Now Playing in Theaters Part Two: The Empire is Falling (or Judi, Judi, Judi. . . )

(One week earlier on a blustery NYC winter's day. . . .)

The empire is falling!!!

The empire is falling!!!

Both Victoriana and Americanah. . . 

But why worry? We're getting out of here in winter, are we not?

The empire is defined by its art forms.
From hotels to igloos, a million accommodations blares the ad on the little screen prior to take off. Travel is fun!!! It must be!They're telling us it is! It's fun being encased in a stuffy, thin, metal tube for seven hours!!! Enjoy!!! The sorry list of movies by which to lull yourself into a blank, mindless stare during the flight seemed to grow more and more dismal with each peek.

After a rainy, foggy, interminable wait on the runway, followed by a second and third dubious scanning of titles amid the desolation of the friendly sky play list from empire movie hell, I finally am rewarded with not one but two Judi Dench movies (back to back if I choose!), both depicting Queen Victoria at various times in her reign. Does it get any better than this on a cross country flight??? Well, maybe staying home. . . .

Nonetheless, I seize on this soothing crumb left by the airlines for those one or two reclusive, bookish types who still fly. After refusing the Bose on hygienic and political grounds, I shove the familiar, trusty little earpieces I’ve brought with me into my canals, and begin.

Dench, our beloved queen of Brit Thespianas, gets to play Victoria twice. First we find her sitting at various desks looking officious and exceptionally plumped up in stiff lace collars and brooches as an elderly monarch, and later on as the perky “Mrs. Brown” with older, much grizzled acting partner Geoffrey Palmer serving as one of the sneaky court politicians. In this Victoria incarnation I particularly liked the little white furry thing she sported so coquettishly on her head that kind of resembled an upside down rabbit mitten.

Like most addicts of British drama, I adore Judi Dench and so it pained me to see her much reduced as the older queen- nearly dead in fact- and so sadly opposed by the court in her relationship with the fervent, young Abdul. Admittedly though, it did pass the time during my weird aloft sojourn. “Mrs. Brown” on the other hand cheered significantly with all those gorgeous stallions, sexy kilts, resounding highland pipes, winning brogues and steaming cups of grog.

But I digress. The real subject of this rant regards why you should never leave your house in January, and also the failing empire as indicated by our current state of the arts; we're talkin' the movie empire, and maybe the whole culture. Maybe?!?  Fairy tale milieus may help mitigate the dehydrated boredom of flying in these spare times, but the entire list of selections  (euphemistically called the “library”) from which to choose a few hours of oblivion while thirty five thousand feet above the earth is a lot more evocative, though what it evokes ain’t good.

In alpha order, I began to choose as "evidence" of our downfall a few notable examples from a catalogue that barring the two anomalous Brit flick choices was  99% more or less scary:

-American Made

-American Psycho

-American Sniper

-Baby Driver

-Brigsby Bear

-Captain Underpants

-Clueless

-Crazy Stupid Love

-Descipable Me 3

By the time I arrived at the letter”e” I had become so inconsolable I skipped to the end of the alphabet:

-Warm Bodies

-Wayne’s World

-Zootopia (a fitting finale!!)

I spent the rest of the flight pretty well chagrined.

The bright side? I was getting out of New York in January. Upon landing, I waxed philosophical and girded myself for all that well meaning, unsolicited advice I soon would be receiving from happy checkout clerks on that other coast about antioxidants, free radicals, the horror of carbs and the secret to flavinoids. I buoyed my spirits with the expectation of all that sun and Vitamin D that would infuse me with limitless vitality and seven different kinds of magical immunity-  loopy bouts of maniacal health talk from strangers notwithstanding. And although it's possible to die of starvation in southern California without a car, at least for the most part they don't have to deal with snow or rain or sniffles.

However three days after deplaning at La La Land, the very source of most if not all of the above mentioned blockbusters and the mecca of youth, immortality and healthy living amidst a lingering smog and some Hollywood sex addicts, I found myself in the grippe of one of the nastiest, most vengeful flu variants known to health conscious, movie lovin,’ vaccine shunning, fish oil eating, freeway careening enthusiasts ever. . . .

But the empire struck back. I got outta there! I lived to tell about it.  I returned to chilly, damp, wet, grumpy, sniffling New York.

Gotta go now. The doorbell is ringing & I think it's my pizza.