The Battle of the Bulge

The 28th Pennsylvania : Their Finest Hour

Going through the Europe files last night and I came to Luxembourg. During December 16 to December 26, 1944 in Luxembourg, in a place called the Ardennes forest, Hitler threw his last roundhouse of the war against a stretch of front that was considered impassable due to the rugged terrain. It was felt that no attack would come at this point so Eisenhower was rotating units here for rest and the front was patrolled fairly thinly. My uncle’s division, the 28th Pennsylvania, was put here after 100+ days of straight combat going all the way back to Normandy in June 1944.

It’s a Yankee-Hatin’ Xmas in June

The Boss is angry. The GM is “on a big hook”. Firing the conditioning coach after just about everyone pops a hammy. Hour long, closed-door meetings that cut into BP and regular strategy meetings. 14.5 games back and in last place on 5-game losing streak that last night, featured a straight steal of home off Andy Pettite! And they’re all waiting around breathlessly for ****n Roger Clemens to give them 5 innings of stiff, 45 year old, 20 million dollar, high-80’s hurling every 5th day! hahaha.

Cheny is Evil. The Taliban? Misunderstood.

I got to talking politics a little with the woman next to me at work. Somehow it came up where she repeated the oft-chanted, Democratic/Liberal-talking-point, “Cheney is evil”. Now this woman is older (50’s) and is pretty darned smart, so when I heard the talking point come out of her, verbatim, I was fascinated. I asked her if she was joking. “No”, she said she was serious, and kept repeating that “he is just evil”. I said, “well, what has he done that is evil? Can you give me some examples?”

Tonka

Click here for Amazon link to a great Tonka book

From the used book store in Seattle: Elliot Bay Books: It’s a book called Tonka purchased mainly for the photos of all the old Tonka Toys that define childhood.  However, upon reading it, I found that there was much more than just photos. The authors (one is a former Veep of the Co.), tell an interesting story about a small toy manufacturer from Mounds Minnesota.

There are interesting profiles of Tonka employees and a detailed history of the company before manufacturing was moved from Lake Minnetonka to El Paso, TX. The company was bought in 1991 by Hasbro and although the Tonka brand still rings up millions a year, most of the manufacturing now takes place in (surprise) China. –fog

GI Joe you can shave

The recent Six Million Dollar Man Squad 51, Station 51 post brought up the whole action figure thread and when you think about it, these things are a little strange. For the most outlandish, there’s no question for me. It’s this:

GI Joe Torture: Shaving at Abu Ghraib

The recent Six Million Dollar Man post brought up the whole action figure thread and when you think about it, these things are a little strange. For the most outlandish, there’s no question for me. It’s this:

The Dr. Zaius action figure. Oh yea, they made all the Planet of the Apes action figures: Cornelius, General Aldo, even Heston.

As a parent, (early 1970’s) seeing boys play with dolls might have been a little unnerving, but ape dolls? Forget it. In fact, I can recall when my brothers and I got on board with the GI Joe craze, some kid razzed us, “…hey you play with dolls…”

I didn’t know what to do. This upset me for an instant. I thought, “hey, he’s right, they ARE dolls!” But I guess I got over it. I was the youngest, so I was following the older guys pretty much no matter what. I mean, they probably could have had Liberace dolls and I would have said, “cool! A sequin piano! Can I play?”

Still, I don’t remember us actually playing with them as much as talking about what guy you had and what accessories you had and “…yea, I want the jeep that shoots the missiles”. It was typical guy talk: wishing for equipment that they didn’t need. When you get older it’s cars or computer gadgets.

So it was always comparison stuff. And one day we compared the lifelike, peachfuzz beard and mustache that the doll had. My brother’s didn’t, and mine did. So somehow, I got the idea that it would be cool to SHAVE my guy’s beard off. How do you shave a doll? I found a razor blade and carefully (I thought) cut his face into a little pointy wedge—but there was no more facial hair! I win!

Until my brothers saw this and just tooled on me for cutting my guy’s lower face off. I wish I had photos of this (What I wouldn’t give). So then I was crying because I willingly ruined my guy and every time we got these things out, everyone took one look at my guy and said, “WTF is wrong with your guy?”

“I shaved him, check it out”, I would defend.

That never worked, he had a pointy face. And the jokes would start all over again and I would end up bummed. And these were expensive enough toys that my mom was not getting me a new guy. [Mom, to my older brothers] “Why did you let him shave his doll?”

My older brothers would say, “but Mom, he didn’t tell us he was shavin’ his guy!”

I just wished I had saved some of this stuff because there are entire conventions of collectors out there who pay good money for the vintage Joes and the stuff that went with it.

I’m not kidding, click here for a GI Joe Convention site I googled up

[Leonard Nimoy voice] “Is this the face of the man who shaved his guy?”

The real fun toy for me was the regulation, plastic “army guys”, as my nephew calls them. We would set those things up (with the blocks of course) for hours. Our set was so old that we had real authentic looking German guys.

Here they are, I found the exact set that we had:

I recall that the crouching shooter was very hard to knock over, so you liked that (especially if the brother-on-brother, knock-over rule was in effect). Also the guy running like a dork with the big Bazooka was not valuable in the army man scheme of things. His Bazooka was not pointing at anything! So you’d try and lay him down on a block, you know, and aim it at your brother’s stuff. It went like this:

“Hey, you can’t lay him down or he’s dead!”

“Why not? He can shoot like that~”

“Can not”…

In fact, those army guys are still at my folks and one day recently I joined my nephews who were playing with them. As they were setting the men up, I said, “Ok, are you guys ready for the Germans? Oh, hey, wait a minute, you have the Krauts mixed in with the American guys!”

They said, “Who are the Germans?” (and thought, “Uncle Foggy is weird”)

I thought, “I feel old”. (But not too old to help them set up the guys)

– fog

Addendum: Someone said they probably make Liberace dolls and free enterprise being what it is, we found them. Can’t make this up: