"LA LA" Land----AGAIN!

Notes of Concern…
….Jack Blair


“ LA LA” LAND, AGAIN!

Some readers will remember the less than ideal departure from Los Angeles that I experienced when I left on my trip to the Far East. I wrote about it in a column about five weeks ago.

Well, “La La” land, home of Hollywood sequels, has provided me with fodder for my column once again!

The little dictator, Kim Son Il, managed to get his rocket launched about three hours before I departed Tokyo for Los Angeles so the skies over the Sea of Japan were relatively calm.

It did not take American Airlines long to get my attention.

The flight attendant came down the aisle and asked if I would like a drink. When you are embarking on a ten hour trip and sitting cheek to jowl with four other people in your row of seats, and your knees are positioned somewhere around your cheekbones, you definitely need some liquid refreshment.

So I said I would like a drink.

She handed me a small plastic bottle of alcohol, a bottle that held about an eyedropper full of booze. I told her I would need two. She told me she would need $12. After we together determined if I wanted to enjoy this libation for the first ten minutes of the ten-hour trip, I would really need four of those little bottles. Yes, she agreed, and she would need $24 !!!

After pouring all four of my little plastic bottles into the little plastic cup she gave me, I had the equivalent of one half glass of liquid, including ice! American Airlines had $24 of my money. To give you a visual on this, imagine putting four ice cubes into one of those cups the doctor gives you for urine samples, and the filling it to the halfway mark. Of course, you wouldn’t drink that!

OK. I said I would give you a visual, not a Picasso.

With that auspicious start to my return home, I was not optimistic about the remaining nine hours and fifty minutes. I was relieved to see that I could watch movies on my little screen. That would be the little screen that is in the backside of the seat in front of me.

If you are a gymnast or a circus side show performer, you can actually watch a few movies on your long journey. You need these skills because the guy in front of you has already reclined his seat, reclined it into your lap, and therefore through some sort of physics managed to get your movie screen pointed down, toward the floor.

Once I arranged myself in a position not unlike those regularly used by the Elephant Man, I found that my movies were in Japanese. If you have never seen Brad Pitt speaking Japanese, let me tell you that you have not missed much.

I rang my attendant button. The attendant, who was $24 richer as a result of her last visit to my seat, arrived with hope and greed in her eyes. I asked her how I could get the movie in the English language.

I received a look that clearly expressed something like: DUMMY! And then she shared the secret. She told me to just keep pushing buttons until I found English. I said a little prayer of thanks that American Airlines had not made her the pilot of my plane.

At this point, I should point out that when they changed the title of the women who work these planes from Stewardess to Flight Attendant, they had this woman in mind. Since the government Gods decided that airlines could not have any physical or age requirements for their stewardesses, whoops, flight attendants, the image of the ladies of the sky changed.

My attendant was one the l –o- n- g side of 60. She wore a blond wig. Her hose did not hide the varicose veins that were struggling to bulge out. The small hairs on her chin suggested wisdom that she did not seem to have. Even her AARP card was old.

Dinner was served on an elegant plastic plate, accompanied by flatware in a similar plastic pattern. The whole effect would have taken the breath away from Martha Stewart.

The salad was a postage stamp sized gathering of long wilted greens. You could have a small amount of dressing if you were able to find a way to open the little plastic bag that contained the dressing. This is part of the reason flying is called magical. Mystical would have been a better description. The real reason it takes 10 hours to fly across the Pacific is that it takes that long to figure out how to open the salad dressing.

The entrée consisted of six pieces of pasta that tried successfully to hide two slivers of chicken. This was a repast designed to fortify you for the ten-hour flight you were facing. I do not think Emeril came even close to this recipe.

Now here is the clue: they charged for the booze.

The food was free.

Which do you think they thought was better?

American Airlines managed to get me to Los Angeles on time. Ah, “La La” land again! Now here things got complicated in a way only American airlines and airports like LAX can master.

I was to get off the plane and transfer to another plane operated by the same airline and at the same airport, Los Angeles.

Simple, right?

Not so simple.

Because I was arriving at a port of entry to the USA I had to go to baggage and collect my bags. Then I had to take my bags and go through immigration. After that, I had to go through customs.

At this point I have arrived at ports of entry for five Asian countries. When I came to the baggage area in those countries there were hundreds of free carts for passengers to use for their baggage.

In “La La” land, they also had carts. The carts were locked in a metal container and only $4 would free up a cart for your use.

When you approached immigration, they had four agents sitting in little cubicles pretending to be interested in determining if you might be a terrorist. In “La La” land they have determined that one of the largest airliners, holding 368 passengers, all of whom must enter the U.S., can be processed by four federal workers.

Roughly, that is 90 individuals passing through each of 4 small cubicles, waiting while a bored and officious unhappy person looks through your passport, asks you question like: how long have you been gone? What countries did you visit? What was the purpose of your trip?

After you contemplate why, when they are looking at your passport, said passport stamped by every country you visited, those would be the questions.

To provide further mystery, you wonder why they don’t know when you left, or how long you were gone, because it is all right there on their little computer screen where the government keeps track of all our travels. May I suggest a possible explanation: they do not understand English. This is “La La” land, remember? Most of these folks had been in the desert for days, had to climb over the new wall we constructed, and just didn’t have time to go to school. No wonder they were angry.

This is all very disappointing because in every other country, places supposedly less advanced than we, they would have ten or more cubicles and process 368 people in a “New York second.”

After running this gauntlet, you get to line up again for a trip past the customs inspectors. The math is a little different here, they have two cubicles not four. Maybe the border fence is working!

Now each officer is handling 180 people.

The questions didn’t get better, either. These geniuses want to know if you bought anything on your trip. Since you have spent considerable time writing down exactly how much you spent and swore on penalty of death on their form that you were being truthful, one wonders if they hope you forgot what you wrote.

This is the government’s version of Truth or Consequences.

At this point it seems to you as if your fellow Americans have taken about the same amount of time to welcome you home as it took American Airlines to fly you from Japan to “La La” land.

But you and your luggage are now off to the transfer area of the airport. In this phase, you get to check your luggage again for the second flight. Obviously, these geniuses think you have had time to open your luggage and fill it with explosives as you worked your way through three security checks!

I dropped off my bags and passed through a gauntlet of two airport security officials with wands. The obese lady who “wanded” me really thought she was hot stuff. She had a badge and a belt and a wand. And she did not think she was Cinderella, she thought she was Cruella DeVille.

She informed me that my carry on bag was too big.

My carry on bag had not been too big for China Air, Thai Air, Korean Airlines, Japan Airlines or, for that matter, for American Airlines on my flight to Asia or my flight from Asia that same day.

I mentioned this. She mentioned her wand.

I had to unpack my bag and move some of the things to my shoulder bag. Then she permitted me to move forward.

As soon as I cleared the lady with the want, I stopped and moved everything back into my carry on bag.

I went up an escalator to the security area for my next flight. Hundreds of people were trying to catch numerous flights out of “La La” land (I had great sympathy for these people; everyone wants to get out of “La La” land.)

For all these people, they had two x-ray machines working and two attendants at each machine. In a miracle of modern time, it only took 45 minutes. Now I know why they want you to have two hours between flights when you arrive from abroad.

What really set me to a slow burn were the sixteen totally unoccupied uniformed security personnel that were hanging around a counter on the other side of security, doing absolutely nothing. Well, that isn’t exactly correct, as they were collecting an hourly wage for this difficult duty.

In the foreign lands I visited, if you were transferring flights, they did not make you leave and re-enter the security area. They transferred your bags right from one plane to the next. And most importantly, they were pleasant in their handling of the task.

My wife and I have experienced this totally unacceptable arrangement on arrival back in the U.S. on a number of occasions. It boggles the mind. How can anyone make a job so easy into a job so difficult? It is unwelcoming, burdensome, and anger producing.

Fast forward now to my new plane, the plane that will take me from “La La” land to San Francisco, home of the kooks, hippies, loonies, and other folks too weird to mention.

Keep in mind that I like San Francisco and you will get an idea of how bad Los Angeles really is.

I am seated. I have an empty seat beside me. This bothers American Airlines. Someone goes out into the terminal and recruits a person to sit beside me.

My seatmate is wearing a wool winter cap pulled down over his ears. Keep in mind that it is 70 degrees here. His dirty blond hair extends from under the hat down to the middle of his back. He is wearing three turquoise rings. Fortunately, these rings are on his fingers and not on other body parts, at least not on the ones I can see. He is clearly stoned.

He greets me with “hey man.”

As we taxi down the runway and the captain has just announced that we should turn off all electronic gadgets, especially cell phones, my young friend is chatting up his girlfriend, on his cell phone. It was a difficult conversation for him because he had his IPod music earphone in his other ear and was trying to keep the beat with his feet, both his feet.

Who says these “La La” land folk cannot chew gum and walk at the same time. He was clearly listening to the Grateful Dead and making an appointment for some social interaction later that night. For all I know he was setting up to score some cocaine when the plane landed.

He asked me what I did. I told him.

He said: “well, Dude, we don’t speak the same language then, do we?

That ended any chance of conversation. Thankfully.

My son came to the airport to pick me up. He was ebullient. I was catatonic (quick-Google those words!). When we arrived at his home, I said hello to my daughter-in-law, kissed my granddaughter, swallowed two pills guaranteed to make me more “La La” land-like” and went to bed.


I have some questions for you to ponder.

1. Why do we go west to get to the Far East?
2. Why is “La La” land on the west coast, but Hong Kong is in the east?
3. Why are we not more grateful that the people we need to watch and keep track of congregate in “La La” land instead of dispersing throughout the country?
4. Would the president consider changing “flight attendants” back to Stewardesses?
5. Since China owns most of America, could we ask them to run our airlines and our airports?

Next time the travel bug bites you…bite it back and take a cruise.

Save the Planet: One Towel at a Time

Notes of Concern….

Jackson Blair


SAVE THE PLANET ONE TOWEL AT A TIME

Over the past year I have stayed at a number of hotels.

Some of these hotels have been in this country. Others have been in foreign countries.

These hotels charge anywhere from $250 to $400 for one night.
This is, of course, highway robbery. Imagine if you tried to get a couple of hundred bucks from someone for sleeping in one of the bedrooms in your home.

There really isn’t any way to avoid the “nasties” of travel these days. I have a lot of gripes about travel but the one I want to feature today is: towels.

At my house, we get clean towels once each week.
I think that is pretty reasonable.
And as I pointed out earlier, the wife does not charge me to use the room.

At the hotels I visit, you are greeted with a sign in the bathroom that says, essentially, “if you are a complete “rube” we are really going to make some cash off of you.” Of course, this is translated in a much more genteel way.

The hotel owners tell you that they are bending over backwards to try to save on water bills. Then they tell you they are definitely supporting “green” programs everywhere they have hotels. And then, subtly of course, they suggest that if you would just not expect a new and clean towel each day, it would save ever so much of the planet and your children and grandchildren would be relieved of the horrendous burden you would place on them otherwise. As you read, guilt sets in throughout your body.

Of course at a couple of hundred “bucks” per night, which gets you a bed to sleep in that is probably bigger than the one you have at home, but not nearly as comfortable, a bathroom that has slippery tile and marble all over the place, and a lighted shaving mirror, you thought it might be a real treat to have a new towel, fresh and clean, each and every day. You thought just a little treat would be OK especially considering the “green” stuff you have in your wallet that they are not trying to help you save.

But they have to ruin it.

You read further. If you are the kind gentleman that usually frequents their establishment you will simply hang your towel back on the rack and that will be a secret code that tells the maid she doesn’t have to remove it, clean it, or replace it in the morning.

In other words, less work for the hotel employee. Dirty towel for you, the guest. No discount on room however.

If you are the miserable human being they hope you are not, you should just pitch your towel in the bathtub and that will tell the maid you are a miserly, out-of-touch, ingrate who is out to ruin the world for her children and grandchildren. Implied in this is the very real possibility the maid might short sheet your bed, put germ- laden sheets on the bed, or not clean your toilet.

The possibilities are endless.

You wonder if the hotel simply said they would knock off $10 per night on the room charge if you helped them save labor costs they wouldn’t be more successful. You also wonder if they suggested you just leave an extra $10 for the maid, that wouldn’t also accomplish their goals. Your foolishly wonder if the hotel profit goes up or down as a result of the “green” and “water saving” program. Now there is a tough one!

You do the math. Eight hundred rooms, a couple of towels per room, no need to wash and dry them, savings in the millions!

So you bite the bullet. You hang the towel back on the rack. You dress and you head for the lobby feeling pretty good about yourself. You are part of the good guy club now!

Then you see the huge waterfall the hotel has placed in the lobby, the one that starts on the 4th floor and cascades down to the entrance of the building. You look around to see if you are in the wrong building. This cannot be the building owned by the people who are saving the world by conserving water.

You come across a wide expanse of lawn outside the hotel. Sprinklers that are timed to water the grass every sixty minutes are magically watering it while you watch. You have the urge to run out with cupped hands and try to save some of the water, while shouting “turn it off, turn it off!”

Beyond the well-watered lawn you see the valet-parking stand.

There is a nice sign there, it tells you they can wash and wax your car while you are a guest at the hotel. You notice over by the automatic washing tunnel there are eight guys, all with two or three towels in their arms, drying the cars as they come out of the wash and then throwing the wet towels into a washing machine so they can be cleaned and used again immediately.

Aha, clean towels for car washing, dirty towels for guest bathing. With this kind of a mission statement, this hotel company stock should skyrocket. Right!

You sit down in the lobby. You order a double scotch “neat.”

Then you get up and walk directly to the elevator. You arrive on your floor of the hotel and you key in to your room. You go in the bathroom and you grab every towel you can find and you throw them all in the tub, thus signaling in “maid code” that they are all to be replaced with nice, new, soft, sweet smelling fresh ones.

You walk back out of your room and march down the hall with a victorious feeling.

But, you still wonder what the maid is going to do about cleaning your toilet now.