How the bridge got it's name

We called it Weidemann Bridge.

It was about three quarters of the way down Route Michigan, if you were headed from Fort Corregidore to TQ, out there in Anbar Province. The bridge was the only one on the route, and was constantly manned by 1/506th on the topside, and only military traffic was allowed to pass underneath. The 506th had placed stretches of concertina wire on both sides of the bridge, which forced any traffic going under to slow to a crawl to get through it, so that even if a carbomb were driven towards the bridge, the guys on top would have plenty of time to light his ass up. Well, let's be fair, light his OR HER ass up.

But that came later. For the first couple of months, they tried to use stone blocks, about a foot and a half on a side, to force traffic to slow and weave.

Sgt. Weidemann was one of the NCO's for the cooks, and was widely regarded as being as full of shit as a five-hundred-head cow pasture in mid-June, and stupid enough that he almost needed watering every day. And it was he who gave the bridge it's name.

A convoy run was coming back under the bridge one night, and Sgt. Weidemann decided to ignore the guys on top. Wouldn't have mattered in the daylight, but the sun had just gone down, and, just like always, the drivers were using Night-Vision Goggles to see. The 506th would lend a hand on dark nights, when the lack of ambient light was so low that it made it very hard to spot the stone blocks in the road. The guys on the bridge would play their IR lights over the blocks to let the drivers know where the obstacles were, allowing them to be safely avoided.

Of course, Sgt. Weidemann was having none of it. I don't know what it was, maybe he got a testosterone rush, maybe he thought the guys on the bridge were insolent, maybe he decided to show the stone blocks how tough the LMTV he was driving was. Whatever the reason, eyewitnesses say that at one point, he just hit the gas and ran over one of the blocks.

Now, an LMTV is essentially a huge, top-heavy pickup truck, painted an unsightly green. Getting up an over an obstacle that's only one and a half feet high isn't a problem. But, when you ramp up to about ten miles an hour, as the Sgt. did, and you hit the obstacle with only one tire, as the Sgt. did, well, the driver of the truck might just find that the passenger side of the truck has risen into the air, and shortly thereafter might just find that the truck has, in fact, fallen onto it's side. OK, now replace the 'might' with 'did'.

To cut through the verbiage, dumbass knocked his truck over by being really stupid.

I don't think the Sgt.'s named would have graced the bridge in our minds, if we'd just been able to use another LMTV to get Sgt. Weidemann's back on it's wheels. What sealed the deal was that as soon as we started to right the fallen truck, tracer fire lit up the night. Yep, we had to correct this idiots mistake while taking small arms and RPG fire. Took about 45 minutes.

And so the bridge was christened, Weidemann Bridge.

Mean Joe Queenan

I like Joe Queenan.

For those of you who have never heard of this sage of the cineplex, I envy you. You get to go out and pick up one of Joe's books, maybe 'Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler' or 'If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be In Trouble' or suchlike, and experience the joy of reading the man's take on the world of entertainment. And by 'take on', I mean 'evisceration of', because Joe, man, Joe's mean.

Joe Queenan is, pretty much by his own admission, a professional bastard. This guy actually wrote a book about his attempt to be a good person, in which he takes the time to go through his complete written works to determine how many evil things he's said over the years, with only a little 'well, this guy deserved it' back-pedaling.

Being good didn't take.

Of course, he's not just mean. Just being mean would make him a depressing read. Joe is funny as hell. He's a virtual compendium of nasty remarks that you wish you'd said to someone, and will try to remember for future use. In the words of Dave Barry: "If you're a fan of informed viciousness (and who isn't?), you'll love Joe Queenan."

How can you not like a guy who once spent and entire day being Mickey Rourke? Who's made not one but three attempts to actually perform some of the less likely stunts that appear in movies, and has concluded, after endangering life and limb, that movies are full of shit? A guy who once described Abraham Lincoln as "looking like he'd come in a distant second in an ax fight with a stegosaurus"?

Beautiful.