BARF.

so i can't believe this is actually happening, but i have to create a myspace account FOR MY FREAKIN' CLASS. it's all about "what the kids are doing," i know, and i understand, but can't we use another medium? anything! i will create my own freaking webpage from scratch! i will knit a webpage and then cover it in papier maiche and sculpt a working crackberry from play-doh! whatever you want... anything but this. ANYTHING!!!!

ugh. i can't believe i have to do this. i am in denial. gross.

obamathon!!

i am so late to the blog-posting-about-the-inauguration party! i better get going...

so first off, let me just say... BLACK PRESIDENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! awesome.

secondly, let me state, officially, for the record, that once i sat down to watch the proceedings at about 10AM yesterday, i became super pissed that i had bailed on going down to DC. i recant all of my reasons from the second post, and revert back to the first post, ex-post facto, section 5-d, paragraph 2. i am a SUCKER! but whatever. wasn't in the cards, as they say. i just want everyone to know that my punk ass stands corrected. and i totally would've tore up that neighborhood ball! if they had let me on the stage to dance with the obamas during "signed, sealed, delivered" i totally would have busted a move, all over that piece, not just in a big clump like all those people that they did let up there to dance like idiots. they should've auditioned them at least a little before they let them up there. did you guys see that??? it's stevie wonder dude! black president! let's cut loose, for heaven's sake!

but i get ahead of myself.

my intention had been to blog throughout the day, in a sort of running diary fashion, a la the sports guy. however, i was too busy intermittently sobbing and running around the apartment with joy and also i don't yet have my super amazingly awesome macbook that i will have in a few weeks, so it would've been kinda hard to running-blog, since the TV is in the other room and all. so i just made sure the kleenex were nearby and then settled in for the broadcast.

i first started to well up a bit when the motorcade headed for the capitol building. i was like, dude! this is it...

then when he came out to the stage i really got emotional, which was accentuated by aretha's rendition of "my country 'tis of thee" it got me to thinking, because we used to sing that song when i was in preschool, after the pledge of allegiance, and i thought back to what it was like to be a kid and have absolutely no conception of race and inequality and real suffering. and then to have grown up without a sense that something like yesterday could happen in my lifetime, let alone aretha franklin's lifetime... well... i just was floored all over again. it felt a little bit new again, you know? a little bit innocent and hopeful and stuff. i know you know.

that's the thing that kinda irked me about the commentators, from every channel- no one was innocent in this regard- they seemed far more interested in talking hypothetically about what obama has to do now, the economic situation, the middle east, etc... and sure, that is all very important stuff, duly noted in obama's excellent speech, but at that moment, during the run-up to the inauguration itself, and as the camera panned around at all the faces in the crowd, young and old, of all races and ethnicities, all the civil rights leaders who fought with their lives, who watched their friends and family die because of racial hatred and ignorance, i felt the only story for that moment was of the historic significance of this man as an elected official to the highest office of the United States. as one commentator finally put it, much later on in the evening, obama was taking the oath of office to go and govern from a building that was built by the hands of slaves. and not very long ago at all, really.

i know everyone wants so badly to "get over" race issues in this country, and i could go on for hours about that idea, but for this purpose i will say that downplaying the significance of barack obama as our first black president is not the way to go about that. and no, in four months, when the issue is economics, or the issue is war, or the issue is whatever else, the most significant note will not be that barack obama is our nation's first black president. but yesterday, it was the most important thing. and people like brian williams, and tom brokaw, dudes i expect to KNOW THIS really pissed me off by yammering on, in speculation of things that we cannot possibly know yet. i think they probably thought that it would be wrong to not treat obama exactly as they would have treated any other president-elect about to be sworn in, but this time was different. for the first time, it was different. and they shoulda recognized...

anyhow. i have to end my inaugural reflections there, but suffice to say, it was, in my opinion, the greatest day in american history thus far, and i am so happy to have been alive to see it, and so proud to have been a part of it!

holy crap!

just days after i took my own flight on US Airways, (and freaked pretty much the whole time, since i am not the most relaxed airplane passenger) a Charlotte, NC-bound flight crashed into the Hudson river this afternoon!

this pic is pretty crazy, but as you can see, the passengers were safe and, aside from being really cold, are said to be in good health. apparently a flock of geese got sucked into the engines or something, causing both engines to fail! this is the kind of thing that is going to make it very hard for me to get on a plane anytime in the near future, but i'll try to keep it together. i'm just glad everyone is okay.

speaking of flying, i meant to blog about our flight home from Richmond the other night, when we made the mistake of patronizing the mickey mouse operation that is united airlines. the price was dirt cheap, but now i know why...

when we arrived at the airport in Richmond, we were pretty early, but when we went to the gate, we found them boarding a plane. i think they had actually made an announcement about this while we were going through security, but at that point i was too busy getting yelled at by the x-ray machine operator for not making sure my bags were fully on the belt before going through the metal detector. what is this, new york? anyhow, it turned out it was an earlier flight, which had been delayed from 3:30. (it was 7pm) but they had room, so they let us on. when we boarded, i noted the grim faces on my fellow passengers, all of whom were no doubt incensed at the fact that they now had waited, like, 5 hours to get to D.C. it's only an hour away by car, for christ's sake. that would have driven me over the edge.

as i settled into my seat, i became aware of the lone stewardess. she not only looked about 15, but proceeded to act the part, spending all of the time that we were pre-flight boarding laughing hysterically and flirting with the pilots. she also kept getting on the intercom and making these totally unnecessary, repetitive announcements in her affected-teenage-esque manner which made me really uncomfortable. i couldn't see the pilots from where i was sitting, but i hoped to god they were over-18.

anyhow, she continued to carry on this way for the duration, including the part where, during takeoff, something flew off a shelf in the little stewardess cubby and she sighed really loudly and rolled her eyes, as if to say " this fucking piece of crap airplane..." or at least that's what i imagined her saying, as i clutched the armrest and tried to hold back the vomit rising in my throat. there was also this really sketchy frat-boy type dude, who looked like he could totally be some kind of right wing gun nut, who kept getting up and making for the bathroom at high speed. maybe he had diarrea, but i couldn't shake the fear that he was plotting something more sinister for our tiny flight, due to my heightened anxiety. (some people profile arab-americans, i profile frat-boys. that's right.)

the only thing that saved me was that the flight was literally 20 minutes long. it took longer to get to the gate at Washington-Dulles(which may be the weirdest and most ass-backwardly planned airport ever) than it did to fly to D.C. again, had I been one of the delayed passengers, i probably would have hit that crazy stewardess over the head with whatever was handy, be it SkyMall or whatever. the plane was too small to fit anything other than a coat and small bag, so we were pretty much without any suitable weaponry, but still...

we passed her, again flirting with the pilots, once we (finally) de-boarded and entered the labyrinth-like terminal, and i wondered if someone might just break out of the line and wrestle her to the ground and start pummeling, but alas, i did not witness such an event. oh, and also, adding to my extreme flying paranoia was the fact that the pilot blamed the delay on a faulty plane but didn't actually manage to convince me that we were now on a different plane. i think it's important to note that information, for the benefit of people like me. otherwise, questions remain.

anyhow, now at Dulles, we undertook trying to find our next flight gate, which sadly, didn't take off till much later. Charles did get a voice mail telling him our Richmond flight had been delayed, so it turned out for the best that we wound up on the flight with the looney tune and co, even if it did just set us up for a marathon wait in DC.

previously, out on the tarmac, while we were waiting for our bags(more on this later, but suffice to say, the economic crunch coupled with airline bitchassedness has made the experience of flying commercial, even in the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, much like what i imagine it must be like to be on one of those third-world airplanes, with the livestock and shit. very, very disorganized, and most of the time, especially when you are say, standing on the tarmac at Dulles in the middle of the winter waiting for dudes in navy-blue reflective jumpsuits to bring you your bag while the refueling tanker pulls up just to your left, you feel like something is very, very wrong with the picture) we saw what appeared to be these giant rolling FEMA-trailers crossing from one long terminal building to another. naively, i thought that these must be for airport personnel, or machinery, but then i came to find out that they were actually for me, and you, and anyone else who needed to get from terminals "a"and "b" to terminals "c" and "d." wow. ok.

so we got in the rolling FEMA- trailer, which took us out past our previous aircraft, and over to the other "wing" of Dulles. here we sat around and watched CNN for two hours, while peeping the absolutely ridiculous get ups that people apparently feel comfortable wearing to the airport. the first winner of this contest, (the contest to determine who has set the bar the lowest concerning the clothes that they will not only wear out of the house, but are also prepared to die in, should they fall victim to a plane crash) were the very fat woman with severely damaged bleached-blonde hair, who had been out in the sun somewhere recently for way too long, and who donned a skintight, all-white lycra ensemble consisting of a tank top, mini-skirt and hoodie sweatshirt, with white socks and white sneakers. really brought out that sunburn, as well as the extraordinarily pronounced fat rolls which covered her entire body. this was a little too much for the latent- hangover-mixed-with-mild-air-sickness i was nursing at the time.

the co-winner was the young lady who decided it would be a good idea to wear white knee-high tube socks underneath those ridiculous, knee high timberland-type boot things(i say this as if i have seen others of this variety, but the truth is, these took it much further than i have ever seen) so that the top of the tube sock was visible over the boot, and then finished off the look with one of those catholic school skirts. i can't imagine what this chick was seeing when she looked in the mirror. it was beyond all comprehension.

finally, we boarded our plane, which, i unhappily noted upon entering the cabin, was really, really old. it was dirty, the writing on the overhead compartments was all worn off...you get the idea. Charles tried to cheer me up by calling it "sturdy," but i knew the truth. shit was OLD, son. real old. speaking of real old, the senior citizen seated behind us fell asleep as soon as her seat belt was buckled and started doing the "snuffalupagus" snore... you know, with the whinnying sound? her husband didn't deem it necessary to alert her, although i have a feeling she wouldn't have cared, and he probably knows better anyhow. when i'm that age, if i am still getting on planes, i won't care if i snore on some packed flight from DC to NY on an old-ass plane. i'll probably punch someone in the face if they try and complain about it, too. so i can't really fault the old bag.

for some reason, the co-pilot decided to make the pre-flight announcements from the passenger cabin, rather than the cockpit(the intercom was broken, maybe? it was really old...) and that turned out to suck because i have never seen someone look, sound and act, more nervous in my life. i am pretty sure he was visibly shaking. he was definitely sweating, and his voice quivered as he "welcomed" us to our NY bound flight. i just closed my eyes at that point. closed my eyes, and listened to the soothing sounds of snuffy, coming from the seat behind me...

the final test of the journey came as we once again lined up to wait for our "carry-on" bags, this time in that crazy little tunnel that they (sometimes) attach to the plane so you can get to the terminal. the whole frickin' flight was lined up in there waiting and then they just started throwing bags through the door, so it became a sort of luggage feeding frenzy. in this midst of it all, this old lady in a giant fur coat was being wheeled off the plane in a wheel chair(why she couldn't make it down that little hallway, i don't know. she could walk, i saw her.) the dude wheeling it was about 4 foot 2 and weighed about 100 pounds (old lady weighed considerably more) and he was trying to push the wheelchair uphill and hit one of the raised floor parts, jostling her forward, and she screamed really loud. my nerves were kinda shot by then, so i envisioned myself smacking her across the face to try and calm myself down, while poor Charles fought valiantly for our bags.

all this so we could get, like, 50 bucks off the cost of the flight... never again, united, never again!

oh, and about the bag-checking thing: so now all the airlines are charging you 15 bucks for the first checked bag and then like 25 for any additional. which BLOWS, obviously. but you can have one carry-on, plus like, a purse or whatever. so we carried everything on, but when you get to the plane, it's too small for your shit, even the stuff that they say is regulation-size. so you wind up having to give it to them anyhow, so they can put it under the plane! and then you also wind up, as i mentioned, standing in the freezing cold getting your hearing damaged by jet-engines while angry airline dudes throw your bags at you! just check the damn things for free! wtf???

you know what? never mind about all that "we have to go to the inauguration!" stuff

so, i guess one of the things about becoming an old person is that you get totally hype about doing something ahead of time and then the reality of the situation sets in and you scrap the whole plan just as easily as you dreamed it up.

now, i know that there are far worse things about being an old person yet to come, like... well, i am not going to go there, cause we all know what i am talking about (or if you don't, you can probably catch a couple of commercials in the next five minutes that will tell you what kind of pills are available to try and deal with it when it inevitably happens) but i guess it's just a little disappointing to me that i am not, in fact, going to be at the inauguration. and i guess what's even more disappointing is that this is totally okay with me, given the circumstances.

see, despite how great i made that last post sound about the spirit of going for it and throwing everything to the wind in order to be a part of history, i pretty much have to defer to all the reasons why it wasn't a feasible idea in the first place. those would be:

1. money. economic downturn, son.

2. cold. we got back to NY at about 11pm the other night and had to take the bus from laguardia to manhattan, and then the train back down to our block. i think i was probably in the cold for about 45 minutes total, with small breaks in between while on the bus or train, and i was totally not into it. give me my couch and a frickin' blanket, dude. and a cup of hot chocolate with hennesy in it. that's where it's at!

3. people. here in nyc, we are in the midst of our second full month of holiday tourist season, and i, for one, am basically at the end of my rope. in fact, if it wasn't for the fact that we just spent four days in richmond, i would probably have beaten some swedish person to death by now. or german. finnish? i have no idea. or iowanian. what the hell do you call people from iowa anyhow, besides annyoing as fuck? i have to get on the train for work in an hour or so, and so help me, if anyone with four large backpacks strapped to them tries to block the train door, i will probably spend the night in jail.

so there you have it. money, cold weather and my overall disdain and impatience for my fellow human beings are keeping me home on inauguration day. i may try and attend one of the group viewings happening around town, or i may have my own group viewing here in my living room, with hennesy, reen and clyde. whatever. black president! i'm psyched!