Shoe News
by botherer on Jan.15, 2009, under The Rest
After my successful trip to the fantastic 826NYC, I went into a shoe store to get something new to put on my leg-hands. I decided I wanted some Converse boots, because it’s been a while.
The store was just astonishingly loud. I’ve been in noisy music shops, but never have I been anywhere outside of a club or live music venue at this volume. In fact, I’d likely leave a club or live music venue that felt the need to have the sound quite so obnoxiously loud. This isn’t the exaggerated grumbling of an ageing man – it was, beyond belief, insanely loud. I literally had to shout at the top of my voice to the sales assistant to ask for some boots to try on, repeating myself three times before she heard what size. She went into a back room to look for them.
While I waited I watched the very many staff in the place enjoying the music. It was, extraordinarily, a sort of UK garage-meets-rasta remix of the Scooby-Doo theme, which clumsily stumbled its way into the Sesame Street theme, all decorated with enthusiastic shouting. All at a volume far beyond that which the in-store speakers were equipped to handle. So it wasn’t only loud, but also fizzing and popping in pain. The staff seemed very pleased with it, with one girl doing some excellent dancing to entertain all within.
After a while another staff member asked if I was being served. I boomed my explanation that a while back someone had gone into this back room looking, and I was beginning to worry about her. She followed her in. And also vanished. Were they dead? Or simply letting their ear drums have a moment of respite?
After far too long in this nonsensically noisy place – like some kind of mad nursery for horrendous pre-schoolers – I was give the brown Converse boots I’d asked for, and made my getaway. Having realised that, oh no, doesn’t David Tennant’s Doctor Who wear brown Converse? Am I unconsciously attempting to dress myself as a mutant version of various Time Lords?
The answer to this is clearly, and deeply troublingly, yes. And I think the long-coated, longer-scarfed, grey-stripey-cotton-hatted, brown-shoed, hair-faced figure I now cut in public should strike fear into the hearts of space monsters and naughty robots everywhere. And indeed anyone else who walks past.
Scarf News
by botherer on Jan.14, 2009, under The Rest
In America! Hooray. I thought I’d find out what all the fuss was about, having heard rumours of a country where the locals all drive cars and the root beer comes in glasses. It’s all true!
I’m over in Philadelphia (or near enough) for a while, visiting Kim and Nick. But today I’m in New York, currently in a Starbucks filling half an hour before I get on a subway down to Brooklyn to try and find 826NYC and the Superhero Supply Store.
This is how cold New York is: All the cold. It’s so cold that my beard froze. Emerging from Penn Station, condensation in my hairy face from the temperature change, I wiped it to hear cracking sounds. I am fairly certain this means my impending death as soon as I venture from the warmth of this narrow coffee hole. It’s the sort of cold where you’re whole face hurts and you wonder if you’ll be able to do expressions again. The sort of cold where people exchange looks of pain as they walk past each other. I love it.
To celebrate I went into Macy’s to buy a scarf. Even though the British Pound’s tombstoning jump into half an inch of lava and spikes means the US is no longer half-price, it’s still a far more reasonably priced nation, and it’s always worth getting as much stuff here as you can squeeze into your bag. Macy’s isn’t exactly a place for bargains, but anything in a sale is going to be less than half the cost in the UK still. However, the same rule doesn’t appear to apply to scarves. Average price: $50. All because they’ve got some stupid logo or other printed on them, in some remote corner. I don’t need to spend £30+ on anything, let alone a long thin bit of wool. However, between these stands of massively overpriced piles of knitting were racks of $25 scarves, which would seem just about reasonable until you see how long they are.
The man at the counter asked me if it was two or three I’d picked up. It was one. This scarf is long enough for two people to share, without needing to be in the same town. It’s so long it’s almost impossible to wear. And it’s entirely impossible to wear without looking like a reject from the Doctor Who auditions. Which fortunately is the look I’m consistently striving for. “What do you mean you don’t want a fat, hairy Doctor? TO HELL WITH YOU ALL!” And then with a swish off my scarf over my shoulder, and the resulting deaths of three passers-by, I storm off.
And that’s all the scarf news.
Wipeout Wipes Out
by botherer on Jan.03, 2009, under Television
I refuse to describe NBC’s idiotic summer show Wipeout as a “guilty pleasure”. I enjoyed its idiocy boldly and proudly. Assault courses are fun, and watching people on assault courses is fun. The Krypton Factor proved that. When the assault course has 15ft high bouncy balls and a wall that punches you in the face, it’s clearly great. Subsequent rounds include leaping over a sweeping pole on very high narrow platforms, being spun at horrible speeds to get dizzy before crossing smaller courses, and finally an epic course that resembles a real-life platform game on a building-size scale. However, just that would be quickly quite tiresome to watch. What made NBC’s Wipeout so fun was the commentary offered by two extremely cruel men, appointing each contestant a nickname, and delivering biting, scripted remarks in an engaging banter. You’d have to be pretty impressively bad at your job to mess up that format.
John Walker Music 2008
by botherer on Jan.03, 2009, under The Rest
2008 marked the year I became a genre. Which was odd. The phrase “John Walker Music” has become commonplace amongst my hateful collection of so-called friends to describe a song they consider whiny and not possible to dance to. This idea is explored in disturbing depth in Kieron’s annual Top 40 songs list, posted today. And takes the term to an interesting place: it’s previously been used to dismiss songs, but seems to be becoming an occasionally acceptable alternative.
He’s quite accurate in his descriptions of which songs I’ll like. They’re easy to pick out the list. They’re the ones that don’t sound like stroppy teenagers singing 80s karaoke to a Casio keyboard demo. That sounds so trite a description, too cliché and predictable a way to dismiss it all, but hell, it seems to work.
(So as I write this I’ve put on some ancient Red House Painters, since Mark Kozelek is the patron saint of John Walker Music, and it’s about as opposite to the oh-so-ironic faux-80s annoyance as I could imagine.) Kieron’s taste has a few blips, allowing in some of this year’s best singles, including the epically great Dig, Lazarus, Dig by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and Matt & Kim’s glorious Daylight. He also includes some Mountain Goats, which has made my day. The best band/singer of them all. It’s a shame there isn’t a decent version of the song online anywhere, as the live version linked to is barely audible. (I might try and fix this in a bit, just in case people who like the shouting stuff click on it – it seems too tragic that he’d not get heard by new ears.) And the Magnetic Fields too, of course. And if they count as John Walker Music, then I think my genre is in damned fine form.
Oh, and the Frightened Rabbit song is fantastic. Kieron’s exactly right about the worry they cause. They’re so damned close to turning into Travis, and no amount of swearing will keep them above this if the banality they occasionally hint at sucks them down. However, while their demise seems sealed in their recent popularity (they’ve had two songs on Chuck’s fantastic soundtrack this season, and are popping up on TV all over the place), their second album survives it, and Keep Yourself Warm defies it. I accidentally saw them live this year, supporting knighted JW Music heroes, Death Cab For Cutie, and they knew to finish with this song in gigantic form. (Nick Cave, Kieron explains to me, only counts as JWM when it’s bad. When it’s good it isn’t. As he says, it’s based on a concept he’s created called “unfairness”. Of course, it’s never bad. It’s just sometimes it isn’t as spoon-fed. Take that.)
Looking at such lists, 2008 seems to have been a disastrous year for music. If the Ting Tings’ vapidity is the best the year can offer, let’s just pretend it didn’t happen. (Kieron links me to a great article about the year’s dodgy output here.) However, there was a decent amount of stuff. Well, nine or so albums. Some that appear in a few lists, some that seem oddly absent. All of them great.
I don’t really pay attention to time, and I find it very hard to know what’s from this year and what’s from five years ago, so I find listing music pretty difficult. I’m also fairly certain the Hold Steady and Portishead albums would have made it 11, but I haven’t heard enough of either yet. But here’s my Top 9 albums of the year. Which should, I suppose, all be John Walker Music by default.
9. Jim’s Big Ego – Free*
JBE have always understood the simplest music equation: record labels = bad, live performance = good. Their latest album is literally free, but you can choose to pay as much as you want for it. If you take it for free, they ask that you “pay” by passing it on to three friends. Of course that has no bearing on the music, which is really rather fantastic. There isn’t the big catchy single that will ride an internet meme this time, like Y2K Hooray!, or Stress, but they were all over a decade ago. Free* is a much more mature album, with some fantastically big songs, like the opening International, and the super-cute Everything Must Go. It gets silly, of course. And is as jazzy and enthusiastic as you could want.
8. Frightened Rabbit – The Midnight Organ Fight
As above. You can’t help but feel nervous, seeing their destiny, but for now it’s hugely enjoyable.
7. Negativland – Thigmotactic
After 2005’s No Business – an album entirely comprised of stolen samples – the copyright-defying group went in completely the opposite direction in 2008. A much more personal project with fewer members of the collective involved, Thigmotactic is an experiment in song writing, rather than song recycling. It’s pleasingly daft, and surprisingly engaging. From a band who made an album by crashing a car into their recording studio, there’s a surprisingly amount of conformity to many of the tracks. It rarely lasts the full length of a song thank goodness, the familiar discordance unravelling tunes brilliantly, as well as many vocal samples throughout. I’m absolutely astonished this album hasn’t been given accolades on end of year lists. While the avant garde nature of most of their releases might put the Vampire Weekend applauders off, you’d think something that apes a traditional album would catch people’s attention.
6. High Places – 03/07-09/07
High Places released two albums this year. Their debut self-titled proper album, that I’ve not yet heard. And this collection of previous songs, that is utterly stunning. It swims and swarms throughout, an aquatic atmosphere meeting a strange, fussy insectoid flittering. Many tracks almost sound as if they’re underwater, the vocals muffled in a way reminiscent of Azure Ray, with the percussion up front. If it weren’t so catchy it would be haunting.
5. The Mae Shi – HLLLYH
I don’t understand how HLLLYH didn’t see a song on Kieron’s list. If I tried to guess an album he’d like, it would be this one. It’s got screeching girls, shouty boys and post-punky tunes. It’s also bloody brilliant. 7 x x 7 is a remarkable song, with almost nothing but “shush”ing for the first 30 seconds, as the guitar begins to poke its way through. Then it’s a minute of increasingly frantic, shouted storytelling, before going back to shushing. Then a final 20 seconds of shrieked madness, wrapping everything up in two seconds over two minutes. There’s no gap before the next track, The Melody, bursts in with 80s videogaming bleeping, warbled singing, with backing vocals alternating screamed notes, and itself breaks down into static noise and confusion midway through. Then it’s time for the next change of direction. There’s a Cloud Cult vibe when they’re pretending to be singing songs, and something unique and fascinating when the disguise is dropped.
4. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
It’s somehow been four years since the last Bad Seeds album. The double CD Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus showed some hints of Cave’s interest in getting noisy again, after his seven years of balladic Christianity exploring and fairytelling. This led to his side project, Grinderman (containing a contender for Best Song Ever with No Pussy Blues). The insane moustache grown for Grinderman’s hairy garage rock remained when the Bad Seeds got back together again, and some of the roughness came with it. But Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is far more sedate affair, and it’s hard to not want it to just go that little bit further into the noise it threatens. It doesn’t get better than the opening title track, but anything the Bad Seeds offer is well worth listening to again and again.
3. Girl Talk – Feed The Animals
Mashups felt so 2005, until Gregg Gillis came back with proof it was still worth much attention. Feed The Animals is a much more approachable album than his previous two (and even more so thanks to being available at your own chosen price, including free should you be so wretched). The hiphop is invaded by incredibly familiar mainstream tunes, with 20 to 30 songs mashed in each track (the album is also available as one continuous track as there are no real breaks), often with three or four seamlessly appearing at once. It constantly makes you laugh as cheesy-as-hell pop so perfectly punctuates the rap, teasingly introducing itself before the reveal. Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares To You and Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade Of Pale not only don’t feel out of place as they help things along from NWA and The Cool Kids to Kanye West and YoungbloodZ, but somehow feel relevant again as they do. And how else could you listen to The Band’s The Weight without it using Ben Folds Five’s Battle of Who Could Care Less’s drums to reach Ace of Base’s All That She Wants backing Lil’ Scrappy? Exactly. (There’s a near-exhaustive collection of the songs listed here.)
2. The Mountain Goats – Heretic Pride
What a year when I get to choose between The Mountain Goats and Cloud Cult as my favourite album. Why on Earth Heretic Pride is getting ignored in the year-end accolades is a mystery – perhaps February is too early to put out an record and receive the notice you deserve come December/January. But John Darnielle proves he merits wide attention with songs like Autoclave and How To Embrace A Swamp Creature. Maybe it’s the familiarity of the sound that has put people off, often featuring songs that remind you of tracks on previous albums. However, there’s something special this time – it’s the most delicately instrumented record since his signing to 4AD. Songs like Last Man On Earth and So Desperate are almost as spare as his cassette-recorded solo albums of the 90s. There isn’t a song that matches Woke Up New from 2006’s Get Lonely, but there’s a few that come close.
1. Cloud Cult – Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes)
Any band whose members include artists who paint on stage during gigs deserves attention. A band who does this while consistently producing albums to the stunning quality of Feel Good Ghosts deserves trumpeting from the roof. Craig Minowa’s project has become something incredible. 2007’s The Meaning of 8 was completely wonderful, meandering through moving and bemusing songs, changing shape and speed in a breathtaking way. Feel Good Ghosts is a much tighter album, notably shorter at only 13 tracks (Minowa was reported to have said he thought people’s attention spans weren’t coping with previous albums), but just as powerful.
This might also be the last Cloud Cult record, with Minowa announcing the band intends to spend at least the first part of 2009 with families, and in one interview saying he doesn’t know if they’ll reform after. If it is, then they’ve gone out in tremendous style. When Water Comes To Life (below) and Journey of the Featherless sound so uplifting you’re tempted to believe they could teach you to fly. But for me the most glorious moment of this or any of their albums is Story of the Grandson of Jesus (also below, without a video). It’s a gorgeous nonsense parable, with guitars and drums slamming together underneath the magical tale.
I cannot count how many times this album has looped through 2008, scoring the entire awkward year for me. If Love You All is to be the last song on their last album, then what better way to finish.
When Water Comes To Life:
Story of Grandson of Jesus:
Love You All:
Best TV 2008 – Sitcoms
by botherer on Dec.16, 2008, under Television
Best TV shows of the last six months. I know – who the hell am I, on a personal blog, to be issuing awards? This is the internet, people. This is how it works. (I should add that I’ve yet to see the latest season of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, if this list looks a little strange without it.)
Best Sitcom: The Big Bang Theory
Season 1’s shortened run showed a lot of promise, especially from a show that in description sounds anything from derivative to offensive. Two physics geeks live opposite a blonde, unambitious waitress. Oh, the crazy differences between them! But fortunately the show quickly realised that the interplay between them as friends who care about each other was far more interesting than in Penny constantly not understanding what the boys were up to. More often this season Penny has joined in with them, and very frequently at the beginning of an episode – in other words, it’s not a big deal that she’s part of Halo Night now. Even if she did manage to accidentally turn it into America’s Next Top Model Night, with the episode ending with Howard and Rajesh finding the ANTM house.
It’s a Chuck Lorre show, which will put a lot of people off immediately. Currently responsible for this and Two and a Half Men, and in the past much-hated shows like Dharma & Greg, Cybill, Grace Under Fire, many wouldn’t come near this. (They’re obviously stupid, because Grace Under Fire was great, and Dharma & Greg wasn’t nearly as putrid as Family Guy would have you believe.) However, if there’s anyone who knows sitcoms on the scale of James Burrows, it’s this guy. And with TBBT, he’s nailed it. It’s a traditional three-camera sitcom, with a studio audience who oohs and aahs appropriately, and is almost entirely set in one front room. But the performances are fantastic. Kaley Cuoco manages to make Penny interesting, rather than a dull foil for the antics of the four geeks, and Johnny Galecki (David from Roseanne) is great at being the audience’s male ‘in’, the most normal of the four men. Kunal Nayyar and Simon Helberg still have the capacity to kill scenes they’re in, but have been better managed this time out. But the real star is Jim Parsons as Sheldon. His Aspergy, awkward social denial is constantly adorable – he somehow manages to make someone who’s almost sociopathic in his inability to understand people into a very loveable character.
It’s hard to argue for the programme in any sophisticated way. It doesn’t match How I Met Your Mother’s writing or acting, and never goes as deep as that show, but it is unquestionably the sitcom that’s made me laugh the most this year. I really cannot remember laughing as hard at any sitcom than during the final scene of the recent Christmas episode (Saturnalia episode, I should say), with Sheldon’s reaction to Penny’s gift. I cried with laughter until I hurt. And that’s what sitcoms are meant to do.
Runner Up: How I Met Your Mother
I love How I Met Your Mother, but season 4 hasn’t had its Robin Sparkles episode yet. It hasn’t had its Slap Bet. There hasn’t been the hook, and “The incident with the goat” isn’t an intriguing flash-forward at all. A goat in the apartment! How wacky! However, it’s been consistently fun, and often very funny. And in a year where the sitcom is almost gone completely (Scrubs cannot come soon enough – next month), it’s great to still have this show. Neil Patrick Harris is still the star by a stretch, and with this, Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Prop 8: The Musical and his depiction of the Shoe Fairy in Sesame Street, he’s the most loveable man on TV. And brilliantly, he sings in all of them.
Runner Up: Gary Unmarried
Here’s another sitcom that shouldn’t be any good, but is somehow really enjoyable. A divorced couple with two kids, and their need to interact. It could have been a spiteful, bitter show, based on nothing but the snipes and barbs between the separated couple. It kind of is based on the snipes and barbs between the separated couple, but somehow is never spiteful or bitter. In fact, it’s their obvious fondness for each other that allows you to relax and enjoy the show, knowing their smart, likeable kids aren’t being screwed up by them, and that we’re not going to be asked to believe they might fall back in love at any point. In fact, as soon as that story happens, it’ll be the sign the show is over and the writing lost track. She’s already engaged (to their former marriage guidance therapist – the brilliant Ed Begley Jr.) and Gary’s dating. It’s corny as hell, but James Burrows directing every episode so far, and a writing staff that’s included people who’ve worked on Scrubs, Seinfeld, Friends and Californication, is smart production.
On Why Reviews Should Be Subjective
by botherer on Dec.11, 2008, under The Rest
Discussions about games writing and the nature of critiquing videogames seems to come in waves, and once again we’re at high tide. I’m sure it’s the same for writers/journalists reviewing other luxury items (“How far should you drive a Mondeo before you review it?”), but it obviously only appears on my radar when it’s about gaming.
One aspect that always comes up, and I think is possible the most/least interesting part of it all, is the debate over objective/subjective reviewing. This is at its least interesting when it’s the discussion over whether reviewing can be objective, and at its most interesting when it’s over whether it should be. I want to make an argument for why reviews should be subjective, and why objective reviewing is deceptive.
KITH Comeback!
by John Walker on Dec.03, 2008, under Television
The main problem with my life is that I don’t know anyone with whom to share this most exciting news ever.
Cursed life.
Prop 8: The Musical
by botherer on Dec.03, 2008, under The Rest
Utterly brilliant.
US Election Experiences – Part 3 – Prop 8
by John Walker on Nov.11, 2008, under Rants
So there’s a final part to the US election results that needs to be added. It’s the wretched, miserable part, but it cannot be ignored. It’s the spiteful pill dropped in the water. California’s Proposition 8.
It made what should have been a jubilant Wednesday into a bitter tasting victory. Obama, a man many hold up as representing hope (and indeed is already delivering on it, with plans to end the human rights abuse of Guantanamo Bay, and reversing Bush’s plans for devastating oil drilling and his prevention of stem cell research), never said anything against Prop 8 in the time he campaigned, rather prevaricating and embarrassingly avoiding an issue he knew would lose him votes.
Somehow the people of the defiantly Democrat California voted in favour of this most hate-driven bill.
It just doesn’t make any sense. I can attempt to understand the reasons why people say they are against homosexuality (although that sounds as mad as being against weather). I get that this is born of the fear of otherness. I get that people are infected by religion that tells them to hate certain people. I get that people are terrified of their own sexuality, and want to destroy the subject. I cannot sympathise with any of these people, but I recognise that they think these things. But I just cannot comprehend how anyone can take issue with two people getting married.
It’s such an aimless hate. Generally people will pick on promiscuity when they want to pronounce what’s wrong with gay people (while seeming oddly quiet on the same subject applied to heterosexuals). Faced with a couple who want to commit to one another for life, who are in love and want their partnership to be recognised, how does this hate not at least dampen? And how – just how – does gay marriage translate in people’s minds to be in some way “harming” marriage itself?
This is what’s so utterly moronic about the whole thing. They are not only campaigning to prevent same-sex marriage, but with such an astonishing volume of bilious hate have passed a bill that could legally divorce all those who were previously married, because they claim that it was in some way endangering marriage itself.
And it’s such a stupid, stupid lie. One marriage doesn’t change another! If I should ever get married, it will likely be to a Christian, and we will declare our love before God and the church, and our faith will be the reason behind that marriage. I cannot understand how any marriage, from two drunken strangers getting married in a drive-thru in Vegas, to a loving gay or straight couple publicly declaring their commitment in the next town, can in any way do harm to my (currently imaginary) relationship. Because it obviously can’t. It’s sheer, bleeding-eyed madness to suggest otherwise.
So a couple in love who want to spend their lives together, in a recognised commitment, whether before God or themselves, who are the same sex – how on Earth could that change anything? You know how it can change it? I reinforces it. It recognises the sanctity of marriage, and celebrates it. It nurtures the concept of marriage.
I felt hope when Obama won. Not because I believe he can change the world – in fact I fear he will be remembered as one of the most vilified and loathed presidents, as the actions of the Republicans bear their fruit throughout his term/s and a stupid majority level him with the blame – but because people made the choice that I believe was most right. America proved everyone wrong when it was said they weren’t ready to elect a black man. That gave me more hope in people. It was a hope so quickly undone when Prop 8 was officially declared as passed. Where I’d felt pride before, it was replaced by disgust. That Prop 8 was ever proposed generates a great deal of horror. The idea that a minority of people were so spiteful as to try and dissolve marriages of loving couples because of their own, private prejudices, was depressing and painful. That a majority – that more people were in favour of this than against it – look, I’m an optimist. I get teased for my faith in humanity by my friends. It took one hell of a blow on Wednesday. Just what? What? Is this where we are as a people?
People voted against love. That’s fucked up. We’re in a terrible, terrible place.
As I started writing this, I saw Olbermann has commented on the subject, and captures the hurt this hate has created. He too seems just bewildered, hurt and disgusted by this most awful of results.
A friend of a friend also makes some wise and passionate remarks about it here and here.
Fist Bumps And Upright Sleep
by botherer on Nov.09, 2008, under The Rest
Yesterday I taught my nephew to fist bump. I feel this is exactly the sort of role an uncle should be playing in this new millennium. The word “poo” and modern handshake-equivalents are the sorts of things a parent might forget while educating their own children, so it’s important that an uncle is around to fill in these gaps.
While I’m aware that everyone wrongly thinks their children/younger relations are geniuses, when in fact they are complete idiots, my nephew is a genius. He’s just turned two, and he can already read basic words like “cat”, “daddy” and “car”. He can recognise all the numbers from 1 to 10, and most of the alphabet. And most impressive, he knows the names of all kinds of cars, and excitedly points them out as they drive past, or appear in the background on television programmes. This impresses me the most, as I haven’t the faintest idea about such things. Which means a two year old is smarter than me… on that subject, at least. Although he has decided to reject the name “Toyota”, and instead refer to them all as “Beep Beep Cars”, which is more on my level.
Jetlag is a funny one. I got back from America feeling all sorts of excellent, having slept on the plane due to some manner of miracle, and then getting to bed at 9pm and waking up at 9am. Mmm-mmmmm. Which of course meant the following night I wasn’t tired at all, and was still on US time, and so got about 5 hours sleep before heading to see my family. So on the train on the way back, on the Guildford to Reading leg, for some reason I thought it would be sensible to just lean my head on the window, just for a moment.
I was woken up by a member of the train’s crew, asking if I really wanted to go back to Guildford again. People were getting on board for the train’s next journey, and I was there like some sort of vagrant, a hobo riding the rails, snoozing comfortably. Still, it filled the otherwise dull gap that would usually be spent standing in Reading station, pulling penknives out of my back and legs.
So what I’ve realised, as I spend Sunday feeling absolutely ruined, is that the only way I can properly sleep sitting up is to be jetlagged. On the flight I managed two or three hours by leaning forward in my chair and resting my forehead on the reclined seat in front. It might make me look like I’m dead, or adopting the brace position, but it appears to trick my stupid car-not-knowing brain into thinking I’m at least on my front, and thus able to nod off for a bit. But on the train I was sat up, in a chair less comfy than the worst economy flight, and with my head on a glass window, and yet fell into a slumber that required repeated shouts from train staff to awake. So my future plan for sleeping on planes properly is to immediately take another flight across a major timezone right before… Oh wait.
As I’ve often thought, and as was discussed on our recent trip to the States, it’s hard to imagine a good reason why it’s not an option to just be drugged when you get on the plane, and then given some sort of reviving medication upon arrival. You feel groggy when you get off a plane anyway, and I’m willing to sign whatever forms are necessary to accept the risks of such a method of travel. And once commonly accepted, airlines would be able to fit five times as many passengers on board, slumped in stacked compartments, and wouldn’t have to feed or wait on people during the flight. It’s obviously the best idea ever, and I demand it be implemented immediately.