Happy “Primetime” New Year from Bryan, Jennifer, and The Palm.
Monthly Archive for December, 2007
Here are the few things I learned while traveling with U.S Airways this Christmas:
- A reservation and confirmation on a U.S. Airways plane means nothing without a seat assignment. Exactly what a reservation is… uh… actually reserving is bit of a mystery.
- Being booked on an overbooked flight means landing at your destination 7.5 hours later than your itinerary stated - and you’re still one of the fortunate ones. Yes, it would have taken less time to drive.
- U.S. Airways sucks.
- Crying doesn’t help you get re-booked. Even if you are a girl.
- Santa Barbara Airport has no concession stands or restrooms beyond the security checkpoint - and is generally the most uncomfortable airport in which to be stranded.
- Overhearing two undergrads flirt with each other in the seats directly behind you can make you dumber. Like, please stop, like, saying “like”, like, every other, like, word. Thanks goodness I, like, totally brought my iPod.
- If they tell you the delay will be a certain number of minutes, you should double the time they give you. For example, when waiting to take off, the “20 minutes to input data from the tower” turned into 50 minutes because we “missed our window”.
- U.S. Airways really sucks.
- In spite of the fact that airline stewards and stewardesses have no control over the actual plane, people will mercilessly scream and curse at them over any flight delay. And then ask them for coffee.
- Getting a free ticket for all your troubles means weighing whether or not you’d ever want to fly this airline again - even for free.
- Did I mention that U.S. Airways sucks? No, really - it’s true!
Other non-U.S. Airways related items:
- My parents are old enough to get bored in Las Vegas.
- According to my father, the movie Hard Walk [sic] starring Nelson C. Reilly [sic] is really funny. While I think I know to which movie he is referring, the movie he described sounds even funnier.
- Sporting good stores in Utah are scary as hell.
- Mormons don’t find Jesus jokes very funny.
- Mormons don’t find polygamy jokes very funny.
- Mormons don’t find me very funny. I think I am hysterical, however.
- As discovered by my father, Utah natives do not like to be referred to as Utardians - even if you “don’t mean it the way it sounds.”
I hope your Christmas holiday was as educational as mine.
My co-worker, the mighty Ted Coe, was the first to introduce me to this claymation rendition of William S. Burroughs‘ The Junky’s Christmas - narrated by Burrough’s himself.
Although I posted this last year, I thought Billy Clarke, given his love for literature, would have appreciated it.
Happy holidays to you all.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6338897291672494696
Our dear KCSB colleague, Bill “Billy Clarke” Savoy, passed away this morning. I’d just like to pass along my condolences to Bill’s family. As a wrote earlier, Bill was a tremendous part of the KCSB community. He hosted the very eclectic and outstanding KCSB music program, Music Soup, edited some episodes of KCSB’s Santa Barbara Lecture Series, and was generally one of our more dedicated volunteers. Beyond all of that, he was simply a great guy.
Goodbye, Billy Clarke. You will be missed.
One of the things I received around my recent birthday, which was largely responsible for my lack of excitement, was the news that my friend Bill was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Bill was experiencing chronic ear aches, which were eventually accompanied by short-term memory loss. When he went in to have it checked out, the doctors discovered several tumors, and within a week (which was exactly two weeks before Christmas) it was determined that he didn’t have much time - three months if the chemotherapy worked. Bill’s condition changed so drastically, in such a short period of time, that when I went to see him last Monday he was up-beat and lucid. When I saw him on Wednesday, he was on morphine and conscious for very brief moments. Bill is 65 years old, and a KCSB dee-jay.
At some level, I want to wax philosophical about the meaning of life and death. I just don’t have it in me. Bill is a pretty significant part of the KCSB community - his work is literally in the walls of one of our studios, and I learned a great deal from him. Like with Tom Borghi and Mike Petrini, KCSB is a better place with Bill walking through its doors. And along with Tom and Mike, it is hard to remember what KCSB was like before he arrived, and I’ll never quite get over the fact that he will be gone. On a small level, this all serves as a reminder that there’s little you can do to prepare for what is inevitable for all of us. On a larger level, it just plain hurts.
In any case, as the holidays once again come and go, do yourself a favor and hug you loved ones a little bit tighter.
