✈ Adventures of a red-eye flight out of Los Angeles

Aisle seats, booties in your face, and warm water. [READER]( The Daily Reader Caught an eastbound red-eye flight out of Los Angeles the other day . . . Supposed to leave at 11 PM. But—for reasons unknown, they didn’t explain why—it was delayed. So for several hours we sat in the terminal in sullen silence. Finally, they announced, good news! The plane we were intending to take was of no use. Well, that wasn’t exactly the good news. The good news they announced is that—unable to fix whatever ailed the plane we were supposed to take—they were bringing over another plane from “maintenance.” Hearing that our plane was on its way from maintenance didn’t exactly fill me with positive vibrations for what lay ahead. But I dutifully boarded. It took a while to reach my seat because the aisles were filled with passengers trying to stuff their suitcases into the overhead bins. The delay gave me time to ponder one of life’s great paradoxes . . . Why is it that airlines cling to a policy that gives people a financial incentive to make everyone’s life miserable? Think about it: It costs at least $30 to check your suitcase. But there’s no charge to carry it to the plane. That means passengers have a financial incentive to schlep bags down aisles that are really too narrow to have all that luggage schlepped down them. And then hoist those bags into the aforementioned overhead bins, smashing with their luggage the elbows, arms, heads, and noses of passengers already seated. Meanwhile, as they try to cram their luggage into those bins, other passengers are forced to wait in the aisles—booties inches from a seated passenger’s face. If you’ve ever had the aisle seat, you know exactly what I’m talking about. That bootie is in your face, no matter how much you pretend it is not. It all makes everyone a little more grumpy than they already were, especially the flight attendants who have to put up with this inconvenience flight after flight after flight. My guess is that airline bean-counters have calculated that this policy saves money on baggage-handlers’ salaries. Anyway, back to the flight . . . Somewhere over the Rockies, they served refreshments. That is, a flight attendant walked down the aisle, a stack of plastic cups in one hand, a bottle of water in the other. “Would you like some water?” she asked. “Why, certainly,” I said. She leaned the stack of cups my way. I took one. Then she poured the water. “Thank you,” I said. “You’re welcome,” she answered. I took a sip. Guess what? It was warm. That is correct. Our refreshment was warm water. “You know, in jail, they usually give you a crust of bread to go with your warm water,” I said. “You ungrateful piece of bourgeois shit,” she replied. Actually, neither she nor I said anything else. Just my imagination. Finally, some real good news. We landed safe and sound. Walked off the plane at about 8:30 AM, after sitting another 20 or so minutes on the tarmac waiting for a gate to open. O’Hare was packed. Like it was the day before Thanksgiving. Apparently, delays, booties in your face, and threats of a pending recession have not deterred people from flying. Enjoy your warm water, people . . . Listen to [The Ben Joravsky Show]( [What Ben's Reading] [H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald](. Finally read the book that was a bestseller some eight years ago. Never thought I’d enjoy a book about birds. But I did. [Yolanda Perdomo]( on Adam Carston’s fabulous movie-ad collection Ben Joravsky offers [advice]( nervous Democratic voters [Best of the Ben J. Show]( [Salim Muwakkil]( on Pharoah Sanders and Kanye West [Adolfo Mondragon]( on colorism and the LA council president’s hateful tirade [David Faris]( Tulsi Gabbard [Joan La Barbara is a treasure of America’s avant-garde]( by [Joshua Minsoo Kim]( [Music Fest threw open the stages on the Logan Square strip]( by [Debbie-Marie Brown]( [Why would a survivor of sexual trauma want D/s kink?]( Some who have submissive desires and traumatic sexual histories find BDSM therapeutic. by [Dan Savage]( Want more Reader in your inbox? 📰 [Issue of Oct. 13 - 26, 2022 Vol. 52, No.]( [Download Issue]( [View this e-mail as a web page]( [@chicago_reader]( [/chicagoreader]( [@chicago_reader]( [Chicago Reader on LinkedIn]( [/chicagoreader]( [chicagoreader.com]( [Forward this e-mail to a friend](. Want to change how you receive these e-mails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](. Copyright © 2022 Chicago Reader, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Chicago Reader, 2930 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 102, Chicago, IL 60616