The Adventure Began

Hi everyone! It's been a solid week without actual internet here in LA, save for my droid, so I've been a bit delayed in setting up a blog to share my adventures with friends and family. This first post I drafted when I first flew out, so it's a little outdated, but gives you an idea of my adventures thus far. Thanks, and have fun reading!

Emily

Day One: The Adventure Begins

Today I set sail (or rather, wing) for my marvelous summer of 2010 in Los Angeles. I am beginning my internship with the Herzog Company, a trailer company which makes all the trailers for Disney films. There I will learn the ins and outs of movie marketing, and hopefully some editing techniques.

Here I pause to explain my choice of major, video production. After going through the "undecided" rite of passage, I settled on media with a specific interest in film and TV. This sounds like an exciting enterprise to most everyone but the two people funding my ambitions. You can imagine the reactions when you tell your parents that, screw medicine, law, or business, you want to be the next James Cameron. They scratch their heads like chimps, smile painfully, and ask, "What's a James Camera?" This is when you know you've found your calling.

Because of my internship, I obtained a scholarship from the Alliance for Family Entertainment, an organization that helps provide family-friendly programming for advertisers like Proctor and Gamble, Wal-mart, and Coca-Cola. Last week, I was invited to a symposium at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills. There i learned about the Alliance's research on American families and their TV preferences. Among other presentations, I listened to a keynote interview with Randy Jackson, music producer and American Idol judge. Another panel involved creators of tv shows like "Glee" and "The Middle" with Patricia Heaton. The fascinating conference concluded with a panel of the presidents of NBC, CBS, FOX, the CW, and ABC.

But back to today. I'm flying back to LA now to begin my internship on the 6th. I sit in my aisle seat, watching the large, African-American woman thunder down the passage with her hair in curlers and a shower cap, her screaming 2-year old tucked sideways under her arm like a bazooka, and I think to myself, "What kind of freak show is this?" I begin to assemble a list of rules for safe air travel that i have learned from my years of hard experience. I will share these rules with you now.

The laws of the jungle- or as some may know it, the airport- are simple and severe. They are a cross between Murphy's Laws and Tijuana street customs. The first rule, and most important, is:

ALWAYS, ALWAYS PEE.

If you have the chance to do it, do it. It doesn't matter if your plane is leaving the hangar. If there is even the slightest hint of a whiff that you might have to expel some urine in the next 24 hours possibly maybe, you hit up every bathroom from the east end of Chicago O'Hare to the South terminal of LAX. You never know when you may be held hostage on a plane where the pilots refuse to take off because of some "minor malfunction" and the flight attendant insists that it is unsafe to leave your seat until you have reached 20,000 feet (even though the plane is still on the ground).

Which leads me to my second rule:

IF YOU THINK YOU'RE SAFE FROM DELAYS JUST BECAUSE YOU MADE IT INTO THE FUSILLAGE, YOU'RE WRONG. AND STUPID.

Don't be stupid.

The third rule:
MAKE SURE YOU BEAT THE REST OF YOUR BOARDING ZONE ONTO THE PLANE.

Unless you're one of those privileged people flying first class everywhere (and first to die when the plane crashes, ha ha), you have to be on your toes. Now, I know what you're thinking: But we have boarding zones! Surely that allows for some sense of decorum and order when boarding a plane that won't leave until everyone is on anyway, right?
Ha.
There is no order to boarding a plane. You would think everyone's rushing to the lifeboats as the TITANIC sinks beneath them. And the secret reason for this bedlam is:
overhead storage. If you're the last on that plane, so is your bag, and the next thing you know, it's under your seat pushing your knees up to your face. And with the airlines charging extra for check-ons these days, it is a certainty that you will have a bag. Point is, this is not the TITANIC. It is much more urgent than that.

The fourth rule:

DON'T PISS OFF THE AIRLINE HOSTS.

The flight attendants are all seemingly Stepford wives until you break one of their rules. They ask you to stop breaking that rule.
"Ma'am, the fasten seatbelt sign is on. Please return to your seat."
YOu have a very good reason for breaking said rule, i.e. a bursting bladder.
"I know, I just have to, really quick-"
"Ma'am, please. return. to. your. seat."
Return to your damn seat right $!#@ing now is what she means. And it's a federal offense to disobey her. But it's your own fault for missing that 8th bathroom you passed in Minneapolis.

During this flight, I am traveling with my mother. The flight attendant asks her if she wants anything to drink, then posing the question to me, she actually kneels down to my eye level and speaks as if she were addressing a small child. "And what would you like to drink, hun?" Pure Fargo accent. I look at her like she's sprung a third eye. Bring me a scotch, hun. Don'tchya know?

Rule Five:

IF YOU NOTICE A SCREAMING BABY IN THE AIRPORT, IT WILL BE ON YOUR FLIGHT.

Children never cause a problem unless you allow yourself to be antagonized by children. If you are waiting for your plane and one of them catches your attention (and not in a good way), you can be sure that that baby will be on the plane with you. And the more you obsess over that crying lump of flesh, the closer it will be seated next to you. Promise.

The sixth and final rule:

MAKE SURE YOU OBEY PROPER SECURITY MEASURES.

Of course you will want to pack only 2oz of liquid, wear easily removable shoes, and separate your electronics from your luggage, but many people forget the most important principle of airport security: push your own bags through the x-ray machine. make sure they reach the conveyor belt, even if that means you have to stand and wait for the bags in front of you to be scanned and re-scanned and wait- nope, just nail clippers- and scanned once more. It is very important that you do this. It is your job. It is NOT the job of the airport people standing around. Their job is to do nothing in particular and look very angry as they do it. Be sure you cooperate and push your bags through, otherwise they will make you go back after you've walked through the metal detector, push them through, and walk back through the metal detector again, while holding up the line. It's very important security stuff; you wouldn't understand.
On that note, buy Gold Bond foot powder for walking through the airport.

Readers, don't be disheartened by my spiel. Air travel is actually a very safe and fun way to get from A to B, and taking a plane usually means you're going someplace pretty cool (except South Dakota. Sorry). Just be on the lookout for situations that might inconvenience you. Or kill you.

I jest, I jest.

But seriously. Buckle up. The fasten seatbelt sign is on.