HALLOWEEN

I don't do Halloween very well. I always come up with a really, really clever costume sometime around November 3rd, spend a few minutes kicking myself and then making a point to remember it for next year.

I never do.

This year, I wanted to be Marty McFly from Back to the Future. I didn't really have any plans other than work, but everyone else was planning on dressing up so I didn't want to be the only fun hater. So last night (Saturday, the night everyone was out doing fun stuff) I spent three hours driving around town looking for an orange vest and a denim jacket. I couldn't find either of them. I figured an orange vest was going to be a bit hard to find (all I found was something similar to what a crossing guard would wear) but I couldn't even locate a denim jacket. And I was at Walmart for Christ's sake. I figured they'd have a whole section of the store dedicated to awesome denim fashion, but no.

The other problem I have with Halloween, is that I get set on one idea and that's that. I would have definitely been able to put something else together, but I was set. It was Marty McFly or bust. And as it got later and later, the whole thing began looking like more and more of a long shot. Finally, after a third (!) Walmart store let me down, I gave up.

Defeated, I went home. Didn't go looking for any parties, didn't try to find anything fun to do, just went home and read comics.

Sidenote -- I'm way awesome, by the way, if you haven't been able to figure that out from this post and the dozens of others on this blog like it.

I was able to throw something really boring together this morning, but it wasn't the same.

Luckily, my whole day was made better by the best Halloween costume of the year—Lil Ron Washington.

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Seven-year-old Liam Roybal, whose Ron Washington costume has become an Internet sensation, earned himself a trip to the World Series as a guest of the Texas Rangers.

Roybal, who lives in Keller, Texas, met the Rangers manager in the dugout prior to Game 4.

It makes me smile every time I see it. Now he gets to attend Game 4 of the World Series and even kick things off by yelling "Play Ball" at the beginning of the game.

That's how you spend Halloween.

I'll have to remember that costume for next year.

2008 - 2010

At least he went out on a high note.

And also, to the people at Sea Life Aquarium in Germany where Paul lived, your new Frenchie octopus (also named Paul) isn't fooling anyone. There can be only one.

SO CLOSE YET SO FAR

Who knew Twitter could cause so much trouble?

If you've never heard of Every Time I Die, they're a hardcore/metal/southern rock band from Buffalo, New York. They're also pretty funny.

Over the summer they had a web series on Vans.com called SHIT HAPPENS. It was basically a whole bunch of tour footage cut up into episodes and new one would run each week. I watched the first couple, thought they were kind of funny, but not enough to keep me coming back every week. But apparently lots of other people liked it and was successful enough that they were able to turn it into an entire DVD. It came out yesterday, but over the past couple of weeks, the band has been hyping it up via the Internet.

One of the things they did was to start making fake endorsements by celebrities on their Twitter account. They did quite a few and some of them were pretty funny.

for sure it will my man! RT @justinbieber: if I don't have pubes by oct 26th, I'm sure the ETID DVD will give me a whole mess of em, yo!

ok. Thanks? RT @peeweeherman: New ETID DVD in stores 10/26! I sure hope they play THAT in a dark, seedy theater!

Along with Justin Bieber and Pee Wee Herman, they RT'd a bunch of others like Sarah Palin, CNN, Roger Ebert, Puff Daddy, Andy Dick and Jimmy Fallon. They started off with President Obama and followed up with Oprah Winfrey assuming that most people would get the joke.

Unfortunately, some of the people the band fake-retweeted didn't think it was funny at all. A couple days after the initial rush of RT's, the band posted these on their Twitter page:

it took 7 days for seize and desist papers to show up. anyone know a good lawyer?

thanx for the support, glad so many people enjoyed our fake tweets but we can't comment further on the legal troubles its caused, stay posi!

The band wasn't talking, but everyone else on the internet began to speculate on who it was that would get up in arms enough to call their lawyer and file cease and desist papers over a mid-level band and their Twitter account. Fortunately no one had to speculate for very long, because within a few hours of the news, the band took to their account yet again.

We just spoke to our lawyer and though we can't comment on it, there's no law saying you can't tweet @kanyewest & tell him to fuck off

Of course it had to be him.

I loved College Dropout and Late Registration, didn't care for Graduation (though still bought it because of that contest he was having with 50 Cent, who I hate) and flat out disliked 808's & Heartbreak. Kind of lost interest in him around then and just started flat out ignoring him after the Taylor Swift thing. Didn't care about anything he was doing and just avoided all stories about him for the next little while. I wasn't railing against him and every time "Gold Digger" came up on shuffle, I still listened to it. I caught his Saturday Night Live performance and was pretty impressed and he almost had me back on his side. Then he did this and I was reminded how egotistical he is with absolutely no sense of humor. The fact that he becomes more of a douchebag every year and still has the majority of people eating out of his hand is beyond me.

Look, I'll always respect Kanye West because he rarely does the same thing twice and is always looking for ways to make his music stand out, but that doesn't mean I have to like him.

JACKASS 3D

I don't care much for the gross out gags that make up about half of JACKASS 3D, but the rest of it was hilarious and exactly what I expected it to be.

The 3D cameras were used perfectly and the super slow motion, high definition replays made everything better. Some of the guys looked a little worse for wear and if you that could be a little depressing if you start to think about it too much. The toll that all of these stunts have taken on their bodies is catching up to them, but they're all probably rich and don't have to worry about it too much, but it might catch up to them and end poorly.

It's a little weird to see a bunch of guys in their mid-to-late-30s doing idiotic stunts, but hey, I'm not going to complain. I'll watch them whenever they do them.

HEREAFTER

Where do I even start with this one? I'm a fan of Clint Eastwood as an outlaw, Dirty Harry and a racist old man. As a director? Not so much.

GRAN TORINO was good, despite the fact that every actor in that movie was god awful but I haven't really cared for anything he's directed for a long, long time other than that (never saw MILLION DOLLAR BABY and MYSTIC RIVER didn't do much). So when the Sunday Night Movie selection came down and HEREAFTER was the choice, I just kind of shrugged and went along.

Man, that was a long, long 129 minutes. I know it was that long, because halfway through I used my phone to look up the running time so I knew how much longer I was going to have to sit there.

The movie ran three different stories that you knew were going to eventually merge into one, but it took so long to get there. Also, every character had at least one cringe-inducing awkward scene with Matt Damon. If you took just those scenes out of context of the movie they would be the most awkward/inappropriate things ever committed to film—especially the last scene in Matt Damon's hotel room.

Better yet, it all climaxed at the exciting location of the London Book Fair, because that's the place everyone wants to be.

Unfortunately the two biggest stories never got any resolution (one of them kind of did) and I realized we just sat through two hours of build up so we could watch Matt Damon fantasize about what might happen.

God damn you, Eastwood. Make another pissed off, racist old man movie. Just this time get some better actors.

And the rest of you, stay away from HEREAFTER.

SOLD

I would most likely buy tickets to all of these shows.

I'M AN IDIOT

Yesterday I was leaving Nordstrom Rack about 6 PM. The sun was going down and I was hurrying across the street. The sun was in my eyes a bit so I was squinting. I stepped up on the curb and walked right into a tree. One of the branches was broken and a little jagged and it scraped the side/top of my head. There were quite a few people around, so I kind of played it off like it didn't hurt, but it really did.

I got in my car and felt where the branch had hit me. When I brought my hand down, my fingertips were covered in blood. I didn't want to panic because the couple in the car next to me saw the whole thing happened and were, I think, waiting to see the damage. I played it off, started my car and drove to the Barnes and Noble so I could use the bathroom. I put my hood up before I went in the store because I didn't know how bad it was and the last thing I wanted was a store full of customers watching a guy with a bleeding head wandering through the store.

In the bathroom, there was one person in a stall, but aside from that, I was alone. I took my hood off to get a better look and it was bad. I turned on the sink and stuck my head under the same faucet that I'm sure countless homeless men have used to shower. The water pouring into the sink immediately turned pink and my head started throbbing. After I cleaned it off as best I could, I took another look. It was a good sized cut, probably about two inches long. Unfortunately, since I have thin hair and keep it shaved pretty short anyway, it was very noticeable.

So, if you happen to see me out and about with a long cut on the side of my head, I might make up a cool story that makes me sound like a bad ass. But if you know the truth. The truth is that I'm an idiot that needs to watch where I'm going.

God damn it.

LAZINESS

I had a plan.

My plan was to update at least once a day. Maybe the posts wouldn't be as long or as in-depth (like I do that anyway) as I'd like, but I wanted to get something up here. There aren't many people that read this (thanks to those that do) but still, I don't want to lose the ones I've got.

I know what the problem is, too. It's my job.

Now don't get me wrong, I like my job but it takes a lot out of me. Being a server requires a lot of small talk and doing that for 8 hours a day takes a toll. If I worked nights things might be different. But since I'm at work chit-chatting with people from 8 am until 3 pm, the last thing I have the energy for when I get off is telling jokes on the internet. I could write about funny things that happen to me at work, but that wouldn't be too much fun. Besides, I'm pretty sure there are literally a million server rant type blogs, and aside from that, server ranting is only funny to other servers. If you don't work at a restaurant, I doubt you actually care or find any of it funny.

If you looked at the dates on my posts, a lot of them fall on Tuesday and Wednesday and that's because those are my days off and I spend most of those days sitting at my desk on the computer (like right now, for instance).

I'm going to try and rectify that and see if I can commit to the "at least once a day" mantra that I've set for myself. So stay tuned. There may be some good stuff coming.

Maybe.

BATMAN 3 JUST GOT BETTER

THE DARK KNIGHT was great and everyone knew there would be a third BATMAN film with Christopher Nolan, we just didn't know what it would be or when it would actually start to take shape.

Well, we've got a little bit of an idea now.

I know it's ridiculous to get excited about casting news because you never know how things are going to turn out. But I don't care. Nolan just signed Tom Hardy for a part in the movie and now I'm infinitely more excited.

This man should be in all movies.

CATFISH

Now that all the summertime bullshit movies are done and gone, we're finally getting to the good stuff. CATFISH played at Sundance this year and I missed it. Heard nothing but good things about it, so I've been patiently waiting for it to come to Salt Lake and it finally did. Sort of.

The only theater in town that's showing it is Jordan Landing. I try to stay east of Redwood Road and north of 3300 South as much as I can, but I wanted to see this thing so bad that I broke both those rules. I also went by myself because sometimes it's damn enjoyable to see a movie on the big screen alone. It gets a bad wrap and I'm sticking up for it. Try it sometime.

One important thing I've heard about the movie since Sundance is that the less you know about it, the better it will be. That was another reason I saw it by myself. Trying to convince someone to see a movie they'd never heard of at a theater that takes half an hour to get to without being able to tell them a single thing about it was a hard sell.

I don't want to give anything away, but if you have any interest in seeing it, avoid everything about it. 20/20 spoiled it last week, so by now it's bound to be everywhere.

All I'll say is that you kind of see what's coming, but the way it plays out is one of the most fascinating things I've seen all year. The people making the documentary do the exact opposite of what you think they're going to do and it becomes 1000 times better.

Everyone that has only seen the trailer thinks its some kind of horror/suspense movie or something that bashes Facebook. It's nothing that you're expecting, but like I said once you get in and start watching, you can figure out where it's going, but the end result is not what you'd expect.

Probably my favorite documentary of the year and one of my favorite movies I've seen in 2010 too.

THAT'S HOW YOU CELEBRATE

Everybody at least kind of knows the Josh Hamilton story, right? If you don't, I'll give you a little recap: He was the number one pick in the 1999 baseball draft, given a $4 million signing bonus. His parents had quit their jobs to follow their 20-year-old son around the minor leagues to make sure he'd be alright, but a dump truck ran a red light and smashed into his mothers car. She and Hamilton's father went back to North Carolina for her to rehab and Hamilton was on his own. So, being 21 years old with $4 million dollars in the bank and living in shithole Florida, Hamilton went straight downhill. Drugs and alcohol eventually ruined him and he was pretty much kicked out of baseball. He made his way back (and it really is a fantastic story, so read it when you get the time) and now he's one of the two biggest stars on the Texas Rangers.

The Rangers beat the Rays (the team that drafted Hamilton, ironically) last night to move on to the ALCS for the first time in franchise history. As a recovering addict, Hamilton skipped the postgame celebration after the Rangers cliched the West title because he didn't want to be around the champagne spraying all over the place. He was prepared to do the same last night, but the rest of the team had a surprise for him.

ESPN -- ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Josh Hamilton's teammates weren't going to celebrate without him this time.

As soon as the Texas Rangers hugged on the field and headed for the tunnel following a 5-1 ALDS Game 5 win over the Tampa Bay Rays, the clubhouse attendants told Hamilton to get his goggles on.

"I was getting a little worried," Hamilton said. "I didn't know what was going on."

Hamilton, who has battled drug and alcohol addiction, said it's best for him not to be around champagne. So he walked into the clubhouse to find his teammates waiting on him and holding bottles of Canada Dry ginger ale.

"Everybody yelled 'Ginger ale!' and I just jumped in the middle of the pile and they doused me with it," Hamilton said. "It was the coolest thing for my teammates to understand why I can't be a part of the celebration, and for them to adapt it for me to be a part of it says a lot about my teammates."

Awesome, right? Rangers pitcher CJ Wilson was equally happy with the Ginger Ale celebration, but not because he's a recovering addict—but because he's straight edge. Seriously. He's got X's stitched into his glove and everything. And he dropped a couple of tweets about it, too.

@str8edgeracer - #gingeralecelebration because josh and I are both polarized on avoiding alcohol but wanted to be in on the party. Straightedge/drug free fun

I hate Texas as a whole, but it's hard to hate the Rangers after this.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A JUGGALO (THE BEGINNING, AT LEAST)

Yesterday morning, I dropped off my car at the auto shop and jumped on TRAX to head home. I like TRAX, but I don't normally ride it. Once they finish the airport line, I'm sure I'll use it a bit more than I usually do, but as of now, I'm only on it once or twice a year.

I walked down the sidewalk on 2100 South and rather than go all the way around the fence through the UTA parking lot, I just casually walked between the tracks. Once I got up to the platform, a Juggalo on a razor scooter started talking to me. I pulled my headphones out and asked what he said.

"There's a cop right there," he said. "It's a $2500 fine for walking between the tracks like that." He pointed to a sign and rode away.

I hadn't seen the sign, but I looked at it after he pointed it out. There was a fine alright, but it was $2400 less than he told me. And the cop was on the very far end of the platform issuing a ticket to some punk rock squatters, paying no attention to me.

As I waited for the train, a juggalette (a lady juggalo, if you didn't know) probably about 18 or 19 was walking her old, green BMX bike across the parking lot. We boarded the train when it arrived, she sat at one end of the car and I sat at another. We both got off the train in front of Sam Weller (where I could catch the train up 4th South to my house) and she, again, walked her bike across the street. She dropped it, hard, next to a group of people—some younger than her and a few that were way older. The way she just threw that bike down made me think she was either really angry about something or she was just showing off. Probably the latter.

She bummed a cigarette, piked up her bike and walked it away. I watched her go down the street until she rounded the corner and she never once got on to ride it. The rest of the Main Street Juggalos (I think that's what their gang name is) kept moving back and forth between two places about 20 yards away from each other. Eventually, the same groups ended up together but just in opposite places.

I started thinking how it would be kind of interesting to pick one out and just follow him for an entire day without his knowledge. I'm curious what they do all day, what they talk about, where they go when they're not hanging out in front of the City Weekly building and where they actually live.

I wonder how many of the older ones are left over from the glory days of hanging out on Main Street before TRAX was built and there were two malls (Crossroads and ZCMI) to navigate between. I also wonder if they tell the younger kids about how things were "back in the day" and if the younger kids listen to the stories wide-eyed, wishing they were around (much like new punk rockers do when they hear stories about the 80s) or if they simply ignore it because we all know ICP wasn't around back then, so it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Those are the conversations I would like to hear.

I'd never do it, of course. I've got far more important things to do—like write about possibly doing that on my blog while ESPN plays in the background.

ERIC STOLZ AS MARTY MCFLY

Way back in 1983-ish, when BACK TO THE FUTURE was gearing up to go into production, Michael J. Fox was the unanimous choice for Marty McFly. Unfortunately, producer Gary David Goldberg refused to let Fox have time off from filming FAMILY TIES so director Robert Zemeckis and producer Steven Spielberg went with their second choice, Eric Stolz.

They filmed for nearly five weeks with Stolz before looking over the footage and realizing he was completely wrong for the part. Zemeckis said Stolz turned in a first rate dramatic performance, but they weren't getting any of the laughs they intended when he and Bob Gale were writing the script and it was turning into a much, much darker film than they had intended. Facing that, they let Stolz go and did whatever they had to do to get Fox. It added another 3 million dollars to the budget (which was actually about 1/5 of the total budget for the movie) and had to start all over.

The studio has been reluctant to ever let that footage out, but they decided to include the footage and the story on the 'making of' feature that's included on the 25th Anniversary DVD's hitting stores later this month.

I grew up with these movies and they were as big of a part of my childhood as STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES, so it's a little jarring to see scenes I know so well looking completely different 25 years later. But it's always fun to think about what might have been.

THE SIMPSON'S. BY BANKSY.

If you didn't see it for yourself the other night, you've no doubt at least heard about it. Al Jean, longtime showrunner of The Simpson's talked to the NY Times yesterday and explains how he did it without getting fired and the lengths they had to go to finding the artist.

NY Times ArtsBeat -- How did “The Simpsons” manage to track down Banksy, the pseudonymous British artist, and get him to create the powerful opening-credit sequence from Sunday’s episode, which seems to reveal the torturous sweatshop responsible for the show’s creation? And how, after all that mockery, have the producers behind that Fox animated series been able to retain their jobs? Al Jean, an executive producer and the longtime show runner of “The Simpsons,” pulled back another layer of the curtain and explained the stunt to ArtsBeat on Monday afternoon.

Q. How did you find Banksy to do this, and now that it’s done, how much trouble are you in?

A. Well, I haven’t been fired yet, so that’s a good sign. I saw the film Banksy directed, “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” and I thought, oh, we should see if he would do a main title for the show, a couch gag. So I asked Bonnie Pietila, our casting director, if she could locate him, because she had previously located people like Thomas Pynchon. And she did it through the producers of that film. We didn’t have any agenda. We said, “We’d like to see if you would do a couch gag.” So he sent back boards for pretty much what you saw.

Q. Were you concerned that what he sent you could get the show into hot water?

A. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it for a little bit. Certainly, Fox has been very gracious about us biting the hand that feeds us, but I showed it to Matt Groening, and he said, no, we should go for it and try to do it pretty much as close as we can to his original intention. So we did. Like we always do, every show is submitted to broadcast standards, and they had a couple of [changes] which I agreed with, for taste. But 95 percent of it is just the way he wanted.

Q. Can you say what got cut out?

A. I’ll just say, it was even a little sadder. But I would have to say almost all of it stayed in. We were thrilled. It was funny, I watched “Mad Men” last night and I wondered if this was my Don Draper letter to The New York Times. I knew just how he felt. But it was great to have a secret.

Q. One of the things Banksy is known for is disguising his identity. How can you be sure that you were dealing with the real him?

A. The original boards that we got from him were in his style and were certainly by an extremely proficient artist. We were dealing with the person that represented him making the movie. I haven’t met him, I don’t even know what he looks like, except what the Internet suggests. And he’s taken credit for it now so I’m pretty sure it’s him. We went through the people that made the movie so I assume they would know how to get to the real him.

Q. Even compared to how “The Simpsons” has mocked Fox in the past, this seemed to push things to a different level. Are you sure there’s no one higher up than you on the corporate ladder who’s displeased with this?

A. I think that we should always be able to say the holes in our DVDs are poked by unhappy unicorns.

Q. Has Banksy’s criticism made you reconsider any of the ways you do things at “The Simpsons” in terms of producing the show or its merchandise?

A. I have to say, it’s very fanciful, far-fetched. None of the things he depicts are true. That statement should be self-evident, but I will emphatically state it.

Q. A lot of the show’s animation is produced in South Korea, but not under those conditions.

A. No, absolutely not.

Q. And even that closing shot of the 20th Century Fox logo surrounded in barbed wire?

A. Approved by them. Obviously, the animation to do this was pricey. I couldn’t have just snuck it by Fox. I’ll just say it’s a place where edgy comedy can really thrive, as long as it’s funny, which I think this was. None of it’s personal. This is what made “The Simpsons” what it is.

I WANT ALL OF THESE

LET ME IN

Two for two at the movies this week. LET ME IN wasn't quite as good as THE SOCIAL NETWORK, but I really, really liked it.

Regrettably, I haven't seen the Swedish version (LET THE RIGHT ONE IN) yet but I'm glad I haven't. It's nice to go in to a movie and have nothing to compare it to. All you have is what's on the screen and that has to hold your attention.

What I liked the most about this movie was that it was more a story about childhood and first love—more or less. Yes, it was a horror movie with vampires, but they way everyone handled it was extremely impressive. Matt Reeves wasn't out to make a shocking, jump-out-of-your-seat scary movie but instead made a serious and straight forward story with a terrifying vibe.

In other words, this is exactly the kind of horror movie I like.

I hate gimmick-y horror (i.e. killer snowmen, psycho killers) but I love atmospheric horror with slow builds and a dynamite payoff—which LET ME IN absolutely has (although, I hear it's not as satisfying a climax as the original).

And the kids in it are just downright spectacular. Chloe Moretz (aka Hit Girl) and Kodi Smit-McPhee were fantastic, Moretz especially.

See it. Tonight.

I'M ON A HORSE

If you've never seen the original commercial, this probably isn't anywhere near as funny as it should be.

BLACK FLAG SELLS OUT

DANZIG. IN A DANZIG SHIRT. BUYING CAT LITTER.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Has David Fincher ever made a bad movie?

We were trying to figure that out on the way home from the movie last night and while his movies aren't always great, they usually range somewhere between solid and entertaining (PANIC ROOM) to downright fantastic (SEVEN). He's actually made far fewer movies than I thought, but he seems to not be taking as much time between projects anymore. And that's a very good thing. There needs to be more directors of his caliber making good stuff for everyone to watch.

Anyway, on to THE SOCIAL NETWORK.

I loved it the whole way through. The way it was crafted kept it entertaining the entire time because Aaron Sorkin's script was phenomenal (so good that I downloaded it when I got home to see how it was put together). Jesse Eisenberg has been typecast as sort of a poor man's Michael Cera for a while now, but he's out of that shadow now. He killed it. Hell, everyone in that movie killed it. Andrew Garfield (the next SPIDER-MAN) and Justin Timberlake were great but they just didn't come close to Eisenberg.

You'd think that a movie about some dorks building a website would get boring, but it never happened. Fincher and Sorkin did great things here and I loved it. One of the better movies I've seen in the past little while.

And you know what else? Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) provided a damn good score. It wasn't your conventional film score, but I think that's what made it that much better—although, I thought some of the audio mixes were a little off. There were times when the background music almost drowned out the dialogue.

Other than that, great, great stuff. Go see it.

THE MICHAEL BAYIFIER!!!

I STILL HATE BOSTON

But it's so hard to hate the Celtics when they do stuff like this. It's amazing.

MONDAY.

It started off great. I met Colby and Andrea for coffee at Atlas (where I regretted not getting something to eat or any treats the whole rest of the day) but that was the one and only highlight.

My flight was at 2:49, so I decided leaving the city by noon would get me there with plenty of time to spare. That assumption was incorrect. For more than a few reasons.

1. I got on the wrong train. Since I don't live there, and I'm actually pretty stubborn, I didn't actually ask anyone which train went to JFK. I saw one that said BROOKLYN and jumped on. Luckily I was only on it for two stops before I realized I was going the wrong direction. I jumped off at Penn Station, found the right train and got on. Problem was, it wasn't exactly the right train. I was headed the right direction, but the train I was riding didn't go all the way to the airport.

2. It was the slowest train I've ever been on. Usually, they go pretty fast, but this one just kind of crept through the city. If the doors were opened and I stuck my arm out, it wouldn't hurt. Might sting a little, but wouldn't cause any actual damage.

3. I got off the train at Rockaway Blvd so that I could catch the right train down to the Airtrain at JFK. That took another few minutes, but it finally came, I got on and was airport bound.

4. The Airtrain was down. Closed for repairs or something like that. Not the entire thing, just most of it. We were all herded downstairs and put on a bus that took us to the terminal loop. When I got on the bus, it was 1:50 (So, it took me from 12:30 until 1:50 to take the train from West 4th Street all the way to JFK). When the bus finally dropped us where the Airtrain was running again, it was 2:15. I had to go through 5 stops, but finally got to my terminal.

5. It was a ten minute walk from where the train dropped me off to security. There was a ticketing kiosk at the end of the tunnel, so I didn't have to wait in any lines to print my boarding pass, but security was a different story all together.

6. The guy in front of me had a carry-on bag, a backpack (with a laptop he hadn't taken out yet), a coat, boots and a sweater. He waited until he got to the counter to start getting ANYTHING ready. So I cut in front of him. He was pissed, but didn't say anything. Just kept giving me dirty looks and ramming his little plastic tub into mine. Then, while my bag was halfway through the scanner, I realized I'd forgotten to take my mouthwash out. It set off the alarm or whatever and one of the agents had to search my bag. It didn't take long, but it was 2:30 by then, so as soon as she was done, I grabbed everything and took off. I got to the plane just as the last few people were lining up.

But...

7. Apparently if you check in a little late, JetBlue gives away your seat. I chose 9D (an aisle) but when I looked at my printed boarding pass, I was in 24F. Not bad except for 5 things- children. There were 5 little kids to my left and behind me all between the ages of 9 months to three years old. You have any idea how restless 5 kids get on a 5 hour flight? Use your imagination. If I was ever thinking about having kids anytime soon, this set me back at least a few more years.

8. We sat on the runway for an hour before we actually took off. Probably longer, because I took a nap, watched half an episode of According to Jim, an entire episode of The Office and half a Friends ep before we were actually in the air.

And that's where we are now. I'm somewhere over Nebraska typing as all these children shriek and scream. Unfortunately, my hearing isn't bad enough to ignore it.

Oh, and right after we took off, the battery in my iPod died and the sound stopped working on my little seatback TV.

So good flight all around, right?

THE GREAT ESCAPE

Check out the rest over at Flickr

BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

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