They mean private military contractors.

Peak (and by that I mean terrible) boomer humor.

The sound engineer for the Beach boys was one of the first to develop the plate reverb sound, where he used a metal plate on the opposite side of the microphone and the sound waves would hit the microphone twice, once on their way by and once after bouncing, or reverberating, off of the steel plate. This is why we associate reverberated guitar with beach music, because beach music started with that sound.

If you drive the border of Texas it is a trip more than 40 hours long. Two straight days of non-stop driving. The US is stupid big and has an insane amount of roadways, you could drive your whole life and have roads you have never been on.