tripgreat

Raymond Burr agreed to do the show only after insisting he be sitting in all of his scenes. Apparently he was done with being on his feet in almost every scene in “Perry Mason”. Brilliant negotiating!

In the weeks after the release of "We Were Soldiers" in 2002, Mel Gibson received a quiet message, off the press circuit and away from the polished interviews. The message wasn’t about box office numbers or reviews. It was about Sgt. Charles T. Fitts, a real Vietnam veteran who had fought under Lt. Col. Hal Moore during the Battle of Ia Drang in 1965 — the same battle Gibson had spent months recreating on-screen. Fitts had recently been hospitalized in Texas after a serious injury. He had watched We Were Soldiers from his hospital bed and, according to people close to him, the film brought everything rushing back. The helicopters. The jungle. The fear. The faces of men who never came home. Something about that stayed with Gibson. No cameras were called. No announcement was made. He quietly boarded a flight to Texas without media attention and asked his team to keep the visit private. When he arrived at the VA hospital, nurses were stunned to see him walk through the hallway alone wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, and carrying only a DVD copy of the film and a small black notebook. No entourage. No publicity team. Just Mel Gibson asking if he could sit with a soldier. Fitts was in his early sixties and recovering from multiple surgeries. When Gibson entered the room, the veteran instinctively tried to salute him, momentarily confusing him with someone from the past. Then he realized who it was and laughed softly. “You looked more tired in the movie than I ever saw Hal Moore,” he joked. Gibson smiled and answered quietly: “That’s probably because you actually lived it.” The conversation lasted more than an hour. A nurse who occasionally stepped inside later said the atmosphere in the room never felt like celebrity meeting fan. It felt like two men trying to bridge the distance between cinema and reality. Gibson asked him about everything. Not dramatic questions. Real ones. What did the gear actually feel like after hours in the jungle? How heavy were the boots when they got wet? What sound did the M16 make when dirt jammed the chamber? What happened emotionally after the helicopters disappeared and silence settled over the battlefield? Fitts slowly opened up in ways people around him hadn’t seen in years. At one point, he reached into his wallet and pulled out an old worn photograph of his platoon. Young faces staring back at the camera. Most of them never made it home. He handed it to Gibson carefully. “You showed their faces,” he said. “That’s what mattered.” According to hospital staff, Gibson became visibly emotional holding the photograph. For several seconds, he reportedly said nothing at all. Just stared at it quietly. Later, Gibson privately admitted to his team that the hour he spent with Fitts became the most honest moment of the entire press tour surrounding the film. Red carpets suddenly felt meaningless compared to sitting across from someone who had actually survived the war he had only pretended to fight. He refused to talk publicly about the visit afterward. The only thing he eventually said was that films like We Were Soldiers could introduce people to history, but veterans like Charles Fitts were the ones who truly educated him. When the visit ended, Gibson didn’t sign autographs. He didn’t pose for photos. He simply shook Fitts’ hand, thanked him quietly, and walked back down the hospital corridor alone. One VA staff member later summed the entire moment up perfectly. “He didn’t come here to be seen,” she said. “He came here to listen.” And maybe that’s why the memory of that visit still feels so real. Because for once, Hollywood stopped performing.

Books: Ozzy’s The Doctor is In Alice Cooper and Paul Stanley’s memoirs, as well as Roger Daltrey’s. Doc: The Behind The Music on REO Speedwagon

And there was no reason for someone with a Rolls in either of those places to come to “Small Town, NJ”?

Oh, get a room!

How far from Connecticut and Manhattan?

Really? What town?

Uh, Christmas Day is a pagan holiday. As for players missing their family time, how many hours do you need to spend around your extended family without getting the urge to get out for awhile? And the NFL is always the highest-rated show. “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”-Pogo

“WE NEED TO LET THEM DO INSIDER TRADING TO FEED THEIR FAMILIES” That was the actual argument just made in defense of politicians trading stocks. Members of Congress make $174,000 a year. The median American income is roughly $63,000. (3x less) Meanwhile the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour… also unchanged since 2009. And you’re seriously being told politicians need access to insider trading to survive. The system is designed to lead earth to neo-feudalism. And it’s becoming more brazen by the year. Asset ownership consolidates upward. Living standards decline downward. The middle class gets squeezed from both ends and disappears while the elite class accumulates more wealth, more influence, and more protection. Leaving behind a permanent underclass. And a permanent political-financial aristocracy at the top…

Yes.

The Peter Principle in action. And whose “peter” is obviously Putin’s.

We need removal of Trump via any means achievable. He IS a Russian asset. He is a convicted felon, and adjucated rapist of a child.

Really?

I’d say it’s completely related to their attitude about money, and whether they were feeding an addiction and acting from desperation and need. I feel rich because of shelter and having eaten. But as a young man, I often acted from a feeling of need and insecurity.

@RealRodLacroix Both?

@tripgreat Yes.

Is your wife a dental technician, or just kinky?

I delivered a eulogy off the top of my head (I’d had him for 50 years), and saw people in the church who had lost their fathers and spouses much younger. The cloud lifted in my gratitude for the 50 years we had.

It’s brutal. I watched my Dad lose weight and appetite for two years, until his upbeat attitude finally descended into a loss of appetite as the cancer metastasized into his stomach. I had time to prepare myself, but when he died I was still in shock for days. (Cont)

“Reign O’er Me” “Behind Blue Eyes” “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

“You’re Gone”, Diamond Rio(Paul Williams/Jon Vezner)

I have never heard of The Secretary of Defense campaigning. It’s a severe ethical violation, if we had an FBI that actually held people accountable for ethics violations by this RICO conspiracy in the White House.