"First came social seating, enabling travelers to sit next to people with similar interests in flight."

"And then came the infamous Miss Travel, which had the travel industry asking 'Dating site or prostitution?' And now, we’ve discovered MeetAtTheAirport.com. Which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like."

Movie star is confronted by a printout from the airport scanner that showed his genitalia.

And he autographs it.

“I was in London recently going through the airport and these new machines have come up, the body scans. You’ve got to see them. It makes you embarrassed – if you’re not well endowed,” said [Indian actor Shahrukh] Khan....

On the downside: Airport personnel are going to be looking at all of us naked and will have the power — if they choose to violate official policy — to print out pictures that could be distributed and displayed anywhere. On the upside: Shahrukh Khan is well endowed.

Airport. Airplane. Airplane. Airport.

Washington.









Detroit.

Jonah gets a bad sandwich.

Jonah Goldberg says:

The other night, while eating a cold, dry semi-stale ham sandwich that I had purchased from a Wolfgang Puck Express station at  O'Hare airport, I wrote on my Twitter feed (I just can't say "I tweeted" with a straigh face. It sounds like someone is too delicate to admit they passed gas)...

Just don't "straigh" too far from the subject of your post. It's sandwiches. Sandwiches and selling out...

By the way, I think the expression "passed gas" is too delicate, so feel free to use the expression "I tweeted" next time you fart.

"Is there any top professional in any industry who has sold his soul more completely than Wolfgang Puck? he puts his name on airport crap."

I got some interesting responses. Some defend Puck on the grounds that he is in fact a great chef and "cashing in" isn't the same thing as "selling out."

I like when a celebrity chef risks his name on a fast-food franchise. He'll be motivated to make sure it's good. So Wolfgang owes Jonah a sandwich. I'm glad there are somewhat better places to eat in airports now, and I hope they get even better. Meanwhile, my experience with the Puck brand was eating here 2 nights in a row, the night before and the night after Meade and I got married on a mountain in Colorado. It was fabulous! The meals (and everything else).

Back to Jonah. He's trying to draw a distinction about good and bad cashing in, and he asks readers who is "America's number 1 sellout." But there are no comments over at The Corner, so feel free to answer that question here. And let's hear about some good sandwiches.


(Photo of an old mustard ad, which was covered in plastic and under bad fluorescent lighting at the Mustard Museum.)

A message to women in their long billowy summer skirts.

If you go through airport security, you will receive a pat-down search.

***

How do I know? It's happened to me 3 times. And yesterday, when I made a point of wearing pants to the airport, I saw 2 women in long skirts — there are some really pretty sundresses out there — and both of them got pulled aside for a pat down.

ADDED: I'm guess the government has decided to pat-down all wearers of flowing skirts as a general rule as a way to search all females in traditional Islamic dress. Any complaints about profiling will be easily met.

Get ready for the government to look at you with X-ray eyes.

The Transportation Security Administration wants to see you naked... at the airport... from a discreet high-tech distance. The new scrutiny begins today... in Tulsa.

WiFi on airplanes. What's the downside?

Terrorists coordinating things? The fact that the mere suggestion of terrorists coordinating things has me instantly eagerly ready to have the government monitor anything sent to or from an airline laptop? Come on, we let them X-ray the intimate items our bags and look at us in that machine that lets them see us naked. And you know how ridiculous you look naked but with your invisible clothes squishing your body into the dressed shape? Or do you think you look better that way, what with your Spanx and your push-up brassiere? I'm thinking of belts and waistbands. So, come on, WiFi on airplanes. It will be great. The time once spent doing that crap crossword in the in-flight magazine and snoozing to a half-heard audiobook will feel just like all those hours you willingly sit in your desk chair on a beautiful warm February day when you could be out traipsing around your beautiful city.

Christmas in airports.

Last Christmas, my scheduled flight to Austin -- where both my sons lived -- got canceled, the rescheduled flight got canceled, and it became impossible to book a flight that would get me to Austin in time for Christmas. It was 5 p.m., 2 days before Christmas, when that happened, and I decided I needed to throw my bags in the car and drive the whole way -- 1200 miles. I made a thermos of coffee and, drinking a cup, tried to think how far I could get that night and whether I could be sure to get to Austin by the end of the next day, Christmas Eve. But it was icy in Wisconsin. They were saying don't drive anywhere unless you have to, and I pictured myself struggling over Route 151 around Dubuque, where it seems so lonely at night, even in summer, and kicking myself for having this stupid, grandiose idea of The Heroic Cross-Country Drive to Save Christmas, so I dumped out the thermos, unpacked my bag, and nursed a humble feeling of resignation toward spending Christmas alone for the first time in my life.

I blogged it only tangentially, here, last Christmas Day:

Merry Christmas.

I hope you have a happy Christmas, if you're celebrating Christmas. Is anyone here not celebrating Christmas today? If so, is it because you never celebrate Christmas or is this year different for some reason? Are you experiencing Christmas woes? For Christmas solace, congregate here.

I was "not celebrating Christmas today," because by then, I'd rescheduled Christmas for January 25th, when I did go to Austin.

But now it's Christmas 2008 -- 2008, the year with 2 Christmases -- and I'm happily in Madison and not alone -- though I am the only one awake, which makes for good blogging time. And I see that many people are stranded in airports:

Tom Waltz, his wife, Kristina, and their two daughters played a Christmas Eve game of Crazy Eights in a corner at O'Hare International Airport, trying to forget the past four days of flight delays and cancellations that spoiled their holiday plans.

The family from Vancouver, Wash., tried to fly out of Portland, Ore., on Saturday, but a blast of snow and ice kept them from getting a flight for two days. On Wednesday evening, they hunkered down for their second night at O'Hare, awaiting a Christmas Day flight to Miami, where they hoped to catch a Caribbean cruise on Saturday.

"It stinks," said 11-year-old Samantha Waltz. "We're playing cards to get our mind off of things."

Aw, Samantha, some day you'll think fondly of the time your family was all together and you played Crazy Eights on the carpet in an airport. It's a nontraditional Christmas celebration, but then, so is a Caribbean cruise. And maybe this family doesn't even celebrate Christmas. I guess missing one's cruise pretty much sucks too -- or stinks, as the nice kids say.

Merry Christmas to all, wherever you are, whatever religion or nonreligion you are. Are you reading this blog while stranded in some airport? I acknowledge your disappointment. The time in airports is also part of life, though it's one of those parts we wish away. Perhaps the happiest moment of your life will be spent in an airport. Perhaps the happiest moment of your life will be spent in an airport because you were delayed. On Christmas.

Rude animation requested and produced.

I requested it here, and Chip Ahoy provided it here.

And here's his nicer Obama animation.

ADDED: And speaking of the creative commenters around here, I love the "airport bar" meme that developed in this thread — which has commenters talking about commenters.

CNN's horrific Obamamania.

I'm sitting in an airport where I'm forced to listen to CNN TV constantly, and the endless enthusiasm over Barack Obama is appalling. There's no pretense of journalistic neutrality. Barack Obama is getting a rockstar welcome... blah blah blah... ugh!

Will Americans get sick of hearing "Barack Obama" cheerleading? Even if you like him — and I kind of like him — it's cloying. Too much candy.

There's a lilting cadence to CNN's pronunciation of the name: ba-ROCKO-ba-ma, with an arcing, hopeful inflection. It's most noticeable when they say "John McCain" soon after. The nonObama candidate's name is said in a leaden singsong, ending in a flat low note.

If I were at home, I'd imitate the way they say the two names, but as I said, I'm in an airport, and my little foray into YouTubing would be even more annoying than the relentless CNN feed.

UPDATE: "Barack Obama is still in Europe...." And Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

IN THE COMMENTS: The Drill SGT said:

I thought you had a crush on him?

You know what it's like? To continue with the "rockstar" trope. If a rockstar you like gets too popular and everyone's squealing over him, including a lot of people who seem to be excited by the popularity itself, well, then, it's just not cool to like him anymore. He's now popular for his popularity, and it makes you want to discover something new.

Gays Mills, Wisconsin.

Seen — through the fisheye lens — from the overlook as you drive into town from the east on Route 171:


(Enlarge to see the town.)

There is a historical marker right there telling you about the establishment of the apple orchards in this valley alongside the Kickapoo River. The landscape is so dramatic because it's driftless — the glaciers didn't make it this far. I drove all the way out here today because the cabbie who picked me up at the airport on Thursday told me that the apple trees will be in bloom along Route 171, and it's a great drive. (We'd been talking about flowering trees in Madison.) Go out past Gotham and Boaz to Gays Mills. He was right about the trees and the drive. There were great curvy roads for my Audi TT Coupe to get some exercise after all these long months sitting in my driveway when I was living in New York. There were almost no other cars out on Route 171 — mostly motorcycles. You could tell that everyone driving there was driving to drive. Propitiously, the radio played "Radar Love."

And here are the mills:



I was out traipsing about on the bank of the Kickapoo, trying to get a good shot of the water rolling over the dam. Took a picture of this sign that I didn't bother to read.



Because these things can't apply to me. I'm lucky. A cabdriver tells me about where to find flowers. And — also last Thursday — as I hoisted my two big bags off the luggage carousel at the airport, I was talking to a nun and, when I turned to leave, she said, "God bless you." I was reentering Wisconsin, and everything seemed propitious.

Variations in airport opinion.

Woman: "Why do we have to take off our shoes?"

Man: "They can waterboard me as far as I'm concerned."

"European man... putting security on red alert... stripping down to tight shorts and dancing in the lobby of Wichita Airport."

What's the matter with Kansas? Don't they get HBO?

"This isn't the worst thing that will happen to you today."

Said to me by a woman working behind the counter for a major airline as I checked my bag today and complained that the instructions on the self-check-in screen were confusing and flashed off before I could figure out what I was supposed to do next.

Think about it. As I'm checking in for a flight, someone working for the airline predicts that something bad is going to happen to me today. I assume I'd be arrested if I told her something bad was going to happen today.

In any case, checking a bag around here is a ridiculous procedure. If you decide you don't want to pay the curbside employee $2 + tip to take your bag, you have to go inside and find a computer to fiddle with, then see that you are to proceed somewhere else to get the tag. But where? Oh, the counter that you used to be able to go to when there were no computers. Then, though there is a conveyor belt of the sort that counter employees have always put bags on, you have to take your bag over to another place to hand it over to the screeners.

It's as if they are deliberately tormenting you so that next time you'll see why you ought to have forked over $3 to check a bag. What a ridiculous system! They ought to be making you feel good about the switch-over to self-service computers. Instead, I felt like they were trying to humiliate me for my unwillingness to use the old-fashioned skycap service. Actually, I'd have used it and tipped the skycap, but the $2 does-not-include-gratuity charge rubbed me the wrong way.

American Airlines, either modernize efficiently or be graciously old-fashioned. If you want to be modern and old fashioned at the same time, at least be efficient and gracious about it. But this set-up, at La Guardia Airport, is ugly and awkward.

And telling me it's not the worst thing that will happen to me today is beyond belief.

Here's what the woman working at the counter could have said: I'm sorry. We don't mean for it to be confusing. We're still working on perfecting the new system. I hope you'll give us another chance.

Or she could have told what I think is the truth: Why are you even trying to check a bag inside? You had your chance with the skycaps, but you were too cheap to pay $3. Three damned dollars, and now you think that I will lift your crap onto a conveyor belt or give you any information you could find yourself on the computer screen? And you dare to complain? I hope this is just the start of a terrible day for you, bitch.

ADDED: Some sympathy. And a film clip.

The 6 imams case survives a motion to dismiss.

In a decision by U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery:

According to a police report, the men were arrested because three had one-way tickets and no checked baggage; most had requested seat belt extensions; a passenger reported that they had prayed "very loudly" before the flight and criticized U.S. involvement with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and they were seated widely throughout the aircraft.

Montgomery said it is "dubious" that a reasonable person would conclude from those facts that the imams were about to interfere with the crew or aircraft. She said the plaintiffs had stated a plausible claim that MAC officers violated their constitutional rights...

Montgomery, considering the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, said the facts they alleged "support the existence of an unconstitutional custom of arresting individuals without probable cause based on their race."

Power Line reacts:

However disappointing Judge Montgomery's order, I think it is good that we will learn the facts behind plaintiffs' lawsuit. The highly capable lawyer representing the Metropolitan Airports Commission is my friend and former law partner Tim Schupp; he will leave no stone unturned on behalf of the MAC. I think it is safe to say that the case of the flying imams one in which the truth should be known, and in which the truth will set us free.

Yes, let's get to the factfinding. No need to throw this out on a motion to dismiss when the plaintiff's version of the facts must be taken as true.

Driving to Green Bay.

In case you're wondering why is Althouse getting such a late start this morning, I was up until 3 a.m. after driving, beginning at 8 p.m., to Green Bay and back. It's all about that snow storm back east. A flight got cancelled, the next flight -- after a motel stay -- was late, a connection was missed, and the only way to avoid a second night in an airport motel was to fly into Green Bay instead of Madison. You'd still arrive at 10:30, but you'd arrive 130 miles away. I was just relaxing into a cozy night of TV -- mellowing out as two "I Shouldn't Be Alive" guys were getting horrendously lost in the Amazon -- and then, minutes later, I'm fueling up the car for the 5 hour round trip to Green Bay.

Speaking of green, it was St. Patrick's Day, not a good time to be driving after midnight, especially on that 20 mile stretch of Route 26 where it's just 2-lane blacktop, and there's a long line of cars and school buses streaming toward you. I guess they were coming back from a sporting event in Madison. There are always a few drivers who think they can improve their situation by passing one car in front of them, and I'd like to thank all those idiots who trusted me to slow down to avoid a head-on collision. When I finally got into Madison at 1:30 a.m., the streets were flowing with young revellers. As I drove across State Street, a young woman yelled at me, "Don't drive drunk!" -- which was for her a big joke, because she assumed everyone out in a car right now was drunk. But I was driving-all-the-way-to-Green-Bay-and-back sober.

So we made it back safe and wide awake. And those guys got out of the Amazon, too, because the show is called "I Shouldn't Be Alive." I don't know how they did it, and I'd like to know. But I'm glad they did, and I'm glad to be back in Madison, Wisconsin on March 18, 2007.

Conversations with cabdrivers.

1. New York City. Sunday, noon. The ride starts at 55 Church Street. The cabdriver asked me where I was from, so I asked him where he was from. He said Pakistan, then rushed to say that he's all American now, here for 20 years. Where in Pakistan? Lahore. I ask what I always ask about cities I don't know: Is the architecture beautiful? He talks about how the city has changed so much in the last ten years, something about all the new and not very good buildings that have detracted from the beauty of the old. It used to be so clean. He used to know every tree, which ones were good for climbing, and where the bird's nests were.

2. Madison. Sunday, midnight. The ride starts at the airport. I say I was happy to see cabs waiting at the airport so late at night, and he explains how the company monitors the websites and knows when there are planes coming in. I say my plane was late because a plane in Cleveland skidded off the runway in the ice and snow. Talking about the weather, he says he finally bought some "choppers," which I learn is the name for a type of heavy mitten. Around here they make them out of deerskin. But out in the west, maybe elkskin. "Choppers," weird. I never heard that term before. I guess they're for chopping wood. Yeah.

Airborne.

Leaving Wisconsin:



Arriving in Chicago:



Now, I'm waiting in the airport... with WiFi. It's not so bad. I paid extra for a nonstop flight, but it got cancelled. Snow in NYC. My connecting flight is delayed an hour, but I found an electrical outlet, and the WiFi here is only $6.95. Lunch is a Starbucks venti latte, with lots of vanilla sugar.

ADDED: I'm blogging from inside the plane. Nothing to say though. It's crowded.

AND: I'm in NYC. LaGuardia airport was insanely crowded. I made it to my 7 pm dinner and am now ensconced in my hotel with a spectacular view, but it's a view that inclines one toward sober thoughts. We overlook the World Trade Center.

Home! Home! Madison! Home!

That's how I feel about home!

Composed en route from Boston:

Why, oh, why does it cost $7.95 to access the WiFi in an airport? What good is a "day pass" when I'm only here for an hour? In fact, when your security check-in is as abysmal as what I just went through at Logan Airport, here in Boston, you ought to make up for it by giving us free WiFi, or at least cutting the rate way down. If the check-in had gone as fast as it does at my home airport in Madison, I might have been willing to pay perhaps $5 for the time I would have had to fool around with the internet, but I spent half an hour in line. No $7.95 for you.

So here I am, composing my post in advance. By cutting me off from my beloved internet, you are causing me to write more about how I can't stand your airport. Give me free WiFi or I will bitch about your crappy airport on my somewhat popular blog.

What was so bad about the security check-in? The line was long. There were two lines on an incline in a hot corridor, and then one of the lines branched into two lines, which means it goes twice as fast, and at least I lucked into the faster line. At the front, where you lay out your carry-on items, instead of long, banked stainless steel channels, there are pushed-together plastic folding tables of the sort that a caterer might hide under tablecloths at a big outdoor banquet. My line snakes behind the monitors displaying the contents of bags belonging to people in the line we branched off from. Everyone in my line blithely invades the privacy of those other passengers by staring. What else is there to look at?

Well, there's that green-and-white Starbucks logo beyond the security checkpoint. In the dreary hell of the security line, you're concentrating your hopes on getting to the end. And there is that shining logo, the light at the end of the tunnel.

I'll have a large latte.

I didn't think of saying "venti latte." I never do. But if I had, I would have said it, because by then I was in love with Starbucks.

Continuing this post draft in Milwaukee: The WiFi here is $9.95. My flight boards in 10 minutes. Do I love the internet enough to pay $1 a minute? Apparently not.

Boo to American Airlines for demanding that one of my sons get off the plane going from O'Hare to Madison at 9 o'clock at night because the plane was overweight. I know there are real safety concerns about weight and removing one person may make a difference and a little weight really does matter on those small planes, but at 9 o'clock at night, with no later flight to take, couldn't you offer more freebies until you get a volunteer? Two people did volunteer, but American only needed to kick off one person and so it would only offer one of these two the measly $200 travel certificate, and the two volunteers didn't want to split up. So one of my sons had to leave, to get the next bus to Madison, at 11 pm, and arrive at the Memorial Union at 2 am--on a cold night, with no shelter open, and nothing warm to wear, because he hadn't worn a coat in Austin, and his luggage had traveled on the plane.

Many passengers on the plane witnessed how rudely my sons were treated and at least one came up afterwards to say how offended he was and how he was going to write a letter to the airline about it. What I simply cannot understand is: 1. If you are going to do something like this at least be scrupulously polite while you're doing it (instead, the method used was: if you don't leave right now, we'll still make you leave and you won't even get the $200 certificate!) and 2. Try much harder to get volunteers (for a second $200 travel certificate, the two volunteers would have left willingly, and everyone else on the plane would have kept a positive opinion about the airline; instead, many people felt really bad about the airline). By the way, I think I would have volunteered in that situation, because the idea of a small plane at its weight limit scares me. That's another reason why they should go for volunteers: pressuring someone makes everyone feel anxious and subject of the dangerous weight of the plane has got to make for some exquisitely bad feeling aboard!

It's interesting that there were seats for everyone on the plane, but the weight didn't add up right. Do you think in that situation the airline ought to pick on the heaviest passengers? Actually, I don't. Yet if I were in that situation, seeing someone being pressured off the plane because of the weight of the plane--especially someone obviously under the 185 weight airlines assume people weigh--I'd be glancing around at passengers to see who was bringing the most weight on the plane and thinking uncharitable thoughts. But that's one more reason why the airline should escalate the inducements until they get a volunteer.

UPDATE: The certificate was for $250, not $200.

AND JUST TO BE CLEAR: The airline was not singling out the heaviest passengers--my sons are way under 185. My point is that if the plane is overweight and that someone is going to have to leave, a certain common sense suggests asking the heaviest person to leave. One person is inconvenienced, either way, but the maximum weight is removed. If you see them trying to oust a thin person, don't you tend to think they ought to be going after somebody big? But they don't, for whatever reason. Fear of lawsuits? Desire not to seem mean? But they were mean!

CHRIS ADDS:

A couple points you missed on the blog about the American Airlines thing:

1) Three or four women working the gate inside the airport knew, and told John and me, that the airplane was overloaded, and even while it was being delayed never made a single announcement that it was overloaded. They knowingly overloaded the plane because they were too lazy to make an announcement over the loadspeaker that they needed a volunteer.

2) What they should do, if they're going to FORCE someone off the plane, is single out the person who checked the heaviest bag. They have that information--they weigh every single checked bag--and they could easily do it that way, something based on weight, without insulting people for being fat. Instead, they got rid of a thin guy, left all the [heaviest people] on the plane, and even left his bag on the plane.

Also, people inside the plane yelled at the guy for not allowing the couple that volunteered to leave the plane. Plus, they were completely unapologetic and even threatening towards us from beginning to end!