Black Hawk Downer

Hey, this is uh,

Hey.

this is, uh, this is, who are You? You found the podcast. Normally we watch sci-fi television, reasonably well done

Uh,

et cetera, et cetera. But

yeah.

today we're having a bit of a Black Hawk Downer.

You wanna explain to the audience one more time why we watch this movie?

yeah. So we watched this movie well, one, we had picked Blade Runner because of, because of Edward James almost, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Easy, easy pick.

So while I was reading so, so Say We All, which is, where's it on my bookshelf, mark Altman and Edward Gross's. Oral history of Battlestar Galactica, both the seventies the two thousands reboot, and also a little bit of Caprica. Blood and Chrome other failed reboots are covered as well.

Oh, no. Other failed reboots. I don't know if we've discussed that

Well, there was one planned before Ron Moore

Oh, we did talk about that. Okay.

Singer of X-Men fame.

Uhhuh.

And, uh, so that's covered in the book and stuff. Anyways part of the, like you're going to be a director on Battlestar Galactica, they would send them a little gift as their first time, and in it were three DVDs, which was Blade Runner 2001 and Space Odyssey and Black Hawk Down. These make up the visual language of Battlestar Galactica.

Truly.

it was awe inspiring in the best and worst ways.

Yep. That is a good way to put it. because we've already watched Blade Runner for the podcast, we were kind of doing the coin flip between Black Hawk Down and 2001, which I'm, you've seen 2001

seen 2001 a number of times. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. We've both seated a number of times. I do find it hard to stay awake. You know, some of that soundtrack is just really like. Soothing it's not particularly a fast-paced movie. And yeah, I was just at a point where I was like, you know, I'm not sure I can do that one for podcast right now. Uh,

We chose this,

this one.

neither of us had seen before. We both missed this one.

Yep. Hey, I'm gonna out myself as so super ignorant before we watch this movie. Like, not familiar with the book. It's based on not the best student of history. I think we've talked

I mean this is like a weird, like obviously it was enough for a book and a movie, but this was not like a big deal thing. This was one of many police actions that took place in the eighties and nineties to help secure freedom. Like there's

We were

stories like this Of American Imperialism. Yeah. Oh yeah. We were kids. Um, we were actual children. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. so walking into this movie, I knew there's a helicopter that goes down and I know we have to rescue people from helicopter that goes down. I thought, honest to God, Ben is gonna die hearing this, that the black hawk went down in a jungle, and that's why it was so hard to rescue people and made it complicated.

would've been preferable. Probably.

Yeah. Jungle would've been better than this.

I mean, unless it was like a jungle with the predator in it. I'm gonna try so hard to make some jokes and not be insensitive. Like, it's not a funny movie. It's, it, it was not an enjoyable movie. It was a good movie. I, I, I wanna make this distinction very clear. This movie, this movie is important. This movie says important things about war. It does not glorify war. In ways that make people want to go sign up for the military.

go to better

yeah, please, please get help because dear God, like I, I think I, God, I said it to someone. I have a friend, I was talking to a friend who's a vet, about it, and it was just like, I think if you enjoy this movie, you're a sociopath. Like you can, you can appreciate this movie. You can uh, like the artistry of this movie. That's fine.

Mm-hmm.

Um, it's a very pretty movie at times. But wow. And on top of it, like. Today specifically is a very weird day for the military and uh, listener. We are recording this at 9:28 PM

Eastern Time.

Eastern Time on June 17th 27 minutes ago, the Irani Supreme leader said the battle begins. Nothing's happened since then. And they've warned that there's gonna be stuff. US military airplanes and aircraft carriers are currently heading out towards uh, Iran, uh, Israel and Iran have been sending missiles between each other for, I think we're on day four or five right now. Um, by the time this episode comes out, uh, we could

Who knows?

well, and this comes out in two weeks. We're not super far ahead right now.

Mm-hmm.

a very real possibility we will have gone to war and be out of war by the time this episode airs. Depending on how that goes because it's making, there's a lot of stuff that's making me very nervous about the use of a lot of escalated weaponry here.

Yeah. This is a very strange context to be trying to review a war ish movie for you all. So I just want you to know that we're in this interesting position and hey, if you guys don't wanna engage with this when it comes out in two weeks, like don't we love

oh yeah. If everything's gone to shit.

Yeah. consider this blanket content warning for military stuff.

Yeah.

Be free if you don't wanna do this,

We, I.

we'll come back for BSG maybe.

yikes. Uh,

Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of BSG, just fair. When we start this movie, did your heart like jump out of its chest

my first note and I have six pages of notes and my first four pages of notes are like the first 40 minutes of this movie. And then at minute 55 or whatever, when the titular Black Hawk goes down, it's like a page and a half of notes for the rest of the movie because it's mostly just gunfire at that point. Um, uh, but on my first fucking note, the fucking font is the same. Uh, this is Bank Gothic. If you were unaware.

I, so Aaron like stopped for a second while I was writing stuff and he's furiously Googling and he's like, you know what? I don't have time for this right now. We were watching the movie while the toddler was taking her afternoon nap,

Oh, great timing.

we were on a time schedule.

No worries. Got you.

so, like our options are during toddler nap or at bedtime,

Neither of which are good.

took the least bad option,

Yeah.

but yes, please tell me more about this because we wanted to know more about

All right. So this is Bank Gothic. It's everywhere. Um, it is the Modern Warfare bit on Call of Duty boxes. It is tons of album covers and movie posters. It is the word original on Irish Spring original packaging. This shit is everywhere. I found a Tumblr called Bank Gothic everywhere. But it made me sign in after scrolling five posts and fuck that. If you are a website that makes me sign in to view anything. Fuck you. I'm out. I refuse.

We need a friend who has a Tumblr already, because I don't either. So Beth, that seems like something Beth might have.

Um,

love a font. We stand a good font.

So we get this quote and then we, we go over to the

Oh yes. Tell us about the quote,

Yeah. Plato has a quote here, only the dead of seeing. The end of war. You want a a not so well. Again, it doesn't really, it's just a fact. Not Plato.

not Play-Doh.

No, this was actually uh, George Santiana, but General Douglas MacArthur in a address to West Point 38 years after this was said to give a timeframe on how old this quote is, misattributed it to Plato.

Way to go. Dougie.

Yeah. Nailed it. It doesn't sound anything like Play-Doh to me. I don't know. I I heard it like, I, well, I didn't hear it. I read it and I'm all like, that's not Play-Doh. That doesn't sound like Play-Doh at all.

I think at this point in history, if we hear a quote and they say it's from Plato, there's like a really good chance. It's not Plato at this point. Right. People just wanna attribute smart thing to smart guy.

well, like, you know, Play-Doh was around for like x number of years and we are at a multitude of years past that.

Correct.

You know, or like 40 or 50 times as many years as Plato lived have occurred since he died. So realistically it just more stuff gets said and Misattributed every year and he doesn't have a chance to say anything new. So

But this movie was what, 19. They were probably filming in 1999, but it didn't come out till

this movie came out in December of 2001.

Yes.

Uh,

What a great time to drop. I do remember this movie coming out and I remember all of the accolades and such, but I never had any

There's some stuff about the, this movie coming out. One, this movie came out like two weeks after a fellowship of the Ring.

Oh really?

Yeah.

Wow. I remember that one vividly. 'cause I saw Fellowship of the Ring 12 times in theaters.

I'm so

I'd never,

a rewatch. We should do that. We should, when, when we're on group vacation together, we should a hundred percent e Everyone who is going is down for this. I, every single person, it would be down for this. We should really do this. We should

And I think Owen would love it. He's, we, he seemed like the first part of Fellowship of the Ring, but when, when we tried to watch it with him, he was just young enough that when we got to the Nas GUL it was

It, it will be too scary for Henry. Um, and I don't know that his attention span can handle doing it in a marathon.

yeah,

Um, but I am so here for it. That's a great way to spend some like afternoons when it's hot out in August.

yeah. Wow. So I didn't really place those two movies together in the, in the timeline,

there is a

it makes total sense

movie in this timeline that has overlap in actors that's gonna make you go, what the hell?

Please do. Okay. All

no, no, no, no, no. We'll get to it. We'll get to it. We'll get to it. I got notes about, I got notes about it somewhere in my, it's not on my page that we're on right now. It's somewhere, somewhere down here. So we're gonna kick that. Can we open in Somalia. It's the early nineties and shit sucks.

Yes, it is super suck.

It's fucking terrible.

we, so I, I think it is 1992 now, is what they

it's nine. It's 19 91, 2, and three over the course of this tech scroll.

Yeah. Okay. So in the, the 91, 92 ish timeframe, we get a huge famine across Africa,

there's starvation

Mm-hmm.

war,

And in Somalia, they tell us that 300,000 people have died.

which is insane. Uh, but yeah, it's a, it's a lot of people, US Marines roll into, stabilize the region and get food to the people. Remember when our military would do that, you know,

yeah, yeah. Well, I, I think they, they tell us it's like the UN is in charge of feeding people, but the US military obviously has things that we can do for that effort. Security, a lot of it. And what I was reading, I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert about this, but I accidentally did the most research I've ever done for our podcast after I watched this

Yeah.

'cause I was freaking fascinated. so they're telling us that the situation at this, this, um, he was a politician. He's positioned himself as a warlord. Mr. Hadid is. Taking the UN food supplies for his people and allowing other people to starve. Right? And the UN was there trying to distribute food supplies. He's taking them away and he has started like targeting the UN soldiers. So I think there were Pakistani soldiers that were killed.

Yeah. so We finally get the movie starting proper here. October, 1993 we're at that Red Cross distribution site where a deed soldiers opened fire on civilians to take that food shipment. The soldiers ask for permission to be heroes and are denied.

Yeah. Rules of engagement. We are not allowed to engage them until they actually engage us, not the civilians.

The soldiers take the food to Mogadishu, where Eric Bonna is just hanging out

Yeah.

the cast in this movie.

Yeah. I, I was so confused. I was like, what is he doing? Why are we here? Like, ridley Scott I read, made the call to put their names at the top of their helmets when we get into actual action because he was afraid the audience wouldn't be able to tell all these white dudes apart. And that was a good fucking call my man, because I struggled until I had their names at the top of the helmets, knowing who was who. Unless you had a nice, distinctive face, which some of our actors do, but

no, the people subtitles were very nice.

I needed it.

American soldiers very politely. Escort Osman at Otto. An arms dealer here. this is where the fir, this is the first scene we get where I'm really like, this is Battlestar. When it's, uh, Garrison and Otto talking. The play with the shadows and the light feels very Battlestar Galactica to me. They talk about America interjecting themselves, places Garrison reiterates what we got from the crawl. 300,000 dead. It's not war, it's a genocide for perspective.

No. Oh, no.

the Israel Gaza conflict that's currently ongoing is known to have about 55,000 killed. Then there's the Russia, Ukraine War. That's been going for a couple years at this point. Uh, Now this is all over the place for how many people have died. Because,

accurate numbers

like six months in Russia was just like, we've killed a million Ukrainians and has not said shit since. And like the day after, Ukraine was all like, what the fuck are you talking about? I guess we've killed a million Russians. And those are still the official numbers.

Oh, so unknown. Somewhere between zero and 2 million. Got it.

a lot of estimates, and they're all over the place. Um, but I would say 300,000 is probably the bottom of where it's actually at after years of conflict with another million in casualties between both sides.

Sure. Okay.

So that, that's how, and that's from starvation and minor conflict. Minor conflict, not international war.

Right, right.

Um, not full on civil war. This is all in fighting and warlords and stuff, and it's hit that level.

We're still doing it guys.

Yeah. Well,

the 21st century. We're still doing it. So maybe this as good a time as any to talk about it.

Which got

have we ever talked about my experience watching Hotel Rwanda for the first time?

I don't think

Okay. So this is also going to be embarrassing in that, you know, like I thought the Black Hawk down was about a jungle rescue. Um, so Hotel Rwanda, have you ever seen it?

No.

It came out around a little after this time. 'cause I would've been in college and, you know, as you do in college, you like want to feel more educated in Cosmopolitan. And so you watch the things that are like the Oscars the, the Oscar nominees, right? And so I was like, well, this is a smart movie. And I decided to watch it, like on my day off. You know, I'm, I'm chilling, I'm by myself. my roommates are not home. And I'm a sensitive soul sometimes.

Okay.

And it really hit me hard that this had happened during my lifetime and I never knew about it. Like I never heard about it and I wasn't really processing that. Like Lori we're a literal child. The adults around you were probably protecting you from this sort of level of news if they were even getting this level of news because it was the nineties.

Ugh. Okay.

Ultimately, historically, a lot of historians are like, because this went so poorly when other things were happening, the US was much less inclined to offer any assistance to anyone. So

Cool.

cool, cool. History is important and I wish I had a better grasp of it.

Well, we get to live a lot of it, so.

That's true. We're doing it all the time.

Mm-hmm. A real Elvis looking motherfucker hangs out of a helicopter before talking to Obi one Kenobi. That's a sentence I wasn't expecting to write down ever.

Okay. I didn't realize that this actor was Orlando Bloom until, I don't know. We were getting ready to go into Mogadishu without the hair. I had no idea.

Orlando Bloom? Well, I mean, he had been filming Lord of the Rings at that point. I think Lord of the Rings might've been done filming at this point. If the first one came out. They were, they filmed all three back to back before, and then

Oh, did they

effects over a year each,

Hmm. Okay.

So yeah, he would've been done filming water. The rings at this point.

You wanna know the only actor I recognized?

Tom Hardy,

Nope.

Ian

Jamie Lannister,

yeah. Jamie Lancaster's in this too. Yep.

I think that he was the only one, but that. Might not be true, but Yeah. I didn't clock IWiN McGregor either.

This would've been in between Clone Wars or maybe before Clone Wars? I don't know. It depends on how much. Time filming. I'd have to do a ton of research to know, but around the time he made clone war, he would've made this movie.

Yeah. Seriously though this cast list, lot of non-Americans put non-American accents. Yeah.

Lorca man, his southern accent's so good.

Yeah.

Anyways so, uh, a chopper picks up Eric Banna on a bike in the desert while they grab some warthog. As baby bloom gets settled in. Jamie Lannister plays chess. He is so young and sweaty here. The sheen on him was all like my, like my deep fake sense went off was all like, is this a deep fake? Jamie

Did they CGI, Jamie Lannister.

Like it doesn't, no. And it's just no, he's just that young and sweaty.

Mm-hmm.

that shine. Sheen on him.

Yeah. They, they really captured and I was thinking about it. I was like, man, this is October. Like, whew, everybody is so sweaty.

Yep. Um, after this, uh, no combat situation is complete without a derogatory, dehumanizing nickname for the enemy. Every, every combat that the United States military has found themselves in, they found one of these. in this one, we call the people who are being starved to death. Skinnies.

So some of the research I read, and it's all internet research folks, so take that as you will, was that the skinnies reference was actually. A reference to the book of Starship Troopers. That's what they called the enemy in the book. Starship Troopers was the skinnies.

I don't remember that.

I don't either. It's been so long since I read the book that I was like,

It's been, I think it's probably been in like eight or nine years since I've read the book. I

Uhhuh.

It's

And the book is such a different tone than the movie that I can't like

The book is not satire

Yeah. I can't use the movie as any sort of gauge.

They're all fighting in Mex suits and his dad survives series and ends up joining the military and then he ends up commanding his dad at one point. Rico does, it's a whole different experience.

Weird. Weird satire and weird like dad issues.

yeah, it's, yeah, it's a lot about the father-son relationship and turning it on its head in a military command sense. Um, but I don't remember skinny's.

Yeah, I don't know. I, I was a teenager when I read that book, so I could not tell you But that's, I saw that on a couple places on the internet, but you know, sometimes on the internet we copy and paste the shit that we find somewhere else, so

Yeah. Did AI

someone in the Discord will know.

Ask Chat GPT and if chat GPT says yes, then we know it's false.

I did not use chat GPT for any of this research. I used crazy ass Google keywords. Like a normal person.

right. fucking yikes. Anyways, uh, a soldier has a seizure while watching Steve Martin.

Mm-hmm.

we see, uh, Jason Isaacs, captain Luca here says he's going home. He has epilepsy.

Yeah.

Josh Hartnett takes over his responsibilities.

So Josh Hartnett is, Everman is his character.

Yeah, something like that. I did not use a single character name in all of my notes. I only refer to the actors by their name or by other parts they are in.

Oh crap. I did the other thing. I have only character names. I don't know who these people are except for Jamie Lannister. Yeah, so Everman what I read about him. So the book that details the whole Black Hawk Down incident, the Battle of Mogadishu really well has like almost a hundred characters, like actual people. And thank God Mr. Ridley Scott did not wanna do all a hundred people 'cause. Laura would be not watching this movie. It would be insane. He trimmed it down to about 20 ish.

Two other characters,

yeah, two

Two, two other people who lived. 'cause the book is nonfiction, right?

right? Yes. So his actions are, are also two other people's actions. and there is one character that is significant in our story that was actually not a real person, and that is because we had to take a real person out of the story because he was convicted in the year 2000 of child molestation. And the Pentagon and the production team were not key on like.

Yeah.

him any time of day.

Yeah. Good call Pentagon in statements I don't usually get to say, um,

broken clock. Yes.

you know, there's a diner in the Pentagon that's hella legit.

I would believe that. Yeah.

Have we talked, you know, I, I spent a month in the Pentagon.

I feel like I've heard about the diner. Okay.

I don't, I don't know if this has ever come up on pod before. Yeah. That's a thing that happened in my life.

it's just between us. I don't

Uh, it is part of my two truths and a lie. My, uh. My public Two truths and a lie, not my private, we're actually friends to Truth and a Lie, which is way different and not going on pod. Um, although I will say one of those is almost suing the TV show Supernatural. Um, because I think that's a story we've told. Um, no. One of my like, fun little, two truths and a lie that I always bring up is I've raced golf carts in the basement of the Pentagon.

I feel like the Pentagon has a basement for golf carts. Yes.

the Pentagon is like the 24th largest building in the world, and it is five stories tall.

And you need golf

And it's the 24th largest building in the world. It is hard to describe how wide the Pentagon is in terms that are understandable by most brains. It's one of something you have to see. It is insanely massive. And so when you need to take out the trash you end up taking it out in golf carts, driving around in the basements of the Pentagon.

Yeah.

Not, not in like the, like the bunker basements of the Pentagon and stuff like The

Yeah. The service

service basements. Yeah, exactly. So anyways, this is where the third movie comes in because Josh Hart it, I'm like, when the fuck did this movie come out? And it's like December, 2001. I'm all like, that's. Wasn't Josh Harden Busy in 2001 and he was making Pearl Harbor.

Okay. Oh,

made Pearl Harbor and then he made this movie immediately after. And then he took a break from acting for a little bit

Fuck yeah. Like,

right? As his career was ready to blow up. Um, yeah,

no, I'd take a break too for one thing. Like hopefully you've gotten some money out of these gigs. Like take it easy.

yeah. But if anyone

these were intense gigs.

anyone was keeping score at home, while we're talking about all these movies that, you know, stand up the military this was filmed in March, 2001 and released in December, 2001

okay. Yeah.

and, uh, Pearl Harbor. Par Pearl Harbor was released in May of 2001. So if you were like, Hey, where are all these war movies vis-a-vis September, 2001? No reason.

Right. They were actually, uh, filming before

Yes. They, they had completed filming well before September, 2001.

So I think part of a big reason that I avoid a lot of war movies is a, don't like the things that come with war and BI am never sure walking in if I'm gonna be watching basically, a propaganda piece

Oh, yeah.

how great we are and how great a necessary war is. So I was a little surprised on this movie. I, I went in with a, like dread

Yeah. Now this movie, uh, I mean, this movie does a great job of making sure that the US is the good guys.

Well, yeah.

Despite being effectively, you know, imperialist invaders depending on whose perspective you're looking at, obviously the people in Somalia were not doing great things to their people to prompt the UN to come in. And then when the UN people, the Red Cross are getting attacked, the military comes in to stop them from getting attacked. Like all, all of this tracks. And I'm not, I'm not, but I'm also like, you know, at the end of this movie we get 19 names of the people who died.

Yeah. And what I've read is that it's like really actually very hard to know how many Somalis they say in this movie that it was a thousand. But people wonder, you know, we think it might've been closer to 2000 or 3000 Somalis.

Well, we don't get a single name for any of them. Nor nor is there a single Somali person involved in this production. There's not a single Somali actor in this film. There's not a Somali consultant in the making of this film.

Yep. The extras, uh, that did the work of the, like Somali militia. The Royal Moroccan army

Okay.

is what I read. So Interesting. But I have some things to say about that at the end. So let's just put a pin on that.

uh, we get to our mission debrief and it goes down like everything should not be a problem. But last I checked, the movie isn't named. Black Hawk remains in air during uneventful seizure of African warlord's top aids. So I don't like their chances.

Yeah, there's a little bit of looks around the table and you know, we have someone who says, wait, we're going in, in the afternoon. Like without, I think I don't remember the type of equipment that the General said he requested,

Certain types of

he requested heavier equipment.

Yeah, he, yeah, he wanted, not Black Hawk helicopters. He wanted, he wanted some heavier stuff that was gonna be safer, I'm sure, for the pilots.

Yes. More, more armored is what I took away. And um, so we're just gonna go in while they can see us coming

Mm-hmm.

and not with the equipment we wanted. Everyone is taking it reasonably well. We don't have like a little Battlestar type blowup of your plan sucks, sir. But maybe not. Great.

Yeah. Christian gets pulled from a visit to the Moulin Rouge to actually see combat Bad timing.

Hmm.

Josh Harnett gets the squad prepped for his first command here.

Yeah. Uh, we get some various like soldier life kind of stuff where they're starting to pack their gear

Yeah.

and somebody's making fun of somebody else. Like, we're not gonna need that shit. Like, this is a 30 minute afternoon operation. You dumb dumb.

yeah. Baby Tom Hardy is getting written from Trainspotting. A bunch of shit.

Yeah. So I recognized that actor. I had no idea his name, but I was like, I've seen this goofy face somewhere.

That's a Tom Hardy

Yeah. Yeah.

Pre Star Trek nemesis. Tom Hardy.

We do see somebody. Who is like, no, I've got too much shit to carry. And he takes the, like, armored plating out of the back of his bulletproof vest.

Yep.

Yikes. Yikes. A whole bunch of times during the beginning of this movie, I was like, oh no. Oh no,

Yep.

because I'm, I'm just like hyper tuned to these things. We, we pull the clerk, you know,

Mm-hmm.

he's complained earlier in the movie about, I go to all these battlefields, but I only make the coffee and I type the type these. And, and now he's going. And um, boy, it was like, that guy's not gonna make it. This guy that took his plate out isn't gonna make it like I was worried for everyone.

Yeah, I mean, baby Orlando Bloom, who's just all like, I can't wait to get in there and kill people. I'm just like, oh dude, you're not gonna make it to this fight.

Yeah, it was like, well, you're first, yep.

that's, that's in a minute here. Uh, the mission is about to go. A few soldiers call home, leave letters. Guy puts his blood type on his boots.

Mm-hmm. Shout out own eggs. Woo.

same.

All right. Rock

very improbable. We are probably maybe the only sci-fi watch cast who has two oh negative hosts.

the only O negative sci-fi watch.

is a very real possibility. We finally found our claim to fame Laura.

Yeah. Woo. You know what else is weird and probably statistically weird is both my children are o eggs.

that is, is is Aaron not?

We don't know 'cause he hates getting his blood taken.

man. You gotta do that like once a year.

I'm like, man, I'm gonna walk you to the doctor's office and be like, look, y'all. I need to know. I just need to know.

like, I, I will say though, like I had a very strong phobia of needles for a very long time. I get it. Um,

Yeah

2021 rolls around. It's January COVID vaccines are about to be a thing, and in order to try and psych myself up to not be afraid of needles, I get my first tattoo.

Oh, okay.

worked. Not only have I gotten two more tattoos since then, but I'm also not afraid of needles anymore.

You just like exposure yourself

percent. Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't remember what happens to that guy, but that doesn't seem good.

Yeah.

we're about to get on the helicopters. We've got, we've got some helicopters going in. We've got, I think a total of four black hawks and some little birds and a convoy. We've got people that are gonna be on the ground.

I found where we are right at in my notes

Okay.

Says, this mission is about to black hawk go down. And then the next, the next line is, have you ever thought about how a helicopter is just a really big upside down lawnmower? I promise I was not high or drunk when I did this.

it did take you a while

took me hours. Hours. I think I watched this movie for four hours for notes plus.

Just to give you some off pod context, ladies and gentlemen. I watched this movie one day, you know, while the baby was napping. And I texted Defer immediately afterwards and I said, oh boy. That was rough. but if I did it, you have to do it too by God. And then Jair texted me the next day in the morning, like when he started, because he had like 15 pages of notes on the font and then was texting me a little bit periodically throughout, and I was like, oh God.

it's been three hours and I've made it 30 minutes.

Uh,

I think at one point if I had, I texted you. If I keep up at this pace, I will finish right before dinner. And I think I had started around 9:00 AM

yeah. Yeah. It's dense, y'all,

Uh, after this, as the choppers move out, we get some of that classic Battlestar Galactica near silence as big vehicles are moving around. This is another thing that we see a ton. we get lots of like in, in battle stars, like cockpit views, where you get little glimpses of the battlefield behind here, it's like the side of the helicopter is. You know, like a little bit of the frame, like Eric Bonna or Tom Hardy's face is like two thirds of the frame.

they did some really pretty shots of the, the beach and the coast as they're flying along. 'cause it seems like we're, we're kind of coming along this coast to go into Mogadishu and it is really pretty.

They, they comment on it that it's almost a great place to go on vacation.

Yep. What with all the famine and warlords? Not so much, but

They get into the city here, as the military starts to move in this felt so much like the first active metal gear solid forward to me. Which I'm sure was a choice. it does, that does not take place in Somalia, but it does take place like right on the other side of a couple bodies of water from Somalia. And uh, it, it's, I mean, Kajima, the guy who makes this games is such a moving nerd that it a hundred percent was not an accident.

Yeah.

let's see, the troops pour out of the choppers with legless falling out as the chopper dodges an RPG. They try and get him to a Humvee as teams at the hotel have cleared the building and captured everyone within in quick order.

Fun fact, I guess as much as anything about this movie can be called fun the Rangers that are like dropping outta these helicopters, they got actual rangers to do that

Uh, I would hope Yeah, it could.

Yeah. Like actual trained people. Um, they, this movie seemed to require a lot of Pentagon cooperation, which is probably part of the tone setting. you know, if we want the actual military assets, we have to dance their dance up to a certain point. And the, the real military nerds will notice this, but I guess there are some shots that are not in Black Hawk helicopters. Uh, they're in Huey's because.

There's like, I know there's the ones that have like the seats on the outside, and then there's the ones that have the seats on the inside that are bigger. That's, that's as much as I got.

I can tell you that none of these damn helicopters was airwolf and I'm really sad about it.

If one of these was airwolf, none of this would've happened. If they had just had a jet helicopter, they would've been able to dodge that Rrp. G

Yep. Yeah,

were you?

it's a damn shame

Humvee start heading out with the captives. Another rocket propelled grenade almost takes out Christopher Robin, and it's a lot of gunfire from this point on.

Yeah. We got the captives actually very quickly in this movie. Like the, the, they told us who the targets were. They were some high up lieutenants of a deed. We weren't going for him, but we were trying to get some of his staff, basically, and we got 'em. We got 'em real quick. And they're such a nothing. They aren't like, do we ever actually see these guys? I don't even know.

yeah. It's

the the focus is on like how this thing just spirals out of control, even though we got what we came for.

Yeah. a gunner gets taken out, so Eric Bannon jumps on it and then 54 minutes in the titular Blackhawk goes down.

Yeah, it was a

this particular scene with the gunner hit me fucking hard. 'cause one of my best friends was a Humvee gunner in Afghanistan for a number of years. And to just see like how quick this happens, was just like. Like, I had to stop and like walk away for a minute and just like, text him and just be like, Hey, you, I, I know you're alive. Obviously it's been, you know, 20 years since you were in Afghanistan, almost. But just thinking of you buddy, you know, hope you're doing well.

Yeah. We all have friends that served in some capacity and. We, we love them for it. It's so complicated. Um, I, I have a student right now that served and watched this movie over the weekend and it was like, man, I kind of wanna say thank you, but I don't want to be weird. Don't be weird. So I haven't been weird.

I, I, I have a, a number of veteran friends, and I don't know, I've always, uh. some of them I had, I met in college who had gotten out and had done like, and, uh, you know, were around and after their service. And then some of my friends went in after college.

Mm-hmm.

And so I, I don't know. I've always, I've always taken it upon myself. Like, I think the best way I can honor their sacrifices is by being a very active pacifist.

I wish our society was such that we didn't need them, that we didn't need that.

Yeah.

Um, and I would like to build toward that, but it seems like people are messing it up for us, like actively right

Like actively write, like, um, let me refresh CNN real quick.

Hopefully. Don't

Okay.

you wanna, you wanna like a happy tidbit from this

Yeah. Is one exists?

There, there's a happy tidbit. Um, so when they were filming, the set was like constantly pestered by stray dogs running in and outta shots. And Ridley Scott was like, no, this is kind of authentic like this. This makes sense for this set in this setting. Right. And then eight dogs were adopted by the production team and taken back to the us.

That's cool.

Yeah. So some doggies got some homes outta this movie.

Yeah. When we get into combat here, the language of the film speaks the same as language is Battlestar Galactica. We've got lots of fast cuts with dialogue interspersed in between. One of the things that struck me the most about this movie and made me realize how much we see it in Battlestar is the difficulty of communication in combat.

Yes.

yelling at each other and repeating each other in this movie. And that's something that we see all the time in Battlestar.

Yep. And if you miss a word, like recent episode of Battlestar, where we had an exercise and some radios were cutting out, like radios, cutting out can mean a lot when you're in this second by second situation. Yeah.

We get after this, what's probably my favorite shot of the movie. Um, so, Josh Harnett squad is working their way to surround and secure the Chopper crash site. And then there's a group of Somali soldiers working their way there as well. And we get this overhead shot of the two alleyways and both groups working their way down in parallel. Oh. Oh really? Scott? You did good.

So tense.

This is like the weirdest movie in the Prometheus alien movie series, but definitely, definitely the best shot out of all of them,

Yeah.

which I guess technically would be true because they did Cedar Earth. So any movie he does that's a historical movie would technically count as in universe

in universe, it's cannon.

Canon. Huh? That was a throwaway joke, but I'm thinking about it more now. Hmm.

You accidentally created a conspiracy.

Right.

Congrats.

The Chaos of Combat Unfolds. We see civilians killed, soldiers killed or maimed. This is not glorified or cleansed. Um, you know, dude gets his thumb shut off or something at one point. Uh, Guy grabs a hand. Like it is, it is disgusting on purpose.

The multiple times we hear that no one is left behind, and the meaning of that is like if something happens to a buddy and there are only parts of your buddy, like,

Mm-hmm.

get the parts of your buddy. Bring him home. it's really intense. Um, we do see at one point, I don't know if we're quite there, but we're close. Are we to the convoy getting RPG yet?

Um, we're, I think we're about there. Yeah. I mostly mo most of my notes for the next little bit talk about the color grading mash in Caprica.

Okay. Oh, yes. The color. We, I now know where Caprica yellow came from. You guys.

Yeah.

Black Hawk down.

Caprica yellow is Black Hawk down a hundred percent.

Yes. Well, we've got this convoy trying to make it back. We have an RPG strikes and it hits the driver of one of the vehicles

Oh my God.

and doesn't explode. So what I read was, this was true. I am not sure if it was this injury or another injury, but the actual injury was so implausible that they had to edit it to make it where they were like, people won't believe that this is what really happened.

Yeah.

So we have to change it a little bit.

This is where he gets all the glass in his face, the driver, or is that later?

I think that is now I think the, the. Passenger gets glass in his face, but the driver gets that and an RPG, and so we're toast. I don't know. A lot of these things run together, guys. It's really hard to review this kind of movie.

Yeah. uh, Wombles and Nelson are stranded alone here. Okay. Not, not sure. I guess I did use character names for these too.

Wombles is a great name's Wombly, I think. I'm not sure

It's Wombles now. Nelson has rendered death from gunfire. Um, another chopper drops troops, but has to evac. It gets, uh, then the down chopper we see the crew is still alive, but can't be moved, so they're trying to treat them in the wreckage

Mm-hmm.

another copter gets taken down. And at this point we've seen them launch so many rocket propelled grenades that I grabbed my phone and in Google I typed RPG cost And then I deleted it before I hit search. So I don't end up on a government watch list

no. You're just gonna get a whole bunch of stuff about d and d.

pass. Oh, a hundred percent. That's what actually would've happened. Yeah,

That's what you would've gotten.

it is, it's, this is like totally unrelated but related. I went shooting with Ben a couple weeks ago

Uhhuh,

and as part of like the waiver process, they get your email. They immediately turned my email over to a guy who runs a CCW permit class in the area,

Uhhuh.

and he has emailed me one to two times every single day since I went to that range about how not safe I am and how I need to get a CCW.

Okay. Okay. Fuck off.

I blocked him today. I, I blocked him without unsubscribing.

Yeah. Yeah. That is Okay.

was, it was obscene. The e like some of these emails I got were just like,

Hmm.

dear God,

I just gave my auditing class a little spiel about not making decisions out of fear,

good. That's a good place to be.

and I was of course, speaking in like a professional business context and like having to challenge your client on complex accounting issues, that sort of thing. But I think it applies to like a lot of stuff.

Laura, we do very different things, but something that we both probably spend a lot of time professionally doing is explaining math to people who aren't as good at math as us.

Yeah, that's, yeah.

And I feel like this is where, this is our overlap on the Venn diagram, on the professional side, I, uh, I, uh, I mean I've been at my job for about six months now, so I'm at a point now where I am more of a known factor instead of the new guy.

mm-hmm.

And, you know, coming in as senior developer, there's not a lot of senior developers in the company who do what I do have my level of expertise. I'm at a point now where people are reaching out to me like, Hey. How would I go about starting a project in the thing that you're an expert in?

Uhhuh

I wrote a like page and a half about just like requirements gathering. And a full third of it is don't let yourself be bullied by the business. They don't understand math. They, I don't care if they're in finance, they don't understand math. They like, even if, even if they understand accounting, math or finance math, they don't understand statistics.

they don't understand computer math.

don't understand computer math. They don't understand report design. If it's not a spreadsheet, you've lost them. Like, and that's fine. That's not their job to understand. It's your job to understand, but you can't let them dictate requirements from the mindset of not understanding how this works and what they could possibly have,

Yeah,

is the same thing. It's just like, don't be bullied, don't make decisions out of fear. Put your foot down. Know that you know what you're talking about. Like same thing. Same, same.

Yeah. Yeah. So life lessons here on the podcast. If you made it this far, I don't know.

That's,

Glad you're still here.

we've made four jokes in an hour, so we're trying.

now? Right. We're trying to give you some content at least. Okay.

The catharsis you get outta this, I hope is worth the lack of jokes. Listener,

This, this episode is just for me at this point. 'cause I got some stuff I gotta work out

right?

life.

Laura would literally rather host a podcast than go to therapy. What

I can do two things.

man? Jason Isaac's Southern accent is so good.

Yeah.

He gets a bit of talking after this and I know it's not the same character he played in White Lotus in this most recent season, but god damn, is that not my head Cannon?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so we've got two, two helicopters that are really important in this movie. I was absolutely stunned. When

black hawks down.

there's a second one. Oh my gosh, I was misled.

big twist. Completely unexpected. A second helicopter goes down.

Oh boy. Yeah, super. Six one was the first one, and now super six four

Yeah.

not in good shape. And both of these are taken out by RPGs, uh, hitting a rotor, I

Yeah. Which makes sense. That's how you stabilize.

Yeah. Yeah.

Otherwise you are just a giant upside out lawnmower.

Right. So in this movie, I, I didn't know what to suspect of being CGI, you know, everything was really smooth and good, but I did read that the, when the helicopters are going down and the rotors are kicking up dust, anytime the helicopters were like close to the ground and were kicking up dust, the dust is CGI, like, they would actually wet the ground beforehand so that there wouldn't be dust. And then they added the dust in in post because actual dust could be a little too unpredictable.

yeah.

gonna see what you

That makes sense.

yeah, I was like, Hey, good job. Had no

Yeah. The dust CGI is solid in this timeframe. No, no. Beowulf's here.

Yeah. Yeah, but we get really dramatic EE both times that these helicopters go down. You know, there's like the moments where the pilots know they're going down, which must be just like awful for a person. and they're descending. And then you hit have like the rotor coming into the ground because the helicopter doesn't just like land on its belly. You know that that rotor's gonna be spinning into the ground.

Giant lawnmower. We get uh, some, uh, wounded convoys. Humvees finally returned to base here stranding, Josh Harnett and the others. The second down chopped is swarm. All the prisoners are, uh, killed except for one who is captured alive. But only after killing dozens of Somalis.

we had one pilot that seemed like clearly okay. And so we had the second crash site, right? And two of our Deltas were in another helicopter and said they wanted to go secure the site.

Yeah.

So Sugar and Gordon Gordon is Jamie Lannister.

Yeah.

They propelled down. Try to protect crash site number two. They get Michael Durant was the pilot who survived out of the helicopter, and they can't get him very far. They get him like into a building and then they're gonna try to defend him,

Yeah.

but does not go great rape.

Nope. Knight begins to descend as the troops deployed begin to coalesce. Yorick Nelson and Wombles make it back, but not without injury or incident. Eric Bon and Crew make it to the other, down to Chopper and find no one. The troops in the field do their best to stabilize their wounded compatriots until

this is horrible.

all of nightfall hits and the Somalis press the attack.

Yeah. So in this nighttime thing we have I think his name is Smith. I don't know ranks, I couldn't tell you the ranks of most of these people, but he's been hit in an aorta,

Yeah.

like in his leg. And the craziness of the medic having to try to stabilize this young man with his colleagues, who I think, I do believe he's only one medic, and the rest of them are just like doing what he says.

Yeah.

Just so intense. And, uh, this young man does not make it,

No,

Uh, in this nighttime somewhere in this nighttime thing we have Grimes who was the paper pusher? The

Mm-hmm.

making coffee.

Yeah. He makes damn good coffee.

Yeah, it's the secret is in the grind. He's like hopped up on adrenaline probably, but also knowing like, we need to stay awake if we're gonna make it through this night, if we're gonna get out of here and making people coffee. And I was like, man, I'm not gonna pretend that I would be any use in this situation, but I would probably think, yeah, coffee. Let's do that.

Uh, Eric Bana and crew are some sneaky bitches. They take out some artillery and then use it to hit other artillery.

Artillery.

Look, it's 10 30.

No, I get it. The other day I could not say opera. Oh, no. Operationalize. I was trying to say that in class and it did not go well, and I could not do it, and I ultimately chose other words.

Yeah. Yeah. Tanks start rolling out of the base here as the narrator from TV's Nature finishes up his coffee. Perimeters are established and everyone works to get everyone out of there. As day breaks, a group rangers are forced to proceed on foot since there aren't enough room in the vehicles for everyone,

Yes. Yeah. These are the UN vehicles. So these are not US vehicles.

I hope this was just drama at this point

Nope.

or no? No. Like even if there's not enough room for everyone, right.

Mm-hmm.

Would you send the guys who have been awake for a day and a half fighting an enemy territory to go on foot, or would you send the fresh guys out on foot and get these guys in a fucking car?

nope,

No.

nope. So these were UIN vehicles and the UN troops did not want to be out there. These aren't US troops that are coming as relief. So it, I believe it was Pakistani maybe. I don't know. I know there was at least Pakistani, Malaysian 'cause they also suffered a couple of casualties, but not like the Americans did. but yeah, they, they did not let the Americans in the vehicles and they had to run out. It was five kilometers approximately. And this is now referred to as a Mogadishu mile.

Wow.

Yeah.

I wonder if my buddy Joe's done these. He's both a veteran and a marathon runner.

Yeah, it's probably come up then.

and I'm sure it's come up. He, uh, the, he, he ran the Detroit marathon, I want to say, five years in a row while carrying in American flag.

Yeah. Wow,

Yeah. Yeah. He was in the news every year for it.

Wow. Yeah, like I, I've not, you know, we've talked about, I run and I, I'm nothing. I'm like, I'm slow as fuck and that's okay. Like, but I'm just trying to do this and I was like, wow, I'm probably never gonna look at the 5K distance the same way again, watching these men do it with their weapons and

50 pounds of gear. Yeah.

after having been up at the most traumatic night of their lives, having to just keep going.

Fuck.

Yeah. So crazy.

Yep. They get out of the hostile part of the city and back to base as we head to the medic tent where the injured are treated. Ruiz has a big, do we get to win this time? Rambo two vibes.

Yeah, so Ruiz Ruiz is basically saying, don't go back there without me. Like I think Ruiz was one that had kind of a, a break in the middle and he is like, I can't do it, I can't go back out there. And

also died.

yeah, yeah. So he's saying, don't go back out there without me. But they're sending him to Germany, to the field hospital and he does not

yeah. He's in the, the list of those soldiers at the end uh, Eric Bonna is going back out there as Josh Harnett waxes philosophical on the life of a soldier telling fallen comrades. He's gonna ha talk to some parents or something as we see caskets get loaded up, and that's the end of the movie. We get the little bit about the thousand Somalis and 19 American soldiers. Here's 19 American soldier names.

And then a thousand other people, except it was probably more than that. Oh boy. So I have other things I wanna say about this movie for one thing. It is, I'm glad I watched it.

yeah,

Um, I think when I texted you, I was like. Man, fuck this episode.

yeah, you did.

I was like, I don't, I don't know. I might give my first fuck this movie.

We don't rate the movies, and I've never been more glad of that than right now.

Yeah. Yeah. Because it, it is intense. Um, you know, at one point there's like someone who gets blown in half and we like

yeah.

comfort his torso, and then take it back because we're not leaving anyone behind. And it's weird when we watch these kind of things, that knowing in the timeline of the universe that like I was a child. This was during my lifetime. Those movies that we watch about Vietnam or about World War ii. There's a little bit of distance there where you can think about it a little more academically,

Mm-hmm.

but then like watching this where it's like, wow, this is my time. And I had no idea it was happening. But the challenge I think these days is that up to a point that history, like World War ii, especially before the internet, it was easy to come up with a prevailing narrative. Like we just say this thing enough times in enough books and it's the truth of how it went.

Mm-hmm.

And now we can see much more diverse things happening. So like. With the things that have happened in Gaza, like we've been able to see the perspectives of the people it's happening to with the power of the internet.

Yeah, no. I mean, people talk about the news involvement in Vietnam as like exposing the American household to the realities of war the horrors of war and

The first time that, that could happen,

Yeah. And TikTok is like the unsanitized uncensored, direct from civilians version of that.

correct, correct.

the last time we'll have that as a culture as well, because now we're gonna have AI showing us fake shit for forever and it won't matter anymore.

Yeah. That's the, the concern that I've had this year is like, obviously I feel for these people.

Mm-hmm.

And I feel for especially the women and children whose backs these conflicts are always carried upon.

Yeah.

You know, it's women and children starving who had no say in any of these decisions and couldn't even have agency in it if they wanted to because the systems are preventing them from having their own agency. But now we're living in a world where people are putting together pretty realistic fake videos. And so I'm like, I don't even know if I can watch your story and know if it's true or if you're real.

Yeah.

a society, I don't know. I, I can't pass judgments on any decisions that were made because I didn't have to make them.

Yeah.

but

Yep.

it is like hard. How do we stand by and watch this happen, but also should we interfere in other people's affairs? I, I don't know. I dunno.

I mean, if there were an easy answer

We would've already taken, it

a hundred percent.

would've already been then. Uh, I did wanna call our attention to a recent documentary that was done. Uh, I found a BBC article about this. It's supposedly on Netflix. Yeah, this is pretty recent. It's from the articles from February of this year. So for the 30th anniversary, they went to Somalia and talked to Mogadishu residents about what happened. And in this article specifically, they talked to a couple of women, which I appreciated.

it had classroom vibes. To me, that was my initial read.

But she's like trying to protect these innocent children and. He goes out the other side of the schoolhouse and there's a little boy out there, and I think the father tries to take a shot at the soldier. and the soldier has a better shot, the American soldier. And then the boy runs up to the man crying because it's implied like that's a relative, you know, like that's his father or something.

Mm-hmm.

so I appreciate that Ridley Scott did not completely shy away from that. I understand he probably had to make certain people happy when he's telling this story. Um, but. There's a very real cost there. And so in this article and in this documentary, these women are also telling their stories of like, what happened to me that day.

Mm-hmm.

And one woman was visiting her, her family in another part of the city, or her friends in another part of the city when the, the shells start going off and the gunfire. And so she's very close to it. She runs home to her family. Her husband starts to make her tea. Her neighbor is visiting, uh, because she's lives alone and she's frightened.

Mm-hmm.

And then some ordinance, impossible to know who's hits their home. And the husband is dead. She feels water from above her. She's, she's on the ground and she realizes this is not water. It's the blood of her neighbor. The woman who lived alone,

Duh.

who has passed, she lost several of her children. One of her sons was blinded, one of her sons, she says this to this day, can't stand the sound of an aircraft and

Yeah.

will hide. this other woman they spoke to gave birth to a baby girl that morning in her apartment. And so she's just had a baby girl gone through the birth process postpartum. Her family's here to see the baby. Everything breaks out. American soldiers run into her house and wind up stationing there in her home while she has a new baby. Sorry. I just really feel for mothers who are in this situation,

Yeah.

and there are probably more of them in the last few days than there were this time before, and there's more of them than there ever should be, who have to think about their new baby and the horrific world around them. And it sounds like the experience with the soldiers wasn't, you know, like a horrible experience. Um, she did name her baby girl. They, they believe in her family of naming the baby after something significant.

Yeah.

I don't know, but I just wanted to let everyone know that that's out there. Like if you're, if you've seen Black Hawk Down, you're interested in this thing, like there's also this chance to get some visibility on Somali citizens experience. It looks like it's actually a mini series, and the title is Surviving Black Hawk Down. So So, yeah, the more we can know, the more we can empathize with our fellow human being. I hope.

Yeah. Um, Battlestar.

So that was Black Hawk Downer.

Um, next week season two episode 11, uh, resurrection Ship part one, the Battle Stars, Galactica and Pegasus face. A new cy target, a resurrection ship while a power struggle threatens to result in all out war among the human fleet

Yeah. Kind of expected that.

like I am, I shouldn't have put a movie in between these three episodes, like as, as, as like, scheduler, like that's my b um,

mean, that was the authentic experience. Right?

I think there was definitely for seasons three and four, I don't remember if there's a break between in season two,

I think Erin told me there was a break after episode 10.

Man, that sucks.

Yeah.

It's definitely a three part episode, so,

Yeah. I would like some resolution, please. Ronnie d

you'll have it in like two years when we finished Battlestar

Yeah. That's what I am afraid of at this point.

and, and it won't be enough. So, but that's, that's, neither here nor there for right now. What is here right now is me thanking Jeremy Siegel which. We, we, we, we love you Jeremy. Uh, thank, thanks so much for putting together our theme music and being a part of this pod fam. We appreciate you a great deal. Jeremy. Siegel, 40 two.amp.com streaming services, nuclear Jaguar.

and thanks Anger Deck time machine on Instagram for our podcast artwork.

Aaron, you watch Black Hawk down too? Do you did?

we, we had a moment after this movie where, well, of course he had to listen to me cry for a few minutes and I think I've brought it up every day since as I've been like processing a little more and a little more and a little more. So really, Erin is always the real MVP of this podcast. 'cause when something happens, it requires like. Effort, mental effort to deal with. Uh, He is the one stuck with that.

Yeah,

Yeah. So thanks babe.

yeah. And, uh, you know, discord, uh, five star ratings. Uh, tell your friends,

Yeah. All that

all that stuff, you know, all that stuff. This isn't your only podcast, and if it is, I'm flattered. You're if if you're, you're exempt from all that other stuff.

Yeah, just be here. We

Yeah. It's cool. We'll take it. Uh, yeah. Well, we'll see you next week. Internet. Fuck.

Love you. Bye.

Bye.