I just checked my Office work e-mail. The corporate atmosphere — except for those poor fucks in sales — is very much that of a 40-hour work week, with an emphasis on not dwelling on work when not at work. I often check my work e-mail before I go to bed, however, often to see if I have to worry about any client issues the following day, or to see if I missed an announcement of some sort (we also have a very liberal flex policy, and I’m rarely in the office after 3pm).

Today, I did miss such an announcement — the Office is hosting a catered lunch for us poor slobs who ddin’t take the day off: it’s nothing fancy, pizza and salads, but the gesture is always well appreciated (especially by me).

However, I’ve got to admit, usually, “they’re” better at announcing this stuff further in advance. Because of the lack of foresight, I have a loaf of bread, cheese, and ham in the fridge that will go to waste (because, honestly? Ledo’s pepperoni pizza is delicious!) unless I eat a double lunch, or have it for breakfast.

I’m leaning towards breakfast.

So, when I was, eh, about twelve, there was this movie that came out that I really wanted to see. I really didn’t remember much about it, except that it was a pirate movie and there was a ship that was lost. I think there was an island and a girl, too. I remember going to see it — I also remember that a friend of mine said he didn’t want to see it because he said the trailer gave away the ending (I think he was right, but I didn’t care).

A few years ago, I started thinking about watching it again. I couldn’t find it by googling or wikipediaing anything, even posting about it on this blog didn’t help. I started to think I’d imagined the whole thing!

And then, a week ago Sunday, I opened the Best Buy weekly ad on my computer, and one of the DVDs offered for sale was Shipwreck, a Disney film from 1990, starring Gabriel Byrne. I checked Netflix for it, but couldn’t find it — apparently, it was just recently released on DVD and only available to buy. Disney, you fuckers.

Set sail for high-seas adventure in the classic Disney tradition as a boy named Hakon embarks on an extraordinary voyage! When his ship is sunk by a hurricane, Hakon ends up alone on a jungle island, only to discover his shipmates have been kidnapped by a gang of ruthless pirates. Now he must summon all his courage and instinct for survival to outwit the pirates and rescue his friends. The whole family will cheer this unforgettable, high-spirited adventure!

I watched it this past Sunday — the first half before working at the Bookstore, and the second half after getting home, and, yes, it’s just as bad as the description on the back of the box. The movie’s only saving grace (and that, barely), is Gabriel Byrne as a villainous villain! Also: it’s presented full-frame. What the fuck. I really don’t understand why movies are available in anything but letterbox.

I was a little lazy getting out of my apartment today. I aim to be out my door at 6:10 at the latest, and today I think I was on my way around 6:35. I took my usual route, cutting down an alley perpendicular to Connecticut Avenue, and emerging on the opposite side of the elevator, which, since I had the light, I decided to take. I had the misfortune to be on the elevator at the same time a janitor was polishing it — that tiny compartment reeked of chemicals. I was almost gagging when I staggered onto the mezzanine, but being unfailingly polite, I wished her a happy day.

When I catch a train at Woodley Park, I always turn right at the base of the platform elevator and walk south to the first bench. It’s my experience that boarding a car from this location on the platform will result in disembarking at Grosvenor-Strathmore right at the escalator.

I noticed the ticker says the next train in the direction of Shady Grove is five minutes away, so I take a seat and pull out the book I’ve checked out from the Bookstore (yet another of the employee persk!), Irregulars by Jennet Conant, about the British spy ring in Washington, DC in WWII (Roald Dahl figures heavily). Frankly, it’s an interesting read, but it could’ve used an eagle-eyed editor (pg. 117: “Not only would it give the semi-government-owned British Imperial airways free access to U.S. Airports but also would Britain them to expand its air routes using the very Lend-Lease planes America had sent its ally in its hour of need” — what the fuck does “Britain them” mean?!).

So I’m reading, and I hear that new chime, and a voice says, “Woodley Park customers, attention, Woodley Park customers.” So I stop reading and listen as the voice informs me and everyone else on the platform that, due to a schedule problem, the next oncoming train to Shady Grove would not be stopping at Woodley Park. The train after that, however, would be. So, a train comes in to the station, filled with passengers, and goes right back on out. Some kind at the far end of the platform, who I guess wasn’t paying attention, looked completely bumblefucked.

I glanced at the ticker, saw the next train was two minutes out, and went back to reading. Two minutes, after all, is only two minutes, and hopefully the next train wouldn’t be quite as crowded. When that train pulled in to the station, I noticed the tickers over the doors read “No Passengers”, and I also noticed it was honking, and I also noticed it wasn’t stopping, and, indeed, it didn’t. (The guy at the far end, I’m sure, was completely beside himself).

Finally a third train arrived, and it was rather empty, but more importantly, it stopped. I wonder if the announcement was supposed to have been for the “No Passenger” train, and somehow some wires got crossed and the conductor of the first train thought the instruction was for him to skip the platform. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I was on that train trying to disembark at Woodley Park, and faced with the unpleasant prospect of getting on a very crowded train at Cleveland Park. Ick!

In the dark, early days of World War II, when Great Britain alone stood against the might of Nazi Germany, a naval engagement in the North Atlantic destroyed the pride of the British fleet, and set off a massive ocean-wide hunt for a German battleship, largest in the theater, capable of wrecking havoc amongst the life-line convoys and starving England into surrender.

The HMS Hood had a crew of nearly fifteen hundred, and while the exact cause of the ship’s destruction is still not known (it’s thought a shell pierced her deck armor and exploded in a magazine), what is known is this: that Bismarck fired, and the Hood was so completely devastated, so rapidly sunk, that only three of her crew survived.

Tedd Briggs was one of those survivors. I was sad to learn today that he died October 7th, 2008.

Ted Briggs himself recalled that he was lifted off his feet and dumped headfirst on the deck: “Then she started listing to starboard. She righted herself, and started going over to port. When she had gone over by about 40 degrees we realised she was not coming back.” There was no time, or need, for an order to abandon ship. Hood sank within three minutes.

Briggs was sucked down beneath the sea. He later wrote: “I had heard it was nice to drown. I stopped trying to swim upwards. The water was a peaceful cradle – I was ready to meet my God. My blissful acceptance of death ended in a sudden surge beneath me, which shot me to the surface like a decanted cork in a champagne bottle. I turned, and 50 yards away I could see the bows of the Hood vertical in the sea. It was the most frightening aspect of my ordeal, and a vision which was to recur terrifyingly in nightmares for the next 40 years.”

Hood, launched in 1918, was at the time still the biggest warship ever built. “She was the outward and visible manifestation of sea-power,” wrote Sir Ludovic Kennedy in his book Pursuit: the Sinking of the Bismarck. “For most Englishmen the news of Hood’s death was traumatic, as though Buckingham Palace had been laid flat or the Prime Minister assassinated.”

I’ve been fascinated with the Hunt for the Bismarck for years, ever since I chanced across a documentary on the History Channel. Churchill was so enraged by the defeat of the Hood that he practically ordered the entire Royal Navy to find and sink the Bismarck. This is one of those sequences that you think, “This has to be a movie — it can’t be true!”

Bismarck‘s crew had always drilled on the chance that they might encounter the most deadly ship in the Royal Navy’s arsenal: Hood. When the battle alarms rang, Bismarck‘s crew thought they were being subjected to yet another drill, and when the Hood vanished in a fireball, no one on Bismarck‘s bridge believed what they saw.

Eventually, it was old, obsolete torpedo-bombers, launched from HMS Ark Royal, that did Bismarck in, after they inadvertently attacked HMS Sheffield, which was tailing Bismarck. Fortunately, the brand new magnetic detonators on the torpedoes were faulty, and the torpedoes exploded on impact with the water. Recalled to Ark Royal, torpedoes outfitted with the old (and reliable) detonators, the plane took off at dusk on a suicide mission — they’d never be able to find their carrier again. Each plane dropped its torpedo with no effect, except the last: the torpedo exploded and jammed Bismarck’s rudder. Each and every plane returned to the Ark Royal, at night, safely. And thanks to her jammed rudder, and inability to maneuver except in a giant circle, the British fleet closed in and pounded Bismarck until either they sunk her, or her own crew scuttled her.

The hunt for the Bismarck is one of long-odds, horrifying consequences for failure, and incredible loss. Watching any of the documentaries which touch on the fate of Hood, it’s impossible not to be saddened by the residual horror and shock evident on Mr. Briggs so many years later. However, as sad as I find his death, at age 85, I don’t find it tragic: Ted Briggs got a sixty-seven year extension on his life back on May 24th, 1941, and as it pertains him, I’m sure of two things: he was never not grateful for that freak bit of luck, and he never, not for a single day, didn’t wish the same opportunity for his lost shipmates.