Marty Barrett: The Flight of the Mavervorl: January 2007

--1.29.2007--

Leopold!

Surely you see the resemblance.

Labels: tot

--1.16.2007--

Las Vegas 5 a.m.

Labels: places

--1.09.2007--

CES 2007

This was the first year I attended the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show as press, and the experience was preferable to when I go anywhere else as press. The consumer electronics industry is dying, so there's a lot of money spent on people like me so we can keep that bubble looking fat and juicy with potential.

No sooner had I registered, in fact, that I got the World's Most Excellent Computer Bag. It was orange and shaped like a backpack, so visiting school groups up and down the Vegas strip would ask me what my MySpace page was.

One of the keynotes I attended was that of Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell. Alas, he was not as dynamic as I'd heard he was, or maybe I should remember that public speaking is not the strong suit of computer professionals so their opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.

Dell's speech consisted mostly of techie platitudes, save for his company's new program of planting a tree in a protected forest for every computer a consummer buys, offsetting the computer's emissions.

The rest of the presentation featured Dell inviting various guests onstage for awkward scripted intervies in which the subject extolled the use of Dell products.

No mention was made of the "Dude, you got a Dell" kid's drug bust. No mention was made that at a convention of avid tech buyers, no oone could complete a cell phone call.

The weirdest thing was when Mike Myers as Dr. Evil showed up. Dell and Myers performed a skit in which Myers needed to back up his computer. It might have been funny half a decade ago when that character meant something. As it was, I was happy that Myers would be cashing a huge check for his appearance.

Dell probably could have made the stage look much busier while saving on his talent fees and maintaining the relevance level by getting Freddie, Jason, and the other Michael Myers instead.

The CES was spread over two locations, the Sands Convention Center and the Las Vegas Convention Center. I spent more time at the Sands , checking oout the smaller foreign distribution booths. That is where the signage really paid off for me.

I also approved of the coordinated suits of some of the exhibitors.

"Earth Wind And Fire are probably wondering where their outfits are," I cautioned these gentlemen.

This bank of laundry and refrigeration equipment was shiny and impressive but provided no information about how to clean and prepare a corpse.

This man shoots like I type. I would repopulate the earth faster than this guy, I think, if it came down to it post-apocalypse.

CES provided its press rooms with box lunches and wireless Internet access as well as couches on which to watch Steve Jobs' iPhone announcement. Apple doesn't come to CES. Instead, Mac World was held concurrently in San Francisco and the ten or so people who had Mac laptops at CES gathered around CNN to watch the announcement.

Someone left his or her PowerBook power adapter on the couch next to me. I looked around for a couple of days for its owner to no avail. So now I have an extra, which is very useful.

My wife says it's stealing.

Labels: CES, coverage, faulty technology, places, vegas

--1.08.2007--

Time zone haircuts

I tend to grow a beard in the winter (or what has been passing for it lately) and then cut it off when I go to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show and the prawn convention. The picture to the left was taken on a ferry on Vineyard Sound on January 3. Four days later the second picture was taken on the ninth floor of an anonymous Las Vegas McLuxuryhotel.

Both pictures look grim; I really should drink more.

I post these pictures as an historical meteorological document; if current warming trends continue, I might be growing beards later and later in the winter, and then not at all. In the absence of a watch and any real religious beliefs, having a beard might be the only way of my telling when it is time to buy Costco gift cards for Christmas.

--1.07.2007--

Primm, baby, Primm

This striking image reveals two things in addition to my amazing photojournalism; the state line of Nevada as represented by the world class city of Primm, and a UFO filled with aliens.

"Should I take a picture of this spaceship full of aliens whilst hurtling down this final hill from California into Nevada or should I take a picture of Primm?" I asked myself.

"Both: I believe in you," I answered.

I accepted no guff from the extraterrestrials; turning the tables, I probed them.

"See how you like it, you goddamn aliens," I said.

--1.04.2007--

United

When airline stewards recite the "we realize you have a choice in air travel..." line at the end of a flight it's not really true, especially in Economy class. If there were a bunch of flights from competing airlines that cost the same, then there would be a choice. As it is, there is no choice when you need to select the lowest possible fare.

My family and I traveled from Boston to Los Angeles today, via San Francisco and Bob Hope Airport in Burbank. We got up around 5 a.m. and arrived home at 9 p.m., not adjusting for the time zone change. More than half that time was spent waiting, and the flying time was spent in pain.

It took us 50 minutes to thread through the line at the United terminal in Boston, because only three people were staffing the checked baggage desks for the 300 hundred or so travelers returning from extended holidays.

This was irritating, and a couple of people lost it. Both had made it to the front of the line before they were told they were in the wrong line or that their flight had left without them or something. Both made scenes. We all stood around, swaying slightly and hoping to get out of the line just so we could spend 20 bucks on a bagel and coffee.

In that the airline industry accepts so much money in federal bailouts, it seems that something should be done about First Class, and its opposition to basic American beliefs.

People who scoff at the idea of a nurtured class system in America have not shuffled through the First Class cabin, filled with people who may well have paid upwards of $500 more for their seat than you and who are already seated in seats bigger than yours and being served the better coffee. You meanwhile make your way past them to sit, almost fetally, in a ghetto.

Today I had the option of paying $50 more for five extra inches of legroom. Is there a class action lawsuit available for other people over six feet tall who can only get healthy legroom on a plane if they pay extra? Forget comfort, but shouldn't a passenger's health be standard?

I paid about $1k for three round-trip tickets. First-class passage would have cost at least three times that much. The scam is that none of the passengers gets what he pays for. Extra legroom, priority seating, and a box lunch that you don't have to pay five bucks for is not worth hundreds of extra dollars, but First Class passengers have the satisfaction, at least, of not having to sit with the cattle. Meanwwhile, it amazes me that an airline is so stingy with its "economy" section that getting lunch on a six-hour trip is now optional and getting airline thrombosis is free.

Once in San Francisco, we found that our connecting flight to L.A. had been cancelled. I asked a United representative what my options were, and she said that we had already been scheduled for the 6:30 flight, four hours later.

"Glad I asked," I said, wondering if I'd be typing this from a $10-a-day T-Mobile Hotspot at SFO if I hadn't. "Do you give us a meal voucher?"

"No," she said. "You don't get anything when a flight is cancelled because of weather."

"The weather in L.A. or the weather here?" I asked, thinking there'd been an earthquake down south.

"Here," she said.

Here? It was 50 degrees and clear outside. Ours was the only flight that had been cancelled. I walked away, then thought better of it. I approached another agent and asked for meal vouchers.

"You don't get them when a flight is cancelled due to weather," she said.

"But flights are taking off and landing here as we speak," I said. She then told me our cancelled flight had been inbound from Salt Lake City.

But then she gave me three meal vouchers. I looked at the other arrivals and saw that two planes had arrived recently from Salt Lake City. Our flight had been cancelled because there were only a few people on it; we found this out later when we met other people who had been scheduled on the cancelled flight who showed up for the later one - they were the only other passengers who had been booked on that flight.

"They gave us no apology and they lied to us," one guy said. And I only got $7 meal vouchers after I'd asked a couple of times.

Things could have been worse; the plane might have been hijacked or crashed, it could have been filled with Philadelphia Eagles fans, we might have all had diarrhea. But it's sad that one doesn't get any kind of compensation unless one complains about it, and then the compensation is "worth" about as much as the extra several hundred dollars one might pay for a First Class ticket: nothing. It is the illusion of worth, and it is only valuable when the other option is misery.

The moral is that I need to have someone else buy my plane tickets from now on.

--1.03.2007--

Good Mittance

A series of inexplicable events and the Red Line brought me to outgoing Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's walk from the (Massachusetts) State House to Boston Common last night.

The center doors of the State House are opened for three occasions: state funerals, visits of Presidents or foreign heads of state, and this ceremonial walk, in which the outgoing Governor strides into Boston Common to become one of the common people again (only one person, James Michael Curley, has ever flouted this tradition; In 1937 he was picked up by a waiting limo at the foot of the State House steps because he would never be a commoner).

I have always wanted to see this ceremony so I managed to get a media pass. State Troopers and hangers-on bustled in and out of the center doors for hours before Romney and his wife emerged. Romney, who yesterday filed exploratory papers for a potential run at the Republican nomination for the Presidency, was, according to the Boston Globe, out of town for 212 of the past 365 days of his Governorship.

More a son of Utah and Michigan than Massachusetts, Romney was seen as a carpetbagger and his filing of papers yesterday came as no surprise.

He shook my hand at the bottom of the stairs. I had no premonitions like Christopher Walken did of Martin Sheen in The Dead Zone, but I was reminded of the following line:

"And, you know, the thing about a shark... he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be living... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces."

The Passing of Father Nog

My vacation is over. I was sick through most of it, until I landed on Martha's Vineyard (median home price: $365,000) and relaxed. Tomorrow I return to Los Angeles. Three days after that I head to Las Vegas.

Here is a suitable End-of-the-Holidays poem for use in libraries and school dedications:

The Passing of Father Nog

The children woke up squinting
And pried their lids apart
And in Dentoned feet they crept like cats
Down creaking stairs where waited there
The brandy-smelling gentleman
So close to childrens’ hearts:
Father Nog!

His boots were made of kitten
His merkin flecked with gray
And in his trousers lurkin’ were
The double tins of cinnamon
And nutmeg that filled hollow leg
For unscrewing there today
Father Nog!

A yellow calloused digit
Went quickly to his lips
For, spying eager children, knew
That nigh on slumbered parents who
Would rather have their eyes ripped out than
See their spawn at Noggie’s hips
(Father Nog)

“One taste, my tender spritelings
Then off I’ll be like wind
You’ll sample my concoction that is milky
As it’s frothy and quite eggy with its brandy
And you’ll know then why
The blender is our friend.”
- Nog, Father: The Hurting Thread (2007)

Sweet Susie stepped forward
To take the tepid stream
Unloosed by Noggie’s gyroscoping egg-nog pump
Developed by Nordic men of Hrothgar’s line
Who slew the twisty Fire Worms
With sim’lar creamy streams
Father Nog!

Young Billy with his aperture
Stretched like spelunkers’ dreams
Increased to ten the oxygen
That filled the hose in which then rose
The gushing jets of Christmas cheer
That burst from Noggie’s jeans
Father Nog!

And then into the grating
Where lights fluorescent whined
Went Father Nog, his tubing spent
Of all the essence of his love
Until the day when filled again would his leg be
Alas, next Christmas time.

--1.02.2007--

I believe you are going to ignore this problem until it swims up and bites you on the ass

Remember: In 2007 you can do anything; you are the Chief of Police.

--1.01.2007--

Fellas, it's been good to know ya

Today, a blustery, rainy day, we listened to the following songs by one Gordon Lightfoot:

"Rainy Day People"
"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"
"Sundown"
"If You Could Read My Mind"
"Carefree Highway"

TAARG asked, "Why do people make fun of him?"

I replied that there are many injustices in this world, and that a noble way to spend 2007 would be to hunt down and kill anyone who makes fun of Gortdon Lightfoot.

(The body count reached 29 - the same number as the men on the Edmund Fitzgerald - by 6 p.m.)