Fever dreams

For a variety of reasons, I've flown quite a bit over the past few years. One maddeningly ubiquitous airline opiate is "Everybody Loves Raymond." I never spring for the headphones, more out of laziness than principle, but I end up staring at Ray Romano and his buddies anyway. I've never watched an episode of the sitcom (I promise I'm not feigning ignorance of popular culture to bolster my psuedo-intellectual cred-- "Who is this 'Harry Potter' of whom you speak? Was he a contemporary of Derrida?"), so I can't really infer any witty dialogue from the silent interactions of lovable familiars. No. I just stare at Raymond and his wife and his friends. And it's neither funny nor interesting. My memories of flight are conflated into a single, endless, three-camera inferno; it's like the kind of waking nightmare you experience when sick in bed for the day.