A Thurderstorm of War News

The war news today is rolling in like a violent summer thunderstorm: American troops killed, wounded and taken prison, a British war plane shot down by “friendly fire,” an ITN reporter killed, two of his crew still missing, an insane U.S. G.I. tossing grenades into officers’ tents, killing one and wounding a dozen. And the skies over Baghdad are once again red and black with fire and smoke after another quick, powerful, pinpoint bombardment.

It is almost impossible to take it all in on this beautiful, sunny spring day in Jersey City. And the Oscars are on tv tonight? It is really hard to care about who wins best key grip or whatever. And of course we will have to listen to actors give their two cents on the war. Can’t wait to hear their educated insight. The NY Daily News has a two-page feature in today’s sports section giving us athletes’ thoughts on the war. I don’t get it. But then again, I’m not much of a sports fan. Though News legend Bill Gallo—a fine cartoonist, sports writer, columnist and WWII combat vet—has a nice piece mixing war and sports.

Of course it is a brilliant thing that the little details of life move along happily during such a serious time. While bartending tonight, I plan to have one tv tuned to CNN, one showing sports and the Oscars will be on the other. Now that’s American television.

My beautiful friend Angela and I took a few hours off from watching the war last night to try and get into the spirit of the Oscars. Turns out that we haven’t seen most of the films up for awards. So, we dropped twenty bucks for two tickets to “Gangs of New York.” What an amazing disappointment. Old Marty Scorsese took almost three hours not to tell a story well. And the historical inaccuracies made it almost unbearable to watch. Thanks be to God for Daniel Day-Lewis. He was insanely brilliant as Billy the Butcher.

But now back to the battle to rid Iraq of the Butcher of Baghdad.