Friday, May 19, 2006

The foolish virgins


Iberia Lounge bar, originally uploaded by farmboyz.

You will recall the gospel story Jesus told about the foolish vrigins and the wise ones? The wise ones kept their "wicks trimmed" so that when the Master arrived, even if in the middle of the night, they'd be ready, and would be brought by him into the wedding feast. The foolish ones became lazy and leisurely, shopping on 72nd street to get just the right sketch book, packing slowly while trying on various T shirts, and finally trusting the word of a taxi driver who said he could get us to JFK in an hour. Two hours later, eventhough we have arrived an hour before departure time, Delta is telling us that they have closed the flight. We have managed to get on an Iberia flight, but at extremely great cost. I cannot even say the number. In fact, I may never again be able to speak that number. The only seats available were business class. And so we are in the Iberia lounge waiting for the flight, and still, we are on stand-by. This is a picture of their open bar which, MarkofKane, did not contain bitters or cherries so I altered our Manhattans by adding Southern Comfort. (Roughing it). I'm pleased to see the number of wine glasses provided, because we may have to down several hundred drinks to recoup the outrageous price of the tickets. Nearby, is a nifty pyramid of perfect apples, each one individually wrapped in cellophane, and the whole Aztectural display spotlit from an amorphous "frozen paper" halogen pendant. We may have to chomp down several thousand of these to recoup the ticket price. Since there are only a hundred or so apples on display, I've set my sights instead on a rather fine Sol Lewitt print outside the mens' room which I'm guessing might fetch on EBAY a bit more than the price of our tickets...maybe.

News. C has just returned from the counter where he was told that the flight has been delayed an hour and a half. He's off to get a massage which is one of the standard LOUNGE amenities. That may give me enough time to cruise the Iberia Lounge Men's Room. Given my hourly rate, in order to recoup the ticket price, I'd have to do...

6 comments:

tornwordo said...

I can't stop grinning. And all for being an hour late. That'll learn ya. I hope that you were able to do at least partial recouping.

dpaste said...

You're taking a two-week vacation to Barcelona. Cry me an f-ing river.

But Delta sucks. They did that to me once on a DOMESTIC flight. At least they put me on a later flight free of charge.

Btw, I want the name of the gym you go to that you mentioned in Mark of Kane's post. Why? Oh, no reason.

Conor Karrel said...

You're not supposed to work on vacation! Hope you guys have a great time and sorry to hear about your flight difficulties, I've been there, it truly sucks.

Mark said...

I think your use of Southern Comfort displays great style and perserverance in the face of a certain on-coming anxiety attack.

I would have just raised the bourbon bottle to my lips and chugged.

XX said...

I'm interested in why you chose that part of The Aeneid. Way back when you started your blog, Eddie asked me to explain the context of "Perge modo" and I offered a feeble explanation of that awful sentence ("...et qua te ducit via dirige gressum"). It's one of those sentences that really just does not need a relative pronoun.
Can you explain the syntax better?

"Move it, go straight." Right?

R J Keefe said...

This is a disgrace and an outrage! I never thought that I would be reading about virgins at Perge Modo!