DEAR ALIZARIN: Blame in on the jetlag

. . .  I just know that the flight on the ultra-hip and youthful Song airlines was not quite as annoying on the way home as it was on the way to Tampa.   Nonetheless, I certainly felt like an old fogy as I begrudged the blaring hip-hop and pop music pumping through the cabin as we boarded and waited for take off.  I debated the validity of my being slightly offended by the safety instruction tape with the salsa theme featuring a speaker with a thick Mexican accent.  Actually, I resented the fact that they bothered to make these tapes (I know even audio tapes can be a pricey project) rather than letting the real live flight attendants recite the instructions.  I questioned if it was really annoying, a bit discriminatory, and condescending to the general public intellect or me looking for something to dislike.  I decided it was a bit of both.  In the end, I'd just prefer a small free bag of pretzels to the snazzy taped instructions. 

 

Then there are the individual TV screens in the back of the seat in front of you bombarding you with attempts to sell the virtues of dish TV on the airline and the ability to buy a meal if I am hungry.  The fact that we ended up sitting at the gate for almost an hour only made me long even more for the old-fashioned quiet airlines where the best form of entertainment was quietly reading and maybe even talking to someone next to you.   (Not that I wanted to talk to the man two seats over cursing the airline for wanting to replace a part of the airplane).  Nonetheless, overcome by too much flying and too many different time zones in one week, beset with insomnia and no longer able to focus on my book, partway through the flight, I did tune into the satellite TV to catch some news and got sucked into a fairly interesting show about the American obsession with beauty.   The guests included two guys who founded the personals website, beautifulpeople.net.   I saw them earlier in the week on The View.  On both shows they were deservedly put on the defensive (they claimed it was not all about looks).  One of the guys, I think, is really not that attractive and the other only in that very ordinary, boring way.  Neither of them knew who Ted Bundy was (or maybe that was from on The View).  I am glad to see they are getting chastised and called out for what they are on these shows, though, in reality, it is just the beautiful people telling them they should not be so obsessed with the beautiful people. And what does it mean when someone talks about an ex and says, "He/she was very beautiful."  Does that mean that the person regrets losing such a beautiful person?  Or that anyone after that person is bound to be a disappointment?  (Uh, that wasn't on the show, a personal tangent there). Curious thing, this beauty.   For instance, the models on the show did not seem that much more beautiful than the psychologist.  I wonder what I would look like with professional stylists, professional photographers directing and lighting me, and the, of course, the airbrushing afterwards.   Once that show was over, I figured since I was in the system of Song entertainment offerings, I'd check out the music.  To my surprise, there was a decent variety of choices.  I listened to a bit of Miles Davis, YoYoMa, and Paco De Lucia (a new find that I really enjoyed).    However, none of this was as charming as the cute steward who humored my attempts at Spanish from Taca Airlines.  

 

Grounded in California, for the next few months,

 

Lychee