Tao of Pauly

Landed

Either God (if he exists) or the powers to be who handled the seating for my UAL flight from LAX to Sydney has to have a wry sense of humor. I was able to upgrade to Economy Plus for $99 after refusing to pay $5K for an upgrade to business class. For $99, I was still stuck in coach, but gained five inches of extra leg room and a coveted aisle seat.

I needed the extra leg room for the huge boner that I promtly popped when the hottest chick (a cross between Jessica Alba and Carmen Elektra) on the flight sat down. If I was sitting next to her on a JetBlue flight from JFK to Las Vegas, I would have pegged her for a stripper.

We shared the middle section seats and both had aisles seats. The two seats next to either of us were empty. Like most Australians I've met, she was friendly, cordial, funny, and extremely chatty as she bombarded me a ton of questions about why I was traveling to Australia.

"I'm a writer," I explained. "I got hired to drink regularly at the Crown Casino and get paid to write about it."

"Sounds lovely," she added. "Wish I could get a job like that."

I had one of those moments, "I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this."

That's when the old lady in front of me switched seats. In her place was a young mother with a two year old. On the verge of tears. In the seats across from me were a young couple with another baby.

Sense of humor? Indeed. One hot chick negated by two babies. Where were my pharmies?

That's the one thing I have a tough time dealing with. Babies. Crying babies on long flights.

The flight from LAX was delayed which was the first of several crappy moments. The three meals they passed off for ffood sucked ass. Plus, I barely slept about two or three hours over the course of the 14.5 hour flight.

I sat through four movies; three bloody awful flicks and Little Miss Sunshine. The baby in front of me started crying at the Louvre scene in The DaVinci Code and by the end of the flick, both babies were crying in stereo. I suspect they didn't like Tom Hanks fucked up hair or they loated the script from Akiva Goldsman.

That's when I popped the first valium after I ordered a beer. I was saving the pharmies for an emergency. That was one. I almost wanted to kill myself when I decided to watch Guardian, the awful Coast Guard flick with Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher. I should be shot because I watched the entire thing. I wanted to talk to the hot chick but she was sleeping after drinking a glass of wine and popping what looked like two sleeping pills somehwere near Hawaii.

I read one hundred pages of a Dave Eggers memoir and watched four episodes of 30 Rock before the hot chick woke up and chatted me up the remainder of the flight. I missed the first glimpses of Australian soil as my plane landed because I was fixated on the hot chick's cleavage.

Welcome to OZ.