US Airways

Don't get me wrong, I think all the airlines are in trouble. Seriously, they need to lobby congress to get TSA to back down a bit. It used to be that four hours was my tipping point. Any less than that and I would drive. Any more and I would consider flying. My tipping point now is about twelve hours - even if it costs me more to do it. Between the TSA's draconian screen procedures (am I the only one worried about what that full body scanner might just be doing to us?), new luggage fees and reduced services folks like me are getting fed up. And that should make air travel companies just a wee bit nervous.

All except US Airways. What the hell, they're already the worst airline in the country right now - what have they got to worry about? Here's a sampling of observations from my last flight:

1. Everything is for sale and nothing is free. I asked at the desk if I could somehow get out of the dreaded middle seat - more as a service to the folks destined to sit next to my bulk than anything else. I was cheerfully told that, yes!, there is an aisle seat available but it's a premium seat and I'd have to PAY for it. Mind you, this seat was no different than any other: not business or first class. It was just a seat that wasn't in the middle. And there are no free snacks - no peanuts or pretzels. But they are more than happy to sell you drinks, snack boxes, charge cards and what have you. I was just waiting for one of the flight attendants to ask me if I wanted to spend time with her in the champagne room.
2. An elderly lady brought her dog on board. She told the cabin, at large, that she paid $200 for her dog to ride in a bag under the seat and, of course, US Airways also counted the animal as her carry on bag. She had to pay to check her regular luggage. Near as I can tell, they did nothing extra for their $200 besides inconveniencing (and fleecing) a little old lady.
3. Their trash bags have a US Airways logo on it. Big deal, you say? Well, remember that they no longer provide free snacks. Put the two together and you must realize that US Airways is more interested in paying to BRAND THEIR TRASH than giving a token to their customers. In other words, garbage is more important to them.
4. My favorite US Airways story still remains the carry on shuffle - in Charlotte I watched an attendant (Nazi) at the top of the gate telling folks they had too many carry ons and insisting that the bags be combined. So ladies would stuff their purses and men would jam their laptops into their roller bags. The first attendant would then release them down the jetway to be met by the second Nazi telling folks their bags were too big and insisting everyone gate check their bags. So, of course, everyone began UNLOADING their roller bags of the very things they had just stuffed in!
   

Harumpf.

Airline companies are in trouble and in need of a serious image make over. But, for me, it's to late for US Airways. I'd rather drive.

I Had a Dream

Actually, it was a nightmare. In my dream, I was stuck in the dreaded middle seat of an MD-88 on a cross country flight wedged between Nancy Grace and Jane Velez Mitchell. And Sean Hannity was kicking the seat behind me.

I gotta lay off the bedtime merlot.

Debt Ceiling Shuffle

So, both parties had to make a show of pushing through their DOA plans in order to save face with their party members. This way, when they get down to work for real and vote on a compromise bill they can then face their constituents with palms upraised and say "hey, we TRIED to do the right thing but THEY wouldn't let us. Don't blame us! We had to vote on this compromise to save the Republic."

Is it just me or is this dance getting kind of old?

Border's Books

Borders is closing and it's all my fault.

I share in that fault though. I'm one of millions of Kindle owners who, joined with Ipad users and the rest, are pulling the publishing world into the digital age whether they want to or not. So no big surprise that Borders is calling it quits.

The truth is though that I LIKE books. I suspect that folks my age and older (47 currently - check back later) and perhaps those from a generation earlier will always have a printed page bias. It's a tactile thing which a computer screen cannot give us. I still remember wanting a home library with shelves and shelves of books. I like the smell. I like handling those old books with brittle pages and wondering who else has read them.

Libraries, though, will soon be a thing of the past. They will become mostly WiFi spots with a few picture books hanging around. The traditional library will become something more like a museum. And so goes progress.

I wonder if those ancient cave painters shook their heads at the stone tablet advocates who, in turn, decried papyrus scrolls as being a short term fad. Soon, I'd imagine, we'll have the words just beamed directly into our noggins so that there's nothing to hold at all. Gonna be a bleak day for bookmarker companies, for sure.

As If It's Not Bad Enough

Yesterday I had to go to a funeral.

She was a vibrant young woman of just 32 years. The type of person that just made you say "wow" after meeting. You wanted to be near her. Folks hung on her words. Fun. Classy. A positive influence wherever she went.

Modern medicine couldn't save her though and the First Baptist Church of Podunk was filled to the rafters with family, distant relatives, friends, coworkers and damned near the whole county. As it should have been. Podunk is smack in the middle of gnat country here in the south: it was hot and it was buggy, even inside the church.

So there we were, sweating and swatting and swaying uncomfortably on our feet because it was standing room only in the back while, just to make things worse, were three ministers who spent more time talking about some dude named Jesus than they did about the life of the beautiful person we were there to mourn.

The phrase 'ad nauseum' applies here. We wanted stories about her youth. We wanted anecdotes from friends. We wanted remembrances from her family. We wanted to grieve and mourn and cry and feel just a bit better, if not a bit melancholy, when it was all through. Instead it was Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

"I feel it would be an absolute SIN if everyone here today has not accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior," they preached and, in my opinion, missed the point entirely. Which is a damned shame. Bad enough we just lost a loved one.

Which made me think that perhaps we shouldn't leave the preaching up to the preacher. Folks make their own wedding vows. All of us have considered our epitaphs at one point or another (I'm going with "I'm With Stupid.") So why not write our own service script? Not just a eulogy but the whole entire service? I think I'm going to open mine with a joke - you know, that one about a bar.

A Thoroughly Researched Observation of Neal Schon

Seriously, I've given this a lot of thought and consideration. I've spent countless seconds working on this post regarding Journey's guitar virtuoso, Neal Schon. Although, for the sake of this blog, I primarily used three sources:

1. A spot he did for a local radio station in which he lingered a little long and much too hard on the word "rock" as though he was being tough.

2. A copy of Journey's latest release in which the guitar work is a bit more pervasive and heavy than one would want.

3. Watching a Journey concert on Palladia - see #2.

Based on these three sources, I'm willing to state, unequivocally, that Neal wants desperately to be a hard rock guitar hero and not be forever associated with a chick band.

Not that there's anything wrong with a chick band.

Listen, if it weren't for "Don't Stop Believing" I'm pretty sure I would have never achieved second base (and a big lead towards third) with Theresa Crooks back in ninth grade. I suspect had the radio station followed up with "Open Arms" instead of "My Sharona" I might have been looking at home... So, hey, mad props to chick bands like Journey, without them some of us guys would have never had a chance.

Besides, while you've been reading this, Neal's made more money on the royalties from that "na, na, nana" song than most of us will earn in a lifetime. And perhaps that's what you should focus on, Neal. You helped countless young men come close to realizing various illicit fantasies while making what I assume must be a butt load of money. All in all, not a bad legacy, I say.

(In order to preserve my blogging integrity, I feel I must confess that any base running with Theresa Crooks is purely my fanciful, wishful thinking. In fairness, I spent enough time imagining various bases occupied by Theresa that I feel like I do have some basis to make such claims. So please, Theresa, grant me a little poetic license here. Thank you.)

((And, yes, I know, it's a weird subject to continue a blog that's been dormant for quite some time. But you should expect that out of me. As long as I can remember the log in info, this blog is "not dead yet."))

MLK Day, Off the Cuff

"All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem."

Martin Luther King Jr. said that and amen to it. Actually, I have no idea what the context of this quote was - I'm not an MLK scholar. But it's a quote I have always liked - even more than the impassioned "I have a dream" speech. What it says to me is that our work is never done. There's always a next step.

There's a lot of kvetching going on about today's holiday. Does MLK deserve it? Am I racist for even asking? Is it a black holiday? And so on and so on.

We've legislated for minorities. In the not very distant past - actually within my lifetime - we've given blacks the right to vote, mandated equal pay and legislated against all discrimination. As though we were gifting them for good behavior or some such. So the balance is equal, right?

Except we have this 'black holiday'. And BET. And Ebony. And all the other 'black only' media. And there's a lot of whites that don't like it.

So, hey, big surprise! The laws say we're all equal but, gosh, it doesn't really seem like we're on the same team, does it? I think THAT'S the next problem - the next task we face. Until we quit putting value in the frivolous things we decide define us: race, religion, sexual preference et cetera we will NEVER have equality. We will never acquire MLK's dream:

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"

And I don't think he meant equal but separate.

Patrick Henry once said: "United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.” I can find more quotes along the same lines - we've been told over and over again. And yet it's a lesson we refuse to learn, much to our detriment. Will we ever?