I'll try to keep this short. We flew Delta out to Georgia and back from Florida. Both ways we had a layover in Atlanta and changed planes. All four flights were delayed, and they lost part of our luggage going down and all of our luggage coming back.
Now, I know that Delta can't control the weather, so the delays are not entirely their fault, but the way they handled the delays was simply idiotic. I don't understand why they wouldn't announce that the flight was being delayed until it was time to board. For example, leaving Tampa we were supposed to get on a plane that was coming in from Atlanta. Well, since we're flying to Atlanta, I know from my itinerary that it takes an hour and a half to make that flight. That means that if the plane is supposed to arrive in Tampa at 3:00, then it needed to take off at 1:30. But Delta for some reason didn't announce the delay until 2:50. I don't get it. Then in Atlanta, they had their message board showing for a while that the incoming flight was scheduled to arrive at 10:20, and that we were scheduled to depart at 10:45. Now, I've never cleaned up an arriving plane before, so I don't know how long that takes, but I know it takes at least a half an hour to board everyone, so it just seems ridiculous to expect us to believe those times. This kind of thing went on consistently throughout the trip.
And then they lost our luggage. They said that it would go out on the first delivery trip of the morning, which left at 7:00am and could take up to 4 hours to get around to reaching us. Fine. No problem there. At 12:30 I called to find out where the luggage was. The woman said, "Well, you know sir, it can take up to four hours." I almost couldn't control my temper. I explained to her that four hours had been up an hour and a half ago and asked her to please find out where our luggage was. She called the delivery company and came back to tell me that they were swamped and it would be there by 2:00pm. You know what? If they had just told me that in the first place, I would have been fine with it. If they had just told me that our plane was being delayed as soon as they knew, I would have been fine with it. Really, the reason I feel compelled to now tell everyone I meet not to fly Delta is because they insisted on treating us like children.
Phew. I'm glad I got that off my chest.
Friday, February 04, 2005
Thursday, February 03, 2005
3 - people getting drunk because pirates didn't invade.
Well, actually no one seems to be clear on what the pirates actually did, but everyone was definitely getting drunk.
Every year in February, Tampa celebrates "Gasparilla." Basically, it's a rip off of Mardi Gras with a pirate theme. Apparently, there was once a pirate named Jose Gaspar who terrorized the Florida coast. And for no apparent reason, in 1904 when Tampa city officials were looking for a motif for their spring festival, they chose pirates and named the festival after old Jose.
What happens each year is this: the "pirates" sail into the harbor on a replica pirate ship and "invade" the city. Then they parade through town sharing their "loot" in the form of beads thrown to the crowds. Then everyone gets drunk.
We were there for it. It was silly.
Every year in February, Tampa celebrates "Gasparilla." Basically, it's a rip off of Mardi Gras with a pirate theme. Apparently, there was once a pirate named Jose Gaspar who terrorized the Florida coast. And for no apparent reason, in 1904 when Tampa city officials were looking for a motif for their spring festival, they chose pirates and named the festival after old Jose.
What happens each year is this: the "pirates" sail into the harbor on a replica pirate ship and "invade" the city. Then they parade through town sharing their "loot" in the form of beads thrown to the crowds. Then everyone gets drunk.
We were there for it. It was silly.
2 - two more movies that I saw, and 4 CDs that I bought.
While in Bunnell, we drove down to Daytona and saw:
1) - "Meet the Fockers." I wasn't expecting much from this movie, and I got even less. The big surprise was how good the cast was. Streisand especially impressed me. I'd just like to pause here and quote the Onion's review of the movie: "Watching a cast this good tackle material this bad is like watching the 1928 Yankees play the Special Olympics softball team."
2) - "Sideways." I had been dying to see this. And I have to say that it didn't live up to the hype. Part of it may have been that I was not in good surroundings -- there were a lot of people in the theater talking, which was very distracting. And part of it may have been that nothing could live up to that hype. And part of it may have been that I just felt like it was good but not great.
While in Athens, I bought:
1) - "Our Endless Numbered Days" by Iron and Wine. They're featured on both the "Garden State" and "In Good Company" soundtracks, so I wanted to hear the whole album. It's great! Super mellow, folksy, acoustic stuff. Really beautiful.
2) - "In Good Company" soundtrack. This was not as awesome as I'd hoped. But it's still really good. There are 3 Iron and Wine songs on the soundtrack, and two of them are on "Our Endless Numbered Days," but the third song, called "The Trapeze Swinger," is a 9 1/2 minute epic that was worth the cost of the whole album. It's amazing.
3) - "Travel Edition 1990-2005" by Saint Etienne. This is pretty good stuff. Trancy jazzy songs. Some are pretty, some are punchy. After awhile, they all start to sound the same, but the first 4 or 5 songs are really good.
4) - "Push The Button" by the Chemical Brothers. Not the Brothers' best work. A couple of the songs are good, but over all this whole album just sounds like everybody else. Not nearly the kind of work I expect from them.
There you have it.
1) - "Meet the Fockers." I wasn't expecting much from this movie, and I got even less. The big surprise was how good the cast was. Streisand especially impressed me. I'd just like to pause here and quote the Onion's review of the movie: "Watching a cast this good tackle material this bad is like watching the 1928 Yankees play the Special Olympics softball team."
2) - "Sideways." I had been dying to see this. And I have to say that it didn't live up to the hype. Part of it may have been that I was not in good surroundings -- there were a lot of people in the theater talking, which was very distracting. And part of it may have been that nothing could live up to that hype. And part of it may have been that I just felt like it was good but not great.
While in Athens, I bought:
1) - "Our Endless Numbered Days" by Iron and Wine. They're featured on both the "Garden State" and "In Good Company" soundtracks, so I wanted to hear the whole album. It's great! Super mellow, folksy, acoustic stuff. Really beautiful.
2) - "In Good Company" soundtrack. This was not as awesome as I'd hoped. But it's still really good. There are 3 Iron and Wine songs on the soundtrack, and two of them are on "Our Endless Numbered Days," but the third song, called "The Trapeze Swinger," is a 9 1/2 minute epic that was worth the cost of the whole album. It's amazing.
3) - "Travel Edition 1990-2005" by Saint Etienne. This is pretty good stuff. Trancy jazzy songs. Some are pretty, some are punchy. After awhile, they all start to sound the same, but the first 4 or 5 songs are really good.
4) - "Push The Button" by the Chemical Brothers. Not the Brothers' best work. A couple of the songs are good, but over all this whole album just sounds like everybody else. Not nearly the kind of work I expect from them.
There you have it.
1 - the scary motel we stayed at in Bunnell, FL.
Well, technically the motel was in Flagler Beach, FL. But our show was in Bunnell, and it's all really one big area.
The area was pretty standard Florida beach zone. Crappy tourist traps and dive bars for the locals. A few chain places by the highway. Lots of beach.
The Topaz Motel was right across the street from the beach. It consisted of three buildings and a pool. The two side buildings were pretty standard motel-type room areas. But the main building was an old mansion. On the outside of the building hung two huge paintings, portraits of a man and a woman in Victorian outfits. I have no idea who they were. Inside, the first floor held the lobby and a restaurant. I think the owners lived on the second floor. Every time I looked in the restaurant, everyone in it was over the age of 60. The lobby was decorated as if your grandmother's evil twin lived there. It held three kinds of items:
a) lots of religious signs and stickers -- pretty hard core stuff, too, like "The end is coming, how's your soul?"
b) framed articles and clippings that all dealt with horrible disasters -- including a large display devoted to the Titanic.
c) framed pictures and mementoes of two children -- a boy and a girl. We're pretty sure the girl was the woman who checked us in, and we met the boy the next day. He's easy to pick out because he's a midget. Nothing terribly unusual about that (there was also a midget working at the hotel in Charlotte), except that he looked very creepy in the pictures of him as a child. And the mementoes included letters sent home by his teacher in which the teacher would say things like, "Mark spends too much time talking and doesn't concentrate on his work." It's odd enough that someone would save bad reports from the teacher, but then in each frame are young Mark's rebuttals: "Teacher lied." "Teacher always had it in for Mark." And I have to say, picturing the creepy young midget crying, "Teacher lied!" was almost enough to send us running back up the highway.
The rooms were actually pretty nice for a motel, and it was nice being so near to the beach, even though the weather didn't cooperate. But man, that was one creepy lobby.
The area was pretty standard Florida beach zone. Crappy tourist traps and dive bars for the locals. A few chain places by the highway. Lots of beach.
The Topaz Motel was right across the street from the beach. It consisted of three buildings and a pool. The two side buildings were pretty standard motel-type room areas. But the main building was an old mansion. On the outside of the building hung two huge paintings, portraits of a man and a woman in Victorian outfits. I have no idea who they were. Inside, the first floor held the lobby and a restaurant. I think the owners lived on the second floor. Every time I looked in the restaurant, everyone in it was over the age of 60. The lobby was decorated as if your grandmother's evil twin lived there. It held three kinds of items:
a) lots of religious signs and stickers -- pretty hard core stuff, too, like "The end is coming, how's your soul?"
b) framed articles and clippings that all dealt with horrible disasters -- including a large display devoted to the Titanic.
c) framed pictures and mementoes of two children -- a boy and a girl. We're pretty sure the girl was the woman who checked us in, and we met the boy the next day. He's easy to pick out because he's a midget. Nothing terribly unusual about that (there was also a midget working at the hotel in Charlotte), except that he looked very creepy in the pictures of him as a child. And the mementoes included letters sent home by his teacher in which the teacher would say things like, "Mark spends too much time talking and doesn't concentrate on his work." It's odd enough that someone would save bad reports from the teacher, but then in each frame are young Mark's rebuttals: "Teacher lied." "Teacher always had it in for Mark." And I have to say, picturing the creepy young midget crying, "Teacher lied!" was almost enough to send us running back up the highway.
The rooms were actually pretty nice for a motel, and it was nice being so near to the beach, even though the weather didn't cooperate. But man, that was one creepy lobby.
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