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[Image taken from here.] |
At a Booksale outlet I picked up
I Ain't Got Time To Bleed: Reworking The Body Politic From The Bottom Up, the autobiography of former Minnesota governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura. It's a fun read, a colorful account of the colorful life of a US Navy SEAL who went on and became a professional wrestler, an actor, a rock 'n' roll singer, a TV commentator, a radio talk-show host, a city mayor, and a governor.
I first knew Ventura when he was a World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) commentator who defended the "villains." I also saw him as Sergeant Blain in
Predator. "I ain't got time to bleed" was one of his lines from there. Much later he played an Arkham Asylum security guard in
Batman and Robin.
Four chapters into the book I learned that Ventura was stationed in the Philippines in the early 1970s. Here's what he had to say about the experience:
I loved the Philippines. I was stationed in Subic, and I loved going into Olongapo. It was more like the Wild West than any other place on Earth. In Olongapo, there's a one-mile stretch of road that has 350 bars and 10,000 girls on it every night. Think what that meant to a nineteen-year-old Navy guy! At various bars you had your pick of rock 'n' roll, country and western, you name it. There was one bar that was nothing but transvestites. It was a decadent city. To the kid I was then it was paradise.
Ventura also tells of the time he
almost got mugged inside a jeepney bound for the naval base. Drunk from a night out in town, he dozed off inside the jeep. When Ventura woke his four Filipino co-passengers had knives in hand—I'm guessing
balisongs—demanding that he surrender his watch, a custom Rolex Submariner waterproof dive watch decorated with the US Navy SEAL trident.
Instead of complying, Ventura dove out of the moving vehicle and rolled into some bushes. He walked to the base but he kept his watch. And his life.