In
Newark Airport, Thoughts on California
Swiped
a USA Today left on a seat.
There’s a map of the US on the weather page. As I’ve lately been thinking about moving to CA after my
Taiwan stint, I look at how far CA is from the East Coast. That’s 11 states across. Really big ones too. Appropriately, they color all the
warm areas yellow. All of the
Northwest is in gloomy blue or gray.
The whole southern half of CA is yellow and I think about the perfect
weather there. Yet I still feel
the tiny start of a pang of anxiety when I think about moving there. It’s not just a new place but new
everything. For example I have to
learn a whole new set of highways—oops, I mean “freeways”; supermarket chains,
etc.
And CA is
just so, well, weird. For
example. On another page is news
by state. Each state has some
reasonable news story: NY--a judge
was censured for threats and bribery, NJ--Edison’s annual Chinese New Year
parade can no longer shut down the highway, CT--governor vetoes deficit-reduction
plan. Even Idaho—sends hundreds of
firefighters to Texas for Columbia shuttle recovery. Iowa--a challenge to the state law making convicted sex
offender information public.
Maine--the governor calls for a milk farmer subsidy. All normal. Then CA: “A
gunman smeared chocolate pudding over his face, then climbed through a
drive-through window and robbed a
Weinerschnitzel restaurant.
He got away with an undisclosed amount of cash.”
That’s
THE top news story in a state that big?
Robbery is like the daily news story in downtown New Haven. Was the guy in charge of submitting to
USA Today for CA just bored and trying to mess around? Weird. See NJ and NY have assholes, that I can deal with. But freaks are another matter
altogether. And what the eff is
Weinerschnitzel? Restaurant
chains, another thing I’d have to learn.
Maybe it’s like their Friendly’s.
“Sweet
Home Alabame” was eh, not nearly as good as I was hoping, Reese W’s character
not nearly as likable as in Legally Blonde. Very cheesy throughout ¾ and toward the end got better. Should’ve been funnier and not take
itself so seriously. Next was “The
Man from Elysian Fields.”
Huh? The tape had
problems—the sound kept going in and out, the picture froze in the same spot,
they restarted it over three times and gave up. I picture a dinky 2-head VCR back there, and it makes me
wonder how old this plane is. So
instead they showed “The Good Girl”, a low budget drama but was rather amusing
(key: did NOT take itself seriously)
with Jennifer Aniston, made by Fox.
She wore baggy 80s outfits and played a cheating wife of the same guy
who played the husband in “Chicago” with cheating wife Renee Zelleweger. He is the same dumb,
whupped-on-a-leash, clueless husband pitifully forgiving and apologetic of his
wife’s rampant affairs. The dark
disturbed kid playing Aniston’s lover, I’m pretty sure also played a dark
disturbed kid on an X-Files episode long ago (guy who ate people’s brains).
…not
even out of the airport, when everything that annoys me about Taiwan comes
flooding back, one by one. First,
the cheesy soap operas on TV (actually I saw this during my stopover in
Japan—but it just confirms that’s where the cheesy romance, cutesy high-voiced
girl crap comes from), then people pushing/shoving off the plane, bad fashion
statements, difficulty finding a garbage can, and the “Huan Ing Guang Ling”
cries of the store girls. One
would think I’d be able to overlook such trivial annoyances considering I just
came from a country suffering from fatal blizzards, imminent war and constant
threat of bioterrorism, not to mention universally hated by the rest of the
globe.
My
first night back, got a big mosquito bite on my neck.