The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

After being cooped up in United’s “Economy Minus” class for about five hours, I’ve finally arrived in Portland, where I’ll be attending RailsConf for the rest of the week. Nice-lookin’ city you folks have here, by the way.

Not an actual photo of my seat, but a reasonable approximation I found with Google Image Search.

I pity anyone 6″ and taller who flies in United’s Economy section — at 5’11”, my knees almost touch the seat ahead, and when whoever’s in front of me decides to hit the recliner button, there’s barely enough room to read a magazine, and I can forget about using the laptop.

United adds insult to injury with the false luxury of their “Economy Plus” section, an area of economy with the legroom that they should be offering as a baseline. While you do get the extra legroom, they’re still the same narrow seats, which means that you’re going to get quite up-close-and-personal with your neighbour, and oftentimes your neighbour’s elbows. Luckily for me, I wasn’t sitting beside anyone in the 250-pounds-or-more weight class, in which case I’d have been dealing with “spillover” issues as well.

The other problem with Economy Plus seats is that you either have to have a lot of miles on their frequent flyer program or pay something close to full fare to get them. If you’re lucky, you’ll have the option to upgrade to one when you’re checking in — I got offered one for an additional $60 when checking in at Pearson this morning.

I think I’m beginning to understand where air rage comes from.

Thanks a lot, United. You’ll always be the airline of last resort to me!

Recommended Reading

I’m not the only one who loathes United. Stephen O’Grady loathes them too, and he’s posted this photo showing the legroom in one of their economy seats:

Stephen O’Grady’s photo of the legroom in a United Airlines economy class seat.

• United thinks that a window seat is an upgrade.
• The Cranky Flier: United Receives the Inaugural Cranky Jackass Award
• United’s Economy Plus legroom: A reality check
• Consumerist’s collection of United Airlines nightmare stories.
• Cucina Testa Rossa: I Loathe United

Believe it or not, the ad below comes from an issue of Tiger Beat, circa 1976. It’s creepy in a way that only a Texas children’s beauty pageant meets the Disco Era photo can be:

Click the picture to see it at full size. Magazine scan courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

If you’re going to RailsConf 2007 in Portland, Oregon or just interested in what’s happening there, let Yours Truly be your reporter! I’ll be posting reports at my technical blog, Global Nerdy.

I’ll be covering the premier Ruby on Rails conference from all angles, technical and social, from the all-day Rails Guidebook tutorial sessions on Thursday to the main conference, which runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday, to whatever extracurricular hijinks 1,200 nerds, a lot of the fine local craft beer and an accordion can get into.

Damn you, Photoshop! Damn you all to hell!!!

Click the picture to see it at full size. Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

“Yup,” says the guy on the cover of Identifying Wood, “that’s wood, all right.”

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

A little while back, I posted three YouTube videos of Saturday Night Live’s parody of MacGyver, titled MacGruber, featuring Will Forte in the title role. In that series, MacGruber’s improvised gadgets made of ordinary household items are undone because one component is too gross to handle.

Last Saturday, SNL aired a new series of MacGruber shorts, this time featuring MacGruber’s backsliding into alcoholism, with the final short being a parody of the infamous video of David Hasselhoff, shirtless and eating a hamburger off the floor.

Here are all three MacGruber shorts in a single clip:

In case you haven’t seen the Hasselhoff video, here’s a short version, taken from a celebrity TV news show: