"Catch 22"

[streakeagle]

How many here have either seen the movie or read the book "Catch 22". I am guilty of being too lazy to find the book and read it even though I know I would love it. I own it and have shared it so many times with my other friends who are ex-military.

I don't think it would be as funny to people who haven't served since some of the humor for me comes from knowing that I had people just like that all around me. In fact, the XO in the movie looks and sounds just like the XO of my first boat.

Orson Welles, playing aristocratic visiting general annoyed by the moans and groans of junior officer givig a briefing:
"Who is this man?!"

XO without the slightest hesitation:
"Danby! D! A! N! B! Y!"

Orson Welles:
"Take him out and shoot him!"

I hope Ace High gets to a point in the planeset where the B-25 shows up. Maybe the guys at HTC will put Yosarian in the nose flipping a bird at the tower during takeoff. Would that be any more offensive than a bottle of Vodka in a Russian airplane?  

[Kratzer]

I've read it a couple times, and thoroughly enjoyed it each time.

[funkedup]

A long time ago I posted a long quote where Yossarian describes his favored spot for riding in the B-25.  They turned off the search feature or else I'd dig it up.

[Mathman]

Absolutely one of my two favorite books of all times.  It is simply brilliant.

My favorite passage: (well, one of them at least  ) -an exchange between Yossarian and Doc Daneeka.

"Is Orr crazy?"

"He sure is," Doc Daneeka said.

"Can you ground him?"

"I sure can.  But first he has to ask me to.  That's part of the rule.

"Then why doesn't he ask you to?"

"Because he's crazy," Doc Daneeka said.  "He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had.  Sure, I can ground Orr.  But first he has to ask me to."

"That's all he has to do to be grounded?"

"That's all.  Let him ask me."

"And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked.

"No.  Then I can't ground him."

"You mean there's a catch?"

"Sure, there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied.  "Catch-22.  Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he (Yossarian) observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.


Man, this makes me want to read it again.  Absolutely incredible book.

-math

[MrBill]

This don't work no more??
 http://www.hitechcreations.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=search

[fd ski]

Best book ever written.
Almost died having a laughing fit  

[streakeagle]

Words from Major Major (recently promoted from Captain Major and played by Bob Newhart) to his desk sergeant (played by "Mr. Roper" from "Three's Company"):

"When I am in my office, no one can see me. Only let people come in to see me when I am not in my office. Have I made myself clear?"

Or funnier words to that effect  

[funkedup]

Thx Mrbill!

 

The B-25s they flew in were stable, dependable, dull-green ships with twin rudders and engines and wide wings. Their single fault, from where Yossarian sat as a bombardier, was the tight crawlway separating the bombardier’s compartment in the plexiglass nose from the nearest escape hatch. The crawlway was a narrow, square, cold tunnel hollowed out beneath the flight controls, and a large man like Yossarian could squeeze through only with difficulty. A chubby, moon-faced navigator with little reptilian eyes and a pipe like Aarfy’s had trouble, too, and Yossarian used to chase him back from the nose as they turned toward the target, now minutes away. There was a time of tension then, a time of waiting with nothing to hear and nothing to see and nothing to do but wait as the antiaircraft guns below took aim and made ready to knock them all sprawling into infinite sleep if they could.
The crawlway was Yossarian’s lifeline to outside from a plane about to fall, but Yossarian swore at it with seething antagonism, reviled it as an obstacle put there by providence as part of the plot that would destroy him. There was room for an additional escape hatch right there in the nose of a B-25, but there was no escape hatch. Instead there was the crawlway, and since the mess on the mission over Avignon he had learned to detest every mammoth inch of it, for it slung him seconds and seconds away from his parachute, which was too bulky to be taken up front with him, and seconds and seconds more after that away from the escape hatch on the floor between the rear of the elevated flight deck and the feet of the faceless top turret gunner mounted high above. Yossarian longed to be where Aarfy could be once Yossarian had chased him back from the nose; Yossarian longed to sit on the floor in a huddled ball right on top of the escape hatch inside a sheltering igloo of extra flak suits that he would have been happy to carry along with him, his parachute already hooked to his harness where it belonged, one fist clenching the red-handled rip cord, one fist gripping the emergency hatch release that would spill him earthward into air at the first dreadful squeal of destruction. That was where he wanted to be if he had to be there at all, instead of hung out there in front like some Golly-gee cantilevered goldfish in some Golly-gee cantilievered goldfish bowl while the Golly-gee foul black tiers of flak were bursting and booming and billowing all around and above and below him in a climbing, cracking, staggered, banging, phantasmagorical, cosmological wickedness that jarred and tossed and shivered, clattered and pierced, and threatened to annihilate them all in one splinter of a second in one vast flash of fire.

[Boroda]

One of my favourite books too.

My copy is a 1968 Voenizdat (Military publishing house) edition, slightly abridged translation. Later, in maybe 1988, there was another translation, that I didn't like at all: they translated all the names into Russian.

I have never seen the movie, tried to search for it in Edonkey, but it's like good old Napster: everyone has all that crap like Brittney Spears, but if you look for something rare and not "popular" - you'll never find it  

[StSanta]

That book is up there with Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Both have the same wacky outrageous style and feeling to 'um, with Catch-22 having an actual point  .

Yossarian lives!

[Raubvogel]

One of my favorites!

[Dowding]

The best book ever written. Bar none. It's funny, sad, tragic, bitter, cynical... a masterpiece.

I've got the film on DVD - it is mediocre at best, although some parts are done well. But then, I read the book before I saw the film.

The 'moaning' episode could have been done a lot better IMO.

You're not a true fan of Catch-22 until you've read the book!  

[narsus]

I loved the book read it about 10 years ago or so, I didn't like the movie though...oh well.

[miko2d]

Originally posted by Boroda:
...there was another translation, that I didn't like at all: they translated all the names into Russian...

 What does that mean? Did they replace their names with russian names?

 miko

[popeye]

The movie might not have been great, but I understand they restored a bunch of B-25s to make it.