In The Air

What can I say? I was never very good with pets. Yes, I forget to feed the blog.

But I have an excuse. I’ve been away too much. In the past two months, my sister got married, I had a birthday, I’ve been to Vancouver Island twice, and I’ve made two separate trips to Italy. Sucks to be me? Hell no. Writing a travel book was a very good idea. Well, I nearly lost my fingers and nearly drowned, but that could happen to me in my kitchen. Note that the above traumas were not occasioned by the wedding or my birthday.

I’ve spent a lot of time in airports recently, and on planes. I’ve two things I want to say on the subject.

First, never fly business class unless you’ll never return to coach. The Rome film festival brought me from Vancouver and very generously put me in the fancy class, and now I’ve experienced what they get up there and I’m telling you, it’s gonna hurt even more going back to the seats where I shove my knees in my ears and bang my forehead on the seat in front of me. It’s a secret society up there. It would take me days to explain half the buttons on my chair, and I bet that I missed a few. Heard a rumour that one of them would start my own private puppet show, and that another would do my taxes.

So stay away, unless you plan to stay.

The second thing I wanted to note is a new trend in air mutiny. Upon landing in Rome, some kid was so relieved by our touchdown that he pulled out a smoke and lit up. Not even in the bathroom. Right there, in his seat. I was sort of proud of him, too, until we were told we had to wait on the plane for the police to come and smack him or whatever. The smokers who had held off hated him even more, now, because he’d deferred their own chance to light up by a half an hour.

The question is, did he know he wasn’t supposed to? Is there somebody in this age who doesn’t know the rules?

The question is even harder for me to answer because on my return flight to Vancouver the same thing happened. Only difference was that the smoker lit up while we were over Iceland. His impulse was prompted by the completion of a meal, not our landing. Our flight attendant even made an announcement, incredibly weary in tone, as if he’d said this ten times that day, “Can we remind you that we’re serious when we say no smoking? Please. Please don’t smoke.”

It’s mutiny out there. Strange times. You know there’s pressure when the skies are ablaze with tobacco. So here I am. Best feed the blog before it bites back.

Notes From The Animal Kingdom

Been blog quiet because I’ve been mostly on the road. I’d tell you about my experiences hunting rattlesnakes in Sweetwater, Texas, but you’ll just have to wait for my travel book for those tales. Suffice to say, this post gives away at least part of the ending, which is, yes, I survived.

Then I was in LA pitching a movie to be based on my fatherhood memoir, C’mon Papa, which will be published next month. I’ll leave you to make the requisite jokes about LA and further snake hunting. Surprisingly enough, I found the 3 days of chronic storytelling sort of refreshing, in an exhausting, pitch-oriented kinda way. At least I got to tell some folks about my misadventures in Texas, even if it was for purely business purposes.

And it just occurred to me: could I be the first person in history who will use snake hunting expenses as a tax write off? Well, me and Bo, my guide. If he’s still alive. He’d another 2 days to go. According to the usual math, that’s about 100 snakes. If you’re with the IRS, don’t fuck with Bo. That’s my accounting advice to you.

While I didn’t encounter any snakes in LA, I did encounter several animals.

“Why,” I asked the development executive at a very nice production office, “why do you have a 7 foot tall plush giraffe?”

I was sort of disappointed when he didn’t ask, “Which one?”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, everything in this room is designed to be a talking point.”

It was true. We were talking. The giraffe caused it. But now I was trying to imagine what else as a blind guy I was missing in this conference room full of talking points. My assistant had put my hand only on the giraffe when we arrived. How much more could there be? What could there be?

“Beside you,” the executive added, “there are 3 dogs, as well. Stuffed ones.”

I stared at the blindness beside me and slightly recoiled in horror.

“Stuffed stuffed?” I said. “Or, you know, just…stuffed?”

“Oh, just stuffed. They’re props. They were the dogs that stood in for the corpses of the 3 assassinated dogs in A Fish Called Wanda.”

And my heart filled with awe. A true celebrity moment. Here I was within reaching distance of the funniest subplot ever written. It was a talking point that left me speechless. Speechless and stupid, it seems, because what did I do next?

I did my pitch and left without touching the damned dogs.