We landed on a most interesting episode of The Love Boat yesterday while channel surfing yesterday. The title of the episode was ‘Picture Me a Spy/Daredevil/Sleeper‘ and included the following actors: Courteney Cox, Peter Scolari, Alan Thicke, Yakov Smirnoff, and Teri Hatcher as one of the boat’s mermaids.
The move comes after the National Transportation Safety Board released an accident report from a 2017 collision, which cites the design of the ship’s controls as a factor in the accident.
I had no idea that during the Vietnam War, it was somewhat common for pro athletes to join the Reserves to avoid the draft. That’s what I learned in this article about Pete Rose detailing what it’s like to hang out with Joe DiMaggio for a 23-day goodwill tour of Vietnam. A few items of note:
Rose was 22-years-old doing his basic training at Fort Knox. He was on kitchen patrol waxing the floor of the mess hall when he received a call informing him he was the National League Rookie of the Year. He served three years in the Reserves with Johnny Bench at Fort Thomas, Kentucky, right across the river from Cincinnati. They were both cooks.
Rose received a call from some guy at the State Department asking if he’d like to go to Vietnam.
In telling the story, he said, “And my first answer was, ‘Hell no! There’s a war going on there!’ “
“Then he said, ‘Well, Joe DiMaggio’s going.’
“And I said, ‘Do I get to meet Joe?’ He said, ‘You get to live with him for 23 days.’ And I said, ‘Sign me up!’ “
Rose didn’t need a lot of persuading other than that. “No. Not to meet Joe DiMaggio,” Rose says. “Uh, uh. If it’s good enough for Joe DiMaggio, it’s got to be good enough for me.”
DiMaggio had retired 12 years before Rose made the big leagues.
“You couldn’t ask him any questions about Marilyn Monroe,” Rose says. “Don’t talk about Marilyn Monroe. Don’t mention Marilyn Monroe.”
Rose and DiMaggio dressed in fatigues and carried phony ID cards. “We were GS … uh … GS 14s, I think. We were colonels. We had to carry that card in our back pocket saying we were GS 14s in case we got captured,” Rose says.
They traveled mostly by helicopter. Rose says he mused to himself that if their chopper went down, every story would be about Joe DiMaggio.
A chimpanzee completing on of those Ninja Warrior courses
