Remember when talk show host and funnyman Conan O’Brien paid a visit to the troops at Al Udeid Air Base last November? Monday night on TBS, everybody’s going to get a chance to see what he was up to during his trip to Qatar with First Lady Michelle Obama. The special episode will be called #MissionConan (which is how they’re promoting it on social media). Besides Michelle Obama — who, it seems, challenged Conan to drop and give her 50 — O’Brien was joined by comedians John Mulaney, Laurie Kilmartin and Brian Kiley and singer Grace Potter. Shortly after his…
Browsing: Offbeat
In case you haven’t been anywhere near the Internet for the last few weeks, a little movie called Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened this weekend. (Spoiler alert: It was a lot of fun.) Pretty much everybody jumped on the Star Wars bandwagon (including Military Times, with our “Pick your Star Wars battle buddy” poll). And as the movie entered theaters late last week, the 45th Space Wing at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida also joined in the fun. The 45th has filmed a trailer parodying the first teaser for Force Awakens, using airmen to stand in for Stormtrooper deserter Finn, desert…
The Air Force Band yesterday staged its annual surprise performance of holiday music at Union Station in Washington DC on Thursday. Unlike previous years, which were more classically-themed flash mob-style performances, this year’s show nodded to the Air Force’s roots and the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. The musicians wore Army Air Corps uniforms and played a period-appropriate big band-style arrangement of Jingle Bells — even bringing strings into the mix — before segueing to a choral version of Auld Lang Syne. Swing dancers from New York City helped bring everything home, and Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James…
Funnyman Conan O’Brien and First Lady Michelle Obama put on a show for troops stationed at Al Udeid Air Base yesterday. And judging by this short clip of Conan’s stand-up set — apparently taken by someone in the crowd and sent to John Q. Public blogger Tony Carr, who posted it on his YouTube channel — he left the troops howling with laughter. In his gut-bustingly hilarious rant, Conan eviscerates the base’s restrictions on consuming alcohol and suggests a few tweaks to the military’s policy that seemed … let’s call it warmly received by the crowd. Portions of Conan’s trip will be…
Troops at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar are getting an unusual guest this week: Talk show host and comedian Conan O’Brien. Conan landed at Al Udeid today with First Lady Michelle Obama. During his visit, O’Brien will be putting on a show for some of the roughly 11,000 service members stationed there. Portions of Conan’s trip to Doha will be shown on his late-night TBS show later this year, according to Entertainment Weekly. But in the meantime, he’s taken the reins of the First Lady’s Instagram account and is promising to post more photos showing his trip. Said O’Brien: Hi everyone! It’s…
Walking the floor at Comic-Con, you’re bound to see people pretending to be Darth Vader, Captain America, Batman or Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones. What you don’t expect to run into is someone pretending to be an Air Force Office of Special Investigations special agent. But that’s exactly what a federal indictment alleges airman Jonathon Wall did last month at the Salt Lake City Comic-Con. The Justice Department yesterday announced that Wall, 29, of Layton, Utah, was indicted by a federal grand jury on Wednesday on one count of pretending to be a federal officer, which could carry a jail…
Standing desks have been gaining popularity among office workers for some time, so it’s no surprise that the ergonomic trend has reached the Air Force. But when our friends at Military.com yesterday picked up a story from Georgia’s Macon Telegraph newspaper about 30 or so airmen at Robins Air Force Base ditching chairs in favor of standing desks, it immediately reminded us of this Duffel Blog story from three years ago: Tired Of ‘Chair Force’ Nickname, Air Force Colonel Bans Chairs TAMPA, FL — The Commander of the 6th Air Mobility Wing at MacDill Air Force Base announced today that he would no longer allow…
The creator of the wildly popular “Terminal Lance” web comic has decided to “jump branches” and portray life in the Air Force instead of the Marine Corps. Marine veteran Maximilian Uriarte announced on Facebook Wednesday that “Terminal Airman” will debut next week. The move marks a radical shift for the comic formerly known as “Terminal Lance,” which appears weekly in Marine Corps Times. Until now, Uriarte has focused on aspects of the Marine Corps that make the service stand out from the rest of the military – such as the Corps’ trademarked “knife hands” move, which retired Gen. James Mattis…
OK, some of these guys at Kadena Air Base in Japan are having a lot more fun than they probably should be. Back in May, Kadena airmen weighed in on whether the Air Force would be able to take down Godzilla in a head-to-head matchup. And on July 31, Kadena posted its latest episode of “The Show,” a goofy video series from the 18th Wing’s public affairs shop that tries to inform airmen there about what’s going on. It seems a few airmen there aren’t getting the picture that when a typhoon warning sounds, you DON’T GO OUTSIDE. In an…
A staff sergeant at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, is traveling to France for an international competition of a different sort. Staff Sgt. Jonathan MacPherson, a fuels service center controller with the 673rd Logistics Readiness Squadron Fuels Management Flight, has qualified to compete the world championship of cycle polo. A combination of polo, hockey and cycling that dates back to the early 20th Century. “The best way to describe it is three-on-three hockey,” MacPherson said in an Air Force release. “You put the ball in the middle, somebody counts down, and one person from each team sprints [to the ball] in…