So last week I had to fly on business for my new job. I had not been on a plane since 2006 and now I remember why.
I flew Continental on a 737 which is allegedly designed to seat around 180 people comfortably. Needless to say there were 824 passengers booked on the flight and God bless em, we managed to get every single one of them on board.
At least that's how it felt to me.
There's a great deal of controversy lately with people who are large being forced to buy two seats but as near as I can tell just about everyone needs to buy two seats on these flights.
The seats appear to be for someone who is 7 feet tall and weighs 79 pounds. Everyone else is crammed into a space clearly designed for a person who has no bones.
Anyway, logic dictates that you should board the flight from the rear of the plane so that you can get everyone to their seats in the least amount of time while also providing the flight crew with an idea of how much storage space is being used up.
Needless to say…this is not how it works. In order to extort more money from the cattle, Continental has come up with a variety of programs all designed to make you feel special when in fact you are no more important to the airline than a bag full of dirty socks.
So you have Continental OnePass and then FirstBoarders and then Ace Numero Uno Seating and then…the rest of the Great Unwashed…of which I am generally a part.
Once you load this random mishmash of program flyers, plus people with babies plus the woman who is using a walker and clutching her chest constantly so Im sure she is not going to survive this flight, you then get to board.
Of course by that point, the other two people who are in your row are already seated and watching a movie so when you show up, they're pissed that they have to stand up and move.
But fuck them! That window seat is mine, motherfuckers…move!
Anyway, they get up…I try to slide into the seat but fail miserably, getting tangled in the seat belts and generally trying to inch worm myself towards the right seat. After a few minutes of this disgusting spectacle it become apparent that shooting me would be a mercy to both myself and the spectators…
…who by the way don't offer to help at anytime.
So now Im in the freakin seat, I have to cram my bag under the seat in front of me which is hard enough without me sitting there, After a few minutes and few hail mary's I get everything situated only to realize that my damn iPad is in that bag and lord knows I aint gonna be able to make a 5 hour flight engaging in conversation with the idiot next to me.
The flight attendants walk through and inform us that we absolutely must turn off our electronic devices. Apparently this plane, this technological marvel with 144,809 parts sheathed in steel and aluminum containing a navigation system so powerful it knows to the square inch where we are in the air at all times can be brought straight down into the earth by a 9 year old playing his Nintendo DS.
So me and the rest of the cattle shut off our phones, power down our computers, deactivate our pacemakers etc.
The pilot comes on the intercom, he is supposed to sound strong and capable… a man we are trusting our lives to while we go screaming at 600 mph through the freakin stratosphere.
Instead he sounds like Don Knotts.
I am not comfortable.
He says: "Well folks…looks like we're gonna be on the tarmac in just a few minutes now. Beautiful night here in Orange County…it'd be a darn shame if you guys didn't make it back here again".
Now Im thinking does he want us to revisit or is he so bad a pilot that even he thinks we aint gonna make it back to NY?
The flight attendants who apparently are so overtaxed with handing out 7 dollar cokes and answering such brain stumpers as "Can I have a blanket", have given up explaining how the plane's safety measures work and are now reduced to pushing a button on a dvd player.
The DVD starts….a cheerful man (who I might add recorded this DVD while safely on firm ground) starts to tell us about how amazing this plane is, how new, how great their safety record is and how nothing ever goes wrong…then he starts in on all the ways that this flight can go wrong and what to do about it.
Much has been written about what to do in a water landing. I can assure you that not a single one of them will work. I am supremely confident that if you are a passenger on a plane spiraling into the ocean at over 500 miles an hour, you need not worry if your seat will work as a flotation device simply because you are about to be rendered into a squishy blob of pink paste that will fit into a single mayonnaise jar. With room to spare.
Anyhoo…we take off. So here we go…five freakin hours on this flight.
Now, Im glad we live in a country where anyone can buy a ticket but it would be better if some of these basketball-following, backwards cap-wearing, semi-shaven fuckwads would just do us all a favor and crash into a ravine on the way to the airport.
So…I get the iPad on and start to choose a movie and fuckwad decides he wants to ask about my new-fangled gizmo. He says and I quote: "zat one of them wachcallit…e-readers"?
I say "No, fuckwad…this is an iPad, an infinitely more powerful, useful and elegant device that an e-reader can't ma…can't you just watch your basketball game and leave me alone"?
Actually what I said was "No, it's an iPad, see, you can use it for more than reading books, you can…".
He says:"Does that thing get porn on it? Can you watch two ladies doin it…cause that would be sumthin".
I return; "Yes…that would be sumthin…but you can pretty much get porn on any portable device, wouldn't you say".
Then he launches into some long-winded half-witted review of a porno he just watched called "Squirt GangBang 4". A highly uncomfortable monologue wherein he utters the phrase "they can squirt pretty far, ya gotta watch your eyes".
I have never wished so hard that the wing of a plane would shear off in mid flight.
