Immediately after our show at the Kuwait base, the officers and USO crew rounded us up onto the bus with the brisk efficiency of SS soldiers on a Dachau-bound train platform, and the driver sped us to the Kuwait military airport for our imminent flight to Baghdad. We got off the bus, strapped on our helmets and Kevlar vests, and were ushered into a waiting room where . . . we just sort of hung out . . . forever. I was starting to see that THIS was the way of the U.S. Military: another example of Hurry Up and Kuwait.

After an hour adjusting and complaining about our gear, the officers told us our flight was going to be delayed for two hours. The way du jour to pass the time on this trip was to make fun of each other. We occupied ourselves that way until someone went too far, someone's panties got twisted in a bunch (admittedly, sometimes they were my panties), and everyone retreated back into their respective caves. In solitary refresher mode, the assaulted victim either moved on or plotted his verbal smackdown revenge.

One of the funnier ongoing "battles" was between Stu "the Jew" and Casper "the B-Boy." Despite the fact that Stu is a rapper and Casper is a B-Boy, they are both Canadians from good families. With the approximate combined weight of 250 pounds (dripping wet with tube socks on), they have the combined toughness of Elton John's asshole . . . wait, I imagine that's pretty tough. Actually, really tough. Beef jerky tough. Bad example.

Casper felt like Stu was constantly "dissing" him and, as a vital member of the hardcore B-Boy crew, "Boogie Brats," he wasn't having it. He told Stu he "better stop." Stu couldn't resist: "What are you gonna do, Casper? Ooooooh, you gonna dance? 'I'm a dancer, and I'm gonna dance all over you! I'll dance you to death! I'll poke you in the eye with my spirit fingers because I'm such a tough dancer! Don't make me dance OVER there! I'll give you ONE SINGULAR SENSATION in your nuts with my fouette!'"

Everybody in the waiting room was laughing . . . except Casper. He retreated behind this hard demeanor that stood at odds with his cherubic, pimply 17 year-old face. I felt sorry for him. This type of energy always makes me anxious and nervous. It reminds me too much of riding home on the cheese bus with all the brothers in high school after football games. On the one hand, I always feared being challenged to a "Yo Mama" contest. On the other hand, I was excited at the prospect of being called to task, because I spent the entire season storing up good lines.

"Yo Mama ain't got no fingers, talkin' bout she wanna be a Pointer Sista!"

"Yo Mama ain't got no legs, talkin' bout she wanna stand up for her rights!"

Nothing?

The flight was now officially delayed three hours. Without the unsurpassable entertainment of Casper and Stu fighting, we didn't know what to do with ourselves. Someone decided it might be fun to have Paul Wall read Jamie Kennedy's journal. Whether it was sheer boredom, sleep deprivation, or divine intervention that inspired this, Paul recounting Jamie's life out loud was the funniest thing any of us had ever heard. It was the perfect mixture of brilliance and retardation. Or the perfect combination of retardation and . . . retardation.

Paul spoke in his hick Vin Diesel gravel with the earnestness of an NPR reporter. I remember thinking that there was something there in his humble rendition that captured the essence of comedy; if only I could distill, deconstruct, and analyze it, I wouldn't have to resort to fart jokes and some of the bathroom bits I do in order to dig myself out of (and sometimes into) trouble onstage.

Finally, after hours of waiting, we were told our flight to Baghdad was cancelled. On the depressing and quiet ride back to the Kuwaiti Radisson, we found out that a military helicopter had been shot down and airspace was being restricted for all non-essential air traffic until it was deemed safe. It was good to know that they were being cautious, but FUUUUUUUUUUUCK, I wanted to tell my poop jokes already. (Before you think I'm a prick, no one died or was seriously injured in the aforementioned helo crash.)

Tracy, our USO liaison, tried to brighten our day by telling us the "good news": because of our delay, we would be flying into Baghdad the next morning with the cheerleaders for the Buffalo Bills, "The Buffalo Jills." We hooted and hollered like extras on M*A*S*H and the Colonel just told us we were going to Seoul for "3 days R&R!"

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The next day, we went through the same process as the day before and ended up in the same place at the same hour. Fortunately, there were girls with us this time. The combination of cameras and boredom compelled me to fuck with them. I decided to affect a ridiculous British accent and pretend I was a film producer--having made a gentleman's bet with Jamie that my "British" and "Producer" combo meal would garner me more attention than his fame would him. Everyone encouraged me to run with the idea, which, not surprisingly, went from "awesome" to "shut the fuck up already" faster than the opening scene of a Michael Bay film. Twenty minutes into my George Plimpton Masterpiece Theatre accent, I had an eerie Jacob's Ladder flashback.

I was reminding myself of the time in elementary school when I kicked Trad Hughes in the sternum. I was at a birthday party with a bunch of kids, and we were all play-fighting. I was being chased, so I grabbed a tree branch, lifted myself up, swung around, and kicked Trad's torso with the soles of my Kmart banana shoes (remember those?) facing straight out. I connected with a satisfying thud, and he collapsed onto his back in awe, "Wow! That was like Buck Rogers!" Another kid came by and gave me a high-five. I was a star! Of course, my instinct for the limelight instantly kicked in and for the rest of the party, I tried kicking everyone, particularly Trad Hughes, in the chest with my 24th century alien-crushing move. By the time the presents were all unwrapped, every kid there hated me: "Oh shit, here comes Bill with his cheap yellow bobos--careful--he's gonna try to kick you in the chest!"

It was a great example of the law of diminishing returns, and one I should have taken to heart as I sunk myself deeper and deeper into this ridiculous cockney brogue. The thing is, normally I can rock an accent. I get big laughs onstage with it. Unfortunately, it had been so long since I'd done British that I started sounding more like a Chinese Jewish Cowboy than anything else. Even Kevin Costner would have looked down on my dialect work.

Luckily, there ain't a plethora of Limeys in Upstate New York, and the captain of the Buffalo Jills started developing a little crush on me, the poor thing. She wanted my MySpace url and to visit me in London. Maybe she thought I could be the one to take her away from the wretched misery that is Buffalo . . . or that is the Bills. I should have come clean and told her I was putting on an accent for fun, but I kept it going because I like to think I'm a method-asshole. Plus, I couldn't admit that it was a prank, for fear of completely ostracizing our entire group from the only vaginas we were allowed to be near. Jamie and everyone else just looked at me half-smiling, completely annoyed at my resiliency and tin ear. I had become officially amusing to no one. Like Operation Iraqi Freedom, my joke needed an exit strategy.

It arrived in the form of the C-130 assigned to take us to Baghdad.

C-130s are those huge military cargo planes that transport EVERYTHING the military needs--from tanks to troops to food. Maybe to creep us out, but hopefully to warn us, one of the officers said our C-130 (since it was coming from a deadly part of the Sunni triangle) "could very well be carrying dead bodies." Furthermore, since it IS a cargo plane, those bodies would not be stored below the cabin, underneath the seat in front of you, or above you in an overhead compartment. NOPE. These bodies would be just feet away in body bags covered by sheets and hoisted down with rope. Yay.

Chilled to the bone by this revelation, we once again fastened on our Kevlar and helmets and anchored ourselves into wooden slabs that served as seats. Tracy warned us (she seemed to like "warning" us of things) that the pilots were probably going to employ evasive combat maneuvers for the landing into Saddam Hussein International Airport in Baghdad, although the name of the airport had been changed simply to Baghdad International. I'm surprised ol' George didn't dub it Operation Iraqi Freedom International Airport, or Liberation International Airport, or even just Barney. He loves that fucking dog.

I'm a shitty traveler (pun simultaneously intended and unintended). Not only do I tend to get weird and squirrel-on-crack-like during turbulence, I also tend to get diarrhea. Since we were flying into a war zone, it wouldn't have surprised me if I got EXPLOSIVE diarrhea. Okay, the pun was intended that time.

We started the descent and I braced myself for the combat maneuvers. I heard a loud noise and a bump and I gripped the arm of the head cheerleader--oh fuck, we were being shot at, I thought! It took me a minute to realize that, in fact, we had landed. I felt dumb. I didn't know if I was bummed or excited that the pilots opted out of the evasive techniques this time. Either way, I had inadvertently squealed and ruined the Buffalo Jill's pipe dream of staying with me in my Piccadilly flat.

When the C-130 came to a stop and opened its Serena Williams-sized rear end for us to deplane, we walked out into a different world. Looking across the flat horizon, we were amazed by the stillness of it all. It was a desert. No shit. But there didn't seem to be a single structure more than three stories tall as far as the eye could see. In the east, there was a plume of black smoke rising off in the distance. I asked one of the officers what it was and he barely looked, shrugging his shoulders.

From the tarmac, we were led to another short blue and white bus. There was a group of soldiers, mostly black men, hanging around, who brightened up at the sight of Jamie. I'm always bemused by the way most urban black men address Jamie. It's always something like, "Awwwwwwwwwww, shit! Jamie Kennedy! Yo, you one stupid motherfucker! You retarded yo! You the dumbest ass piece of shit ever! . . . . I love you, dawg!" He gets love in the 'hood in a way that I think would shock most white people.

Surprisingly, most of the brothers dropped Jamie like yesterday's meatloaf when Paul Wall came around. I don't think I had ever really heard a Paul Wall song before, other than "Grills," but the boys on the frontline seemed to know every song. I felt like a fuddy-duddy, completely out of touch with pop culture and these crazy kids nowadays!

No one knew Stu Stone at all which, admittedly, made me laugh because he sometimes lorded his pseudo-celebrity over me on the road. I reminded him that HERE, in Baghdad, he was an unknown little Jew who would sooner find himself getting beheaded than getting head from one of these Buffalo Jills models. It didn't help his cause (with the soldiers or the Jills) that he'd been scared about the trip from the get-go. Before the trip was even finalized he would call and ask me, "Aren't you scared?" I would just break into demonic laughter and say, "Well, would you rather go out a floppy-jowled, sack of bones with a vial of FloMax as your only companion or would you like to go out with a BANG!" Then I would tell him about the recent slew of helo strikes and the rising chaos in and around Baghdad, and continue my maniacal giggling. He would call me "fucking nuts" and hang up. I don't know why I loved torturing Stu so much . . . is it because I'm German and he's Jewish? Hmmmm . . .

After Paul finished his lovefest and the officers finished conferring on our next move, we boarded the bus and whipped out our cameras like Japanese tourists (again) poised to shoot something un-be-reev-a-brrrrrr.

What I saw during the five kilometer trek aboard the convoy to Camp Victory was remarkable: nothing.

Now, I know there's a lot of press these days about the "wall" being built in Baghdad between the "International Zone" (that's where you don't get shot in the face if you're an American) and the "Red Zone" (that's where you DO get shot in the face, declared jihad on, ululated at). There is some sort of controversy about it in the American press and in the U.S. legislature. Here's the irony: it's already up. The entire ride to the base (the largest complex in Baghdad, housing up to 14,000 troops . . . okay, I Googled that) afforded little opportunity for dazzling photography because all we did was drive through a maze of 12-foot T-shaped blast walls adorned at the top with rolling barbed wire, like metallic afros. On the one hand, we felt safe, ensconced within the barriers. On the other hand, we couldn't see shit. Sure, every once in a while, the concrete megalith was interrupted by a field of rubble, mud, and makeshift shanties, but no one's winning a Pulitzer with that kind of picture. It's not even good enough for a MySpace default photo.

After rumbling through this dirty, gravel-lined labyrinth of narrow barriers, our little blue bus suddenly turned a corner and we arrived at Iraqi Freedom's Ground Zero--the grounds surrounding Saddam Hussein's Al-Faw palace resort. It was like a science fiction movie where we stepped through a grimy portal into some fantastical world. It was surreal. When I say surreal, I don't mean sorority girl "I-can't-believe-we're-fucking. I-just-met-you-at-the-Tri-Delt-party-earlier-tonight-this-is-so-surreal" surreal; I mean it was Willie Wonka's secret chocolate factory surreal. I half expected to see little grinning brown people donning candy Kevlar and singing the Oompa Loompa song: "What do you get when you fuck with George Bush . . ."

The headquarters for the Iraq War are in a resort. Literally. Al-Faw palace sits in a resort complex originally reserved for Saddam's VIPs. There are lakes, ponds, islands with palm trees (replete with coconuts), ornate buildings and palaces in every direction. Off in the distance, one of the officers pointed out Flintstone Village, a faux-town based on the cartoon (some allege Saddam was obsessed with it) that Saddam had made for his grandchildren. I could see the little round caves with the round entrances all clustered together as if the town of Bedrock were a Rio slum.

I didn't quite understand the novelty of building fake cave dwellings in Iraq. Couldn't Saddam have said, "Hey, children, you like the Flintstones? I'm sending you on a bus to Flintstone Village!" and then have them carted off to the Pakistan/Afghanistan border to go wander around some fucking caves? It felt about as redundant as a sand museum, or a "gays only" dance club in San Francisco. Really? You need that?

I had to go meet the Flintstones! I had to. I wanted to go so bad I would have kicked a newborn puppy in his soft spot for the chance. When they told me that it wouldn't be possible, I about had an aneurism. Apparently, the insurgents had done some damage to it. I find it ironic that the insurgents could actually destroy a monument to the Stone Age, but I guess they went BAM BAM, Pebbles went flying everywhere, and now it's nothing but a bunch of Barney Rubble.

Flintstone Village. Didn't believe me, did you? Suck it.

I had to keep reminding my grinning face that I was in a war zone, not Six Flags.

The mordancy of my feelings were only heightened by the fact that we were driving into Baghdad during a particularly clear and beautiful day. It was spring in Iraq, so the temperature was mild and tourist-friendly. The sun was glistening off the water and fish were jumping out of it like some Robert Redford movie. In truth, it did actually feel like we were driving onto a set.

Soon we would realize that, in effect, we weren't too far off the mark.

Posted by Bill Dawes at 5:47 PM

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Posted by: Sarahh~ at June 21, 2007 01:51 PM

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