Remember that scene in Full Metal Jacket? The one involving the use of an interesting improvised weapon: a bar of soap wrapped in a towel. I have a friend who is thinking of joining the Marines, and I’d like to taunt him properly. So is there a proper name for this sort of indignity?
wow…this is so weird. I have no clue what that weapon is called, but I just saw that movie for the first time tday on Cinemax…too weird that you brought it up…
BTW, awesome movie to those of you who have not seen it…
I’m sute TurboDog will correct me if I am wrong…but IIRC it was called a “blanket party” or some version of “party”…towel party? Ah heck…guess we just need to “send for the Marines” on this one.
I’ll back you up, Tequila. I’ve always heard “blanket party”.
Never saw Full Metal Jacket and dunno about the Marines, but the Navy equivalent of “blanket party” is what happened to James Belushi’s character in The Principal. Toss a blanket, towel, pillowcase, or some such over the victim’s head and proceed to beat him silly.
Ah yes, the comraderie of military life. When I was on the Consteallation we had semi-private living conditions - 120 men in a compartment. Each 12 guys were alloted half the space of John Gotti’s prison cell. This puts a high value on personal hygene. A certain young lad decided he didn’t need to shower daily. A few of us set him on the path to clean living with scrub brushes and laudry detergent. I’ll admit the act was at least as brutal as Gomer Pyle’s hazing in Full Metal Jacket but I will not apologize for it.
I guess I was expecting some clever and/or profanity-laced military name for the soap/towel combination. ‘Blanket party’ sounds almost innocuous.
Bar of soap in a towel? This would be one of those ‘smart weapons’ that incapacitates people but leaves buildings standing?
My dad refers to this as a “GI shower.” Is that what you called it? Back when my dad was on the Diamondhead, he and some fellow sailors threatened a guy with this treatment if the guy wouldn’t shower up. Fortunately for him the stinker heeded their warning.
Funny, he related this story to me while we were watching Full Metal Jacket one night.
I’m reminded of Stephen King’s novella The Langoliers, in which one of the characters gets a tablecloth and wraps a metal toaster in it. He winds up using it to bash in (and utterly destroy) the face of another character. Ouchie.