Learning to Walk In Heels

It has been many long years since I had to worry about walking on high heels.

I'd say I threw my last pair out nearly 20 years ago - probably about the same time I jumped the "what-the-hell" shark and tied a scarf under my chin, Old World babushka style,  during a really windy storm.

I have plenty of shoes that aren't flat-flats, but nothing that resembles the "spikes" I occasionally wore at various time in my life.

My shoes are - there's no other way to describe them - sensible. They vary on the comfy-continuum from walking-on-air to wouldn't-want-to-hike-10 miles-but-otherwise-okay. They also vary on the style-continuum, but very few are out-and-out clunky.

I was amused the other day to see a small bit on the news (while I was in NYC) on a woman who teaches women to walk in stiletto heels.

Yes, I know they look sexy - especially when worn by a sexy, young thing - but if you need to have a lesson on how to walk in a shoe, it's probably a shoe that - from a podiatric health point of view - you shouldn't be walking in.

Walking in shoes.

Aren't shoe-walking lessons kind of like those old Cool Whip ads in which those wide-eyed folks asked Sarah how she made "pudding in a cloud."

What kind of a moron couldn't figure out that it was instant pudding with a plop of Cool Whip thrown on top?

And those instructions on shampoo - lather, rinse, repeat - with the repeat obviously thrown in to sell more shampoo. (Honestly, does anyone actually repeat?)

Lessons in shoe walking.

I suppose if you spend a hundred bucks per inch for a pair of 6-inch Manolo Blahnik's, you'd be willing to pay for lessons to walk in them. (On second thought, shouldn't the lessons be thrown in for free?)

But, again, if you need lessons the shoes are probably terrible for your feet, your calf muscles, your back, etc.

Those heels!

Girlfriends, you're risking a broken ankle. You're risking getting caught in the bricks. Or in a grate. You're risking breaking a heel off, and then having to limp along like Granpappy Amos in the old Real McCoys.

I see plenty of young women in downtown Boston with these terrible shoes on. They look like they're in agony. That's because they are.

A lesson might be able to teach you how to walk without teetering over and falling on your prettily made-up face. But ain't no lesson going to make those puppies feel like anything but the torture-chambers-for-your-feet that they are.

Sometimes I see women my age in these spikey heels.

By now, you'd think they'd have grown out of them, given up the fight, and settled into a pair of clunky old, comfy Hush Puppies.

The Dumbest Generation?

Well, yesterday I wrote about a pair of 20 somethings who are facing serious time for the identity thieving life they've been living. And here I am today with a post on 20 somethings who are members of what Emory University Professor Mark Bauerlein is terming The Dumbest Generation in his new book and his eponymous website.

I haven't read the book - and don't know if I really want to - but The Boston Globe online had a riff on it the other day, in which they pulled out a few reasons why the tag fits.

The reasons cited - mostly quotes from the book, I believe - are predictable.

"The ignorance is hard to believe ... It isn't enough to say that these young people are uninterested in world realities. They are actively cut off from them. ... They are encased in more immediate realities that shut out conditions beyond -- friends, work, clothes, cars, pop music, sitcoms, Facebook.''

They brazenly "disregard books and reading." (Alas.)

They can't spell. (Better check this post extra carefully.)

Those who think and write originally are ridiculed. (Alas.)

They play Grand Theft Auto. (Alack. And since I don't brazenly disregard books and reading, I will look the word "alack" up in the dictionary. On second thought, I'll just google it. And now I know that all alack is is an alas-like interjection of regret. Just as I thought.)

They don't store information. Instead, like me when I decide to look up "alack", they rely on the Internet. (Well, take it from someone who can dredge up the name of everyone in her kindergarten class; can still recite "Oh Captain, My Captain;" and remembers who hit home runs at her first baseball game in 1960. Not storing all that information isn't necessarily a bad thing. By the way, it was Ted Williams and Vic Wertz.)

Etc.

Here's what the DG website says about its own book:

Anyone who thinks this is mere intergenerational grousing, the time-worn tradition of an older generation wagging its finger at a younger one, should think again.

Drawing upon exhaustive research, detailed portraits, and historical and social analysis, The Dumbest Generation presents an uncompromisingly realistic study of the young American mind at this critical juncture. The book also lays out a compelling vision of how we might address its deficiencies.

To fail to do so may well mean sacrificing our future to the least curious and intellectual generation in national history.

So, this is all very weighty and ponderous, but if Bauerlein used a boring title like, The Critical Juncture: The Young American Mind, his readers and reviewers might take him seriously, but there wouldn't be that many of them. Now that he's slapped the gauntlet down, there'll be a lot more.

It's so wonderfully easy-breezy to slap a label on a generation, isn't it?

We've had the Perfect Generation.

Sorry, I mean the Greatest Generation.

And, now that they're all dying off, I have this sense that every other generation from here to eternity (at least my personal eternity) is going to be crapped on with some lousy designation or another - like The Worst Generation, which I've seen used to describe The Boomers.

The Dumbest Generation.

I have to say that most of the 20-ish early 30-ish people I know are not ignorant, slack-jawed slackers. They know who Dick Cheney is. They read books. They can find Iraq on the map, and can do a nifty compare and contrast of Iran and Iraq, too. They're just out of school. Or in grad school. They're starting their official careers. Or they're taking keep-it-together jobs while they see what it's like to be a writer-actor-filmmaker-dancer-musician. They're looking for a life partner, or they're getting married. They're having babies, or thinking about having babies.

Of course, most of the folks this age who I know and love are middle class/upper middle class, well-educated, smart.

Maybe it's all the rest of them of there...

Sure, there's plenty to be worried about. And that's the prospect of having all kinds of "grown-ups" among us who really don't care about anything other than who's trashing whom on MySpace.

But I'm kind of thinking that most of them will grow out of it.

Sure, it may take them a bit longer than it used to take a generation to grow out of their solipsistic obsessions, but most of them will do so in time. At least that's what I'm thinking and hoping.

There is, however, the lurking worry that there are a goodly number of people in this particular generation who, because of globalization, are not going to get the easy ride that, with obvious and painful exceptions, earlier generations got. Not that it's one big glide for any one generation, but, let's face it, those of us who grew up before the world became so shrunken were all lucky to be born into a big, rich, job-producing economy - with a lot of those jobs around even for those who may not have known who the vice president of the country is.

Most of the "young folks" I know will be okay.

But I think of the sons of our buddy Larry-the-mailman.

Larry is a great guy - smart, decent, funny, good. And we like him a lot.

He's a high school grad - and Viet Nam vet - who took the Civil Service exam in the way-back and has been working for the PO since.

Larry has two sons in their late twenties.

They're both high school graduates, but neither one of them has managed to find anything that resembles a steady job, let alone a career, for themselves.

Easy for me to say they should have gotten themselves a trade, or joined the service, or stayed in school. But they're also the sorts of guys who, a generation ago, would have been able to find some sort of semi-skilled factory work which may well have led to skilled factory work.

Those jobs don't exist anymore.

So Larry's sons take pick up jobs - non-union laborer, extra guy on the moving crew, seasonal retail - and cycle in and out of his house. When they're home, he tells us, they sit there glued to the TV watching sports, smoking and drinking his beer. They play Grand Theft Auto.

Just a wild guess, but I'm betting that neither of them could spot Iran or Iraq on the map.

When does it get better for them? Unless something motivates them to get off their butts, get themselves into a class or two at the local community college, think further ahead than the next version of GTA being released... Or forces them to take a drudge job, however drab, boring, and ill-paid, and see if they can make something out of it. Where do these guys go?

The Dumbest Generation is a harsh term and, like most/all sweeping generational generalization can't possibly be all-encompassing.

But guys like Larry's sons? How many of them are there out there? And where do they all end up?

That's something worth worrying about.

Maybe I will buy Bauerlein's book, after all.

Starter jobs: how's stamping license plates sound to you?

Possibly because I'm intrigued why what would motivate someone - especially someone who seems to have had the advantages of a solidly middle-class upbringing would turn to a life of crime. Possibly because my brother-in-law Rick is a Penn grad. (And, if I'm not mistaken, his sister is a Drexel alum.) And possibly because I just like reading about bone-heads, I really enjoyed a recent story I saw about a young Philadelphia couple who are going to cop a plea, admitting that "fraud fueled [their] luxury lifestyle."

Drexel's own Jocelyn Kirsch, 22, and her Penn-grad beau, Edward Anderton, 25, were arrested late last year, because they were apparently unwilling to take the starter job, Boomerang back home to bunk in with Mom and Dad, and apply to business school. No, they wanted to so take a short cut, so:

They stole credit-card and bank-account information from friends, co-workers and neighbors to finance lavish purchases and travel, prosecutors said. They were arrested when they claimed a package at a local UPS store under a neighbor's ID. The package contained lingerie from a British retailer.

Anderton, who majored in economics, was a fairly entrepreneurial type. He had a couple of fake eBay accounts , using stolen identities, through which he sold non-existent goods to real people, which netted him $33K in walking-around money, which he presumably spent some of on his trip with Jocelyn to Paris, and on other luxury vacations that they apparently needed to rest up from their studies and the exertions of identity theft.

Although it may not have involved all that much exertion. The police say that most of the identities/credit card numbers they stole were of people who lived in the same building where the couple nestled in a $3,000 a month apartment. (My first college apartment was $150 a month, but that was a long time ago. What was once a pretty dumpy neighborhood has been gentrified in the intervening years, and I just googled up a one-bedroom there for $1450, a two BR for $1950. Parking spaces available for - what do you know - $150 a month.)

When they were arrested, police found quite a few goodies in their digs:

A weekend search of the couple's $3,000-a-month apartment turned up a cache of tech toys: four computers, two printers, a scanner and an industrial machine that makes ID cards. Police also found $17,500 in cash, dozens of credit cards and fake drivers' licenses, and keys to unlock many of the apartments and mailboxes in their upscale Rittenhouse Square apartment building. Police are not yet sure how they got the keys. (Source: AP article on MSNBC)

The search also turned up a book titled, "The Art of Cheating: A Nasty Little Book for Tricky Little Schemers and Their Hapless Victims," as well as a newspaper article on "How to Spot Fake IDs."

A weekend search of my $150 a month apartment on Queensberry Street would have yielded books like C. Wright Mills White Collar, and  W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk, which my dog had chewed the bright red cover off of.

The search would also have yielded an old record player,a bunch of albums, a couple of old radios, two dog bowls (food and water), jeans, sweaters, a decent assortment of (used) dishes, glasses, and pots and pans, some posters, a few decorative touches, and little else. Oh, and maybe some Zig-Zag papers.

If any cash were to be found, it would have been whatever coins had fallen in behind the pillows of the ancient, 1940's studio couch or the two ancient, 1940's armchairs (those solid, too-heavy-to-move numbers covered with that never-wear-out fabric that felt like you were sitting on the bristle end of a scrub brush).

It wouldn't have been worth steeling the identities of anyone in our building, a combination of students, the elderly, and recent immigrants, most of whom probably didn't have credit cards to begin with.

Man, who would have given a college student a credit card? What a crazy idea?

We just cashed the meager checks from our crappy jobs and when we ran out of walking around money, we stopped walking around and just hung out.

The downfall for this latter day, unarmed Bonnie and Clyde came when one of their neighbors got a call to come to the UPS store around the corner to come pick up a package that was waiting for her. Problem was, she hadn't ordered anything.

But Kirsch and Anderton had - that fancy lingerie - and when they strolled into the store, no doubt hand-in-hand and with a twinkle in their starry eyes, the police arrested them. (As an aside: am I the only one who remembers the day and age when lingerie from London would have conjured up images of knee-length flannel undies lined with mohair?)

"They were just so arrogant," Philadelphia Detective Terry Sweeney, the lead investigator, said Monday. "When you start committing ID theft around the corner from where you live, it's going to come back to haunt you."

And this will be coming back to haunt these two in a couple of ways.

First, there'll be their felony prison sentences, which could get them up to 5 years in the stir for Kirsch, based on some assumptions about her plea deal. Alas, in prison, she won't be able to pop into a salon for $1700 worth of hair extensions. But she will have time to grow her own.

And my guess is she gave her boyfriend up, in more ways than one, so he's probably got a few more years to face. (These are federal charges they're both facing, by the way.)

Then there'll be the lifelong conviction hanging over them when they go to look for their somewhat delayed starter jobs.

Meanwhile, Anderton has lost the $60K a year starter job in real estate finance he did have and is back home living with his family, and Kirsch - a few credits short of her Drexel degrees - is back home with her mom, as well.

These Boomerang-ers do have a persistent habit of making their way back home, don't they?

We'll no doubt see one and/or both of these two on Dr. Phil and Oprah once they've done their time, talking about how easy it was for them to just drift into a life of crime, what with all those identities just laying around.

I can hardly wait.

Here's Peat in Your Eye

I saw a piece in the news the other day - a Washington Post article picked up by The Boston Globe - on how the rural pubs in Ireland are dying off at a rapid rate.

The Vintners' Federation of Ireland, which represents rural pubs, said the number of pubs outside Dublin has dropped from 6,000 to 5,000 in the past three years. Some estimates suggest the number may soon dwindle to 3,500.

This is no surprise, given the amazing growth of the country's economy - and the attendant social and cultural changes - that has occurred over the last couple of decades.

As with most change, this one is a mixed blessing.

The closing of the "local" - often the only place in a small town, other than the church, where people can get together - truly represents a loss of an important cornerstone of Irish culture. For older people - lacking the inclination or (often) the money to adapt to something new - it's a rent in the social fabric that is not likely to get repaired.

On the other hand, some of those rural pubs were pretty damned dreary and god-awful.

I remember dropping in to one pub in Port Arlington - where we had a few hours stopover between trains - that was grimy, smelly (smoke, porter, piss), and where the window sills were strewn with the carcasses of dead flies.

Still, for the locals, it was easy to see that this was the place to go when they wanted a pint, some conversation, a bit of a sing-song, a step out on the dance floor.

Rural Ireland can still be pretty grim and lonely, and the pubs are often all that stands between someone and profound social isolation.

It was, of course, easy to see the decline in pub culture coming.

When I first went to Ireland, the music sessions invariably ended with the playing of the Irish national anthem - a sweet touch that is almost unimaginable in The States, even in the most flag-swinging precincts.

I haven't heard "Soldiers Are We" played to close out a session in a long while.

Then there was the sign I saw in a Dublin pub: "Ladies, please mind your pocketbooks."

Just another big city reminder that someone might be out to lift your wallet. (Come to think of it, that Dublin pub was really something more of a fern bar - living, breathing ferns enabled by the ban on public smoking. Yet another forerunner of the decline of the pub.)

Another time a favorite pub of mine in Galway had brought in a TV so folks could watch an important rugby match. I observed that everyone under 30 had pulled their short stools over to the TV set, while everyone over 30 stayed sitting at the bar, at tables, or in the snugs chatting. This is not a change for the better, I thought at the time. Go back, go back.

This was the exact same thought I'd had when a cab driver proudly boasted that the first shopping mall was going up outside of his city.

Go back, go back.

But why should they go back?

Ireland has become more affluent, more cosmopolitan, and more sophisticated over the years.

The Irish no longer go abroad for work, they go abroad on vacation, taking cheap flights on RyanAir to Montpelier, Morocco, and Malaga.

The Irish no longer export their young, they import someone else's. Last time I was there - September 2006 - most of the waitstaff in hotels, restaurants, and - yes - pubs was from Eastern Europe.

The Irish no longer have to poor mouth. Sure, there are still poor people, but the country itself has become unimaginably rich - not just in comparison to the Ireland that our grandparents and great-grandparents left in droves, but to the Ireland of the 1970's with it's no central heat and waxen toilet paper.

And the Irish are under no obligation to provide us tourists with a way to reconnect, however superficially and temporarily, with the Ireland our ancestors last saw when the townspeople held an American Wake for them before they came over here to start a better life.

Still, especially for the "old ones" left behind by the high-tech working, cell-phone sprouting, RyanAir flying, sushi-eating brave, new Ireland, the death of the local pub has got to seem like a death in the family.

Only now there's no place to gather after the funeral.

Sweet Caroline! How come I can't get tickets to a Neil Diamond concert?

Not that we're the biggest Neil Diamond fans on the face of the earth, but my sisters, our friend Shelly, and I decided that it would be a hoot to go to Neil's concert in Fenway Park. After all, he is the guy who sang so many of the great windows-open, full-throated sing-along oldies of our youth.

Fenway Park, on a "hot August night, when you almost bet you could hear yourself sweat, he comes in." Where the "he" that comes in is not Love Brother Love, but is Love Brother Love's composer. Singing along with that? Not to mention "she got a way to move me, Ch-er-ie". And, of course, the especially meaningful and rousing Sweet Caroline, which since the dawn of the Golden Era in Red Sox baseball, has been the anthem sung between the top and bottom of the eighth innings.

Sitting in the stands at Fenway for all that? It sure has a way to move me, alright.

So, I got on the American Express pre-sale, on TicketMaster - the ticket source for this concert - to see if I could get four of the $44.50 tickets.

No dice.

So I tried to worm into the Friends of Neil Diamond pre-sale ticket purchase. Although I'm no FOND, my sister was cannily able to predict that the password would be "caroline" (a secret that was also "revealed" on Craig's List before those tickets went on sale).

Again, no dice.

But how remarkable it was that, those $44.50 tickets - which, of course, were already up to over $60/per once the convenience and handling and other nonsense fees had been larded on - that were instantly unavailable, were instantly available at more than twice that price - not via Craig's List scalpers who'd managed to grab a few pairs. But on TicketMaster's "sister" ticket site, "TicketExchange."

Hmmmmm.

I don't know the exact relationship between Master and Exchange, but I'm guessing it's a fairly cozy one.

When it comes to ticket scalping, I'm actually a big free market proponent.

If I have tickets that someone else wants, let 'em pay.

But I reserve my approval of scalping for individuals - not for ticket services.

I understand that whoever's promoting an entertainment or sporting event just wants to sell-out, and are thus somewhat indifferent to whether they sell-out to a bunch of individuals, or to a bunch of ticket agencies. But I do wonder what miniscule proportion of tickets is even made available to non-brokers. It sure doesn't seem like there are very many.

For the event promoters, of course, the beauty of the ticket brokers is that they reduce their risk. The ticket agencies assume that risk - they're stuck with the tickets if no one wants them. And they also get the upside - and what an upside it is, sky-high is the limit. A nano-second after failing to get Red Sox tickets online - yet again - tickets were available from agencies for 10x the face value, and more. At least the Neil Diamond ticket inflation was more modest.

With so many tickets allocated to the ticket agencies to begin with, it's really exasperating to be a fan trying to get a hold of a few tickets.

It's especially irksome when you have to keep re-entering those difficult-to-read codes that are supposedly there to prevent rapacious ticket grabbers from using robots to buy all the tickets.

So I tediously type in those number/letter combos in the grid - is that a "c" or an "e"? a "7" or a "1" - only to find that, alas, I am not worthy of buying a ticket.

Unless I'm willing to pay 3 times the face value.

And this for a concert - Neil Diamond at Fenway - which, rumor has it, is not selling out.

Let's face it, how many people are there willing to fork over more than $100 to see Neil Diamond?

It's not like he's Bruce Springsteen, or Paul Simon, or someone else of that caliber. To me, he's halfway between these guys and the oldies reviews that come around for free concerts in City Hall Plaza and down at the Hatch Shell on the Charles every summer.

My sister Trish advises patience.

Her belief is that, come August, more of the $44.50 tickets will miraculously appear.

Meanwhile, in a city where poor schnooks with an extra ticket to sell are routinely busted for some freelance gouging at the door, ticket brokers can jack up their prices to whatever they want.

What a business!

A Meditation on 99¢ Paradise

Along with my friends and colleagues John and Sean, I was in New York City last week. Frugal business travelers that we are, we stayed at a Holiday Inn in Long Island City.

While we were walking back from a very nice dinner in a yupscale restaurant on Greenpoint Ave, one of us - Sean I believe - spotted a store named "99 ¢ Paradise", with the curious tagline that read "everything 99¢ of more". (Photo credit goes to John for the shot below.)

Didn't dollar stores (and, presumably 99¢ stores) used to sell stuff for, well, a dollar?

Maybe there's just so little these days that actually costs that little, forcing stores to change their tune.

Let's face it, what can you get for that little? Two postage stamps? A roll of Life Savers? A couple of pencils? Some postcards? Poison-laced toothpaste? Plastic bottles that leech chemicals into our sports drinks? Canned green beans with mouse-heads floating in them?

Not much, that's for sure.

But what can it possibly mean to have a store where everything is 99¢ or more?

Doesn't that pretty much cover every store in this country?

I mean, Tiffany's can make this claim. So can Neiman Marcus. Barney's. Saks.

John chalks the sign up to marketing genius, and I guess he's right. The sign attracts shoppers who know that, whatever they get there, it's probably not going to cost that much. ("Look, honey, this toothpaste only costs $1.01.")

But it's also a good and sobering reminder that, for a lot of folks, being able to buy miscellaneous and sundry stuff - some necessary and useful, some Adam Smith's "trinkets of frivolous utility" - for a buck or thereabouts is a good deal.

They're the folks that are working at thankless jobs that pay not much north of the minimum wage. Old folks eking out an existence they never dreamed would last this long - or cost this much - on a meager pension or miniscule SSI check. I was going to add 'kids with their first paycheck from Mickey D's", but I doubt that any self-respecting teenager would be caught dead in 99¢  Paradise - I can't imagine that there's much in there that would appeal to anyone much over the age of 5 or 6.

99¢ Paradise....

The price, I guess, is probably right.

Is JetBlue going down the toilet? (I'd give the buddy pass a pass, if I were you.)

Having flown them a couple of times in the last few months, I've become something of a fan of JetBlue: clean, comfy, convenient, cheap flights.

I obviously wasn't one of those inconvenienced during the flight delay - flight cancellation horror-shows of last year - but when it comes to JetBlue, what's not to like?

Well, if you're Gokhan Mutlu, there's plenty to be, well, pissed off about.

It seems that Gokhan was traveling from California home to NYC on a freebie travel voucher - a buddy pass - that had been given to him by a buddy who works for JetBlue. Buddy seats are a pretty much seat-of-the-pants way to travel - the ultimate in stand-by. And you get what you pay for. And what Gokhan got was an order from the captain to give up his seat to a stewardess who wanted a break from sitting on one of those nasty little jump seats near the rear exit (and toilets) that you see the stews perched on during packed flights.

Apparently, only JetBlue employees can sit in those jump seats, so Gokhan was asked, errrrrr, to go sit in the toilet.

After a long, bumpy while, he was permitted to come back out and reclaim his seat.

This being America, Gokhan is suing JetBlue for $2M.

My first reaction to this was, 'Oh, come on. This certainly is an insult and an affront, not to mention a humiliation. But $2M?'

My second thought was imagining myself in such a situation.

You know what, I would want a pretty big fat payout, too. Beggars can't be choosers, and all that but, if an airlines needs a "real" seat for their stews to take turns sitting in on long flights so they're not stuck in those rotten little jump seats, then the airlines should dedicate a seat for that purpose - not ask a passenger, even one who they think of as a freeloading hitchhiker to give up his seat.

Of course, the captain might not have had the nerve to ask a woman to give up her seat, sexism being what it is (and, occasionally, working in your favor under the retro guise of chivalry). I'm also guessing El Capitan wouldn't have asked anyone to give their seat up for a steward.

So, how could the captain have handled this better:

• He could have asked nicely (in his best Right Stuff, Chuck Yeager drawl): "Hey, buddy, seein' that you're in a buddy seat, and seein' how Susie Stewardess ain't feelin' all that well, d'ya mind parkin' in the head for a while and givin' her a break. 'Preciate it."
• He could have asked for volunteers: I'll bet a few people would have taken turns standing for 10 minutes at a shot in order to give the stew a break.
• He could have let Gokhan sit in the darned jump seat: So what if this is a violation of JetBlue policy, or FAA policy? Who was going to rat him out? Unless he had enemies in the flight crew....And even then, he could have warded off that by telling on himself. ("We had a situation in which the stewardess was unable to sit on the jump seat, so I made a decision to....")
• He could have not pulled rank: Even if he didn't ask nice, once he got some resistance, he should have backed off gracefully and gone to Plan B (find a volunteer).
• He could have pulled rank: Before approaching Gokhan, the pilot could have contacted someone in management, told them that he needed the seat, and gotten a few bargaining chips. Maybe Gokhan would have gone nicely for a couple of free round trips that weren't buddy seats. (And while the pilot was asking for the comp tickets, he could have informed HQ that he was letting Gokhan sit in the jump seat.)

On a flight, the captain's the manager. As such, wouldn't you think that he could have come up with a better solution to his need (or was it desire) to find a better seat for the stewardess than ordering a passenger into the toilet. Management!

And it's just amazing to me that in this day of word-of-mouth - make that word-of-keypad and word-of-'net - in which a story like this makes the rounds (and the blogs) in warp speed, someone might not ask himself, 'is this not the sort of dumb thing that could get me in trouble?'

Apparently not.

And speaking of getting in trouble, the person I feel worst for in all this is the poor schnook of a JetBlue employee who gave Gokhan the buddy seat to begin with. If Gokhan cashes in on this, I hope he throws a few bucks his buddy's way. (And I hope the poor buddy never has to run across the captain, who will no doubt not be feeling all too thrilled with whatever happens.)

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Here's where I saw the first report on this: on Comcast.