L.A. Trip, day 01:

Knoxville, TN to Charlotte, NC:

A 45 minute flight that resulted in one chapter of David Sedaris’ book “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” several songs listened to and two abstracts written to assist me in writing a screenplay and deciding what storyline I’m going with.  Looks like we may be going with “Dreams of Sarah Beth” but more details on that in the future.

The guy beside me is wearing shorts and a generic outdoors-type name brand shirt.  I try to start a conversation but was halted by his sudden urge to nap.  This is when I started writing.  It’s good to write while others sleep, especially if they’re sitting next to you.  I’m always paranoid that the other person is reading what I’m writing.  It’s nearly 5:00, welcome to Charlotte.

Charlotte, NC to Phoenix, AZ

The 10 minute layover was barely enough time to take a leak and call my wife before boarding the next flight.  Again, I have the aisle seat but the cast of characters grew substantially.  The man by the window had stringy hair, a goatee, glasses, a Starter brand football jersey and was munching a turkey and cheese wrap which must have been pretty good as he nodded his head in approval after every bite.

Next, in the middle seat was an older gentleman who was paired with his wife who sat in the middle seat of the row next to mine.  They talked back and forth in an attempt to make others around them laugh (“I’ll see you in Arizona, hun!”  “Just you and me, gal!”).  I didn’t laugh.  The plan took off, both men fell asleep.  I read 3 chapters of my book, listened to a ton of rock and roll and took note of how many people went to the bathroom.

It’s only a 4 hour flight, but it seemed that half of the passengers went to the small, boxy bathroom.  Some as many as 4 times like the lady in the owl t-shirt.  Of course, the guy next to me, who woke only to order a diet coke from the stewardess (I ordered a Sprite), got up to go to the bathroom.  I had to leave my next twice because he couldn’t hold it another 45 minutes.  During this time I also passed on in-flight dinner, which consisted of an “Italian Market” sandwich and some other kind of sandwich.  I would regret this later.

I took note of how the reading lights were making a pattern much like that created by a student while taking a standardized fill-in-the-blank style test.  Some questions were answered twice, however, but none were answered all 3 times.  If it were my test, there would be forced pencil mark X’s over some of the answers and a lot of eraser marks.  It was time to focus on something else.

The young guy on the other side of the aisle pulled out his Macbook and began working on a screenplay.  And apparently magic as well as he continuously made magic hands at his computer, one time, after configuring Expose, clapping 3 times hand to fist then pointing to his monitor with two gun-shaped finger gestures.

Man beside me’s wife keeps leaning up attempting to take a photo of him sleeping.  I pretend to not notice.  It’s about 10:00 Tennessee time, 7:00 local time.  Welcome to Phoenix.

Phoenix to Burbank:

I breathe a sigh of relief as the lady at the window seat requests to be moved, allowing the black gentleman who appeared to be a preacher of some sort to scoot over to the window, leaving an empty seat between the two of us causing there to be plenty of room to spread out.  My turning down of the “Italian Market” sandwich during the previous flight has now proven to be a bad choice.  The flight goes smoothly for me, but I can’t say the same for Chris who had to sit with the blonde bimbo the entire flight who apparently brought along winnings from a shopping spree as her carry on.

A gay man and an ugly girl share the next row with an old Asian lady.  They gawk at the tabloids while the Asian lady reads something formatted much like a devotional.  She stays quiet until the plane lands.  This is when she begins stomping the ground, then begins clapping her hands the minute people start moving out.  She asks me to get her bag from the overhead then disappeared into the mob.

By the time we got our bags, rental car and got to the hotel, it was after 11:00 local time.  I’m tired and very hungry.  The girl at the front desk is mega hot and her boobs were about to fall out of her shirt any minute.  I lost interest quickly, however, after she informed me that the restaurant closed at 11:00.

Dinner consisted of a Twix candy bar and a Mountain Dew, which is cool because all I really wanted to do was sleep.  Welcome to L.A.

Enjoy today’s haiku:

Droid, iPod, iPod
A pack of Lucky Strikes and
a bottle of wine