Actually - BD is a Nam and Iraq vet, lost a lower part of one leg in a blast in Iraq. Boopsie (I know she has a real name, can't recall it) is actually turning out into a decent character...her sarcasm here, and her "look" at her husband for ORDERING the doll in the first place...well, she certainly has opinions!

Cast bios from http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/thecast/


B.D.

College football star, Vietnam Vet, third-string quarterback for the Rams, Gulf War reservist, California Highway Patrol officer -- B.D. has worn many helmets over the years. He and his wife, starlet Barbara Ann Boopstein, share many memories of the 70s and their years at Walden Commune -- she posing for Playboy , he volunteering for Vietnam to get out of writing a term paper. Though captured by a Vietcong terrorist named Phred [yes, same spelling - cc]and wounded by a beer can, B.D. left the Nam relatively unscathed.

In his subsequent role as Boopsie's hardheaded Hollywood manager, B.D. exhibited minor skills and major attitude, a combination that did not help extend her list of credits. Their main production was Samantha, born in 1992. Better suited to life in uniform, B.D. was called to serve in Desert Storm, and later as a CHIP officer, but a diagnosis of Gulf War Syndrome left him sidelined and bitter.

A return to Vietnam helped him bury old demons and dig up several old war buddies - including Phred, now a mover and shaker in the new Vietnam. Hired by his alma mater to coach the football team he once quarterbacked, B.D. has come full circle, he and Boopsie once again living in the house at Walden where they first met.

Reactivated for a second Gulf War, B.D. was shipped out to Kuwait, leaving the Fighting Swooshes in Acting-Coach Boopsie's care. He serves as a public affairs officer at Camp Blowback, embedding journalists in frontline army combat units.

P.S. - B.D. no longer wears the helmet; and Mike Doonesbury did a series of strips on B.D.'s vet counselling after B.D. got home from Desert Storm. Worth a look.



Barbara Ann Boopstein

During her Hollywood heyday, Barbara Ann Boopstein was called "the drinking man's Meryl Streep." Stardom has thus far eluded the Divine Miss B, but she knows it's only a matter of lifetimes. She speaks with a certain authority: in a previous incarnation she was Lorna Doone. Her theatrical credits thus far include numerous exercise videos and several teensploitation flicks. She was featured in the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, played Barbara Bush in the made-for -TV movie Poppy: The War Years, and was mentioned in Andy Warhol's diary. Activities in service to her country include co-hosting the Times Square victory parade marking the end of the Cold War, posing for a popular pinup poster for the Desert Shield troops, and working with the Malibu Military Family Support Group. She served on the California State Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem, and, on the personal front, was delighted to be Babe of Honor at Hugh and Kimberly Hefner's wedding. Regrettably for her fans, she did not make the cut in "Survivor" tryouts. But her body, bit-mapped and scanned, lives on in a variety of media, generating royalties as the template for Lara Croft in "Tomb Raider" and Julia Roberts' breasts in "Erin Brockovich". Having concluded a longtime association, Boopsie no longer shares her body with the channeled 25,000-year-old warrior Hunk-Ra. Along with college sweetheart and Fighting Swooshes football coach B.D., daughter Sam and nanny Zonker Harris, she once again calls Walden home.