When I was a little boy I used to watch a Japanese animated show called Mazinger Z which was translated into Spanish from Japanese. In the show, a giant robot was controlled by the orphaned son of its creator, Koji Kabuto, a reckless renegade who played by his own rules. He would get into "pilder," the little flying thing he used to get inside of Mazinger's cranium (where he controlled the robot), and fly dramatically in as Mazinger was lifted out of a waterfall that was fake and held his launch bay.

Mazinger fought evil robots controlled by AIs who served the mad scientist Doctor Hell (literally known to me is Spanish as "doctor jell"), and usually saved the day.

When I saw this Mazinger artwork on the web, I was reminded of some photos I tool of a Jetblue Airbus 320 parked at San Jose last week. This was the plan I flew back to Boston on a redeye on last Thursday.

San Jose is one of those very small airports that still has some of its jets loaded by having people walk out on the tarmac and climb the stairs. The real treat of it is to stand "human-scale" next to these gigantic jet engines, fuselage, and wings.

For some reason whenever I do this (stand next to any great big mechanical thing), I am reminded of my childhood fantasies of being Koji Kabuto and having my own Mazinger.