In Flight

For reasons that I barely understand, I always look forward to a long plane flight because of the in-flight entertainment. It feels like my brain says to me "Here is an opportunity to watch five hours of stuff that you normally wouldn't touch with a ten-foot barge pole."

For the flight over, this meant the new Love Bug movie.

Two things I have to make clear:

1) When I was a young-un the Love Bug movies were on TV a lot. And I watched them a lot. Particularly the Monte Carlo one. My memories of these movies entering my brain over and over again: nothing. I've been trying to nudge any particular scene out of my head, just one, and all I can remember is the texture of the carpet in the living room. Perhaps if I were to sit down with the newly released DVD of Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, the memories will come flooding back, but honestly; I don't think I need them that much.

2) The screen that I had control of was not watching the Herbie movie constantly -- I was changing channels a lot for that one. The big screen in front of the cabin had it on all the way through as well as just about every other screen within my peripheral vision. It was not that hard to follow along with the plot.

I spent most of my energy watching the BBC offerings. Three shows stood out in my memory:

A documentary about two bunches of British public school students challenging each other to a swimming race across the English Channel. (Actually, their school administrations came up with the idea, the kids just sort of went "oh" because they were young and had no idea what they were getting volunteered for.) I particularly enjoyed this one because by the time the actual race came around, it looked like some of these pompous young yutzes would actually drown themselves for the glory of their school. I also enjoyed the stoic parents explaining how this will be a fine learning/growth experience for the young muffins while cradling them as they vibrate out of their hypothermic semi-comas (though some seemed a little miffed that they were being pulled away from their course work).

A different documentary about a woman who deals with the death of her dog by going out into the woods and watching the adorable forest creatures kill and eat each other.

A sitcom, presented from the point of view of a pre-teen boy who is the only voice of pure reason amongst his daft sitcom family and his father's daft sitcom co-workers. The twist here is that the father is the Prime Minister. We learn this from the title: "My Dad's The Prime Minister." The episode that we were shown was the Christmas episode, which was sort of strange for September. I hope that this was just some random thing, rather than an indication that this was one of the better episodes, which would be rather sad. I was particularly happy to see that in these days of high security issues, the sister's comedy boyfriend, a grocery store clerk, can just wander into 10 Downing Street unannounced.