Light Thoughts

Those who know me well, know that I am absolutely in love with women's magazines, such as Cosmo, Glamour, Allure, etc. etc. etc. Even though a certain journalism instructor I had way back considered them "smut"! My favorite is Cosmo, although Glamour runs a close second, and I read them, religiously, cover to cover, in one sitting, the minute after I pick them up from my mail box.

As they do every month, they have mini paragraphs sent in by readers about brief testimonials to whatever topic of which the magazine inquires. I read one such anecdote of a man who went to a bookstore to pick up women (because smart people hang out at bookstores, ergo women at bookstores are smart) and came across a beautiful British woman. Then, he proved his theory (that women who hang out at bookstores are smart) wrong by conversing with the woman, and finding out that all she read is British gossip.

The previous anecdote really doesn't have anything to do with my blog entry of the day. Yikes. Off topic already!

Well, I had to go to Staples/Office Depot/Office supply store to pick up some paper. Staples was the closest at the time, and I dropped in, got the stuff, and jumped out. There happened to be a fabulous BN in the same area as this Staples. And open until 11PM. I had to go in.

I love, absolutely adore bookstores. And I will be open about the fact that I'm not browsing quaint second hand stores where the musky scent of dog-eared books are supposed to be charming. Nay, yours truly will only be found browing the ultimate, state of the art, owned by capitalist multi-billionaire corporation bookstores, which may or may not be attached to a Seattle-based coffee giant Starbucks, but more often than not, it is conjoined at the hips with one.

Oh how I love BN. I can spend hour after hour just strolling up and down the aisles. The smell of freshly printed paperbacks are as sweet as freshly ground coffee.

Having said all that, why are books by the Dalai Lama so darn expensive? You'd think the man is sitting on wads of cash in his exiled home. But even though, I wanted to buy so many books. I was just hungering after them tonight. It's not about wanting to read books that makes me want to go buy them -- it's about ownership and owning things -- because I am still at that emotional stage where a good decent portion of me is defined by the materialistic, physical property I own. But come on, you're reading the blogs of a girl who's in love with Barne's and Noble! It sounds about right, doesn't it?

So many things were on sale -- and those who know me well know that it is with extreme difficulty that I pass up a good bargain -- I faced many of those difficulties tonight during my rendezvous with BN. How can they have so many hardback former bestsellers for under 5 bucks! I glided the tip of my index finger along the edges of the books, outlining their spine, with the same giddy excitement as I did when I touched (slightly) a Monet at the Smithsonian.

It was a sigh of relief, and a sigh of fulfilled satisfaction that I made on my way out of BN. Unfortunately, the realities of the world are much harsher than the bookish world of BN -- I felt the clash first hand when I mistaked the door to be an automatic sliding door, and run smacked into it. Woe is me for being such a klutz. I had been to the same BN for years and not once with this problem, and yet tonight, I managed to walk face on into a metal-lined door. This is with my contact lenses on!

Moving on.

LAX. New show on NBC. Television stations are filled with smart people. These people have decided to make some money by feeding on the public's fear of terrorism. Tonight I watched my first episode of this LAX, starring Heather Locklear and that black dude (no offense, actor dude) who played a sports doctor for the Knicks and also short-term boyfriend to Cynthia Nixon's character, Miranda, on Sex and the City. In an one hour episode, there were three drunk pilots trying to fly a plane to the Serbs, one bomb in a suitcase, a caseful of cocaine in one terminal, and even beyond all that, the characters evidently just had sex and were competing for the job of the airport director. Furthermore, there was some strange dog running around the runway, appearance of the SWAT team who came and went without doing much, some governor's flight was re-directed, and a petite, soft-spoken Filipino woman came to meet her American overweight and ugly lover/fiance. She also passed along her phone number to a TSA crew-member and urged him to call her and winked at him, while making kissy faces -- all while walking away with her new hubby-to-be.

Lovely show. It was amusing at the least, and glad that NBC is scraping a few extra bucks while the nation still trembles in fear of terrorism (it's personal -- the terror warning level thing went up to orange the day before my flight out of DC!). So congrats to NBC, to the LAX, and to Heather and the aforementioned black dude, for portraying realistic superheroes who fail, have raunchy sex, compete, and still manage to walk all over one of the world's largest airports in stilettos. Yay.