August 26, 2001

What was I doing on August 26, 2001. I don't know. I don't remember.

It was the end of summer and I'm sure I must have gone to the movies around then. What was out? I don't remember. But I've looked it up.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Not my kind of movie. Didn't see it then. Haven't seen it yet.

American Pie 2...Captain Corelli's Mandolin...
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion...Original Sin...
Summer Catch.

Nope,didn't see any of them.

The Others. I saw that around this time. Scary and Nicole Kidman was great in this movie.

And they had re-released Apocalypse Now. I saw that the first time around. Good movie...weird but good. And I wouldn't have thought it meant much, seeing that again.

It's the kind of movie you don't forget even if you've only seen it once. It's as if you can taste the fear and the death, wiping the jungle sweat off your own skin just remembering it. An obese Marlon Brando mumbling darkly in the shadows. Robert Duvall crowing about napalm and the smell of victory. Dennis Hopper as a stranded war correspondent madly quoting T.S. Eliot. And a young, skinny Martin Sheen trying to survive as the only mostly sane person in the whole movie. Great stuff.

But I've seen it.

An old war, already fought again and again, a thousand times over in books and movies and retrospectives every anniversary of the Fall of Saigon.

That long black wall with all those names.

Vietnam. History. Nothing really new there.