A Shouting Legacy: Tribute to Billy Mays

Yeah, this really happened.

The following is a transcript from the recent funeral for Billy Mays, outside Lakeland, Florida.

JOEL OSTEEN:  Ladies and gentlemen… we are gathered here today to remember TV’s Billy Mays; father, husband, host of incessant and  captivating infomercials.  I had planned a rousing sermon on brotherly love and the various avenues available to you if you wish to donate to my church, and what those avenues might get you once you reach the Pearly Gates.  But as I look out onto this loving crowd, I realize that I hardly knew Billy.  Yes, as I look out, I see faces I’m familiar with only through their outstanding products and accompanying commercials that run early mornings on cable variety stations and late night public access.  I see faces I can trust, faces that loved Billy.  And so now, I will open the floor to you, his friends and colleagues, to speak on your fondest memories of Billy Mays.  Let us pray:  Our father, who art in Heaven and who art available on porcelain plates with a donation of $10.00 or more to the Lakewood Church, half off be thy name if you act now, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.  Give us 30 days or your money back.  Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…  Mr. Osteen is interrupted by a funeral page. Oh, yes, in the sake of time, and your bill, Amen.

CROWD:  Amen

VINCE OFFER:  Mr. Offer removes a note from his pants pocket and unfolds it. Yeah, um, hi, my name is Vince.  I know, I know… Sham-Wow.  Yeah, well, look, I was gonna get up here and talk about how Billy inspired me and all, but that’d be a lie.  I recently… um… well, you saw the news.  Me and the hooker.  The crack.  Well, I just wanted to get up and say that I’ve been goin’ to meetings.  And I quit Sham-Wow!  I quit it!  Crowd whispers amongst itself. No!  No, you don’t understand!  I was using it all the time, man… like Billy here used to cram those damned mini-burgers into that fat, loud, bearded face of his!

CHEF TONY (from the audience):  YOU SHUT-A YOUR DAMN MOUTH-A!

VINCE OFFER:  You shut your mouth!  You ain’t even Italian, you lying sack of sh**!  I seen you, I seen you backstage takin’ that stupid hat off, and just chopping things, choppin’ em’ all the time!  Miracle Blade… more like Miracle Meth.  I saw you hack a turkey to pieces one time, and just throw it out!  You just cut it to cut it you sick, psychopathic, stereotype son of a bitch.  Wanna know how I know?  We smell our own.  I used to spill things, just so I could sit there and wipe ‘em up again.  Got to a point where I wore that headset every day, even when I was out on the street prowling for strange sex and some crack.  And look where it got me.  Look… look where it got Billy.

CATHY MITCHELL (from the audience):  DAMN YOUR LIES!

VINCE OFFER:  Lies!  Yeah that’s right!  Billy used to sit at home, late at night, and cook off dozens of Big City Sliders… and then you know what he’d do?  He’d puree them, and drink ‘em.  He’d drink and drink and drink… One night, Billy I were hangin’ out after INFOCON 2008…. and he says, “Vince, I got something to show you.”  He whispered it, real quiet, ain’t like nothin’ you all ever heard outta the man.  He takes me to his RV, and sits me down, and he starts cooking.  He says, “I stumbled across this invention, and I bought the rights, and, well, you can use it two ways.”  He turns back and he smiles.  “The first way, we can sell.  The other way… well… this sh** will take you down the rabbit hole, my friend.”  And did it ever.  Did it ever.  Billy, I’ll miss ya.  Hope you’re makin’ that big pitch in the sky…  Mr. Offer places a Sham-Wow on the coffin and walks off stage.  He comes back after a few seconds and retrieves it, then exits.

CATHY MITCHELL:  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry to everyone, I hate that Vince… he’s ruined so much for us, and now this?  Billy was a good man.  He was a good man.  He never, ever took his products for granted, and he never abused their power.  He counseled against it.  That’s right.  I used to make this… dessert.  It was… this is hard.  See, I used to take cookie dough from my favorite recipes, and… and I’d… I’d freebase it, OK?  I’d freebase cookies.  I’d mix them together, and I would just go to town, brother!  One day, Billy and I shared a set.  And I was trying this new bit, where I’d take my regular size, mixed up cookies, and I’d put it in the Xpress Redi-Set-Go… see it has this flat griddle inside, on the top and… C’mon… C’mon Cathy, you can do this… well, you could make these huge cookies.  And so I was trying out this huge cookie.  I called it… a, uh… this is so hard… a… cookizza.  Audience gasps.  I know, I know.  Anyway, so I’m baking this monstrosity, and Billy comes over and he says, “My God, what’s that delectable smell?”  So I explain it to him, and he just looks at me.  He rubs his beard, and he sits down next to the prop table I’m standing at, and he says, “Cathy,” he says to me, “Cathy, I want you to think about what you’re going to do.  I want you to consider your powers.  I want you to think about your audience, and what something like this… cookizza… might do to them.”  Then he asks me when the last time was I was at a meeting, and I just started crying.  And right there?  We had a meeting, just me and him.  Sure, I went on to promote and sell thousands of the Xpress Redi-Set-Go ovens, and I even pulled the cookizza trick with poor Joe, but I learned my lesson and Billy was right!  Billy was always right.  I kicked the cookizza thanks to him.  It haunts me… no more.

JOEL OSTEEN:  And finally, Billy’s best friend and confidante… I think we all know him very well, to close us out today… Mr. Anthony Sullivan.

Audience applauds politely.  Mr. Sullivan stands at the podium and stares into the distance quietly for 30 seconds or so.

ANTHONY SULLIVAN:  Wow, what can I say?  Billy’s dead.  He’s absolutely dead.  I’ve never seen someone so dead, it’s like he just up and died one night and now, he is incredibly dead.  Hi, I’m Anthony Sullivan, co-host of the hit television show, “Pitchmen”.  Has this ever happened to you? You wake the kids up for school, put some coffee on, and then, in a shocking twist to your normal routine, you find your husband dead on the bedroom floor.  What a mess!  It’s the kind of mess that can really screw up your day.  Well, not anymore.  Mr. Sullivan holds up a black Oxiclean Bottle. With my new, patent-pending Anthony Sullivan’s Oxiclean Oxicorpse!  Oxiclean Oxicorpse is a powerful chemical agent, combining the strength of  sulfuric acid, and the lovely scent of lilacs in the morning.  Watch.  Mr. Sullivan removes a black plastic bag from the podium, and dumps out a cat’s corpse on stage.  The crowd gasps. All you need is a little Oxicorpse!  Mr. Sullivan pours the detergent on the cat’s corpse.  It begins to sizzle.  It smells surprisingly like lilacs. And done!  No burying!  No dusty cremation!  No messy removing of limbs for compact transportation!  Just one cup of my amazing Anthony Sullivan’s Oxiclean Oxicorpse will make your grief disappear!  Just $19.95 if you call within the next 7 minutes!  But wait!  If you order now, I’ll send you not one, but two Oxiclean Oxicorpse bottles, for the same low price of $19.95!  We’ll even throw in a set of these polythylene, chemical resistant gloves and a pair of Anthony Sullivan’s All Purpose Face Mask Goggles, FREE!  Quick!  Call now! 

Mr. Sullivan bows his head and walks off stage to the sounds of BTO’s “For the Weekend”.

San Fran… oh come on.

I was geared up to write something praising San Francisco for its general awesomeness, but I’m finding it hard to focus.  So I’m going to just post some of my favorite pictures here, and I will leave you with this comment:  Bess and I had a great time, and we’re going back as soon as we can to check out some more of the city.  We walked Pier 39 extensively, all the way up and down Lombard Street, to the top of Coit Tower, made our way to Ghiradelli Square (twice), drove through Napa and Sonoma, visited the Muir Woods, saw the Golden Gate Bridge, ferried and walked Alcatraz, explored Chinatown, had drinks at the Top of the Mark, and finished the weekend with a spectacular fireworks display.  And still, I feel we’ve only scratched the surface.  Great city, great people, great everything, really.  No complaints for once.

Pee Pee Woman – The Flight Home

“I have to go to the bathroom.”  The young woman next to me tugged at her boyfriend’s sleeve just after takeoff, somewhere around 10,000 feet.  “I really have to go.”  She leaned over to me and tapped me on my shoulder, “Excuse me, I hate to do this, but I really have to pee.”

The thing about standing up at 10,000 feet while the plane you’re on is currently engaged in an ascent intended for climax at 32,000 feet,  is that you’re not supposed to.  There’s a handful of other reasons, mostly involving physics as well as FAA regulations and simple common sense, but essentially, you’re just not supposed to.  I mulled it over a bit, and unhooked my seat belt to make way for my neighbor.  After all, if anyone was going to fall, it’d be her.  And, in the interest of comedy, I had hoped in addition to a possible failed attempt at competing with nature’s favorite law, I’d also get to see an adult wet themselves publicly in a dramatic setting.  Such an event would make my life.

Minutes later she was back, the attendant forcing her back to her seat.  “That bitch won’t let me pee,” she whined to her still quiet partner.  “I really, really have to pee.”  She looked to me, “There’s going to be a problem, this is an emergency.”  I nodded apathetically.  The voice of my father rolled through my head: You should have gone before we left.

After situating myself, turning on the television, and stuffing in my ear phones, I had all but forgotten the whiner next to me.  The sound muted her complaints, but out of the corner of my eye I could see her panicking to her boyfriend, pointing back wildly to the bathroom.  She whipped around and pushed my shoulder.  I removed my ear phones.

“…emergency!  There’s going to be a problem, I have to get up, I have to get up!”  I stood once again, and she shoved by me and ran to the back of the plane like a dyslexic hijacker (”No Ahmed!  The FRONT of the plane!  THE FRONT!”).  I swiveled around to see the attendant in a shouting match with the woman, and after being told once again to come back to her seat, she did.  Before sitting, she turned toward the attendant.  “YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND I HAVE TO GO NOW.”  The flight attendant, a sleight woman with an expressionless, makeup-plastered face shot back:

“Ma’am, you’re an adult.  You can do what you want.   I’m asking you to sit down. If you want to stand up, understand it is your fault if you fall or hurt yourself.  Do you understand?”

The woman, panicked and, at this point, sweating, yelled back, “I UNDERSTAND.”

The sense of entitlement was palpable.  Readers will note my obsession with people who think they deserve things, even if laws or basic, common rules of society should preclude these people from feeling this way.  These people, however, feel that they are special, which is to say they feel the rest of us aren’t.  And trust me.  These people thought they were special.

Before takeoff, I overheard the woman talking to her parents about her and her boyfriend’s “exquisite” visits to various wineries throughout Napa.  And while such visits hardly indicate snobbery, the way she talked about them, as if she’d been to Mecca, did.  Bess and I visited two vineyards, and spent most of the time driving through wine country, its spectacle almost more impressive than the wine it produces.  I know it sounds unreasonable to consider this behavior alone would have me believe that these two were snobby douches.  And it is.  But it is merely one part to a larger, meaner sum.

Shortly after the bathroom incident, the woman returned to her seat and continued to complain to her boyfriend.  She even leaned over to me and had me remove my ear phones to exclaim, “Can you believe her?  I don’t understand, she was the attendant on my flight to San Francisco,” as if they were old friends.  “Ugh, I can’t believe these people.  Get a f***in life.”  No, seriously, she said that.

Her boyfriend opened his laptop when we were told we would be allowed to do so and slid a disc in.  “Sideways”.  I shit you not, after their trip to Napa, these two decided to watch “Sideways”.  I wanted to lean over and say in my best Stewie voice, “OH, delicious!  Look at me, look at me… okay, now, which one of you is Paul Giamatti???  OH, it’s YOU, it’s YOOOOU,” while pointing at the woman.  And so they spent a little under two hours laughing at the shared hi-jinxes of Thomas Hayden Church and Giamatti, clearly missing the point of the movie.  While wine is central to the theme of the story’s plot, the valley itself and the cultivation of the drink which we all eventually imbibe is a metaphor for… whatever, you get it.

Bess and I ordered some food mid-flight, and with our movies on pause, took time to have a small chat, y’know, just, “Hey, how’s your movie,” kind of stuff.  I turned back around and Pee Pee Woman was in my face.  “We’re going to order something.  Do you want anything?  We just want to f*** with the waitress.”  Waitress?  “I swear to God, I’m going to make her life hell.”  I thanked her politely and said we’d already ordered food.  “No, no, just to mess with her, do you want, like, three diet cokes or something?”  I fake laughed and replaced my headphones.

After their meal, they packed up their trash and stuffed it under the seat in front of them.  The woman laid her head down on her sheepish boyfriend’s lap, as he scrolled through pictures of their trip to Napa.  I didn’t get to look at all of them, but judging from what I saw, these people were alcoholics in wine connoisseurs’ clothing.  And they’d been driving the whole time.  The best part was they dressed up for it.  In most of the pictures, he was wearing a suit and tie, and her, a dress.  And it wasn’t like they had an event… they had different outfits for each day they were there.  One big week of dress up and drink.  (If you ever go to wine country, it’s casual.  The tourist industry in and around the area negates a hard standard for dress.  I mean, don’t show up in your “Big Johnson” t-shirt if you can help it.  But it’s a casual affair.)

And here’s why I’m writing this.  Each of these events and the couple’s accompanying behavior, in and of themselves, are little acts of assholery.  But the grand finale these two performed at the end of the flight serve as proof that these two were horrible, stupid, selfish people.  As we readied descent, the attendants came around asking for trash.  The couple ignored them as they walked by, and quickly unpacked their trash from under the seat and either kicked it around or put in the seat pockets in front of them, giggling, as if this sort of thing was going to deliver the vengeance this woman’s bladder so rightly deserved.  My mouth hung open as I watched this, embarrassed that I was even in their immediate proximity. I’ve never said it, nor have I found a time to say it appropriately, but this would have been the time to exclaim, “Well, I never!”

I like to think that these two spent a week in Napa celebrating themselves in fancy clothes, getting drunk while pretending they were as good as the company they keep back home.  (They seem like the couple who tried Napa because someone bragged about it at a party, and they felt left out.)  I also like to think that even though it was fun for them, they will go on living in denial of the fact that while Napa is considered a nice vacation for their cut of society, how they ended it was probably one of the most white trash things they could have done.  And that no matter what they do in life, this is the sort of behavior that defines them.  Not their material worth, or their professional achievements.  No amount of philanthropy will forgive their actions.  If these people solved the economic crisis and cured AIDS, they’d still be the assholes from Virgin America Flight 84 to me.

Sorry, had to get that out of my system before talking about how awesome our trip was.  I’ll have more up this week, as well as photos.

Somewhere over America…

I’m on my way to San Francisco, enjoying Virgin America’s on board wifi when I get this:

Loren: in case you were wondering…it is Rob Thomas week on iTunes…(no joke)

Foiled again, Rob Thomas! Damn your eyes!

10 Broken Things – Customer Service

There are some things which we know to have created for a specific use, but because they seem so innate to our purpose, we do not know their origins, for we have simply forgotten as to why we ever did it in the first place.

Early on, someone created ‘customer service’.    And, surprise; they didn’t create it to help anyone other than themselves.  Customer service was originally implemented as a sleight of hand, so proprietors and entrepreneurs could stave off their purchasing public while they continued production, designed new inventions, or, more likely, counted their money.  And in the generations since the introduction of customer service, invented shortly I suppose right after the first customer showed up angry that the product he purchased didn’t work and shot the man who sold him the snake oil that did not get ‘rid of the demon syphilis’ as he’d been promised, well, the whole thing seems to have gone downhill.  Someone call Ralph Nader: Customer service is broken.

I’ve recently purchased Apple’s most popular product, the iPhone, from their store just down the street from my apartment.  Apple just released their new model, the 3GS, and I was in a position to be able to purchase the phone the day of its release.  So, when the press release rolled out that on June 19, Apple would be releasing its new iPhone 3GS, I was online, reserving my phone, ready to go.  As soon as I clicked ‘Reserve your phone now’, I realized that I would be out of town that weekend.  Worried they’d give my shiny new iPhone (with a compass!) away, I called my local store.

“Yes, hello, I’ve just reserved the new iPhone to pick up at your store…”

“Congratulations, sir!”

“Yes, um, thanks, but I just realized, I’m going to be in Florida that weekend… how long do you hold reservations?”

“10 days from the date of availability, nothing to worry about.”

“Great, thank you.”

“Thank you.”

<click>

I literally hung up and thought to myself, “I love Apple, they have great customer service.”  I’ve always felt that they had great customer service.  When I bought my 24″ iMac a year earlier, they walked me through everything I’d need and sold me a great product.  When I needed to move music from my PC to the iMac and then onto my new iPod Nano, they helped me.  And when I had questions about the pros and cons of Logic Express versus Logic Pro, they were blunt.  See the pattern?

I just spent a paragraph discussing customer service by defining it through illustrating its ironic, inherent lack of actual service.  See, in all these situations, there was nothing wrong, nothing to be solved, no errors to report.  I wasn’t getting customer service, I was being told by a company how to be a customer.  They were coaching me into being their customer.  How to buy our stuff and get the eff out so the next person can step in line.

Is that wrong?  Well, like with most things on this blog, that all depends.

If, when I had returned from Florida the week after the 19th when my pretty new phone was put in a safe, away from the rabid customers that wrapped around the block like zombies, ready to hollow the brains out of anyone that stood in their way to get to my new iPhone; if, in other words, the store had done what the term “reserve” implies, then I wouldn’t be off on this particular tangent.

Because when I returned and called the store, I was informed that the iPhone 3GS had, indeed, sold out, and that my reservation was “only good for the 19th”.  Besides being a blatant contradiction to what I had been previously told, insult to injury was provided in the company all but publicly boasting that their online reservation system had solved the wait-in-line issue Apple suffers every time it releases a new iPod product.  And as for the customer service, well, having a twenty-something basically tell me, “too bad” was incredibly insulting and annoying.  While not obligated to assist me in solving my problem of not having an iPhone, the attendant could have offered me other avenues of assistance.  Instead, I was told that no one knew when the next shipment was coming in, and that if I wanted, I could renew my reservation online and check back later in the week.  What made this individual think that I was in the mood to purchase anything from their company at that instant defies logic.

So naturally, I wrote a letter to Steve Jobs, because customer service had failed, and when customer service fails, we kid ourselves and go to the top.  As if it has worked in the past, and precedent demands this sort of thing.  We all know that customer service is just a wall of mediocre people separating us from their superiors.  And if we think that at some point, things were better than they currently are?  They weren’t.  There’s been no devolution of customer service.  Just because customer service jobs are being handed over to foreign phone banks doesn’t mean things have gotten worse, it just means that things were never very good in the first place.

My letter has not been answered.  I imagine Mr. Jobs and his staff of thousands are inundated in similar complaints, but as a consumer, when I complain, I do not expect results.  I am trained to let the water roll off my back, return to the store, and try again.  Which is exactly what happened.  72 hours after my initial ordeal, I was in line at the same store, purchasing my new iPhone 3GS, with no discount, and not one mention of the failure in customer service Apple had me suffer just days earlier.  I didn’t even ask for an apology.  And then, I went home to my girlfriend, raving about Keith, the young kid who helped me out.  But he didn’t really help me, did he?  No.  He sold me something, and it took a couple hundred words on paper to figure that out, like, just now.  But, hey, the product is great.  But somehow, that’s not the point.

If we, as consumers, had any collective intestinal fortitude, when wronged, we would march into their stores, announce our anger, then march right out and never go back.  If we really wanted to fix the way we were treated, the way our money was treated, we’d be able to.  But, unfortunately, we are a society in decline of standards in tolerance, and we allow things to happen because we empathize.  We empathize with the minimum wage worker behind the counter.  We see a future we pray to avoid in the lonely middle-management sycophant whose job is to iron the wrinkles of an ungrateful customer base.  Worse, we even idolize the people at the top while simultaneously damning them under our breaths in line at the big box stores.

In other words, we let it happen.  Because in the end, it’s more about the product, than it is about customer service.  On both sides of the counter.

The Emperor’s Glove

So, the King of Pop is dead.  The news wires, entertainment rags, Facebook, Twitter… all major orifices of social and mass media are spewing surreal and awkward praise for Michael Jackson as his borderline Gacy meets Hughes lifestyle is ignored for fear of admitting that, we, as a culture, worshiped a pedophile.

I’m sorry, but making music, or any art, for that matter, does not excuse one’s behavior, especially when that involves sex with children.  Twitter celebs have all but ditched the Iranian revolt and will.I.am’s beatdown of Perez Hilton to make room for 140 character obits.  The running tagline encourages us to remember Michael for his music, and not for his life, as if the two were ever mutually exclusive.

Michael Jackson built his empire on the foundation provided by an overbearing, abusive father and an oppressive pre-adolescent career with the Jackson 5, before an awesome string of solo hits in the 80’s.  And when he began to fade (literally) into the winter of his career – after the allegations, setting himself on fire, Jacko on his backo, Lisa Marie Presley – it appeared as though he had abandoned that foundation to simply rule his own odd little world, reveling in a rebellion he never had as a child.  This was a world where kids never grew up, and, one where, unfortunately, he perceived himself as each child’s lover.  I mean, I love kids, we all love kids, but this guy… he loved kids.  It was a  dangerously comfortable illusion for Jackson, as J.M. Barrie never makes mention of age-of-consent laws in his original work.  If only the poet had included a stanza on ‘jail bait’.

And what of respect to the dead?  In my mind, anyone who excuses himself from the standard social practice of , oh, I dunno, not having sex with children deserves as little respect as can be offered.  Am I suggesting we all run around wishing ill on the man’s soul?  No, but I don’t see anything terribly wrong with it if we did.  The difference between Michael Jackson and your average sex offender is the latter is typically caught and tried for his crimes.  Jackson, if you remember, was simply caught.  And like other celebrities who manage to wiggle out of the system to return to a life of whatever-the-hell-they-want-to-do, Jackson got away.

The hard proof will be discarded by his estate, I’m sure, but in the meantime, enough is suggested by Jackson’s aggressively little-boy-biased art collection, which was placed for auction late last year, and is still listed around the web.  The collection, which included nude paintings of children and a gaggle of sex toys, was to be auctioned, until Jackson fought to get it back.  Because we don’t want to let the cat out of the bag, do we?

In the end, no one needs to remind me that we should remember him for the music, as that was his legacy.  Just like people forget that Sinatra was a womanizing thug and Dean Martin spent his life drinking Ireland’s GNP, music has an odd ability to cover the flaws of its messenger.  Apparently, if you ever want to get away from the fact that you’re an awful person, sing a song.  People love music.  Music could never come from a bad person.  Music makes bad turn to good.  Music = Good, not Bad!  Urrrgh.  Good. I can hear a nation of millions breathing through their mouths as the Michael Jackson tributes play out on the radio.  Now that I think of it, I bet Hitler’s kicking himself somewhere in the bowels of Hell.  “Eef only I had written ze pop musik!  Zen zey vould drop zat silly holocaust sing!”

Please don’t ask me to like Michael Jackson or remember him for the music.  Because no matter how many times you tell me Bad was his Abbey Road, or that he revolutionized popular music more than any one musician in his generation, he’ll always be just a freaky, kid f***ing clown to me.  That’s right.  Kid f***ing .

Rob Thomas vs. His Fans – A competition of sad.

I really don’t know what to make of this, but if you go to Rob Thomas’ Myspace, you can leave a message for him via phone, and it’ll post a voice mail to the page.  I’ve listened to a few, and yes, they’re all perfectly sad examples of popular fandom.  And then I laughed, and figured, “Hey, I better share this on my blog”.  Go ahead.  Call 1 (917)-338-0477 and leave ol’ Rob a nice message.  Oh my God,  I might even give him a call.

It’s weird that this sort of thing is even an idea.  Stranger yet are the people that believe Thomas sits up at night and listens to these, or that he might even call someone back.  Some of the messages are simple (”Hey I like your album”) and some are, not surprisingly, creepy (”I carved a cheese statue of your genitals and ate it”), but none are funny.  Maybe I’ll remedy that later.

For now, it’s just another notch in the professional bedpost of shame for Mr. Thomas.  I just realized… I hate this guy so much, I’m actually paying attention to him, like watching a squirrel in traffic.  The human side of me doesn’t want the lil’ guy to get squashed, but horrible, rotten, chewed up internet version of me can’t wait for some terminal punctuation to his career.

Come Cry With Us: Delta Airlines

Yesterday, a massive storm system pushed through the southeast, forcing  Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport to ground all outgoing flights and hold all incoming.  Fine.  I get it.  Sometimes you simply can’t fly.  And being that Delta owns Hartsfield’s major operations, we all knew that yesterday would be disastrous.

So, Bess and I were able to call Delta and reschedule our connecting flight out of Atlanta as we sat for an extra hour at Pensacola’s airport, right?  Well, apparently the storm system was soooooo huge, the phone bank in India they usually send us to at 1-800-221-1212 also shut down.  No incoming or outgoing calls.  But no worries, Delta’s crack team of desk attendants would be able to assist… not really.  We had a ’special’ person at our desk in Pensacola, who I will heretofore refer to lovingly as “Corky”.  Corky looked like Patton Oswalt in drag, and carried a lispy speech impediment that made me chuckle out of anger every now and then, because someone gave her overhead speaker announcement rights.  (”Flighthh eitthheeennss thitheen theven i-i-i-i-i-thhh bowding zonthesth thwee…”)  Brutal.  When we approached her for help, she promised she could smile and look pretty, no more.  I shit you not.

Her trollish counterpart did bring us ’round the desk to show us that our connecting flight, too, had been delayed.  Which, as it turns out, didn’t mean anything, since we missed it anyhow.  But hey, whatever, Delta, right?  As Corky would tell us later, Delta takes care of its customers, and it is a family oriented company.  I’m not sure what the latter implied… perhaps because Bess and I technically are not a family, they would not take care of us?  No, really, Corky gave this speech, that, if I hadn’t been forced to put away my laptop, I would have transcribed.  She apologized profusely for our tardiness, then proceeded to rub the Delta corporate dong in front of us as if we c…. well, I didn’t care, Bess didn’t care, but people APPLAUDED after her “speech”.  As if they were applauding Sylvester the Cat for making it through an alcohol-induced karaoke stab at Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life”.

When we did finally land in Atlanta, and discovered that our plane had come and gone without us, we approached a Delta employee with a group of other people in the same predicament, and waited for her attention.  Instead, she stood in front of us, back turned, pointing the offloading passengers of another site to the monitor directly above their heads as they exited, saying simply, “Connecting flights”.  Really, Delta?  This is what you pay your people for?  Corky’s Churchillian slurs beat this woman by yards in terms of customer service.  After 10 minutes of trying to be patient, decent people, we cut up front and just yelled at her, “HOW DO WE GET TO DC” or something like that.  She casually took her connecting flight finger and pointed to the gate across the way.  As if this was her job.  To point.  I wanted to snap it off and put it on my key chain to show to my children, and my children’s children, like a WWII vet bringing home Edelweiss from a downed SS trooper.

In all, we just made a (not ours) connecting flight and managed to get on the ground in DC past 11pm, 2 hours after our original flight was to have landed.  Our luggage is still en route.  And while I’ve been through delays, and I’ve suffered stupidity, I’ve never seen chaos and tragedy bang it out in public like I did yesterday at the Atlanta airport, as thousands of others suffered the same retarded regime we did.  Never mind the fact that at least 80 percent of the passengers stumbling through Atlanta’s airport are just as fat and stupid as the employees they encounter along the way, two wrongs definitely do not make a right.

Delta needs a customer service overhaul.

Oh, sorry.

I’ve been in Florida visiting the folks with the girlfriend.  Watching the news, loving that each time they show protesters in Iran, there are more, and more.  Kim Jong Il is probably pissed that his  nuclear reindeer games have been overshadowed by Iran’s ongoing implosion.  Oh, wait, he is, apparently, because he’s threatening Hawaii.  Sort of.

Florida’s nice though.  California next week.  It’s a good summer to be James.  Y’know, minus the geopolitical kaleidescope of effedupedness going reon.

Here’s a picture of the pizza my parents made in their brick oven outside, just imported and built this week.  (I know, right?)

The further thumbing/dumbing down of a nation.

http://www.lgtexter.com/

That’s right, a texting competition.  In its third year.  On a national stage.  I want you all to marinate in that for a bit, because, well… this sort of goes along with a commericial for the Washington Post I heard this morning on the radio, y’know, the ones that say, “Today in the Washington Post,” and then the voiceover guy runs through a list of headlines.  This morning, the first headline was about a story concerning communities hit worst by the ongoing economic crisis… and the last was a headline about two small companies competing for the best gelato and coffee flavors.  Dichotomous, yes?

So when I see a company host a texting competition, and award a  young girl $50,000 for further chipping away at our national vernacular, I have to wonder if we’re really taking the recession thing as seriously as we could be.

PS – I’m buying a new iPhone next week.  Why?  So I can text.