Random Observations from MIA

 

I love people watching, and probably the best place to do that is the airport. Miami International Airport is my point of departure, 90 percent of the time. No better place to just sit and watch people than MIA.

On Men:

We conservatives often bemoan the sad state of manhood. I submit that bemoaning is justified.

  • Men, don’t go out in public wearing a sleeveless muscle tee if you have pipe-cleaner arms.
  • In the same vein (heh), don’t get tatted up full-sleeve if you have pipe-cleaner arms.
  • When did facial hair make such a come-back? Pre-9/11, 99 percent of men were shorn of facial hair. Then a bunch of guys with beards bushwack us, and now, lo these 17 years later, everyone has beards — or facial hair of some type. ‘Course, the guys we sent to kill the guys that came to kill us all grew beards, too. Maybe it’s a wash. I’m not saying this to be snarky; I got a beard. I’ll probably be able to keep it ’til March, then it’ll get too darn hot. I just wonder, “what the heck triggered the beards?”
  • Saw one guy covered with tats. Up and around his ears; had a spider web starting in the webbing ‘twixt thumb and forefinger and traveled across the back of his hand. Dude, are you a badass or a poser? Because if you’re going where I’m going, poser tats will get you killed. I watched this guy off and on for two hours, lovingly pulling stuff out of his kid’s travel backpack to keep him happy and occupied. No artifice or affectation. I settled on badass.
  • If you’re my age (50+) and wearing a KISS T-shirt, you’re doing it wrong.
  • Just a couple years ago, I only ever heard the term “skinny-fat” from my girls talking about other girls who may well be slender but have no tonus in their muscles. It appears that the “skinny-fat” phenomenon has pole-vaulted the gender gap.
  • Most of the guys that aren’t bloachmoads look like they had pharmaceutical assistance. Not a lot of old time, hard-muscle guys around.
  • Ooh. Even worse than pipe-cleaner arms and a muscle tee? Pipe-cleaner arms and a pink polo shirt. You’re supposed to wear pink to demonstrate you’re secure in your masculinity, not to demonstrate you’ve capitulated it.
  • I like yoga. I do yoga. (Kinda/sorta. If you didn’t already know what I was doing, you’d say, “that’s yoga.”) But, dude, don’t strap your rolled-up yoga mat onto the side of your carry-on backpack. Add some toxicity to your masculinity, son. -3 on the man card. -5 if you’re skinny-fat.

Women:

  • Young ladies, if you’re going to dress as scantily or sexily or whatever as you can, at least have the courage to adapt the persona and carriage that go with your outfit. Nothing more pathetic than a young lady that wore her sexies to the airport and then walks around with downcast eyes like a scared puppy dog, looking like she wishes she were invisible.
  • Mature-to-middle-aged ladies seem to be the most grounded, self-assured people in the airport.

People in general:

  • People from flyover country — particularly the midwest — seem to be able to identify each other immediately from a football field away, introduce themselves to their fellow travelers, and become fast friends on the spot.
  • Captain Obvious just called in, wanted me to note that if your personal technique is to shut off your phone as soon as you get to the airport and don’t turn it on again until you arrive on the other side, watching how obsessively people stare at their phones is jarring.
  • Kids are awesome. Most of the fun of people-watching at the airport comes from their antics.
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  1. Gary Robbins Member
    Gary Robbins
    @GaryRobbins

    Delightful!  Much better than my post that is getting lots of static.

    • #1
  2. Vicryl Contessa Thatcher
    Vicryl Contessa
    @VicrylContessa

    When we were flying to Nashville for Christmas, I couldn’t believe how many women wore yoga pants and “dressed them up” with a cute top, blazer, and heels. No, just…no! This should not be a thing. I was also impressed by the women who had a full face of make up on at 05:45. At that time of day, mascara and filled in brows- that’s all you get.

    • #2
  3. Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug Contributor
    Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug
    @HankRhody

    Boss Mongo: I just wonder, “what the heck triggered the beards?”

    I think it’s a cyclical thing; you gotta differentiate yourself from the previous generation somehow.

    I wore a beard back when it was unfashionable, and will probably do so after it is again. Partly because it hides my Lutheran chin. Spent the last five years with just a mustache because of work.

    For reference, here’s a picture of me with a beard and one without.

    • #3
  4. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    Love the observations – they could be Anywhere, USA.  Can I add (not to pile up on the guys) to the skinny armed, pink shirt, tatted up with beard look dudes a couple more requests –  can you pretty please ditch the following:

    The Man Bun – UGH – it was never a good look and gets a minus 8 on the masculine scale.

    Older guys (that’s anyone over 25) wearing comic book hero t-shirts – just stop it!

    Guys riding skateboards – really?  I saw a fellow last week with no shirt, plenty of chest and facial hair sailing down the sidewalk – give the Beav back his wheels and shouldn’t you be working?

    • #4
  5. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug (View Comment):

    Boss Mongo: I just wonder, “what the heck triggered the beards?”

    I think it’s a cyclical thing; you gotta differentiate yourself from the previous generation somehow.

    I wore a beard back when it was unfashionable, and will probably do so after it is again. Partly because it hides my Lutheran chin. Spent the last five years with just a mustache because of work.

    For reference, here’s a picture of me with a beard and one without.

    Your man cave has a lot of hats!  I saw a band on Austin City Limits where the base player had an old fedora on – 1940’s-50’s, I think it even had a hole so an original – and the stage was decorated with vintage radios and old lamps – interesting – Is that a Shriner’s hat?

    • #5
  6. Major Major Major Major Member
    Major Major Major Major
    @OldDanRhody

    Boss Mongo: -Kids are awesome. Most of the fun of people watching at the airport comes from their antics.

    Long layover at MIA with three boys, aged 7-10.  One made a “KICK ME” sign and stuck it to his brother’s back, but couldn’t restrain his own giggles while doing so.  Hilarity ensued…

    • #6
  7. Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug Contributor
    Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug
    @HankRhody

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):
    Your man cave has a lot of hats! I saw a band on Austin City Limits where the base player had an old fedora on – 1940’s-50’s, I think it even had a hole so an original – and the stage was decorated with vintage radios and old lamps – interesting – Is that a Shriner’s hat?

    It’s just a cubicle. Had all this had storage at work, so filled it with hats. I could use a proper top hat.

    Nope, just an ordinary fez. Picked it up at GenCon year before last.

    • #7
  8. EB Thatcher
    EB
    @EB

    Boss Mongo:-Men, don’t go out in public wearing a sleeveless muscle tee if you have pipe-cleaner arms.

    -In the same vein (heh), don’t get tatted up, full sleeve if you have pipe-cleaner arms.

    Men, don’t go out in public wearing a sleeveless muscle tee EVER.  (Sorry, no matter what the shape of your arms, sleeveless tees just scream “white trash.”

    Men, don’t get tatted up, full sleeve EVER.  (See above.)

    • #8
  9. DocJay Inactive
    DocJay
    @DocJay

    Never go full muscle tee w pipe cleaners.  Man law!

    My boy got sleeved.  He’s being trained to kill now so it’s all OK.

    • #9
  10. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Major Major Major Major (View Comment):

    Boss Mongo: -Kids are awesome. Most of the fun of people watching at the airport comes from their antics.

    Long layover at MIA with three boys, aged 7-10. One made a “KICK ME” sign and stuck it to his brother’s back, but couldn’t restrain his own giggles while doing so. Hilarity ensued…

    Hmmn, which two were involved?

    • #10
  11. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug (View Comment):
    I think it’s a cyclical thing; you gotta differentiate yourself from the previous generation somehow.

    Sort of, and there are some of us who have always been uncaring of the fashion trends. I grew my first (decent) beard in 1984. Having had it for more than thirty years, more on than off, I certainly don’t qualify as having a sudden case of facial hair.

    • #11
  12. Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug Contributor
    Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug
    @HankRhody

    Arahant (View Comment):
    some of us who have always been uncaring of the fashion trends.

    Easy man! Warn me before you’re going to drop a bombshell like that!

    On the subject of current beard trends, I dislike it when I see a guy with an overly-neat beard. Groomed so you don’t look like a plane crash survivor who just hoofed it in from the mountains, sure. Manicured such that it looks like you spent an hour this morning staring in the mirror? You’d better be at a wedding.

    • #12
  13. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    Spent 3 hours going through  customs on Saturday at MIA. Can’t believe some jerk weed kept passing gas while in line .

     

    • #13
  14. Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug Contributor
    Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug
    @HankRhody

    PHCheese (View Comment):
    Spent 3 hours going through customs on Saturday at MIA. Can’t believe some jerk weed kept passing gas while in line .

    Hat tip to @asquared

    https://amp.ibtimes.co.uk/fart-attack-plane-makes-emergency-landing-after-passenger-refuses-stop-breaking-wind-flight-1662146

     

    • #14
  15. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug (View Comment):
    Manicured such that it looks like you spent an hour this morning staring in the mirror? You’d better be at a wedding.

    Or a funeral, and it had better be yours, either way.

    • #15
  16. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug (View Comment):
    Easy man! Warn me before you’re going to drop a bombshell like that!

    Do you think my cape is a bit passé?

    I don’t care.

    • #16
  17. Boss Mongo Member
    Boss Mongo
    @BossMongo

    Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug (View Comment):

    PHCheese (View Comment):
    Spent 3 hours going through customs on Saturday at MIA. Can’t believe some jerk weed kept passing gas while in line .

    Hat tip to @asquared

    https://amp.ibtimes.co.uk/fart-attack-plane-makes-emergency-landing-after-passenger-refuses-stop-breaking-wind-flight-1662146

    Can one just refuse?  “I am a superior being.  I shall not allow further noxious gases to issue forth?”

    No one tell Mrs. Mongo.

    • #17
  18. Vicryl Contessa Thatcher
    Vicryl Contessa
    @VicrylContessa

    Boss Mongo (View Comment):

    Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug (View Comment):

    PHCheese (View Comment):
    Spent 3 hours going through customs on Saturday at MIA. Can’t believe some jerk weed kept passing gas while in line .

    Hat tip to @asquared

    https://amp.ibtimes.co.uk/fart-attack-plane-makes-emergency-landing-after-passenger-refuses-stop-breaking-wind-flight-1662146

    Can one just refuse? “I am a superior being. I shall not allow further noxious gases to issue forth?”

    No one tell Mrs. Mongo.

    Yes, it is possible. Or, you could just be a woman. We don’t do that.

    • #18
  19. Boss Mongo Member
    Boss Mongo
    @BossMongo

    Vicryl Contessa (View Comment):
    Or, you could just be a woman. We don’t do that.

    Mmm-hmmm.

    • #19
  20. Vicryl Contessa Thatcher
    Vicryl Contessa
    @VicrylContessa

    Boss Mongo (View Comment):

    Vicryl Contessa (View Comment):
    Or, you could just be a woman. We don’t do that.

    Mmm-hmmm.

    True story.

    • #20
  21. Muleskinner Member
    Muleskinner
    @Muleskinner

    Boss Mongo: But, dude, don’t strap your rolled-up yoga mat onto the side of your carry-on backpack. Add some toxicity to your masculinity, son. -3 on the man card. -5 if you’re skinny fat.

    Back around mid-August ’81, on my way back from 4 months camping in the snow on an ice sheet in Greenland, I walked through O’Hare with a pair of cross country skis strapped to my backpack, a six-inch beard, raccoon tan line left by the artic-issue Ray Ban Aviators, and pipe-cleaner arms. The people I met moved away from me and toward the Hare Krishnas. 

    It was probably the pale (and weedy) arms…

    • #21
  22. Muleskinner Member
    Muleskinner
    @Muleskinner

    Vicryl Contessa (View Comment):

    Boss Mongo (View Comment):

    Vicryl Contessa (View Comment):
    Or, you could just be a woman. We don’t do that.

    Mmm-hmmm.

    True story.

    I beg to differ. When Mama Skinner got the word that chemo wasn’t working on her terminal stomach cancer, she wanted to stop at a little import store to look for jewelry boxes as gifts for her sisters before she went home. It was a pretty somber errand, Old Man and Mama Skinner, and my brother, sister and me, were walking slowly down the aisles, not really looking or wanting to finish. We would get supper together, they would head out on the four-hour drive home, and the three of us kids would go back to our college dorms.

    After a bit, three elderly ladies walked in, and it was clear that one of them had gas. Bad gas. Campfire scene in “Blazing Saddles” bad.  The two companions got red-faced and did their best to ignore their friend’s extravagant flatus, and the offender, after a loud toot, would put her hand to her mouth and say “Oh dear, oh dear.” This went on for awhile, and we all tried our best to pretend not to notice, but when we looked at mama, she was trying so hard not to laugh that tears were flowing–Mary Richards at Chuckles the Clown’s funeral-style. We all lost it, then. Little old lady passing gas was probably the last really good laugh we all had together. Bless her gassy heart, but we really needed something to break the tension.

    • #22
  23. ctlaw Coolidge
    ctlaw
    @ctlaw

    What, no stories of emotional support alligators?

    No comments on the latest luggage trends?

    • #23
  24. Ontheleftcoast Inactive
    Ontheleftcoast
    @Ontheleftcoast

    This isn’t really germane to anything above, but ever since I read some Cordwainer Smith story or other, every time I read “Miami” I think “Meeya Meefla.”

    And @bossmongo, if you haven’t come across Norstrilia and  Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons, you should check Cordwainer Smith out.

    P.M.A Linebarger was a seriously interesting man. His father was an old China hand, his godfather was Sun Yat Sen. By the time he got his PhD at 23, he was familiar with six languages.

    While retaining his professorship at Duke after the beginning of World War II, Linebarger began serving as a second lieutenant of the United States Army, where he was involved in the creation of the Office of War Information and the Operation Planning and Intelligence Board. He also helped organize the Army’s first psychological warfare section. In 1943, he was sent to China to coordinate military intelligence operations. When he later pursued his interest in China, Linebarger became a close confidant of Chiang Kai-shek. By the end of the war, he had risen to the rank of major.

    In 1947, Linebarger moved to the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, where he served as Professor of Asiatic Studies. He used his experiences in the war to write the book Psychological Warfare (1948), regarded by many in the field as a classic text.

    He eventually rose to the rank of colonel in the reserves. He was recalled to advise the British forces in the Malayan Emergency and the U.S. Eighth Army in the Korean War. While he was known to call himself a “visitor to small wars”, he refrained from becoming involved in the Vietnam War, but is known to have done work for the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1969 CIA officer Miles Copeland Jr. wrote that Linebarger was “perhaps the leader practitioner of ‘black’ and ‘gray’ propaganda in the Western world”

    And as Cordwainer Smith, he wrote unforgettable science fiction. He depicts many individuals at the apex of his Instrumentality of Mankind, men and women of great privilege and power. His portrayals differ qualitatively from the way in which most authors imagine that royalty and aristocrats think and behave. Given his personal experience, I’d bet on his being closer to the truth.

    • #24
  25. Tutti Inactive
    Tutti
    @Tutti

    You’ve done an excellent job of capturing the current state of peoplehood (as that most genderless, milquetoast of a Canadian prime minister would say). At least in Miami, I would agree with your analysis .

    • #25
  26. Boss Mongo Member
    Boss Mongo
    @BossMongo

    Ontheleftcoast (View Comment):
    if you haven’t come across Norstrilia and Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons, you should check Cordwainer Smith out.

    Wilco.

    • #26
  27. Umbra Fractus Inactive
    Umbra Fractus
    @UmbraFractus

    Boss Mongo:

    • When did facial hair make such a come-back? Pre-9/11, 99 percent of men were shorn of facial hair. Then a bunch of guys with beards bushwack us, and now, lo these 17 years later, everyone has beards — or facial hair of some type. ‘Course, the guys we sent to kill the guys that came to kill us all grew beards, too. Maybe it’s a wash. I’m not saying this to be snarky; I got a beard. I’ll probably be able to keep it ’til March, then it’ll get too darn hot. I just wonder, “what the heck triggered the beards?”

    I can’t speak for all of the bearded, but in my case it’s just simple laziness. I’m not gonna lie.

    • #27
  28. Larry Koler Inactive
    Larry Koler
    @LarryKoler

    I want to get some shoes with rollers on them. I wonder how safe they are. Lots of kids wear these shoes but I never see adults using them. Airports are the ideal place to use them it seems — the floors are super smooth. We all wonder why it took so long for humanity to add rollers to our suitcases (needed good floors for one thing) so why not on our shoes to glide efficiently and easily from one part of the airport to another?

    Anybody seen adults using these shoes?

    • #28
  29. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    It’s not quite as bad as being at a large mall, but I’m always struck by how  ugly most people are.  At least at an airport you don’t see so many of those people too fat to even walk–guess those types don’t fly.   Really, why do I worry so much about whether I look good?

    Once I saw a documentary about couriers, y’know, people who carry top secret or very  valuable stuff.  They have cosmeticians  who make them up to look ugly, because, they said,  no one’s eyes dwell on ugly people.  Maybe there are more of them at airports than we think….

    • #29
  30. PHCheese Inactive
    PHCheese
    @PHCheese

    Vicryl Contessa (View Comment):

    Boss Mongo (View Comment):

    Hank Rhody, Prince of Humbug (View Comment):

    PHCheese (View Comment):
    Spent 3 hours going through customs on Saturday at MIA. Can’t believe some jerk weed kept passing gas while in line .

    Hat tip to @asquared

    https://amp.ibtimes.co.uk/fart-attack-plane-makes-emergency-landing-after-passenger-refuses-stop-breaking-wind-flight-1662146

    Can one just refuse? “I am a superior being. I shall not allow further noxious gases to issue forth?”

    No one tell Mrs. Mongo.

    Yes, it is possible. Or, you could just be a woman. We don’t do that.

    I’ve always wondered about that.

    • #30
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