Thursday, April 20, 2006

Low Hanging Fruit (on Airplanes)

I am on a plane; the flight attendant offers a beverage. I ask for Coke; the flight attendant offers Pepsi. I ask for ginger ale and receive a can of Canada Dry ginger ale. The fashion-magazine-laden, umm, girl? lady? chickie? okay, blonde chickie seated next to me asks for sparkling water with lime and following a brief negotiation receives club soda with ice, Schweppes.

Wait.

Aren't Canada Dry and Schweppes different companies, or at least different subsidiaries? Aren't they in competition like, say, Coke and Pepsi? And if so what soft drink supplier let this contractual afterthought slip by? I can get Pepsi here but not Coke, so if Canada Dry belongs to Pepsico, why isn't their club soda part of the in-flight soft drink line-up? It's just water and bubbles, and clearly they have the technology to do that. It can't be that Pepsico owns Schweppes, because then the ginger ale would be Schweppes. Wouldn't it? Or does the clear necessity of prioritizing ginger ale to cola matching over club soda to cola matching make sense only to me?

I can't possibly be the first person to notice this.

Was there a United executive devoted solely to enforcement of this ginger ale/club soda preference as his airline slipped into bankruptcy? That doesn't make much sense either, but I feel there's an edge of plausibility to this airline beverage czar.

Unless Canada Dry and Schweppes are owned by the same conglomerate, in which case everything I understand about how the world works may be a compete sham.

I'm concerned as well about the La Croix water (seltzer?) I see two seats over. If anything it lends credence to my theory of a rogue, beverage-power-mad executive. I imagine he emphasises points of contention in beverage contracts by banging his fist on his desk. I imagine he does that a lot.

Where was I going with this? Nowhere. These are things I think about on long flights.

Well, that, and the in-flight movie, which in this case was In Her Shoes. It was not good. Somebody needs to figure out what to do with Toni Collette because she is far, far better than that. Also Cameron Diaz is not Jewish and will never be believable as Jewish, I don't care what the script says.

That, and the in-flight television offerings. MythBusters is an odd show without sound. The red-haired mythbuster is exceptionally animated in conversation, while the mustachioed mythbuster watches, silently plotting revenge or somebody's untimely demise. Then they build Sputnik out of plywood.

That, and fellow passengers. Mothers and teenage daughters should not paw through fashion magazines together exchanging comments like, "How cute is that?" "Supercute!" "Without the buttons?" It's creepy and unnatural. Either one of you isn't rebelling sufficiently or the other is trying too hard at one thing while potentially failing at something else altogether.