Seth Herzog is a New York-based comedian currently in the middle east en route to performing for the troops in Iraq. He'll be sending home reports from the region as time and satellite uplinks permit. This is the first of his dispatches from overseas.
After leaving the US on Monday afternoon and getting here on Tuesday night (somewhere during my flight I lost a day..I swear it was here a minute ago...), its now Friday and I'm still in Kuwait on the Arifjan Army Base. We've been grounded by raging sandstorms and hence unable to get in the air and get into Iraq. Currently a sandstorm has engulfed the base, its really quite something to witness. Its like a fog but even creepier, if you can imagine.
The Arifjan Base feels most like a modern desert college campus (think Arizona State), but one where everyone is a jock. There's dorms, a large dining hall, football and baseball fields, tennis courts, and lots of 'activities' to keep everyone busy. There's Karaoke 2 nights a week, as well as Salsa night Friday and Salsa lessons on Wednesdays. Last night (Thursday) was particularly interesting. In the Community Hall (which I referred to as 'the student center'), it was country line dancing night in the same room where the black soldiers like to congregate nightly to play dominoes and cards. It was wild watching the cadets from West Virginia, etc two-step their way around the room, while the hokiest of country music blared out of the speakers and not 30 ft away 40 black soldiers sat and played dominoes and 5 card draw. Each showed no sign of even recognition of the other until "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" came on, and some of the black soldiers started singing along loudly (they only song we all knew).
We've done one show so far. It was on Wednesday night at the Ali Al Saleem Air Force Base, aka "The Rock" (since it built on a large rock). I got there early and some sort of mandatory meeting with the Commanding Officer, where we just chit-chatted about nothing for 20 minutes, while Army photographers took pictures, then he handed me a framed certificate of "Celebrated Service" or something, which also needed a lot of pictures apparently. I love that they army gave me a certificate to come over here and tell a bunch of soldiers a few stories about my sordid life and dance around in a Wonder Woman outfit.
I was then given a tour of the flight equipment room. At which point they strapped me into a large parachute pack, when it began to seem more like a hazing ritual than a demonstration. I was then given a tour of a C-130. These are the large transport planes that one might see in movies like, "Operation Dumbo Drop" ( but they don't like it if you keep mention that film during the tour). This plane was from the '62! And its still in use, it was made for Vietnam! It still has a hand crank pencil sharpener on the control panel. For reals!
The show was in a large theater (seating 350) on the base, and though it was only two-thirds full of co-ed Air Force types (pilots, engineers, etc) when we started, it was fully packed by the end of the show. They say it was the best turn out for comedy show there ever (take that Carlos Mencia)! Also, I'm sure the image of me in prancing about in my Wonder Woman outfit will forever be burned on their crew-cutted brains (maybe even give them something for the spank bank). Now, at least they can say they've seen some terrifying shit!
They say we might head into Iraq tonight, but I'm sure it will be more like tomorrow.
As of now, I'm sitting here Kuwaiting for the sands to pass...