Two Brits, an Irishman, a half Irishman/Englishman, an Aussie, a Frenchman, and me are waiting in a hotel in Southwester China when a whitish dude sites down. This sounds like the beginning of a bad joke and it quickly devolves into one just minus the bar. I make simple small talk with the gentleman who would soon be our captain while we, as British solders, would surrender to what we thought was the dirty Japanese but turned out to be the very unclean Chinese peasant Army.
I found out that El Capitan has been working on this show for two years and is a journalist who normally lives in Beijing. He said he is from Chili but works for a German TV station and he sounds exactly like Count Dracula. This is all very puzzling and we quickly realize that he barely speaks any English or Chinese which is amazing since he’s working on a Chinese TV show and his lines are mainly in English or some facsimile thereof. More along the lines of some Spanish influenced Eastern European English.
We drove deep into the mountains and past some US Army looking jeeps as my new British friends used every swear word known to man to express their joy at the thought of driving a jeep. We finally made it ‘on location’ where large trucks holding all manner of wardrobe and weaponry were assembled as well as a cast of hundreds who were gathered around slop buckets. On the way to the chow line we were told be a ‘famous in China’ American actor wearing a silly mustard yellow uniform that this was ‘5 star’ food. He said this sarcastically and most of us ignored him except my new British friends who said something about his fatherless upbringing, his mothers lack of a moral compass and his deep love of his self but amazingly all in five words or less. ‘The Kings English.’
Soon we were forced into yellow shorts and dark brown leggings made all the more ironic since I was just joking about starting a jazzercise class. We had grown men fitting us with ammo belts in the dark and we giggled boyishly as we picked up machine guns. We were told were and how to march with my new French friend doing a goose step to get in time. After the marching scene we stood while El Capitan delivered his lines and I mean along the lines of a woman going thru a painful childbirth delivery. He had no idea what he was saying and when he asked, ‘why are your clothes so dirrtty?’, we all delivered a few chuckles of our own. Despite the surmounting ridiculousness of it all I realized that men, no matter the age, will always enjoy playing soldier. That night we played soldier with the best of them and marched to make or grandparents proud for standing up to the Nazis and El Capitan marched to make his Uncle Count Dracula proud for standing up to the Red Russians or whoever they stood up to back in Transylvania.
I found out that El Capitan has been working on this show for two years and is a journalist who normally lives in Beijing. He said he is from Chili but works for a German TV station and he sounds exactly like Count Dracula. This is all very puzzling and we quickly realize that he barely speaks any English or Chinese which is amazing since he’s working on a Chinese TV show and his lines are mainly in English or some facsimile thereof. More along the lines of some Spanish influenced Eastern European English.
We drove deep into the mountains and past some US Army looking jeeps as my new British friends used every swear word known to man to express their joy at the thought of driving a jeep. We finally made it ‘on location’ where large trucks holding all manner of wardrobe and weaponry were assembled as well as a cast of hundreds who were gathered around slop buckets. On the way to the chow line we were told be a ‘famous in China’ American actor wearing a silly mustard yellow uniform that this was ‘5 star’ food. He said this sarcastically and most of us ignored him except my new British friends who said something about his fatherless upbringing, his mothers lack of a moral compass and his deep love of his self but amazingly all in five words or less. ‘The Kings English.’
Soon we were forced into yellow shorts and dark brown leggings made all the more ironic since I was just joking about starting a jazzercise class. We had grown men fitting us with ammo belts in the dark and we giggled boyishly as we picked up machine guns. We were told were and how to march with my new French friend doing a goose step to get in time. After the marching scene we stood while El Capitan delivered his lines and I mean along the lines of a woman going thru a painful childbirth delivery. He had no idea what he was saying and when he asked, ‘why are your clothes so dirrtty?’, we all delivered a few chuckles of our own. Despite the surmounting ridiculousness of it all I realized that men, no matter the age, will always enjoy playing soldier. That night we played soldier with the best of them and marched to make or grandparents proud for standing up to the Nazis and El Capitan marched to make his Uncle Count Dracula proud for standing up to the Red Russians or whoever they stood up to back in Transylvania.
