"Travel Tremors - Part Two"

There’s this joke I love – which I have referenced before – from the movie Two For the Road (1967), starring Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn.

Two For The Road intermixes a series of trips through the South of France, taken by a couple during the various stages of their lives.  At one point, as youthful newlyweds, they hitch a ride with a stuffy married couple and their obstreperous young daughter.  Undisciplined by her laissez faire parents, the daughter, upset about something, grabs the car keys, and tosses them into a nearby, I don’t know, corn field.  Something with tall stuff growing in it.

While the two couples futilely search for the missing car keys, Albert Finney asks the “by-the-book” husband/driver, “Don’t you have a spare set of keys?”  To which the husband/driver haughtily replies,

“If we use the spare, then we won’t have a spare.”

As I prepare for our eighteen-day journey to Turkey, I am confronted by the dilemma of either using up all my backup blog posts or, instead, reprising some old favorites.  I ponder the option of eating up my accumulated backups, and the thought rises immediately to mind:

“If I use up my backups, then I won’t have backups.”

It is disheartening to suddenly see yourself as a joke that you once thought was hilarious.

I don’t know, I will probably go “Old Testament” on the problem and split the difference – offering part new material, part carefully selected reprises.  That way, I will still be some blog posts ahead when I come, while sparing my esteemed readership the prospect of three weeks of recycled material.

Now, concerning another previously alluded to situation…

The shaking.

As mentioned yesterday, before we set out on some upcoming adventure, we traditionally lie down on our bed and gyrate uncontrollably, while verbalizing our extended litany of concerns about the excursion, in hopes of defusing our simmering anxieties.

In the last post, I ran down a list of highly troubling “What if’s” – “What if it’s terrible?”  “What if we built it up too much?”, “What if we get lost and are never heard from again?” and the like.  (Note:  Dr. M indeed did get lost in the circuitous labyrinth of Pompeii.  She was, however, fortunately rediscovered.  But it took an hour, and it could very easily have gone the other way.) 

Why would we deliberately want to scare ourselves, a well-balanced, healthy person might curiously inquire?  I don’t think we do.  We’re just frightened people.  Also, imagining the worst inoculates us against the trip’s inevitable difficulties and disappointments, allowing us to say afterwards, “It may not have been perfect.  But it was sure better than we imagined it would be.”

For us, it is “Win-win.”   Our appreciation of a trip that turns out to be wonderful is only augmented by our trepidations beforehand that it would stink.  You see that?  We can’t lose! 

This is bizarre thinking, I know.  Though not quite as bizarre as the insight that popped into my head just this morning.

During my morning meditation, our pre-trip ritual floated into my consciousness, and, as often occurs in my meditation, I began to perceive the situation from a fresh and illuminating perspective.

What if – and hold onto your hats here – my concern is actually the opposite of what I am saying it is?  What if I am not afraid that the trip will fall short of my expectations, but instead that it will be so fabulous that, whoever or whatever system in the universe is responsible for such matters will be compelled to “balance the books” by inflicting upon me some commensurate punishment? 

(Note:  It is not unlikely that this convoluted (and in no way recommended) thought process encompasses my entire attitude about my career.  While constantly complaining, I was actually having the time of my life.  I just didn’t want anybody to know about it.  

(And require me to pay.) 

Anyway, there’s that. 

And now…we are off, come what may, to Turkey. 

I’ll be back with some hopefully interesting stories. 

Though, hopefully, not too interesting.
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It's a loaded calendar today.  First, it's Dr, M's birthday.  As a psychologist, Dr. M requires as much confidentiality as possible.  That's why you don't hear as much about her as I would prefer to pass on.  But let there be no doubt.  I am a truly fortunate fellow.  And I wish her the best.

Also, though it rarely takes "Second Position", for those who observe, tonight marks the culmination of the Jewish religion's Ten Days of Atonement.  Tomorrow night, we are either inscribed in the Book of Life, or we're not.  What can I tell you?  Fingers crossed.  Which, for all I know,  is a Christian superstition. 

"Travel Tremors"

Prior to flying to some far off destination, Dr. M and I have a longstanding tradition that we never fail to include in our pre-departure preparations.

We lie down on our bed,

And we shake.

Our standard M.O. is to gyrate uncontrollably, while frantically verbalizing our formerly submerged anxieties concerning the impending alteration to our everyday routine:

“What if we hate it?”

“What if it’s stupid?”

“What if it’s too long?”

“What if we wasted our money?”

“What if we get hurt?”

“What if we get sick?’’

“What if we get robbed?”

“What if we get kidnapped and beheaded?”

And that’s for trips to New York!

We are going to Turkey.  (So “What if we get kidnapped and beheaded?” is not entirely over the top.  I know that was… I’m actually not sure where that was.  But if it was Syria, that is directly next door to Turkey.  And Iraq is precariously just down the road.)

“Heebie-jeebies”, especially concerning places you have never visited before, I would suggest, are natural.  And “shaking”, releasing our trepidations into the open, may, in fact, be a healthy, liberating response.  Though you do not want to take your “externalizing” to an unhelpful extreme.  For one thing, excessive gyrationing can easily throw out a person’s back.  Wait – there’s another one!

“What if I throw out my back?”

Admittedly, not all of our worries have been generated by “The Unknown.”  (Traditionally followed by a ghostly, terror-inducing “Whoo-ing” sound.)  “What if it’s too long?” is a problem that is entirely of our own making.

WARNING:  What I am about to reveal may come out sounding elitist.  (I can never tell about those things.  Once, while visiting a Masai village in Kenya, I exclaimed, “Man! I just stepped in cow shit!” only to discover that the entire village was made out of cow shit.  To its Masai inhabitants, however, it was simply “home.”) 

Due to certain physiological requirements, we make a point on our long distance journeys to fly “Business Class”, using our credit card “miles” (plus additional “surprise” surcharges) to upgrade our seating from “Coach.”  

By flying “Business Class”, we hope to arrive at our destination without needing the immediate services of a chiropractor.  I realize that not all “Coach” travelers walk off the plane doubled over like a pretzel, but… I don’t know, maybe it’s an “age” thing.  (Or we are simply being elitist.)

Because it’s the way the airlines works – and they are entirely in control in this matter – you cannot always access your “upgrading” miles on the days you would ideally prefer to fly.  What that means in practical terms is that you can only “upgrade” when you are permitted to “upgrade.”  The result being that, on this trip to Turkey – as with a trip we took not long ago to London – our vacations are invariably – and involuntarily – longer than we would actually like them to be. 

Three years ago, a seven-day “London Theater Tour” package expanded to a sixteen-day excursion.  Our trip to Turkey – a scheduled ten-day outing – will, beyond our control or desire, balloon to eighteen days.  That’s right.  We are paying for eight extra travel days…

For leg room.

“What if it’s too long?” is, therefore, an entirely appropriate concern.  (A consequence of which involves this venue, which will require me to be fifteen blog posts ahead in my writing.  Add “What if I can’t do it?” to my building litany of aggravations.)

My travel preparations have also revealed a previously unrecognized conservatism in my character.  For convenience sake, I had decided to take along a recently purchased battery operated electric shaver (the last time I used an electric shaver was after I received one for my Bar Mitzvah), and my Kindle apparatus instead of volumes of heavily weighing-down reading material.

                               

But then I hear myself bleat:

“What if they don’t work?”

My reflexive response to this possible calamity is, as a precaution, to not only pack the battery electric shaver and the Kindle, but to also bring along my blade razor and shaving cream and actual books, reducing my anxiety but multiplying the encumbrance.

“Holy ‘belt and suspenders’, Batman!  That’s not a good idea, is it?”

I’m sorry.  I’m going to have to continue this tomorrow.

Suddenly, I feel an overpowering necessity to shake.  

"Unsung Heroes"

I remember an episode of Seinfeld in which two women in a bar or at a comedy club or in a bar at a comedy club – that’s not important, okay? 

What’s important is that, wherever they were, these two women superciliously disparaged George for imagining he could score points with them by bragging that he had just co-written a television pilot for NBC. 

Two shallow women eviscerating an even shallower Costanza for thinking that boasting about a television writing credit was his undeniable ticket to the “Promised Land.”  (A joke the Seinfeld writers made at their own expense, though their self-satirizing potshot is arguably inaccurate, not because there is in fact a cultural cachet in writing for television, but because of the substantial paychecks that accompany that dubious enterprise.)

Almost from the beginning, television writing has been accorded a lowly designation on the literary totem pole, more towards the supporting hole in the ground than that scary, beaky, birdy thing at the top. 

TV writers are rated lower in the proverbial pecking order than screenwriters. Which is wrong, because screenwriters have virtually no control over their material while television writers have some.

So there!

My overall view on these matters is:  It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it.  Baggers at supermarkets are not particularly loftily valued in our culture (or probably any culture.)  But I have witnessed variations of performance ranging from “Wizards (and Wizardesses) of Baggery” to “You just put a half gallon of milk on top of the eggs.”

Once, in Florence, Italy, a venerable waiter deboned a fish at our table with such skill and efficiency, I literally rose from my seat and accorded him a standing ovation.  (As I recall, the man’s response to my enthusiasm was an annoyed bewilderment.) 

In the specific realm in which I have toiled – writing for money – there is no status I can imagine lower than the uncredited practitioner, writers, albeit salaried, who put pen to paper, often – as the following examples will shortly detail – brilliantly. Their names, however, have been separated from their efforts. 

Consider (as I once did in the past in a post entitled “Those Thrilling Years”) the anonymous writer who in his “Lone Ranger” radio series introduction, wrote:

“A fiery horse with speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi-yo Silver!’  The Lone Ranger!  With his faithful Indian companion Tonto, this daring and resourceful Masked Rider of the Plains fought for justice in the Southwestern United States.  Return with us now to those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear – the Lone Ranger rides again!”

That’s no iron pyrites, folks.  That’s the genuine article!

RADIO PRODUCER:  “Write me some ‘blah-blah’ to start the show.” 

And they came up with that. 

It’s a home run.  The slugger’s name, sadly, forever unrecorded in the record books.

I have also in the past – because I have made it my mission to do so – shone an egregiously neglected light on the comedy writer (or team) who penned Abbott and Costello’s magnificent “Who’s On First?”  To me, the most hilarious comedy routine ever created.  The first time I saw it, I laughed so uncontrollably, my mother was seriously concerned for me survival.

And yet, once again, the authorship of this comedy classic – with the exception perhaps of professional archivists – is entirely unknown.

My attention today falls on a third noteworthy but uncredited contribution, returned to my attention when I recited it to coming-up-on-three-year-old Milo, who, since birth it would seem, has been in tshe imaginatorial thrall of superheroes, his “Outerwear of Choice” alternating daily between Batman and Superman, invariably with the accompanying cape. 

He probably won’t remember my doing this, but once, arriving to find him decked out in full Superman regalia (except for the boots), I broke spontaneously into the opening introduction to the 1950’s Superman television series.

“Faster than a speeding bullet!

More powerful than a locomotive!

Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

‘Look!  Up in the sky!  It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!

It’s Superman!’

Yes, it’s Superman!  Strange visitor from another planet who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.  Superman!  Who can change the course of mighty rivers.  Bend steel in his bare hands.  And who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fought a neverending battle for Truth, Justice and The American Way.” *

(* Recited from memory.)

I am aware there is great poetry.  And literature.  And playwriting.  And screenwriting.  And yes, even great television writing. 

But, to me, the contributions of the practitioners I have just mentioned – fated to eternal anonymity – stand at (or at least near) the top of evocative accomplishments– “Change the course of mighty rivers” – are you kidding me? – the world of English Speaking Arts and Letters has ever been honored to include.  And if it doesn’t, it should.

College courses should be created to study these heart-pumping openings.  (“Here’s Adventure!  Here’s Romance!  Here’s O’ Henry’s famous Robin Hood of the Old West…the Cisco Kid!”)  Research grants provided to discover the names of the unsung geniuses who made them up.

And now – via a technology I have just barely under my control – an actual demonstration. 

Get ready to be stirred.  (Even if you’re an uncomfortable flag waver.)