Heidi's Fascinations

Well thank god for the New York Times. That's all I have to say. Where else do you get such smart articles that go beyond the AP/Reuters blurb? Okay, there might be a few other places, but the New York Times (online) rocks! They delve deeper in news and they publish funny articles for no other purpose than to entertain.

Case in point: The following snipet is from an article perfect to comfort the poor business traveler.

...But who needs industry statistics about airplane orders and hotel occupancy rates when the beleaguered business people who are sitting in the planes and sleeping in the hotels are testing another kind of boundary: the limits of humiliation, weirdness, fear and revulsion? Wouldn't you rather hear their stories? Here are some of them.

TIGHTEST SPOT Bobbie Wyatt's husband packed the bags and checked out of their Manhattan hotel before she did, leaving her with only her top. "I had nothing to wear from the waist down," said Ms. Wyatt, a public relations professional from Greenville, S.C. There were no housekeepers in the hallway to lend her a uniform, and she was too embarrassed to call the concierge and say she had no pants.

"As I sank down on the bed, my arm brushed against the fabric of an airline blanket," she said. A light bulb went off. With the sewing kit from the bathroom, she rigged up a wrap skirt and headed outside for the nearest clothing store. "I glanced up to see a half-naked cowboy playing a guitar," she recalled. "I just relaxed, realizing I fit right in." To reward herself for her ingenuity, Ms. Wyatt emerged from the shop with three outfits.

WACKIEST MOMENT The flight out of Chicago had been delayed, there were no agents in sight and the passengers at the departure gate were restless. The phone at the desk rang, and a self-styled comedian answered it, identifying himself as Joe Customer.

"Then the other phone on the wall rings, so he answers that one, saying, 'Hello, Joe Customer here,' " recalled John G. Miller, a motivational speaker from Denver, who witnessed the incident. "He quickly goes back to the first phone. Then, 'Hold on, please. I think I have your party on the other line.'

"To everyone's amazement in the gate area, he reverses the handsets and puts them together, so the two phones are touching, one right side up and one upside down."

The tension-breaker put the crowd in stitches until "some tall woman dressed in her executive-boardroom airlines uniform that has never been wrinkled comes stomping down into the gate area," he said, and demanded to know who answered the phones.

Joe meekly raised his hand. After being scolded, he apologized to his fellow passengers. He was rewarded with loud applause.

MOST WELCOME CURSE On a trans-Atlantic flight, Eric Yaverbaum, the president of Jericho Communications in Manhattan, opened the overhead bin and released somebody's bottle of Jack Daniels, which crashed onto a passenger. Seeing the man knocked out and lying in the aisle, streaked in blood, Mr. Yaverbaum shuddered. If this guy is an American, he thought, he will probably sue. A doctor was summoned. The man came to. Mr. Yaverbaum apologized. The victim received six stitches. Then he began to yell — in French. "I had no idea what he was saying until he started cursing in English," he said."

There are other stories in the article, but these were the best.

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