Inner Monologue: The Little Cat

"I need to sit here. Wait, I'm small. See? I'm small. Look, your chest is the perfect size for me to sit on. Am I blocking your view of your blackberry? How is that possible? I'm small."

Logrolling Off of Archer: More About Air Travel

Why is it news that the airlines are charging a whopping $10 more to fly the Sunday after Thanksgiving? Because it's an opportunity to show airline customers kvetching about ten bucks and whining about how the evil airlines are gouging them with fees?

As far as I can remember, the airlines have always charged a little more to.travel on high-volume days. It's basic supply and demand, folks -- on the days that everyone wants to travel, the airline takes advantage of the scarcity of seats to up their revenue a little bit. What's wrong with that? You want a cheaper ticket? Take another half day off from work and travel at 10am on the following Monday. You'll pay less and probably have the added bonus of a flight that isn't packed to the rafters with screaming kids and armrest-hogging fatsos. Hell, you may even get a row to yourself.

And no whining about how dismal the flying experience is. Of course it sucks. It sucks because everyone has gotten so used to paying 300 bucks for a round-trip JFK-LAX ticket that the airlines are backed into the corner of eliminating your bag of Chex Mix and charging you to check a bag just to stay financially afloat for another month. You wanted to pay the equivalent of bus fare to jet cross-country in a few hours? Then a bus ride is what you'll get.

Last week I went online to see what flights I wanted to take for my upcoming trip to LA, and yes, there were round-trip fares as low as $300. Then I clicked over to business class fares and the price jumped to $2500-$3000. First class was something like 5 grand. I've taken those flights before, and they are always full. So those thirty or so passengers in first and business class represent about 2-3x the gross revenue of the 150 passengers in coach.

I've been fortunate enough to fly business class to California for work, and I'm well aware that I won't arrive any faster than someone in coach, I have to use the same crappy, cramped bathroom, and I'm breathing the same stale recycled air as everyone else. You want to know what that extra two+ grand bought my company? The "privilege" of boarding the aircraft early (so I can sit in the tin tube even longer!), no checked baggage fees, or even better, plentiful overhead space so I needn't worry about checked bags, all the liquor I might want, gratis, a nice hot 3-course meal with real silverware, one of those personal video thingamajigs, and best of all, a seat that reclines nearly all the way, so after I've drunk myself into a stupor over breakfast I can pass out for the rest of the flight. Oh, and the warm nuts. Don't forget about the warm nuts. You can add that up as many times as you want, it still doesn't add up to 2 grand's worth of extras. Where does the rest of it go? As far as I can remember, no one's ever come around offering hand jobs up there in business or first, so it must be subsidizing all those $150-per-leg seats back in coach. Not to mention paying the flight crew's paltry salaries, maintenance and fuel costs, ground staff at both ends, baggage handlers, airport tariffs, and those aggravating TSA agents who want to confiscate my Jergen's and nail clippers.

I watched a show on cable (can't remember which channel, maybe CNBC?) "Inside American Airlines" and they ran down the numbers on one of those JFK-LAX round trips, and at the end of the day, the total profit for the airline for that particular aircraft was something like 200 bucks.

So you know what? Stop acting like flying cross-country is a basic human right that is being insulted by an airline charging you $3 for a can of Pringles or $10 because you want to fly on the busiest travel weekend of the year.. If you want a better flying experience, put your money where your mouth is and buy it. Are you willing to pay a couple hundred dollars more for your ticket?

I didn't think so.

Big "Whoops!" on SNL Season Opener

I stayed up to Watch the season opener of SNL last night. It was only so-so, with the exception of Weekend Update, which was completely hilarious -- is it me or was Seth Myers totally killing it?

U2 is officially too big for anything but stadium shows. They looked straitjacketed on the tiny SNL stage, and both of their performances were oddly bloodless.

Now, Megan Fox. Who seems to have had the fastest hot-to-not trajectory of any celebrity in living memory (maybe the Octomom has her beat). Can any of you guys explain the Megan Fox thing to me? Because I just have never gotten it. Generally, I can look at the latest object of male lust (Angelina Jolie, Jessica Biel, Scarlett Johanssen) and say, "yeah, I get that," but Megan Fox has me completely baffled. From an empirical standpoint, she's pretty enough, but there's always been a vaguely "ick" feeling about her, as if inside her shoes she has dirty feet. Doesn't a date with Megan Fox require a course of penicillin for a week afterward? There's just something "schkeevatz" about her. Plus, lately, stories have started to ooze out that she's a big asshole. So -- if any of you men out there can explain her appeal to me, I'd really appreciate it.

Best (unintentional) moment of the show: the biker chick skit, when one of the new female cast members, in a "frickin'" and "freakin'" laden skit, slipped and blurted "I fuckin' love you!"

I've spent a little bit of horrified time with biker chicks, and trust me, the skit didn't go far enough. These are tough and scary women, so coarse and rough in their speech that it will turn your hair white. "Fuck" is not the worst of their words, let me tell you. The c-word flies with just as much casual frequency. They scare me a little bit, because these are females who think nothing of getting into fights at the slightest provocation. The amount of anger, resentment at the world, and violence that simmers under the surface in the biker lifestyle is astonishing. It ain't pretty, let me tell you, and I'm puzzled by the dark glamour it holds for my best friend. And I won't say anything about the rampant drug and alcohol use and casual criminality...its so far outside the boundaries of reasonable society that I feel like a big narc when I'm at a biker party. I know, Jane has standards for acceptable behavior, albeit pretty low ones, but they do exist.

Anyway, I'm sure the skit is all over Youtube by now. Catch her expression as soon as the f-bomb flies -- "Oh, SHIT! I am so fired." Then watch her try to regain her composure for the rest of the skit. You actually have to feel a little sorry for the poor girl!

Sometimes What You See on "Law & Order" is Real

Like the rivalry between the NYPD and the FBI.

You know that big terrorism bust that the local news has been touting with all those glowing stories?

Well, it turns out it was just another colossal fuckup by the NYPD.

Read about it here.

Slice of Life, Friday Night, Brooklyn

As I write this, I'm sort of semi-reclined and curled up in my chair watching the news. My little cat jumped up to join me and is now curled up on my lap, purring madly and occasionally kneading my arm and looking up at me with that blinky lovesexy gaze that a contented cat will give you. She just lifted her head and gave my nose a little lick.

The weather is turning crisp, with that fresh apple bite of coming fall. Soon it'll be time to start layering blankets.

Judge Street is quiet tonight, unusual for a Friday. No idling cars with booming bass. No groups of idling teens on the stoop of number twelve, gossiping and giggling in high Boriqua voices.

It's my favorite time of year in New York.

I have to go to Los Angeles next week. I'm leaving on Wednesday and not returning until the following Friday. Nine days, during which there will be a king-sized bed in a luxe hotel room with a fireplace, two gigantic flat screen tv's (because it wouldn't be America without a television no further than ten feet away at all times), Aveda bath products and an ocean view. Nine days, during which I will eat the freshest sushi imaginable, spend some free time walking to Manhattan Beach, and try to spot celebrities on Robertson Boulevard.

On the other hand, no little cat will crawl into my lap, there will be no big chair for me to curl up in, and for nine days the full inventory of my stuff will be defined by the perimeter of my wheely Samsonite.

I don't know why I'm not very excited for this trip. Usually I really enjoy getting out of the office to go on press, but this time...

I dunno.

I Need to Brag About Something

I have done a lot of my posts since June from my Blackberry. No, no, you don't understand how monumental this is...I look at my laptop and think, "very, very expensive and delicate typewriter." So this is equivalent of finding water on Mars.

Aren't I clever? I'm fricking Sissy Hankshaw with that bad boy, is what I am.

Just wanted to pat myself on the back.

Peter, I Can See Your House From Here

I just returned home from a daytrip to Chicago, and while I don't exactly love getting up at 3am to catch a six o'clock flight, I don't really mind it so much either. It's just part of the job.

In case you haven't noticed, I have a thing for air travel.

It's not just my slightly ghoulish interest in plane crashes; I am intrigued, occasionally appalled, but ultimately fascinated by pretty much every aspect of the entire travel experience, from how my luggage gets on the right plane (barcodes and conveyor belt sorters kind of like a USPS Bulk Mail Center) to how a plane actually flies (Bernoulli's Principle, of course. It's all about the curve of the wing assembly and how the differential between the speed of the air flowing over the wing and the air flowing under the wing creates lift and snoooooooore). I mean, one of my internet must-reads every Friday is Patrick Smith's "Ask the Pilot" on Salon. (He's linked over in that sidebar on the right side of this blog.)

I know: NERD ALERT!

I'm such a geek that I was tickled when I moved into my apartment in 2004 and learned that it was under the approach path to LaGuardia Airport. I've been known to sit in my front windows or on my front stoop just watching the planes go by. I'm close enough to LaGarbage that I can see the landing gear (as it is another two to three minutes to landing by the time a plane passes over Judge Street, if the gear isn't down, there's something seriously wrong and you should listen for a large boom), and I like to idly recite to myself the airline (identified by its livery, or "paint job" for you non-geeks out there) and the type of aircraft. "Hmmm...American, MD-80; USAir, 737; Delta, 757...Song? What the heck is Song?" Okay, so that was back in ought-four, Song doesn't exist anymore...) I've been known to stand in my bathroom watching incoming flights and timing the separation between the planes. New York has the most congested airspace in the country and there is a plane landing at LGA every 45 to 60 seconds. Scary, huh? Those ATCks really are pushing tin!

See? Geek.

Two years ago, flying into Pittsburgh for Dad's funeral, I was looking out the window and casually thought to myself, upon spotting a split-entry ranch well off the road and surrounded by trees, "That looks a lot like Uncle Chuck's house...Holy shit! It IS Uncle Chuck's house!"

Tonight, flying home on American, we had a smooth flight with clear-clear-clear skies and I was lucky enough to have the A-seat in a row not obstructed by a wing, and as we flew up the East River, I was able to start pinpointing landmarks (to myself, of course. I'm a geek, but not an audible one). Statue of Liberty, Governor's Island, Ferry Terminal, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburgh bridges...ooh, that's Metropolitan Avenue, there's Kellogg's Diner with its hideous purple and pink neon outlining the whole building, and holy cow, I can see my little one-block street with the building on the corner with the five bright orange lights on the outside and just a few doors down, with the three bright lights on the facade, I could see my own house! So cool.

What did I tell you? Geek.

But as Jesus said, blessed are the geeks...

Do you need any further evidence of my geekitude? I just wrote a thousand words -- if that isn't evidence enough, I don't know what is.

Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew

So Mackenzie Phillips' big reveal on Oprah is that she was screwing her father, "Papa" John Phillips.

I'm so skeeved by this that I can't write anymore.

How to Waste a Beautiful Sunday

Oh boy. I'm not a Jets fan, but I loved seeing them put the spank on New England. I'm sorry, but what kind of team isn't even affiliated with a city but calls itself after a region? It's a football team, not an airline. Pick a damn city. Boston, Hartford, BurlingtonN something.

Now its time for a blue-collar bash -- Steelers-Bears.

Roethlisberger just scored Spaeth on 4th and goal, 92 yards on first possession. It's a beautiful thing. Go Big Ben! It is a good thing that the next couple of weeks they're playing weenie teams, cause they are Troy-less for at least the next couple of weeks.

Secret confession: I really watch because I think Mike Tomlin is all kinds of chocolately delish.

When Does Joyce Carol Oates Sleep and Eat?

It's become a semi-annual thing, hasn't it, to think to oneself, "Hmmm, isn't it about time for Joyce Carol Oates to put out a new book?"

Well, it has for me, at least.
JCO has published FIFTY SEVEN books since 1964. Think about it -- that's two a year!

Is it just me, or is that mind boggling?

The woman teaches creative writing at Princeton, which one would think is a huge time-suck in and of itself. Imagine having to deal with the fragile egos of a seminar of post-adolescent writers (is there any creature more self-regarding than a college-age writer? Well, maybe the hipster population of Brooklyn, but that's a topic for a different post).

Who knows, maybe she has a big red rubber stamp that says, "forget it, kid, you'll never be a writer -- go down the hall and sigb up for Krugman's classes," and that frees up her time for writing.

The only conclusion I can draw is that she must spend every free waking moment writing something. It's kind of inspirational, and oh so basic when you think about it. The lesson is: the way to be a writer is to write all the time (have you seen her? She's certainly not wasting any time fussing about how she looks, that's for damn sure. Too mean?).

I've always got so many ideas for stories, characters, scenes. But they fly around in my head like those flocks of birds that take off from telephone lines and whirl around in crazy circles before settling down again. I haven't mustered the discipline to snag even one out of the sky.

Why is that? There was a period in my life, spanning the time roughly from when I was about four years old to my early twenties, when I did nothing BUT write stories. What happened? Lots of other people do it, why haven't I?

Now I find that we are surrounded by a whole lot of published crap (much of it. perpetrated by my own gender, I'm sad to say) and when I dip my toes into the latest airport bestseller, the first thing that crosses my mind is "I'm a better writer than this," not "Wow, I wish I could write like this."

It's not a matter of reading books about writing (guilty as charged, I've read them all, and I will whole-heartedly recommend Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird" and Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones") but of actually writing.

Oh, and please don't talk to me about The Artist's Way. There's something insufferably smug and self-satisfied about Julia Cameron. I think her 12-step bullshit creeps into her books, and besides, she is a writer who only writes about writing. It's a little too meta for me. (I guess you can give her a tiny break; she was married to Martin Scorsese, after all, and if I was a super-ambitious moderate talent married to an authentic genius, I'd probably drink and drug, too.)

You know what I'm going to give myself for my birthday? The time to write stories, that's what.

Now -- go write something. And steer clear of Krugman's office. That way lies madness.

President Obama Makes The Sunday Morning Rounds

Tomorrow morning, tune in to the morning shows. President Obama is going to be on five of them.

Of course, he's snubbing ClusterFOX in favor of Univision. This has sent crybaby Chris Wallace into fits. I mean, what does it say about your network when the President of the United States would rather talk to the network of El Sabado Gigante con Don Francisco (you have to imagine it in that guy's voice, really) than you?

It's smart, actually. Why bother with a network that talks almost exclusively to a tiny, vocal, teabagging, lunatic right-wing fringe who believe that Glenn Beck has something important to weep about when Latinos are the fastest-growing minority in the country?

I think it shows that President Obama is fully aware that FOX is now completely irrelevant to the national conversation. By showing them the back of his hand, he's semaphoring a huge message to the rest of the media that he will not talk to unserious hacks calling themselves journalists (Mike Wallace must be embarrassed by his kid every single day).

Of course, he's finishing off Monday by going on Letterman's show. Man, that must REALLY chap Chrissy Wallace's hide.

My prediction for Wallace's guest lineup for tomorrow morning; Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Dick Armey, and Joe Wilson.

Keep Pluckin' That Chicken!

I've decided that I'm going to make that my new buzz-phrase.

It works really well as a snarky answer to someone who is engaged in or is going to engage in something that is so hopeless, so mind-numbingly futile, that you can only throw your hands up and say,

"Keep pluckin' that chicken!"

Mark Sanford, you're going to work on falling back in love with your wife? Keep pluckin' that chicken!

Joe Wilson, you want your Wikipedia entry to show that you did good things in Congress and look beyond your ill-mannered outburst for the rest of eternity? Keep pluckin' that chicken!

Sarah Palin, you want to be taken seriously as a human being? Keep pluckin' that chicken! You betcha!

In case you you don't know what I'm talking about, just go to YouTube and search for Ernie Anastos' F-bomb. I'm sure he had "plucking" in mind when he made the statement, but every now and then, an unfortunate rhyme will be standing nearby and will shoulder the intended word out of the way to grab its moment in the spotlight.

Happens to all of us.

I'm Not Saying...but...

The funniest internet meme going lately is the "Did G1enn B3ck rape and murder..."

Just google his name + murder and read the reddit string for a good chuckle.

I'm not saying he did it, but some people ARE saying it, and all I'm saying is that he hasn't produced the long-form document proving that he didn't do it. America deserves the truth and we will not be intimidated!

Hoist by his own petard, the black-souled alkie scumbag.

Hahahaha!

Jane Talks About Sports (Gay Friends, Feel Free to Go To the Kitchen for a Drink)

First order of business:

The classiest act from an era of Yankee class acts (alums of the Classy class include Bernie Williams and Paul O'Neill, but most definitely NOT overpaid cracker douchebags Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson), Derek Jeter passed Lou Gehrig's hit record last night! 2722 -- wooooohooo!

What is it about Derek? He was born in pinstripes and he'll die in pinstripes, I reckon, and he just seems to be an all around good egg. Quiet, great work ethic, good character. No showboat, and even his mishmash ethnicity is a perfect reflection of the city he's played in since 1992.

Oh, and still so cute.

Unfortunately, despite Jeter's Big Hit last night, the Orioles seem to be owning the Yanks this series.

Total side note, the pitcher of record for JBH was Chris Tillman, a Baltimore rookie who seems to have a big future. Your Janey knows this kid's father!

Second order of business:

My hometown Steelers won the NFL season opener, squeaking out the win in overtime, which I missed because I was so tired I went to bed at 10 o'clock. (I'll say it again -- I'm OLD!). The bad news is that our resident Tasmanian Devil, Troy Polamalu, injured his MCL and will be out for 3-6 weeks. Bad news...

Troy's yet another class player -- a total animal on the field (but in a fun, Muppety kind of way -- when you watch him play, you can almost hear Frank Oz: "AniMAL! AniMAL!") and so quiet, soft-spoken, and gentlemanly off that you can't believe he is the same person.

Third order of business:

The Penguins got to visit the White House last week. So that's two Pittsburgh teams who have gotten to meet President Obama this year! The Prez couldn't resist getting in a dig that he's really a Blackhawks fan (even I smirked at that -- our basketball-playing, hip-hop-loving President, a hockey fan? Come on!), but since the 'hawks bought the Stanley Cup Repeller (aka Marion Hossa) this year, Obama'll have to start rooting for the Caps.

Well, that's my sports roundup for the week. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Found a New Blog I Love

Linking to a Buddhist doctor.