Photo by Cynthia Larsen
Quibbles & Bits: Sons and Turtles
Also, a few remarks about modern aviation
By Ed Goldman
THE SON ALSO SURMISES—Hunter Biden, whose name could also be the description of an outdoorsman takin’ his own sweet time before blastin’ a squirrel to kingdom come, has lately taken to telling podcasters what’s wrong with the Democratic Party. And believe me, party elders are listening. Not to Hunter Biden, of course, but I’m sure they’re listening to somebody.
Biden the Younger is using the famous Ambien Defense to explain why his dear ol’ dad morphed into a sculpture at the beginning of that legendary debate with Trump, The Man Who Won’t Be King. He also blamed George Clooney for pointing out that Scranton Joe’s elusive grip on cognition prevented him from recognizing Clooney at a fundraising event and scolded former President Barack Obama for gently escorting Joe offstage when Joe was staring into the distance, possibly attempting to read an eye chart tacked to a wall in another building.
Of the Clooney incident, Hunter doesn’t seem to grasp a basic rule of survival in public life, to wit: You can pardon your convicted son for a jailable crime, you can have your staff lie about your mental and physical health, but you can never ever fail to recognize a movie star.
SHELL GAME—There was an item that moved through the news the other day about a woman who was apprehended at a Florida airport while attempting to smuggle two turtles into the country—in her bra.
My immediate reaction was to hope they weren’t snapping turtles.
And I was sorry to read that one of the turtles died in transit. I guess the woman wasn’t wearing a product that was all the rage when I was growing up: the Playtex “living bra.”
TerraPinterest
It also reminded me that just last March some guy tried to smuggle “an invasive” turtle past the TSA—in the front of his pants, according to CBS. I feel a case of FOMA coming on—in this case the Fear Of Missing Out on a hot new sex trend, each and every one of which I’ve missed since adolescence.
As a little boy I had two turtles in my room: Timothy (named by me) and Elvis Pretzels (named by my older brother Stu). We kept them alive for about two weeks—or roughly seven times the duration one can expect a turtle to live in the care of four- and eight-year-old boys in the Bronx, in winter. We probably could have kept them longer if we’d had access to a pair of adult pants or a living bra.
FLIGHT DRECK—It’s odd when your own experience doesn’t square with financial reality. No, I’m not talking about the creditors stalking me: this is about my having flown a bit more this summer than in prior ones and the airline industry whining to the business media that this has actually been a tough summer for them, as “economic worries made price-sensitive travelers more cautious” according to the Wall Street Journal.
In response to the airlines, I need to ask how many languages exist with a word for “Duh.” The simple fact is that almost everything about flying has become reprehensible—from getting to the airport during endless construction projects (why are so many airports being enlarged if the pool of flyers is draining?), to feeling rushed at the TSA grab ‘n’ go check-in even though you’ve planned ahead and have left plenty of time to get to your gate. Then there’s the person at the gate, the flight attendant or the pilot, none of whom has been trained on the usage of a microphone. Most of them have enunciation skills which rival those of the kid in Wendy’s who calls back your drive-through order in a language new to you (though you suspect it relies heavily on the word “like”).
I wonder if airline executives ever experience the airport adventures we all do. If they did, just once, maybe they’d know why people are flying less—or at least the translation for “Duh.”
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Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).
