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  ENGINE FALLS OFF PLANE

  WING FALLS OFF PLANE

  PILOT SUCKED OUT OF PLANE

  PLANE POSSESSED BY DEMONS

  FAA Orders Exorcism of Entire L-1011 Fleet

  But the truth is that, thanks to improvements in technology, air travel today is safer than it has been at any time for the past three weeks. Yes, we’ve come a long way since the Age of Aviation began back in the historic year of 19-something in Kitty Hawk, North or South Carolina, when two young mechanics named Wilbur and Orville Wright, using some canvas and old bicycle parts, constructed the very first airline omelet. There have been many important commercial-aviation innovations since then, including:

  Airline magazines featuring articles with titles like “Akron: Meeting Yesterday’s Challenges Tomorrow.” “Turbulence.” This is what pilots announce that you have encountered when your plane strikes an object in midair. You’ll be flying along, and there will be an enormous, shuddering WHUMP, and clearly the plane has rammed into an airborne object at least the size of a water buffalo, and the pilot will say, “Folks, we’re encountering a little turbulence.” Meanwhile they are up there in the cockpit trying desperately to clean waterbuffalo organs off the windshield. Frequent-flier programs, wherein each time you take a commercial flight, you earn a certain number of miles, plus bonus miles if you actually reach your intended destination within your lifetime. After you’ve accumulated enough miles, you can redeem them for another flight, unless you have the intelligence of a turnip, in which case you’ll remain in your recreation room, where it’s safe. The Baggage Carousel, where passengers traditionally gather at the end of a flight to spend several relaxing hours watching the arrival of luggage from some other flight, which comes randomly spurting out of a mysterious troll-infested tunnel that is apparently connected to another airport, possibly in a different dimension. The baby in the seat behind you whose parents are obviously poking it with hat pins because there is no other way that a child could shriek that loudly all the way from New York to Los Angeles. The 475-pound man in the adjacent seat who smells like a municipal landfill and whose forearm (which by itself is the size of Roseanne Barr) spends the entire flight oozing, like the Blob, over the armrest until it occupies virtually your entire seat and starts absorbing your in-flight meal through some of its larger pores. This in itself is not a bad thing, because airline food is not intended for human consumption. It’s intended as a form of in-flight entertainment, wherein the object is to guess what it is, starting with broad categories such as “mineral” and

  “linoleum.” When the flight attendants ask, “Do you want roast beef or lasagna?” they don’t mean, “Do you want roast beef, or do you want lasagna?” They mean: “Do you want this dinner substance, which could be roast beef, or it could be lasagna? Or possibly peat moss?”

  And speaking of airline food, another important aviation development has been: The barf bag. Early barf bags were large canvas sacks; a severely airsick passenger would be placed inside, and the bag would then be sealed up and, in an act of aviation mercy, shoved out the cargo door at 12,000 feet. Today’s passenger doesn’t get that kind of personalized service, and must place a small bag over his nose and mouth in hopes of cutting off his oxygen supply.

  Despite these strides forward, there have been a few problems caused by the belt-tightening in the airline industry that has resulted from “deregulation,” a new government policy under which the only requirement to purchase an airline is that you have to produce two forms of identification. Even Donald Trump was allowed to purchase an airline, which he immediately named after himself (“Air Jerk”). This led to some dramatic aviation moments when Trump got into financial difficulty and had to sell some of his aircraft while they were still in the air. (“This is your captain speaking. We’ve just been advised that instead of Boston, we will be landing in Iran. We regret any incon ...”)

  Of course, this kind of adventure only adds to the fun of flying. My family has had many fun flights, including an extremely exciting one in which we went from Miami to Honolulu via the following itinerary, which I am not making up:

  1. We flew from Miami to Denver on a plane that seemed to be working fine, so naturally they made us get off of it and get on another plane that was supposed to fly the rest of the way to Honolulu. This happened to be on Halloween. “Never Fly on Halloween,” that is our new aviation motto.

  2. They put a bunch of fuel on our new plane, and we got on it. One of the flight attendants was wearing devil ears, which struck us as hilarious at the time but which we later on realized was an omen. “Never Get on a Flight Where a Crew Member Is Wearing Devil Ears” is another one of our aviation mottoes.

  3. When we got out to the end of the runway, the pilot announced that we had too much fuel, which struck us ignorant laypersons as odd, because we were under the impression that having a lot of fuel is good, especially when you’re flying over a major ocean such as the Pacific. Nevertheless we went back to the gate and got off the plane while they removed fuel, apparently using eyedroppers, because it took them two hours.

  4. We got back on the plane and the pilot announced that—remember I am not making this up—we were going to fly to Los Angeles to get some more fuel. So needless to say ...

  5. We landed in San Francisco. There they told us (why not?) that we had to change planes, so we all got off, only to be met by a gate attendant wearing an entire devil costume, which was seeming less and less amusing. Also the pilot was not inspiring a great deal of confidence in us. You know how pilots are generally trim, military-looking individuals who remain up in the cockpit looking aloof but competent? Well, our pilot was a chunky, slightly disheveled man who looked like a minor character in Police Academy XIII. He was walking around the lounge area, chatting with us passengers as though he had nothing else to do, and holding a computer printout the thickness of War and Peace, which he announced was our “flight plan,” although we couldn’t help but note that (a) he wasn’t reading it, and (b) pages were falling out of it. Some of us were starting to suspect that he wasn’t a real pilot at all, but merely a man who had dressed up in a realistic pilot costume for Halloween. But we were desperate, so we followed him aboard yet another plane. As we taxied out to the runway, the pilot said—I swear—”Hopefully, this one will fly all the way.”

  6. So we took off from San Francisco, and for a while everything was fine except for the aroma coming from the seat behind us, which was occupied by a wretched woman who was attempting to get to Australia with two very small children, whom she evidently intended to enter in the World Pooping Championships. But this ceased to be our main concern when, after about an hour over the Pacific, which is famous for not having anyplace on it where you can land, the pilot announced that we had a “minor engine problem.”

  7. So we turned around and headed back toward, you guessed it, San Francisco, which we were beginning to think of as home. All the way back the pilot kept reassuring us about how minor this engine problem was, so you can imagine our excitement when we got to the airport and saw what appeared to be the entire San Francisco Fire Department lining the runway.

  8. We landed safely and scuttled off the plane to be greeted, once again, by the devil, who was now being assisted by a witch. Of course by this point, Hell seemed like a major improvement over commercial air travel.

  9. Several hours later our pilot led us onto yet another plane. By this point

  a lot of people had dropped out of the flight, but we were determined to see what would ultimately happen, with a lot of smart money betting that this would become the first commercial airliner ever to be sucked into a black hole. During the Preflight Safety Lecture—I swear this is true—the flight attendant said, “If you gotta go, go with a smile.”

  10. We took off from San Francisco again and flew back out over the Pacific, where, to judge from the amount of “turbulence,” we flew smack into a whole herd of airborne water buffalo. The in-flight movie was The Dead Poets Society.
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br />   11. We landed in Honolulu, 21 hours after we left Miami. To apologize for our inconvenience, the flight attendants gave us coupons that were good for discounts on future flights, although they new full well that we were all planning to return to the mainland via canoe.

  I do not mean to suggest here that all flights take this long to reach their destinations. Some of them never reach their destinations. And I understand that there are even some, the ones that I personally am not on, that arrive right on schedule. YOu just never know, which is why air travel is the ongoing adventure that it is.

  Airport Security

  The important thing to remember about airport security procedures is that they have been created for your protection. Sure, it can be annoying to have to stop at the security checkpoint when you’re on a tight schedule, but look at it this way: If the security personnel do their job properly, they just might cause YOU tO miss your plane, thereby Possibly saving your life.

  The heart of the airport security system is the metal detector, a device that shoots invisible rays into your body. These rays are perfectly harmless, according to security personnel, although you notice that THEY never go through the metal detector. In fact, when nobody’s around, they use it to cook their lunch. So most travel experts recommend that, to avoid turning your internal organs into baked lasagna, you go through the detector as fast as possible, maybe even back up fifty yards or so and get a running start.

  The purpose of the metal detector is to make sure that you’re not carrying a bomb or a deadly weapon or a set of car keys. If the detector detects one of these items, it will beep; security personnel will ask you to place the item on a plastic tray and go through the detector again. Your item will be returned to you on the other side (“Wait, sir! You forgot your bomb!”)

  How to Act While Going Through Security

  Security personnel are on the lookout for people who fit the Profile of Suspected Terrorists, which is as follows:

  PROFILE OF SUSPECTED TERRORISTS

  SEX: Male

  AGE: 15 through 74

  LOOKS SUSPICIOUS: Yes

  As a smart traveler who wishes to avoid the inconvenience of being taken to a small airless interrogation room and having electrical wiring attached to your various genitals, you should make every effort to avoid fitting this profile. This means that if you are, for example, a male, you should try to deflect the security personnel’s attention away from this fact via such techniques as:

  Wearing a dress (This is how Oliver North handles it). Periodically remarking out loud to nobody in particular: “I certainly have a lot of body hair, for a woman!”

  Baggage Searches

  At the security checkpoint, your carry-on baggage must be placed on a conveyor belt and passed through an X-ray machine so the security personnel can see if you are carrying questionable items, because if you are, federal law requires them to open up your luggage and root around among your personal belongings like starving boars in a full Dumpster. If they find anything suspicious, For Your Own Protection they will ask you certain standard security questions, such as:

  “What’s this stain in your underwear? Cheez Whiz?” “This is a vibrator? I never seen a vibrator this big! HEY, NORM! TAKE A LOOK AT THIS LADY’S VIBRATOR!”

  “For Kids Only”: Fun with Airport Security Personnel

  Airport security personnel are chosen for their sense of humor, and there is nothing they enjoy so much as a good joke. A fun game you kids can play with them is “Uncle Ted.” What you do is, when you get near the security checkpoint, you walk up to a passenger selected at random and say in a loud voice, “Uncle Ted, can I see the bomb again?” Ha ha! Those wacky, fun-loving security personnel will sure come running! They might even take “Uncle Ted” for a ride in the electric cart! They might even take YOU for a ride in the electric cart if you mention the detonator in Mom’s purse!

  Note From The Publisher

  In this chapter Mr. Barry has been quite critical of commercial air travel, so we have decided, in the interest of fairness, to allow the airline industry an opportunity to respond. The following point-by-point rebuttal was written by Mr. M. Duane LeGrout, president of the American Association of Associated Airline Companies in Association with Each Other.

  An Open Letter To Airline Passengers

  Dear Airline Passenger:

  We will be starting this rebuttal in just a few moments. Please remain in the area, as we are almost ready to start this point-by-point rebuttal. Thank you.

  We apologize for the delay. We will begin rebutting very soon now, and we are grateful for your patience.

  We have an announcement for those readers who are waiting for the point-by-point rebuttal. We are experiencing a minor equipment problem with our word processor at this time, but we do expect to have an announcement very soon and we do ask for your continued patience. In the meantime, we regret to announce that we have overbooked this rebuttal, and we are asking for readers who are willing to give up their space in exchange for an opportunity to read two future rebuttals on a topic of your choice. Thank you, and we expect to have another announcement shortly.

  Okay, we do apologize for any inconvenience, but we have been informed that the word-processor problems have been corrected and we will begin rebutting any moment now. We ask that those of you with small shrieking children pLeAse asssidaisaas *(*A*&AA hey can someBoDy fiX this goddam

  REBUTTAL CANCELED! SEE AGENT!

  Sincerely,

  M. Duane LeGrout President

  Chapter Four. Traveling As A Family (Or: No, We Are Not There Yet!)

  Family travel has been an American tradition ever since the days when hardy pioneer families crossed the Great Plains in oxen-drawn covered wagons, braving harsh weather, hostile Native Americans, unforgiving terrain, scarce food, and—worst of all—the constant whining coming from the backseat:

  “Are we there yet?” “Hey! THESE plains aren’t so great!” “Mom, Ezra is making hostile gestures at those Native Americans!” “Are we almost there?” “Mom! Rebecca dumped some unforgiving terrain into my scarce food!” “PLEASE can we stop here and settle Kansas please please PLEASE??” “Yuck! We’re eating bison again?” “When are we going to be there?” “Mom! Little Ben put oxen poop in his hair!”

  Yes, it was brutally hard, but those brave pioneers kept going, day after day, month after month, never stopping, and do you know why? Because Dad was driving, that’s why. When Dad is driving, he never stops for anything. This is part of the Guy Code of Conduct. A lot of those early pioneer dads, when they got to California, drove their wagons directly into the Pacific Ocean and would probably have continued to Japan if it hadn’t been for shark damage to the oxen.

  Another part of the Guy Code of Conduct still in effect is that only Dad can drive. If necessary, Dad will permanently bond his hands to the steering wheel with Krazy Glue to prevent Mom from driving, because he knows that if she had the wheel, she might suffer a lapse of judgment and decide to actually stop for something, such as food or sleep or medical care for little Jennifer, whose appendix has apparently burst. No, Dad will not allow minor distractions such as these to interfere with his vacation schedule, which looks like this:

  6:00-6:15 A.M.: See Yellowstone National Park 6:15-6:25 A.M.: See Grand Canyon 6:15-7:00 A.M.: See Latin America

  What Dad means by “see,” of course, is “drive past at 67 miles per hour.” Dad feels it is a foolish waste of valuable vacation time to get out of the car and actually go look at an attraction such as the White House, Niagara Falls, the Louvre, etc.

  I myself have been guilty of this behavior. Once we were driving across the country and we got to South Dakota, a dirt-intensive state so sparsely populated that merely by entering it you automatically become a member of the legislature. A major tourist attraction in South Dakota is something called “Wall Drug,” which is basically a group of stores advertised by a string of billboards that begins somewhere outside of the solar system. My wife, Beth, wanted t
o stop. Her reasoning was that we had driven hundreds of miles that day with absolutely no activity to relieve our boredom except eating Stuckey’s miniature pecan pies at the rate of approximately three pies per person per hour. And so as we drew closer to Wall Drug, passing billboard after billboard—157 miles to go, 153 miles to go, 146 miles to go, etc.—her anticipation mounted, until finally we were there, and Beth’s excitement reached a fever pitch because this was the only point of interest for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles, and of course I elected to whiz right past it, as though I had an important appointment elsewhere in South Dakota to pick up an urgent load of manure.

  You know how certain incidents become permanent sore points in a marriage? Like for example a husband will never let his wife forget the time she left a $2,000 video camera where the baby could get hold of it and drop it into the toilet? That’s the status that the Wall Drug Incident has achieved in our marriage. My wife feels that we’re the only people in the history of interstate travel who failed to stop there, and, fifteen years later, she is still bitter. If she ever files for a divorce, this is the first incident she’ll mention to the lawyer. And that’s the wonderful thing about family travel: it provides you with experiences that will remain locked forever in the scar tissue of your mind. Especially if you travel with children. We traveled extensively with our son Robert when he was very young, and I have many, many vivid memories of that period, all of which involve public rest rooms.