The Lighhouse

On a quiet side street terminating in one of many far North Side Chicago beaches, lies a hidden gem of a dive bar that, if I have anything to say about it, will be a secret no more. In a way I hate to violate the establishment's privacy, but this is the type of place I assumed no longer existed: a humble watering hole where everybody knows your name, or at least your face. No logo adorns a garish awning (in fact the tavern bears no signage at all), no Groupon deals drive hipster masses to the front door in search of the latest special on PBR. In fact, the Lighthouse Tavern, which opened for business in 1923 as a hotel bar inside of of the neighborhood's then-fashionable resorts, doesn't even have a website.

It is more than likely that the bar's owners won't appreciate this modest bit of publicity, but in a City I love that has become, in many ways, gentrified and chain-business occupied to oblivion, I am utterly giddy to discover a little piece of something authentic.

Yelp reviewers can identify with this paradoxical dilemma: to protect or share? David L. writes, "This bar is so cool you almost don't want to tell anyone about it." Denise P. waxes, "No pretenses here.You get eye contact. The best kind. Tracy behind the bar really wants to know if you want water with your libation, sugarmuffin. Billy remembers you have a cat, too. And he knows you like your wine in a rocks glass, not a wine glass. The beauty of The Lighthouse is that everybody pretty much leaves their weekday personas at home."

The Lighthouse had me at its authentic nautical ambiance. I am not talking Red Lobster kitschy flair here folks. I mean antique seafaring tools, photos, maps - remnants of another century in the Windy City's port of the Midwest past. It secured its grip with the well-preserved 1950s-era twin bowler arcade game. And I was completely gone after two hours spent enjoying the most satisfying people-watching exercise in which I have indulged in recent memory.

The Lighthouse answers the question: where did the front line members of Chicago's counterculture movement end up? Turns out, their coordinates can be pinpointed to barstools within the Lighthouse. The scene was Easy Rider meets Hair: tresses were long, unruly and streaked with gray; leather and denim everywhere mixed with the intoxicating aroma of patchouli and whiskey. At approximately 8:00 PM on a Friday night, the nondescript bar of which I had hitherto remained ignorant was crawling with people drunk on shots and nostalgia.

As one of the youngest patrons by far that evening, I enjoyed an outsider's perspective that simultaneously included me in a sustained toast to the good old days, whatever that meant to these people who survived free love, the Civil Rights movement and the administration of Richard J. Daley. I greedily grabbed snatches of conversation that alternated between lucid and soused, nostalgic and bitter. While gulping down cheap wine, I wanted to drink in the collective memory that coursed through the well-kept space.

I have already mentioned that the Lighthouse boasts very little PR infrastructure. I learned of the place like almost everyone who walks through the doors becomes initiated - word of mouth. I have lived in my neighborhood for over two years, consider myself informed and have passed by its door countless times. But I guess I was invited in when I was finally ready to appreciate its special anachronisms. As I come to value my own quirky, anti-establishment character, it seems I have found a new place to unwind.

Republicans: IB Program's Global Citizenship is Irritating

Earlier today I enjoyed Sunday brunch with two high school classmates, Faith and Gary. Gary and I have been inseparable for the better part of 20 years, while Faith and I always kept in touch as we went off to college, started careers, married, reared children (her case), divorced (mine) and reinvented those careers (both). The three of us were all part of the prestigious International Baccalaureate (IB) program as secondary school chums. The IB curriculum’s Swiss founders, presciently foretelling the coming of a flat, borderless economic, technical and social planet, engineered the program in 1968 with a goal of helping young people “develop the intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills to live, learn and work in a rapidly globalizing world.” There are 3,318 IB schools in 141 countries.

IB, quite literally, prepares one for the multicultural complexities and rigors of life. There are no lazy U.S.-based educational standards to provide students with a free pass to college. I never worked so hard, with such a sense of reward. On graduation day in June of 1996, I held two diplomas in my hands: one from the Chicago Public School system and one from the IB Program. I knew I had earned both and had the skills to compete with any 18 year-old student from any nation. When I walked onto campus as a freshman at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, no slouch an institution of higher learning by any means, I was floored by the freedom and comparatively undemanding workload I enjoyed.

The goal of the IB Program, per its website, is to put young scholars through a “demanding two-year curriculum leading to final examinations and a qualification that is welcomed by leading universities around the world.” Indeed. I took no less than seven, three-hour long IB exams in subjects ranging from French composition to advanced biology to trigonometry, theory of knowledge and psychology. I completed a 4,000 word extended essay in the subject area of my choosing with the help of a faculty advisor, and satisfied the 100-hour requirements of CAS activities (community service, arts and sports). It was a full and diverse life, in addition to the AP exams, SATs and other milestones of the American high school career.

It’s quite true that with all my extracurriculars, scholastic demands and a steady boyfriend, I didn’t have an abundance of free time. But I lived smack in the middle of the City of Chicago and I didn’t have occasion to fall into any of the Windy City’s urban traps for wayward students either. Between the years of 1992 and 1996 when Gary, Faith and I were enrollees, Lincoln Park High School was the only institution within city limits to sponsor the program. Grade school students from all corners of Chicago prepped for the entrance exams, with immense peer competition for the roughly 120 spots. The program was expected to have a 50 percent attrition rate by the time all IB exams were completed. In other words, half of us were expected to fail.

The Lincoln Park High School of the early 1990s isn’t quite what it is today. Low-income students from nearby Cabrini Green outnumbered WASPy, middle-class types. Gang activity was a daily event and Chicago Police were no strangers to the hallways. Yet as a student of the IB program, there was no time or energy, not even the temptation really, to indulge in drugs, alcohol or violent pursuits. I simply had too much riding on my day-to-day effort. I came from a broken home and the IB program, quite frankly, was my ticket out. If my resolve should wobble, I need only remind myself the dropout halflife experienced by my non-IB counterparts.

All things considered and precociously exacting as my teen years were, it was the best situation in which I could have found myself, especially when set in relief against the structure-free, violently unpredictable, toxic environment of my family life. Academics and the other requirements of the IB program were an escape, one that required me to think broadly and forwardly with a clear-head.

Within this general and personal context, who on the planet could view the IB program through the prism of sinister anarchy and unpatriotic indoctrination? Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota), the Tea Party’s poster crackpot.

Back to brunch with Faith and Gary. Faith mentioned in passing that Ms. Bachmann had publicly decried the program this past summer as a force undermining American unity. I took the Internet upon my return home and found the following explanation from Mother Jones magazine: [Bachmann and other] “right-wing critics argued that IBO was quietly weaning kids off the antiquated notion of national sovereignty and American ideals and pushing them to become world citizens. (This, among other reasons, is why conservatives were so irked by Obama's statement that he considers himself a ‘citizen of the world’). IBO students would be taught to revere the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and embrace a doctrine of moral relativism that values gay rights, redistribution of wealth, and the notion that the earth itself is a living organism.”

Well we can’t have that now, can we? If American students are to continue their competitive decline and complete their transformation into the ignorant, distracted sheep so valued by Big Business, Big Banks, Big Oil and a corrupt U.S. government, better to keep them away from lofty, radical notions that we’ve only got one race and one planet to protect.

American Community Onlooker

For my first blog post of 2012, I would like to share the story of a woman who nurtured a late-2011 resolve to feel more even keel about life as a mid-30s divorcee. A wizened chick who had directed much of her considerable energy to achieving independence and a thriving media career, despite tremendous emotional and other personal costs. A gal who had finally started to come to terms with her circumstances and comprehend that though we don’t always live the existence we imagined, there is a way to learn to love the universe you have created.

That is until the American Community Survey showed up in the mailbox to remind her just how footloose and unattached life really is, and how frayed from the nation’s social fabric this renders her. Leave it to the Census Bureau to create revulsion and anxiety even in a year that doesn’t end in “0.”

Though the Bureau states on its website that the ACS is issued annually, I had never been selected as a respondent. Being a curious individual and a journalist by trade, I went looking for information. This is what I found:

“[The ACS is oriented around] giving communities the current information they need to plan investments and services. Information from the survey generates data that help determine how more than $400 billion in federal and state funds are distributed each year…All this detail is combined into statistics that are used to help decide everything from school lunch programs to new hospitals.”

Well that all sounds good and I am nothing if not a civic-minded person. I love my community (the Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park) and will do gladly do anything I can to better it. Naturally however, I wondered how I came to be selected to complete the survey. I learned I was chosen “as a part of a sample and represents thousands of other households like yours. We randomly select about 3 million addresses each year to participate in the survey.”

I have only lived in my studio apartment for eight months. I happen to know from mail forwarding mishaps that the previous occupants were a married couple. As I sat down to provide the requested survey information, I realized with irony that the Census Bureau may have been coveting the information of the stable ones who came before me.

The survey began benignly enough: questions about birthdate, hometown, occupation, race and income. Standard stuff. But since the well-meaning folks at the ACS plan to use the cumulative data to plan educational resources and other bedrock elements of society, naturally the queries began to get more personal and for me, uncomfortable.

17b. “Is this person blind or does he/she have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses.”

Ok, well I am pretty damned near-sighted (20/1100 vision), but I am not ready for a service dog yet. Let’s continue.

34. “How many minutes did it usually take this person to get from home to work LAST WEEK.”

Please don’t ask me why the last two words are in caps. I am not omniscient. Maybe corporate headquarters move around sometimes like magic? Anyway, I leave my apartment at 6:05 AM and arrive at the office at 8:20. Thanks ACS, I love my work but after seeing the numbers in such stark terms, I am officially depressed about my commute. What’s next?

20. “What is this person’s marital status?”

Fine, it stings, but this is an easy one: divorced.

22. “How many times has this person been married?”

Um, I think I need to open a bottle of wine while I finish this.

23. “In what year did this person last get married?”

How in the world is this important information? Obviously I am divorced. How does it help the community to know when the long process of failure began?

24a. “Has this person given birth to children in the past 12 months?”

No.

24b. “Ever?”

Xanax please. Am I on Candid Camera? Again how does my barren womb aid the neighborhood? Does this open more early childcare spots for families in need if the federal government is reasonably certain that no offspring of mine will ever require one? Just tell me what the endgame is here so I feel slightly better about recording my solitude and loneliness for posterity.

I think you get the picture right? As a dyed in the wool social liberal I want to do everything possible to benefit my fellow citizens. But come on Census Bureau, have a heart. It’s a new year and some of us are trying to convince ourselves that a life without attachments is uplifting and full of promise, rather than empty and simply a matter of counting the days until we become society’s burden.

Come to think of it, maybe those rascals at the ACS are attempting to ascertain when single “households like” mine will be in need of Social Security benefits and a public retirement home. Or perhaps this survey was placed in my hands a true test of my ability to accept myself and my life choices.

Survey says?

Dating Discoveries

Clearly when I wrote this post on October 18^th, I was a little premature in declaring myself “back” to the blogosphere. Trying to manage a full-time job, part-time position and a seat on a woman’s journalism board has wreaked a little havoc on the intervals and desire for pursuing personal writing projects. This is not a complaint. A year ago, I was an unemployed author wondering if I would ever be able to provide for myself. I have been blessed this year with a number of opportunities to do just that.

At the same time, finalizing a divorce and attempting to figure out my new, unanchored place in the world has borrowed a significant amount of emotional bandwidth. As all of us creative types can attest, writing is a physically and spiritually exhausting activity. If you come to the table drained already, your finished product will reflect it. With that disclaimer in mind, consider yourself warned. I am one rusty blogger.

Anyway, that accounts for my intermittent presence, but I am here today to talk about the life of the singleton. As strange as it sounds, at the age of 33, I am experiencing the world of casual dating for the first time. Historically, I have been what they call a serial monogamist. Since the age of 16, with only sporadic periods of solitude, I have been in one committed relationship after another. Until April of this year, I never lived alone.

The impact of facing the world without a reliable mate and someone to come home to has been jarring and uncomfortable in some ways, refreshing and enlightening in others. The bottom line is that by keeping myself aligned with another for most of my life, I failed in my due diligence to get to know Becky. For better or worse, I’m forcing the issue now. I’m going through a delayed adolescence at warp speed.

Since the middle of this past summer, I have been on some dates and experienced a couple of short term relationships. Some of these situations ended with unpleasant resolutions, but not one of them has been a wasted experience. Here are a few takeways thus far:

1. I am more traditional in my approach than I believed.

I am a capable, independent woman who enjoys her freedom but that doesn’t mean I don’t get all warm inside if a man inflates the tires of my bike, fixes my loose shower head (no, that is not a euphemism – get your minds out of the gutter) or opens doors for me. Initially, I took my attraction to these behaviors as an appalling sign of weakness. I have since come to recognize that after a lifetime spent putting my own needs last, there’s nothing wrong with indulging a little TLC.

2. If a man over 40 only communicates with you via text message and makes no effort to invite you over, or introduce you to his friends and family, something is probably rotten in Denmark.

At this point, a number of you are probably snorting at my naivete, but I have always been a late bloomer and in keeping with my personal history, I had to learn this one the hard way.

3. If a date embarrasses you in front of your friends or makes demeaning jokes without any attempt to apologize, run like hell.

Once again, I figured this one out through trial and error. People are traditionally at their best at the outset of a relationship and if you encounter this level of disrespect before you’ve opened the closet to have a look at the rest of the skeletons, there’s probably no need to do so.

4. A disappointing number of single men like you to be attractive OR smart, but certainly not both. And don’t dare have a past.

Ok, I confess: I am engaging in gross generalization here, but it’s my personal experience of recent months. I have been out with men who professed to be floored by my intelligence and wit, but balked at the idea of dating a woman who attracts physical attention from other quarters. It made them paranoid and insecure. At the same time, I have had dates who thought I was pretty but wished I would talk far less.

Without fail, the dudes with whom I have stepped out have had some objection or another to one or more of the following: a rough childhood that was certainly not my choice, my conversion of religion away from Christianity, a divorce, a career and life’s work that asks me to expose myself, an aversion to moving to the suburbs and having babies, the number of exes with whom I remain friends. Here’s a newsflash: I am 33. I am not a virgin, nor have I lived in a bubble. You thought it was cool that I was a writer until you realized that was a semi-public profession? Your problem buddy, not mine.

After a very recent breakup and with the approach of the New Year, I am taking a breather from dating. It is, in a word, exhausting. It certainly creates a lot of material for farce and melodrama, but I don’t have the wherewithal for the time being. I suppose for the moment, it’s gratifying enough to realize the opportunities will be there when I want them again.

While I’ve Been Away

I haven’t written or posted a word on this blog in nearly two months. Gratifyingly (however recently), there has been a mini-groundswell amongst my friends and small readership for a return. I find myself with a few spare moments today so I thought I would share, not what I’ve been up to, but why I have been silent so long.

Anyone familiar with the story of my 2011, whether personally or casually, knows it has been an uneven year. I greeted January as an unemployed insomniac, separated from my cherished husband Eddie in March (because you can still love and cherish somebody with your full soul while knowing at the same time that you’re on the wrong path – one of 2011’s cruelest lessons), moved out on my own for the first time in April, underwent surgery for cervical cancer in June, and that’s basically when I left the scene.

A lot has changed since that time, not all of it for the worse. I have my health again. I am scheduled for a six-month checkup in early December, but all signs point to a near-term ability to put that ordeal behind me.

My career, diametrically opposed to my personal life, is thriving. In July I was recruited away from my position as a web writer and project manager at a boutique publishing firm in the North Chicago suburbs – better title, more money and benefits I haven’t enjoyed since leaving the non-profit world in 2009. Yet for all that, happy to be where I was, I initially said “no thank you.” To my great surprise (and eventual gratitude), neither the company nor the hiring manager took my rejection for a finality. So here I am, six weeks on the job as the Senior Manager, Social Media Marketing/Head Writer for a successful home products company. Better yet, my former employer asked me to stay on part-time, so for an additional income, I get to continue doing the real estate and personal finance writing and blogging that I grew to love.

I am expanding my involvement and leadership in the professional organization for which I sit on the board. I have connected with numerous new friends and mentors and am grateful for all I have learned, especially from the positive female presences I have allowed in. In a variety of ways I am forcing myself to branch out and conquer the fear of public speaking that threatens to hold me back.

All of this is good. I am blessed. It wasn’t long ago that I was one of the panicked unemployed, the cuckolded trophy wife who saw her best years slipping away helplessly.

And yet right as my professional fortunes began to turn, as I reclaimed my physical health and learned to live independently of the whims and needs of others, my personal creativity all but dried up. Simply put, I hadn’t the energy or the will to follow politics anymore, chart my personal growth or explore the pop cultural evolution of society. I was busy – certainly a great excuse to punt.

I enjoyed summer, did some traveling, dabbled in dating and actually met someone who taught me a great deal about how I want and deserve to be treated. The relationship didn’t last, as rebounds are typically wont to do, but I am forever grateful to this man. I sort of entered this period where I no longer wanted to think about my actions. I just wanted to act, to live in the moments I had over-planned for too long.

But now it’s mid-fall. I have settled into my new routine and as the end of the year approaches, a pensive mood steals over me again. I am mere weeks from watching the ink dry on my divorce papers, and wonder where I go from there.

Have I made the right decisions?

All along I have followed my socio-political touchstones (the New York Times’ Columnist page, CNN, the work of my fellow writers) and see that the world is continuing to go mad (or perhaps is simply in a cycle of self-correction). What do the holidays bode? What does 2012 portend for our nation, the Western Hemisphere and the world at large?

I can no longer afford to indulge an intellectual sabbatical. So I’m back.

Vacation Becky: The Return of the Honey Badger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg

Vacation Becky is a hell of a lot more fun than Real Life Becky. Ask anyone. Real Life Becky is a bundle of nerves and self-consciousness, confined by typically artificial bonds of to-do lists, worries, overzealous exercising, dietary constraints and fears of aging. Vacation Becky is the absolute antithesis of all that. She is a honey badger (see NFSW video clip above) who does what she wants, worries about no consequence and is the type of bon vivant that typically adds to the entertainment of any group gathering.

I was reminded of how much I enjoy my vacation self, so unlike the real me, this past weekend on a friendly group camping trip to scenic Shelbyville, Illinois – population 5,000. What can a group of citified gal pals and gay men get up to in the still, unmolested country? Quite a lot as it turns out. And as the normally-reticent-come-yes-girl ringleader, I left a certain CoCo Chanel/Anna Nicole Smith imprint of white trash glamour that South Central Illinois will not soon forget.

It all began with breadsticks drowning in a lake of butter and covered in rock salt, not unlike the kind you might find on a Midwestern highway in the depths of January. This was the conclusion of a late Friday afternoon dinner with my traveling companion Laura. As she marveled at the delicious grotesqueness of my wish for more carbs to soak up the excess butter pond, she remarked that this sort of culinary abandon seemed outside of character. This is the moment when I acquainted her with Vacation Becky, and warned her that there was a lot more to follow.

We arrived late Friday evening at our cabin in the woods (for neither Vacation nor Real Life Becky do roughing it very well), to a raucous chorus of already inebriated whoops from the homosexual peanut gallery. We came ready to party with a trunk full of booze and chips (Ah Chili Cheese Fritos! How I love thee!). Picture bonfires, cocktails and inappropriate loud laughing well past the campground’s “quiet hour.”

Over the course of the weekend, Vacation Becky, as also known as CoCo/Anna, put boring Monday-Friday Becky in a headlock and engaged in the following:

1. Wildly shameful flirting with brawny local teen boys.



2. The purchase of a thrift store string bikini (Original tags on of course. Even Vacation Becky is a borderline germaphobe).



3. The eating of newly procured pork rinds right there at the counter of Shelbyville’s local Family Dollar store.



4. Jumping off a pontoon into lake water for the express purposes of peeing.



5. Drinking a bottle and a half of wine on aforementioned pontoon, then passing out for a solid 30 minutes before reviving to finish the rest.



6. Eating thinly vetted fried shrimp and coconut cake at a Sunday breakfast buffet.



7. Looking eminently confident and sexy while engaging in all of the above.

Just who is this wild, adventurous minx who cares nothing for public opinion and how do I incorporate her into my weekday life? Or perhaps it’s better than she is only released from her cage for long weekends and holidays? Maybe Vacation Becky is most safely enjoyed in small doses.

Sucking Air

American Airlines is the nation’s largest carrier, having gobbled up competitors such as TWA in the Aughts, and despite flirting unsuccessfully with the acquisition of US Airways in late 2009. According to Wikipedia, American “is the world's third-largest airline in passenger miles transported, passenger fleet size, and operating revenue.”

As a child growing up in the 1980s, I could sing the airline’s commercial jingle in my sleep, “We’re American Airlines, something special in the air!” A ticket to board an American Airlines flight must have been something magical! When I was a grown-up, I would find out by God!

The company now uses the tagline, “We know why you fly.” However, if my experience of this past weekend is any indication, the carrier must think the purpose of my travels is to experience a frustrating lack of communication and a desire to sleep on the floor of Boston Logan Airport on the eve of my 33^rd birthday.

In other words, to put it academically, American Airlines sucks.

Sunday morning I awoke in my high school chum Euridice’s apartment in Medford, Massachusetts to the soothing sounds of light rain. Though the showers intensified somewhat as we enjoyed a leisurely brunch downtown, followed by some mall walking (insert old fart joke here), I was only minimally concerned about flight delay. There was no accompanying lightening or thunder and though, like Pavlov’s dog, I have been trained to have my time wasted by airport security and airline personnel at the slightest provocation, I expected I would be on my way back home at some hour close to the 6:50 PM scheduled departure.

I arrived at Logan’s Terminal B in plenty of time to check my bag and wade through security procedures, only to discover as I started the self-check-in process that my flight had been cancelled. Five hours earlier. And in a surprise twist, the cancellation was due to equipment failure, rather than Mother Nature.

Let’s get over the fact that I am an American AAdvantage member and the bureaucratic apparatus of the carrier sent me neither email nor phone call nor text to make me aware of this schedule change. Let’s try and sidestep the disheartening news that American had no other flights from Boston to Chicago that evening and that they swore the best they could do was put me on a 2 PM plane the following day.

What really irked me was the mass confusion, poor customer service and utter lack of willingness to issue refunds or assist with accommodations for the night. At 6 PM I was staring down the barrel of having to ring in a birthday, which I already bore a humbug attitude toward, drunk (because really, what else could I do?) and alone on the cold, industrial floor of an East Coast air travel hub. Can you imagine anything more pathetic? No, then how about the scene of weeping mothers and fathers, forced to call their scattered homes to inform children, spouses and parents that they were unable to return, in some cases, before two days following? I haven’t witnessed so much misery first person since my sister Jen finally realized at the age of 10 that there was no Easter Bunny.

As a former corporate travel agent, I was aware that there is but one carrier that does not share its booking system with any of the other major airlines. That is of course Southwest, the only operation that has yet to institute charges for checked bags, the sole provider of air travel who issues comfy leather seats to all passengers without some other bullshit upcharge, and the only company who appears to conduct customer service training for its call center and onsite personnel. It is not by accident that the carrier is one of few that regularly turns a profit. In May 2011, Southwest Airlines was ranked as one of the top ten companies in MSN Money's 2011 Customer Service Hall of Fame, and its flight completion record is currently 98.8 percent as of first quarter 2011.

Why do I highlight all of these distinctions? Because unlike at the American counter, where I and my fellow strandees were treated like gum on the bottom of a shoe and provided zero resources in our time of hardship, after running three terminals over to the Southwest vestibule, I encountered something like human compassion. I had the forethought to book another flight by phone (where I was pointedly wished a “happy birthday” by the friendly rep who assisted me), but was advised to go to the counter afterward to try and get standby on a yet earlier flight. The customer service representative was unable to grab me a seat herself as it was too close to flight time.

Did I mention that this last minute one-way ticket cost me a mere $330? That’s not chump change to a struggling writer, but more than worth it in the long run to get home to my cat Jordan, my work and my life before an additional 24-hours elapsed. Compare this to a figure of $618 for a comparable ticket on American.

Southwest’s flights were delayed that evening, but they did take off. Icing on the cake: the fees for alcoholic beverages were waived once my plane finally taxied off the runway. The flight crew knew we had all suffered enough, were feeling quite cranky and a little liquid calm was bound to make everyone’s experience just a bit less stressful.

At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, I am forced to bemoan the perceptible and lengthy decline of airline service. It’s not just the endless delays, lack of food and nickel and dime surcharges for EVERYTHING. It’s not the increasing invasiveness and dehumanizing effects of airport security, for which the carriers issue yet another fee. It’s that we pay so much, and are hassled so incessantly, for the privilege of being treated like shit and shoehorned into a seat we would deem capital punishment in any other environment.

If I must fly, and at this point, I would prefer Amtrak, or even dare I say it, Greyhound, it won’t be as an American Airlines passenger. Think I am alone in my aversion to the carrier? Check out these links:

1. http://bigfatmarketingblog.com/2009/03/24/american-airlines-sucks-and-im-not-the-only-one-who-says-that/

2. My personal favorite: http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/06/American-Airlines-YOU-SUCK.cfm

3. http://www.travelblog.org/Topics/22463-1.html

4. http://sobeale.blogspot.com/2008/11/american-airlines-sucks.html

Southwest, thank you for making a pretty terrible night just a tiny bit easier to swallow – with a red wine chaser.