You know, the one about the river in Egypt. Yeah, I think I’m in denial about the semester starting next week, and so I’m avoiding anything scholarly or pedagogical in favor of the personal- and family-oriented. To that end, here are three more pictures: Dad, Mom and Dad, and me and David.
That River Joke
Your mom is pretty Zelda Fitzgerald-fabulous there!
As for my own denial, well, you’ve seen my posts lately. Plus, I’ve been using exercise as a procrastination measure: I recently bought a jump rope and acquired some weights on Freecycle, so it’s been lots of jumping rope, lifting weights, and doing crunches over here. As procrastination activities go, I guess exercise is a better one than most, right?
Well, you have presented to me the only picture I have ever seen that makes smoking look “cool”. In all my dealings with you and your family I never really noticed a resemblance between you and your father, but that picture is a dead ringer. Mannerisms and all. Wow! If I did not know better I would think that that was a black and white picture from the barracks in Ft. Stewart. Except none of the women there were nearly as pretty as your ma!
Barracks? Did somebody say barracks?
And one more, for good measure.
Something makes me think that you have been holding onto that picture just waiting for a moment like this. Damnit, there goes my political career. That is so funny, Mike. Now you’re going to make me go through my pictures for some juicy stuff. Any chance I could pay you for some doubles of the pic’s you have of all of us? It’s a good thing you don’t have video or audiotape of some of those nights!
Rob, I’ve only got a couple pictures like that, but I’ll gladly scan them and send you some high-quality photo-paper printouts.
I’m just happy in the knowledge of my ultimate military victory: one wet PT session when we were doing the Big Loop, I had the opportunity to call the following cadence:
If if rains all morning, we’re in luck
(If it rains all morning, we’re in luck)
We’ll run six miles and pretend we’re ducks
(We’ll run six miles and pretend we’re ducks)
Quack quack waddle waddle quack quack waddle waddle
(Quack quack waddle waddle quack quack waddle waddle)
Sundquist stumbled and almost fell out of formation holding his arms around his gut, he was laughing so hard.
And, actually, I think Cohen or somebody did get some video of that party Kurpinski had where you were drinking out of two bottles at the same time and, according to Ski, “Hey! Ed’s talking like Chewbacca from Star Wars!”
I think the smoking face inspired a memorial to smoking the other night for me. I don’t think I could draw a conclusion about familial resemblance; all I see is the smoke.
I really love the last post of you holding your brother.
PS what’s the date of the above photos? You look so young and much crazier than I envision you now.
Part of it’s the smoking, but I think what probably also struck Rob was the way my dad’s sitting in the first picture: recently, when I was out West, I was sitting down and chatting with family members, my foot crossed over my knee like in that picture, and my aunt said, “Look at him. He looks just like his father, sitting there.” Inherited mannerisms, indeed, Rob.
I like the picture of me with David, too. As it happens, he’s the one who inherits that armchair, as soon as he gets out.
Crazier? Hm. Well, then there’s me as the would-be ne’er-do-well at 21, there on the right. Barefoot in the parking lot, with Busch in hand.
Then there’s two or three years later, as a young Spec-4, from roughly the time of the barracks photo from my comment above: 1993 or 1994.
If memory serves, it had been a wretchedly hot July day in Savannah, spent busting down split-rims with a pickaxe in the motor pool. Hence my peeved expression. The laughable peach-fuzz over my lip is the very early stage of my first and only (and, obviously, ridiculously ill-considered) attempt to cultivate a mustache.
As far as smoking goes, you’ll note the bright red ashtray prominent at lower right.
What a RRrrrrogue. The barefoot photo is awesome. What a bone and you look so pissed off. Superb choices.
I might have you beat, Mike. I got off the cadence of all time, which of course very few people understood.
hip hop body rockin doin a doo
(insert repeat here)
beer drinking breath stinking sniffin glue
(insert repeat here)
Forgive me if I am repeating it incorrectly, but none the less it was a classic. Getting your Captain to repeat the Beastie Boys is a classic in and of itself.
About the double fisting beer…I always said I was years ahead of my time. Now, I only have two more things for you about your pictures.
Na na na na na na na BATMAN!
and
What’s up with the hair? Looks like a mix between Flock of Seagulls and The Cure. Come on everyone sing along…Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick. The one that makes me… Well, you get the point.
Mike, how do you feel about that photo of your father? Uniform, curling smoke, leg crossed (so manly and cliche) and … the clincher, nonchalantly flipping through a Playboy? I love the photo for its honesty but wonder how you feel about it because its message is so blatantly and obviously set in days gone past and set afire.
It may be something you should consider if your students are perusing your site because if they don’t ask that question, they should have thought it.
Point well taken, Michelle. For me, it’s just — well — Dad, when he was much, much younger. And, as you point out, it’s also such a hyper-masculine cliché as to border on self-parody — that grin indicates to me a certain staged-ness about the picture. And then there’s that historic quality to it; the idea that this was a time when it was OK to flip through a Playboy at the office. So yeah, it’s a loaded picture, and I’m probably too close to it via my dad to adequately understand just how loaded it is.
But maybe people who see it might think about how one might do a contemporary re-framing of that photo: cigarettes no longer have the same cultural cachet they held in the late fifties and early sixties, but I still see plenty of young students who smoke; and perhaps “lad mags” like FHM and Maxim have come to occupy the cultural position that Playboy held forty and fifty years ago. I wonder what Clancy might have to say about it.