Current location:	Home, office, the nest ...
Current mood:	Who can really say?
Current music:	Divinyls - If Love Was a Gun
Entry tags:	cruise, la, mtm

One long flight, with revelations ....

Her can turn the world on with her smile.
(Oh, don't pretend you don't recognize the lyrics)

Her can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile.
(From the cloylingly cute use of the objective case instead of the nominative in the first couplet things improve rapidly.)

Well it's you girl and you should know it,

With each glance and every little movement you show it ....

We should never have been on that plane, but we were lucky to be there, the five of us bound for L.A. and a cruise down Mexico way. the original aircraft for the first leg of our journey (Columbus to Minneapolis) was found to be leaking brake fluid, so Northwest eventually stopped dithering, sent for replacement parts, and had us all de-plane.  We were fortunate enough to get rebooked through Newark, N.J., with only a couple of hours delay. Since we were getting to L.A. the day before the ship sailed, we seemed to be in pretty good shape.

And generally we were in good shape; our luggage was routed correctly and showed up with us, we had plenty of time to make the connection in Newark and even time for a bit of lunch.  All was well, except ....

Our vehicle for the long haul - Newark to L.A. - was serviceable enough except for the seats, which had been purchased at a Guantanamo government surplus sale. I would have traded mine for a waterboard in a heartbeat, no questions asked.

After 15 minutes - somewhere over eastern Pennsylvania - my spine gave out and I turned into a squirming invertebrate. My legs were taking turns going numb. I was too uncomfortable to read (and anybody who really knows me understands the magnitude of that statement).

I tried music, but my MP3 player seemed to be dying. I tried using my jacket to improvise a lumbar pillow, with no success. Kathryn offered me her pillow, but it wasn't going to offer anything the jacket didn't, so why should she be uncomfortable, too?

I considered getting up for a bit, but wedging myself in and out of the seat seemed impossible. Besides, I was lucky the guy net to me (I was in the middle, Kathryn on the window) hadn't killed me already. He seemed in no discomfort at all.

The one thing our Torquemada 747 had going for it was a high end A-V system, with LCD screens in the back of every seat.

I watched Ghost Town (a very funny movie) which got me through part of the Contrail of Tears. But eventually I lost the ability to focus on that.

I tried their music offerings, but couldn't get the volume above a whisper. ("Won't Get Fooled Again" is useless at that level, by the way.)

Then I noticed a "Short Programs" video category. What did I have to lose?  I took a peek.

It was episodes of TV shows, of course. (And you thought this digression was terminal, didn't you?)

Some modern, some oldies, mostly what you'd expect and hope for. Including a single episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

This show, this monument to what even the most debased vessel (broadcast network sitcoms) can achieve when executed with skill and passion, was one of the pillars of my youth. It helped convince me I wasn't totally a mutant, that there was some overlap between my world and "reality."

The stories made a semblance of sense. The characters caught bits of the real world, as I saw it being lived by the people around me. The dialogue was remarkably and consistently excellent.

But most of all, there was Mary, perky Mary, who could tolerate and cope with and even like (perhaps even love?!) the various laughable people of her world.

Mary, with the heart-shaped face and the chestnut hair and the smile that said "It's OK. Really, I'm pretty sure it will be OK ..."

Of course she was my first extended crush. And perhaps more than that; it is possible that on some level she was imprinted on my psyche, like an upgrade to my BIOS (if you'll forgive a lame-ass computer simile). Note that I cleverly avoided the phrase "firmware upgrade" and the accompanying connotations.

It's not a matter of "type." Kathryn, my partner of 15+ years is not at all physically Mary-ish except for a pronounced streak of perkiness (which I have been trying to repress, thus far unsuccessfully). But on some level I automatically associate that look with the positive, open-spirited energy of MTM.

Does this explain my fondness for newsreaders of the Campell Brown and Robin Meade type? How many other near-Marys have I been unwittingly drawn to? (Please note: None of the major disasters of my life have been triggered by anybody even vaguely Mary-ish. At least, so far. I do not believe this to be a coincidence.) What unseen Mary-avatars lurk in my future?  (My present?!)

I believe nobody has any power over me which I didn't give them. But the giving is not always voluntary or even conscious. And taking that power back may be the hardest when the motivations are buried most deeply.

Anyway, halfway through this particular episode - in which Lou and Mary had asked station management for raises - I laughed out loud. And the various knots and kinks in my back began to unwind; just a little, but enough to let me know I was gonna make it, after all.

At the end of the show, Lou agrees to split the lump sum offered by management with Mary, telling her he had paid $2,000 just to see her smile. Then he adds the inevitable Lou Grant punchline - "It wasn't worth it."

But Lou and I both know that, really, it was.