Comedian Jenée: People are Idiots

Afghanistan ’08- Day Two

I’m finally in Afghanistan! We left Germany at 6 am on a gigantic C-5 airplane. Crew: 8, passengers: 2. Does that qualify as flying on a private jet?

I sat in the cockpit during takeoff with several hotties, which provided further confirmation to my belief that the Air Force is the best looking branch of the military (of course, when I perform for the Army I have to tell them they’re the best looking).

I spent most of the seven hour flight sprawled out across a row of chairs then returned to the cockpit to watch a mid-air refueling.

That involved pulling our plane about 30 feet below another plane then attaching a line that transferred 12,000 gallons of fuel from the other plane to ours. It was an exciting process to watch, particularly when we hit little bumps and got kinda close to the other plane. This here was the view from two inches behind the co-pilot’s shoulder.

We’re spending the night at Bagram Air Force base, elevation 5,000 ft., in a valley surrounded by snow-covered mountains. My SoCal ass isn’t digging the cold weather but at least it’s tolerable. Ira’s staying in a B-hut, which is a flimsy plywood structure that houses a bunch of soldiers. I’ve got my own toasty room with a tv and dvd player in the distinguished visitors unit. Military tours are the rare circumstances in comedy when it’s better to be a woman than a man.

I’m currently sitting in the Pat Tillman USO center fighting for bandwidth with about 40 soldiers. The connection speed is so slow I just received an email sent in 1943. This means I might not be able to post every day and will have to hold on to some updates until I find a speedy 28K connection.

It’s almost 11 pm and I have to be prepared to catch a flight to Kabul at 4:30 am. With the airstrip only a couple hundred yards from my room, I’m sure sleep won’t be a problem at all. We’re supposed to be based in Kabul for three days so I’m looking forward to finally staying in one location for more than nine hours. Hopefully we’ll even do a little comedy at some point.