Campbell Vertesi

It's 4:25am in Vancouver, and we are at the airport. Bryn and I have a 6:10am flight for Chicago this morning, so we arrived to check in... and discovered one of those dreaded enormous checkin lineups. At 4am no less! This is the line up for the first flights of the day!

The line up isn't moving. They have all of two agents on duty - one tagging bags and one checking people in. There are now 3 United flights leaving in the next hour, and the lineup is still horrendous. There is barely a sliver of a chance that we will get checked in in time to get our flight, after a two hour line up.

This is not the fault of the agents on duty - who can you give priority checkin to? Even if all their flights weren't full on this busy travel day, you're talking about hundreds of travellers leaving within the hour, and two people to process them!

United is not making any friends at this airport today. Least of all this blogger. I will now try to avoid flying this airline again. I'd like to do an out and out boycott, but they are one of the biggest carriers that flies in Canada, so it's hard to stay true to that promise. But I'll certainly pay more money to fly another airline.

Incidentally, when we checked in at Indianapolis, the checkin official told us that United was trying to get rid of employees after the new year. He said they were probably going to make an offer to buy out people's contracts or something, because they had been treating their employees so terribly for the previous few weeks. He was planning to quit if he didn't get an offer by the 1st.

That's fine if United Airlines wants to make life hell for their employees. It's poor ethics, but they will get what they deserve - a wave of quitting employees. They will also get a wave of angry ex-customers. I'm one of them.

update: the flight ended up delayed by an hour so the passengers could get on.  Bryn and I got to run across Chicago O'Hare (literally between the two most distant gates possible in that airport) in 5 minutes to catch our connecting flight. Then the airline lost our bags.  We were thrilled.

<rant>

Comedy is way harder than drama.  I've always found a very natural timing and comfort with comic roles, but the problem comes when I try to actually act in them.  Shocking, but apparently it's possible to have an over-the-top, comic character come from an authentic place inside you.  I would never have known, but for our Opera Characterization class, where I have to do exactly that.  I've been watching my colleagues try it for a month now, and though I can see the positive result, I'm having a helluva time getting it myself.

It's one thing to play a straight man in comedy.  That can be authentic.  But the silly man?  How can you make a caricature like Osmin into an authentic character?

</rant>

Sorry, had to get that off my chest.  Anyone with suggestions on realism in comic characters, please post a comment!