Loganized

Desophistication is stuck at BOS-Logan Airport. Our nonstop flight to the other coast--why change planes in a Red State?--is three hours delayed, even though the weather is fine. We're also flying the most understaffed major airline ever, but we saved enough on the ticket to pay for this WiFi connection.

So as a public service, here's our review of Terminal C, Logan International Airport, Boston.

• Terminal C is designed so that most of the shops and restaurants are outside the Security Area, near ticketing & baggage check. The gate concourses have fairly modest amenites (as is the case in most of Logan). We're not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing.
  
• Our present location, "The Sam Adams Brew Pub" in Terminal C, is cheesy and the food is overpriced. In fact, they sell Legal Sea Foods' Clam Chower, but it's more expensive than at Legal's. But it's in a bread boule. (We had Mozzerella sticks, in a futile attempt to relive our high school years spent at Bennigan's.) Worse, it has bad acoustics and no music. The plasma TV screens don't save it.
• Sam drafts are $4.85. We have met far worse prices in airports.
  
• Perhaps we would have been better off at Legal's bar. The Fish & Chips are actually cheaper there (go figure). Perhaps we'll still get there -- did we mention that our departure was delayed *three hours*? But Legal's is, well, Legal's -- it looks like the Oak Room, which has its plusses and minuses, which directly correspond to one's expense account.
  
• Official Red Sox hats are $21.95 throughout the terminal. Must be the standard price.
  
• If you go to Terminal C, remember that the best airport shopping may be behind you. A few of the better souvenir stands are tucked behind the Delta baggage check-ins.
  
• Hudson News is still cool, but I didn't see the Brookstone till it was too late, which is a shame, because they have the best luggage tags and locks (that you can get in an airport). But I would've spent more than necessary there.
• The electronics store seems to have friendly and helpful salesmen, though I don't know if anyone but a pilot would by a PalmPilot in an airport. (The Demo model of the T5 had a program called 'airline log' on it. Or something to that effect.)
• The shops close at about 7pm.
  
• Philadelphia (PHL) Terminals B-C are far superior. Starting with the fact that the Independence Brew Pub is way cool. For that matter, even the overpriced PHL bars at least rock.
  

All in all, Logan Terminal C is satisfactory, maybe a B-, as long as you don't actually have to go to a gate or anything.

UPDATE: inside security: the bar inside the security area seems to have closed at, like 8:30 (as did Legal's, outside of security). We were disappointed. Had we known, we would have had another Sam Boston Lager. This happened to us once at Midway: airport bars close early. We hope the airline comps us a drink. Oh, to be a real lush like Wonkette!

How not to be an Insider

A ray of hope had been declared in the mist of the Clone Wars. In today's Phoenix, Dan Kennedy interviews Atlantic Monthly editor Jack Beatty on great political writing. It's not all historical. As they were musing on Eleanor Roosevelt, Beatty made a prediction:

I think that if we--when we--get a woman president, there will be a self-made aspect to it. I have a candidate: Stephanie Herseth, a congresswoman. She is the female Barack Obama. Shes a 33-year-old South Dakotan who, while Tom Daschle was losing statewide, was winning by six or seven points, and Bush was pulling the state out by 25 points. I've watched her on C-SPAN. She is a political talent. You know how John Edwards just seems to have it? Shes got it.

We agree. One of Herseth's campaign TV-ads from early this year was among the best campaign ads we have ever seen. (And btw you may not know this, but we are academically qualified to judge these things.) We were almost ready to relocate to South Dakota. In the middle of winter.

Also, she's from a small, rural state with a degree from Georgetown. Remind you of anybody?

The Columbia to Cantabrigia Blues

Wonkette's sub notes that there's a big, inside-the-beltway type confab going on today at Harvard. Which we don't think will look anything like the big beltway-type shenanigans we had here in July. Also pessimism has made our city a pretty cold place for this week.

The Wonkette operative notes that "incompetent security at Reagan" can be blamed for several people and a Republican missing their shuttle up here. We would consider that a result rather of the gate agents' surprise and disorientation when a flock Republicans had "Cambridge" stamped on their ticket.

Yes, New York is bad for the GOP.

Drudge Report, NYT, Wonkette, all other media with nothing better to do have been reporting the story that Bush's recently withdrawn Homeland Security nominee, Bernard Kerik, didn't just have a 'nanny problem' (which would be sooo 1994 anyway). He was also having an (extramarital) affair with his publisher, in an apartment near ground zero. Supposedly, it's the value of the real estate that's the real problem.

Is this a real story? Maybe for Republicans, since all the details make it seem like just such a blue-state Affair. We prefer to consider in the context of PTSD: it reminds us that our holiday reading list includes Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures.

His Agent Must Have Had a Good Pitch

So we're back to sports. Pitcher Pedro Martinez is leaving Boston for the New York Mets; the Mets offerred him $52M and a four-year guaranteed contract; the Red Sox had three-year, $40.5M offer on the table. So he took the money and ran. Note: he's already made zillions in Boston.

Most Bostonians are over it already. (After all, it was Curt Schilling's sock that turned red.) For that matter, they got over the midseason trade of Nomah awfully quickly too, especially once the playoffs happened. In the cafes they've been speculating since the ALCS whether Pedro would be back next season. I though it was likely, but close to a 50-50 chance.

The Globe's Dan Shaughnessy--who thinks the Mets made a dumb offer--aptly describes Pedro's primma donna side. But he also waxes nostalgic with some amazing high praise about how great it was to have him in town:

He was smart, fun, and entertaining. He introduced us to a new culture. He made Boston a better place in which to live and he made Fenway a better place in which to play baseball. His talent was infinite. He was a delight. Pedro game days became Fenway festivals.

As for us, it took us a while to notice Pedro, partly because for some time Nomah had more celebrity and partly because we had not yet seen the light, regarding Red Sox Nation as some bizarre and irrational Cult of Depression, a mechanism that pretended to be spring and summer but really the wise could see it was only an extension of winter into an infinite loop. But he's a brilliant pitcher. But how long did it take to beat the curse? At any rate, the fact that Pedro can't exceed seven innings was so painfully obvious at the end of 2003, that we're all ready to move on.

Whether or not a 4-year deal was a smart idea, it seems that the National League game, which expects pinch-hitters after the stretch, will be more accomodating. Also, Pedro is the type of celebrity which New Yorkers are comfortable with. As Donald Trump shows, bigger cities can hold bigger egos.

Holly and Ivy

We're still here--have just been getting in touch with family recipes and insights & revelations from the old school. Also, we're in the end-of-semester crunch, which we secretly love, because life without an end-of-semester crunch is so disorienting. (And yes, we do have firsthand experience of the contra naturalis type of lifestyle where you *don't* either take or give exams every December.)

Ice Age Commentary

Op-ed in today's BG with the UCC's view of the allegedly controversial ad. The overall idea is to raise their profile by extending a welcome. (Gee, so un-American these days). They held focus-groups to find out why people weren't going to church, inviting

Unchurched people (some had once been churched, others had never been) to talk about their experience and/or perception of church. The overwhelming majority expressed negative feelings. claiming that churches (of every ilk) are judgmental, archaic and make you dress and think a certain way.

So the UCC is specifically addressing the view of churchgoing religion generally held by "blue-state voters."

Two other points:
(1) In the current context it seems that the UCC is distinguishing itself most obviously from the RCC. It does so by maintaining that "all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance, or sexual orientation will find a welcome in the church." One wonders how it ever came to this.
(2) It strikes me that in the evangelical red-states, the verb "to church" might be considered suspiciously, er, blue.

Life in the Ice Age, #1

The sun's finally out, everyone's recovered from Sunday's travel delays, and strange controversies are back. The Boston Globe [BG] reports--front page--that CBS and NBC are refusing to air a 'controversial' ad from the United Church of Christ. The spot, "intended to make the point that the Protestant denomination is welcoming, briefly shows two men who are holding hands being turned away from an unnamed church."

So here's how the decision was explained by a CBS official:

Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations, and the fact that the Executive Branch [the Bush Administration] has recently proposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast.

In other words, the network will adjust its broadcast standards (not as the Spirit moves them but) in order to reflect the Admistration's proposals? That is, controversies are generated from the top down: Moreover, we won't let churches talk about exclusion because only the government can talk about exclusion. (!)

I guess it's trivial at this point to note that this is also another instance of up-is-downism, since the ad from the UCC, rather than being a discourse of exclusion, is actually advocating inclusion.