Hitler!

Hitler! He ruined that mustache for everyone.

I saw Inglorious Basterds. Enjoyed it, but also came at it from a fairly unique perspective. The movie centers on the titular group of soldiers, Jews who fight a guerilla campaign and kill Nazis in occupied France. My father, a Jew who fought in WWII, was sort of a bastard, too. Note the correct spelling there.

My father died in 1996. We never managed to come up with a functional relationship. During his last days in the hospital, he went from gesturing inarticulately into the silence of a morphine coma. I never managed to forgive him and he never managed to express any feeling for me apart from a sort of bemused contempt. We didn't understand each other. He never told me about the war.

Every dark-haired young man in uniform, all eight original Basterds, reminded me of my father. In wartime photos, my father looks like the actors in the Tarnatino movie.

Inglorius. Kind of a bastard. My dad. I'm pretty sure he never scalped any Germans, as they didn't store many of those in New Guinea or Australia. And I still haven't a clue about who he really was.

I'd like to blame Hitler for this, too.