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Thursday 20 November 2008
The Levelling Effect Of Flight
One thing you have to say about flying is that unless we're talking about megastars or heads of state who have their own planes, generally speaking, everyone ends up on the same planes, even if in different parts of the cabin.
For celeb-spotting, airports and aeroplanes are fertile ground. I've sat next to some very well-known people in my time, and at the moment (writing aloft for posting aground) I'm sitting across the cabin from a famous film director who has spent a large part of the flight writing copious notes on a yellow legal pad and then using sticky tape to attach the torn off pages and parts of pages together into longer sheets.
It's just a small insight into a way of working, but interesting for all that.
Sucker!
I am, I cannot deny, a sucker for an iconic image. I'm not talking about the classics I'm afraid - Marilyn Monroe over that grating is a great image, but not my subject today.
Back in the day, British Airways used to use a shot in its promotional material taken from one end of the long side of Heathrow Terminal 4. It was outside, and was of the tail fins of ten or so BA jets each on one of the gates, with just one last one sliding onto stand to complete the set. Sucker for impressive marketing images that I am, it used to get me right *here* (indicates chest).
That was in the days when Terminal 4 was almost exclusively BA's domain of course - the KLM planes were tucked away round the back out of sight. These days the terminal is used by so many airlines it's hard to imagine ever catching such a perfect image in passing.
But one of the advantages of the way US-based airlines adopt certain airports as their hubs is that you can see it over here.
Like this morning, approaching Newark Airport at the crack of dawn, my cab drove past a line up of six or seven Continental planes, and just for a split second I got the tail fins shot.
And the sucker in me rose up and put a rather pathetic lump in my throat.
Please Allow Me To Recommend
The new Belle and Sebastian album, The Life Pursuit. I've never been a big fan, but it's a very solid listen, with a few absolutely outstanding tracks (The Blues Are Still Blue chief among them). I've listened to it a *lot* on planes this week and it's not getting old yet. Who was it a few years ago who said that then recent Brit-winners Belle and Sebastian were a flash in the pan? Someone from one of those manufactured bands wasn't it? And where are they now I wonder?
Sparks: Hello Young Lovers. My other listening this week has heavily featured this one - again not a band I've listened to much in recent years, though one I was certainly more interested in back in the day than I ever was in B&S. The first track is worth working through, because it's very much what I'd characterise as "what I'd expect from a Sparks album", but once you're past it, the rest kicks into a very different, very impressive listen.
Both items introduced to me as is usually the case with music these days by The Better Half.
Ooh Look! Snow!
Well, here I am in New York, where earlier this week, The Heaviest Snowfall Since Records Began(tm) crashed down overnight and Brought The City To A Standstill(tm). I present this news in the style of the UK tabloids (who report on this kind of thing every year back home when about a centimetre of snow falls over the course of a week), specifically with a view to drawing a comparison to what happened here.
Three days after a fall of some two feet, Manhattan is operating to every intent as usual, and for all I know has been doing so since Tuesday. The streets are cleared, the buses and trains are running, people are working, shopping, jogging, and probably rollerblading in Central Park, and dare I say it, the world hasn't come to an end.
Picture that happening in the UK and I'd suggest you're picturing some bizarre parallel world. One where we don't all spiral into a tabloid-fuelled paralysis of 'wrong type of snow'-ism. At home people would be taking days off work because it's too hard to get in (for a week), old people would be starving in their inaccessible homes (we would be assured by The Sun), and the economy would be plunged into freefall as economists worked out "the true cost of the lost hours".
Once upon a time, before even the commencement of my advanced years, the British were reknowned for stoicism, for 'making do', 'getting by' and what is fondly referred to as The Blitz Spirit.
All change.
The Great Comics Conflagration of 1991
(In small homage to my Better Half, who is currently guest-blogging over at Glitter For Brains, and his posting of today).
Once upon a time, I owned at least a couple of thousand US comics. Mostly Marvel, some DC and a bunch of 'independents'. These were painstakingly sorted and boxed (though not bagged and boarded - exactly how sad do you think I am?).
In amongst that rather fine collection were a complete run of New X-Men, including Giant-Sized #1, Frank Miller's first run on Daredevil and his Dark Knight Returns and Ronin (first printings), a complete run of Spider-Woman, all of John Byrne's Fantastic Four and Walt Simonson's Thor, Legion of Super-Heroes from the start of Levitz and Giffen's run onwards (plus various earlier issues), complete runs of GrimJack, Maze Agency, and the wondrous Zot!, and a whole lot more besides, much of it of course slightly less worthy of note...
When I moved from Manchester to London, I started out living in a single room in someone else's flat, and I had to put much of my life, including the comics, in storgae with various friends. The comics went into the attic of a friend of mine, whence I swore to recover them as soon as I was living somewhere with the space to support them.
Alas, before that day could arrive, the dread phone call came. There had been a fire, the house was gutted, and all of the boxes of comics had gone the way of the furniture, books, electrical goods and clothes that, you know, actually belonged there. And so happened the event I've since referred to by the title of this posting.
I've bought a few of the lost items over the years, but I always think that if I start in on an attempt to recreate one of the serious runs I'll be tempting frustration. I just know that if the time comes when I've managed to get all but one issue, it'll be the one that I have the fondest memories of, or the critical final part of a major storyline.
Better perhaps to leave the past to the past and try to focus on the current. After all, it's not like I'm not spending too much money on current comics as it is, and I am managing to pick up collected editions here and there (like IDW's lovely reprints of The Maze Agency).
But reading about my loved one's loss put me in mind of my own similar bereavement.
So I thought I'd spread the misery.
Is Sandy Gall Still Alive?
I only ask because I'm sure I walked past him on a San Francisco street about an hour ago.
No More Smoking
As I'm in California at the moment, I'm just down the road from the first bar I ever visited which had a small group of smokers standing outside because they weren't allowed to smoke indoors. That was back in 2003, and apart from the slightly incongruous sight that they presented before entry, I still remember walking into the bar itself and being stunned by the fact that I could see everything clearly from one end of the space to the other, that the whole place looked somehow cleaner than I was expecting, and that the next day my clothes didn't stink of smoke. I tend to the view that all of these are Good Things.
I was out at a birthday party in a bar on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning my clothes even *felt* dirty.
So it's with some pleasure that I see Parliament has voted overwhelmingly for the ban in bars and clubs in the UK. There are few enough times that I feel satisfaction or even, heaven forfend, pride in the decisions of our elected representatives in Westminster, but on this occasion I'm willing to make an exception.
And I love that the free vote means that the Health Secretary voted out-of-line with the official Government (manifesto-stated) policy, and not only won't be in trouble for it, was voting alongside the Prime Minister in doing so.
Hardly Plane Sailing
Total number of different airport terminals I've been through in the last two weeks: Eight.
Total number by the end of this week: Ten (assuming New York is open by Thursday)
That's a lot of bad sandwiches, foil-topped plastic containers of orange juice and being frisked by hefty blokes with bad cologne (Don't ask me, I don't know - these days I even take my belt off as a matter of course and still I set those damn things off).
There are people I know who think all this travelling I do is glamorous; that somehow it's a jet-set existence full of excitement and, well, yes, glamour. I'd like to dispel this myth once and for all. It's not. The inevitable mad dash through airports caused by leaving the office at the last possible minute is just stressful and in my case sweat-inducing; the subsequent lines of people waiting to get through security merely depressing, and the actual flights are increasingly lost to me as I either work through them or use them as interludes for recovery from the ground-based pressures involved in getting onto them.
Even a long flight like the one on which I'm writing this tends to create a strange mix of experiences - the first few hours are hard to get anything done in, filled as they are with the round of drink service, meal and cabin crew generally being all over the place, which then give way to the yawning prospect of seven hours looming ahead which have to be filled with a combination of work (done as much as I can), watching the in-flight entertainment (the CSI two-parter directed by Tarantino), exploring the stuff I put on my ipod for the trip (three series of Ladies of Letters? somehow I'm not in the mood), reading the paper (done that; even the sports pages), and then reaching the point where you're wondering when they'll be coming round with 'afternoon tea' (shouldn't be long).
And behind all that there's the clear knowledge that every single time I get on a plane I'm part of that ongoing ruinous process of damage to the planet arising from the plane journey itself and the resources used up in getting me and three hundred other people from A to B. Long flights are bad because they do more of the damage, but also because they give you time to think about stuff like that.
I love travelling - despite all the above I even enjoy flying when it's not work-related - but there are times when I wish I'd never set foot on a plane. If I'd never done it, I wouldn't know what I was missing by having all my holidays in Britain.
Chips With Everything
One of this morning's papers (a tabloid - they all blur beyond a certain point) appears to have given up reporting the news and gone over wholesale to clairvoyancy, predicting as they do in their front page story that Chip and PIN 'chaos' is going to strike the nation on Wednesday.
I'm trying to get my head round this whole thing and I'm afraid I'm coming up blank.
Practically everyone who has a plastic card will have a PIN for it already, so it's not as though the very concept is alien.
Add to that the fact that if people don't yet have a chipped card they can sign just like they did in the past, and the whole thing begins to reek of fabricated panic.
In fact, am I the only one who can smell the unmistakable aroma of Millennium Bug scare stories around the place?
"That's why I drink, so I'll be who they think I am."
Not remotely appropriate, but I'm listening to I Say Nothing, and I've had a few drinks, so I'm suggestible :-)
Late night - the third such in a row in fact. Tuesday was a night out with clients (I left at midnight and missed quite a lot of the fun, apparently). Last night was the first of two nights away for a big meeting which ended up with me learning two whole new ways to gamble, but also earning more than I lost, and tonight was a big meal and drinks to finish off the meeting trip that didn't end that late, but since I got back to the hotel I've been working, and now I don't feel very tired.
Hence Voice Of The Beehive and a quick blog. Not had a chance to look at any news for the last couple of days, and I'm not in a mood to get caught up, so I'm not going to get all intellectual about current affairs either.
In fact, I think I'm going to try and get some sleep. (PS - it's an hour later where I am than it looks from this posting time. So if I want to try and sleep I can....)
The Worst Thing About Those Damned Cartoons
Having carefully considered the situation as it pertains to free speech, the causing of religious offence, the place of violent protest, the limits of legal responsibility and the role of art as an instrument of social comment, I have reached a definitive and reasoned view on what the worst thing about the cartoon situation actually is.
It's that they're shit. Not clever, not intelligent, not witty, not subtle. A waste of all the time and energy that's gone into defending them.
A Full Head Of Steam
There are some things, bodily function-type things that is, that you know happen but you tend not to think about. And then one day, BAM! People are giving you funny looks and giggling.
So it was as I stood on the railway platform this chilly morning. And the reason - a phenomenon known to bald men the world over - was that the top of my head was steaming.
And what can you do in a situation like that? You can't stop it, and you can't hide it, short of manically rubbing your head to disperse it. So you just have to stand there. Being looking at. Steaming.
Banged Up!
George Galloway - in an Egyptian slammer overnight 'on national security grounds'. Why couldn't it happen here instead, so we could make sure they throw away the key?
They Do Things Differently In The US
Things like Wife Swap for instance. It seems that on Trading Spouses, the swapping partner gets to allocate the participation money given to the other family, which is an interesting switch.
It's not terribly relevant to the madness seen in this clip, but the very last caption puts it all brilliantly into context.
(Note - the sound is integral, but gets quite loud, so probably not suited for some work environments.)
Thanks to my beloved for passing it on, by the way.
Next Job....
.... is going to be a grand trip of all the people whose blogs I used to stop by for a catch-up and comment where appropriate. It's not only my own blog I faded away from, you see. The whole blogosphere has felt my loss. Keenly, I'm sure.
The Last Three Months
In summary and no particular order:
Free Voting
So the decision has been taken that MPs will have a free vote on a total ban in smoking in all public places when the matter comes up for debate. Which means it looks like Patricia Hewitt will vote against her department's official line and in support of a total ban. Surely at this point nothing is standing in the way of that outcome?