I always read the in-flight magazine cover to cover, and usually spend quite a bit of time with SkyMall. But that's because I usually don't bring any reading material.
My routine is to pull out some huge and nasty-looking book and stare deeply into it with a pained and studious expression until my neighbor gives up all hope of speaking to me. Then I pull out the in-flight crossword and do that.
I say we all head out from the meet-up to see this White Bear! I've never heard of them, but they must be wonderful.
You know, I've never understood this concern with avoiding talking to seatmates. Do people really strike up conversations with random strangers on airplanes that frequently? I've never done it, and it just seems like a really unlikely thing to happen on most of the flights I've taken.
I fear the in-flight magazine. I once saw a guy across the aisle from me sneeze into his hand, stare at his hand with the realization that his sneeze produced a large amount of mucus and he did not have a tissue or anywhere else to dispose it, take out and open the in-flight magazine, wipe his hand across a page, close the magazine, and put it back in the seat back pocket.
You'd notice if something like that had happened, though.
I've had two really pleasant in-flight conversations. One was with a young woman who turned out to be a fellow humanities graduate student in NYC. The other was six years ago, when I was 20, with an early 40's-ish lawyer. I don't remember how we got to talking, but we started saying the kinds of things you never say to people you know because they might judge you. We told each other horrible, burdening secrets. Every secret private thing was said, and then we never saw each other again. It was amazing.
Mostly, I'm sensitive about getting dragged into conversations about television, which I don't watch, or marriage, to which I don't aspire, or money, about which I don't care. I make seatmates really uncomfortable when I have nothing to contribute.
5 - Before it was too late?
I only talk to my seatmates if they are D-list celebrities who try to get me to accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I've found that's a good policy.
I've certainly had pleasant conversations on airplanes; I once had a nice talk with a cute girl sitting next to me about how nice it would be if Southwest flew to Denver so we didn't have to take fucking America West which is so broke they put ads on the tray tables. In the course of the discussion she mentioned that she had studied Southwest as a case study in business school, whereupon I elected not to reveal that I was 19 years old. Good times.
I enjoyed the in-flight conversation I had during a turbulent landing somewhere in the midwest during which I told the story of the time I was flying into BWI and the weather was so bad that the pilot got within range/sight of the runway, but the plane was somewhat tilted and we had to pull up and circle and try again, leading a number of passengers to begin to worry that we'd have to go to another airport.
My point, though, is that I often see people complaining about how they don't want to talk to people on airplanes, and I think, "but wait, why is this a problem? Why can't you just not talk to them? Are they really going to insist on starting a conversation?" It just doesn't jibe with my experience (which may be atypical; hence, my question here).
Are they really going to insist on starting a conversation?
This has happened to me a couple of times. You'd think the fact that I was wearing headphones and watching the movie would be a deterrent, but you'd be wrong.
See, that's what I find weird. It's never happened to me, and I fly quite a bit. Strange.
teo, maybe you have a less approachable aura about you than other people do. I know I usually come off that way compared to others.
I tend to think I convey an antisociable air, and yet I'm occasionally mistaken for an employee at various shops.
I get asked for directions a lot and it doesn't seem to matter if I'm from the area or even from the country. But I also get a lot of questions at passport control and, occasionally, have my passport examined very closely or my possessions searched. Perhaps I'm an approachable probable criminal.
Probably criminals probably know escape routes and such, so it fits together.
I was also once wanted by the police in Winnipeg. Or rather not me, but another person of the same countenance.
I am actually frequently asked for directions, but that seems like a rather different situation than idle chatter on a plane and is probably due to the impression I give of knowing exactly where I am at all times.
How do you plan to "read but not purchase several magazines"? Do you stand there and read them in the bookstore? I have no patience for that -- my goal as soon as I get to an airport is to find a space as far away from the masses as possible.
my goal as soon as I get to an airport is to find a space as far away from the masses as possible
In my experience, this space is inevitably not very far from the masses at all.
(And I assume Ben does indeed intend to stand in the bookstore and leaf through magazines. What else is there to do at an airport?)
What else is there to do at an airport?
Airports are a prime location for watching planes take off and land. If you enjoy that kind of thing. (There you go, Ttam.)
when it goes well, i have so much fun with the random plane seatmate conversation, because people really do say things they wouldn't to someone they might meet again, which is fascinating... (if usually on a less intense level than AWB's one conversation),... and i meet people i normally wouldn't in real life: video game designer, architects, young business executives about to take a business partner out go-carting, divorced man embracing his new state and reading maxim for the first time (ew, i know, but it was funny too), ...
...you just have to size up whether or not they're going to be interesting very, very quickly.
teofilo, you could always start it up yourself, you know.
I once really hit it off with the three other men who were in my middle row: a Palestinian, and Egyptian, and a Russian. We got drunk together and enjoyed Johnny English just a little bit too much. I was planning on getting drunker, but the flight attendant very pointedly rolled her cart past me when the alcohol came round for the third time. Bitch.
26 -- "the three other men who were in my middle row" makes it sound like you are calling yourself a man. But we know better. Sounds like fun -- I have never gotten drunk on an airplane but I could imagine doing it if I had entertaining seatmates.
You know, it's a good thing I checked my departure time just now.
I'm either totally misanthropic when I travel or else feeling pleased with myself for going somewhere. My willingness to talk to whoever is sitting next to me really depends on my mood, it's weird.
Reading the in-flight magazine is really inexcusable, btw. People. Just buy a Vogue and flip through looking at the pictures.
teofilo, you could always start it up yourself, you know.
Why would I want to do that?
Just buy a Vogue and flip through looking at the pictures.
Why would I want to do that?
Why would I want to do that?
1. It's a fat magazine, so it takes a while to go through.
2. It's less insipid than in-flight magazines.
3. Some of the pictures are pretty.
4. The ones that aren't inspire an enjoyable sense of schadenfreude.
5. It can, if one is inclined to thoughtfulness, inspire interesting ideas about the aestheticization of the human figure, the relationship between aesthetics and commerce, the relationships between aesthetics, commerce, and gender, the juxtaposition of "high" and "low" aesthetics (it's interesting to note that a lot of the ads for cheap drugstore lipstick are running right next to ads for thousand-dollar shoes, for example), and so on.
1, 3, 4, and 5 work. 2 is wrong wrong wrong.
All valid points, but for me they pale in comparison to the consideration that I would have to spend money to acquire this publication when the in-flight magazine is free. And besides, will Vogue tell me what festivals are going on in Houston this month? Or where to find the hippest bars in Tampa? I suspect not.
Apostropher may well be right about point 2, but never having read Vogue I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
never having read Vogue
It's a 300-page magazine with 270 pages of advertisements.
$3.95?
I agree with B. Fashion/lifestyle mags were created for plane flights. (For fun: Maxim is Cosmo with slightly different text.)
I think the only reason chattiness on airplanes bothers me is that there's no way to escape. If someone is unpleasantly chatty in a coffee shop or at a bar, I can leave. I can't do that on a plane, and knowing this makes every interaction endless.
$3.95?
Yep, not gonna happen. I can see the point about lifestyle magazines being good for plane flights, but isn't that exactly what in-flight magazines are?
I don't think I'm the right demographic for the in-flights. Too young, not businessy enough. Flights are also good for catching up on light fiction.
I actually like the glimpse at how the older, businessy set lives. Although my favorite activity on planes, which for some reason no one has mentioned, is looking out the window.
34: Wrong. In-flight magazines are the worst, most appalling productions in the literary universe, just about. They're ugly to look at, the prose is excruciating, and the sense they give you is that every city in America is exactly alike, except with entirely predictable differences (Tex-Mex vs. Clam Chowder!) that are tissue-paper deep. I can't bear it. At least Vogue, however ridiculous you may think fashion is, takes its content seriously.
At least Vogue, however ridiculous you may think fashion is, takes its content seriously.
That's its problem.
Fair enough. I'm not especially inclined to defend "women's magazines" as a class, or Vogue in particular as anything other than frivolity. But if I'm going to read something for more than two minutes, I at least want it to not make me want to shoot myself.
Really, the only acceptable airplane reading is Middlemarch.
The best thing in the current SkyMall? A robot chimp.
At least Vogue, however ridiculous you may think fashion is, takes its content seriously.
I would really contest that, B, at least for American Vogue. They don't really cover the industry of fashion or the haute couture stuff. Instead they do makeup and makeover spreads, semi-comprehensible thematic pret-a-porter fantasy shoots, and laughable fashion-items-regular-girls-can-afford lay-outs. If the 600-page Moda runway quarterlies were anywhere near my price range, that's what I would be buying for serious fashion press.
48: This is true, but American Vogue's real topic isn't fashion, but the commerce of fashion. Which is why really, one buys it to look at the ads. The fashion industry is boring, just like all industry is. But clothes are pretty to look at!
In the end, the only thing I read was a paragraph of scene-setting and a bit of narrative from James Patterson's novel Honeymoon, which reading I accomplished by looking over my neighbor's shoulder.
The first bit I read (from the beginning of chapter 15) detailed the progress of a car down one verdant lane and into another equally pretty lane until it finally reached a garage, and reminded me of Umberto Eco's test for determining if something's pornography (are there lots of scenes in which people get from place to place, depicted in great detail?). Sure enough, by the end of chapter 16—which is to say, four pages later—it was fucked by two people in a brand-new red Mercedes convertible.
A young, rather ill-at-ease gentleman sitting next to me in a 100% full plane, just after we took off on a 12 hour flight to Hong Kong, threw up all over my bare arm - being belted in I had no chance to escape over the arm rest.
Subsequent conversation was very limited.
As it happens, TMK, Middlemarch was in my bag.
The fashion industry is boring, just like all industry is. But clothes are pretty to look at!
Next time I fly, I think I'll buy a copy of The Economist just to spite you.
I, on the other hand, will try to finally finish reading this.
Oh, the Economist is good plane reading too.
Ben, you read over people's shoulder's? You are evil, and I'm surprised you've lived this long.
Anyone who has not read over people's shoulders on the New York subway hasn't lived. People read weird stuff. Like romance novels.
I call on AWB to back me up on this "read over my shoulder and die" thing.
Okay, I'll just stick with the in-flight magazine. I can't imagine anything more boring than looking at pictures of clothes for three hours.
Looking at pictures of United's flight paths.
Are you kidding? That's the best part!
Airports are a prime location for watching planes take off and land. If you enjoy that kind of thing.
But if you don't enjoy that sort of thing, can it be said to be a prime location? Perhaps 'prime location' is contextual, relative, or subject-sensitive, and the consequent really is dependent on the truth of the antecedent. (Honestly, I'm not sure if anyone knows exactly what counts as a biscuit conditional, I'm just being a lint puppet.)
(Just returned from the Pacific APA, actually starting to write a paper on the Portland to Dallas flight. Regor Etihw, your ass is mine.) On the Dallas to Lubbock flight, which was too short to break out the laptop, I read some of Gene Wolfe's Free Live Free. I think I did philosophy all the way up, too. Weird.
Yay Matt you are live like studio audience not dead like Eugene Debs
Mr. Eugene V. Debs will now address you (via)
Are you kidding? That's the best part!
Also can be really fun to watch the monitor showing the current position of the airplane along it's filght path, with nearby cities, and constantly switching zoom level from local to state to region to USA (I've only seen this on domestic flights) to (bizarrely) whole world projection, and interleaving statistics about current elevation, temperature, barometric pressure -- I've been disappointed when they switch from this to the in-flight movie, and happy when the movie ends and they switch back.
Alas! I am sorry I will not get to meet the illustrious Mr. w-lfs-n -- a child-care responsibility has come up for Wednesday evening and I will not be able to make it to O'Reilly's. Also I had been looking forward to making the acquaintance of A White Bear, guess that will have to wait too. Hope someone will be live-blogging -- has O'Reilly's wireless access?
oooh, moda.
nest used to also be very very good (on design, not fashion) but it is now defunct, no?
teofilo:
well, i find people are often interesting in the odd situation that is a plane flight, and when not, they are often entertaining despite themselves.
when i want to end the talk, i have never been failed by the tactic of looking the other person in the eyes, smiling, and pulling out my book.
Fair enough, but I dislike conversations generally, so I see no reason to start them on airplanes. I'd much rather look out the window.
And I suspect that Modesto feller flies on fancier airlines than I do.
MK: bring the kid along! Ben loooooves small children.
Yeah I thought of that but I reckon it will not work out -- we would get there about 7:30 at the earliest and have to leave at 8 in order for her not to be in bed too late (and indeed if we left at 8, she would be in bed too late) -- not really worth spending an hour on the train each way.
Teofilo -- I think those monitors are on Continental.
Oh right, other people's children have bedtimes. I tend to forget that.
I think those monitors are on Continental.
Pshaw. Who flies legacy airlines anymore?