Washington, DC
Sunday, July 8th

Today was freaking hot. So rather than drag the kids to the scheduled Arlington Cemetery and the Zoo in 95 + weather, we decided on a free day. Most went to Georgetown, some went to the National Archives, I love my fellow geeks, and some went to Pentagon City Mall. The faculty kind of scattered also.

I being the mature adult that I am went to see the new Transformers movie with Bill. The movie was awesome. Great special effects and the female characters were easy on the eyes. This irony is that I saw the original cartoon version of Transformers with Bill. There were four of us who saw it. We went with Phil and Dooz. In a way we felt like we were cheating on them. Our fascination with the movie stemmed with our child like love of being idiots. In addition, Dooz, Phil, and I took German together at Prep for three years and we convinced our Teacher, Herr Deaschner, to describe the conjugation of verbs in terms that relate only to Transformers lexicon. If you are wondering, yes we had dates and did hang out with girls.

One more Transformer related oddity. The theme song from the original cartoon version was classic 80’s cheese. The song was called, “The Touch”. Here is a YouTube clip of the song and a video of the cartoon. So what you ask. Well let me drop this bomb. The song did achieve its true fame until it appeared in the movie Boogie Nights, yes the Dirk Diggler’s story. The song is used when Reed and Dirk went to a studio, run by Michael Penn, to add musician to their porn resumes. Here is the clip from the movie. I think the whole thing is hilarious. Maybe everyone else already knew this. It was news to me.

Phil and Dooz we missed you guys. Long live immaturity in the face of overwhelming adulthood.

Later when all the students got back to campus we had them watch the documentary film, Gunner Palace. The movie follows an Army infantry group as they engage in patrols in Adhamiya, Iraq while they live in the bombed out palace of Saddam’s son Uday. It was quite informative. The movie was to give support to the speakers and case study that they will be studying on Monday. If you want a frank view of the Iraq War in 2003 without political rants, the director lets the soldiers talk, I recommend this movie. Just warning, lots of F-Bombs. War is H%#$!