January 31, 2006 - 6:36 PM

How I Flew Sanely with Sudoku and Ursu

When you think about holiday flights, you usually think of pure horror, not luxury. Well, on my trip back east for the winter holidays, I flew on Delta's little sister airline, Song, which is their version of JetBlue. While the flight was booked, there was plenty of leg room in my exit row seat in which to stretch out while I attended to my personal video screen. The fact that there wasn't anything on the teeVEE that I wanted to watch, and you had to pay for the movies didn't funk up my mojo. Instead, I called up the MP3 player program which lets you select tracks from a wide assortment of albums to create a playlist that you can listen to while you do other things. My playlist ranged from a few mid 90's alt-rock "hits" like Deep Blue Something and that "Freshman" song to the latest Hilary Hahn violin album (holy shit that girl is good).

The real find, though, was the soundtrack to Spamalot, the Broadway musical based on Monty Python's The Holy Grail. It's brilliant. Taking cues from other MP sketches, they go through the story of the movie and carry on in song like a regular old operetta. The highlight was the duet "The Song That Goes Like This", an irreverent, self-aware and self-referential song that SOUNDS like it could have come from something like Les Miz, except for the words. It's going on tour soon, hitting Boston and DC, I think, but it won't make it out to L.A., unfortunately. Stupid Steve Wynn in Vegas has bought up the West Coast rights, so you'll have to pay a fortune to see an expurgated version (20 minutes shorter?!) at his Casino if you live out here.

Most of my flight time was spent with the headphones on, the mp3 player doodling away, and a brand new Sudoku book teasing me (for a brief while, I multi-tasked by also playing the touchscreen trivia game on my TV set, competing (and winning once) against my fellow passengers). We did a Secret Santa exchange in my office before I left, and the line producer, Mike, had me. He was the only person to treat the exchange as a "gag", thus leaving me with a pile of presents that included: the Pearl Harbor DVD, a Memoirs of a Geisha paperback, a children's size Karate uniform, a plastic Ninja-weapon set, the Sudoku puzzle book, and an inflatable bed that had a picture of an asian dad playing with his chinky daughter. Thank god he included the gift receipt; needless to say, I returned everything except the Sudoku book, because I was curious to see how it worked.

I don't know if you know this, but I loves me some puzzles. Crosswords especially. Logic and number problems too. So Sudoku is perfect for me. Perfectly, badly, all-consumingly good for me. The entire 10 day trip to the east coast, I was spending any free time working on a puzzle. Every night, after the rest of the house had gone to bed, I was up, still on West Coast time, surging through the easy and moderate grids, tackling the hard and demanding squares, and scratching away at the very very ass-smackingly difficult ones. My addiction has abated since i returned to L.A., but about once a week, I pull out the book to give my brain a run for its money.
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Hmm...when I flew back to Maryland for Thanksgiving, I had something else to obssess over that kept my mind occupied while in transit. I read a book. Or, more appropriately, I devoured the book. This book was the best thing I'd read in years. It immediately jumped up next to the Westing Game as one of my favorite reads ever. It's called "Spilling Clarence" and is written by Anne Ursu. How'd I happen upon this random book by this random author, and what made me want to read it in the first place (if you don't know, i read about one book every 2 years)? Anne Ursu is Batgirl, baseball blogger extraordinaire, and a fine crafter of words. Her website is a daily check-in point for me, and I've been enjoying her writing for the past two baseball seasons. She also happens to be good college friends with my friends Mike (with whom i've done much recording work) and Kristie (whose cats i occasionally look after).

It was Kristie who recommended that, if i enjoyed Anne's ramblings as Batgirl, I would really dig her books. So, with an Amazon gift-certificate from Mark, I was finally able to purchase a copy of her two works, "Spilling Clarence" and "The Disapparition of James". I spent the entire plane ride and the next two nights in Maryland being touched by the characters in Clarence. I know a story really has me when I find myself wanting to inject myself INTO it so that I can be there to talk to the characters, to comfort them, to give them a hug and help them solve their problems. Ursu delivered. Clarence was clever and well-paced, and engrossing, but really, it was a character study that left an indelible mark on me. Go go go read it, I implore you.

Now Listening To : Elvis Costello- The Very Best of Elvis Costello and the Attractions
Random Thought : I have an obssessive nature sometimes. Mwah ha ha ha...

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