Things I learn from NPR

I once watched a movie with the current CIA director, Michael Hayden. Specifically, Enemy of the State, starring Will Smith (who by contract, has a starring role in every other movie in the 1990s and 2000s) and Gene Hackman (who had a similar contract in the 1970s and 1980s). 

I only discovered this just today, when I was listening to last Sunday's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!", a comical news quiz on NPR. Hayden was this week's celebrity guest (yes, it's an odd program).  

The host and celebrity panelists were joking with the CIA director about how so many people thought the American intelligence services were like those depicted in Enemy of the State (i.e., spying on everyone) or in Three Days of the Condor (i.e., killing off people who got in the way), and they wanted to know which one was accurate. 

Hayden then mentioned that he had watched Enemy of the State just before getting word that he was being promoted to director of the NSA (the bad guys in the film). Specifically, he said he had watched it on the Friday night it came out at the base theater where he was stationed, at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, Korea.

"Whoa!" I thought to myself as a low-energy GE lightbulb went off in my head. "I was there!" I distinctly remember watching that movie, in part because it also starred Lisa Bonet, about whom I had had many impure thoughts when I was a lad. 

Geez, who wouldn't? (Frankly, though I'm happy to hear she's resurrecting her career in the American remake of the British hit "Life on Mars," it appears the past ten years or so have not been terribly kind to her. Unlike, say, Phoebe Cates.)

Anyway, knowing the schedule I had back then, and knowing I had watched the movie when it first came out, I also would have been there at the Balboni Theater during the same showing. I can't say I specifically remember the good general, but it's kinda cool to know this. 

Now I'm only one degree of separation from the president. My plan is finally coming together. (And that, wiretapping scribes, is meant as a joke.)