cari back in paris (jetlag edition); or, great revelations and quiet desperation

I don't sleep on planes; this is just a fact.  There is no pill, no alcohol, no expensive pillow, no eye mask, no extra leg room and no insanely long length of flight that will change this fact.  Hence, when I choose an airline, the quality of on-board flight entertainment is a key factor.  This last time, I had rolled the dice on British Airways, having never crossed the Atlantic with them before, and was absolutely thrilled with the 4.5 video-on-demand movies I was able to watch on my little screen in front of my seat.  Perfect.

Hence, for my return trip to Paris, I didn't bother buying any magazines or newspapers, nor did I charge up the ipod.    . . .  You know where this is going, right?  Murphy's Law.  My screen was the only screen in the whole plane that didn't work.  Obviously.  But scratch that - it wasn't that it didn't work, it was worse.  It kind of worked.  

What does this mean?  First of all, no video on demand, just seven TV channels, each one on continuous loop of a different movie plus one episode of a TV series.  And, as an aside, can I ask - what is up with Everybody Hates Chris?  I have never ever seen this show anywhere outside of an airplane.  Was it specially produced for United?  

Anyway.  This doesn't sound so bad, right?  Seven different movies?  More than enough.  Except for the fact that three of the channels didn't work at all, and the other four had this skipping problem that ranged from mildly annoying to air-rage provocation.  And one of the movies was this Mark Wahlberg carniverous-ghost-winged-people thing.  So only three channels, really.  After about an hour of big turbulence (which didn't help my nerves or the TV's technical difficulties) I finally settled on Rachel Getting Married, which only skipped once every ten seconds, which is to say the frame would freeze, accompanied by this high-pitched scratching noise, and then the movie would resume.  I'd like to point out that I was sitting in the very back row, which not only means that I couldn't put my seat back because of the wall behind me, but I also had a stellar view of all the people in front of me sleeping peacefully in front of their perfectly functioning screens.   Sigh.

So, can we talk about Rachel Getting Married?  Revelation.  This was a great movie.  Anne Hathaway deserved some sort of statuette for that.  And I never would have seen it otherwise.  I didn't know what it was about, but I think I was taking it for some sort of whiny bourgeoise art-school chick flick, which it totally was, but in a really good way.  It's hard to watch because there is a lot of tension and tough moments in the film, which is why when we got to the end, I was really looking forward to those last five minutes where everyone hugs and it's all okay . . . which is when the TV skipping went nuts and totally out of control, meaning that instead of getting any closure I got five minutes of high-pitched screeching along with frozen stills of what looked like a really heartwarming ending.  

 . . .

After several trips up to the snack bar (where I wondered if I was the only person taking 5 mini Kit-Kats at a time, and whether the nearby crew were watching me take said Kit-Kats along with 3 cups of cranberry juice), I got back to my seat and tried to make the Diane Lane - Richard Gere hurricane movie work.  To no avail.  No matter, though, because luckily, I had reading material with me.  I had gone to Barnes and Noble looking for a Walt Whitman collection, but having forgotten what I was looking for, and knowing that it wasn't Emerson but someone like him, I ended up with Thoreau's Walden.

So Walden.  Another revelation.  Reading Walden is like taking a long, hot shower after a day of moving:  you go in sweaty and dirty with an achy back, and you come out feeling fresh, clean and relaxed.  Walden is way better than it was in high school, at turns philosophical and practical, always gorgeously written and surprisingly funny at times.  In his long section on fashion, he writes, "The head monkey in Paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.  I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men."  And God knows I love fashionable headwear.

Anyhow, I have much of Walden left to finish, because even though I had five free hours on the plane to read, my reading light somehow got off course and was pointed directly in the face of the girl next to me.  Which, along with not providing me any light at all, had the added benefit of waking this poor girl up every time I switched it on to fix it.  

Love plane rides.  Love them, love them, love them.