=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/c/a/2005/07/03/TRGQJDGBAF= 1.DTL --------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunday, July 3, 2005 (SF Chronicle) A toast to thoughtlessness from the bar without honor John Flinn Why are so many airline passengers unable to board a plane, quickly stow their carry-ons and just sit the hell down? From San Francisco International to Heathrow to Narita, these people apparently believe that once they've arrived in the general proximity of their seats, all the others waiting behind them cease to exist. Hey, don't mind the rest of us. Take all the time in the world to positi= on your bag properly in the overhead bin. Commence a leisurely discussion with your spouse over who'll get the aisle seat. Don't rush; carefully weigh all the options. There's absolutely no hurry. No one's behind you. Maybe decide to switch seats over Greenland, to make it fair. Well, that's a little more than halfway, isn't it? Perhaps this would be a good time to retrieve your carry-on from the overhead bin and fish out your John Grisham novel. Oh, and your spouse's reading glasses, too. Might as well stand in the aisle and take off your jacket. Fold it carefully -- you don't want any wrinkles, do you? All those passengers waiting behind you in the aisle, shuffling their fe= et in the Jetway, going nowhere in a queue that snakes back through the boarding gate, back through the security checkpoint and out to the front curb -- the moment you found your seat, they just vanished, didn't they? Sorry if I'm a little grouchy today. I borrowed my colleague Tim Goodman= 's cranky pants, and frankly they could use a skosh more room in the thighs. Actually, I've just spent 11 hours and 40 minutes in an airline seat designed for an anorexic hobbit, and I've had plenty of time to ponder travel's little irritations. Among them: -- Are all the world's designers of hotel night-table lights engaged in a competition to see who can devise the least intuitive way of turning one on? -- Why are upscale hotels increasingly rechristening their mini bars as "honor" bars? They charge unconscionable prices -- six bucks for a can of Budweiser? -- and they don't trust you to fess up to your late-night binges when you check out, so they've put little sensors beneath the bottles. Move a can of Coca-Cola to peek behind it, and $4 appears instantly on your room bill. This -- perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not -- also prevents you from bypassing the extortionate prices by emptying the fridge to make room for the six-pack you bought at the corner market. Where, I ask, does "honor" enter into any of this? -- Why do restaurant owners throughout the Mediterranean world stand in their doorways, arms folded, and glower as you pass by? If you even break stride to glance at the menu they've got their hand on your elbow, trying with a little too much desperation to force you into their establishment. "Yes! Please! Come!" Is this really an effective way to drum up business? I don't know about you, but when this happens to me (and it happens a lot), I feel an instant desire to be as far away as my feet will carry me. -- Why don't airlines just order more of the chicken and less of the fis= h? When was the last time you heard a flight attendant say, "I'm sorry, sir, we're all out of the fish. Would you like the chicken?" -- If a hotel-room television in a foreign country gets just one English- language station, why must it be CNN International? With no point of view about anything, so as not to offend any viewer, anywhere in the world, the news is so vapid and shallow it makes the domestic version of CNN look like "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" by comparison. (I'm not the only one who thinks so. A few years ago, at an international conference, the head of CNN International at the time conceded his network's coverage was "a mile wide and a half-inch deep.") Most of the day is filled with shows with names like "Global Challenges" about the emerging high-fashion scene in Abu Dhabi. (It's always, for some reason, Abu Dhabi.) The weather segment is a dizzying, 60-second spin around the globe, with a chirpy woman dancing in front of a world map: "It's hot, hot, hot in the Middle East, there's scattered clouds over parts of Asia and Africa, and if you're in Europe you might want to think about carrying an umbrella tomorrow. OK, back to you, Charles." Then there's the bafflingly ubiquitous Richard Quest, who looks like Gilbert Gottfried, sounds like John Cleese and has risen to the top by barking the obvious in as loud and dramatic a voice as possible, with a tone that suggests he's just uncovered something big: "I'm here in LAGOS, the capital of NIGERIA, and there's CORRUPTION here. If you're trying to do BUSINESS here, corruption is BAD." Ya think? How did this guy get to be their go-to correspondent? Does he have compromising pictures of Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons in his desk? Would it kill a hotel chain to offer the BBC instead? Ah, I've just unsnapped the top button of the cranky pants and I feel mu= ch better now. I think I'll kick back with a $6 Budweiser and see what's on Richard Quest's mind. John Flinn is executive editor of Travel. To comment, e-mail travel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---------------------------------------------------= ------------------- Copyright 2005 SF Chronicle