Running on empty

I spent a good chunk of yesterday getting home to the Silicon Valley from Sedona—from about 1030 to 1700, door to door. And of course I have a couple of observations on this process.

USAir has to be one of the saddest carriers still limping along, flying the most dilapidated aircraft that actually make it into the air. Their flight attendants do not inspire confidence when they can’t even read that flight safety announcement. (The one from Flagstaff to Phoenix seriously had the card in front of her face, and she still couldn’t get it right.)

The thing about spending the entire day on airplanes where they give you nothing to eat but a packet of pretzels is that, with only a couple of toaster waffles in you, you arrive home absolutely empty, but too tired to cook anything.

Thank God for TJ’s holiday-only “handmade” tamales that you can nuke for a couple of minutes.

Supper club in Sedona

I had an unusual Christmas Eve this year. My sister, whom I’m visiting in Sedona for the first time, arranged for us to go out to a “supper club” holiday dinner.

It’s sort of a mix between dinner theatre, a night club and the early-bird special. There was a four-course dinner and then a small, uh, entertainment group (singers, instrumentals and really, really bad patter). Evidently it was the first time this particular establishment has done this, and they hadn’t quite worked out the pre-show organizational bugs, but the food was actually quite good and the musicians were accomplished.

What they didn’t explain was that, in order to get more people into the venue, which isn’t that big, if you were a party of two, they sat you with another party of two. When we arrived at our table, we found that a (retired) couple from Seattle were already ensconced there and had eaten all the choice bits from the cheese platter.

This pot luck seating is one of the reasons I’ve never fancied taking a cruise. (The other one is that I am not what they call a good sailor and I’ve never seen the point in paying money to spend all my time hanging over the rail, if you catch my drift.) To be seated for five hours (less the 90 minutes of the two musical sets) with a prime example of the self-absorbed, self-satisfied inhabitants of the Emerald City was just plain mean.

In all the time I was there, the husband (John) asked me exactly one question about myself—where in the Bay Area I come from. That was just a foil for him to go off at great length about how he and the wife always go to San Francisco, “which is really comparable to Seattle, although it’s not as big”.

Oh, in his bleeding dreams.

The entertainers are obviously well-known to the audience—I expect that in a town the size of Sedona, people get to know the local performers. (The Seattleites assured me that there’s a massive music scene here.) Plus—the fans were clearly well-oiled.

It was actually an enjoyable experience once I got over the whole bad-PNW-fairy thing. Definitely an experience I would ordinarily not have touched with a barge pole. So, hurrah for the Christmas spirit.

Today I’m on my way back to the Bay Area, glad for the break, for seeing my sister and for trying something different.

Holiday flash, Part 6

For Christmas, I’m giving you one more “Hallelujah” flash mob. It’s the first one I ever heard of, put on by the Philadelphia Opera Company on behalf of Random Acts of Culture at the old Philadelphia Wanamaker’s (now Macy’s) store.

If I thought I could be engulfed by one of these flash mobs, I might be enticed into a Macy’s.

At any rate—I hope your Christmas is as surprisingly wonderful as any of the holiday flash mobs I’ve shared with you over the past week or so.

Tech connections

I’m visiting my sister in Sedona for Christmas. Flew out Saturday from Oakland, through Phoenix and then on to Flagstaff, which from the air appears to have expanded since the last time I was through there 30 years ago and rolled my car.

(Yes, that’s right. I did not spin out; I did a 360-degree roll. But that’s another story.)

I brought with me: my laptop, my Kindle Fire HD tablet (an early Christmas gift, with which I’m completely besotted), my smartphone, my Zune MP3 player, a Nikon 35mm DSLR and a Nikon POS camera.

Here’s the thing: because every blinking one of these things has a different connector at the device end for either power or to transfer files, I’ve had to bring with me six bleeding cables. My roll-on was a veritable snakepit of cords.

At least I can use the same cable for my pedometer and the DSLR.

Holiday flash, Part 5

To round off our holiday flash mob week, I’ll return to “Hallelujahs” at malls.

Here it is at a shopping centre in Weinheim, Germany. Auf Deutsch.

And here is my favorite (so far) rendition of it in a mall.

I love the way people pop up to join, and then melt away after it’s over. That is the most magical thing about flash mobs.

Holiday flash, Part 4

So far, the holiday flash mobs I’ve featured have been unsponsored. (Well, the LAX one might be quasi-official, but I didn’t see any ‘sponsored by’ indicators.) So here are a couple with corporate connections. Interestingly—they’re both from airlines.

This comes to us from a carrier I personally have never heard of. WestJet livened up things for late-night passengers at the airport in Calgary.

Now, I don’t know that it meets the criteria for organic flash mobs, inasmuch as participants in these phenomena are meant to appear suddenly, do their singing/dancing schtick and then melt back into the crowd. But it’s certainly stylish & entertaining. & the passengers on the red-eye headed to Toronto looked a lot happier than you’d ordinarily expect.

Plus—that whole Blue Santa thing: extra points for the style statement.

This one features flight attendants of Cathay Pacific strutting their stuff for charity. I’ve got to say that considering these men & women have an actual, you know, day job, they do remarkably well at pulling this off.

I like the woman pushing the service cart through the aisle of flight attendants, flinging packets of peanuts around. Plus—they totally get into it when the Macarena comes up, as it apparently usually does in an airport flash mob setting.

Holiday flash, Part 3

Today’s holiday flash mobbery comes to us from airports—since airports feature heavily in many of our holiday plans.

The first one takes place in Orlando International, and is “Hallelujah”. It sounds to me like the singers get out of synch for part of it, but that has to be one of the hazards involved in doing a choral work in this kind of venue. Still—props for pulling it off.

Now this second one—well, it’s going to take you a while to get through it, but well worth it. It comes from LAX, & let me just say this: those baggage handlers & cleaning staff got some moves on them.

Crank up the volume & join them. You know you want to.

Holiday flash, Part 2

Continuing the theme of holiday flash mobs, today I’ll move away from “Hallelujah”.

This one, at a Connecticut mall, is a little more than just a bunch of people showing up to sing or dance. It’s by a group called RedefineChristmas.org; you’ll see what they’re redefining.

For another kind of surprise, here are a saxophonist & a couple hundred of his closest friends from the University of Minnesota school of music. They showed up one day at the Carlson School of Management to show the MBAs-in-the-making that there’s more to life than ROI.

Aloha to the honorable gentleman

I can’t tell you how sad I am to hear of the death of Daniel Inouye. The Senator who represented the people of Hawaii since 1963, died today at age 88.

The man served the people of the United States pretty much all his adult life. He lost his arm in action in Tuscany against the Germans in 1945 as a member of the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team. For his courage truly above and beyond, Inouye was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor (initially the Distinguished Service Cross). Following his recovery from his wounds, he earned degrees in political science and law, and began his political career.

Inouye absolutely embodied the concept of public service. In an organization marked these days for veniality, pettiness and rabid ideology, he never lost sight of the greater good. I can’t think of him as a “politician” when the term applies to the likes of our Congress.

Sadly, they don’t make them like him anymore.

Holiday flash, Part 1

I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but I was expecting another week between now & Christmas. Someone apparently sneaked in & burgled it while I wasn’t looking.

At any rate, it’s time for holiday flash mobs. First up—because you can never have too much “Hallelujah Chorus” is a couple from Ireland.

This one, from a South Dublin mall, is remarkable to me because the setting is so depressingly like every mall in the US. Couldn’t they have built something not quite so vanilla?

(I was also struck by the yahoo who rode the escalator down with his/her kid in one of those fold-up strollers. Apparently Irish yuppies have no more sense of child protection than American ones—can’t be bothered to take the elevator, just jam the rear axle on the tread & hope that disaster doesn’t strike.)

Okay—I’m being a bit churlish there.

So by way of atonement, here’s one from Cork—apparently in the university dining hall.

Props to the choir for singing it a cappella.