Mon 20 Feb 2006
“Welcome to Goose Bay, Newfoundland, first refuge of trans-Atlantic flights afflicted by sick passengers, engine trouble, and terrorist threats. We hope you enjoy your stay and somehow manage to disassociate our fair land with the tragedy that brought you here. Goose Bay: Come back soon…on purpose!®”
October 23rd, 2006 at 7:32 pm
[…] As we touched down in Los Angeles, I was finishing Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and wondering what California-based book I could find to enhance my travel experience. The peculiar smog-filtered light reminded me that I had never seen the end of Shopgirl, a movie set mostly in LA that I was watching when my plane finally got the hell out of Goose Bay last winter and they turned off the in-flight programming. I’ve been wondering how it ends. I hope they don’t pair off Claire Danes and Steve Martin in a Pretty Woman happy ending. Steve’s older man was far too smug and entitled for her. But as much as I’ve loved Jason Schwartzman (since Rushmore, naturally), I thought he was too flaky for her as well. The movie seemed too smart to go for one of those forced resolutions, so I’m hoping for something a little more intelligent and nuanced. […]
October 23rd, 2006 at 7:32 pm
[…] Then…I started working on three projects at once. One project involved week-long trips to Europe every month. Other US trips were sandwiched in between. The Amsterdam trip started off four hours late due to a snowstorm and ended five hours late after a detour to Newfoundland. Sitting at the Logan baggage carousel, after waiting nearly an hour for the baggage handlers to get it in gear, I reflected on how absolutely miserable I felt; how that feeling would be magnified if I had a screaming two-year-old; how that feeling would be exponentially magnified if I also had a screaming infant; and how I never, ever wanted to board an airplane again for the rest of my life. Now, at this point in time I still had a passel of business trips on the calendar. I couldn’t really make that vow. But I could say, “No more trips that are not absolutely necessary to put food on the table,” and I did. […]