David Cook

23 January 2009

For all you American Idle fans out there, we did indeed have the American Idle David Cook here at the glorious FOB Warhorse the other night. He was here for the day, I don't know what he was doing because I didn't see him during the day. He had a concert at night. Unfortunately there was some issue with the helicopters he and his crew and gear were supposed to arrive on, so it was just him and 4 guys sitting on the giant stage (relatively speaking of course it's a small stage as far as concerts go, but big for FOB Warhorse) on stools with acoustic guitars. None of their other equipment came in but it was still a pretty good concert. I went over, more less to say I did. I have never watched American Idle so I didn't know who he was or if he was actually any good. But he was pretty good.

I ended up sitting with the head surgeon for our Brigade, Major Mary Reed. She and I work pretty close together so I talked with her and we enjoyed the concert. At the end we decided, why not stand in line and get a picture with David Cook! It was pretty cold by then. It's getting down to the 30s at night here. Not anywhere near as cold as Fairbanks, but cold considering in a couple months here it'll be about 130.

We got out picture taken with David, and since we were at the end of the line they asked if we'd hang around and get a picture taken with the whole band and a USO banner. The USO is the one who brings all the famous, and sometimes not so famous, people to Iraq and Kuwait for the Soldiers. So if you ever see a USO picture with the David Cook band and a cold first lieutenant off to the left side, that's me.

It was a pretty fun night. We're not cool enough like Baghdad to get people like Robin Williams or Toby Keith, but David Cook brought some much needed distraction from the dirt and monotony of work here. Other than David nothing too exciting is going on around here. The Inauguration I've heard was cool, but I didn't see it. I saw parts of it but maybe it'll come out on DVD or something. As much as the new president affects our everyday life over here, no one really talks about it because at our level it's pretty irrelevant who it is. It's still exciting, maybe things will change, but the Army will be around no matter what the financial crisis is like back home, so may as well fix that first.

The Iraqi elections are just around the corner. It's fun to be here during the US elections and see how different ours are. It's peaceful, everyone accepts the outcome, and it's a happy event to see the presidents switch out. Here there is still a huge security threat at polling sites as different parties will try to prevent their opponents from winning, or scaring people from voting all together. It'll be interesting, but hopefully not as bad as we have to plan for.

I'll try to get pictures up soon, these computers are not picture friendly:(