nothing to show for it

So in the end, I did rest a while, first watching a censored version of "Uncommon Valor"* on the American Movie Classics channel, then wobbling out in no particular direction to grab a bite to eat.

I ended up at a small pizzeria called Sweet Basil, where I ordered two slices of their Luau pizza and one slice of Margherita. The latter was good, but damn-- the Luau was fantastic. It's a variation on regular ol' Hawaiian pizza; like Hawaiian, the Luau has cheese, ham, and pineapple, but it also has pork sausage and uses a sweeter-than-normal sauce whose exact ingredients I couldn't identify. The combination of flavors, though, was memorable, and before I leave Walla Walla I'll have to go back to Sweet Basil and order a few more slices.

From the pizzeria I limped over to an ATM, then made my way over to Whitman College's campus, which isn't far from where I'm staying. I was delighted to see that the college has language houses; not ten minutes ago, I passed by the French House, which was quiet as a graveyard. I was tempted to barge in and start speaking French to everyone I met.

I also went into the Campus Center, where I hoped to get information on cheap housing. Alas, the young lady (God, I'm old) at the information desk told me that no spaces were available. According to her, the campus has only one(!) guest room, and because there was a larger-than-normal influx of freshmen this semester, there were no empty dorm rooms for rent. Before I left, I gave her my blog's URL and my standard line: "This is just so you know I'm not some random crazy perdon." I say this to almost everyone I meet, but it never gets me chicks. What's that all about?

So I guess it's a bust for housing at Whitman College. While part of me wonders about housing at Walla Walla University, I'm hesitant to stay there because the campus is actually outside the city proper, way over on the west side. It's likely that I'll simply stay at my motel (a very nice motel, by the way; I've got a patio!) for the second week.

So today's search for cheap housing ended in a crash-and-burn, but I'll keep looking. Hope, like intestinal gas, springs eternal.

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*"Uncommon Valor" is probably the only good movie of its subgenre: the Vietnam War prisoner extraction fantasy. While Stallone's "First Blood" was in some ways a sympathetic look at the psyche of traumatized vets and their subsequent mistreatment by American citizens (remember Rambo's tearful rant at the end of the movie?), "Rambo: First Blood Part 2," which was part of the prisoner-extraction subgenre, was positively insulting to US war veterans. (Trivia: Stallone caught flak in the 1980s for playing soldier after having dodged the draft.)

"Uncommon Valor" was, by contrast, a movie that showed how a prisoner extraction might plausibly work: you'd need private funding, recruit gone-to-seed veterans who would have to be retrained; there would be painstaking planning (not constant improvisation with bows and arrows), and great emphasis would be placed on the importance of teamwork.

The movie also wasn't afraid to show show what happens when plans go awry: the team ends up losing four of its members, and team leader Colonel Rhodes's search for his POW son Frank turns out to have been in vain: we find out that Frank has died of disease in the POW camp.

"Uncommon Valor," despite its frequently cheesy moments, allows for actual plot and character development; it's a human film, unlike the robotic actioners by Stallone and Chuck Norris (the Missing in Action series), both of whom portray ruthless killing machines. You learn to like and respect each team member.

Best UV moment in my opinion: the old guys are undergoing an accelerated boot camp with young rookie Patrick Swayze as their drill instructor; Swayze is facing off against old vet Sailor (former kickboxer Randall "Tex" Cobb in one of his best roles) in a team contest where each team has to chop away at logs-- planted vertically like telephone poles-- until one of the logs falls first. Sailor gets through his log; Swayze's character sees Sailor's log topple and stops chopping: the contest is over. Except that it isn't: Sailor rushes over to the log that's still standing, and over Swayze's protests, chops that one down, too. Sailor then whirls on Swayze and rages, "You never give up!" While not an Oscar-winning acting moment, it's probably the best moral lesson in the film, one I fail repeatedly.


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