In Case You Were Wondering What I Was Thinking….

In Case You Were Wondering What I Was Thinking….

• When did it become a service standard for the server to provide you with his or her name, as if we were going to be friends?

• Air New Zealand used nude employees in their flight safety announcement videos to try to get people to pay more attention. I wonder if the tax people have considered that for online payments?

• A woman keeps telling people her dog is a Vizsla whenever they ask, which sounds stranger than it reads, and then confronts stunned expressions with: “He’s a Hungarian Pointer.” She did this six times in two minutes. Why can’t she simply say that to begin with? I don’t tell people I’m eating a homarus americanus. I just tell them it’s a lobster.

• Putting a spoiler on the back of a car may be stylish, but they don’t actually work, aerodynamically, below about 135 miles per hour, and most cars I see them on will never approach that speed. Below that they’re usually a drag on gas mileage.

• I’m back in Vegas as I write this, at the MGM Grand Skylofts, and the service is simply superb—attentive without being unctuous. It’s all a matter of management oversight and hiring good people.

• Airplanes are made with reclining seats. Everyone knows this. How can you become incensed when the person in front of you reclines the seat? It may be uncomfortable for you, but that’s not your “air space” to be protected. I find such umbrage a sign of total self-absorption (and many times the protestors have their own seats reclined).

• The Internet is the latest iteration of Guttenberg’s movable type, on an undreamed of scale, Al Gore notwithstanding.

• I’m convinced that there is no relationship at all between the price of a barrel of oil and the price for gasoline at the pump.

• People who turn every story and event into something about themselves are not those who are high on my guest lists.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.