Travels with Brendo - IFF Boston
Oh dear reader - thank you for your patience as I have been using this space almost exclusively to sound the horn about the Boston premiere of my film TALLYWACKER. Your patience is noted and most appreciated. As you may have gathered, I was a little excited about a hometown screening. But first, I had to get there…
May 1st 7pm Pacific
I started the journey at the always breezy Burbank airport. Burbank is incredible - it’s almost never busy and practically walking distance from my apartment. What could go wrong? I was ready for my JetBlue red-eye flight to New York followed by a quick jump to Boston. It was going to be easy! I scoffed that anything could go wrong. Scoffed, I say!
When I arrived, the flight was delayed by about 90 minutes, but it was a red-eye! Who cares, right? I was cautiously optimistic the journey would go great!
90 minutes turned into 3 hours. I was getting a little annoyed that I wouldn’t make my connection from JFK to Boston, but it wasn’t a big deal. JFK had flights to Boston every hour. It was going to be fiiiiiine. I didn’t even get too rattled when I finally got on the plane (around 11:30pm) and discovered that the plane had a ridiculous name.
But I put my pun-based prejudices aside and decided to find the whole thing charming. I settled in for a 4 and a half hour sleepless flight (I never sleep on planes and anyone who can is a weirdo android), but I was still optimistic! Cautiously! I was going home to Boston for a film screening at my hometown fest! Life was good!
About 90 minutes into the flight, Captain Bummer got over the loudspeaker: “Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately the lavatories aren’t working so we need to divert this flight to Albuquerque to get them fixed. We have a crew on the ground ready to get to work, so hopefully we will get those fixed quickly and be up in the air and to New York.”
My cautious optimism started to wane. This wasn’t great. Still - they might fix the bathrooms and it can be a minor detour. Right? So… we landed in Albuquerque and sat on the plane while the crew tried to fix the bathrooms that wouldn’t flush. And sat. And sat. And sat. Until…
May 2 4:30am
After sitting in the plane for almost three hours and (of course) using the non-flushing toilets like a Coachella port-a-potty anyway, Captain Dumbdecision informed us that they could not in fact fix the bathrooms. What a shock, eh? We were told that our bags were headed to the carousel and we should kindly get the fuck off the plane where JetBlue agents would help us rebook. A few questions may be coming up for you:
Question 1: “Wait - you waited on the ground and used the non-flushing bathrooms for almost four hours. If you had done the same thing and kept flying, wouldn’t you have ended up in New York?” Why yes! Yes we would have!
Question 2: “So when the captain said there were JetBlue agents there to help you rebook, he couldn’t have been outright lying, could he?” Why yes! Yes he could! After a while, a JetBlue agent showed up at the desk, but she made it clear that she was just there to ‘assist’ and couldn’t rebook us. We had to rebook over the phone or on the website. I suspected she didn’t have a full comprehension of what the word “assist” meant. I decided to go to the carousel and get my bag so I could rebook with another airline. Which led me to…
Question 3: “How long can it possibly take to get bags from a plane to a carousel in a small airport like Albuquerque?” As it turns out, almost two hours! You see, there was no JetBlue crew on the ground at Albuquerque, so there was no one to get the bags to the carousel. We heard rumor that they conscripted one dude from another airline to help out. But it took until…
May 2 6:30am Pacific
Realizing JetBlue was abandoning me like my high school prom date (I still remember Doreen!), I rebooked with United. They had a flight to Houston from which I could get a connection to Boston. Great! The plane to Houston was taking off at 7:30am so I had time! But… my bag hadn’t yet come out of the carousel. My flight to Houston was boarding in 20 minutes. I had been waiting for my bag to arrive. Would it come in time for me to get on the next flight? It was all very exciting!
Just in case, I called JetBlue (remember - there was no one at the airport who was actually helping) to see what I would need to do to forward my bag to Boston. When I finally got a human on the line, I explained the situation about what was going on in Albuquerque.
Her: Can you spell that for me?
Me: You want me to spell Albuquerque?
Her: Can you do that for me?
Me: Not really.
My JetBlue customer service agent apparently didn’t know where Albuquerque was, much less how to get my bag to me from that airport. Not a great start. At this point, my cautious optimism had blown out the door of a mid-air Boeing jet. My oh-so-helpful JetBlue agent put me on hold and then informed me that no, I would have to talk to the airport about forwarding my bag. She just couldn’t help me. It was the final ‘fuck you’ of the journey from JetBlue. It was almost delicious in its callous cruelty. I weirdly respected it.
Miraculously, the baggage carousel started moving about ten minutes before my flight was boarding so I was able to get to my flight to Houston for a connection in Boston. My bag was in my hand! It was an Albuquerque miracle! I was coming home, baby!
May 2 8:30am
I boarded the flight to Houston and threw on my headphones to listen to a podcast about cautious optimism. As I was starting to feel a little better, we heard Captain Doom get on the loudspeaker: “Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately there are severe thunderstorms in Houston and they are stopping all incoming aircraft. We will have at least a two and a half hour delay so we will need to deplane and wait.”
So I got off another plane. In Albuquerque. My cautious optimism was finally brought outside behind the barn and put out of its misery with a sawed off shotgun. I would just live in Albuquerque now. There would be no Boston, no film festival, no reunion with loved ones. But hey… tacos, right? That’s not so bad.
In a last ditch effort to cling on to my former life, I asked the very nice United staff member about possibly maybe getting to Boston some time this century. She informed me that there was a flight to Chicago in about 6 hours. From there, I could get a connecting flight to Boston. Beat down by the vicissitudes of life, I agreed.
May 37th 32:00pm
It was time to sit and wait in the Albuquerque airport! At this point, I hadn’t slept in well over 24 hours. My body was achy and stinkier than usual and my brain was pouring out of my ears. I had gone past the point of being able to distract myself by reading or listening to a podcast. I just sat in the waiting room, creepily staring into the middle distance.
Of course, the flight to Chicago kept getting delayed and delayed and delayed. But it didn’t matter! I managed to sleep a whole 45 minutes or so on the floor of the Albuqurque airport, so I was fresh as a daisy! My cautious optimism was returning. I might get to the Boston screening after all!
The flight to Chicago finally took off and after an uneventful couple hours I landed at O’Hare to learn that I had exactly eight whole minutes to get from Terminal B to Terminal E to catch my connecting flight to Boston. Everyone seated around me was in the same situation - we were all trying to make impossible connections. Most of them had given up and resigned themselves to the fact they’d have to rebook. Not me! I was on 45 minutes of sleep. I was going to catch that plane, damn it!
I ran through the airport like OJ Simpson in a Hertz commercial. I ducked and dodged, tried not to knock people over. I was a sweaty, panting freight train of determination!
Miraculously, I made the flight! I actually yelled “I made it!” and laughed maniacally when I got on the flight. My fellow passengers weren’t as excited as I was. Weirdly, they weren’t psyched about sitting next to a heavy breathing perspiration monster for the rest of the flight. But I didn’t care. I had made it. I was going to Boston for a hometown screening of TALLYWACKER. It was all going to work out! Optimism was no longer cautious! I made it!
Of course, my luggage didn’t make the eight minute run with me. I spent the next 24 hours in the same stinky t-shirt and boxers until they delivered my bag. But still - the harrowing journey was over. It was time for our big screening… which I’ll get into next time! (Come on - you had to know this was going to be a two-parter.)
Boogie Writes is a completely independent endeavor by one hard-working funnyman trying to make his way in the world today (which takes everything you’ve got.) If you like what you read, please subscribe, support, and tell a friend! Also - do you need advice? Of course you do! Send your queries to brendan@brendanboogie.com with “Dear Boogie” in the subject and get some solid or at least passable advice!