Tag: Whoops

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When You See Me Sprinting Through an Airport, Please Step Aside.

There’s this amazing moment in one of Carl Reiner’s and Mel Brooks’ “2000 Year Old Man” sketches, when Reiner is moving through a line of questions about the early days of man. He’ll get to the good stuff in a second — questions about Joan of Arc, questions about the secrets to longevity — but first, he’s got a softball. “What was the main means of transportation back then?” he asks.

Brooks’ response is classic deadpan, and he crushes it. “Fear,” he says. “You’d see a tiger, and you’d run a mile in a minute.”

We don’t have such sources of transportation inspiration anymore. Except for one, really: the fear of missing an airplane.

On Thursday, I was nearly confined to the multi-thousand square foot beast that is Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

So I ran.

❡❡❡

The last time I made the airport sprint was in San Francisco. My shuttle to the airport was late — by an hour. My flight was on time. From curb to last-call at my gate, I’d been given 14 minutes. But San Francisco International is a relatively easy airport. Each wing has its own security checkpoint, servicing just a dozen or so gates, and I didn’t have any bags to check in, so I butted in line, apologized profusely and then ran — my left hand keeping my pants up, my heavily duct-taped roller bag and belt over my head and waving behind me. I ran like Reggie Bush on a punt return, dodging travelers, spinning away from golf carts, my eyes upterminal at all times. I made it to the gate — the very last gate in the terminal, of course — in time.

I gasped.

I heaved.

But I was on the plane.

❡❡❡

My sense is that Americans, in general, love to procrastinate. We also love to be lazy, to lounge around and to waste time.

So it should follow, logically, that getting a few hours to kill at the airport would be an American pastime.

That’s how I used to feel, actually. When I was young, I’d to ride the subway down with my dad to National Airport in D.C., and we’d sit by the windows and watch the planes take off. Some fathers and sons went to baseball games or the zoo to relax; we went to the airport.

But most Americans don’t see the airport as a relaxing place. That’s why we have a phrase for the occasion: stuck at the airport. Or worse: stranded at the airport.

In all your years, have you ever heard anyone outside of a first class lounge talk excitedly about an extended airport layover? Don’t worry about me, honey. I’ve got four whole hours to spend at Boston Logan!

As a society, we are not claustrophobic, but we fear airport-based confinement, and all of its trappings: patience, non-reclining chairs and doubly-overpriced Starbucks.

Maybe it’s just the way we define airports. We break them up into sections — Terminals, we call them — but we view them with a lower case ‘T.’ As in: beyond curable. Beyond suffering.

As in: the stage just before the light.

❡❡❡

The first sign of trouble hit my inbox on Thursday. There they were two e-mails from Continental Airlines informing me that my flight to Houston had been delayed. I looked at the details. Both said my 8:35 flight had been delayed to…. 8:35. Whatever.

By the time I’d gotten to San Antonio, the departure monitors told a different story. The 7 a.m. to Houston still hadn’t taken off yet. The 8:35 was delayed until 10:15.

My connecting flight in Houston left at 10:30.

I’ll fast-forward for you: I got on a non-delayed 9:15 flight, due to land in Houston’s Terminal C at 10:10. The connection was over in the B gates, no. 75. High numbers are never a good sign, and when my San Antonio flight stalled on the runway for 10 minutes — broken radars in the control tower, the captain said — I wasn’t optimistic about getting to B75 in time.

But we touched down at 10:04, and I was sitting in row 8, and the flight attendant said that since so many people had been delayed that morning, please, for the courtesy of your fellow passengers, let’s have only the passengers with urgent connecting flights stand up when the plane stops.

The plane stopped. The first eight rows stood up.

One guy was connecting to Kansas City. Another to New York. Someone else to Albuquerque, I think.

The doors opened, and we ran.

We ran through the jetway, where the emergency alarm had sounded when the gate agent had goofed in a rush to open the doors for us. We ran through the noise and into….

…Terminal E. Not, as I’d been told, Terminal C, only a quick one-hop subway connection away from my B gate. Instead, I was in the third-to-last gate in the terminal farthest away from where I needed to go. I’d have to cover over a mile of airport in about 12 minutes.

Naturally.

But my next gate hadn’t changed: B75. At least I knew my destination.

Houston Intercontinental Airport

❡❡❡

There are three keys, in my opinion, to surviving the airport sprint:

1. Use the Reverse Jinx: Sitting in San Antonio International on Thursday, I knew two things:

A. If I didn’t eat, I’d make my connecting flight but not have enough time to grab a bite in Houston, and I might not eat anything until 2 or 3. That wouldn’t do.

B. If I did eat, I’d miss my connecting flight and have three hours of waiting in Houston, with plenty of time to eat. And I wouldn’t be hungry, because I’d already eaten. That wouldn’t do, either.

So I grabbed a sandwich and secretly hoped to reverse jinx my way into the perfect scenario: eat early and make my connection. (Spoiler alert! It paid off — except for the part where I had to sprint through an airport terminal with a belly full of McMuffin. But more on that later.)

2. Be Loud: When you’re running, make sure people hear you coming. Be loud, and people will clear a path for you as you run. An airport sprinter is a wrecking ball-in-waiting, so make your presence known. Yell, holler, wear clogs — whatever it takes. There’s a reason those airport golf carts have sirens on them.

3. Look Desperate, But Don’t Panic: If you only take one piece of advice here, take this one. When you’re clomping down a terminal, you want people to look up and instantly know which person is rushing to a flight. Your face needs say, Please, for all that is holy, don’t make me stay one second longer than I need to in this place. But internally, you’ve got to stay poised. I’ve seen roller bags go flying out of control in airports. Stay in control, and let your legs do the rest.

❡❡❡

I ran right, then left, then across a moving walkway. My roller bag skidded behind me; the duct tape on the handle seemed to be holding things together nicely. I wheeled past the international terminal, passengers from Guam and Guatamala looking both groggy and very much not on high alert for me, this 6’6” thing cannonballing into Terminal D, where I could catch the inter-terminal train. Up the escalator, passing a couple on the right — sorry! — I made it to the train.

If the Google Maps tool over at WalkJogRun.net is to be believed, I’d just sprinted just over a quarter mile. In sandals. While wheeling a bag and hauling another one over my shoulder. Through an international terminal.

We reached Terminal C at 10:19. I had a chance, but the train pulled away slooo….. ooowwww…. wwlyyyy. We inched along. Terminal B arrived at about 10:22. My gate was just closing, if I was lucky. Maybe the airport door hadn’t shut, too. I had two minutes, tops.

Out on the platform, there were two escalators, both headed down. The guy going to Kansas City was a step behind me, and I beat him to it. I was in full-on “American Gladiators” mode, demolished the escalator and spun onto the main concourse. Lesser airport gladiators would crumble at the sight of the Houston Intercontinental eliminator; I hung in.

I should say here the floors in Terminal B are different, older. They’re a thin layer of carpet over concrete, and I was running in sandals. The thwap of each step echoed behind me, like “Riverdance” in snowshoes.

Terminal B opened into a square-shaped area, with four corridors leading out from each corner. Gates 76 and above were up on the side next to the train.

Gates 75 and below were not.

So there was another run, this time through the square, past another food court and to the right. It was the home stretch, the last tenth of a mile sprint through the B concourse, and my legs sagged. I wanted to quit. I wanted to stop sprinting. I was defeated.

And then, the tunnel turned. There was light.

❡❡❡

“Breathe, honey, breathe.”

I continued to pant, gasp, sweat. The gate agent, Rosetta, printed out my boarding pass. “Oshinsky? Coming from San Antonio? No way I thought you’d make it. Where’d you come from?”

E22.

“That’s amazing.”

The airplane door hadn’t closed yet, so she walked me down the gateway. I was still sucking for air. She mentioned something about wishing that she had my speed, and I laughed. No one had ever called me fast before.

I tried to tell her that, but it came out something like, “Eyyyee [gasp] mmmm not [gasp gasp] thaaat fass [gasp] ttt.”

I was boarding a puddle jumper, so my roller bag had to be checked plane-side. My breath was coming back, and I asked Rosetta if airport employees had a word for what I’ve just done.

“You know, we used to call it — well, before the trial — we used to call that the O.J. sprint.”

I looked back at her before I board the plane. I got here, I wanted to tell her. But I won’t go there.

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The Blog Post That May Make Me The Butt of Your Jokes.

For the last 10 days, there has been something wrong with me. I have been slightly more irritable than usual. I’ve been twitchy at work. I’ve gone through long spells when my mind appears to be in a very different place.

Today, I believe I’ve discovered the problem.

I may be bleeding out of my anus.

Now, this is probably not the type of thing you’ve come to this blog to read, and perhaps you’ll be inclined to click away, to read about my mother or my experience with Kosher-approved pornographic advertising. I’ll understand.

I’ll admit that this diagnosis hasn’t been doctor-confirmed. [1. Though, you’ll admit, ‘slight anal leakage’ isn’t exactly a tough one to figure out.] But I’m still confident in it, partially because I can’t imagine many people have spent as much time thinking about their own ass as I have.

Some kids spent their childhoods looking up at the sky and guessing what each cloud resembled. My mother has stories of me, a two-year-old who’d come out of the bathroom describing in great detail what I’d just produced.

In fourth grade, when a family friend was asked what he was thankful for, he replied, “The toilet.” I just nodded in agreement.

At Hannukah, my siblings and I all hoped that mom and dad would gift us the latest edition of “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.” [2. We’ve collected just about every one of his volumes.] The toilet is where I learned to appreciate Dave Barry’s columns, where I studied the Wall Street Journal’s middle column and where I occasionally penned verse. [3. Poo-etry, perhaps?]

You get the idea.

Things get murky [4. Yes, there’s still time to bail on this blog post yet.] about three weeks ago, when I started to feel an odd twinge in my right shoulder. I went to the doctor. His verdict: a pinched nerve in my neck. He told me to take two-a-day of some pill that had more Xs in its name than I cared for.

That night, after popping the first of the pills, I felt something where I didn’t want to. Let’s call it an unwanted tingle.

I blamed it on the chicken fried steak I’d eaten at lunch.

But the tingle was still there on the second day. On the third, I started to feel that something was seriously wrong. I looked, of course, to my stool. [5. A technique, I learned, of course, via the musical episode of ‘Scrubs.’]

By week’s end, I was really worried. I was twitchy at work. I was tingly when I didn’t want to be — and where I didn’t want to be.

On day seven, I had to drop my laptop off at the store for some repairs — a note that would seem unrelated, except that afterward, I had a sudden urge to check WebMD for advice on my condition. I went to the public library to check my email, read the terms of agreement and decided that Googling anything beginning with the word “anal” might get me banned from all city buildings for the next year.

Finally, I got the laptop back. I checked first to make sure everything was in working order with my Mac — at least everything’s okay on this end, I told myself — and clicked toward my internal diagnostic confirmation.

Gastrointestinal problems? Check. Dermatological discomfort? Check. Special sensations? That might be one way to put it. Never had such an unspeakable tingle sounded more obscurer.

I walked over to the bathroom, where I’d left the bottle of pills on the counter. I felt up my shoulder, and I thought about my other twinge. Suddenly, the pain up top was tolerable.

The symptoms are now starting to subside, but the tingle was still there today. Also worth noting: I haven’t exactly figured out a way to casually mention my temporary condition at the office. It hasn’t been easy keeping my mind off of it, either.

In a chat with my boss this afternoon, I started to drift off. My boss asked if I was listening. I assured her that I was.

“I just can’t tell what you’re thinking about right now,” she said.

I squirmed a little in my seat, and I started to assure her that I had only two things on my mind. [6. I actually meant this new Twitter project and a meeting I had later in the day.]

Then I decided that I probably shouldn’t think too much about any number two.

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When Voicemail Accidentally Serves as a Time Capsule.

The first thing I heard was a weird scratching on the phone, like aluminum foil was being rubbed against the receiver. Then I heard my mother’s voice, frantic.

“I must have just missed your call,” she said. This was last Thursday.

But I didn’t call, I told her.

That didn’t stop her. “No, Dan,” she said. “I just got your message.”

I didn’t leave a message, I told her, because I hadn’t just called. This seemed to clear things up on my end.

My mother kept talking.

“No, but I just got it. You said you were about to meet Hunter Thompson.”

I paused, the only way a man can pause when your mother calls and insists that you’ve just left a message that you did not leave explaining that you’re about to meet gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who you cannot meet because he died five years ago.

“You’re saying that you just got a message from me, claiming that I’m about to meet a deceased Rolling Stone writer?”

“Yes,” my mother replied, and without hesitation. This seemed like a perfectly normal thing for her to say.

I didn’t know what to say next. Of course, my mother did.

“You said you were sick.”

“I’m not.”

“No, in the message. Are you sick?”

I did not know what to say. To this point in my life, I had never had to deny the unlikely voicemail/I’m sick/meeting dead gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson trifecta. I started considering the possibility that my mother had been taking hallucinogenic drugs.

But thinking out the right way to respond to this line of questioning, something started to click. Back in the fall of 2005, I did get sick, and I did cancel on my friend, Andrew, who I was supposed to go with to meet a Mr. Wright Thompson — then a writer for the Kansas City Star, and now a reporter for ESPN. I asked my mother if the name Wright Thompson sounded familiar.

“Yes, yes, that’s the one. Are you supposed to meet him today?”

I explained that no, I was supposed to meet him in 2005, but I’d canceled because, well… I was sick at the time. Another pause. The timeline began to click into place.

“Do you mean to tell me that today, you just got a voicemail that I left for you five years ago?”

I started laughing, but my mother’s tone didn’t brighten just yet. I could hear her on the other end, still reaching for something motherly to say.

“You sure you’re not sick?” she asked.

And then, finally understanding the absurdity of the whole thing, she started to laugh too.

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Wait, You People Still Speak to Each Other?

I haven’t been home to D.C. since I left for south Texas just over seven months ago. I keep up with some home friends via phone, and I caught up with a few earlier this month out in L.A. But for a good chunk of news and gossip from home, I rely on an email listserv that circulates amongst the guys from home.

So when I found out today that someone who we all went to elementary school with was joining an American football team in Spain, it seemed implausible. At work, I run three different Twitter clients at all times. I have a cell phone, a landline, a Google Voice number, an actively updating Facebook news feed and at least three email accounts. How the hell had I not heard about this already? [1. And as someone who considers himself a legitimate sports fan — and someone who spent half of 2008 living in Spain — how was I unaware that Spain had an American football league?]

Usually, when anything semi-important happens involving someone at home — say, two kids from my high school getting their Cal Tech-certified game theory paper on waiting for the bus published in the New York Times Magazine — I know about it. But this one had eluded the listserv, apparently.

I emailed into the group to see what the word was. A response came back: “not true, i — and i thought others — knew about this like a week ago if not more?”

A week? Three constantly updating Twitter feeds — and I was behind by a week?

I searched my Gmail account. No word of any Spanish football league teams. I emailed my friend back: Was there some alternate, super-secret listserv circulating?

Then the response came:

“The secret listserv you refer to is in fact the technologically archaic word-of-mouth.”

Oh.

Post-script: Since this post was published, everyone from home has been piling on. “I would like to amend your latest blog update,” wrote one friend. “You were behind at least a month. I knew about Carl in December at least.”

Another, studying abroad: “even i knew and i am in a third world country living in a rice village.”

And worst of all, from my mother: “Actually, I knew that.”

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The Day I Accidentally Rooted for Kansas.

I want to take it back.

I cannot un-know what I know. I cannot reverse time. I cannot deny what has happened.

But I cannot imagine going on knowing that one day, fourteen years ago, I may have accidentally rooted for Kansas.

¶¶

My dad used to do a bit of work with the D.C.-area Boys and Girls Club, which was affiliated with the D.C. police, which was the reason why dad always ended up as the policeman in my elementary school’s annual Sock Hop production of the “YMCA.” But it’s also the reason why we ended up at a fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Club, this one put on by the Washington Redskins.

The MC that night was Chris Berman. He did a couple “back back back” jokes, the DJ played “Hail to the Redskins,” and then Berman tossed it to the live auction.

One of the items was a trip to Kansas City to see the Redskins play. I do not know why — I was only 7 at the time, and I’d never been to Missouri before — but I asked my dad if I could bid on it. He said yes.

He thought I’d bid once or twice and get out of it.

I wanted to win.

The ballroom must’ve held a thousand people, maybe more, so it’s understandable why the auctioneer didn’t initially notice my arm shooting into the air. But around $300, my Uncle Sol caught his eye and gave him a wave in my direction.

“$300,” he said, and pointed at me.

This being my first live auction, I was unfamiliar with the bidding process. I didn’t notice other people taking their hands down after bidding. So even after the auctioneer pointed at me, I kept my arm up. He looked elsewhere. Someone bid $350. He looked back at me.

“$400,” he said.

My arm stayed in the air.

It went on like this for a few more rounds. Dad told me to stop bidding; my hand stayed in the air. But by then, it was too late. It was down to just me and one other contender.

I bid, and the auctioneer looked at the other bidder. He was consulting with his wife. How much was too much to spend on a mid-November trip to Kansas City? he was surely asking. She gave him a look. His arm stayed by his side.

“Going once,” the auctioneer said. His eyes swept the room. He caught my eye. My hand was still in the air.

“You can’t bid against yourself,” he said. The entire room laughed.

When the room quieted, he asked for a second time, and then a third, but the other bidder didn’t match.

¶¶

When you’re seven, it’s only the weird things that stick out. Going to Kansas City, I remember we flew Midwest Express out of the old terminal at National Airport, and I remember that the stewardesses gave us real silverware to eat our in-flight meal with. I remember that we stopped in Milwaukee, and that dad wanted to buy me a Green Bay Packers cheese head. (I wasn’t interested.) I remember going to a barbecue place in Kansas City, where they used paint brushes to slather sauce on their brisket sandwiches, and where the food was wrapped in the Sunday edition of the Kansas City Star. (The barbecue place turned out to be the legendary Arthur Bryant’s.) I remember the omelete bar at the hotel, and I remember regretting having gone through six or seven eggs at breakfast before the flight back to D.C.

The game itself was less memorable. We had seats in the upper deck behind one of the benches. It was cold. The Redskins lost, and I remember Brian Mitchell dropping a pass in the end zone on a 4th down. The box score doesn’t provide much help: the Redskins ran through Gus Frerotte and Heath Shuler at QB that day. It didn’t matter. They lost, 24-3.

But it’s this other memory that’s started to bother me.

¶¶

Not having anything to do on a Saturday in Kansas City, my dad and I decided to drive out to Lawrence, Kan., to see a football game.

I’d long since forgotten the opponent, but I was thinking about the game yesterday, and I checked in with Google to see if it could offer any answers. I tracked down the date of the Redskins-Chiefs game, and then cross-checked it with the KU football schedule.

The day was Nov. 4, 1995, and I watched as the Kansas Jayhawks beat the Missouri Tigers, 42-23. That’s what the box score says, but I don’t remember it. My memories from that day are hollow: a long, flat stretch of highway out to Lawrence; a half-empty stadium; and something about a giant drum. I can’t know for sure, but I’d guess that my dad and I cheered for Kansas that day.

What I didn’t know is that a decade later, I’d be enrolling at the University of Missouri.

¶¶

It’s weird, now, but I feel almost wronged by the memory. There is the Chase Daniel cover of Sports Illustrated hanging next to my bed. There is a Brad Smith jersey hanging in the closet. There is a copy of the Mizzou alumni magazine on the coffee table.

And then there is this memory, of a chilly fall day, of a horseshoe stadium, of a rivalry game that I didn’t fully understand.

A decade later, I’d fall in love with one of those teams. I’d plan my Saturdays around their Saturdays, and their glory would become my glory.

But on Nov. 4, 1995, I’m afraid that I rooted for the wrong one.

I wish I’d known then. I wish I didn’t know now.

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More Proof That I Am, in Fact, an Idiot.

I am an idiot.

I’m 22 years old and blissfully unaware of the world around me. Blissfully unaware, I’d venture, is one step closer to bliss than most people ever get.

But it’s that bliss that, today, reminded me of how big an idiot I really am.

I had to go to Target this afternoon because there was a hot yoga class in town that I wanted to try, and to take the class, I needed to first purchase an official yoga mat. Such a mat is the consistency of an oversized Shamwow, except that it costs $20 and does nothing that a $3 towel wouldn’t do when it’s 95 degrees inside a yoga studio and your palms are too sweaty to grip much of anything. [1. I also must report that my yoga class consisted of what I must assume were the five most flexible people in all of South Texas. The yoga teacher herself may have been born without joints, bones or the ability to sense the unstoppable pain in my lower back. I don’t think she was a contortionist; I think she was a human balloon animal.]

There was traffic on the way to Target, so I called a friend while I waited in traffic. I kept talking as I got to the store, parked the car, grabbed a hand cart and found the oversized Shamwow that would be my platform for future yoga futility. I started walking back toward the checkout line.

Somewhere during the walk, the idiot in me took over.

For the most part, I try not to be an asshole in public, and generally, I look upon other assholes with scorn. At the top of the list of assholes in public are People Who Talk On Their Cell Phones While Urinating. Just below that, on the list of assholes worthy of title case, are People Who Talk on Their Cell Phones in the Checkout Aisle.

I decided, mid-walk, that I did not want to enter that second category.

But instead of doing the rational thing — explaining the situation to my friend, hanging up and calling back a few minutes later — I just kept walking and talking.

I walked and talked over to the toiletries aisle and picked up some paper towels. I found the grocery aisle and eyed a pint of ice cream, though I eventually passed on any. I looped through to home furnishings and grabbed two scented candles, then back to sporting goods, and over to menswear. At some point, I found myself back in the grocery aisle and decided upon a single can of minestrone soup. My handcart was getting progressively heavier. My left arm was starting to sag. I kept talking.

During my fifth or sixth loop of menswear, I looked down the aisle toward the store’s entrance and noticed that it was getting dark. I told my friend that I had to go and hung up. I saw the counter flashing on my phone. I’d been walking and talking for nearly 40 minutes, it said.

I walked over to the checkout aisles and found an empty lane. I put my things on the belt, and in a conscientious effort not to be one of those aforementioned assholes, I smiled at the cashier and said hello. She said nothing. She put my items in a bag and told me the price of my goods. A trip for a cheap yoga mat had turned into a full-on shopping spree, all in an effort to be polite to this cashier. I thanked her and wished her a nice day, and I actually kind of meant it. She didn’t respond.

I grabbed my bags, and my left arm sagged again. I didn’t feel like an asshole, which was a thought with about as much comfort as my $20 yoga mat. I only felt like an idiot.

Which is, to say, I only felt like myself.

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No Matter What You May Have Been Led to Believe, I Do Not Have a Rabbinically-Related Bacon Sex Obsession

A serious, actual warning: this blog post contains material that is mildly pornographic. If you are my parents or anyone who is seriously considering hiring me — with the exception of the fine editorial board over at the Adult Video News family of publications — I advise that you just click here to read my more, uh, kosher material.

End of warning.

❡❡❡

I am writing today because I am concerned — as many of you are, I imagine — that millions of American men are under the impression that Jewish youths fantasize not of Catholic schoolgirls or slightly-submissive cheerleaders but of bacon-wielding Rabbinical scholars.

Perhaps I should explain.

Where to start is a hard question 1.. When I was a kid — in the clean, wholesome 1990s — companies were in the business of using sex to sell Pepsi or Chris Rock albums instead of, well, sex.

Even when the President decided to let the other zipper drop, all the American people got were a few Slick Willy jokes. Those were simpler times.

But as Y2K closed in, something changed: doctors at Pfizer realized that their new blood pressure medication wasn’t doing what they they thought it would do. And now they needed a megaphone to tell everyone of the side effects they’d discovered. Meanwhile, the NFL needed a new sponsor; those 1-800-COLLECT ads weren’t going to survive. So if you’re looking for a moment when Americans became weirdly okay with talking about sex in public, I’d nominate Viagra’s first TV ad campaign as the tipping point.

A decade later, we’re completely unimpressed by overt displays of sexuality on television. If you watched the NFL Draft this weekend, you were probably exposed to equal amounts of Cialis advertising and draft analysis 2.. If you watched on a satellite provider, like Dish Network, you saw an additional dose of ads for something that’s called — with all irony intended — Extenze. And may I remind you: in 2004, a famous entertainer exposed herself to nearly a hundred million Americans. It is no coincidence that the incident took place at halftime of a football game.

Lately, we’ve been channeling our sex obsession towards pornography. Two weeks ago, an obituary for an adult film actress was featured on the front page of The New York Times’ website. The Washington Post ran a multi-part series about the Maryland state senate’s quest to squash a public showing of a pornographic film titled “Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge.” Porn isn’t taboo anymore; it’s actually headline news.

Even today’s sex advertisers are evolving with these social changes. They’ve actually started to — and I cannot believe I am typing this — microtarget to consumers.

Microtargeting is a technique that only slightly predates Viagra. Give much of the credit to Mark J. Penn — a political consultant for the Clintons, among others — who coined the term “soccer moms.” He started a movement among political-types in which society is fragmented until you’re left with only homogeneous groups of people. Those people — soccer moms, NASCAR dads, Rednecks for Obama, or whomever — are then sent as many political mailings as the USPS will legally allow.

Then there’s another side of microtargeting: localization. Specific advertisers — say, supermarkets — want to be able to advertise to the people who live within a few miles of their store. So they’ll mictrotarget their ads only to those consumers. It’s easy to figure out who those consumers are, too: your Internet IP address is basically a Lo-Jack for your computer.

What’s frightening about today’s sex advertisers is that they’re microtargeting to both specific demographics and local markets; they’re actually customizing their smutty ads to your liking and locale.

On a theoretical level, microtargeting makes sense. If you can gather information about an Internet user — Dan, age 21, Jewish, enjoys baked goods — and can pinpoint his location — Columbia, Mo. — then you can deliver an ad that cuts directly to what I like and where I can buy some of it.

But this really only works well if you’re looking to get me a good deal on hamantaschen in mid-Missouri. It does not work as well when you’re trying to sell sex.

Which, finally, brings me back to the matter at hand: a disturbing new series of Internet advertorials that have brought together Jimmy Dean breakfast meats and shiksas in a way I never thought was possible.

(N.B.: The following screenshots have been reproduced directly. With the PG-aged in mind, I have edited in leavened distractions to block any unsightly parts of the photo. Other images have been slightly Photoshopped to blur out 3. what matzah could not.)

The advertisement features a number of slides that progress every few seconds. I’ll start with the first slide:

Initial thought: what’s with the fake beards? And I don’t even want to guess what they’re trying to sell. To the next slide:

First things first: I belong to a synagogue in Washington, D.C., that’s lucky enough to have not one but two excellent female rabbis. So I’m not entirely sure what this ad is getting at by asking “if.” But to answer the question at hand: no, even as a young Jewish man, no, I have not had that fantasy.

Also noteworthy: I still have no idea what’s being sold here. Next slide:


Now’s the point where I start to really wonder how customized this ad is for me. I mean, ass-slapping? With pork products? And it’s not like the Google search that led me to this ad was “Lesbian rabbis AND ass-slapping AND the other white meat.”

And I’m completely clueless as to what’s being sold here. From what I can gather, it appears that Johnsonville may have finally gotten into the kosher breakfast meat/sex toy industry 4.. Still, there’s no way I’m clicking away now. To the final slide:

Now here’s where microtargeting can go really wrong. Sure, I suppose that there’s enough Jewish stuff about me on the web to figure out that I like Tu Bishvat as much as the next guy. Yeah, I’ve written one blog post too many about matzah, I suppose. And I’ve managed to slide a Shabbat mention into my work before.

But there are ZERO Jewish women in Columbia, Mo. Trust me: I’ve been looking for them. And now some smut advertisement is telling me that there’s a cult of slutty, Rabbinically-dressing girls 5. somewhere in this town?

I’ll believe that the day someone convinces me that Catholics guilt their children better.

Now, the ads turned out to be for a website that’s kind of a Match/eHarmony/J-Date-gone-smutty. I wasn’t previously aware that such a service existed. I suppose it would make for an unusual answer to the “So, how’d you meet?” question at the wedding, though.

Regardless, there is a lesson here for advertisers: be careful with microtargeting. You can’t always be sure that you’re actually reaching your target audience. Personally speaking, I prefer pastrami to ham.

And another thing: are there really that many Jewish-taboo-breaking-ham-lovers to even warrant such a targeted ad?

I’l leave you with a final thought: this ad could’ve taken a page from the 1990s. This decade, we’ve been using sex to sell sex. I think that’s the wrong tack.

Sex sells others things pretty well. Had I been shown the above ad — and then been asked to click through to buy a honey-baked ham — I think I just might have considered.

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1.) Yes, that’s what she said. And if you get bored of that, add the words “in bed” to the end of a sentence. That also works well with fortune cookies. >back to article

2.). Why it seems like a good idea to mix Mel Kiper, Jr., with subliminal sex advertising doesn’t fully make sense to me. His mustache must have something to do with it. >back to article

3.) I do not think it is a coincidence that when blurring out the less suitable parts of these photos, I used a Photoshop tool that measures the strength of the blur in something called “hardness.” Hey, it wasn’t my idea. >back to article

4.) And if there ever was a company to get into the breakfast meat/sex toy industry, you’d want it to be named Johnsonville. >back to article

5.) Also: I really cannot imagine how the company solicited actors for this ad. “Wanted: 36-24-36 non-vegan for photo shoot. Experience working with large, salted meats preferred.” >back to article

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Twitter Has Killed Small Talk. (Or: Why We Are Less Interesting Than Ever.)

If you are like the majority of Americans — and I suspect that you are — you suffer from a severe condition that scientists typically refer to as “not being interesting.” I, myself, have more than two decades in the field, and after extensive research, I feel compelled to note that only a small percentage of Americans have anything useful to say.

A slightly larger percentage of these uninteresting Americans are, however, entertaining. But I should note: this condition is not the same as being interesting. This is the reason why people who become stars on YouTube are infrequently consulted when it comes to matters of national importance.

The problem is that we, as Americans, are quickly becoming less interesting. Naturally, I would like to blame Twitter for this decline.

Research shows that blaming Twitter for things is now the number one media pastime in America, just surpassing “baseball metaphors used in a political context” and “finding new excuses to subtly insult that woman on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ for her looks.” We, the media, love to blame Twitter, because those articles will soon be Twittered by potentially millions of people, which, in turn, should exponentially increase the size of our Twitter followings. There is a good reason why the number one most re-tweeted article yesterday was about the rise of narcissism.

Now, I have been using Twitter since the fall 1. I liked my first tweet — “attempting brevity,” I wrote — and little else. I’ve surpassed 1,000 tweets. I have potentially read thousands more. I cannot say that my life has improved as a result.

However, I do feel comfortable saying that I am less interesting than ever. There is a good reason for this: Twitter is killing small talk.

No longer do I have those go-to questions to ask friends; instead, I’m finding out the answers in real time via Twitter. And we, as humans, are not interesting enough to maintain small talk if you take away our most inane questions. Now that I don’t need to ask the basics — “So, how are the roommates?” or “Did the test go well?” or “Was that you I saw passed out face down in a pool of nacho cheese on 9th Street Tuesday night?” — I’ve been left with the cold realization that I’m not that interesting 2.

And the Twitterati will say, “Shouldn’t you have more to talk about now that you have access to regular snippets of information about friends?” Hypothetically, yes. Sadly, few of my Twitter friends are tweeting about topics such as the search for absolute zero. And even if they were, their tweets would just get lost among the avatars on my screen. Imagine that a formula along the lines of “E=mc2” was discovered today. Sure, it’d get re-tweeted 3, but only if Lindsay Lohan wasn’t currently trending on the site.

Look, I understand why Twitter users are so fanatical about the service. Information delivered on-demand from whomever you want is a pretty good deal.

But may I remind you: we are a nation — to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld — built on nothing. Now that we’re microblogging our nothingness, we’re emptier than ever before.

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1.) I use Twitter as a personal news ticker to monitor what’s happening right now (or what happened in the last 15 seconds). I don’t scroll down to see old tweets. Anything that’s far enough down the page has probably been written about in a space that’s measured in inches, not individual characters. >back to article

2.) Completely unrelated tangent: Ashton Kutcher has a million online followers (though, for the sake of this comparison, I’ll add these words: “per month”). The New York Times has 20 million monthly followers. So why does Kutcher get more publicity? Maybe if The New York Times had a “followers” or “articles published” counter on their homepage, people would take notice. >back to article

3.) “RT @aeinstein: OMG this is WAY bigger than relativity!” >back to article

UPDATE: Jason Kottke defends Twitter for its banality.

H/T to Robert Scobie for the image.

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How and Why I Ended Up Stalking the "Cash Cab" Guy at Dulles Airport

So I’m at D.C.’s Dulles Airport tonight, waiting for my late-night flight to St. Louis and looking for an airport bar to watch the first half of the U.S.-Mexico World Cup qualifier. The bar near my gate is full and showing CNN, so I keep moving, down Dulles’ interminable Terminal B, an inexplicably long tunnel of white that may or may not explain the title of the new U2 album. The next bar is down at the other end of the terminal, about a 5k away. If I’m going to catch any of the game and make it back for my flight, I’ve got to hurry.

So I’m in full stride, pushing past the B gates when I notice a bald, Irish-looking fellow on the steps near one gate. He’s got a standard carry-on upright in front of him; he’s thumbing through something on his iPhone. And as I cruise past him at Olympic-qualifying speed, I start to recognize something in his face. Maybe it’s the jut in his chin, or maybe it’s the way the top of his forehead slopes forward with all the slickness of an Augusta National green. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, that’s so familiar.

About five steps later, I realize that I may have just walked past Ben Bailey.

For those who don’t flip anywhere north of MTV on their TV guides, Ben Bailey is the cab driver-cum-host of Discovery Channel’s “Cash Cab,” which is basically Trivial Pursuit on wheels. Contestants enter his New York City cab, ambushed by a disco’s worth of lights to discover that they’re on a mobile game show. They’re given a series of questions to answer during the ride to their destination. Miss three questions and Bailey tosses you out on the street. Keep answering right and you might end up with a few hundred dollars in winnings.

I come from a game show obsessed family. We were huge “Supermarket Sweeps” fans as kids. We were that family watching Regis each night on “Millionaire.” We’re the ones who plan our runs on the treadmill around “Price is Right” or “Wheel of Fortune.” “Cash Cab” is one of my most recent finds, and it’s quickly become one of my favorites. There’s just something about seeing New Yorkers struggling to remember what a quadratic equation is, all while fearing that they’ll be booted out in the rain 15 blocks too soon.

I watch the show casually, maybe once or twice a week in the early afternoon, but enough that I’m certain that the guy I’ve just passed at Dulles is Bailey. I stop and look back at him. He’s wearing a blue shirt with the word “STAFF” in huge, white block letters. It looks like the kind of shirt that you’d see TV tech guys wear.

I walk a bit farther up the terminal to a monitor with gate information. I scan for his gate number. A few columns over, I find it: a JetBlue flight direct to New York’s JFK International Airport. I’m no Clouseau, but I’m feeling confident so far that that guy really is Bailey.

Now, I should explain something here: for the last week or so, one of my closest relatives was in the hospital. On Monday night, she died. So I’ve spent much of the last week shuttling amongst Columbia, Mo., St. Louis and Washington, D.C. I’ve spent enough time in the air that I can probably recite line-for-line this month’s American Airlines in-flight magazine. (The profile of the gritty, resilient, never-say-die Paula Abdul is particularly nauseating.) I haven’t been sleeping much at all. So I’m slower than Don Adams to realize most obvious sign that Ben Bailey is sitting in Terminal B:

Three days ago, my parents – also huge “Cash Cab” fans – went to see Bailey’s stand-up set at the D.C. Improv. He was at the Improv all weekend.

I spin around. I know that Bailey’s coming to Columbia in about a month to do stand up. Suddenly, I’m struck by the urge to schedule an interview with him. So I come up with a plan. I’ll walk up to him and casually ask if he knows where I can find a bar to watch the game. And then, just before I walk away, I’ll do a little double take, play dumb and ask, “Hey, do I know you from a TV game show somewhere?”

It’s a flawless plan. I’m thrilled with my brilliance, even in the face of sleep deprivation. And then I turn around and realize that he’s on the phone with somebody else.

So I get take out my phone, call anyone who’ll pick up and explain that I’m basically stalking the “Cash Cab” guy, all while occasionally glancing back down the terminal to see if he’s done chatting. Soon, we’re essentially pacing in simultaneous loops around the concourse, Bailey just a hundred yards away from me, an unknowing partner in the evening’s cell phone walkabout pairs competition.

I keep circling, twenty minutes worth, waiting for Bailey to hang up. The gate agent for JetBlue starts to board the JFK flight. I make my move, down the hall, just idling while idly hoping that whoever Bailey’s on the phone with disconnects. I pass him, still waiting. I stall near the TVs showing CNN, only half watching whatever wall of monitors Wolf Blitzer’s standing in front of.

I stand and I wait, and wait. I wait as Bailey switches his phone from his right hand to his left, as he reaches for his carry on, as he wheels it toward the gate, as he hands the gate agent his ticket, as he boards the plane, phone still in hand.

I wait as Bailey disappears down the jetway, wondering how the $100 question I wanted to ask got away.

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