126

Staring vacantly at the clouds on the inflight entertainment's live video feed showing a view from underneath the jet, it suddenly strikes me as entirely appropriate to photograph the screen while dangling from the ceiling like a giant bat. From this proposed vantage point, with my feet wedged into the overhead luggage compartment, hanging upside down, I would see that the clouds appear similar to what they look like when you stare up at them from the ground when lying on your back. I briefly consider that the jet is below the clouds and flying upside down.

This confused musing dissipates, and as we prepare for landing, the camera view switches from looking down towards the creeping earth to looking forward from the front of the cockpit. We land, taxi up to the jet bridge, and slowly begin to stop. As has happened to me once before, we come to a complete halt with the camera pointing directly at a leaking dumpster packed full of garbage. None of my previous actions, or even the oozing dumpster, disturbs the Japan Airlines flight attendant sitting next to me, who is now fastidiously folding her blanket after she nimbly consumed a package of pretzels after napping with her hands precisely folded in her lap. If a jet flight is a series of specific actions carefully executed in a technologically advanced container, then this precision flight has concluded on a different type of vessel, one holding a considerable assortment of disorganized refuse and goo

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118

The "Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor" appears suddenly on in-flight television as my plane hits turbulence approaching Japan and forms a perfect blend of the possibility of a mechanical disaster in the present with the environmentally progressive technology from the 1985 comedy Back to the Future. It looks so bright and warm on that suburban front lawn – a round, soft afternoon light – whereas it is 18% gun metal gray and getting cold along the Shakujii gawa. The foliage, of course, is also very different. What then might be the role of the blue down vest worn by the film's protagonist in altering the course of the upcoming past, or previous future? Protective insulation would no doubt be of use in navigating through time without contaminating one's own existence with flak from a deviant tangent. As well, that Mr. Fusion was based on a Krupp coffee grinder raises some interesting connections with the past – with the German company's study of barbed wire in the war between Russia and Japan. Would the stainless steel of the DeLorean DMC-12 sports car upon which Mr. Fusion is mounted shine in the trenches of Manchuria as it does in the Californian light? Would it have been more appropriate to call the Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor Mr. Mikasa after the Krupp armor and guns on the Japanese battleship of the same name? The pivot point of the gun barrel certainly does have a striking relationship to Mr. Fusion's logo. But above all, what is the relationship on my TV screen between the cutaway of the down vest's missing right arm and the tinted arc of the home energy reactor facing it? The tinting must be significant, though I am uncertain why.

Top image: Film still of the "Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor" from Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 film Back to the Future. Bottom image: Krupp gun on the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Mikasa battleship

111

Some repercussions of red tail signage on a Japan Airlines jet when modified to red/green tail signage and viewed with 3-d glasses, or simply "the in-flight Television safety film looks much more plausible if you shake your camera."

109

What would be the consequences if Japan Airlines altered their aircraft identity signage so that the tail had a second slightly offset green circle in addition to the current red circle? Against a blue daytime sky it would form a red, green, and blue additive color model, cleverly hearkening back to the initial attempts in the late 1800s to generate color photographs from three separate red, green, and blue filtered black & white images. On the other hand, it could trigger a different chain of events for an approaching aircraft where the pilot happened to be wearing 3-d glasses.

29

On Sundays I sometimes go to Narita Airport to photograph the people photographing the jets and the people photographing their children photographing the jets from the outdoor observation deck. Today I am thinking about that Austrian Airlines jet that just arrived from somewhere. Also, I am thinking about traveling from New York to Vienna to see The Third Man on January 17, 2003 at 7:44 AM and the jet bridge stretching out to meet the Japan Airlines jet that was next to me. Could there have been a hatsumelo warning song as the jet bridge pulled away from the aircraft? If the hatsumelo for the Japan Airlines jet flying to Vienna were in fact the theme from The Third Man, then what Japanese film might have been referenced in my plane's departure song as the jet bridge pulled away? On that note, could Austrian Airlines hatsumelos for jets departing Vienna for Narita possibly play Kojun Saito's theme from Yasujirō Ozu's 1953 film Tokyo Story?