The post office lost disk 1 of Season 2 of 24 (curse their hides), so I channel surfed most of last night. Highlights included the "Good Old Blues Brothers Boys" sequence from The Blues Brothers, one of the finest movies based on an SNL skit. Am I damning it with faint praise? I love their rendition of "Stand By Your Man" ("bay-beh!"). I'm echoing a friend's sentiments here (hi, Nancy!): I miss the skinny, uptight Dan Ackroyd.

Then I watched Mail Call, the program R. Lee Ermey hosts on the Hitler Channel. It's an enjoyable program on military hardware. This episode perked my interest because he did a tandem skydive with members of the U.S. Army's Parachute Team, the Golden Knights. Hell, I'd be a hot skydiver, too, if I got to jump on the taxpayer's dollar, whine whine whine. Well, they do a lot of demos which can't hurt our sport.

For the most part. Some members of the Golden Knights were to do a demonstration jump into the Huntsville International Airport for a huge airshow. They had to cancel because a few weeks earlier, quite a few of them got injured jumping into a race track in extremely high, gusty winds. That was a dumbass thing to do; it puts a black eye on our sport as well as gets people killed. And not just jumpers. People have been injured because a skydiver landed on them. I sincerely hope reprimands aplenty were administered for that stunt.

The followup is our drop zone was asked to fill in. We were happy to do so, although the airport were a bunch of tightwads towards us, especially since I know that the Golden Knights ain't cheap. I was told by some of our ground crew that the audience was told that the Golden Knights had to cancel because of the events over in Iraq. Sure, fine, whatever. In all honesty I guess the truth wouldn't have gone over too well: "The Golden Knights had to cancel because a bunch of them bounced like rubber biscuits on the last demo they did. To fill in, here's a completely different set of dumbasses!"

Aaaaanyway. I love it when skydiving is portrayed in a good light on T.V. so kudos to the Knights and Ermey for that segment. Have I ever told you how much I loathe Real T.V.? Every time I see a skydiving incident the narrators do *not* get the story straight. I'm sure the other sport incidents on that show are portrayed incorrectly, as well.

After Mail Call, I watched a 30 minute segment about American propaganda during WWII. It was interesting and not surprising. Hell, it was propaganda. I'm looking forward to all their programming about D-Day that's coming up; the 60th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy is this year.

And then hey! It's Band of Brothers for the umpity umpth time! It was the episode Crossroads, where Captain Winters is promoted to Battalion X.O. and is frustrated by all the boredom and paperwork. The ep prominently features a lot of Damian Lewis, including a partially nekkid DL, so yeah I watched it again. For the umpity umpth time.

The Hitler channel rules!