Naa mek mi vex, mon.

I'LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!!!

I'd like to speak for a moment now, if  I may, about the modern flight attendant. If you're really interested, you can check out this link on the History of the Flight Attendant. If you're not so interested, I'll tell you this much.
         The first people ever to "attend" to the needs of the first commercial air passengers were the adult children of wealthy financiers who owned the first airlines that offered the first commercial flights. I can see them now, lurching about the cabin from hand-hold to hand-hold, shrieking over the din of the propellers. "Hello, sir! Father says I'm to offer you a biscuit!"
               Then it fell to the hands of the copilot to pop the champagne and fetch blankets until at some point, somebody decided it would be advantageous to keep the copilot near the controls should he have to, oh, I don't know, fly the plane. This wisdom ushered in the day of the Steward. He was handsome and trusty and probably had very handsome and stylish friends waiting for him in every port. Early commercial air travel was noisy, uncomfortable and generally unsafe. So it was decided that female nurses should take the place of the stewards so as to placate any passenger fears or talk of mutiny. I know that, for me, nothing takes the edge off the prospect of  occupying a tin can packed full of human sardines, plummeting 30,000ft into the sea, like a nurse telling me to return my tray table to its upright and locked position.
           Along comes Dubyadubya Dos, and all the nurses go off to bolster the war effort.  The airlines fill the sudden vacuum with any young, attractive woman that's game for being bullied, sweet-talked, groped, objectified, hit on, picked up, put down, poorly paid and generally maligned. The industry was rampantly sexist. Stewardesses could be terminated  for gaining weight, gaining weight that was a husband, gaining weight that was a baby, getting ugly, sassing, or just being a woman. The airlines offered them up as the sexual playthings of the air-traveling elite. They wore paper dresses and joined the mile-high club in the lavatory. Advertisements lured prurient passengers with the "Air Strip" featuring stewardesses shedding layers of clothing over the course of a flight. All manner of sky-borne scandal went on and it was just a glorious time for the passenger, really. Things continued  like this for a while. Flying was romantic and fun and there were all those movies that ended with a the hero's triumphant race through the airport to get to the gate just before/after his true love's plane takes off, and if you were a kid like me on Delta airlines, you'd get some little silver wings to pin on your shirt and everyone just loved it. And then the country started to get uptight again.
                By the end of the 80's, the hemlines were down, men had joined the force in numbers enough to throw out the title of "stewardess". The airlines were deregulated and struggling. Passenger perks were tossed out like old luggage and the sky party was largely over. Paul Westerberg of The Replacements even wrote a desultory song about them.
Sanitation expert and a maintenance engineer
Garbage man, a janitor and you my dear
A real union flight attendant, my oh my
You ain't nothin' but a waitress in the sky
You ain't nothin' but a waitress in the sky
You ain't nothin' but a waitress in the sky 
          Then came 9\11 and the TSA and it ALL went right to shit. Now the airlines themselves are the gropers,  their cash stained fingers fondling airline worker benefit packages and union-proof wage cuts.  No more the glamour or elegance that once accompanied air travel. The romance and intrigue have deferred to process and propaganda. Nothing left now but humiliation, indignity and claustrophobia. We passengers shuffle on, shoeless and beltless, through endless lines as we're exposed to strange rays and our nethers are scrutinized by strangers.  We're harangued for accidentally stepping into the wrong Tens-A-Belt line by a staff of federal goons who seem as inept and feckless as the hang-dog passengers they are herding. My carry on is flagged because my Co-op packed fat-free, wheat-free fig bars look like a wad of C-4. (I assure you, no substance on the planet is less likely to cause an explosion than fat-free, wheat-free fig bars.) We pay more and more of a premium for lite masochism. We see the abuse, but slowly it comes. One drop at a time, like a water torture. Like smoke, staining the  upholstery. You turn around one day and find yourself  acting like a lunatic on the sidewalk, waving a weapon among the old couches and dirty, rolled up carpets.  
            So it's no surprise that the flight attendants might see some flak once the masses are belted in and sweating it out on the tarmac. The copilot, flight attendant of yester-year, is sequestered behind a reinforced bulkhead, so he's safe with the captain up there. The cabin crew is left to field the slings and arrows of outrageous mis-fortune. That pressure cooker of group frustration has to vent occasionally. Not everybody is as polite as I try to be. I'm in the FSI.. The Food Service Industry, bitches. Before that, I cleaned sewers from time to time. (Yes. I've washed my hands. A lot.) So,  I know what it's like to deal with a problem customer. One that's giving you some real shit.
               I've bored you with all of this for one reason: I want you to know that I get it. I understand the plight of the beleaguered flight crew. No respect...long hours...shitty pay.  But, welcome to employment in the...well, in any century. Work sucks, that's the deal. That's why it's called work. If we liked it all the time it would be called fucking.
             So... why did you have to be such. A. Bitch? Yeah you. Mizz Flight Komandant.  The one with the cheap silk neck-r-chief. The one with your hair pulled back so tight your gobs of blue eye shadow are practically smeared on the wet, pink under flesh that cradles your skyward rolling eyeballs.

You were like this




PLUS...

THIS

What asshole got your asshole so peppered up? Because it wasn't me, it wasn't Sarah and it wasn't even the motor mouthed little old lady in the seat next to mine. 

             You were so mean to everyone. You stared down on us with a contempt traditionally reserved for rapists and films with Gerard Butler. You answered questions with questions and ignored entreaties for assistance. You openly mocked the heavyset man, on all fours in the aisle, as he hunted under seats, sweating it for his lost passport. You win the Thank You For Flying The Friendly Go-Fuck-Yourself Award. I hope you get airsickness and sit on a tack. 

             Anyway...at length we enjoyed a gentle landing in Montego Bay with bright sun, temps in the low 80's and a light breeze.  We cleared customs and found our ride... 

(These pics were supposed to be a hair-raising video

  but Blogger's Dashboard is effing up right now)

And ended up here...

CHEERS!

TUNE IN SOON FOR MORE SNARK, PLUS...

WHITE FOLKS ON THE BEACH