London City Airport

I've got time to kill, Catskill, June in July...so I figured I'd check in.

Just went through security. They've got a great system with the trays. You know, the bins you put your wares into to be scanned.

You see there's a return path, like at the grocery store, or the way it used to be, in the days of parcel pickup, when they'd put your bags into a bin and it would slide down rollers all the way outside and a gentleman, actually a boy, and never a girl, would put your groceries in your trunk. I guess that went the way of full-service gas stations, but the point is those rollers, do you remember them? When you're through with your tray at London City Airport, they put it on rollers and it rolls down to those who now need it, so there's never a shortage, never a need for an employee to stack them up and drive them back to the beginning. And I know you're saying SO WHAT, but I'm the kind of guy who travels heavy, and I'm always running out of bins, so I thought that was pretty cool.

As for yesterday, we went to dinner and discussed Rammstein.

Have you seen them?

Everything's so close! Webbo and Janet flew to Berlin for the show. I saw them opening up for Ozzy, back in the nineties, and the music is superfluous, but the show is amazing!

When you get rock and rollers together, no matter what country, no matter what nationality, you end up talking shows but really you communicate through lyrics. That's how Janet connected with Derek Smalls, i.e. Harry Shearer, he was giving away an Ivor and he quoted one of his band's obscure lyrics and she gave him the next line backstage. That's Spinal Tap to you, and the point is nothing is obscure to a fan.

Before that Lisa had a get-together.

You can't have get-togethers in L.A., because no one can get together! Tell everybody to meet in L.A. at six and they'll say NO! Because you just can't get from there to here, traffic is that damn bad. But in London, even more than New York, you can be anywhere shortly via public transportation, and that engenders human contact, it enriches society.

Before that we went to the Museum of London. I'm fascinated with what happened here. Not only the Royals, but the hardscrabble life of yesteryear to today.

The biggest impression upon me?

The Black Death. Put a perspective on SARS. Yup, it could happen, some disease could wipe us out.

And there was plague thereafter. And they didn't know what caused it, there were a ton of cockamamie theories, kind of like when the AIDS epidemic began.

And then there was the great fire...

Streets were so crowded that you could reach out and touch your neighbor across them. Yup, people not only built up, they built out. Houses were narrow at the bottom and wide at the top. And the fire began in a bakery, but you're stunned there wasn't one sooner, with so many people cooking and heating.

And of course there was the footage of the bombing of London. The tales of those who were there. About losing their loved ones, narrowly escaping. I was always fascinated with the concept of taking shelter in the subway, i.e. the Underground. Turns out that was for the hoi polloi. Higher classes considered them breeding grounds of crime and disease. And there was a lot of fear, but there was a story of some soldier who told everybody down under there were gonna be many nights of bombing, so they had to get used to it, and then he began to sing...

Yup, music gets you through. Always.

And speaking of music, you won't be bitching about the loss of recorded music sales when you contemplate what happened to the blacksmiths. Progress eradicates the past, and if you try to hold on to it you're doomed. But in America, not only are taxes unnecessary, no one can lose their job. It's like we need a national rethink, a decision to all go forward together, but that would require some to win and others to lose and that's just not the American Way, although it is.

And London goes up and down over the centuries. There's endless war. Royals come and Royals go. But if you lived back then, you probably thought you were at the height of modernity, after all you had sewers, built with log pipes. Huh?

And you see all this stuff in the museum and you wonder if you should save yours. I'm a pack rat, but as you get older possessions become meaningless. Oh, you want the utilitarian necessities, but the extras become superfluous. You need no gifts, you need nothing extra, because you can't take it with you.

I don't understand those people who build palaces, monuments to themselves, and then usually die so soon thereafter. Life is about living. But it's easy to get sidetracked.

But everything's in the cloud today, so it's all about experiences, connection, sparks.

And infrastructure is important, but it's those who titillate us, who amaze us, who make us feel warm and fuzzy and blow our minds who are truly important today.

In other words, you may have all the money, but you may have missed the point.


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