About 3 weeks ago, one of our sold Army soldiers, Specialist Bateman, decided to take on LSA Anaconda Air Force airmen at their own game, the "Balad Idol" contest series that the local airmen do when they're not busy working in harms way(in their branch of the armed services nowdays: slips, trips, and falls)...

In short time, this red necked wonder sang his way past 2 weekly rounds, with such classics such as "Little Less Talk, a Lot More Action", and Garth Brooks' "Rodeo". Facing off against 5 other people (4 airmen and a civilian obsessed with Luther Vandross), he decided to used a hide a trip up his sleeve....PLAYING A #$%#%#$%#@!!! INSTRUMENT AT AN IDOL CONTEST FOR ONCE. I should have known, as he actually had a guitar as his carry on for the plane trip into Anaconda,and has a tendency to spontaneously have country jamming sessions.

As little seriousness as I gave him, I was proved wrong, as his completely acoustic version of "American Soldier" (who saw that coming?) received the most applause in an audience made up of over 80% airmen. However, Bateman had to deal with the fact that every single one of the judges was either a commissioned or senior non commissioned air force officer. It was not helped when an Army Colonel providing entertainment during the intermission replied to the judges' observation of there being only one army soldier in the semi-finals with saying that most of them were busy "outside the wire" at the time while the air force was normally busy being obsessed with silly Morale-Welfare-Recreation events.

So our Specialist Bateman was deliberately denied the chance at the finals, being left our of a three way tie, two of which were obsessively singing bad Luther Vandross songs, but if it means being either being a third-place soldier or a first place airman, we'll just be happy to cut our losses while were still ahead.