The Airport World Rant

One of the other nasty things that happened to me during my travels this week was that I was grabbed by the heels and dipped head-first into the slimy sewage of modern American society with all of its crowds and cell phone conversations and Fox News airport televisions and ESPN banner headlines and USA Today pie charts and Orange Threat Levels and Transportation Security Administration checkpoints and Homeland Security announcements and maximum carry-on bag size restrictions and no-leg-room airline seating and those 17 half nuts in the little foil bag that the smiling flight attendant gave me on the plane. And there was that guy at the next table in the restaurant, where the tables were too close together, and he was telling his girlfriend the saga of his visit to the veterinarian, how his German Shepherd's one good eye went bad, and he had to take it in to be put down, and the dog looked so sad, but it really was a "quality of life" issue, and when it was over the man had to carry his dead dog out through the waiting room wrapped in a sheet because he really wanted its final resting place to be at home by the trailer park they lived in. And I'm thinking that if the vet had put the dog's phucking owner to sleep, I wouldn't have to listen to all this while I'm trying to eat my frigging breakfast. And there was that well-kept 60-something woman on the plane from Atlanta who carried on a conversation with a dull man two seats away, and she was explaining how her husband lives in China, and she lives in England, and she's only here for the birth of a grandchild, but her son-in-law is between jobs and her daughter hates her, and I'm beginning to hate her, and I think her grandchildren might hate her, too. And if they'd all just shut the phuck up, the world would suddenly become brighter. I'm thinking, of course, that Hell Is Other People. It's a thought that often comes to me. And I analyzed that notion a bit. It occurred to me that, #1) the world is way too crowded for my taste, and #2) I like polite people, but I despise friendly people. I suppose that doesn't really work for everybody. It wouldn't work for all those lonely people, who desperately reach out for a shred of human kindness from other hopeless and boring losers like themselves. No, my misanthropic mindset just wouldn't work for them. No one would ever strike up a friendly conversation with anybody. No one would ask anyone else out for a date. Love and procreation would dwindle. The future of the species would be in jeopardy. Humanity would soon die out altogether. And then there'd be more leg room on the plane and fewer blonde newscasters live from New York and less noise in the airport. And those weird a$$holes with those Blue Tooth phucking things in their ears could just talk to themselves (much like they do now), and there'd be fewer terrorists trying to blow up my airplane, and there'd be a lot less bullsh!t for the CNN News wizards to get all hysterical about. And things would be friggin QUIETER.
(And, no, noise-cancelling headphones are not the answer.)
People just need to shut the phuck up.
Maybe next time I'll just drive.

Thank you for your continuing patience.

Purdey 2

Joanna Lumley as Purdey in The New Avengers (1976-77).

The cool dresses and other outfits were created by Jilly Murphy, Betty Jackson, and Catherine Buckley.

(Purdey 1 was called Takeoff.)

B.V.

I.R. in B.V.

Reading By The Pool

The motel I stayed at this week had a pool. I actually brought my old swim trunks, but didn't have the opportunity (or courage) to get in the pool. There were a lot of soldiers and their young wives staying at the motel for some reason. And they were "rough-housing" (a term my mother used to use) and playing a lot of "grab-ass" (a term my mother never used), and they were having lots of fun, so I didn't want to spoil it for them by wandering into the pool area with my gray chest hairs and cigarettes. So I sat at an umbrella table slightly back from the swimming pool and smoked my Salem Silver Box cigarettes and finished reading This Just In, What I Couldn't Tell You on TV by Bob Schieffer, the first two thirds of which was pretty interesting. I was reading Bob's book, because I'd found the first two thirds of Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation so fascinating. Both these guys tended to wade (speaking of swimming pools) into the realm of politics in the final thirds of their stories, and that's kind of dull to me (as you by now realize). Before Brokaw's book, I had read David Henderson's 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky, the story of Jimi Hendrix, which is kind of a downer, because as you're reading you just want to cry out, "Stop swallowing all those freaking drugs!" Alas, I realize I cannot imagine Jimi growing into middle age. And before that I made it part way through a really dull book called Looking at Life (edited by Erika Doss), which takes a way too serious and overly academic look at the sociological significance of Life magazine's history. How they managed to make that story boring I don't know. And somewhere in that mess, I read the truly excellent The Brotherhoods by Guy Lawson and William Oldham. It's sort of a companion piece to Jimmy Breslin's The Good Rat, which I mentioned earlier. No, so, anyway, I finished Bob Schieffer's book a day early and bought a crossword puzzle book to tide me over (so I'd look like I was actually doing something out there besides studying the bikini beauties around the pool). It wasn't as bad as a TV Guide crossword ("Television," two letters), but they seemed to use Ida Lupino's first name in at least half the puzzles, and the thing soon lost its charm.

The management's Swimming Pool Rules were posted on the gate, and they constituted a short novel by themselves. Everybody seemed to be ignoring the "No Glass Containers in the Pool Area" rule, and no one seemed to care. The pool was smaller than the one I have pictured here, and it had no diving board, being that diving board injuries expose the motel management to all sorts of liability these days. And two husky-type 30-something guys tossed a football around and checked out all the chicks. And the young soldiers' even younger wives (I'm talking 18 years old here) were ignoring the football guys and me, which hurt the jocks' feelings but not mine. And the girls were wearing bikini bottoms, not thongs, which was fine with me. But they all had on flip-flops, which I don't really like. And everybody (except the football dudes) seemed to have a good time. But what really caught my eye was a late-20s woman in shorts, who took off her little sneakers and then slipped off her tiny socks and crossed her bare ankles and put them up on a cabana chair and cracked open a book and then lit a freakin cigarette. She was the starlet of the pool scene in my mind. But that's just me. Let me know what you're reading this week, even if you aren't reading around a pool.

(Another clear violation of the rules.)

Sweater Sweetheart

Barbara Bates

Ouch!

17 Half Nuts

Okay, I'm back.

Earlier today, I was sitting in my tiny airline seat with my knees jammed into the seat in front of me, eating my .42 oz. (12 g.) foil packet of free airline dry-roasted peanuts and gazing into my 6-friggin-ounce cup of airline friggin coffee, and it got me to thinking about the days when flying was actually fun, and airline passengers were treated like customers, not like pigs being herded to the slaughter. More on this later. Just wanted ya to know I got back in one piece. (I phuggin hate flying these days.)

I'm Out Of Town 6

But Anne De Vigier is still here.

I'm Out Of Town 5

But Linda Darnell is still here.

I'm Out Of Town 4

But Joan Caulfield is still here.

I'm Out Of Town 2

But Rosemary Lane is still here.

I'm Out Of Town 1

But Jill Banner is still here.

Romy Reprise

Romy Schneider has been here lots of times.

Miss Peggy

Peggy King is a singer, who played the lovely, lonely, unmarried stewardess in Zero Hour! (1957), which was the serious version of Airplane! (1980), in which Lorna Patterson played the lovely, lonely, unmarried stewardesss.

Pounding Sand

Enter Sandman

Walkin' in the Sand

Veda

Veda Ann Borg