japan arrival

Some very quick thoughts before the 30 minutes of Internet access I’m paying for runs out:
– Business class was all I’d hoped it to be, although I still couldn’t sleep on the plane. (I’m a finicky sleeper, and no matter how many degrees of incline you get, sleeping on your side is still uncomfortable.) The only problem: too much food. I think I ate 9 meals in a 36-hour period. (Mmmm…Dove bars.)
– There is no less flattering light than the light in an airplane’s bathroom. I looked like an extra from some never-before-aired Star Trek episode. (More so than usual.)
– Watched “Vertigo” on the plane and was strangely disappointed. I like Hitchcock, and I’d always heard “Vertigo” held up as one of his peaks. But it seemed a bit too hamfisted, Kim Novak was awful, and even the Bernard Herrmann soundtrack was only so-so. It did help me better understand the Harvey Danger song “Carlotta Valdez,” however. (P.S. A.J. Hammer, ex-VJ on VH1, now has the job of introducing movies on Northwest flights. Not sure if that’s a promotion or not.)
– Good music to listen to on a 12-hour plane ride: Roni Size/Reprazent, New Forms; A Tribe Callled Quest, Anthology, Dismemberment Plan, Change. Not as good for plane rides, although still a great album: Tindersticks, Tindersticks (too whispery for all the plane noise).
– People who keep opening a window shade during the sleep portion of a lengthy plane ride should be immediately thrown off the flight. Hint: it still looks like a bunch of clouds out there. You don’t have to look to confirm it.
– Naturally, my laptop broke the first time I tried to use it. Gotta love toting around 15 pounds of dead weight for the next 12 days.
– Japan seems…well, I haven’t seen enough of it to say yet. I’ll get back to you on that.