Old Stories
Today I'm flying to New Orleans to exhibit at the first ever Big Easy Comic-Con. My road crew for this trip consists of Travis O'Neil (Slave Labor's new operations manager and the guy who is supposed to watch my back) and Bob Simpkins (now in his second tour of duty with Slave Labor, assuming the job of publisher recently vacated by new Reno resident Craig Pape).
Things started on a lousy note for us when we went to get our seat assignments and they couldn't seat us together. On the first leg of the trip (San Jose to Salt Lake City) Travis and Bob sat in the back two rows of the airplane while I lucked out and got a bulkhead seat. Things got even worse for me when the gate attendant wouldn't let me board with my rolling suitcase. It seems that someone from the plane had called down and told them that all of the overhead bins were full. This turned out not to be the case, there wa plenty of bin room. I couldn't get my bag back and now I know it's going to end up in Cincinnati or someplace worse.
The situation went from annoying to bizarre after I got seated when this punk kid in the row behind me signaled the flight attendant over to him and reported that “He was a danger to himself and everyone on the aircraft and was capable of hurting someone.”
“What?” the woman replied. “I'm going to hurt myself or someone else on this flight.” he repeated.
There was a man sitting next to the kid who interrupted and said “Ignore him, he's pulling your leg.” “No I'm not” insisted the kid. At this point the flight attendant asked the kid if he wanted to get off the airplane. He was in the process of saying yes when the man sitting next to him flashed a badge and announced to the flight crew that he was escorting the young man back to Utah for trial. After some verification of paperwork and an assurance from the officer that the kid would be no trouble, things settled down and returned to normal. I shot the little sociopath a stink eye that said “If you do anything to make me miss my connecting flight, standing trial in Utah is going to be the least of your troubles.”
An interesting observation about Delta Airlines flight attendants; they have mastered a facial expression which is hard to describe. They don't smile, not fully. Yet they don't frown or scowl. They go about their business with an attitude that says “Being a flight attendant would be great if it weren't for all of the passengers.” They aren't unfriendly or surly (that would be American Airlines flight attendants) but they fall far short of being the friendly, helpful bunch that you might find on Southwest Airlines (Southwest is a great airline they seem to understand that flying is no longer a pleasant experience and they help you make the best of it). Nobody has been rude to us yet, but the flights not over.
Anyway if I had to name the expression, I guess I would call it a smowl. Just enough of a smile to not insult you, but enough of a scowl that says “Fuck you very much, and thanks for flying Delta” On the Salt Lake to New Orleans leg of the trip I decide that I'm going to bust out with the new laptop computer right after the meal service. I should have just declined the food which was something like teriyaki shoe leather and some kind of green substance as a side dish. There was also a mold of something that looked like it might have (at one time) been mashed potatoes. Airline food is never great, but it's sometimes passable. This stuff was tailor made to be inedible.
After the meal I discover the folly of pulling out a G3 Laptop computer in a coach seat of a 727. I struggled with the bag (which I had slid under the seat in front of me) for what seemed like 10 minutes. Once I finally managed to get it out I discovered that the stupid thing was just a bit to big for the flip down tray. As a result, I couldn't lean the screen as far back as I would have liked. I mention this only because Apple markets these things as being portable and versatile. One of the selling points is that, if you buy a DVD kit, you can watch Austin Powers on an airplane TWICE.! Fat chance, I say. I doubt I could get the CD carrier to eject without poking the person sitting next to me. And it has nothing, NOTHING I TELL YOU, nothing to do with the fact that my stomach has now encroached into my lap area, leaving me with considerably leass lap than I had a few years ago.
Still, I made the effort to get it out and turned on, if only to convince myself that one of my main reasons for buying the G3 in the first place hadn't just been flushed down the chemical blue toilet of the unfriendly Delta Airlines skies.
I don't know if it's the fact that I'm fighting off a cold or just plain tired, but the people around me are starting to look odd. The two people in the row next to me have settled in to read a couple of their favorite bestsellers; The new Garfield collection and the latest musings by that noted redneck philosopher/thinker Jeff Foxworthy. I fear that I am flying into a wasteland of inbred dolts. Out of the corner of my eye I see one of my fellow hillbilly passengers eyeing my laptop like one of those apes staring at the monolith at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I imagine he's thinking to himself “I'm gonna git me one a’ them things and git me on that internet. Alls I need is a little book ‘larnin and a computer and I could sell metal pigs to people in other countries like Alabama.”
Maybe its not that bad. Or maybe it is. I've lost my ability to judge reality as this plane keeps getting tossed around like bad ideas at a Hollywood pitch session. I think we're somewhere near Louisiana. Below me cousins are marrying, gators are eating tourists and some weird voodoo priestess is cursing the fact that Delta flight attendants don't smile. I fear my lunch will revisit me soon and it won't look substantially different than before it was eaten.
Its about 12:45 PST. The clouds outside have an unfamiliar quality to them. They look like they're filled with water and anger, and that they would prefer that I not stare at them. It seems that the entire southeast is mooning me from below. Elsewhere in the cabin, babies are crying. A teenage girl is rocking a cabbage patch doll as if it were a real child. I look away in case she make a poopy. The captain keeps turning the seat belt sign on and off, taunting me into thinking that he's got the situation under control. Suddenly this whole New Orleans trip is looking more and more like a bad idea. I'll type more after I land and I finish throwing up.
11:05 PM Central time - Riverside Hilton, New Orleans.
Okay, I overreacted a little about the flights. Had there been actual emergencies I probably would have written my last will and testament instead of flippant remarks about flight attendants and people from the south. The landing was rough, though. I think the pilot was making side money dusting crops because he came in at a strange angle. We made some radical turns and, when he finally decided to put the plane down, he bounced the damn thing three times. We almost went sideways at on point. It seemed less like a landing and more like a controlled crash.
Getting off the plane we discovered something that we've always known about but never admitted; NEW ORLEANS IS HUMID AS HELL! Its really bad, like walking through a sauna. We walked to dinner and Bob mentioned something about the rain. I told him it wasn't raining, that the air had just become solid water, All in all, the weather here stinks.
During the drive in we saw our first sign of stereotypical real south; A trailer flying a confederate flag pulled up along side of the road with broken fishing boats strewn all around it. I saw the home of the redneck and was awestruck by its attention to cliché. You have got to love the irony of a state with a population that's like 80% black and can still boast a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan as a legitimate candidate for governor.
We mad our first foray into the French Quarter tonight. Without getting into the gruesome details I'll just tell you that mistakes were made. Another thing, never drink with an irishman at a place called Pat O’Brian’s. Pat O’s as it's more commonly known, is the home of the Hurricane, a drink that ,when well made, is pretty good. Sadly, the hurricane at Pat O’s leaves a lot to be desired, more of an alcoholic brain freeze than a proper mixed drink. I was ready to cast many an aspersion towards the legendary bar until I sampled the Mint Julep. A little cup of heaven. Also worth sampling are the Rum Runner and the Plantation Punch.
The number of drinks I mentioned above should give you an idea about the mistakes that were made.
At any rate, I decided that the Hurricane at Pat O’s was something that they served to tourists. Later in the evening I noticed that when you ordered one the bartender would just pull a pre-made one out of a refrigerator under the bar. That just isn't good for anyone.
Pat O’Brian’s is actually three bars. A regular bar bar (where we spent the evening), a piano bar across the hall, and a patio bar with a real cool fountain that lights up at night. This is a place worth seeing if you're in New Orleans. It has an odd rest room set up, though. The men's room nearest the bar we were sitting in only had urinals. To find a stall, I needed to go use the rest room in the piano bar, and let me tell you, they don't want just anyone wandering into the piano bar. There's a line a mile long for the bar, and the doorman is pretty adamant about making sure you're using the rest room and not trying to sneak in ahead of the line. I had to explain in some detail why I wanted to use that particular bathroom (“Well pal, it's like this, I really gotta vomit, and I don't want to have to do it in the urinal.” The stall in that rest room didn't have a door (to discourage unsavory activity? Come on, this town's foundation is unsavory activity) and I imagined myself back in grade school.
Across the street is a voodoo store. Shrunken heads; chicken feet necklaces; little bad mojo kits complete with dolls, pins and an instruction manual, and weird stuff. Pretty much sums up the city. Most of what was in the store we termed "tourist voodoo". That might sound weird but it's par fot the course in a place where you can have guided tours of haunted places and graveyards.
For those of you who don't know, New Orleans is actually below sea level. That's why its famous graveyards consist of above ground crypts. In a good rain, bodies buried in the ground have a tendency to rise to the surface and float away. Many of the crypts are very ornate and, when combined with the voodoo and vampiric history of the city, make interesting landmarks. One man's creepy is another man's cool, and i declare this to be very cool indeed.
You can also take tours of the swamps, but somehow the notion of going into a gator filled bog in a small boat with some cajun guide strikes me as a little too Deliverance.
Even the normal stuff has an odd vibe to it. I'm sure our hotel has some kind of bad voodoo mojo going on in it, and it's a pretty modern place. When I went to the ice machine I could have sworn I heard the screams of a dying chicken coming from one of the rooms. Was it some kind of ritual sacrifice, or some NOLA hooker doing a special?
I don't know.
I don't want to know. All I know is that I'm going to be real nice to the locals while I'm here. And I'm steering clear of anyplace with a goats head in the window.
Tomorrow the convention starts.
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