It that time  of the year again!  With Christmas around the corner, It is time for my new WTF Skymall Gift List 2011!

Anyone who has flown almost any commercial airlines more than a few times is intimately familiar with Skymall magazine. It is required browsing for any airline travel warrior.

It is a magazine off  hopeful Shark Tank idea, gadgets, oddities, collectible and future garage sale items that are supposed to make our lives easier, more enjoyable or simply give you an excuse to open up an EBay account. When do we reach the reach the upper limits of our 3o Thousand feet boredom and finally read Skymall cover to cover? Here are a few reasons:

When you are stuck on a flight with no Wi-Fi;

When you have read American Way Magazine cover to cover… three times;

When you don’t  understand Spanish so you can’t read NEXOS;

When someone else has  already  done the crossword puzzle;

When you  have mooched and read the Wall Street Journal, US Magazine and National Enquirer  from the passenger in the seat next to you;

When the baby next to you is screaming uncontrollably and you need a distraction with the only things left to read being the barf bag and the card that reminds you of what won’t save your life if your plane goes down.

When you need a distraction from your trouble breathing due to the 500 lb guy squeezing you into 3 square feet of your seat.

When all of the above has happens you finally pull Skymall out of the seat-back pocket.

The effect of Skymall magazine on the enjoyability of a flight is not to be taken lightly. Have my fellow frequent-flyers not also experienced that irritated knot in the stomach and let out an exasperated sigh when you excitedly pull out the Skymall mag and see that it is the same issue that you read on the last flight? How many times can we look at a Rosetta Stone ad and try to convince ourselves that it would be useful to learn Pashto.

I have on many a flight gone through every item in the magazine analyzing its cost-benefit to society and simply wondering who would be stupid enough to actually buy a Indoor Dog Restroom. Is there really an impulse buy at 30k feet?

So with X-mas coming up fast and needing to make a list and check it twice, what better place to start than Skymall and its 240 plus pages of very cool to very weird gadgets and gifts for the traveler who has everything and the gift recipient who will say thanks but will really be thinking WTF!

1. The “Cat Toilet Training System

Look at the face on this cat.  It screaming, “I’m Taking a sh*t! Shut the door!”  Does it also teach the cat how to flush?  The upside of this is that it will be good coffee table talk when your guest goes to take a dump and wonders if you have a rat problem.  God forbid poor kitty loses her balance and does a cat-o-nine-tails into the Toilet Kitty Hell.  As soon as PETA gets wind of this the “shits” really going ot hit the fan.

2. The “SIT FIT“  Ridiculous “Infomercial” type exercise gadgets are low hanging fruit for the WTF list.   The image is a well dressed lady in high heals sweating herself up at her desk while she’s closing a million dollar deal.  Or the guy putting some sweat stains on his Fruit Of The Looms. This is also an ab-toner?  I might as well cancel my gym membership, forget the marathon training and fool myself into thinking this thing works while I eat that pizza slice at my desk.  One word of advice.  While you are making those foot movements and sweating it up beneath your desk, keep your hands in plain view or people will think your  “working yourself up” a little higher on your body.

3.  The Underwater Cell Phone System(1,790.00) It advertises as follows:

With the Alpha UWCP, talk with someone 15,000 miles away while diving a tropical reef or in your pool! This complete and sophisticated communication diving system can do it.

I still can not figure this out. Is this in case you get drunk and go overboard on a cruise ship? What’s more, do you really need an underwater phone to make a call from your swimming pool? Spend 50 bucks on a waterproof case instead! Maybe this is a big seller in the treasure hunter profession. At almost $1800.00 we may not see this in many garage sales but I have no doubt one will turn up inside a shark one day.

4. Toppik Hair Building Fibers Being follically challenged and having often thought of coughing up the big bucks for the Bosley Clinic, this item caught my attention. I frankly thought that this stuff went the way of the “As Seen On TV” Ronco Veg-o-matic and Ginsu knives. It advertises:

Many A-list celebrities use Toppik to enhance their image, on screen and off. Hollywood stars trust Toppik. It’s undetectable, even in close ups and stays on through wind, rain and perspiration.

Even more interesting to me than whether it works are these mysterious “A-List” celebs. I want to know what celebrities will admit to spray painting their heads. TMZ should get on this immediately. Conspicuously missing was a disclaimer that Toppic should not be used by people who are color-blind. I smell a lawsuit…

5-Old Yankee Stadium Seat. (799.00) A used seat from the old Yankee Stadium. Unless Babe Ruth or some other Yankee legend sat in it or autographed it, this is a WTF item. It is however is certainly more reasonable than a seat a the new Yankee Stadium. My advice is to pay the 799.00 for this seat, put it in front of your big screen and MLB package. You can then laugh at the suckers who coughed up tens of thousands of dollars to sit in something that they will be able to buy for about 800.00 in the 2040 Skymall Holiday edition. 

6.  “Brew Your Joe While You Go”  Where could you possibly be in such hurry to get to that you can’t make your coffee first or pass by one of the Gazillion Starbucks or even 7-11′s(which has damn good coffee)  that infest our nation.  If your going for cost per cup, stick with the swill from  your office coffee pot. Probably tastes no worse and  you don’t look an idiot carrying this thing around.  This is not even a  future garage sale.  Within months you will be watering your plants with it.

7-Remote Controlled Tarantula. Any adult that buys this for himself has repressed violent tendencies. If he is buying it for his kid, what message is this supposed to send? Terrorize your fellow children with big disgusting bugs? Nice. I am so weirded out by spiders that just picture of this gives me the willies. This faux spider would not last five minutes in my house. Survival reflex would take over and it would be squashed into 1000 bits of circuits and switches

7-Oil Extractor(69.95) They advertise this like it is the common thing to do to crawl under your own car and change your own oil. The ad states:

“This is How Mercedes Factory trained techs change oil”

Well isn’t that why we don’t crawl under our own cars and let them do it ? A Mercedes owner that changes his/her own oil?  That is a WTF in itself.

8-Wireless Toilet Seat.  “Some Men Have A Hard Time Remembering To Put The Toilet Seat Down” Now we need wireless assistance for this?  Is this what our collective manhood has devolved into?  Give this to your “significant guy”  for Christmas and you are guaranteed  a vacuum cleaner and an affair in return not necessarily in that order.  It takes 30 seconds to go up and down.  In “I gotta go” time, that’s an eternity.  My advice is to partner with the makers of the  Cat Toilet Training System.   Kitty needs some help.

9-Basho The Sumo Wrestler (95.00). “Basho crouches in his mawashi (Sumo belt) in these intricate sculpts with wide stances. This Toscano-exclusive heavyweight is cast in quality designer resin for display in home or garden.”

If you are looking for an easy way out of your marriage simply give Basho to your wife for Christmas or place him a center piece on the dinner table right after she has told you she feels like she needs to lose a few pounds… On the other hand, I only glanced at him for a second and immediately renewed my gym membership. At 95 bucks it beats the hell out of lipo.

10-Electronic Listening Device. (59.95) “Powerful enough to capture distant sounds from 300 feet away. Zoom in and see what you’re hearing. Sounds and images impossible for the human ears and eyes to pick up now seem as if you’re only a couple of feet away. This secret surveillance device is perfect for when you really need to know what’s going on.”

The perfect gift for the soon to be divorcing couple so they can spy on each other. If your spouse or significant other suddenly turns up with this gadget and tells you it is to pick up “bird sounds” you should be suspicious. Do you really want to be with someone who has those kind of voyeuristic tendencies? This would be a much bigger seller as a “his and hers” so you can spy on each other.

11-Head Spa Massager. I am not really sure what to say about this.  From the photo it appears that you can either massage your head, audition for alien guest spot on Star Trek, remove Spock’s brain, or prepare for the invasion of Troy.  A great combination of options at 49.95.

Last but not least.  Are you still wondering who would be stupid enough to buy the Indoor Dog Restroom?   Wonder no more.  It was me.  Yes I was suckered into the Skymall impulse world of future garage sale items.  Was my dog happy to do her business on her new AstroTurf?  The answer was yes but it was not the business I expected.

What they don’t tell you is that for this to work you have to have your dog piss in a cup and pour it on the turf so she gets the scent.   I dutifully  followed the instructions. I poured her “business” on the fake grass.  My dog  walked right over to it, looked up at me and took a dump on the AstroTurf.  I am still trying to fumigate my apartment.  WTF!!

After 32 years of flying I had my first verbal confrontation with a fellow airplane passenger sitting next to me.  She accused me of being an “elbow assaulter” for  invading her seat space.  More specifically, my right elbow repeatedly made contact with her left shoulder

I was on my way back to DFW  from San Francisco after a terrible day in which I totally bombed a speaking engagement. It was the last flight out.  I admittedly was a little cranky.  The aircraft was a Boeing 737.  I was in window Seat 13A.   It’s a three seat row. All three were occupied.  If you have flown a 737 coach you know that it’s basically a flying bus with little leg or elbow room.  Add to the mix that I am 6’2  23o lbs and she was not a petite individual. That left about 1 inch max of shoulder room to maneuver around.  In that situation, it is extremely difficult to occasionally not make some type of body contact with the person sitting next to you unless you become a statute for the entire flight.  I was also attempting to use my laptop which was almost impossible because the guy in front of me reclined his seat into my groin.  To be clear, this was not a case of  my body spilling over into her seat.  She had simply taken control of the armrest to my right as she is entitled to do and had adjusted herself in a “sleeping position”.  She was not sitting upright in her seat.  It was  physically impossible for me to sit in a normal position and type or even adjust myself occasionally without my elbow occasionally touching the part of her shoulder that was on the armrest.  Sensing her annoyance, I made various maneuvers in my seat and tried to flatten myself against the bulkhead as much as humanly possible to give her as much room as possible while still being able to type.

After about the 3rd or 4th time I brushed up against her shoulder, she looked at me and firmly asked me to stay out of her seat. I calmly explained to her that I was as far up against the bulkhead as I could be. In lieu of sitting perfectly still the entire flight or in an awkward position there was nothing I could do.  Our bodies were inevitably going to make contact . That was not good enough for her.  She made it clear it was her seat, she had paid for it and I should cease my “elbow assault”.

The back and forth escalated to the point where I calmly but firmly told her that there was nothing I could do and she could either deal with it or call the flight attendant to be moved. I would have gladly moved but it was a full flight and there were only middle seats available. I was not going to give up my window seat to only find myself in a worse situation.   This was coach.  Space is tight.  Baby’s are going to cry.  There are going to be unwelcome smells.  People are going to recline their seat into your groin.  Shoulders are going to occasionally touch.   As I expected,  the flight attendants told her there was nothing they could do but move her to another available middle seat.  She was having none of that.  She had paid for her seat.  I was an unwelcome trespasser to be evicted by any legal or non-legal means.  It was that point the attendant began to feel my pain. I saw the slight eye roll.   A firmer tone took hold as she repeated told the passenger that  while I may be an “elbow assaulter”  it was not a capital offense.  The FBI and Homeland Security would not be called to the gate and I would not be given a parachute and ejected from the plane.  The passenger finally grudgingly got up, gave me a “f*ck you” glare and moved to another seat.

What is the proper etiquette here?  I am a big guy but not outside the norm of people who fly. I was not spilling into her physical seat space.  Ironically,  two seats up from me were two guys who REALLY had space issues.  They seemed to be getting along just fine. (see photo).  I frankly do not see anything I could do to appease her other than moving to a middle seat which I was not going to do or flatten myself against the bulkhead and sit perfectly still the entire flight.  To get some insight, I went to someone I know.  Flight attendant veteran  Heather Poole, who blogs about her flight experiences and allegedly has a book on the subject coming out.  In her blog “Middle Seat Etiquette”  she says:

• Leave the armrest for the middle seat passenger. The window seat passenger has the window, while the aisle seat passenger has the aisle, but the middle seat passenger has nothing, nada, zilch, so please, for the love of god, give the person in the middle seat something, anything, an armrest, please!
• Do not hit the middle seat passenger in the head with your newspaper, even when the middle seat passenger is asleep and you are fairly sure they will not feel it.
• Do not use the middle seat passenger’s tray table. Even if the middle seat passenger is not using it.
• Do not put your feet under the seat in front of the middle seat passenger, no matter how long your legs are, even if the middle seat passenger is short.
• Do not place your luggage underneath the seat in front of the middle seat passenger. The middle seat passenger has luggage, too.
• Do not bring aboard a pet, choose an aisle or window seat, and then expect to put the pet under the middle seat because it does not fit under your seat.
• Do not raise the armrest between you and the middle seat passenger, no matter how well you are getting along.
• Keep your hair away from the middle seat passenger, no matter how pretty or how manly it may be.
• Remember, middle seat passengers are people too!

What about being tagged as a  window seat “elbow assaulter”  when there is no place to put the elbow but at your side?  Heather? Help!

Stay tuned for episode two of “Airplane Armrest Wars”

(FOX-Dallas) Sarah Palin has announced her newest plan to get the United States economy back on track.  Palin, in Dallas for a fundraiser stated that she welcomed “heated debate” over the radical legislation which “would change the way the average person lives in today’s world”.

Palin stated that her  “CMDR Initiative” would stimulate the economy in ways never envisioned as well as lessen the need to rely on undocumented labor.  When pressed for details, Palin was extremely vague regarding exactly what “CMDR” stands for, stating that they needed today to work out details before unveiling the full plan prior to throwing her hat into the 2012 Presidential race.

Fox News was able to get a copy of her ‘CMDR Initiative’ and can reveal for the first time that it stands for “Certificate of Minimum Dating Requirements.”  Footnotes to the plan sate that is meant to stimulate the auto and fast food economy as well as curb “what has become an “epidemic” of 30k millionaires  who have no job or visible means of support showing up for dates with Sarah’s daughter Bristol by bus or bicycle.

“This plan will substantially increase used car sales and relieve a strain on public transportation and the pretentiousness of dating in general – something all parties feel is the breaking point. The plan would also ensure that there is 100 percent employment in the lowest tiers of employability such a fast food restaurants as part of my new,  “ONE CHILD, ONE BURGER” initiative. It would also ensure that at the bottom rung of employment, all ditches that need dug are in fact dug.”

The key element of this new legislation will be the formation of a national “CMDR Database that will function much like and be interfaced with a federal sex offender registry.  Inclusion in the database will be strictly voluntary. In order to get in the CMDR Database, a guy or girl will have to do the following:

Provide the database administrator with a current address, not a P.O. Box as well as proof of U.S Citizenship.

Allow the database administrator to do a registered sex offender check.

Provide the database administrator with a current title to a vehicle at least equivalent to minimum buy-in BMW.

Provide the database administrator with two current pay stubs evidencing a salary of at least $75K per year.

Provide documentation that the applicant is not married and does not live with mommy and daddy.

Provide a DNA sample to be sure the applicant is not genetically disposed to homicidal rage and douchebag behavior in general.

Provide a negatives AIDS test that must be updated every six months.

To be in the database, the applicant agrees to update this information every six months. This information will be encoded into the driver’s license of all those who participate in the database. The database will charge a fee of $20 per month. This fee will provide a reader capable of reading the encoding on the driver’s license.

Fox News has learned that it will work as follows:

Let’s say a girl meets a guy she likes.  If the guy is not in the database she can assume that he probably does not own a car, takes the  unemployed, lives with mommy and daddy, may be a registered sex offender and carries communicable diseases.

If you do not own a car because of you live an enumerated major city, you can apply for a “Big Apple Exemption” from the vehicle requirement.

If the guy is in the database, the girl may scan his driver’s license through the reader and the display will show what kind of car he drives, his sex offender status, and how much he makes per year. She may then make an intelligent decision on whether to go on a date with him.

Both Republicans and Democrats feel this new initiative will force complete losers who show up for their dates on bikes and buses to go buy a car. It is also felt that this will drastically reduce the number of perverts and $30K a year millionaires asking out unsuspecting women.

In order to encourage inclusion in the new CMDR Database, it was announced that the first 1,000 people will get a free “No Deadbeats” credit check!

When confronted with the leaked version of the initiative the Palin responded with the following statement:

“Most females agree with the bedrock conservative premise that, dating toothless unemployed losers without cars and who live with their mommies and daddies are a major problem in today’s society and action needed to be taken. ”

“Taking your date to McDonalds by bus or bicycle is not the answer to our problems – it is the problem.”

“I believe that as a movement, we have veered off course into the dangerous and uncharted waters of settling for the hot bodied pool boy with the bus pass versus sacrificing some looks for the comfort and security of a guy holding a CMDR.”.

President Barack Obama when asked about the plan stated that he could not support a plan that did not include substantial tax credits from automakers and auto-lenders that would allow all unemployed geeks to qualify for a CMDR.  He noted that he had just made the last payment on his 1980 BMW.

Senatory John McCain, when confronted with the proposal stated that while he agreed that something needed to be done about unemployed geeks, he felt that they were an unnecessary drain on the economy. He recommended military conscription for those who could not obtain a CMDR. He pointed out that they would be employable when they came out and who didn’t want to date a man in uniform? When pressed to elaborate, he pointed out that he had found a rich hottie young enough to be his daughter but admitted that he already had a Beemer when he snagged her.  He was hoping that the legislation would finally result in a boyfriend for his daughter Meghan.

Bristol Palin refused to comment on CMDR but was quietly overheard telling a friend that the whole idea seemed gay and all homos should be excluded as well.

More to follow……

Read a story about a patron of the “Down House” in Houston being ejected for tweeting that the bartender was a twerp while also using the hashtag #jackoff.  Uncomplimentary to say the least. If you said it to a bartender’s face  you would probably get ejected from most non-biker bar establishments. That is beyond a critique. It is an ad-hominem attack typical of the knee jerk rants you see on Twitter every day and that I have also engaged in for better or worse.  You can agree or disagree with the way the general manager, handled it(I disagree and think he was as much a #jackoff as she was) but it is the reality of the 140 character, instantaneous gratification response Twitter-world we live in.  There is nothing more “in the moment” emotionally gut-satisfying than the instantaneous  FUCK YOU!  you potential of Twitter.  That is what gets so many tweeps in trouble. It got Allison Matsu berated by the general manager of the Down House and ejected.  My twitter feed is attached to my ass wherever I go.  It could easily happen to me one day.

About 3 weeks, ago I was having dinner at a Dallas/ Oak Cliff restaurant called Bolsa.  About a quarter of the way into the meal, a gentlemen who was clearly someone of authority, approached the table, asked how our meal was and congratulated me, presumably referencing the Dallas Mavericks championship.  My first thought was, “how in the world does this guy know who I am”.  I don’t wear a sign with my last name when I go out and I did recognize him as someone I knew.  Then it occurred to me that I had checked into Bolsa on Facebook.  Someone on my Facebook account who worked for the restaurant  probably saw the check-in and mentioned to him that I was there.  That’s how fast information moves in the era of tweets and check-ins.  Food was great. Service was great.  An overall great experience.  While I would hope the owner of Bolsa would handle it differently than the general manager of Down House, it could have gone south of Oak Cliff if I had posted or tweeted something negative about the food or service and the info was real time “fed” to management.  Awkward to say the least.  While I have posted both positive and negative reviews on Yelp, I have never tweeted or real time posted on Facebook about poor service or food.  IMHO that is rude.  I however, will not rule out a real time rant about rude/angry service. If  the establishment steps outside the bounds of customer courtesy, don’t expect any leniency from me.  For the moment, lesson learned that evening at Bolsa and from Allison Matsu.  In the Facebook and Twitter-world we now live in, everyone is listening in, especially when you are most vulnerable to making a #jackass out of yourself.