Last night the wife and I were watching Ghost Busters, and toward the end, when Winston shouts at Ray, “when someone asks you if you are a god, ay YES!” I took a moment to tell her about my Move Rules of Thumb.

So she asked, “You mean, like always take you gun to the bathroom?”

And we both laughed, and I realized while that was a good rule, I had not listed it.

So, in tribute to Vincent Vega, by my wife, I add:

23. Always take your gun to the bathroom.

20. Leave the gun, take the cannoli.

Thanks to Kevin Creighton, who was watching The Godfather, and posted it on the book of faces. He reminded me of a phrase I use a lot, to mean dropping what I don’t want, and keeping what I do.

See them all at my Movie Rules of Thumb.

Source: Die Hard, my favorite Christmas movie.

WARNING: Harsh language!

Lesson: it’s never really okay to let your guard down. I covered this once before in my post about awareness. Always maintain a state of alertness, whether things seem normal or not.

Always be alert. Always be in Condition Yellow. Can we ever relax, then? Yes, but with caution and alertness.

In the movie Die Hard. New York police detective John McClain, played by Bruce Willis, goes to California to visit his wife for the holidays. He arrives at her office during the Christmas party. Someone he meets along the way gives him some advice on how to relax after a long trip – take off your shoes and scrunch your toes in the carpet. John does this in his wife’s office, and it seems to help. But just then, a group of terrorists take over the building. Now John has to fight a building full of terrorists in his bare feet. Mayhem ensues.

Now, if John McClain had kept his shoes in his hand, ready to put back on, things would be have gone differently. Not for the bad guys, but for certainly for John.

The Rule started out as “Never take your shoes off when there are terrorists in the building.” But this implies that we can know when there are terrorists in the building, or a mugger around the corner. So I added the innocent phrase “at a Christmas party.”

Yippee ki yay, Mister Falcon.

My followers on Twitter can attest that my movie watching habits can be strange, especially when it comes to movies like Tombstone or Blazing Saddles. All I can say is, if you think my Twitter feed gets strange, you should be at my house when the movie is on.

We were watching Saving Private Ryan last night, and my son (he prefers to be called the Dauphin) was in rare form.

I should explain that his career goal is to become a military historian. I think it all started when we visited a lot of the museums and memorials in the Washington DC area a couple of years ago. In any case, it fits his personality, because he has always been interested the history of battles and wars, not just the what happened, but the why. He just started high school, but he already knows where he’s going and what he plans to study.

He started going on about the M1 Carbine again, and how the ammunition for it was merely an illusion, an urban legend, meant to scare the Nazis. Like Patton’s inflated tanks in England before D-Day.

++++

More Dauphinisms:

The bazooka was devised as a way to let German tank crews know where the best American troops were located.

“Here, stand up. You be a Panzer tank. Now, I’ll be a bazooka team.” He tapped me lightly on the shoulder, then he said, quietly, “Hey, Panzer, we’re over here! Here we are!”

++++

When Jeremy Davies came on the screen as the translator Corporal Upham, he said, “You know why Faraday is so nervous? He’s worried that Benjamin Linus is going to show up.”

He once pointed out that John Locke was mayor of Tombstone, Arizona, in 1881, pointing at the screen and saying “Damn you, JJ Abrams.”

++++

His name for the Sherman tank: The Suckie.

It has nothing to do with his Southern heritage.

++++

He promises to develop his own translation of the Edith Piaf song playing on the Victrola. I can’t wait.

++++

His college plans – research the best American History professors in Georgia, and get his BA with them.

Masters at Oxford. Research in Moscow, Paris, and Tokyo.

PhD at Georgetown.

“If you’re going to get a PhD in American Military History, go where it’s all kept.”

He eventually wants to be Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. At least he doesn’t aim low.

++++

The current Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution is Dr. Wayne Clough. As a fellow graduate of Georgia Tech, I plan to write and ask for a short visit with him, when our family returns to DC next summer. It never hurts to ask.

++++

Since he will be 44 at the centennial of World War II, he is planning to be at the centennial events at Pearl Harbor, Stalingrad, Normandy, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. I would love to be there with him.

I hope they’ll let me take my Mosin Nagant to Stalingrad. That would make one hell of a rifle match. The Vasilly Zaitsev Prize.

++++

When he shot an AR-15 for the first time a couple of weeks ago, he fell in love. He’s as much the reason I want to build one as my own desire.

I pointed out that after high school, the US Government would give him one to shoot as much as he wanted. All he had to do was sign up for at least 2 years’ service. He wasn’t keen on that idea.

I have since broached the idea of ROTC in college. That way, he would come out as a Reserve Officer, and get first hand knowledge of military operations.

Plus, as an officer with a US History degree who wanted to be a military historian, he would probably be invited to speak with a lot of the real players in American military history.

He’s considering it.