- American Airlines, are you freaking kidding me? Of all the ideas you’ve hatched to extort money from customers, this might be the most ridiculous and offensive. Charging people for checked bags is bad enough, but attempting to talk passengers into paying extra to sit at the front of coach class and be among the first coach ticket holders to board is a downright farce. The company announced this passenger-gouging ploy, called Express Seats, on Wednesday. The fee for these choice seats begins at $19 and passengers in the first few rows of coach, including the bulkhead seats, will pay an additional fee based on distance, starting at $19 for shorter distances up to $39 for a cross-country itinerary. So besides sitting at the front of coach and presumably deplaning sooner upon arrival, what benefits will there be for wasting $20? Well, passengers who purchase the option will board in the first group of general boarding. Making the seats even less appealing, Express Seats will be available only via the airport self-service check-in machines from 24 hours to 50 minutes before departure for flights in the United States, including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. If the special seats are available for a flight, they will appear on the seat map customers see if they opt to change seats. "Express Seats highlights American's focus on offering customers what they value most," Virasb Vahidi, the airline's chief commercial officer, said in a statement, presumably with a straight face. "This is another great product under the Your Choice program that puts more travel choices in the customer's hands.” If by “great product” you mean “colossal screw job,” then yes, I agree. I concur with Jami Counter, senior director of TripAdvisor flights, when it comes to this idiotic idea. "The Express Seats option is really a way for American Airlines to introduce a new fee that basically charges extra for regular coach seats," he said. Not that I’m ever in favor of paying an airline any more than you absolutely have to, but a better option would seem to be American’s group 1 boarding option for $10 per flight and a Boarding and Flexibility Package, which includes group 1 boarding, a standby option and a discount on flight-change fees, which are also part of the airline’s Your Choice program. While I’m sure this scam will fool a few people and perhaps entice business travelers who aren’t paying for their own airfare anyhow, here’s hoping Express Seats is every bit the failure it deserves to be………
- When your slate of television shows for every successive season sucks even more than the previous one, you have to dig a little deeper and push a little harder to convince people to watch said shows. Maybe you push the limits more when it comes to promoting your programs and perhaps you use sex, shock and awe in excess because if people actually pay attention to the shows themselves, they will soon see how bad they are, how flimsy their premises are, how terrible their acting is and how worthless it is to invest a single minute of their time watching them. That makes the controversy over the CW’s poster promoting its new fall series Nikita so incredibly predictable. The poster, which has been deemed too racy for L.A. shopping center The Grove and other important shopping centers around the country, features star Maggie Q lounging near a machine gun in a long red dress and another image of her lying seductively in a formal chair, clad in a black leather suit that looks a lot like a one-piece bathing suit and allows Maggie Q to show off a massive tattoo on her exposed hip while also brandishing a handgun. I can see where the poster might offend some - the prudes among us - but I also understand that the CW has the single-worst programming schedule every year because they have long since canceled all of the good shows they inherited when the WB and UPN networks merged and gave birth to the bastard offspring that became Dawn Ostroff and the CW. As such, I know that the CW must go further, take bigger risks and be as flashy and stunning as possible to promote its shows because beneath that shiny exterior, all the network has to offer is a bunch of cookie-cutter shows about rich, spoiled kids in New York or southern California, living their privileged lives, partying it up by night and lounging poolside by day. Some variation on that theme seems to be all the CW is capable of these days, which might explain the need to use revealing, sexed-up posters in shopping malls to promote its shows………
- No matter where you are right now and what the weather is like outside your window, today is a beautiful day. Why? Because today is the day the last U.S. brigade combat team in Iraq has left the country, making good on President Barack Obama’s vow to have all U.S. combat troops out of the country by the end of the month and brings us one step closer to the president’s goal of having a maximum of 50,000 troops in the country by September 1. At the moment, there are about 56,000 U.S. troops in the country, according to the U.S. military. The last combat unit out (who I hope turned out the lights) was the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. The last of the unit’s 4,000 members of the unit crossed the border into Kuwait early Thursday. Technically a few of them stayed behind to finish administrative and logistical duties but were scheduled to fly out of Baghdad later Thursday, but for all intents and purposes, we’re outtie when it comes to combat troops in Iraq. The departure of the last few thousands troops was somewhat anticlimactic because much of the brigade departed more than a day ago, but the announcement was delayed for security reasons. This is a day seven years coming, the de facto end to a war that never should have begun from an American perspective. When that Ass Hat in Chief W. led us into an unjustified war in a nation we had no reason to invade, no one imagined it would drag on this long. A war we never should have fought is finally coming to an end, 4,419 American casualties later. All that remains is for an additional 6,000 U.S. troops to leave Iraq to meet Obama's deadline for the end of U.S. combat operations in the country and the beginning of Operation New Dawn. What is Operation New Dawn, you ask? Well, it’s an operation in which the remaining U.S. forces will switch to an advise-and-assist role instead of combat. The departing soldiers stopped to take pictures as they crossed the border and some unfurled an American flag and posed in front of it to commemorate the occasion. Speaking about the unit’s departure in a speech made Wednesday in Columbus, Ohio, where he was attending a Democratic fundraiser, President Obama sounded a triumphant tone. "We're keeping the promise that we've made when I began my campaign for the presidency," Obama said. "By the end of this month ... our combat mission will be over in Iraq." He claimed that more than 90,000 U.S. troops have left Iraq in the past 18 months, which certainly does sound nice. Now, it’s not quite the standing on the deck of a carrier ship with a banner declaring “Mission Accomplished” behind you like Obama’s predecessor engaged in when the war was actually far from over, but it’ll do. "And, consistent with our agreement with the Iraqi government, all of our troops will be out of Iraq by the end of next year," Obama said. From here on out, the State Department will handle many of the responsibilities currently handled by the military, increasing its security contractors from 2,700 to nearly 7,000 and working with diplomats and police trainers in some facilities. To cover the costs, the department has asked for an additional $400 million to cover the costs, which is very bureaucratic of them. Also, they’ve asked the U.S. military to leave behind surveillance systems, about 50 bomb-resistant vehicles and a few dozen UH-60 helicopters, which would be quite the welcoming gift. Ultimately, let’s choose to overlook all of the bureaucratic bullsh*t and just appreciate the magnanimosity of this day………..
- Facebook is at it again, adding something new to its site that will undoubtedly stir up angry sentiments among some users and thrill others. It happens every time Facebook changes anything about the site’s appearance or operation; angry users form Facebook groups and start petitions demanding the reversal of whatever change has just been made. I don’t know what objections will be raised based on the face that Facebook has entered the online check-in world by launching of Facebook Places, which -- similar to services such as Foursquare and Gowalla -- will allow people to use the GPS on their mobile phones to let friends know where they are, but rest assured there will be objections. Interested users can get Facebook Places immediately in the United States through the latest version of Facebook's iPhone app and, for other advanced mobile phones, through the company's site for advanced mobile devices. From Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto, California, word of the new app came down and it has already created quite a buzz in the tech world. To notify friends of their location, all users need to do is tap a "check in" button to see a list of places nearby, then choose the place that matches where they are. "After checking in, your check-in will create a story in your friends' News Feeds [on Facebook] and show up in the Recent Activity section on the page for that place," Places product manager Michael Sharon wrote on Facebook's blog. Facebook executives promise that the app will be useful not only to let friends know where they are, but also to determine a user’s friends are nearby, and to record what they are doing at the location and their thoughts about it. In other words, people will be able to go back and see boring, inane details about your daily existence years from now! And as with photos and videos uploaded to Facebook, users will be able to "tag" any Facebook friends who are with them - but only if the taggers themselves check in to the location, too. Initially, your check-ins will only appear in the news feeds of your friends as a default setting, but you will then be able to winnow that list to specific friends. Facebook hopes to expand Places to other countries and mobile platforms soon and also allow Foursquare, Gowalla and other services enhance their current integration with Facebook. If Places grows at anywhere close to the rate of Foursquare, which made its debut in 2009 at the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, then it is going to be extremely successful by any measure. Still, it will undoubtedly inspire plenty of angry groups and petitions against the app and generate a lot of attention for Facebook in the process………
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