This is the topper of people and companies that piss me off this week. I got on a United flight from Philly to Lax on Monday and the plane was just about loaded and ready to take off. The flight attendant stops at my row and looks in the overhead bin at the bags. They’re all arranged perfectly, but she starts asking in the bitchiest possible voice “Whose gray bag is this?” She asks like 4 times and nobody is answering her. I’m perplexed, since the bags are all perfectly arranged and wondering how she singled out that bag. She then starts saying “If nobody claims this bag, I’m going to gate check it.” The guy next to me finally points to an older man across the aisle and one row up and says he thinks it’s that guy’s. We’re looking at each other asking what the deal might be.

When the older guy says that yes, it’s his bag, she shifts into her next phase of drama. “Well, that bag you re-arranged to put yours up there is mine, and it doesn’t work that way. You don’t touch my bag.” She takes his bag out, leaving a gaping space because there’s plenty of room for all the bags, and walks to the front of the plane. About 15 rows up she throws it in the overhead. In the meantime, she has no idea that a good 12 people are laughing at her, and asking each other why it is that the paying customer doesn’t get to keep his bag where it fits. It wasn’t crushing her bag, it was barely even touching it. But out of principle because he re-positioned her bag, she took his and moved it as far forward as possible.

While it’s obvious the airline industry doesn’t care much for it’s customers, there’s got to be a marketer / PR person / customer service manager somewhere at United who’s got to care just a little bit about their existence and the damage that an employee like this does to their brand, making them work that much harder when they deal with consumers that already hate them. It had nothing to do with me, and I was pissed about it the whole flight. Of those 12 people laughing at her, all of them will tell this story, I probably already did 4 or 5 times before I even put it on here. Maybe it was the same flight attendant from this flight…

 

Next on the list of companies that irritate me… It doesn’t matter how great of a company you partner up with, it doesn’t mean you still won’t suck. AT&T started by not even being able to get iPhone activation right on their own network, while Apple had minimal issues making it happen in minutes through iTunes. Proving further they are clueless about the consumer experience, they start shipping out 300 page phone bills in boxes to people, because the bills included all the unnecessary detail. Aside from irritating people with the waste and pointing out their cluelessness, they followed up with this too little, too late SMS message. In case I didn’t read the first one they sent it again the next day, again looking stupid. Maybe I’m just bitter this week. No, they’re just stupid.

 

I was flying out of LAX tonight, sitting by a window eating dinner. This UPS guy pulls up, and literally kicked every box in the truck after dropping each one off the shelf it was on.

If for some reason you want a Youtube version of it, it’s here.

 

Here’s the beginning of a big catch up. We did a hit and run trip last weekend to the third world part of VT (Huntington), staying on the Sadler compound. Here’s the recap:

I noticed a lot of the roads up there have good burnout marks. The best ones lead directly out of people’s driveways. That is, on the roads that are paved.

This is a real, working gas station. The yellow lines are the middle of a road.

Matt Taylor’s attack dog.

Jim and Jayme

Riley, dressed up for our visit

Wooshers. VT version of horseshoes.

I’ve known of Gary Boldgett for a long time, but somehow never met him. This trip I found myself at his house drinking beers, watching his dachshund Frankie get nuts. He (Frankie, not Gary) was obsessed with chasing and retrieving rocks, and would jump into the river behind the house to get them. He’d swim under water until he recovered the one you threw. If you stopped throwing them in, he would get one himself, drag up to the top of a 6′ cliff, throw it in the water and go get it, doing it over and over. I didn’t have my normal camera or I would have some good video.

The drive to VT is usually relaxed and animal free, but not this time. After getting off the NY Thruway late at night, it became a game of dodging wildlife. It started with a roaming gang of 5 raccoons, a baby deer, several foxes, 3 separate cats, frogs that were jumping across the road as high as my hood, a rabbit, and several bats that swooped down. The only thing that got hit was a bat that swooped down straight into my windshield, so we considered the minimal death toll a victory…

 

I have a pile of updates waiting to get uploaded, but this one was too good to wait.

 

 

We headed out to Carter’s place yesterday for his pirate / merkin themed party. It was everything you’d have expected it to be – cocktails, merkins, inflatable women, a mile long Slip-n-Slide, and a few games of Flip Cup. The morning of the party, Tara burst into a fit of creativity and knocked these two out with no effort, along with a few others. Check here for the slideshow of images, here’s a few of the best ones:

 

I just got a little package from Draplin with some Field Notes. They’re kickass notebooks that are already getting put to use. Everything about them is just right, down to the love we share for the font Futura. Go get some.

Speaking of worthwhile Draplin creations, this is another one to put in your arsenal.

 

We saw Slayer the other night, excellent as always. They co-headlined with Marylin Manson which made for two very clear camps in the crowd. I wanted to like the Manson show but we only made it through 5 or 6 songs and ended up leaving. Watching the scene any time before the show where people randomly scream out "Slayyyyyer" and then others randomly scream it back is almost as good as watching the show itself. No other crowd gets as amped up as it does for these shows.

The sea of horns:

Old school: