Back from Hawaii

Aloha! I'm back. It was great to visit Hawaii again, but it's so good to be home. As much as I love it there, I love Arlington way more. I've decided my favorite place in the world is wherever Neil is. Definitely the last separate vacation I'll ever take!

True to form, I don't really have any pictures. I lugged a 20-lb. bag of camera goodies out there and probably took 5 pictures. I'm too lazy to get up and download them, so they will be in a forthcoming post. It's always hard for me to pin down the feel of a place in a photograph. I guess that's what practice is for, but I was nervous to bring the camera around in HI, when I didn't know if we'd be at a beach or some other unsecured place. And when I did carry it around, I felt stupid snapping away. Alas.

On my flight back, they had the weirdest movie/TV programming.

For comparison: On my way out, from Dulles-San Fran, they had a mediocre Michael Caine/Demi Moore movie, "Flawless." Then from San Fran-Honolulu, of course my headphones didn't work, but they had episodes of "The Office."

But on the flight home, the weirdest programming ever: This horrible, horrible movie with Pierce Brosnan and the chick from "The Notebook," all about infidelity and adultery (is there a difference?). I think it was called "Married Life," (which is absurd) but I don't know, and it's not even worth IMDBing. But I thought to myself, "This is quite a provocative topic for this audience. I don't know if other adults are into it, but what kid is going to be into this movie, or even understand it? (And what kind of influence is this having?) What happened to the days of 'The Cutting Edge' (played on my first flight out to Hawaii years ago) and other light, innocuous, in-flight entertainment?"

So after that crappy movie, there was NBC in-flight news or something about the Olympics. OK, I can definitely appreciate Michael Phelps. And the highlights of gymnast Shawn Johnson, some volleyball players and BMX riders was cool.

But after that, they played some BBC program about China. First, they talked about the people and culture, which should have interested me (hellooo, cultural anthropology?) but it didn't. Then the program became more nature show and featured a series of animals native to China, like the panda, Chinese alligator, some sort of crane, a golden mountain goat thing, etc. But the weird part about that, where they again seemed to disregard the audience, was the AWKWARD moments where it got all Discovery Channel and showed each animal mating! It just seemed weird to have five TV screens down the airplane all showing this; there was no way to avoid it. Call me prude, but seriously, didn't they used to show episodes of "Friends" or "Seinfeld" or something? What's going on with the airline industry? Dumb question. After THAT, they showed an episode of the most AWFUL show ever, which makes me very glad I don't own a TV, because of the sorry state of television programming. It was called "Psych," and I'm obviously no TV snob, but this was painful to watch. It was soooooo dumb and the acting and jokes totally forced.

Um, so yes, my point is -- I have no idea what is going through the minds of the folks who select in-flight programming, but they've got to do better than this. But who am I to complain -- with a free ticket, I guess I got what I paid for.

Pretty lame post for just getting back from a great vaca, but there you have it.