None of the bleeped words are curses. The imagination’s a fun thing, eh?
I spent this weekend in southwestern Ohio, where my girlfriend is from, at her friend’s wedding. The wedding was a blast, but it turned out to be not nearly the most eventful part of the weekend.
The most eventful part? My 8-hour stay in the Dayton, Ohio, airport. Which, as I sit and write this isn’t over. But write it I must, because otherwise it will be forgotten and I will still be bored enough to buy more food, and I’ve run out of places to buy food without looking like a weirdo. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.
10:30 My girlfriend, Claire, and I get in the car to go to the airport. Her flight is at 12:30 and mine’s not until 6:30, but terrific and otherwise rideless boyfriend that I am, I come with.
11:00 We get to the airport. Check-in goes smoothly enough, despite the fact that it can’t possibly not look suspicious that I’m checking in seven and a half hours early for my flight. But we check in, I say “thanks!” to the guy at the Continental counter whose only contribution to my experience was to parrot the exact instructions on the self check-in screen, and head to security.
11:10 I make two discoveries. One, that the Glee soundtrack I heard playing on the PA system and thought was hysterical and childish, was in fact coming from my iPad, which had unintentionally turned on and started playing what I promise wasn’t already cued up and paused because I have Glee on repeat at all times. You’re welcome, TSA people.
Discovery number two: My feet smell terrible. Even in flip flops. It’s too distressing to talk about this at length, but know that my feet are bad-smelling to the point where I’m not the only one who knows this.
11:15 We’re through security, and Claire and I decide to eat. One look at the airport restaurant’s menu and the $14 potato skins later, we decide maybe we’re not hungry. So we eat Munchies, the greatest snack that has ever been created, and wait for the flight.
11:40 Claire’s flight is overbooked, and they’re taking volunteers to get a later flight. Only they don’t call it overbooked; according to AirTran, they’re simply having a “slightly oversold situation.” This leads me to conclude they’re only oversold by about a third of a person, and that this might not really be a problem.
Side note: what happens if there are no volunteers to give up their seats? Do they keep raising the stakes until finally the ticket agent is offering you their uniform, $50 grand, and a night in their home, and will throw in a dance just as a bonus? If so, shouldn’t everyone on the flight band together, raise the reward as high as possible, and then split it, giving a higher percentage to the people who opt to stay? I don’t see the downside here.
Now that I think about this, I’m thinking it’s a game show: “The Price is Right” meets “Punk’d”, meets another show I want to see: “For a Million” - ten contestants, a million dollars, and each one says what they’d do for a million dollars. The public votes, and the winner has to do it, on live TV, for the million. So add that in, and “Laid Over” (the working title) could be a great show: bring people to the craziest, dirtiest, most remote airports, and see what you have to offer them to get them to stay in the airport.
12:00 Claire boards her flight. We hug, we kiss, we say adorable things, and then I go off in search of food because she ate all the Munchies while I was trying to figure out how much they’d give her to volunteer her seat.
12:05 I find a restaurant called Max & Erma’s, order lemonade with free refills, and hunker down to hang out. My happy discovery was that free refills are crucial layover fare, because you get to be in the restaurant eating or drinking as long as you want, without spending any more money. My waitress? Not a fan. But Marge will live.
12:40 I’m already bored. This afternoon might not go well.
12:41 I’ve got my iPad! Luckily for me, my iPad has all kinds of great applications for videos and music and entertainment. Unluckily for me, the Internet here is about as fast as the lady zooming by me on her motorized scooter. So after a minute of getting incredibly excited about my iPad, and the Netflix-induced joy that is about to be mine, I am foiled once again.
12:51 I finally feel bad staying at Max & Erma’s with only my lemonade (which is on about refill #13), so I order food: “Cheese skewers,” which are essentially blocks of fried cheese that you dip in ranch dressing. 16 of them for $6. Best decision ever.
1:10 The cheese skewers are gone, and I’ve decided there really ought to be a warning on the plate: “Do not eat all of these in 35 seconds!” I need to walk off the stomachache that is coming at me like a pack of linebackers, so I pay my bill and go in search of somewhere else to hang out.
1:30 After two or three laps around the airport (not nearly as impressive a feat in DAY as it would be in JFK), I find - you guessed it - more food. This time, it’s a bar called “Fiesta Lounge.” There’s a World Cup game on today, so I figure I’ll get a beer, camp out, and watch the game.
1:40 I’ve got a beer, I’ve camped out, and…I’m watching the College World Series. I’m all for baseball, and I know a couple of the guys on the UVA team (which isn’t playing, but still makes me like college baseball a little more), but it’s not exactly what I want to watch for the 43 days it feels like are ahead of me.
1:43 Claire calls. “I landed! What are you doing?” Mean.
2:30 The World Cup game starts, but I wouldn’t know, because apparently Florida State vs. Vanderbilt baseball is infinitely more important and watchable. I check to make sure the game is on TV SOMEWHERE and then ask the bartender in my very best nice-guy-David voice, “hey, do you mind changing the channel on that TV?”
2:33 The bartender just finished her long, sorry pause with a “you can’t do it?”
2:33 I’m not sure what to say…
2:35 Bailed on the conversation with the waitress, and went back to the TV. I found how to change the channel, but only after a brief moment of turning off every single TV in the bar and making them go grey and grainy. Oopsies. Anyway, the game’s on now!
3:10 What was once an empty bar is now packed to the gills with people drinking and watching the World Cup. I debate asking the waitress for a cut of her tips, because I clearly deserver them for putting the game on TV, but since she hasn’t been over to my table since our little stand-off, I decide against this. I drink my beer in quiet, and watch the game.
4:40 The game’s over - Germany wins convincingly, 4-0. Good game, and a GREAT way to kill 2+ hours. But now I’m the last one at the bar, and while “first in, last out” is a good thing when you’re talking about the gym, it’s not such a badge of honor at a bar. So I leave.
5:00 I’m bored. So guess what I’m going to do? Parktake in the great pastime of our generation - eating to kill time and suppress feelings.
5:02 Quizno’s, normally very exciting, let me down today. I ordered a Turkey Ranch and Swiss sandwich, which has those three things plus lettuce and tomato. Except there’s a minor problem: “we don’t have any lettuce or tomato. And we’re almost out of ranch. But I can get enough out.” So, technically, I’m still getting a Turkey Ranch and Swiss sandwich.
5:03 Oh wait, no I’m not. I’m getting a Turkey Swiss and Bread sandwich. The lady behind the counter hands the guy behind me his sandwich, and looks at me forlornly while she tells me she burnt my sandwich, with the last of the ranch on it. Do I want something else? Except she only has mayo.
5:06 My sandwich is gone. Not the best sandwich, but at least I’m full, and I killed six minutes. Little victories.
5:15 I decide to brave the Internet connection one more time and download 500 Days of Summer, a movie I’ve wanted to see for a while. I go to iTunes, try to rent the movie, and get “your account information has changed. Please verify it.” So I dutifully log in, review the information, change all of it because it was wrong, and try to rent it again.
“Your iTunes account information has changed. Please verify your account information.” I KNOW! I JUST CHANGED IT. But, dutifully, I go back in and make sure my account information is right. Then I try again to watch the glory that will surely be 500 Days of Summer.
5:17 “Your iTunes account information has changed. Please verify your account information.”
5:18 “Your iTunes account information has changed. Please verify your account information.” Screw this movie.
5:25 I call Claire, ever the patient girlfriend, and ask her to upload a movie (Superbad) to Dropbox, so I can watch it from there. She does, and then I go to download it.
5:35 The movie has downloaded 486 KB of data. That’s, like, four frames of the movie. This might not go well.
5:50 I’m about a megabyte and a half in, which’ll get me to approximately the third note of the intro song. I bail.
5:55 Just posted: my flight’s been delayed. New takeoff time: 8:45. New time I will have spent in the airport: 9.25 hours.
5:58 Out of sheer bored desperation, I just bought a book. It’s “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” by Tucker Max. I’m not in the mood for a dense or difficult book, and this seems like the perfect antidote.
6:05 I was right - though I laughed my coffee all over my phone a second ago, and that might be a problem.
6:25 Just peed for about the thirteenth time today, half out of boredom and half from the gallon or so of lemonade I drank this morning.
6:40 Tucker Max just keeps getting better. If you don’t get disgusted or offended easily (or really at all), and are looking for a book to pass a few hours, “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” is an excellent choice.
6:50 Fourteenth.
6:55 I complete my goal to purchase something from every store in this airport with a Grande coffee from Starbucks. My purchasing for the day (every single one from a different place): the current issue of The New Yorker, a coffee, a beer, cheese skewers and lemonade (the only double-buy of the day), I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, a water, and a three-minute massage in a massage chair. I don’t regret any of it, especially that massage chair, which I think I might try and use to replace my seat on the plane.
Speaking of Starbucks, the guy at the counter has been here since 4:00 this morning, and leaves at 8:45 tonight. I feel like a jerk, but then decide that he gets paid so he’s probably okay with so many hours. Self-pity returns.
7:10 A group of girls walks past me, does a collective double-take, and then keeps walking.
7:10 I’m the man.
7:12 The girls walk past again. They’re definitely staring at my iPad, not me in my hoodie-wearing and unshowered sexiness. It’s a crazy world we live in, folks.
7:25 Speaking of staring at my iPad, I’m now up to eight people who’ve actually stopped in their tracks to look at it, and three who have actually asked me about it. the iPad = uniting the world, one creepy middle-aged traveler at a time.
7:50 I think I’m winning the award for “person who doesn’t work here who has been here the longest.” I’m getting friendly nods from the lady in the magazine store, and the guy at my gate keeps looking at me wondering if I’m casing the joint or something.
8:10 We’re boarding! I’m almost sad to get on the plane, partly because I know pee #15 is coming but mostly because I know this airport like the back of my hand now, and feel like all these people are my friends.
Dayton, you’ve treated me well. Before our second date, please get faster WiFi - or at least lettuce and tomato.
How BP Deals With Office Coffee Spills
Sir, I think we’re underestimating just how much coffee was spilled.
I believe that most writing worth reading is the product, at least to some degree, of this extraordinarily intimate confrontation between the disorderly impressions in the writer’s mind and the more or less orderly procession of words that the writer manages to produce on the page. When I think about the writers I loved to read when I was in high school and college, I know what mattered most to me was the one-on-one relationship I felt I was developing with the writer’s thoughts. It was fantastic to feel I was alone with a writer, engaged in a splendid intellectual or imaginative conversation.
Alone, With Words - The New Republic
This is what I dream of becoming as a writer. And, by the way, this TNR article is a perfect representation of it.
As the Gulf turns dark and the polar ice cap melts, I intend to listen to Bach more and listen to the news less. It’s good to know that, in the midst of vast indifference and mediocrity and narcissism, mankind did manage to produce the St. Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor.
Some of History’s Firsts - then the EVO
I’m not totally sure I buy that the EVO 4G from Sprint is the culmination of all inventions, and is a slight technological breakthrough beyond the space shuttle (which this ad never says, but implies fairly heavily). But it’s a great ad anyway.
Young Woman Performs Dismal Rendition of Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’
Fun test: How long can you watch this video without laughing?
My result: 39 seconds. “I want your ugly” slayed me.
Who lives in NYC and wants to make it a personal quest to try every single one of the 101 with me? I’m game. And hungry.
Love this article. After reading productivity news, ideas, blogs and chatter over the last few years, I can do even better. Productivity in five words:
Go do it. Right now.
TV’s sort of the last frontier of bad language. Cursing is accepted in the workplace, among friends, and everywhere else it seems - except for the ultra-PC world of TV.
But now there are shows like “Dance Your A** Off” and “Sh*t My Dad Says”. Sure, they’re whatever-the-written-version-of-bleeped-is-ed, but when I say “there’s this great new show on!” I’m not going to tell people to watch “S H star T My Dad Says.” Spell it how you want, the show’s called Shit My Dad Says.
I say it’s fine, and I’m actually excited: who says shit’s a bad word anyway? Let’s make it totally allowed - I’d much rather yell “shit that hurts!” when I stub my toe than “oh gosh gee golly that smarts!”
