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17
Mar 23

BCN – JFK – IND

After the cab to the Barcelona airport, we hustled inside, hoping to beat the large crowd of obviously American high school students who were filing in. Happily, they were not on our flight, and not on our airline. By virtue of some frequent flier gimmick we got a VIP security experience. The ticket agent handed us little strips of paper that said “VIP Security.” Everyone went into this funnel for a security check, but when we showed our little passes the person standing there officially, courteously, urgently, waved us farther down the building. There was a different security checkpoint for us. It was expedited.

Which was great, because we’d arrived two-and-a-half hours early and now we could spend our time in the terminal, surrounded by other travelers, including a woman who couldn’t stop coughing. And some old people from Atlanta who, I gather, spent the bulk of their time in Spain complaining about Spain. And there was a long line for a sandwich snack, and a woman doing Spanish chamber of commerce type surveys, and a young woman who looked too young to be traveling alone. She was traveling alone. I am now old enough to see people and think “Isn’t this person too young to be going on an international flight by themselves?”

I’d expect that from other people, but, remember, I am daily surrounded by young people in a professional capacity. I can no longer discern these things, it seems. It isn’t a big deal, or something I would ordinarily do anyway, but I had the time, because I am a member of the VIP Security experience.

We flew from Barcelona to JFK. I watched four movies, including the Oscar winning Everything Everywhere All at Once. It’s silly. It’s gross. It’s poignant. Some of it is going to feel dated very quickly, so see it before, you know, the all at once happens.

I also watched Devotion, because Jonathan Majors is in it. It was a decent enough movie to watch on a plane.

Then there was Nomadland, which I’ve been meaning to watch, and, again, this was a good time and place for it. Frances McDormand is so, so great at doing all of the little things in a big way, and the few big things in the right way.

Then there was Paddington 2, a movie franchise which I enjoy much more than I probably should.

I had a scratchy throat in New York, and peppermints wouldn’t touch it. Started going downhill after that. At JFK, I stood in the incredibly inefficient passport control line for almost two hours. Global entry, go right through. If you have scanned your passport into this app (what could go wrong?) go right through. You might stand there long enough to think they’re trying to inconvenience people who aren’t paying the premium fees. That would be a quintessentially American thing to do, wouldn’t it?

Everything else worked well, though. We collected our luggage, deposited it with another desk. Stood in more long security lines. Got on a plane for Indianapolis, and so on.

On the one hand, we covered 4,454 miles — as the crow flies — today. On the other hand, it took 27 hours to get from the sandy beaches of the Mediterranean back to … Bloomington.

Unloaded the car, took a Covid test — I’m sick, but negative. Had a later takeout dinner, and started the unpacking process. I’ll spend the weekend coming down from jet lag and whatever sinus cold I’m getting.

Another wonderful vacation is in the books!

adventures / movies / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
8
Mar 23

Should we continue trying to travel in March?

Or traveling at all?

Here is where we are. Spring Break is next week. We’re taking a few extra days for a conference and that meant a trip to the airport and that’s where the fun begins.

We flew, today, from Indianapolis to New York. We did that after giving up on a bike ride, which was the right idea, for a change. That allowed us more time, so we were well ahead of schedule and relaxed going to the very large building with the planes attached at odd angles.

Our flight from Indy to JFK was just fine. Arrived on time. The plane pulled into the same terminal we’d use for our connecting flight, an overnight trip to Spain. Here we are, waiting to board the plane to Barcelona.

We got on the plane, let’s assume it is that one, and everything was just fine.

And then someone kicked out the extension cord that connects the plane to the airport’s power. The plane goes dark! But we’re on the ground, so not a problem. Because there’s ground beneath us. I think about all of that ocean we have to fly over — power and gliders and altitude and ocean — but the crew did not seem concerned. The power is restored, either internally, or via that extension cord. Boarding took forever, and so we pushed back about an hour late.

We got out on the taxiway to learn we had to go back to the terminal for a maintenance issue.

And that ate up the entirety of our second-connection window.

But it allowed me to watch two movies, first, Minari.

Lee Isaac Chung wrote and directed the movie. He was just about to give up on Hollywood, taking a teaching job, when he decided to try one more script. Odd, but lovely, Willa Cather became his inspiration.

She drew upon memories of life in the Great Plains and wrote a series of intensely personal works that are among the most moving novels in American literature. She said, “Life began for me, when I ceased to admire and began to remember.”

I wondered if the voice was leading me to these words, so that I would begin to trust in my own. As an exercise, I devoted an afternoon to writing my memories of childhood. I remembered our family’s arrival at a single-wide trailer on an Ozark meadow and my mother’s shock at learning that this would be our new home. I recalled the smell of freshly plowed soil and the way the color of it pleased my father. I remembered the creek where I threw rocks at snakes while my grandmother planted a Korean vegetable that grew without effort.

With each memory, I saw my life anew, as though the clouds had shifted over a field I had seen every day. After writing 80 memories, I sketched a narrative arc with themes about family, failure and rebirth. That’s how I got the idea to write “Minari”; it began for me, when I ceased to admire and began to remember.

I also watched Clerks III, which, I assume, Kevin Smith wrote and directed because he wanted to cash in one more time. Truth be told, I knew this was in the works. I was skeptical. I didn’t realize it had already been produced and released. But here it was, on the plane, full of its own brand of contemporary nostalgia.

The first movie was 23 years ago, so there’s nothing contemporary about this nostalgia. But it bristles a bit that we’ve now become a nostalgia generation. But, befitting our role in this timeline, our self reverence is saved for reference to other media. Star Wars is all over the Clerks trilogy, so much so, there are two meta references right there in the trailer.

Give the third movie this: it is better than the second one, and has, perhaps, the best heart of the series.

Tomorrow, the rest of the journey. Or part of it. Or the beginning of a new side-journey.

Anything is possible.

Except for our booking travel in March, ever again, after these last two years.

books / movies / Thursday / video — Comments Off
9
Feb 23

1,000 breezy words

Is it just me or is everyone lately wiped out by Thursday? It wasn’t always this way. There must be some corner of Reddit where I can find the best and most reasonable theories.

I’m not searching for them on Reddit, or anywhere else, but someone is writing about it somewhere. Most of these ideas are nonsense, but someone is going to accidentally stumble on the cause. Fox Mulder will read about it, but by the time he gets back to his computer to follow up, “They” will have removed the thread entirely.

The 10th (in 2016) and 11th (in 2018) seasons of X-Files aside, that show will come back around for a relaunch in another decade or so. It won’t be nearly as believable or as charming or as well-received in the next go around. Given what goes on in the open, and what is imagined online, these days, the atmosphere will be all wrong. The original 1993-2001 run may as well have been from another age entirely. Maybe it was.

Someone could write scholarly works on this.

Oh, look.

Did the x-files prime us for the QAnon era?
Deceive, inveigle, obfuscate: Post-structuralism and the staggered retirement of Fox Mulder
The paranoid style for sale: Conspiracy entrepreneurs, marketplace bots, and surveillance capitalism
The truth is everywhere: Reconceptualizing far-right conspiracy theories in the Information Age
9/11 and its aftermaths: Threats of invasion

The papers continue, the quality might vary. Sometimes, I think, we’re just trying to shoehorn things in between reality and pop culture, but that’s for actual sociologists to worry over at the downtown hotel at their next conference, forgetting, there was always something fun about turning the lights off and watching Mulder and Scully wrestle with faith, science, monsters and conspiracy. The point is, things and times change. That how we watch things has changed probably plays into it too.

They never got into this Thursday thing, though, which leads me to conclude …

See how easy that is?

Talking with my mother this evening, she asked what I was reading right now. Threw me for a complete loop. Why I was in a loop threw me for a second loop. Now I am dizzy, loopy even.

I don’t know when I was asked that last, but it’s good, right? It makes sense for my mom to ask; she’s seldom seen me without a book or three since she taught me to read.

I’m going to start asking people what they’re reading. It’s a far more interesting question than what they do — though I have an effective strategy that can make for lively conversation, for the answerer — and more useful than asking someone how they’ve been. Maybe that’s just how I’ll start conversations now. By way of greeting, “What are you reading?”

The only problem is if the question catches someone off guard. Got me, tonight. I couldn’t even remember what was on my nightstand.

What I’m reading, and I hope to wrap this up soon, is an autobiography of Mr. Spock. It is titled The Autobiography of Mr. Spock. This was a gift from my mother-in-law, who always has a book or three ready for me. (A few years ago a friend of hers was ready to clean out a bunch of books from his personal library and she grabbed them by the armful for me, just in case. Many of them are now on my bookshelves.) If you asked me how I’ve lately been getting my books the answer is “I see a Kindle sale, or I see my mother-in-law and now look at these almost 200 books waiting to be read …”

But, first, Mr. Spock.

When I got this, this Christmas, I misread the title as a biography. That’s interesting, I thought, a biography of a beloved fictional character. This should fill in some holes. But, being an autobiography, it is written in the first person of a fictional character. Not a novel idea, by any means, but calling it an autobiography of a fictional character, that’s kinda different, for me at least.

And how about the authors that take that on? Writing such a beloved character as that? Bold strokes, Una McCormack and David A. Goodman. McCormack’s got 40 titles on Amazon, all sci-fi, most from very popular franchises, at least two autobiographies — the other is of the war criminal Kathryn Janeway. Goodman, similarly, has two dozen books on the site, all sci-fi, and has another autobiography, of Jean-Luc Picard, there.

Spock is writing this to Picard. Here are two brief portions, the first one centered around The Search fo Spock — so, 40-year-old spoiler, I guess.

And, in this passage, Spock is referencing events that took place during The Undiscovered Country — so, 30-year-old spoiler alert. (Thirty years? Geeze.)

McCormack and Goodman have this job of fleshing out what we see on screen, for a character metaphorically torn between two worlds, and making that seem reasonable. Instead of inventing too much new Vulcan culture, they continue the theme of the character trying to learn and reconcile both of his cultures. In his voice, and with more time than a sequence in the second-act of an episode, or without having to worry about cinematic beats, it works. The Valeris part comes up a few times.

Understated in the films, with the exception of one bit of exposition, is Spock’s ideological disagreement with Kirk, but the book gives it a few more passes.

It’s in the prime universe, if that matters. Post-Reunification, timeline-wise, meant to exist somewhere in or around the time of the Picard series.

I’ve yet to watch any of the Picard series. It’s on my list. I just can’t bring myself to start it. Sometimes, when I start a thing, I’m just that much closer to the conclusion. Varied reception of that series aside, it is always ongoing, until I start it.

There’s some pop-psychology on Reddit, or real scholarship, elsewhere, about that phenomenon, too.

cycling / Mastodon / movies / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
12
Jan 23

Am assured we’ll maybe see some sunshine this weekend

We had the fog earlier, the snow tomorrow, the rain today. This was the view looking back up the street. I had to wait several seconds to get a shot with the road empty. And then I waited for this guy trudging up the street. You wonder where he’s going, and how he feels about it in the rain. But you only wonder for a moment, because he’s blurry and still something of an abstraction.

You’d think more on it if you could make out details of him and his trudge.

The composition, then, was entirely a choice.

Anyway, I like the way raindrops sit on glass. They both emphasize and distract from what’s going on in their background.

Did a quick bike ride this evening, just ticking off stages on Zwift. (Twenty down, 101 to go.) There’s no point to this, other than to do it, which is the point of everything.

I’m presently working on two cycling goals, both integral to waiting out the winter and rainy weather.

I have made a spreadsheet, you see, to chart my bike riding progress this year. It shows that I am, right now, well ahead of my daily projections, which is to be expected, frankly. It’ll only be later in the year when the daily trendlines become a challenge.

The other challenge will be in riding all of those Zwift stages. The ones I ticked off the list tonight were the first ones with slight climbs in them. They’ll only get longer, and more challenging from here.

Easy night, otherwise. Just trying to glide into the weekend. There’s only Friday to go!

And I will see you then. Until then, check out my Mastodon count. There’s always something useful there. For example …

movies / photo / site / Thursday / video — Comments Off
15
Dec 22

Counting hours

After today there’s just a half-day or so left in my work year. And, a few short minutes after that, we’ll be undertaking the great traveling adventure. This realization, this countdown, is oddly conflicting. On one hand, “The holiday break is almost here, and I don’t know that I deserve all of this time off.” On the other hand, “It’s here, already?”

Now, clearly, there’s something wrong, woefully wrong, with that first hand. Deserving it is a silly notion. This is a western and, frankly, dumb concept. Time off is part of my deal. I can take it or lose it, and no one is interested in giving it back. What’s more, I’ve earned it, having carefully accumulated days for just such a traveling adventure as this. I think it’s the mentality of accumulating and hoarding those days off for a year that builds that frame of mind.

Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about as I did a little Christmas shopping this evening. Because, ya know, it seemed like the appropriate time. I went to one store Monday and was uninspired. I tried another place yesterday and was interrupted — all for the best, I am sure. But, this evening I knew I would have some success: I started seeing things I wanted.

And so if you don’t want to chip in, or purchase outright, a new bicycle for me, I found stuff for me. And also for others. Things I didn’t buy. This, which looks cool.

We have a five-foot vinyl tunnel and one of the cats absolutely loves it. Sleeps in it. Ambushes you in it. Takes rides in it. That one is a bit more involved and a bit more expensive; it stayed in the store.

So did this. A few weeks ago I found Zoltar. This evening I saw the keyboard Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia played in Big.

I’m holding out for the full-sized piano, and the ability to do this.

There aren’t many movie scenes more charming than that. That’s really what I’m holding out for on my own dancing piano.

Anyway, some shopping done. Laundry done. Packing and holiday travel to follow.