This weekend I had the fortune of witnessing the majestic spectacle that is the Blue Angels. Yes, Fleet Week fever infected our otherwise passive city once more. These sky-scarring birds staked their stratospheric claim upon the horizon in all of their usual blue and gold glory. (Caution: I’m on the verge of busting out some iambic pentameter). I’ve intermittently seen the high-flying hijinx of our nation’s aerial elite over the past twenty or so years. And over this time, to my dilettante eye, it seems their repertoire has remained virtually stagnant. Sure, like the Stones or Dylan, or any other venerable touring act, there’s an unsaid expectation to perform the time-honored classics. I’ll grant them this - as we can’t all be of the
avant-garde Navy fanboy variety.
Some of the Angels’ crowd-pleasing standbys included: “The Smokey Loop d’ Loop,” “The Smokey Corkscrew,” “The Inverted Flip-off,” “The Smokey Inverted Flip-off,” “The How Slow Can You Go,” as well as a more esoteric aerial shout-out to their
roller-rink pro brethren on the ground: “Shoot the Duck.” (Apparently there’s a mutual respect shared between these two groups - what with them both being the respective leading practitioners of totally kick-ass moves and all). That bit of flamboyance was a welcomed surprise. I found it disarmingly quirky – no matter how tenuous their hot-shot flyboy affinity may be (I can only assume that grazing the outer reaches of the thermosphere at Mach 3 is akin to skating backwards under the glorious void of black light). But beyond that dalliance, it was a virtual carbon copy of their ’89 Portland performance – or virtually every other show for that matter. Have we really reached the creative apex of our aeronautical grandstanding?! Come on! There’s a war on! They could at least make an attempt to awe us (if not shock surmounting rogue nations) with an inverted Loop d’ loop-flip-off-twirly-smoky-plume-gyrator-surprise or something. Better yet, why not light up our habitually neglected neighbors in the East Bay and drop a daisy cutter on Jack London Square (and maybe even get a little al Jeezera coverage as an added bonus). At a young age I learned that nothing scares the opposition like a little preemptive self-inflicted masochism.
To put things in perspective, in the past twenty years even Paul Hogan has exhibited more aesthetic dexterity (And he didn’t even know he was being filmed during the shooting of the original Crocodile Dundee. True story). But alas, I should give credit where credit is due: the Angels’ perennial felicity once again manifest itself in an ear-piercing and veritably seamless, pitch-perfect synchronicity - the likes of which I’ve not encountered since The Police’s magnum opus. No, not really. I just wanted to turn
synchronicity into a pun. Puns are arguably the highest form of comedy, you know. You can’t teach it. And please excuse the sycophantic purple prose describing the royal splendor of the Angels. I was just compensating for all the jaded criticism – because, you know, in reality, they’re pretty decent pilots and most likely pretty okay guys and junk like that. And after all, what have I ever done to defend our nation and/or support the snow cone industry? Well, actually, upon returning from IstanbuI two years ago, I
did turn over to the Feds some 350 Polaroid shots I’d taken of suspicious looking characters I’d come across while there. I wasn't being prejudiced or anything, I just snapped shots of guys with that unmistakable, swarthy terrorist look to them. U! S! A! U! S! A!
But behind the artifice, behind the surreptitious recruiting methods, and behind the hackneyed pandering of Fleet Week, there lurks a much more pressing concern. A recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine found Fleet Week to be a primary transcontinental courier of venereal diseases (second only to the African Osprey). This epidemic is of a scale not seen since the
Latin lover conquistadors plundered the virgins shores of the "East Indies" in the 16th century. The armada’s migratory nature, compounded with a pervasive frat boy mentality that encourages incessant drunkenness and rampant sexual promiscuity is a volatile combination. The epidemic can also be attributed to the less acknowledged, though still time-honored
secret of the sea: homosexuality. Scandal arose in 1979 when The Village People’s seminal hit, “In the Navy,” blew up the airwaves, shedding light upon this clandestine activity and threatening to mar the global prominence of our nation’s fleet. A sub-rosa emergency meeting was held by the Joint Chief of Staffs during which they drew plans to sabotage the band at the height of their powers. Their ploy was manifest in one simple catchphrase:
Disco Is Dead. This shrewd turn-of-phrase soon became the mantra for the growing number of disaffected youths who were fed up with the excesses of hairspray and polyester and Travolta. And so shortly thereafter, disco did indeed meet its demise. And so too did The Village People, with each member relegated back to their respective day job (All except for the Indian. He managed to strike it rich in the gaming industry).
The infection rate left in the Fleet Week’s wake has been on a steady decline since the tragic events of September 11, however. I can only speculate that this decline is somehow attributed to the fact that we’ve beefed up our global military presence considerably in the aftermath of 9/11. In doing so, our nation’s more formidable sailors have been deployed, in turn leaving the Fleet Week contingency with a crew mostly comprised of those deemed unfit for combat. And as a result, our port cities are now seeing an unprecedented influx of inept B-team-poop-deck-swabbers with sub par skill-sets (be it physical, social, or otherwise). They uniformly lack the threatening swagger, virility, and the fist-fighting mentality that has historically made the
docked sailor a notorious breed to be reckoned with. And thus, their collective inability to find willing partners with whom to conjugate has considerably stunted the spread of STDs.
In light of these findings, there is now talk of sending these same Fleet Week sailors to Asia in an effort to deter the looming threat of a massive bird flu pandemic. Initially, elite military units were slated for deployment, but with their higher susceptibility to disease transmission, our nation now turns its lonely eyes to you, dear Fleet Week seamen.
