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Jet-setting with Bubbler for 7:35

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Bubbler, Nov 19, 2007.

  1. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    I'm 'round about 35,000 feet on a flight home from Dallas, I've done all the work I can do, and I've read the Star-Telegram as much as I desire. My complementary beverage has arrived, so its time kick back and ponder my surroundings and the world around me.

    Put your seat in the relaxed position, take a sip of Pepsi from a 3-ounce plastic cup with donut ice, and go flying with me for 7 minutes, 35 seconds of jet-propelled thoughts.

    It helps immensely to put Herb Alpert's Rise on your turntable, since that's what was in my head at the time ...

    --First off, who's directly around me in good ole Seat 16D? I rarely take the aisle seat, I generally prefer staring out the window trying to guess where I am based on topography and visible highways, but today I'm feeling the aisle.

    In front of me to my left is a guy who looks like the Mexican Dan Fogelberg. Felt bad for the man. The muffled gasps he heard in the terminal were those of the less-enlightened travelers who probably mistook his bearded Hispanic look for that of someone of Middle Eastern descent. I gar-awwn-tee there were some Texas grannies who thought Mexican Dan Fogelberg was wired up to take them to meet Jesus on this good Sabbath. By the way, the horn in Fogelberg's Longer is a flugelhorn, I learned that from Casey Kasem via my XM.

    To my left, is a woman in her early 30s, attached like a machine to her iPhone. In the aisle with me are a mother and daughter, the daughter has fallen asleep with iPod in ear in the middle seat next to me. It looks like she keeps waking up to swipe a glance at me, but ... why? I'm looking haggard in a wrinkled burnt orange polo and some lingering strep throat has me clearing my throat ever-so-seductively. Of course when I'm at my best, my 36-year-old appeal among the teen set is well-established from coast-to-coast. ::)

    One way or another, Spaceman would hit either of them.

    My ire is saved for the gentlemen in front of me in the middle seat. He's European, and his accent is definitely Teutonic. German? Perhaps, but his voice also has a Gallic lilt. Can't be French, maybe he's Swiss?

    Dude is straight out of Euro-sterotype central casting. His complementary beverage was V-8, and he returned the cup of ice the flight attendant reflexively gave him. He's got that Euro-conservative, pseudo-intellectual haircut and narrow head that make him look like he tests Moog's in Basel or some such thing.

    But it's worse ... dude is reading some sort of technical manual ... or was it a Swiss-German Stephen Covey self-help book ... or both? All I know is from my seat, I can see diagrams and encouraging, yeah! rah! body copy. The book had a Greek word and the number six in it, but I'll be damned if I remember what it was.

    I normally love Europeans, but this guy makes Kraftwerk look earthy. He's a got a cruel bent too. To his left, directly in front of me, is a kindly grandmotherly type whose confined to a wheelchair (Spaceman? Yeah ... you know the rest). He decides to fill her in on every last detail of this book.

    It's like I'm living the scene from Airplane! when Stryker keeps telling stories about his past, with the passengers killing themselves with boredom. Stop shortening this poor ladies' life with your techno-drivel, you Swiss-ish asshead! The poor lady can't move!

    -- The woman next to me is watching the TV show Chuck on her iPhone. Technology is great, but why do I get the feeling that I'm going to read some News Of The Weird-ish type of item where someone was busted for watching porno on their iPhone? What's to stop them?

    -- An older gentlemen in a yellow polo resembling the general manger from Major League comes sauntering down the aisle, presumably to take a leak. The man looks like any other senior citizen, it looks like he hasn't been laid in at least 20 years.

    But I'm old, so this guy might have been a fuckbeast back when I was conceived in Oct.-Nov. '70. I have no idea what song, if any, I was conceived to, but it's possible this portly gentleman did the nasty to the same song around the same time. What was on the charts back then? Here's a link to the Cashbox chart from Oct. 10, 1970 ...

    http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/randypny3/cashbox/19701010.html

    Looks like Dawn's Candida was No. 1. The calculator in my head gets a-whirllin'. It's a full plane, I'd estimate 1/3 of the passengers were in a position to have sex in late 1970. Of those, you figure 10 percent of them might have had sex to Candida or any other song on the '70 chart. So chances are someone on my flight had sex around the same time or ON THE VERY DAY to very song I was conceived to. Remarkable. Small world.

    -- The cockpit door opens briefly so a flight attendant can get instructions. I wonder if pilots get all sensitive about the Peter Graves character from Airplane! or if they embrace the humor of it? If I were a pilot, I'd put a movie poster of some Steve Reeves Hercules movie from the 60s as my humorous tribute to Graves.

    -- If I were into psychedelic album covers and Hinduism ... which I'm not, I'm actually into Blaxploitation movie posters and Buddhism ... and I were assigned to do a psychedelic album cover based on this flight for, I dunno, Jefferson Airplane or some such anachronistic druggie band, I know exactly what I'd do. I'd have some intergalactic Vishnu in space with her arms in the Earth's atmosphere, benevolently guiding all of the planet's planes to their destinations. Only I'd have Vishnu smoking a massive joint ... to increase album sales.

    -- I glance down at my Star-Telegram and the headline for the TCU football column targets that very-desirable and untapped Leslie Gore Fan Club portion of the audience newspapers have been neglecting to their peril. The Gil LeBreton column headline says, "Frogs feeling that it's their party and they can go if they want to", a reference to TCU's bowl chances.

    That headline is God-awful dreck, but it got me to thinking which bands I've referenced in headlines. Let's see: The Who and the Stones won me an award, I've used Brewer & Shipley, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and many others I've forgotten. A buddy of mine said he'd give me $20 if I ever worked a KISS lyric into a story. I finally did it a few years ago, but I never collected on the bet.

    -- This is going to sound terribly sexist, but it's kind of off-putting when female flight attendant's try way too hard to make themselves look more glamorous than they really are.

    One of our flight attendants is probably around 50, and quite attractive for her age, but she's reaching ... she's going for some sort of sophisticated-woman-of-30 look and it's all wrong. Truth be told, she looks like she got TKO'd in a boxing match by a makeup artist with gloves made of foundation and powder.

    Then again maybe I'm not thinking of this with the right journalist's point of view. Perhaps the airline industry puts so much pressure on female flight attendants to look attractive that they have turn to whatever means necessary to toe a rigid, sexist line. Perhaps the pressure to look youthful and attractive is unbearable, not unlike Hollywood on-air talent. This could be a scandal my pen could unveil.

    On the other hand ... her partner looks like Cyndi Lauper's mom. So much for my breakthrough expose`.

    -- Here comes AARP man again, returning from the bathroom. I can't believe he 69'd to Candida. I'll bet he broke the ice whilst wearing a lime green leisure suit too. Damn that's cool. I was born too late ... I can never match that. I will never know the glory he knew ... to doff my lime-green leisure jacket in a fit of passion as Dawn played the soundtrack of lust in the background. That guy has to be the coolest on this plane, lo, any plane.

    The plane is beginning to descend and Herb Alpert's horns are trailing off now ... sinus issues will soon replace the ramblings in my head. I will Rise no more on this flight. Fun while it lasted.
     
  2. slappy4428

    slappy4428 Active Member

    I am humbled by your experience...
     
  3. John

    John Well-Known Member

    Bless you, sir.
     
  4. Angola!

    Angola! Guest

    So, I take it you were in Dallas this past weekend. Did you take any advice from the thread or have any wisdom on things to do in Dallas to share?

    Also, how do you get online when you are in the air?
     
  5. old_tony

    old_tony Well-Known Member

    Damn, Bubbler, that was one cool ramble.
     
  6. Angola!

    Angola! Guest

    And I forgot to add, this is why Bubbler is my favorite poster. I actually read every word of this Rokski-esque length post.
     
  7. HoopsMcCann

    HoopsMcCann Active Member

    wow. just wow.
     
  8. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    Unfortunately, I was sick for much of the weekend and hung out in my hotel room. I did very little other than work.

    I didn't write this until just now, but it was what I was thinking on the plane at the time of the flight.
     
  9. Angola!

    Angola! Guest

    Well, I hope you had fun in Dallas anyway.

    So, does this mean I can't use my air card on the airplane?
     
  10. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    By the way, I did buy a very good Herb Alpert Best Of on the trip, and I decided to read more about Rise.

    Apparently, it was helped to the top of the charts in '79 when it was used to score a Luke and Laura rape scene from General Hospital. Whenever Laura recollected her rape on the show, they'd repeat the ethereal, ghostly strains from Rise as accent music, and it helped the song stay on the charts for almost a calendar year.

    A) I had no idea Luke ever raped Laura; B) General Hospital is pretty awesome for using such a cool song; C) I suppose it's easier to score a rape to Rise than, say, Tijuana Taxi or Whipped Cream.

    I could have seen Kubrick scoring a rape to This Guy's In Love With You, a la, Singing In The Rain from Clockwork Orange.
     
  11. FileNotFound

    FileNotFound Well-Known Member

    "Rise" was the first 45 I ever bought. Loved the bass line that started and ended that song.
     
  12. Diabeetus

    Diabeetus Active Member

    Nice work, Bubbler! Read every word :D
     
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