review by AJ Pacitti

It will happen in an instant: a flash-electric-swish-a-bang-woo-woo-woo-Tom Wolfeian whirlwind similar to the quarter in the gumball machine, the ping pong ball (the back and forth), the batting of the waves, the cash money dollar bill rubbed against a machine's side and the subsequent extra quarter that seems excessive – dirty money consummating its filthy love in the Coca Cola machine – now with Japanese characters and also Arabic characters next to the English cursive to appeal to the zeitgeist. Modern times! Which brings me to the point: The Real Team deals largely with the perceived (not actual) zeitgeist dujour – the blood, guts, and evocatively homoerotic glory of what it feels like (or it is perceived to feel like) to wave an American flag and battle corruption while setting off illegal fireworks and watching bad television like Murder She Wrote only to wonder if JB Fletcher is a lady killer boning the cops of each town, seducing them to keep her secret (she is a killer). As in: this saga begs the question: can one both capture a zeitgeist and ignore the postmodernist impulses of the present literary moment? Marcinko seems to suggest this is the case, which is why Don Delillo did not sign his copy of Underworld and subsequently wrote a book titled Great Jones Street, which figuratively deals with all and none of this.

Further, does she (Angela Lansbury) herself, cardigan draped but not fully on her shoulders like old ladies often do when it is cold (a description that may or may not be a predictable appeal to ageism and perhaps that which will spur a slew of angry hate mail from the AARP) – does she really kill in every episode? Is she a modern woman? A man eater? Does she just give sloppy blowjobs to the cops in the director's cut scenes of Murder She Wrote? Or to anyone on the street? Did she talk dirty to The Real Team, or does she (Angela Lansbury) lull her lover(s) gently to sleep to the sound of "Tale as Old as Time"?

For money?

No, Kanye. For glory.

Essentially, then, If the "Team" is "Real" (as Richard Marcinko pointedly poses it is), the future he paints is a bleak one. I would pose, Mr. Marcinko, that yes, war does dangerous things to male minds, as does groupthink, but humans are quite resilient and enjoy kool aid (sometimes). I insincerely resent your simultaneous degrading of SEAL culture and championing of bumptious Americana: rewind to World War II and you are a ground force and you are kicking Ernie Pyle in the spleen burgeoning an anachronistic machete and side braid, surrounded by complacency. Men are hovered in bunks talking about being home where it's warm and they can get drunk off something other than peppermint Listerine and get blow jobs from Angela Lansbury until their loins are sore and trembling. That is your America, Marcinko, and Delillo and I don't want it.

AJ Pacitti likes the civil war and teen vogue.