DC Diary- Kamikaze Time

Today, we discuss Day Five of our National Lampoon's DC Vacation which was actually the last day of the trip, but we will have a final entry on both blogs tomorrow with some added reflections.

Day Five featured a very limited schedule because my sister and my brother-in-law had to make their British Airways flight back to London (not where they actually live) from Dulles, so we simply focused on the second part of the National Air and Space Museum which is located near Dulles International Airport.

For me, the most interesting plane on display was a Japanese kamikaze plane. Anyone who has regularly watched the Larry David Show "Curb Your Enthusiasm" assuredly remembers the episode where Larry yells "Banzai," which was what these suicidal pilots did when they crashed into American battleships.

While researching this piece, I found out that Ensign Kiyoski Ogawa, who was 22 or 23, killed himself on an attack of the USS Bunker Hill which also killed some 400 American troops. Some of the kamikaze pilots were as young as 17. The planes were quite devastating because they carried bombs, torpedoes and explosives on them.

The other displays on the site included the Enola Gay, which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, and certainly makes one ponder the devastation it caused. An Air France Concord plane which could take passengers from New York to Paris in about three hours (they have since been retired), Nazi German war planes, Soviet planes and a boat plane!

Afterward, we took my sister and her husband to the airport and waved "Arivederci," or however, it's spelled in Italian. I jokingly asked my sister back at the museum gift shop if she wanted a pilot Barbie. She said no.

As for the kamikaze drink (we couldn't find a good image to use of a kamikaze plane), you might be able to find one at Jack's Restaurant in DuPont Circle. No promises! And, of course, don't drink and drive....

Things We Learned on Twitter This PM- Armageddon Still Sucks!

We have no idea if the programmers at F/X decided to rerun the epic mess "Armageddon" (you know the movie with Bruce Willis and Ben Afflect that came out in the late '90s) with the commemoration of the Hiroshima tragedy this week in Japan, but the timing does seem a bit surreal.

On a personal note, I have endured a zany last couple of days which involved two days in which I virtually slept away the whole day, one day in which I was up for 24 hours and then some and an unfortunate accident with scissors (still $%&*# hurts!).

So, while I was not watching "Armageddon" or anything else for matter this afternoon, my good pal Chris Knight of Reidsville, NC, was indulging in the film which he himself says 'makes The Black Hole look like 2001.' (He is referencing a Disney science-fiction film with Tony Perkins that came out in 1979 when I was nine years old!).

Knight said he has great admiration for actor Steve Buscemi who is in "Armageddon" since the indie film icon is a volunteer fire-fighter in his spare time.

But, Knight had no use for the rest of the film which he also called 'a dumb popcorn movie.' He added that "Armageddon" was 'not an Oscar-worthy magnum opus.' Whatever that means!