I just finished watching Stateside on Encore. This is one of those movie that no one ever sees but is actually very good. The story centers around an 18 year old Marine and a slightly older "starlet" who has developed schizophrenia. It follows how they deal with the consequences of what life has dished out to them and ho wthey impact each other and others around them. Well worth the 2 hours.
For some reason that movie started me thinking about my fake wife - Eileen Irwin Mellencamp. In 1992 I was stationed at McMurdo Station Antarctica. After a spree of tagging everything I could with the Kuru mark I like everyone else settled into a routine. Part of that routine was watching a sequence of 5 videos every morning before quarters. One of the videos was John Mellencamp's "Get A Leg Up", which starred Eileen Irwin. I referred to her as potential ex-wife number 1. At some point a couple of Psychiatrists arrived to do psych evals and one of them commented one day about us watching this video every morning. HMCM Creel looked at him at said "Didn't you know, that's Chad's wife?" This led to a series of questions about how we met etc. I dreamed up a story really quickly about meeting her by crashing a party in LA when I was stationed at El Toro and he was satisfied and life went on. Suddenly she had shifted from potential ex-wife number 1 to "my wife" and she stayed that way until they deaprted the ice and I was able to shift my unhealthy obsessions to some other target, (Jennifer Connelly I believe or maybe Traci Lords) . Everything was going fine until about 9 months later when I saw one of the Psychaitrists walking across the grounds of Naval Hospital Portsmouth Va. and he asked how my wife was. I came up with a quick story about her divorcing me and marrying John Mellencamp and was on my way. Since there is no legal system in Antarctica I hereby declare myself as having been married to Eileen Irwin Mellencamp. Now if only I can collect alimony.
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