So, no photos to look at, but the memories are indelible: the lights from the favelas twinkling on the hillsides, the ground shaking in the sambadromo as the drummers marched towards us, the shock of seeing small children sleeping under flyovers, my first taste of passion fruit… Each time I return to Brazil I fall in love with it again.
I am in a taxi when I hear this news, airport-bound on the flyover with my home town spread like a map below.
In the resentful fantasies of my flyover state obscurity, I imagine my film-reviewing colleagues in New York and Los Angeles spending much of this past week pontificating and prognosticating, churning out think pieces and offering up sound-bite analyses.
Sometimes in the wintertime and yes I am presuming a northern, east coast, Midwest and flyover climate reality here; my favorite thing ever was when I drove to Big Bear with some of The Californians and snowflakes as gentle as Bonhomme's tears drifted onto the windshield and they all burst into hysterical stress cryings but sometimes in the wintertime you won't leave your apartment allllll day.
I've lived for the last four years in a part of the country that many of my friends consider "flyover" territory.
These sad realizations all came crashing down on me recently as I was driving home from work and experienced my first drone flyover.
After witnessing a ceremonial flyover directly overhead, I took my seat in the auditorium where a fantastic orchestra and choir from the Southern California Baptist University performed rousing renditions of our national and military anthems.
It's hard for Big East fans, I know, but having spent most of my life in the flyover states of Michigan and Illinois, I can't help but feel a bit of schadenfreude in the suffering of the Big East in this year's N.C.A.A. basketball tournament.
The one-bed flat that was less than 10m from the Hammersmith flyover, where I had to raise my voice to say "See?
Bruce took my daughter Olivia and me on a flyover in the Greater Canyonlands that I don't think either of us will ever forget.
