Pouring one out for New Orleans-born Carl Weathers over the weekend.
A big part of my childhood, I can’t remember how many times I saw him on bootlegged-off-HBO Betamax tapes as Apollo Creed– including his death at the hands of Ivan Drago, which was one of the most chilling parts of the Cold War to me as a kid. Plus, there was the terribly underrated Force 10 from Naverone, and, of course, Predator.
As an adult, I just recently attended the Chubbs Peterson Memorial Rifle Golf Tournament in Utah last year, and everyone was full of Carl Weathers humor at the time.
Although he didn’t serve directly in the military, he was a big part of Red Tight Media, which specialized in producing tactical training films for the U.S. armed forces and in constructing simulated Afghani and Iraqi villages at the NTC at Fort Irwin, California, all of which certainly helped keep guys alive in the sandbox.
Thus closes another chapter on my childhood.