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Nov. 17th, 2019 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. After a harried day trying to do errands, and briefly getting stuck in an elevator, I decided to chill today and attempt to get some writing done.
It's a cold gloomy day anyhow. Last night texted niece and bro, apparently my brother was stuck in an elevator in an empty building once for two hours. He relaxed and waited, figuring physics would eventually make it go to the bottom and let him out.
In his case the door wasn't half-way open and he wasn't stuck between floors.
I'm also sleepy today for some reason. I blame the radiators. And I keep flirting with sneaker all weather resistant boots on Ryka.
2. Dolly Parton refuses to get political, she'd rather heal the divide.
I'm slowly changing my mind about Parton. For while there I didn't like her all that much, more the fault of some of her die-hard fans than Dolly herself. Then I watched the Country Music documentary, and that went a long way to changing my mind about Parton and her music. (Note bashing another artist to build up my own, will often cost that artist I happen to love fans. It's true of characters, stories, anything really -- hate attracts hate. If I want someone to love my favorite character? Find a way of loving theirs first, then show things about mine that I think they can relate to. Meet them on their level, not my level.)
Though many of her songs touch on female empowerment and give voice to working people — to the extent that Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren uses “9 to 5” as her walk-up song at campaign rallies — Parton exists outside the partisan fray. (At the 2017 Emmy Awards, she presented with her “9 to 5” costars Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, who made barbed comments clearly aimed at Trump; Parton noticeably stayed out of it.)
“She is deeply political in her music but not ever going to touch it,” says Jad Abumrad, host of “Dolly Parton’s America,” who was inspired to make the podcast at a 2016 Parton concert — “one of the few spaces that cuts across the divisions.”
“She has a kind of radical openness and inclusivity that is special at this moment,” he adds.
Sam Haskell, her producing partner, describes Parton as “this little atom of consistency” in a time of great uncertainty.
“I have my own thoughts, my own opinions, of course,” Parton says, “but I don’t believe that I should offend people that don’t have that same opinion by voicing my own opinion. I’m an entertainer; I can live it, I can write about it, I can joke, lift people up in my own way. But I don’t see no reason for me to get involved in political fights.”
She continues: “Half my people are Republicans, half of them are Democrats, and I always joke that I’m just a ‘hypocrat’ — and in a way I kind of am. ... I know we can’t ever all get along. But we could get along a little better if we tried a little harder.”
I can sort of identify -- throughout my life half the people I've known have been Democrats, half Republicans. My parents had the same situation. It's true of extended family as well.
3. Disney + has Power and a Plan -- sounds like an advertisement for Battlestar Galatica Reboot.
Anyhow..
For all the flash of its newcomers, however, the real heart of Disney+ is its back catalog. The service’s entire raison d’être is Bob Iger getting tired of direct competitors (read: Netflix) profiting off of his own content and deciding to get into the distribution game. Last month, Disney got some light flak for spamming our Twitter timelines with a barrage of less-known titles it would soon bring back into public view, from Sultan and the Rock Star to The Shaggy D.A. The strategy was a marked contrast with Disney’s historical pattern of hoarding popular properties, then staging a limited home release to satisfy pent-up demand. But once the reflexive 30 Rock jokes settled down, the cumulative might of lesser Disney Channel shows and the entire Star Wars saga spoke for itself. $6.99 is a pittance to pay for such an archive, particularly when the appeasement of one’s offspring is what’s actually for sale; with Netflix as a precedent, raising prices somewhere down the line is a when, not an if, and we’ll continue to oblige even once the sticker price is no longer falsely deflated. Until then, Forky has some questions.
Sign up for the
Yep, the back catalogue is pretty huge. Consider that Disney doesn't only have 100 years of content on its end, it has a 100 years work of 20th Century Fox content as well. We basically have:
* Marvel
* Pixar
* Disney
* ABC shows
* Fox Movie Franchises
* Star Wars
* Buffy, Angel, Dollhouse, Firefly ...
* National Geographic
It's a lot of content. An overwhelming amount of content. And 85% of it is G rated or PG. So..a lot of family centric content.
My younger, cable-free, co-workers couldn't wait to sign up.
My brother like my co-workers doesn't understand why I still have a cable subscription.
Me: NY1
My brother: You can get that on streaming.
Me: Really not. It's Spectrum, and only available on either Spectrum or Cable.
Brother: I don't know about that -
Me: I do, I checked.
It won't last forever. I'm getting annoyed by commercials. I'm on the fence about Disney, it's not expensive -- but, I don't time for it. Also, HBO Max looks more interesting and a touch more adult.
4. Throat Hurts? Brain Hurts? The Secret Life of Audiobook Stars
Sort of makes me rethink any plans to take up a second career as an audio book reader. (Not that I can listen to audio books, they tend to put me to sleep. I find it really hard to focus on, in part because I am visual not audio -- and I flip sounds and mishear words. Also this may well be genetic -- no one in my immediate family likes to listen to audio books. We also don't like puns. It's very odd.)
Bryson’s audiobook experience goes back 20 years, when he was living in New Hampshire and the nearest recording studio was in the neighbouring state of Vermont. “Now I’ve probably worked with five or six producers,” he says, “and they’re all really kind, and they’re always very encouraging, but I can’t help feel that I should be better at this, that I should be able to pronounce the words in my own book.” Does he not realise by now that when he commits a word like glomerulonephritis to print, he will eventually have to record it? “You would think so, but no,” he says. “You know what it’s like when you’re writing – you don’t think about anything, really, except trying to get words right to yourself on the page.”
In the two decades since Bryson recorded his first narration, the audiobook market has grown from a publishing industry side hustle into a huge global business. In a climate where print and ebook sales are stagnant, the UK audiobook market rose to £69m in 2018, an increase of 43% on the previous year. In the US, audiobook downloads generate revenue of close to a billion dollars annually. This growth has largely been driven by the rise of Audible, the Amazon-owned platform that dominates the digital audiobook market through its subscription streaming service, though there are other players, including Storytel, which operates largely in Scandinavian countries. In the 1990s, before the iPod was launched, Audible was selling a proprietary digital media player that held about two hours of audio downloaded from its online library. Today, Audible’s catalogue contains more than 400,000 titles; in 2018, its members downloaded nearly three billion hours of content.
"You’ve got to stay still. Any movement creates extraneous noise: fabric rustling, chair creaking, foot tapping’ "
But while technology has transformed the industry, it still relies on an army of audiobook narrators to meet the demand. “I’m so impressed with professional readers,” says Bryson, “the Martin Jarvises of this world, or people like Stephen Fry, who can really bring extra dimensions to it.”
The real professionals, however, are people you might not have heard of. In the US, 81-year-old actor George Guidall is considered narration’s undisputed heavyweight champion: his baritone voice has graced more than 1,300 audiobook recordings, including works by Dostoevsky, Jonathan Franzen and Stephen King. Some of the biggest British voices in audiobooks belong to faces you might not recognise, but may well have seen – on stage, on Coronation Street, or in any number of Carry On films.
***
Narration may sound like an easy way to make money – you just sit there and read – but I can assure you, it isn’t. I narrated my own audiobook in 2014, an experience that I described at the time as being akin to an exorcism: three long days in a dark room, tripping through the minefield of my own words. All I could think was: if I’d known I was going to have to say this whole book out loud, I would have written a better one. Or maybe I wouldn’t have written one at all.
I’ve done two more audiobooks since – most recently, last spring – with the gently increasing confidence that comes of never, ever listening back to previous recordings. The first time, I agreed to the challenge only because I was assured it was not unusual for a first-person, non-fiction book to be read by its inexperienced author. But I never met anyone else like that in my three days at the studio. I met only professionals.
Clare Corbett isn’t sure, but she thinks she’s narrated about 300 audiobooks since she left drama school to join the BBC’s Radio Drama Company. “That started my passion for radio, and for mic stuff,” she says. “Then I went into TV and theatre, and [audiobooks] just carried alongside it, beautifully.” She was one of three narrators of The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins (the book itself features alternating narrations), which won an Audie award for best audiobook in 2016. More recently she narrated Flights, The Man Booker international prize winner by Polish author – and now Nobel prize winner – Olga Tokarczuk. “Approaching that was very difficult,” says Corbett. “There was Russian and Polish language in it, and Russian, Polish and Croatian pronunciations.” In the end, she contacted some other women from her local area who spoke the languages and could guide her through the pronunciations. “I’m meeting my community at the same time,” she says.
Most professional readers are also trained actors – as early as 2013, Audible’s founder Donald Katz was claiming his company was probably the largest single employer of actors in the New York area – but narration comes with its own peculiar constraints. “What’s different is, you’ve got to stay still,” says Corbett. “When I first started, I was very animated. I was told to stop.” Any movement in the booth creates extraneous noise: fabric rustling, chair creaking, foot tapping. Before the introduction of the iPad, even the turning of pages was an editing headache.
5. Apparently Smiling is as effective on mood as eating 2000 chocolate Bars...also no barfing afterwards (The headline is mine, the article obviously has a different headline.)
6. Will over 20 Hours on a Plane Drive Someone Insane -- Quantas the Longest Plane Flight
Do not try this at home
Professor Carroll’s advice assumed a degree of baseline mental calmness. But preparing for an overseas flight is never easy. You cram a week’s worth of deadlines into two days; you stay up late packing; you obsess about every red light and every nuance of bad traffic en route to the airport. Even the most blameless traveler worries that she will get busted by the T.S.A. for random crimes against security. There’s a special kind of exhaustion that comes from hauling carry-on luggage through the anxiety-suffused corridors of an airport at night.
We had an unusually easy time at Kennedy International Airport, with our separate check-in desk and cordoned-off section of the departure lounge, but I already felt pretty ropy. By the time boarding began, at 8:30 p.m. or so, I had already taken three different prescription medications, plus an allergy tablet, plus a Sudafed. Right before takeoff I squirted a massive dose of Afrin up my nose. I might as well have shot amphetamines directly into my veins. My head felt like a beehive at honey-making time.
Most airlines feed the passengers immediately on overnight flights and then cut the lights, but the idea this time was to keep us up for more than six hours — until the middle of the night, New York time — by, among other things, feeding us spicy dinners that would serve as “a wake-up slap in the face,” Professor Carroll said. I had saffrony tomato soup and a lively-tasting sea bass, followed by caffeine-infused dark chocolate and tea.
Womp. The lights were also cranked up, as bright as interrogation lamps, part of the plan to trick our bodies into thinking they were already in Sydney, 14 hours ahead. I watched multiple episodes of “Barry,” about a hit man who joins a Los Angeles acting class led by Henry Winkler. The crew handed out pajamas with kangaroos on the front, instilling a pleasant sense of group infantilization, as if we were participants in an adult slumber party. From the seat in front of me, David Koch, co-presenter of the Australian morning show “Sunrise,” told me that it was important to understand the psychological ramifications of the sartorial transition.
“It’s a sleep cue,” he said, of the pajamas. “Don’t put them on until you are ready to go to sleep.” I said that I already felt jet-lagged, even though the monitor on my screen indicated that there were more than 16 hours to go. As an Australian, he replied, he prides himself on his travel-related stoicism, particularly since, to be honest, he always travels in business class.
“You know it will take you at least seven hours to get anywhere,” he said. “The feeling is, ‘Toughen up, princess, you’re at the front of the plane, so stop whining.’”
My brain would not shut up; my body wanted to crawl into a coffin and remain there forever. Some of the frequent fliers had glasses of wine, even though they weren’t supposed to, and then fell asleep. A few rows ahead, Mr. Joyce began watching “Fleabag,” which he had not seen before, and found the opening scene, in which Phoebe Waller-Bridge narrates her sexual encounter in medias res, unexpectedly racy. At one point, Professor Carroll led a group through a set of calisthenics in the back of the plane, encouraging us to use the oven handles as makeshift barres. We finished with an enthusiastic, if sloppy, mass performance of the “Macarena."
Do not try this on a plane either
Back in my seat, I tried to do some work but could not focus. It was already something o’clock in Sydney, though it was 1 a.m. on the plane. Following Professor Carroll’s advice, I took two milligrams of melatonin as a body-clock-resetting measure. On my video monitor, George Clooney had unwisely boarded a creepy space station where, whenever he dozed off, he encountered either his dead wife or a malign specter conjured from the dark recesses of his imagination, it was hard to tell the difference. I could respect his dilemma. “How long can you go without sleep?” a character in the movie asked.
The crew handed out our second meal, a soporific mélange of sweet potato soup, sandwiches and a panna cotta trifle. The idea was to fill us with carbohydrates and milky foods to help us sleep. By now, it was something like 3 a.m. and all these things were clashing in my stomach. I thought with fondness of my bed at home.
After dinner, the mood rapidly downshifted. Whoosh, the lights went out. The effect was of being in a birdcage over which your owner has abruptly dropped a blackout cloth. Everyone lay down and (it seemed) fell asleep on the spot. Alone with my obsessions, I kept remembering “Lost in Translation,” the 2003 film in which a dazed and alienated Bill Murray wanders around Tokyo for days on end, wacked out from insomnia.
Against Professor Carroll’s judgment, I took an Ambien and then, when it did not seem to work, took another one. I do not know what happened next. Nor do I know what time it was when the lights surged back on, because I cannot read what I wrote in that particular section of my notebook. But we were much closer to Australia.
The passengers were in various states of bedragglement; the crew members, who had slept in shifts, looked fresh and perky. Breakfast came, an energizing egg-white omelet with balsamic herb potatoes, sautéed kale, spinach and mushrooms. I was so happy to have such a nice meal. I knocked back several lattes and a glass of “wake up juice.” Nutrition coursed through my body. Knowing that, when it comes to sinuses, landing is far worse than taking off, I took another decongestant, an allergy pill, an antibiotic and a couple more squirts of Afrin.
Across the aisle, Billy Foster, a cameraman for Sunrise, Mr. Koch’s program, said he normally wakes up for work at 3 a.m., but had been traveling so much that he had lost track of what day it was. He had already had four double shots of espresso. “I reckon I got two or three hours of sleep,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a train.”
On the other hand, David Speck, the onboard chef, was doing much better. He had followed his own nutritional program. “I had a big bowl of soup and thought, ‘I’ll just sit down and watch a movie,’” he said. “I started watching a Johnny Depp movie, what was it called? I lasted about five minutes. Five hours later, the guys took about five minutes to wake me up. It’s probably the best sleep I’ve ever had on a plane.”
Qantas declared the flight a huge success. We had traveled 16,200 kilometers, or just about 10,000 miles, in 19 hours and 16 minutes, arriving with fuel to spare. We had beaten another, non-direct Qantas plane that left New York three hours before us. A crowd of airport employees was waiting to watch us glide in. “I feel great,” Mr. Golding said.
Back in our adult clothes, we were sent away with gifts of commemorative stuffed kookaburras. I was not doing so well, but most of the passengers seemed fine — better than you would expect after nearly a day in the air. Their conversation was coherent. They did not feel the need to immediately put on their sunglasses when we disembarked onto the tarmac.
And so let us be clear: What happened next was my own fault. I am aware that no one wants to hear how a person lucky enough to be an aviation pioneer traveling in the lap of luxury on a historic flight in a brand-new airplane to a continent halfway around the world at no personal financial cost can, in the end, barely make it out in one piece. No one wants to hear how I lost first my kookaburra, and then my breakfast. (Qantas rescued the kookaburra.)
We had been told that to combat jet lag when you arrive at your destination, you should go outside and walk around. Let that light sweep over you. So I did. Sydney is so beautiful. After dropping off my bags at my hotel, I staggered into the great Australian sunshine, past the majestic opera house and through the botanical gardens. I found a nice spot near some fetching white ibises, birds that I later learned are considered the “bin chickens” or “trash turkeys” of Australia.
Here’s one way of coping with acute Australian post-flight nausea. Lie down on the grass. Arrange yourself into a fetal position. Use your handbag as a pillow and, if you are worried about the concerned expressions of passers-by who suspect you are dead, cover your face with your hat. Remain there for several hours, moving as little as possible so as not disturb your stomach’s uneasy equilibrium.
Your body is right there next to one of the world’s most spectacular harbors, even if your mind has slipped into the Twilight Zone. You have traversed half the world in less than a day. You have left one place on Friday and successfully arrived in another place on Sunday. It is hard to comprehend that concept, how carelessly we skip over time and space, how casually we lose entire days. What happened to Saturday? Try as you might, you realize, you’ll never figure it out.
[I'm glad I visited Australia when I was still living in Kansas City. Also had a brief layover in Hawaii. There's no way I'd do it now. I'd like to visit New Zealand, but the long plane trip is giving me second thoughts, so too are any planes to go to Hawaii. I don't like traveling by plane, I don't like airports, I don't like the whole ordeal. I find it anxiety inducing. The idea of checking my bag gives me a panic attack. (I've had some nasty experiences regarding checked bags.) This 20 hour plane flight sounds like a nightmare.]
It's a cold gloomy day anyhow. Last night texted niece and bro, apparently my brother was stuck in an elevator in an empty building once for two hours. He relaxed and waited, figuring physics would eventually make it go to the bottom and let him out.
In his case the door wasn't half-way open and he wasn't stuck between floors.
I'm also sleepy today for some reason. I blame the radiators. And I keep flirting with sneaker all weather resistant boots on Ryka.
2. Dolly Parton refuses to get political, she'd rather heal the divide.
I'm slowly changing my mind about Parton. For while there I didn't like her all that much, more the fault of some of her die-hard fans than Dolly herself. Then I watched the Country Music documentary, and that went a long way to changing my mind about Parton and her music. (Note bashing another artist to build up my own, will often cost that artist I happen to love fans. It's true of characters, stories, anything really -- hate attracts hate. If I want someone to love my favorite character? Find a way of loving theirs first, then show things about mine that I think they can relate to. Meet them on their level, not my level.)
Though many of her songs touch on female empowerment and give voice to working people — to the extent that Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren uses “9 to 5” as her walk-up song at campaign rallies — Parton exists outside the partisan fray. (At the 2017 Emmy Awards, she presented with her “9 to 5” costars Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, who made barbed comments clearly aimed at Trump; Parton noticeably stayed out of it.)
“She is deeply political in her music but not ever going to touch it,” says Jad Abumrad, host of “Dolly Parton’s America,” who was inspired to make the podcast at a 2016 Parton concert — “one of the few spaces that cuts across the divisions.”
“She has a kind of radical openness and inclusivity that is special at this moment,” he adds.
Sam Haskell, her producing partner, describes Parton as “this little atom of consistency” in a time of great uncertainty.
“I have my own thoughts, my own opinions, of course,” Parton says, “but I don’t believe that I should offend people that don’t have that same opinion by voicing my own opinion. I’m an entertainer; I can live it, I can write about it, I can joke, lift people up in my own way. But I don’t see no reason for me to get involved in political fights.”
She continues: “Half my people are Republicans, half of them are Democrats, and I always joke that I’m just a ‘hypocrat’ — and in a way I kind of am. ... I know we can’t ever all get along. But we could get along a little better if we tried a little harder.”
I can sort of identify -- throughout my life half the people I've known have been Democrats, half Republicans. My parents had the same situation. It's true of extended family as well.
3. Disney + has Power and a Plan -- sounds like an advertisement for Battlestar Galatica Reboot.
Anyhow..
For all the flash of its newcomers, however, the real heart of Disney+ is its back catalog. The service’s entire raison d’être is Bob Iger getting tired of direct competitors (read: Netflix) profiting off of his own content and deciding to get into the distribution game. Last month, Disney got some light flak for spamming our Twitter timelines with a barrage of less-known titles it would soon bring back into public view, from Sultan and the Rock Star to The Shaggy D.A. The strategy was a marked contrast with Disney’s historical pattern of hoarding popular properties, then staging a limited home release to satisfy pent-up demand. But once the reflexive 30 Rock jokes settled down, the cumulative might of lesser Disney Channel shows and the entire Star Wars saga spoke for itself. $6.99 is a pittance to pay for such an archive, particularly when the appeasement of one’s offspring is what’s actually for sale; with Netflix as a precedent, raising prices somewhere down the line is a when, not an if, and we’ll continue to oblige even once the sticker price is no longer falsely deflated. Until then, Forky has some questions.
Sign up for the
Yep, the back catalogue is pretty huge. Consider that Disney doesn't only have 100 years of content on its end, it has a 100 years work of 20th Century Fox content as well. We basically have:
* Marvel
* Pixar
* Disney
* ABC shows
* Fox Movie Franchises
* Star Wars
* Buffy, Angel, Dollhouse, Firefly ...
* National Geographic
It's a lot of content. An overwhelming amount of content. And 85% of it is G rated or PG. So..a lot of family centric content.
My younger, cable-free, co-workers couldn't wait to sign up.
My brother like my co-workers doesn't understand why I still have a cable subscription.
Me: NY1
My brother: You can get that on streaming.
Me: Really not. It's Spectrum, and only available on either Spectrum or Cable.
Brother: I don't know about that -
Me: I do, I checked.
It won't last forever. I'm getting annoyed by commercials. I'm on the fence about Disney, it's not expensive -- but, I don't time for it. Also, HBO Max looks more interesting and a touch more adult.
4. Throat Hurts? Brain Hurts? The Secret Life of Audiobook Stars
Sort of makes me rethink any plans to take up a second career as an audio book reader. (Not that I can listen to audio books, they tend to put me to sleep. I find it really hard to focus on, in part because I am visual not audio -- and I flip sounds and mishear words. Also this may well be genetic -- no one in my immediate family likes to listen to audio books. We also don't like puns. It's very odd.)
Bryson’s audiobook experience goes back 20 years, when he was living in New Hampshire and the nearest recording studio was in the neighbouring state of Vermont. “Now I’ve probably worked with five or six producers,” he says, “and they’re all really kind, and they’re always very encouraging, but I can’t help feel that I should be better at this, that I should be able to pronounce the words in my own book.” Does he not realise by now that when he commits a word like glomerulonephritis to print, he will eventually have to record it? “You would think so, but no,” he says. “You know what it’s like when you’re writing – you don’t think about anything, really, except trying to get words right to yourself on the page.”
In the two decades since Bryson recorded his first narration, the audiobook market has grown from a publishing industry side hustle into a huge global business. In a climate where print and ebook sales are stagnant, the UK audiobook market rose to £69m in 2018, an increase of 43% on the previous year. In the US, audiobook downloads generate revenue of close to a billion dollars annually. This growth has largely been driven by the rise of Audible, the Amazon-owned platform that dominates the digital audiobook market through its subscription streaming service, though there are other players, including Storytel, which operates largely in Scandinavian countries. In the 1990s, before the iPod was launched, Audible was selling a proprietary digital media player that held about two hours of audio downloaded from its online library. Today, Audible’s catalogue contains more than 400,000 titles; in 2018, its members downloaded nearly three billion hours of content.
"You’ve got to stay still. Any movement creates extraneous noise: fabric rustling, chair creaking, foot tapping’ "
But while technology has transformed the industry, it still relies on an army of audiobook narrators to meet the demand. “I’m so impressed with professional readers,” says Bryson, “the Martin Jarvises of this world, or people like Stephen Fry, who can really bring extra dimensions to it.”
The real professionals, however, are people you might not have heard of. In the US, 81-year-old actor George Guidall is considered narration’s undisputed heavyweight champion: his baritone voice has graced more than 1,300 audiobook recordings, including works by Dostoevsky, Jonathan Franzen and Stephen King. Some of the biggest British voices in audiobooks belong to faces you might not recognise, but may well have seen – on stage, on Coronation Street, or in any number of Carry On films.
***
Narration may sound like an easy way to make money – you just sit there and read – but I can assure you, it isn’t. I narrated my own audiobook in 2014, an experience that I described at the time as being akin to an exorcism: three long days in a dark room, tripping through the minefield of my own words. All I could think was: if I’d known I was going to have to say this whole book out loud, I would have written a better one. Or maybe I wouldn’t have written one at all.
I’ve done two more audiobooks since – most recently, last spring – with the gently increasing confidence that comes of never, ever listening back to previous recordings. The first time, I agreed to the challenge only because I was assured it was not unusual for a first-person, non-fiction book to be read by its inexperienced author. But I never met anyone else like that in my three days at the studio. I met only professionals.
Clare Corbett isn’t sure, but she thinks she’s narrated about 300 audiobooks since she left drama school to join the BBC’s Radio Drama Company. “That started my passion for radio, and for mic stuff,” she says. “Then I went into TV and theatre, and [audiobooks] just carried alongside it, beautifully.” She was one of three narrators of The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins (the book itself features alternating narrations), which won an Audie award for best audiobook in 2016. More recently she narrated Flights, The Man Booker international prize winner by Polish author – and now Nobel prize winner – Olga Tokarczuk. “Approaching that was very difficult,” says Corbett. “There was Russian and Polish language in it, and Russian, Polish and Croatian pronunciations.” In the end, she contacted some other women from her local area who spoke the languages and could guide her through the pronunciations. “I’m meeting my community at the same time,” she says.
Most professional readers are also trained actors – as early as 2013, Audible’s founder Donald Katz was claiming his company was probably the largest single employer of actors in the New York area – but narration comes with its own peculiar constraints. “What’s different is, you’ve got to stay still,” says Corbett. “When I first started, I was very animated. I was told to stop.” Any movement in the booth creates extraneous noise: fabric rustling, chair creaking, foot tapping. Before the introduction of the iPad, even the turning of pages was an editing headache.
5. Apparently Smiling is as effective on mood as eating 2000 chocolate Bars...also no barfing afterwards (The headline is mine, the article obviously has a different headline.)
6. Will over 20 Hours on a Plane Drive Someone Insane -- Quantas the Longest Plane Flight
Do not try this at home
Professor Carroll’s advice assumed a degree of baseline mental calmness. But preparing for an overseas flight is never easy. You cram a week’s worth of deadlines into two days; you stay up late packing; you obsess about every red light and every nuance of bad traffic en route to the airport. Even the most blameless traveler worries that she will get busted by the T.S.A. for random crimes against security. There’s a special kind of exhaustion that comes from hauling carry-on luggage through the anxiety-suffused corridors of an airport at night.
We had an unusually easy time at Kennedy International Airport, with our separate check-in desk and cordoned-off section of the departure lounge, but I already felt pretty ropy. By the time boarding began, at 8:30 p.m. or so, I had already taken three different prescription medications, plus an allergy tablet, plus a Sudafed. Right before takeoff I squirted a massive dose of Afrin up my nose. I might as well have shot amphetamines directly into my veins. My head felt like a beehive at honey-making time.
Most airlines feed the passengers immediately on overnight flights and then cut the lights, but the idea this time was to keep us up for more than six hours — until the middle of the night, New York time — by, among other things, feeding us spicy dinners that would serve as “a wake-up slap in the face,” Professor Carroll said. I had saffrony tomato soup and a lively-tasting sea bass, followed by caffeine-infused dark chocolate and tea.
Womp. The lights were also cranked up, as bright as interrogation lamps, part of the plan to trick our bodies into thinking they were already in Sydney, 14 hours ahead. I watched multiple episodes of “Barry,” about a hit man who joins a Los Angeles acting class led by Henry Winkler. The crew handed out pajamas with kangaroos on the front, instilling a pleasant sense of group infantilization, as if we were participants in an adult slumber party. From the seat in front of me, David Koch, co-presenter of the Australian morning show “Sunrise,” told me that it was important to understand the psychological ramifications of the sartorial transition.
“It’s a sleep cue,” he said, of the pajamas. “Don’t put them on until you are ready to go to sleep.” I said that I already felt jet-lagged, even though the monitor on my screen indicated that there were more than 16 hours to go. As an Australian, he replied, he prides himself on his travel-related stoicism, particularly since, to be honest, he always travels in business class.
“You know it will take you at least seven hours to get anywhere,” he said. “The feeling is, ‘Toughen up, princess, you’re at the front of the plane, so stop whining.’”
My brain would not shut up; my body wanted to crawl into a coffin and remain there forever. Some of the frequent fliers had glasses of wine, even though they weren’t supposed to, and then fell asleep. A few rows ahead, Mr. Joyce began watching “Fleabag,” which he had not seen before, and found the opening scene, in which Phoebe Waller-Bridge narrates her sexual encounter in medias res, unexpectedly racy. At one point, Professor Carroll led a group through a set of calisthenics in the back of the plane, encouraging us to use the oven handles as makeshift barres. We finished with an enthusiastic, if sloppy, mass performance of the “Macarena."
Do not try this on a plane either
Back in my seat, I tried to do some work but could not focus. It was already something o’clock in Sydney, though it was 1 a.m. on the plane. Following Professor Carroll’s advice, I took two milligrams of melatonin as a body-clock-resetting measure. On my video monitor, George Clooney had unwisely boarded a creepy space station where, whenever he dozed off, he encountered either his dead wife or a malign specter conjured from the dark recesses of his imagination, it was hard to tell the difference. I could respect his dilemma. “How long can you go without sleep?” a character in the movie asked.
The crew handed out our second meal, a soporific mélange of sweet potato soup, sandwiches and a panna cotta trifle. The idea was to fill us with carbohydrates and milky foods to help us sleep. By now, it was something like 3 a.m. and all these things were clashing in my stomach. I thought with fondness of my bed at home.
After dinner, the mood rapidly downshifted. Whoosh, the lights went out. The effect was of being in a birdcage over which your owner has abruptly dropped a blackout cloth. Everyone lay down and (it seemed) fell asleep on the spot. Alone with my obsessions, I kept remembering “Lost in Translation,” the 2003 film in which a dazed and alienated Bill Murray wanders around Tokyo for days on end, wacked out from insomnia.
Against Professor Carroll’s judgment, I took an Ambien and then, when it did not seem to work, took another one. I do not know what happened next. Nor do I know what time it was when the lights surged back on, because I cannot read what I wrote in that particular section of my notebook. But we were much closer to Australia.
The passengers were in various states of bedragglement; the crew members, who had slept in shifts, looked fresh and perky. Breakfast came, an energizing egg-white omelet with balsamic herb potatoes, sautéed kale, spinach and mushrooms. I was so happy to have such a nice meal. I knocked back several lattes and a glass of “wake up juice.” Nutrition coursed through my body. Knowing that, when it comes to sinuses, landing is far worse than taking off, I took another decongestant, an allergy pill, an antibiotic and a couple more squirts of Afrin.
Across the aisle, Billy Foster, a cameraman for Sunrise, Mr. Koch’s program, said he normally wakes up for work at 3 a.m., but had been traveling so much that he had lost track of what day it was. He had already had four double shots of espresso. “I reckon I got two or three hours of sleep,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a train.”
On the other hand, David Speck, the onboard chef, was doing much better. He had followed his own nutritional program. “I had a big bowl of soup and thought, ‘I’ll just sit down and watch a movie,’” he said. “I started watching a Johnny Depp movie, what was it called? I lasted about five minutes. Five hours later, the guys took about five minutes to wake me up. It’s probably the best sleep I’ve ever had on a plane.”
Qantas declared the flight a huge success. We had traveled 16,200 kilometers, or just about 10,000 miles, in 19 hours and 16 minutes, arriving with fuel to spare. We had beaten another, non-direct Qantas plane that left New York three hours before us. A crowd of airport employees was waiting to watch us glide in. “I feel great,” Mr. Golding said.
Back in our adult clothes, we were sent away with gifts of commemorative stuffed kookaburras. I was not doing so well, but most of the passengers seemed fine — better than you would expect after nearly a day in the air. Their conversation was coherent. They did not feel the need to immediately put on their sunglasses when we disembarked onto the tarmac.
And so let us be clear: What happened next was my own fault. I am aware that no one wants to hear how a person lucky enough to be an aviation pioneer traveling in the lap of luxury on a historic flight in a brand-new airplane to a continent halfway around the world at no personal financial cost can, in the end, barely make it out in one piece. No one wants to hear how I lost first my kookaburra, and then my breakfast. (Qantas rescued the kookaburra.)
We had been told that to combat jet lag when you arrive at your destination, you should go outside and walk around. Let that light sweep over you. So I did. Sydney is so beautiful. After dropping off my bags at my hotel, I staggered into the great Australian sunshine, past the majestic opera house and through the botanical gardens. I found a nice spot near some fetching white ibises, birds that I later learned are considered the “bin chickens” or “trash turkeys” of Australia.
Here’s one way of coping with acute Australian post-flight nausea. Lie down on the grass. Arrange yourself into a fetal position. Use your handbag as a pillow and, if you are worried about the concerned expressions of passers-by who suspect you are dead, cover your face with your hat. Remain there for several hours, moving as little as possible so as not disturb your stomach’s uneasy equilibrium.
Your body is right there next to one of the world’s most spectacular harbors, even if your mind has slipped into the Twilight Zone. You have traversed half the world in less than a day. You have left one place on Friday and successfully arrived in another place on Sunday. It is hard to comprehend that concept, how carelessly we skip over time and space, how casually we lose entire days. What happened to Saturday? Try as you might, you realize, you’ll never figure it out.
[I'm glad I visited Australia when I was still living in Kansas City. Also had a brief layover in Hawaii. There's no way I'd do it now. I'd like to visit New Zealand, but the long plane trip is giving me second thoughts, so too are any planes to go to Hawaii. I don't like traveling by plane, I don't like airports, I don't like the whole ordeal. I find it anxiety inducing. The idea of checking my bag gives me a panic attack. (I've had some nasty experiences regarding checked bags.) This 20 hour plane flight sounds like a nightmare.]