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By Seth Arenstein
When the comedian Don Rickles appeared on The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson used to describe his own duties thus: Shake hands with Rickles, say "hi, Don" and sit back.
While R. Lee Ermey doesn't possess Rickles' name recognition, the host of The History Channel's top-rated series Mail Call is a similar force of nature. To his credit, the director Stanley Kubrick recognized this in his 1987 Vietnam epic Full Metal Jacket. After listening to the Ermey vernacular, laced with expressions like "what is your major malfunction, numb nuts?" Kubrick tossed the script and let Ermey be Ermey. Good thing, after all, he was portraying the paradigmatic no-nonsense, iron-lunged Marine Corps drill sergeant, a job the Vietnam vet did for part of the 11 years spent in his beloved Corps.
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| You've got questions for Mail Call author R. Lee Ermey, and he's got answers. Just don't let him find those donuts you've got hidden in your footlocker. |
Nearly two decades later the act endures. "As you all know, there's no such thing as a former Marine," he writes. And it prospers: The ol' Gunny (gunnery sergeant) has made 60 films. His steady gig is hosting the weekly series Mail Call, where he answers questions (firmly in the Ermey style, you grabasstic maggothead!) about military equipment, history and trivia. Fortunately, The History Channel and whoever urged him to write Mail Call, the book, agreed with Kubrick's instinct. On the show and in this book, Ermey is having a lot of fun, and he seems to have free rein to use his own brand of language when answering questions sent by "pukes" (civilians) and "grunts" (random military personnel).
Yet his bite-size answers are usually interesting, as are the questions. Were medieval weapons accurate? What's the origin of the term "doughboys"? Who can receive a 21-gun salute? What makes smart bombs so damn smart? Occasionally, the answers border on the fascinating. A question about the word "berserk" leads Ermey into a history lesson (this is The History Channel, after all). Turns out Berserkers were Norse warriors who went into battle wearing a bearskin or "just plain naked." Their pre-battle ritual is a mix of your average NFL team and a frat party: They banged helmets, howled like animals, drank large quantities of alcohol and ate hallucinogenic mushrooms, Ermey writes.
With its snappy Q&A format, lively graphics and interesting trivia, Mail Call is a terrific bathroom read. No disrespect. In the book's introduction, Ermey tells us he begins each day in the bath--reading. "That's right, Gunny reads in the bath--got a problem with that, moron?"
Endnotes:
Title: Mail Call
Author: R. Lee Ermey
Publisher: Hyperion, January 2005, 244 pages, paperback, $17.95. Back to this issue
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