Content Nausea No. 25: Back to Earth
Get love where you find it, it’s the only fist we have to fight with and soon, you’re headed back to Earth
Welcome to the 25th edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 24 right here. No. 26 is coming soon, too, because I am trying to put myself on a regular schedule. It’s not like there’s much else to do at this point. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
I got sunburned for the first time in 2020 last week because I did my American duty. I left my apartment, walked down to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, found space on the median and waited for the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds to fly over Philadelphia.
I have never felt dumber.
There are myriad reasons for it. The stay-at-home order for Philadelphia was extended this week through June 4 (though restrictions are easing in other parts of Pennsylvania), and I have made it a point to only leave the house for essentials: runs and buying cider.
But in a “show of support to frontline workers,” or whatever, we were gifted something that needed to be viewed outside in a manner that certainly eschewed social distancing. I thought about going to the steps of Philadelphia Museum of Art, but even from 20th Street and the Parkway, I could tell that was a bad move. So I staked out some grass, and fortunately, only three of the 20 or 27 people who were in my area were unmasked.
I would probably prefer another $1,200 in my bank account to some jets flying over the city, but I am not in a position to make decisions. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, “the Air Force said taxpayers will incur ‘no additional cost’ due to the flyover, which fulfills training requirements for both teams to maintain proficiency.”
Luke O’Neil summed up the absurdity of it in Welcome To Hell World earlier in April when the Thunderbirds flew over a vacant Las Vegas:
This also isn’t related but I just read that on Saturday the Air Force Thunderbirds flew a mission over Las Vegas to honor the healthcare workers and first responders on the front lines. The eight jets which cost around $18 million each and burn roughly $100,000 an hour in fuel collectively were a stirring tribute to the real heroes most of which one presumes were inside working on saving people’s lives instead of staring up at the sky with their mouths open.
I don’t know about you but the image of jets flying over a desolate Las Vegas doesn’t exactly fill me with anything but a sort of dull emptiness in my stomach. I’m not a hero on the frontlines though so perhaps the symbolism of the gesture is lost on me.
“It is an honor to fly for the Americans at the forefront of our nation’s fight against the coronavirus,” Lt. Col. John Caldwell the Thunderbirds commander said. “They are true heroes…”
He also said even though the jets would be flying close to one another haha that doesn’t mean people should gather close together to watch them.
“We want Las Vegas residents to look up from their homes and enjoy the display of American resolve and pride while keeping front line coronavirus responders in their hearts during this unprecedented time in our nation.”
I fucking love displays of American resolve and pride. I fucking love keeping heroes in my heart.
The absurdity of the moment was ratcheted up during my walk to the Parkway — I wore my face mask where Snoopy is an astronaut, and it was some American flags on it — when my boss called. We chatted, and he signed off by saying, “I hope you get to see the planes.”
Well, I saw the planes, and I loved it.
A couple weeks ago, I sat down and started to write in this space about how I drove my car for the first time in a month (to go buy more cider) and how much I loved driving. At the time, my thesis was that the most American thing about me (outside of, like, participating in capitalism, I guess) is that I love to drive. It’s a powerful feeling.
The prospect of seeing the Blue Angels (and the Thunderbirds, too, but whatever) flipped a switch in my brain that mostly remains dormant. Usually, it gets toggled during football season during pregame flyovers after the national anthem in displays of paid patriotism:
(I don’t respect helicopter flyovers, but that’s another conversation).
But the Blue Angels fully flip the switch.
When I was 4 or 5, my mom took me to an air show on the Chesapeake Bay in Southern Maryland to watch the Blue Angels. We had seen them flying around Calvert and St. Mary’s Counties during the week or so before — most notably, I kept referring to a stunt plane as a “stump” plane in my young speech impediment — and I was tickled at the possibility.
We parked at Seahorse Beach in the Ranch Estates and sat on top of the red car, and I was transfixed by the planes doing their acrobatics and the rest. It was cool, and it stuck. I had a model Blue Angels plane that I never finished, and the first iteration of my room in Bel Air had a framed photo of some sort of military plane.
In May 2003, I went to Annapolis with my fifth grade classmates who had also completed the Patriot program, and during our boat tour around the town (I got seasick), the Blue Angels were out practicing for Naval Academy graduation.
It was sick.
I felt dumb sitting in the grass on the Parkway while my ankles were getting sunburned, considering Everything That Was Happening And Has Continued To Happen. But it was rather surreal to have a certain part of my brain — the babiest part of my smooth baby brain — get tickled and wake up. I wish it didn’t have to happen in the middle of a global pandemic, and I wish it didn’t taste similar what I imagine licking the bottom of a boot might taste like.
But there I was, eagerly scanning the Eastern horizon to look for the planes coming off the Delaware. I tracked them as they crossed over toward the Schuylkill along roughly South and Lombard Streets. I held my breath as they flew in from behind the Art Museum and down the Parkway, directly over me. And I jumped a little when after disappearing from view for a little while, they re-appeared to the northeast and screamed south along Broad Street over City Hall.
When it was over, I did not feel more hopeful.
I felt dumb. But I also felt sort of alive.
Thank you for reading the 25th edition of Content Nausea. Click the little heart at the top or bottom of this page if you made it this far. Thank you, and see you soon.
I was biding my time, desperately, I walked the line
Between health and poverty
Looked into a face, all my thoughts they were replaced
I had the nerve to call it soul
—D.G.