As reported here, I had difficulty getting out of Tucson on Friday night. But I was finally able to get home — and hey, my baggage arrived today, so there’s that good news to report too.

After my last post about this travel imbroglio, the airline powers-that-be decided that they didn’t have the necessary equipment on-hand at Tucson airport to fix the plane. So here’s what they did instead:  They canceled my flight. Personally, I don’t care about specific flights or flight numbers — that’s their business — I just want to be on a plane that takes me where I need to go in a reasonable timeframe. But that wasn’t going to be, either:  By the time they could get me to Phoenix, I would have missed my connecting flight. And so would the other 60 or so of us who were going to be on this little cloudhopper of a plane. So then they decided this:

They would BUS us to Phoenix.

Here’s what I posted on my Facebook wall: OK, the plane is worse-off than thought. Now they’re going to BUS us to Phoenix. Welcome to the 1940s. Best response from a Facebook friend, courtesy of my friend Alan in San Diego:  “How William Inge.”

And y’know what? I was still fine with that. Again, not delighted, but not upset — hey, planes malfunction. I get it. By all means, fix it. But then the gate agent did some funny things:

1. The “bus” became “a series of shuttles,” each of which “holds nine people.” And it didn’t sound like I was going to be one of those nine people, because:
2. He read out a litany of canceled destinations those   shuttles would be servicing, and while it was a long list, it somehow didn’t include Burbank, and because:
3. When I asked about this, he said, “You never know. Maybe some of these people with tickets have already given up, and we’ll be able to get you on a shuttle. Just hang out.”

That was the point at which I called the client whose travel agency had booked me on the flight. Once he understood my situation, he called me back almost instantaneously (thank you!) to say that I was now on a United flight headed to Los Angeles. I walked two gates over and picked up a boarding pass from the friendly and rather more competent-seeming gate agent at United.

But first I asked USAirways about my baggage. I don’t like to check bags — I make a point of traveling with two carry-ons:  my laptop bag and a small rolling suitcase — but for this trip I’d had to check the suitcase because I had to carry on an LCD projector. I also checked the Bose speakers that go with it. For the fee of $110 roundtrip. The USAirways gate agent told me that my baggage was already on a plane, to Burbank. So I got on my new flight, to Los Angeles, and when I disembarked there I shared a cab back to the Burbank airport with another inconvenienced passenger who was supposed to be on my flight, an executive from Hilton. She bemoaned how much worse air travel had become, and wished it would go back the way it was 10 years ago. Here’s what I told her:

Forget it. The good old days aren’t coming back. Real or imagined, the threat of terrorism has thrown major maddening slowdowns in the way of getting onto a plane. But the bigger problem is the airline price war. We’ve all enjoyed the lower fares, but we’re paying the price in other ways:  in airlines that purposely overbook (it’s cheaper to provide a voucher or two than have a plane lift off with open seats), that don’t feed  you, that don’t offer enough gate agents, that don’t stock enough spare parts, that charge to take luggage.

And it’s not just the airlines:  It’s Home Depot (good luck finding customer service or help of any kind); it’s deteriorating roads and bridges (because we don’t have enough tax revenue to maintain them); it’s failing schools (here in Los Angeles the school district and the teachers just agreed to cut another week off the school year as a budget-saving device because the state is, again, “borrowing” education funding); it’s your credit card company (charging higher fees for shorter due dates). It’s everywhere. And we’ve allowed it. We’re not mad enough. In fact, even at the end of this, I somehow couldn’t summon the high dudgeon some small part of my brain told me I was entitled to. No, I expected bad service. I expected that they wouldn’t get me on another flight in time, and I certainly expected my checked bags — which I paid $110 to check — not to arrive Friday night, no matter what they told me. And I was right:  They arrived today, Sunday. Friday night what I got was a phone call:  “Hello, this is Tucson airport. Um… we seem to still have your bags here from a canceled flight…?”  In other words — no, the bags were not already loaded onto the plane, as the gate agent had said.

What finally — finally — pissed me off? When the baggage agent in Burbank told me no, they couldn’t deliver them — I’d have to come pick them up. It made no difference when I pointed out that it would cost me up to $30 to park at the airport to “run in” to get them. Evidently, delivery of your bags when they’ve fucked up is another service they’ve cut.

Neil Gaiman on what it’s like to be a relative nobody at the Oscars.

I know:  It looks like a bowl of snot. But actually, it was one of the tastiest things I’ve eaten in quite a while. This is the dish of escargot, served with gorgonzola cheese and artichoke, with a toasted crust, that I consumed Wednesday night in Tucson. I took this photo because my seven-year-old son Dietrich has learned that I like to eat snails and he asks me frequently when I’m going to take him somewhere so he can try them. When these arrived at my table, I thought, “Let me show this kid what he’s in for.” So I texted the image to my household. He still wants to try them. But my wife texted back “Ewwwwwww.”

Sarah Palin is like a parasite that has overtaken the host body of John McCain. He created her, and now he needs her to survive. And in prostrating himself, he’s had to reject everything he once believed in.

I’m awaiting my flight in the Tucson airport, where this message was broadcast:  “Attention, passengers waiting to board Flight 2715. Your aircraft is here, but they have identified a potential tire problem. They are investigating, but we thank you for your patience.”

Whenever something like this happens, I always see people get steamed and fret and stomp around. My thought is always:  “Yes, please — fix it. I don’t want to take off in a broken aircraft.”

Update:  Just got the next announcement. The mechanics have determined a “need to do a dual tire change.” Our potential delay time? “We’re looking at up to two hours. We’re also looking to see how this will impact connections.”

Guess what? Yes — I have a connecting flight. So I suppose I won’t be joining a bunch of playwright-friends to see “Wit” tonight.

I don’t know if or when Jesus Christ is coming back, but clearly we’re all blessed to have Steve Jobs among us. You know the idolatry has hit a high point when the fact that Steve Jobs sometimes emails customers makes it into the New York Times.

Somehow during the mad scramble for accommodations, the merry men and I were able to once again secure a suite for this year’s Comic-Con International (or, as we older-timers like to call it, “the San Diego Comic Con”). Which means that, this year, there will be more of these small, odd, touchingly humane and sometimes disturbing moments.

By the way, while I am posting these blog posts from an Embassy Suites in Tucson, AZ, I was able to restore internet service to my house before leaving town again. I performed a rigorous inspection of all my systems and identified the problem:  a cable had come loose. I pushed it back in. I only wish I had been able to bill someone $175 or so for that.

Don’t think that’s much of an accomplishment? That’s more than my 18-year-old college kid was able to do in the five days he was home feeling sad without the internet.

Yesterday I emailed Penny in my office to request some changes to this blog — and I just noticed that they’re up.  So now there’s a search box, and there’s an archive by year, and recent comments are previewed. I also asked for a Shelfari feed so everybody can be really impressed by whatever I’m reading at the moment. (Right now:  Profits Aren’t Everything, They’re the Only Thing by George Cloutier; and Creation by Gore Vidal. I’d sure like to put the two authors together in a steel cage match. And also Priceless:  The Myth of Fair Value.) I think she said she’d have to upgrade my WordPress to do that. That upgrade will mean I’ll also be able to use the WordPress iPhone app. I’m hoping it has a feature that allows me to take down Adwords the next time I catch it running ads for a Tea Party candidate on this blog.

I don’t remember the U.S. Census being so openly reviled in the past, but now it seems that no matter where you stand politically, if you fill out your census form it’s like you’re obliging a government conspiracy.

Last week I was visiting a gay couple when the one partner got a call from a gay friend distraught about some series of questions on the census, and my friend was telling him, “No. NO. They do NOT need to know these things about you!” It sounded like a fear of the government knowing you’re gay — even though everyone else in your very gay neighborhood knows. Not being in the situation, I’m not one to judge.

Someone else I know gave this response to “the asinine race question”:  She checked off the box “Some other race” and then wrote in “Lightly tanned.” Granted, once upon a time a lot of people didn’t fit into that form at all (including my friends who are what was once called “mulatto”). But now there are more racial options on that form than ever before. I understand the resistance:  I don’t like being categorized either. Some people claim that if “communities” are under-represented, then there are fewer programs directed to them. Maybe. But starting with my college applications I always checked “Native American” — after all, I was born in New Jersey — and I never got a single grant or scholarship.