Much has been written about air travel, so for me to throw my hat into the ring would seem to be a bit unnecessary, and you probably don’t want to read it. Tough. No one forced you to come here, and my hat’s already in the air.
I remember, as a child, seeing the old movies and advertisements for air travel. The seats were HUGE. Kings and Queens were jealous of the space afforded passengers. In addition to this, the stewardesses were all kind, helpful, and pleasant. They also all happened to look like Jane Mansfield. It was luxurious, classy, and above all enjoyable. The food was plentiful, varied, and presented on a platter. I could go on, but the easiest way to sum it up is this: if God promised the Jews airfare: ‘a flight flowing with milk and honey’, in the 1960’s he made good on his promise.
Things were certainly looking up when I was a kid. The Concorde flew daily between NY and Europe at super sonic speeds. Even though it was spartan, it was progress. And then everything stopped, and went backwards.
Anyone who has flown anywhere except in Warren Buffet’s lap knows how things have changed. If you get a beverage you’re lucky, and even then you’ll probably pay for it. The flight attendants, who look more like Kathy Bates, couldn’t hate you anymore. Half the time I expect a request for a pillow to be met with the wood block and sledgehammer. The food makes a Stouffers meal look like a 10 course feast. And could someone please explain to me when it became universally accepted that peanuts were a great snack? It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, but they of course are salty (not unlike myself), and that makes me thirsty…which brings me back to trying to get some service from the lady from 'Misery'.
Some things have improved. For example, I’m pretty sure they didn’t have movies on the flights in the 60’s. We now have movies on any flight over 4 hours, which is…nice. What I want to know is how they pick these movies? I mean is there a panel of women and eunuch’s choosing from the complete catalog of ‘chick flicks’ and family favorites? Every flight I’m on has some dreadful romantic comedy or taxing animated tripe. I know it’s too much to hope that they would show something like ‘Predator’, but could we at least get a drama, something where women and children aren’t the focus and men are a distant afterthought?
Now I know what you’re saying: ‘You brilliant and engaging curmudgeon, why don’t you just not watch the movie?’ Are you serious? How much do you think there is to do on these flights? It’s not like there’s a lot of room in these seats, as every knows this isn’t the 60’s. I guess I could talk to the person sitting next to me, but people on airplanes fall into 2 categories: the experienced and the terrified. The experienced traveler is exactly whom they sound like, and not an interesting topic for conversation. The terrified traveler, now they’re interesting.
The terrified traveler is convinced Osama Bin Laden is every plane, especially the plane they’re on. I like these people because they’re afraid of my iPod. Not in the traditional sense mind you, many of them have iPods of their own. But on takeoffs and landings, my iPod becomes the fingernail of Satan himself, just waiting to scratch them out of existence. You see, I don’t turn my iPod off during takeoff and landing, it’s nonsense, and the flight attendants are lying to us when they say it interferes with the equipment. You know how I know its nonsense? Here how. Before every flight I have to take off my shoes, my belt, my jacket. I can’t carry liquids in excess of a teaspoon, aerosols of any kind, and according to the TSA, a pair of tweezers is just as dangerous as the sword of Conan the Barbarian. But they let me keep my iPod. If all it takes to crash an airplane were I listening to my podcasts of Big O and Dukes (http://www.wjfk.com/pages/703221.php), Al Qaeda would give up on procuring a nuclear weapon, and just buy those little Apple gift certificates. I’m sure Steve Jobs would even give them a quantity discount.
The terrified traveler can’t figure this out though. Again, they’re convinced that every dark skinned bearded man is a secret agent for the Taliban. With their cognitive functions severely limited by this terror and the latest soul destroying Renee Zellweger movie, they can’t reason out that my iPod is not, in fact, the cuticle of Beelzebub, but merely my own distraction. During landing I enjoy leaving my iPod clearly visible and obviously playing, to despair the terrified traveler. I once had a woman tell me what I was doing was wrong, I calmly reasoned with her using the logic above. Unfortunately at the same time a gentleman who looked a lot like F. Murray Abraham shifted in his chair, and all bets were off.
In conclusion, I’m not a big fan of air travel. The seats are small, the food is bland, the airport experience leaves much to be desired, and the entertainment is sub par. I would think that by now we would have teleportation figured out. I mean, I was terrified by Jeff Goldblum in ‘The Fly’ just like everyone else, but if ‘Jaws’ hasn’t stopped us from swimming, can’t we get this technology off the ground? I'm sure the oil lobby is involved somehow, but that's a topic for another blog.
