Papa's Got a Brand New Bag
Cartoons about airplanes, airports, and the human condition
Hello! My name is a Hilary Campbell and I am a world traveler. And by world traveler I mean someone who goes back and forth from New York to California constantly. Can you believe how cultured I am? As someone who spends a serious amount of time in airports and on planes, I believe I have the whole thing down to a science. First I start with overpacking. Then I get to the airport very much not on time. After nearly having a heart attack in the TSA line, I get wait in line at Starbucks for a chai latte for so long that I almost miss my plane. That's routine, baby! I myself am a JetBlue girl. Unless of course there's a cheaper ticket available, in which case I'm a United, Delta, Spirit lady. The reason I love JetBlue is because of this little area they call the "Marketplace," also known as free snacks. If the marketplace in the real world meant free snacks, capitalism would be in so much trouble. The second thing I love about JetBlue is the fact that they have DirectTV on it. I mean, could life be any dreamer, squished up thousands of miles in the sky, pretending not to fart? But the thing is, as much as I act like I love my DirectTV choices (always a Law & Order marathon), I find myself gazing at the TV two aisles down, just to the right. What is that guy doing? Is he watching Creed II... no subtitles? I tell you, it's riveting! I of course could watch Creed II on my TV, but I don't wanna watch Creed II on my TV. I want to watch it at a distance, yearning, trying to understand the human condition. And that everyone, is what traveling is really about.
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I once took a plane to Chicago after not sleeping for 2 days. I was sat next to an excited young gentleman with verbal diarrea on his way to try out for Second City. If ever there was an excuse to "Block" and not "Yes And..." it was in Seat 5E when he asked me if I knew what a Harold was.
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One time I was talking to a pilot, and this is a true story by the way, about how I got this fear of flying. So he starts telling me how many things have to go wrong for the plane to go down, he says it 's like swiss cheese, all the holes in system all have to line up for their to be a problem, and while there might be some holes, they don't all line up, when's the last time you saw one big hole go through an entire block of swiss cheese? So I says, "well I got issues digesting dairy, " and he says "well I don't think that matters for my metaphor," so I says back "there's nothing metaphorical about what happens to my butt when I eat swiss cheese, whether or not there's a big hole in it." So he just stares at me for a moment and excuses himself. Anyway, I heard he quit a few months later.
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I remember, when my father used to fly across the country often, a phase he went through where he enjoyed bitterly complaining about the Jet Blue airline safety videos. This phase ocurred after an extremely brief phase of praising the very same video. This whole episode coincided with the dawn of Airline Safety Cinema in the early 2010s, and Jet Blue had chosen a particularly drama-filled and bombastic approach to establishing themselves in this emerging artistic genre. Jet Blue, it seems, didn’t account for the possibility of repeat or, god forbid, frequent flyers. A Broadway show stopper looses its freshness after the second viewing, let alone the twentieth. I’ve been happy to see a new, subtler approach to the genre emerge in this decade, a kind of Avian New Wave meets Seatbelt Surrealism, much more hospitable to repeat viewings.
Airports are chaos! Airplanes are cramped! After over a hundred years as the top-dog of travel, isn't it time we innovated on air travel? Well, wait no more, because a better way came to me in a dream: slides. Big, enormous chutes from one side of the country to the other. It's fast, it's fun, it's fuel efficient. Sure, we'll have to raze entire midwestern communities to make way for the slide pylons, but I don't care about that because I'm a snooty, nation-destroying coastal elite. My company is called ZOOTCHUTE and it's launching in 2024. Currently taking applications for CFO, COO, CTO. COO, CXO, CJO, and someone to tell me what any of those mean.
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I absolutely loved your witty humour. Hope your new company comes along soon. Thanks for the laughs, sorry about your plight. My best.