Given a robust sample size of three flights in one day, I can conclusively tell you that the time most people simultaneously spring from their seat and head for the toilet is right after the pilot turns on the seatbelt sign about 30 minutes before landing. The bell dings and heads pop up like whack-a-moles.
Through close observation, I have noticed that each of these rule-breaking passengers goes through the same motions. He half rises from his seat, placing one hand on the seat back in front of him, one hand behind. He cranes his neck and looks forward and aft, trying to determine if the stewardess is looking his way. If the stewardess is nearby, his face turns furtive, trying to give the message that he is just stretching and that he has no plans to bolt. But if the stewardess is remote, he claws his way into the aisle, hikes up his trousers and legs it to the toilet, where there is usually a line.
This happens so often—I have never been on a flight where it has not—that the timing of the seat-belt-sign illumination must have a built-in safety margin. My seatmate (a stranger), after sucking down a large coffee, did this on a short haul right as we went into the approach, and the stewardess had to phone the pilot to advise delaying the landing. The pilot must have not have agreed, because I heard the stewardess say in a resigned tone,”Okay.” My seatmate made it back on time, but barely.
Apropos the TSA. I stood by one security counter for about five to eight minutes and I did not see even one person get a pat down. I did watch one young mother have her baby bottles scrutinized. One was opened and, I swear, sniffed by the gloved agent. One bottle must have spilled in the tray, because a roll of paper towels went into action.
On the subject of high-flying objects, the Daily Mail has a hard-hitting investigative report on the ghastliness of breast implants (complete with pictures, guys).
They are proudly displayed by a group I call ‘the Boob-Job Boobies’: the A-list celebrities and C-list nobodies who are forever out on the town with their big bosoms popping out over little black dresses.
I’m not sure what authority is tasked with rating celebrities, but I can understand that the Daily Mail is against these inflationary devices. As am I; though I admit my prejudices may have been shaped by what, through remarkable good fortune, life has presented me in the form of natural beauty (not my own).
The reporter says:
A woman with real class would never have a boob job. For here’s the most remarkable thing that no surgeon who takes your money will ever tell you: those big inflatables just aren’t sexy.
Indeed, quite the opposite: a boob job makes an attractive woman seem less attractive — it’s the breast equivalent of the trout pout.
To which we can only say: amen.
Abrupt segue: on that same Daily Mail page appears the link to the article, “Will The Beaver really launch Mel Gibson’s career comeback?”
I admit to some jet leg, so I cannot be certain my fogged gray cells are deceiving me. But this appears to be a review of a Mel Gibson movies called The Beaver. “The Braveheart star plays a depressed man who finds solace by wearing the furry beaver hand puppet that he uses to communicate with people.”
I searched the text twice, but was unable to discover any indication that this was some kind of prank. And we’re nowhere near April 1st.
The voice over of the trailer starts: ‘ This is the story of Walter Black, a hopelessly depressed individual. The successful, loving family man he used to be has gone missing.’
Walter: ‘What’s that?’ (Younger son pulls out arts and crafts project from a bag.)
Younger son: ‘Your brain. Mom says yours got broken.’
Voice over: ‘You can see, Walter is a man who’s lost all hope.’
Walter to his beaver puppet, who becomes his alter ego: ‘I’m sick.’
I’ll probably read these words later after fully waking and realize that the movie is indeed a hoax. This will only re-prove to me that traveling takes it toll.
Airline travel in the US is so safe that most injuries happen to unsecured cabin crew.
Occasionally a paying customer will find himself on the floor.
Fish lips are the WORST idea ever dreamed up by women. You can’t blame men for that.
No mention of June, Ward or Wally.
Was it Senhor Wences who used to have conversations with his hand disguised as a puppet? Seems to me there was someone else, possibly someone in the newspaper comics – Kudzu?
IIRC the 30-minute before landing rule is one of those unjustifiable 9/11 fallouts. Nothing to do with safety per se and apparently convenient to the airlines (like the comparing of ID’s to ticket name which killed the cheap ticket gray market). Previous practice was around 10-15 minutes out and I once saw the light come on during final approach inside the approach gate (often approx. 7nm out).
I agree most women don’t need breast implants and they are frequently overdone.
I will spare you the talking hand jokes.
Briggs:
Next you’ll be telling us children are the thirstiest in the 30 minute period immediately after being put to bed. You stats guys are good.
Did anyone else find it a bit troubling Wiki used a horror-film genre site source for the “best screenplay ever” quote? Well, duh!
It simply isn’t true that implants are unattractive. While the article feels the need to go overboard describing something in unattractive terms it makes me wonder why they don’t let them stand on their own (pun intended). I mean why should anyone care other then the owner of the enhanced breasts and the indivdual who will get to view or otherwise use the enhanced breasts. If they are happy why should anyone else care?
Mel Gibson made inappropriate remarks while drunk! Stop the presses that’s never happened before. He also was intentionally driven to anger by his ex when he was drunk so she could tape his outbursts as “proof” he was unfit to have his child and therefore should promptly give her $20 million… Does anyone else but me see a sick disgusting criminal extortion plot here? Gibson may never live down his shame over his outbursts but compared with most famous people he doesn’t seem so bad. I’m sure glad no one had a tape recorder going when I broke my arm. I think I would have made Gibson sound pious by comparison.
49erDweet,
“SlashFilm” is not a “horror-film genre” site. It’s really “/Film.”
The trailer is here …
http://beaver.the-movie-trailer.com/
Speed,
Got it. [blush] Mea Culpa
Mel Gibson is an insane man. You say, bad people crawl around him, well in Portugal we have a sayin’: tell me who your friends are, I’ll tell you who you are (diz-me com quem andas dir-te-ei quem és). And his religious beliefs are just even more insane. I think he told his wife she would go to hell because she didn’t belong to his right sect of christianity. His father is a well known anti-semitic holocaust denier, and the son thinks his theories are “interesting”. Well sure, Mel.
Above all, his movies are mostly crap (except for deadly weapon which is just crazy). And that is what I find most unforgivable.
Luis,
I may agree with you that Gibson has pretty much jumped as far over the crazy shark as one can, but I will say that he has quite a few fun movies.
Lethal Weapon was always a blast, Mad Max (and its sequels) are great, and Braveheart is fun if only for its well choreographed fight scenes.
Make note: just after MG’s film which prominently featured (and exaggerated) the foreign made Beretta 9MM semi-auto side arm many (and large) law enforcement agencies changed their service weapons from American made guns to Italian Beretta 9MMs. For the job the 9MM is inferior to either 45ACP or S&W357 caliber arms. I believe the movie was part of a cultural manipulation on a grand scale.
People who know more about the change out are the Department Armorers who did the swap for their agencies.
How can you forget “Payback” when talking about fun Mel Gibson films, the film that showed he could actually act?
****
As for implants:
I am reluctant to accept as an authority on the subject a man who’s wife left him for a younger woman.
Snark aside, like all things, implants can be done well and done poorly. Merely because some poor examples exist is not a reason to denigrate the entire class of bosom enhancement. Given that the writer admits to only one intimate encounter with this miracle of modern science, it does not seem reasonable that he has enough data to form a valid judgment.
However the no-doubt-offensive-to-M. Landesman overdone implants of, as an example only, Pamela Anderson seem not to have driven men away. While there are all kinds of people out there with a wide variety of tastes, from a statistical point of view the odds favor heterosexual men finding larger breasts attractive and a deep decolletage enticing.
The whole “article” is a repeating example of the logical error of hasty generalization: because one man (the writer) does not like breast, no men like breasts: because one set of silicon implants was unattractive to one man, no men find any enhanced breast attractive. The article says something about the tastes of the the writer but nothing about the desirability of cosmetic mamillary modification.
Should the word bosom be used as a singular or a plural term , as in, “Jane has a great bosom” or “Jane has great bosoms” or should one just sustitute the more general term ‘bust’ as in “Jane has a great bust”.