|
If
I was ever captured by some enemy forces and subjected to torture,
I think I could hold out as long as they didn’t force me to sit in
an airline seat for an extended period of time. The term ‘cruel
and unusual punishment’ should be applied to anyone who is forced
to sit for hours on end in a seat that measures about 24 inches
across and 30 inches or so front to back. This is not normal for
live human beings. It might work if you were a corpse, but then
you wouldn’t know anyway.
These measurements could apply if you
were a toy poodle, but not your average sized American. Of course,
toy poodles can’t sit in the seats either, since they can’t open and
shut the seat belts by themselves, much less sit on the exit rows.
Cats probably could if they wanted to do so, but they’d have to
think about it and get back to you on their decision. Anyway, here I
am in such a seat on a flight back from Germany the other day. Fool
that I am, I have picked up a book in the Frankfurt airport that
sounds interesting. It should since I had read it a year or so ago
and had forgotten what the title was. So, now I’m stuck in the seat
from hell, for the next 9 hours with nothing to read except some
German newspapers, which don’t help at all.
Seeing that I’m desperate, the lady next
to me is gracious enough to hand me a copy of some new magazine
called…..”US”. Having nothing else to do, I start reading this and
am in hopes that I will learn something that will be of value to me
or something I might want to know about. Sadly, I am mistaken. One
person makes the comment that the magazine is “really a scholarly
exploration of the unusual rituals of those celebrity types”.
Another makes the comment that it looks more like a “cheesy gossip
rag”. I have to agree with the latter. Let me start off by
describing what the lead article is about. It’s a study (very
scientific, I’m certain) about movie stars wearing their undershirts
on the outside where they can be seen. Now, it’s beyond me as to why
anyone wants to do this, but if it floats your boat, then who cares?
On the other hand is this material we need to know?
Another article deals with which star
has what is being called a PUH. For the uninformed, this is a
‘personal umbrella handler’. I suppose the bigger the star, the more
folks you have to have around you to do all of the various mundane
things most of us do for ourselves, like hold our own umbrellas or
open our car doors. Or maybe they have someone stand in line for
them at McDonalds for the big Mac…. The magazine manages to hold my
attention for maybe, 5 or 6 minutes, then it becomes obvious what
this thing is made of, which is pure nothing. I don’t care that 6
major female stars have dated 100 men among them. I don’t care that
someone famous sleepwalks. I don’t care about anything in this
worthless publication and I hand it back over to the lady in the
next seat. The way she looks at me indicates that I may have hurt
her feelings by giving it back so soon. Maybe I should have
pretended to read it cover to cover. Nope, couldn’t fake that.
Perhaps, I ‘m just too old for this stuff…maybe I’m too
cynical…who knows?
The way I feel is simply that I don’t
know any of these people and probably never will so what do I care
about the kind of sheets they buy or where they find the best
apples? It bothers me not that they have money and can spend it like
it was going out of style. I think being an entertainer would be a
very tough profession for anyone. I applaud the folks who seem to
rise above all of the hoopla and fawning they seem to have to
contend with. Like most of us, I have a limited amount of free time
to spare and don’t want to waste what I have reading about people I
don’t know that are living lives most of us can’t relate to. Someone
once made the quote that went something like….”All men are created
equal…only the rich are different” or something like that. Oh, well
enough about some dumb magazine…..here comes the in-flight
movie…let’s hope it has something with some redeeming social
values…..let’s see…it’s something called…”Dumber and Dumber” ……sad
times we live in aren’t they?
|
