Changing Hemispheres; Norwegian Air; New Movies

The last full day at the beach in Napoli saw all of us get some sun. For my wife and son, who share a smidgen of native American blood, this amounted to teamster-burn for him (that was more a tan than a burn) and some red coloration for her on the skin above the bikini top and below her neck. The next day it was bronze. Our niece is half native, and while she's rather fair skinned overall, it was barely noticeable.

My skin had gone past red into the dangerous, sounds-like-wrapping-paper stage. Oh how we all laughed about this turn of events.

The next day was fun. Carrying the backpack wasn't that bad, but the strap on the car-seat felt like it was trying to cut my head off at the neck for the entire walk.

We headed out early to catch that express train to Rome, and less than two hours later we were there. Then we made it to the airport on another train, and then we made it through security after checking as much as we possibly could, and we would have made my mother proud: we had a few hours to spend before boarding would start.

We were so early we didn't even have a gate assignment. While that was mildly annoying, it was way less stressful waiting at the airport than risking taking the slightly later train from Naples---not an express---and pushing our arrival time in Rome far too close to our departure time for comfort.

Cass and I played on the escalator for nearly an hour. Play may not be the right word, because it wasn't dangerous really, just up and down and up and down, big jump big step big jump big step.

They had a snackery, of course, by our gate when it was finally assigned, and they even had a toy delivery truck kids could sit in:

That was lots of fun until he realized he could reach those sugary treats from where he was sitting.

This was the anticipation time. Are you nervous because you're about to get on a crazy long flight with an obviously over tired and/or over stimulated little boy? NOPE.

I've been on flights when young humans are having a rough go, and making it rough for those close by. Dang, I used to think, hate to be that parent.

Now that I've been that parent, and the prospect was about to happen again, I realized the score from this side. If you have no kids, I'm about to tell you the truth, and if you have kids, tell me I'm wrong:

WE DO NOT GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT YOU AND YOUR PROBLEMS WITH OUR WAILING KID. You got a problem with it? Really? Well, SO DO I. Do you have suggestions? I'm open to ideas. Either it will be awesome and helpful or it will be ridiculous and stupid, but there's only one way to find out, and if you've got the balls to say something, you better hope it's effing awesome. Your dirty looks fuel my eye-rolls and no, my kid didn't shit his pants, I've been farting for the last three hours.

I joke, for sure, but only a little. Cass did way better on the second flight, the trip home. He slept for, like six hours maybe, which benefited everybody around us, except me and Corrie. We were even more uncomfortable than ever. But it didn't matter, because the Boy was sleeping.

Because we left in the late afternoon and flew west...well, north of west, as we flew over Greenland and the Hudson Bay, over Manitoba and the Dakotas on the way into LA, it only really got dark when we landed, around 8 pm. It was pretty much daytime the entire flight.

And this was a good segue into the nifty windows on our plane: they had no plastic shade to open and shut. They had a dimmer function that would darken the windows to a specified darkness that you could control. When the plane was put into night-night mode---around 9 pm local time in Rome---all of the windows dimmed to essentially black and the cabin lights were negligible. When someone even opted to brighten his window, they'd come by and basically force them to return to blackout.

I thought that was neat.

On the first flight one of the stewards sounded and acted like a sociopath, and the crew's habit of wearing leather gloves didn't help him not look like he was about to strangle you. The second flight they were slightly better.

The video screens in the chairs had all sorts of movies and games. There were New, Classic, TV, Documentary, Kids...most of it was dreck, but I did catch two movies I'd never seen before and was interested in seeing, one on the way there and one coming home. Oddly enough I watched Inception afterwards in both trips, but heading to Rome I wasn't listening to it because of Cassius, and I couldn't remember why the kids are in, like, every scene, which prompted a more attention-heavy viewing coming home.

Anyway, on the way there, I watched for the first time "Dog Day Afternoon." It had been edited for language and looked like it had been cut up for commercial breaks, but oh my goodness is it great! I love the randomness of John Cazale's film acting career. A prominent and beloved stage actor, John Cazale appeared in only three movies in his entire life before the cancer took him, and all three of them were nominated for best film at the Oscars: this movie, where he plays Sal, Al Pacino's partner in the bank robbery; and the first two Godfather movies, where he's Fredo.

A few things I didn't realize about the movie were the truthfulness behind the story; how funny it can be, especially in the beginning; and I had no idea about the twist in the middle. It makes sense that it must have been pretty edgy when it came out in 1975, and why it was lauded and put in the National Registry in the Library of Congress as an important artifact. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor.

On the way home I got to watch (mostly uninterrupted) "Suicide Squad." I'd heard all sorts of things about it, and very few of those things were positive. A colleague who I knew desperately wanted to like it had some good things to say, but it was mostly, "It's not that bad...Jared Leto as Joker, though..." and he shook his head.

I thought the biggest problem was that it didn't really know what it was trying to do, or what it wanted to be. It was very uneven. The scenes with Will Smith are a microcosm of the whole thing: in certain scenes he's the mouthy anti-hero the movie seems built for, in other scenes it's a tragic story of an incarcerated father, and in other scenes he's angry and enslaved, and we're not sure if that's good or bad.

The guy from Altered Carbon is the main military boss of the rag-tag team of bad-guys (good) but they don't seem to flesh out his relationship with the girl who is also the main antagonist (bad---because if it's not believable, does anything matter and do you give a shit?). Margo Robie as Harley Quinn is great, but her accent is all over the place, which is jarring, and sucks, because we know from "I, Tonya" that she can absolutely nail at least one American accent.

But the character of Harley Quinn in the movie is total bullshit, which leads to possibly the worst crime the movie commits: it makes a totally shitty, unlikable Joker. No wonder they cut his scenes precipitously. The fire guy, Diablo, could be the best character in the movie. In the beginning, at least.

I may bellyache here, but I plan on watching it again, just so Corrie and I can have this same conversation. And we will definitely be watching Dog Day Afternoon.

***

I'd wanted to put the discussions of the new movies in with this other, plane stuff because...because an entire post complaining about Suicide Squad in the narrative about our Italian adventure seems out of place.

Victor picked us up in the gloriously chilled air of June-gloom, LAX. It was maybe 68 degrees, and I'd been feeling like the planet forgot what a relaxing breeze could be.

The movies felt like bookends to the trip, and I fought the temptation to discuss Dog Day Afternoon in the opening few posts, even though I'd planned on it after we arrived in Rome.

Now we're back, and the adjustment is mostly taken, as it's been exactly a week now.