I'll Be Home For Christmas

"Hey where's the bus at?"

Really Rascal Flatts? Each of the three of you, not to mention all the other fake rednecks that handle your promotion and distribution, are multi-multi millionaires, and yet the cleverest, most topical 18 second introduction to this video you can concoct is, "Hey, let's s'ang that one about bein' home for Christmas."

Like you couldn't even vocalize the fake cell phone conversation that the fat guy with the flip-up had in his hotel room? (By the way, dude, it hasn't been 1999 for almost 11 calendar years; it's time for you to snip that goo demon once and for all) Maybe stir in a, "Yeah, ba'aby, I'll be home for Christmas; I love you, too, ba'aby" and then have him look sad yet optimistic for 2 seconds. Unless flippy orchestrated the video prologue himself (which would not surprise me), the mere existence of this video means some no-talent asshole was probably paid a number of thousands of dollars to create that masterful introduction. Which actually makes me sick.

Which, it turns out, I am anyway, because I haven't slept in like three days and I've been sucking down airplane oxygen the whole time.

On that note, if none of the aforementioned or following actually comes across as logical English, forgive me. I am exhausted, but I can't sleep* on the benches in the New York Penn Station Amtrak WiFi HotSpot Waiting Area Zone (that are specifically designed so homeless people cannot sleep on them. And considering I'm rocking a 3-week beard, a stained, maroon hoodie, and significant travel B.O., I guess the benches are doing their job).

*Note: I also cannot sleep because the smug, balding asshole with the goatee sitting three benches behind me is reading entire Newsweek articles out loud to his friends.

My journey back to American soil started three-ish days ago (time difference in screwing with me). I packed the dorm room on Saturday night and headed to the airport earlier than I had to on Sunday in order to save some dough on the taxi, which actually turned out to be wise because it meant I could get in the excruciating British Airways rebooking line earlier than most of the other people on my flight.

I guess London got more snow this weekend than it's had in 30 years, so everyone who was scheduled to fly through Heathrow (yours truly) was given a hotel voucher and a new, convoluted-ass route to their original destination (Mine was Prague to Warsaw to Newark to you're own your own). Acquiring this was a mostly hassle free process, unless you count standing in line for a full FIVE hours a hassle. 1, 2, 3, 4, FIVE. Standing. British Airways was utilizing a grand total of two members of their Prague Airport staff to service approximately 300 travelers, and it seemed as if one of the two ladies would manage to slip away every half hour to go be surly elsewhere. Allow to me add one more thing to the list of things I will not miss about Prague: service.

So after I spent five precious hours of my life glaring at airport employees in hopes of telekinetically convincing them to be more than barely helpful (I was not successful), I got to the front of the line and was rewarded with a next-day flight and a room at the Airport Marriott Courtyard, which was not such a bad deal. If I had to choose between being on an airplane or eating dinner at a complimentary buffet Sunday night, you better believe I would be at that buffet. The Marriott also had a 24-hour workout room, which I got really juiced about initially, but then, as happens all too frequently when I consider exercising, I decided to sit in bed, chat with people on Facebook, and take down a king-sized Cadbury's Fruit and Nut chocolate bar square by square by square. All things considered, not a bad night.

And the following day didn't start off so bad either. Again, ya man hit the complimentary buffet for breakfast, and I hit it hard. There might be someone in this world with enough self-control to not make numerous trips to a buffet line in one sitting, but that person is not me. I ate at least 10 mini chocolate croissants, interspersed with not-strange-tasting scambled eggs and sausage (!) and bacon (!!) and sliced fruit and muesli (which I acknowledge is actually just granola with an exotic, healthy sounding name). Just a great all-around breakfast, which I semi-suspect the blog Gods laid before me in an act of irony and spite. Whatever. Shit tasted good.

But then shit went downhill.

My new airline was Polish Air (It goes by LOT), and flying with LOT was, in fact, as mechanically outdated and potentially-life-threatening as you'd suspect. I'm usually pretty calm and collected when it comes to takeoffs and landings, but I was legitimately worried during the entirety of both of my LOT flights. I prayed. Yeah, that worried.

I'm not really sure what LOT teaches their pilots, but neither landing I experienced today felt remotely normal or safe. Each time the plane approached the destination, it would alternate between accelerating at inappropriately high speeds and coasting at inappropriately low speeds. And as if the mental image of a sideways building careening into the Polish countryside at 2 billion miles per hour wasn't present enough in my mind, before each landing the plane was fucking crooked. Like the plane felt crooked. That shit gives me the willies** just thinkin' about it.

**In my book, "the willies" is not merely a turn of phrase, but an actual physical phenomenon usually brought on by the thought of smelling sour dairy products or having my nipples fucked with.

Mechanics aside, my flights still sucked exceptionally.

When I checked in however long ago, I asked the attractive LOT desk clerk for exit row seats because I have long legs and I am not resilient. She said she could accomodate me no problem, and I left the counter oddly satisfied with the very last service I would recieve in Prague (not true, the dumbass waitress at "Coke Pointe" adjacent to Gate C10 had no idea how to swipe a credit card so I couldn't buy a pre-flight Powerade).

However, I soon found out that by "exit row," Miss Lady must have thought I said "least comfortable and nearly the least convenient seat on the entire jumbo fucking jet" (to be fair, I did get an exit row on the 1 hour flight from Prague to Warsaw; on the 10 hour flight from Warsaw to Newark, however, I was not as fortunate). On that 10 hour flight, the seating arrangement that directly affected me was as follows:

Directly in front of me was the composite board that divides first class from the heathens in coach. This divider represents evil for so many reasons. Here are two:

1) The divider gives those directly behind it approximately 8 fewer inches of leg room than one would have in a normal coach seat (case closed, but read on). In order to keep my legs from becoming permanently numb, I had two options: extend my dogs into the aisle to my left, which was a) not comfortable because my armrest jutted into my hip whenever I shifted ever so slightly to the left, and b) not practical because the stuartesses always managed to run my foot over with their carts; my other option was to stretch my feet out vertically onto the divider wall, which was a little more comfortable, but the comfrt was short lived because my legs were drained of blood within 10 minutes.

2) I could fucking see two unoccupied first class seats within an arm's reach. Talk about torture. Usually, I would be first in shameless line asking to be relocated, but not this time, because:

The (very) young couple sitting next to me had a baby, so I felt they deserved it over me. I even suggested to them that they inquire about the upgrade; they appeared to be quite humored by the prospective methods of inquiry, but never quite managed to do it. Honestly, they were good people, but there is no way sitting next to a small, curly-haired noise machine for ten hours is going to leave much of any blempathy (blog empathy) on the table. Once again, I am no exception.

Based on my ten hours seated next to the young family, I suppose that these three humans were related this way: the wee one was the offspring of the lady and the gentleman, who I also suppose were not married (no rings). He was (is) black; she was (is) white. I only mention this because the little guy looked (looks) like what I suspect Jaden Smith looked like 7 or 8 years ago. Cute as a god damn cappuccino button. But, like all people under the age of 17 (generous), super irritating.

But only because he consistently made noise, not because the noises he made were particularly bothersome -- a distinction which means a lot when it comes to judging infants. Because of that distinction, my recent memory of the little man is positively skewed. And even though the gurgles and shrieks that he emitted were more voluminous and unpredictable than any other noise in the immediate vicinity (except for possibly the aforementioned composite board, which was not completely fastened to the ceiling, and which occasionally rattled, mimicking what I think it would sound like if someone rubbed two pieces of styrofoam together into a loudspeaker).

I was actually more bothered by his Euro league basketball playing father (possibly Poland, possibly Ukraine), who, for a solid 45 minutes, discussed the intracacies of the statistical relationship between shoe size and height -- not only for himself, but for each of his teammates. Needless to say, his girlfriend/fiance thought most of everything he had to say on the matter was, "so crazy."

Though the couple seated next to me was far and away the most interesting of my travel companions, not to be forgotten were the gentlemen to my direct left and rear, the former of which is a shoe-in for Ivan Drago in any upcoming Rocky IV remake, and the latter of which was an obese, cantankerous Polish man who also happened to have the most impressive patch of ear hair I have ever regrettably laid eyes on. Neither of these gentlemen did anything noteworthy, though I'm sure that if I understood Polish grumbling, I would have had a bone or two to pick with Mr. Furry Ears.

So, to make an unnecessarily long story shorter, the 10 hour flight ended and I rushed the fuck out of the plane (which had landed at Newark International Airport, remember) in order to try to catch a train that I was doomed to not catch from the get-go.

Had my flights not been conjunctively delayed an hour, and had the U.S. customs line not already been 400 people deep when I joined, and had I not forgotten my passport on the plane...

Yup, forgot my passport on the plane. It didn't really end up being a problem; a LOT employee fetched it eventually, but it did add one more hour to my too-many-houred trip, and it did give me an inside perspective on the U.S. Homeland Security Department: Newark, New Jersey Branch. Pretty much what you'd expect -- one long-winded Italian guy and three or four other less long-winded Italian guys. And a very, very large woman who intoxicated people have probably thought was J-WOWW.

So, passport in hand, I went to retrieve my checked luggage. Up to this point I had on my person a carry-onable wheeled suitcase, an oversized backpack, a shopping bag with gifts for my mother (if I somehow lose her Christmas gifts believe you me I am sleeping in the yard until 2011), and my bulky-ass, pilly wool overcoat. In case you aren't a visual person, that right there is enough to occupy a guy's paws.

Add on 100 pounds of checked luggage dispersed into two massive L.L. Bean wheeled suitcases, as well as a thick sheen of perspiration, and you've got yourself a pretty accurate image of what I looked leaving baggage claim number 7 at Newark International Airport. I then get through the "baggage check" line, which is purely a harvest point for those meaningless customs declarations they make you fill out, only to discover that I've now lost my meaningless customs declaration. I found it pretty soon thereafter, but I mention it to reiterate how shitty this travelsty (has someone copyrighted that yet?) was up to this point.

And as if my sore throat and destitute appearance was not enough, allow me to remind you that I broke my Blackberry a month and a half ago, so in order to figure out the train schedule, I had to use a payphone (!!insert yuppie squirm!!). Which went fine. But I forgot how to make a collect call (actually I was just tired of listening to the operator), so I had to panhandle for someone's cellphone.

I looked around the airport lobby-ish area for potential targets, and I found what I thought would be a great match: two older white folks eagerly holding up a homemade sign that said something about welcoming someone home. Perfect, I thought, they're white, I'm white, we're in Newark; I've got this in the bag.

"Um, excuse me, sorry to bother you, but would it be at all possible for me to borrow one of your cellphones and call my parents?"

The mom looked at me, looked at her husband, and then looked back at me as if I had just asked her if she knew where I could score some rocks and a handgun.

"Uhh, did you bring your cellphone, dear? I don't have my cellphone."

"No, I don't have a cellphone."

Are you fucking kidding me? You probably have 4 cellphones between the two of you. And I bet two of them are iPhone 4's. I could not fucking believe it. Not only did these people deny me something that I and (I would like to think) most cellphone owners would grant to normal looking people that go to the trouble of asking, but they tried to bullshit me in the process. I mean, lady, do you think I'm gonna fake a call home and then abscond with your mobile phone in this extremely busy airport? Do you think I'm part of some elaborate burglary scheme and I have a getaway van waiting down the block? No. I need to make a fucking phone call.

Thankfully a friendly latino guy handed me his extremely complicated touch screen phone, which I handed back to him and asked him to dial my house number for me (this, ladies and gentlemen, is yet another example of technology advancing far too rapidly beyond the scope of human control -- there is no way I, a modestly tech-savvy 21-year-old, should be rendered incapable by any consumer electronic good. But alas, it has happened. In three years I'll probably have to have my now 4-year-old cousin Nora show me how to use whatever new-fangled moving picture device I get for Christmas..).

And then I got in a cab, which took me for a $70 ride (literally and proverbially) to New York Penn Station, where I and my luggage got out and smelled New York City for the first time since August.

And it smelled wonderful.

It was no coincidence that I was smelling air in the immediate vicinity of the 33rd Street Brother Jimmy's (by far the most inferior of the 3, though still patronable), where I promptly dragged my luggage, sat at the bar, and ate the most delectable marbled barbeque brisket sandwich and drank the most refreshing 16 ounce can of Natural Light. And I don't give a shit about football (especially involving Bears or Vikings), but MNF was on and I saw Robbie Gould kick a field goal.

It's good to be back, America.

Now, as I sit on the Amtrak 67 Northeast Regional bound for DC -- a route that I've become almost routinely familiar with over the course of the past two years -- I'm trying really hard to quantify what it's like to be back home, to be back at routines. Considering I've been "home" (in the most generic sense of the word) for approximately 6 hours, and considering I haven't slept a god damn wink in two days, this is proving to be a far less profound experience than I expected. Instead, it feels like it should: routine, possibly with a little nostalgic sparkle mixed in. If you'll allow me to get flowery on your ass momentarily, I feel like a fish who's spent the past hour of his life in a unknown, temporary bowl because the everyday tank is being cleaned; I've just gotten dumped back into the old tank, and I can see a lot more clearly than I did before, but nothing looks all that different.

If you asked me 96 hours ago if, in order to get home, I would want to have my flight delayed by a calendar day, spend another calendar day waiting in lines and sitting on airplanes, lose my passport, and have to pay an additional $180 just in order to to be able arrive home within a day of when I was supposed to, I would have undoubtedly said no.

But if you said that within that extra 24 hour time frame, I'd be able to eat a marbled barbeque brisket sandwich, I would have undoubtedly said yes.

And I'll be home for Christmas. That's pretty good too.