back to the grind...

Had an interesting interim flight from Reno to San Francisco, before my red-eye back to Dulles on Saturday/Sunday. A very attractive woman sat down beside me in the lounge at United's Gate C-4 at Reno/Tahoe Int'l, apparently to wait for the same plane as I.

The impetus for starting a conversation, or chatting her up as it were, was a cell-phone conversation carried out by a blonde late-20s adolescent across the way, describing in no uncertain terms her sexual habits and her weekend's events, which, as it happens, conjoined. Needless to say, her half of the conversation was highly entertaining. And the woman next to me looked at me, grinning, particularly when the adolescent started cursing a blue-streak as if she was all alone in the universe. The woman whispered, "I think I know all I need to about her."

"And yet I still wonder if that isn't enough information," I said stoically, which prompted a charming giggle from, again, this very attractive woman.

Her name was Shari, and she was a TV news anchor and general assignment reporter out of California, and she was in every way the classic California girl: late 30s, slim, fair of face and hair, and most engaging. She was fresh off a job interview with a Reno affiliate, a stint she'd been pushed into by her agent, whom, she later confided, was going to get a "heart-to-heart." Suffice it to say she didn't like Reno, a rapidly aging smallish-to-midsized western city which lay bare in a dreary Sierra desert basin. Heck, I'd rather do California by the coast any day myself, and I did only a coupla days before.

As it happened, her seat aboard the plane was directly across from mine (as was the adolescent's beside her's - small world, etc.). In days gone by, I might've made a play, disregarding my limitations, in time and league, with the knowledge we'd never see each other again anyway, i.e., if it didn't work out (When I was younger, say... and prettier!). But today I hung back and busted out the book I'm still reading: Noam Chomsky's Imperial Ambitions - Conversations in a Post 9/11 World. She was reading a Joel Osteen self-help door-stop and wasn't enjoying the religious undertones with which, she concluded, it began. I offered to trade. She scanned at the cover of mine, and, handing it back, said no thanks.

It was only an hour flight to San Francisco Int'l, although she thought it was longer. She was kneeding her brow and looked agitated. I offered her some ibuprofin tabs I keep handy. The thought brightened her some. She kept them in hand until she could get some water inside the terminal, whereupon she invited me to join her for dinner at the food court. I suggested she twist my arm first.

She had chowder, I had chinese.

And we both have broadcast journalist backgrounds, which I thought meant I could get into current events during our conversation. It wasn't long before I found our politics didn't mesh -- at all! Of course, those of you who know me would be willing to bet that wouldn't stop me from going on about the world's problems, or my problems with the world. And you'd be right.

To summarize: she believes that pile of dog-droppings we call President can do no wrong. She's quite pleased with the phone-tapping and and the internet-monitoring and the warrentless searches; the decimation of habeus corpus, and the ends justifying the means. She thinks the press is too liberal, even as I found that ironic coming from her. I tried to have her entertain the notion our problems with terrorism may have to do with that which goes around is now coming around, but she would have none of it.

What disturbs me about this experience is, here is this certainly intelligent woman, who, while at the same time, could aptly be the poster child of the modern day American TV journalist: politically incurious and parochial as to what constitutes news, (or what might as well have been faxed over from corporate), as, i suppose, any local newsfolk would have it -- though perfectly satisfied in never having to report on the real news in these times: America's inevitable backslide into 1984.

But hey, why not? She's beautiful, lives an imagineably comfortable life-style, and, in the meantime, is most likely smart enough not to excrete where she eats. Which, by the way, is no mean feat.

Maybe mine is just envy. And maybe I'm being unfair. After all, what is the Washington Post or the New York Times or CNN reporting on these days?

Did Edward R. Murrow even exist?

We shook hands and smiled, wished each other well and went our separate ways. I guess I managed to contain myself from indulging in the really loose rhetoric. (What can I say, it's a gift.)

No hard feelings then? Cool!

Flew home, no hitches getting thru security - yay!

But, ach! It's Tuesday again.

Turn the screw on the crank.