Right, I’m typing this somewhere above the Atlantic, having made it through the scariest part of any flight (other than the turbulent middle and the landing), which is, for me, the take-off. I practically soared through it actually, thanks to my malfunctioning in-flight entertainment device that I was attempting to fix as the plane rumbled along the runway. At first I’d just smirked at the affected gravelly American voice describing every pixel of what was being shown on the screen. (‘A three-dimensional W and B drift together inside a stylized shield to represent Warner Brothers Productions … A diamond attached to a floating trail drifts down to attach itself to a seven-layered L-shaped vortex…’) But then it continued in what became a very intrusive way into the film itself: ‘A silver corvette drives along a mountainous winding road. At the wheel is a young female, singing to a tune on the car radio. Pebbles hit the windshield. The car skids off the road and somersaults down the mountainside…’) It took me a while, I grant you, but finally I realised that the audio description aid for the visually impaired was turned on. It was at that point that the engines revved up and the plane began to speed up for the dreaded take-off. But was I bovvered? No! Well, maybe a little… my right hand did clench the back of the seat in front of me a little tighter… But on the whole I was more concerned with turning off the gravelly toned audio description. In the end it took the flight attendant resetting my screen to solve the problem, but by then we were safely up in the air. (Well, it never feels completely safe to me up there, but you know what I mean.) But now that I’m sitting here nursing a glass of Sauvignon Blanc while watching the highly disastrous disaster movie San Andreas, I find myself slightly regretting having turned off the audio description, as it would have been quite entertaining to have listened to the growly voice becoming ever more frenetic in an effort to keep up with the increasingly destructive earthquakes that comprise the movie’s ‘plot’.
That’s maybe a little unfair, as there is more of a plot than just a few quakes happening and people and cars being swept en masse off the collapsed Hoover Dam and Golden Gate Bridge. A bit more anyway. This is it: Several very high-magnitude earthquakes suddenly destroy the west coast of the USA out of the blue, and an Action Man figure of a helicopter rescue pilot and his estranged wife fly to San Francisco to find their daughter amid the rubble and water left after a 9.6 magnitude quake hits the city followed by a tsunami. Somehow they know without a shadow of a doubt that because she’s so smart, she’ll have figured out a way to stay alive when all those around her are not, and somehow they find her from their speedboat as she flags them down by flashing a small green light at them from the top of a crumbling high-rise building. Somehow she’s become trapped up there with her love interest – a foppish, ineffectual Hugh Grant–type British chap – and his little brother. Somehow, even though the daughter very clearly drowns at one point and can’t be resuscitated, Action Man brings her back to life after getting very angry about it all. Somehow the US flag then unfurls – as of course it would do – over a destroyed Golden Gate Bridge and the reunited happy family, at which point the no-longer-estranged wife says, ‘What now?’ To which Action Man stoically replies, ‘We rebuild.’ The End. Oh, and Kylie Minogue’s in it somewhere, but I can’t for the life of me fathom where. Maybe she was the small green light.
Well, it passed 114 minutes, so I can’t complain.
It’s now the next morning and I’m in my brother’s apartment in Manhattan, trying and failing to get connected to the wi-fi. I woke earlier thinking it was 8.30 am but was confused by the fact that it still seemed to be dark outside and all my devices showed different times. It turned out to be 3 am. I think it’s now just gone 7. I should still be asleep as I’ve only had a few hours’ kip, but in UK time it’s past noon, so I’m more than ready to be up and hitting the streets of New York. My plan is to play an open mic tonight. We’ll see how bright eyed and bushy tailed I still am by then, however…
That’s maybe a little unfair, as there is more of a plot than just a few quakes happening and people and cars being swept en masse off the collapsed Hoover Dam and Golden Gate Bridge. A bit more anyway. This is it: Several very high-magnitude earthquakes suddenly destroy the west coast of the USA out of the blue, and an Action Man figure of a helicopter rescue pilot and his estranged wife fly to San Francisco to find their daughter amid the rubble and water left after a 9.6 magnitude quake hits the city followed by a tsunami. Somehow they know without a shadow of a doubt that because she’s so smart, she’ll have figured out a way to stay alive when all those around her are not, and somehow they find her from their speedboat as she flags them down by flashing a small green light at them from the top of a crumbling high-rise building. Somehow she’s become trapped up there with her love interest – a foppish, ineffectual Hugh Grant–type British chap – and his little brother. Somehow, even though the daughter very clearly drowns at one point and can’t be resuscitated, Action Man brings her back to life after getting very angry about it all. Somehow the US flag then unfurls – as of course it would do – over a destroyed Golden Gate Bridge and the reunited happy family, at which point the no-longer-estranged wife says, ‘What now?’ To which Action Man stoically replies, ‘We rebuild.’ The End. Oh, and Kylie Minogue’s in it somewhere, but I can’t for the life of me fathom where. Maybe she was the small green light.
Well, it passed 114 minutes, so I can’t complain.
It’s now the next morning and I’m in my brother’s apartment in Manhattan, trying and failing to get connected to the wi-fi. I woke earlier thinking it was 8.30 am but was confused by the fact that it still seemed to be dark outside and all my devices showed different times. It turned out to be 3 am. I think it’s now just gone 7. I should still be asleep as I’ve only had a few hours’ kip, but in UK time it’s past noon, so I’m more than ready to be up and hitting the streets of New York. My plan is to play an open mic tonight. We’ll see how bright eyed and bushy tailed I still am by then, however…
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