog on the USO Tour. I am Gale Sayer's business partner and would be happy to get you a signed football or picture if you would like one. Thanks for serving our country."

I thanked him for the offer and asked him if he could ship it to my family's address, and sure enough, I got an email from my mom threatening that she was going to sell it on Ebay!

Well, of course she was kidding, but indeed, how cool is this?




Gale Sayers' Rocks! Thank you so much Mr. Sayers, that really made my day!

Who Loves the USO?

I Do, I Do!

The USO came around Bondsteel yesterday doing a tour with GEN Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff. For those of you who don't know, GEN Myers is the Highest ranking person in todays Army. Well, actually he's even higher, because he's not in the Army. He's Air Force, but I won't hold it against him. . .


Meanwhile, well, this is a USO Tour. USO conjours up images of Bob Hope on Christmas.

Well, Bob Hope is no longer with us, so other celibrities have come to try to fill his shoes as best as they can.

Master of Ceremonies was none other then Leeann Tweeden, of FHM and Maxim fame, as well as ESPN and other venues of Testosterone Entertainment. She was very nice, though being a babe in a sex starved military deployment, when they split the groups up to get autographs, a bunch of guys went to her line. I decided to go a different route, though I would have loved to get her autograph. I did end up getting a card signed by her, one of those generic ones that she presigned to go around, but I decided to be nice and give it to Nate who had fore-gone the USO tour to take the Pilgrimage trip to Letnica for spiritual enlightenment. He's catholic.



There was also a run on the PX's Sports Section, from what I heard they sold over a hundred footballs. See, Pro Football Hall of Famer Gale Sayers showed up too. I missed out on getting an autograph from him as well, considering, well, the forementioned Football Blowout. There were a lot of people in line wanting to get an autograph and these Celebrities were only there for an hour and a half to entertain us and then gift us with their John Hancock.



Well, that leaves the fun old fashioned comedy routine, brought on by two talented comedians who gifted us with some jokes that were at times making the generals blush upstage thinking *what have we done?* It wasn't PC in the slightest bit, and that's probably why I laughed that hard.

Jeffrey Ross was first. He hosts this routine on Comedy Central called The Roast where they honor any given celibrity by dishonoring them. Apparently he had just finished Roasting Pamela Anderson the night previous. He was a bit raunchy, but pretty freakin' funny!



Last up was Colin Quinn. You may know him from venues such as Saturday Night Live and Comedy Central's 'Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn', amongst other shows. I knew him from SNL, in fact, right off the bat, he's the first name I recognized. And like Jeffrey Ross, he made me laugh. Hard. I took some video, but I got to remember to dump my memory stick before going to things like this. I did the same thing at the ThundHERstruck Concert.

I loved his metaphor on the war on terror and the nations involved compared to a bar fight. Classic. . .



I'm going to have to watch more SNL when I get home now.

Anonymous Messages

I got a cryptic message on the door. . . it was a simple envelope that simply said 'SGT E' with a blank CD Rom attached.

At first I didn't know what it was, but then I thought it might be the pictures that SPC H (the task force photographer) giving me the extra pictures she took of my photoshoot (that I guarantee I will never see the end of when that issue of the guardian comes out)

No, I popped the CD into my computer and there was a video of me air strumming my M16 to Thund'her'Struck.

Did I mention that a lot of people deployed here read my blog? You know how eerie that is sometimes?

And is it a coincidence that within a couple of days after my post about an incident that happened over a month ago, an anonymous CD turns up on my door describing pictures I didn't have?

I think I'll take a few stills off the CD and post them here.

Rockabilly and All Girl Cover Bands

The Battle of the bands indeed. . .

Ok, on top of current events, this post will pick up on an event that happened well over a month ago. Meaning this post will be picture intensive. Because I love pictures.

I'll start with the old and end with the new. . .

All Girl Cover Bands

Sometime in June, we had a group called Thund'HER'Struck come in and treat us to a rockin' good time with a bunch of songs from AC/DC. They were an all girl cover band. And they were fun.


Though several people mentioned the fact of them singing 'Big Balls' (by request I might add) was somewhat wrong. But I enjoyed them despite the fact. As I enjoyed it when they invited all of the females in the audience up on stage with them to rock out.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of me air-strumming my M16. I could probably find some from somebody around post, there were a lot of people in the audience with cameras taking pictures.

Anyway, without further ado, pictures of an all girl ACDC cover band playing hard for the troops in Kosovo.


Here's a shot of the soldiers enjoying the concert.


Its the Drummer. . .


Rhythm Guitar. . .


Bass Guitar. . .


This is why I miss having long hair. . .


Band going Body Surfing!!!


The Entire band ended up jumping into the crowd, I tried to get the drummer in mid air but got a small delay in my camera.


Me with the band, when it started to get cold. . .


. . . the bassist stole my Boy's jacket! (but don't worry, he got it back after the fact) And if you wanted to see what my boy looks like, well, there he is. He's the only male in the group, of course :)

I got quite a few pictures of them rockin' out, as I tend to do.

Rockabilly

And then, last week, we had another band come and treat us to a rockin' good time singing some Rockabilly. What, you may ask, is Rockabilly? Well, I was asking the same thing, as I hadn't heard it before. Nate was trying to describe it to me and told me it was like a hybrid sound of country, rock, surfer, swing and oldies, or something. When I just kind of gave him a 'what?' look, he mentioned the Stray Cats, and then I asked him about Stray Cat Strut. So I was trackin, sort of.

The Bassist even emphasized the Stray Cat influence.


Anyway, this band called Jack Knife and the Sharps came and introduced me to this genre of music and I found myself enjoying myself, meaning I might just have to check out this genre more often. But maybe it was because I was also in the company of Nate, who Swing Dances. And when they started singing swing, he took us out and we started dancing.

I'm not much of a dancer, but I've always wanted to learn how to Swing Dance and so we started busting some moves.

Live Bands Rock, by the way.


Becuase I'm inexperienced with Swing, we didn't do anything to crazy, but later he showed me some other moves we can try when the time arises and we find ourselves the only ones dancing in front of a bunch of people.



Usually, the Bassist plays a standing bass, you know, the REALLY big violin type instrument, which would have been really cool but flying into a warzone sometimes you have to make sacrifices and leave gargantuan instruments back home. *sniff*



I love this guitar. Its so cool. In fact, I found myself paying a lot of attention to how they played the guitar, seeing as I'm learning myself.


Later, in introducing his band, Ric (the singer) told us he picked up his Bassist at a Garage Sale and his Drummer off of Ebay. *snicker* What, it made me laugh!

The drummer reminds me of a skinnier version of my brother-in-law, who happens to be a drummer :)


It has become customary for me to get a picture with the band. Because I love bands. They rock. Literally. I asked to pose with them and Ric put his guitar around my neck and it hung past my knees. That's what I get for being short.

Next time I'll try not to wait a month and a half to gloat to you about the cool people I get to meet.

For Your Remote Viewing Pleasure

We had a mind reader come to Bondsteel and perform for us named Craig Karges.

That dude was a trip!

He had complete audience participation while he had his eyes taped shut and then covered with a blindfold and proceeded to read people's minds through Remote Viewing. He would have to write things down as they came to him and at times would have two or three people stand up in the audience and say things about them. Of course, they had to be thinking about that item for him to be successful. For instance, at the beginning of the show, everyone took a slip of paper and wrote their name on it, then they wrote something on it about themselves, like their birthyear or where they're from and then they wrote something about what they were thinking.

A friend fo mine named Todd got selected for this when Karges asked somebody in the audience to stand up with the initials TE. He then proceeded to tell him his name was Todd, and mention that he had changed his mind from thinking about Greece to thinking about his wife instead. I talked to Todd afterwards and he showed me the paper he had wrote on and sure enough he had Greece scribbled off and Wife written next to it.

He also mentioned how one guy was thinking about a specific car and described it to the point where the guy just gave up.

I might be a bit more skeptical if I hadn't participated myself. He had four people stand up toward the end and I just wanted to try this for fun so I made sure I had stood up. He asked one guy, who happened to be Nate to give him a car. At first Nate said Tank (he's a tanker) and was told to change to something a little more practical, so he said a '52 Mercury Sedan. He asked if that was the car he wanted and Nate confirmed it. The next guy described it as being Black. He gave the option of changing the color but the guy stood by Black. The Third guy was then tasked with giving the license plate number, to which he said NK6969. When asked if he wanted to change any of the letters or numbers, the guy declined. Then he looked to me and asked me to give him a price. My first thought was $50,000. But as I was thinking to myself, I thought, 'No, that's to much' and chopped it in half and said 25 Grand. He then asked me if I wanted to go more specific, so I said 25,242. He then asked me if I liked that answer and then I blurted out 32 cents. He kind of smirked at this and asked me if I wanted to change any of the numbers. I decided to change the the first two to a one, because there was just to many 2's in there. And now that I look at it, there was a pattern. $25,242.32 . I didn't notice that until now.

Anyway, I changed my answer so that it was $15,242, sort of dropping the cents. So he wrote everything we said down and asked me to pick out somebody in the audience. There was a girl behind me in a norweigian uniform (and therefore, different from the rest of us) and so I asked her to stand up. She was kind of shy at first but was a good sport about it and headed up on the stage. He read out the description of the car that we gave him and we confirmed that that's what we said. Then he pulled out his wallet and in it zipped up was tucked an envelope, which he handed to the Norweigian Soldier and told her to tear it open. Then she read out loud to the effect of "Currently I am in Monteith and tomorrow I will perform at Bondsteel. At the end of the show I will pick four people at random and they will describe a car to me. That car will be a 1952 Mercury Sedan, Black, License Plate NK6969 priced at $15,242.32."

I thought that was a pretty wild trick if I don't say so myself. Though when I went up to him afterwards to ask for his Autograph, he asked me for my name and I just smiled at him. He couldn't read my name so I finally told him. Then he tried to guess how to spell it and failed miserably. He was pretty stuck on the 'C', thinking it was Cammy, or Cami, or Camy, and when I finally told him K-A-M-I he laughed and mused about how off he was. I guess he was winding down.

But of course he gave me a little talk bubble to the side with 32cents written in it.

I think I shall henceforth go to more of these entertainers and see them. They have definitely been keeping things interesting in an otherwise boring environment.

Small Break from Greece Trip

You know, things have been going on besides my trip to Greece (which happened over two weeks ago, and I'm still trying to post it) so I thought I would mention some of the other things going on.

Fred Travalena came by the Balkan states to perform a show for us. Though he caters to an older crowd (I had never heard of him) he proved to be entertaining as he is a pretty good impressionist. He had a few people down pretty good. Though he came across as being a conservative, it didn't stop him from poking fun at some previous republican presidents and candidates in harmless jest. I had a pretty good time, I think I need to take more advantage of these USO tours. They have been a nice break from reality from time to time.

Also, Lit had a great interview in the Guardian magazine. Click on the DANCON issue and scroll to page 20 to read it. The author also posted the full interview on his own website, which was cool (they say 'y'know' a lot) They say they're going to talk to some of their buddies about coming up here too.

USO and MWR are definitely doing their part. Can't wait to see what other things they have in store for us.

The Four-One-One on Lit

I think I'm in Love.

No, seriously, these guys rocked! And I have a new found respect for rock bands who come to war torn third world countries to put up a free rockin' show for the troops and let them dive off the stage and mosh. I've never moshed before, never been to a concert where I was close enough to the stage too.


The audience was completely sober (well, maybe a couple of people had been drinking when they weren't supposed to), and from what I understand, so was the band. There is no alcohol on Bondsteel. AJ, the lead singer, made a comment about it too, something to the effect of "you know, I don't think I've ever had a concert where the audience was sober and everyone was carrying guns."

He then asked us to show our weapons so they could take a picture.



I was up on the stage practically the entire time either catching the thing on video or taking pictures (when I wasn't moshing). I was in a pretty close proximity to the band. Here's an idea.



They're best known song is probably "My Own Worst Enemy" which is a song just about everyone in the audience knew. They pulled us up on the stage with them and we sang along, I have never had so much fun at a concert before.



And of course, I have the obligatory pictures of me with the band.



They came around the hospital earlier that day and we gave them a tour. I was trying to tell them my job function but I got interrupted, that and we have a lot of graphic pictures in our office. I probably ran into these guys around post four or five times yesterday before the concert.

Did I mention these guys rocked? They are now one of my favorite bands (seeing a band live in concert does that to me) and it is my quest to attain their CDs. I have one back at home. Now I need the other three.