The problem with airplanes — and travel in general — is that once I'm on one, I never actually want to do the things I think I'm going to want to do beforehand. I thoughtfully loaded my iPod with eight hours of un-listened Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! and This American Life episodes, and the new Gossip album: The device stays in my pocket. I schlepped my laptop aboard with a full battery: I will not open it. I brought 2666, intending to finally read it: I won't. The problem with in-flight movies is that they suck, and they let you concentrate on just how uncomfortable your seat is. The problem with novels is eyescratch. The problem with looking at a screen is looking at a screen. On a plane, I always need something else, and I never know what it is. It's a difficult task for any media to successfully anticipate — and meet — needs you can't name.

Which is why inflight magazines can be truly dismal, generally because they mistake their subject for "travel" in the narrow, genre sense of the word: tedious evergreen stories about A New Resort On An Island I Will Never Visit, Which Nonetheless Seems Very Similar To Numerous Islands Featured In Other Travel Stories I Have Read. How many times have you read the One Night In Prague story?

Or, mindful of ad pages, they hawk pages' worth of overpriced gadgets that are uninteresting mainly for being comparatively less ridiculous than the overpriced gadgets in SkyMall. (Oh, how many hours I have killed with SkyMall and its kitchen bench automatic stainless steel tomato pots.) That and somebody always fills in half the crossword, in ballpoint, and then gives up.

But if you think about it, the in-flight magazine — done right — has the potential to publish only really fascinating, enlightening writing: the world is its topic, and after all, it has a kind of captive audience. United's Hemispheres starts each issue off with Dispatches, a Talk Of The Town-ish section that runs story-lets on the things you didn't even know you never knew about: Josephine Baker's 15th Century mansion in the French countryside. Old men who take up positions outside of Wrigley Field in the hopes of catching stray balls. A terrible London musical about Ernest Hemingway's suicide. Then there are the features, like the one I read yesterday about a man who's hunting for Solomon Guggenheim's lost silver. Writer Rachel Sturtz even scored a rare audience with the street artist JR, and produced a wonderful profile of him. So what if there are a few too many pictures of $300 stereos and the occasional bullshit puff piece mars the lineup: this thing made out of paper and glue keeps me awake, and makes me learn things I didn't know before.

I think inflight magazines can achieve this kind of greatness because they are not gendered. They therefore avoid both the mannered meta inanities of Esquire, and the thick-headed condescension of Vogue. These are general publications, forced to at least attempt to interest an audience that comprises anyone who travels by air, for any reason. It never occurred to me before, but the artificial sensory deprivation chamber that is the jet plane might just provide a better opportunity than anywhere else for appreciating the printed word.

Yesterday, when I realized I'd get to read a different issue of Hemispheres than the one that was on the planes I took to New Zealand last month, I actually got a little bit excited. I haven't felt that way about reading a women's magazine in years — even though those are significantly easier to acquire on the newsstand.

Hemispheres [Official Site]
The Worst Celebrity Profile Ever Written? [Slate]

Photographer Publishes Plight Of Women Worldwide
Reluctant Esquire Writer Admits That New "Sexiest Woman Alive" Is A Series Of Pretty Parts
Vogue: There Are Dumber Things To Read This Weekend, But At Least 'Baldo' Has A 10% Chance Of Being Funny

I love European travel, but my girlfriend has travel restrictions outside the United States for at least one more year...I really like her, but this is causing me some resentment; she hinted that she's okay with my traveling by myself — but in a passive-aggressive manner, I suspect. Any words of wisdom?

Dorthy Parker:
"You overestimate your appeal/
She'll pack your bags with joyful zeal."

Ernest Hemingway: This is why God made French whores. And Spanish whores. I'm forgetting some whores.

Casanova: That's what we call a "business trip."

Emily Dickinson: What is this "travel" of which you speak?

Lizzie Borden: What is this "passive aggression" of which you speak?

Joseph McCarthy: "Travel restrictions?" And what are these "European" countries you're so very eager to visit?

Abelard: So, you "love" travel and "like" this woman? Enduring Love: ur doin it rong. [translated from the Latin.]

Isak Dinesen: I disagree. This is curtailing your ability to travel? End it.

George M. Cohan: Wait, why would you want to leave the GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD? [Dances.]

Marie Antoinette: Travel restrictions? I don't understand. You just call a carriage, nicht wahr?

Alfred Dreyfus: Don't talk to me about resentment, Monsieur.

Sir Thomas More: What do you mean, "hinted?"

Ernest Hemingway: Remembered! Cuban whores.

Jack Kerouac: Fuck the government.

CAROLYN HAX [Washington Post]

Earlier: How Do I Tell Everyone That This Guy Died Of Prostate Cancer Because He Was An Adulterer?
"My Marriage Is Falling Apart Because I'm A Mac, And He's A PC."
What To Do When You're In Love With Your Sister's Widower?
"How Do I Keep My Sullen Daughter From Alienating My Wealthy Boyfriend?"

The John Edwards sex tape, or Tina Brown calling his dying fucking wife a crazy media whore?

Beholding the gross emails your husband sent to one woman, or to fucking five? The fact of the cheating, or the fact of him being an entirely different person in his emails to some woman sitting on the fucking beach reading fucking Alan Greenspan as the late capitalism he created implodes on itself who then has the audacity to call the hacking of her Hotmail account an "evil act" like, yeah, the invasion of your privacy is up there with North Korean labor prison! Or wait, the part where he blames it all on the fact that his wife had actually achieved shit in her life in contrast to his unemployed Stepford mother and her full fucking tank of light sweet crude "unconditional love," or how he used to work for Goldman Sachs, or the part where some cheesy ditz whose idea of banter is "You are so hot" also was not only the actual girlfriend but fucking muse of a celebrated American writer, and speaking of celebrated writers, what about how Dexter Filkins' ex-wife thanks him profusely and generously in the acknowledgements of her book when he was probably lying about not cheating on her because that is what men do but also there are about 976 names that come before hers in the acknowledgments of The Forever War?

Which is all by way of saying: look, if it is true that "the person who is brutally honest enjoys the brutality quite as much as the honesty, possibly more," as I read some witty dead person quoted by someone in my Facebook newsfeed the other day, then maybe it's just because we've had to learn to love the brutality. At least it is a little less insulting to our intelligence, right? And if a loved one's petty brutality gets your email posted to this blog, a Pyrrhic victory is the only kind you can really hope for with most dudes, right?

Which brings me finally to William* and Stephanie (also a pseudonym) who met in a class called "Shakespeare and Plutarch" - so she knew what she was getting into (and she never meant to get into it) - and one night about four years later got really drunk and woke up dating. They made big plans to move to New York and work in publishing (good thing it is so hard to be a pompous delusional alcohol-abusing permadolescent in this town!) but he fucked that up when he came in one night about four months in and refused to discuss what he'd been doing, which was Stephanie's "friend." William is still in Minneapolis according to MySpace, where she found the below a few afternoons later:

—-—-—-—-—-— Original Message —-—-—-—-—--
From: Myles na gCopaleen [Seriously dude? -Ed.]
Date: Apr 16, 2007 5:17 PM

Stephanie,

I haven't known what to say for too long already. But I did want to give you some air, some space from the bullshit. But let me say I'm not an insincere person. Despite the baldest lies, my feelings for you aren't phony, and so I'm sorry that I've shattered your trust. It was always good to be your companion and your lover and I care about you a lot. I'm sorry I wasn't honest about my need for non-monogamy, not to mention the times I flirted with it in your presence. I wanted things to stay as they were between us while I dated casually, which is naïve at best. That is, I wanted to date without anyone coming between us. Not being naïve, I was trying to keep what we had (which was almost all lovely) separate from ‘complicating' people. I didn't want to compete for you with others, and I didn't want you to feel like you had to compete for me. So I became a hider and a liar by degrees.

This isn't foreign to me, obviously. I've never completely broken from the cycle of behavior that formed in my teenage years with my parents, which consisted of intermittent rebellions in secret, justified as the only means to get what I wanted (and felt I deserved, more or less). Certainly, you're not controlling or smothering like my parents were, yet I still carry a self-justified ‘will to autonomy' that persuades me, ad hoc, to make compromises with honesty. Obviously, the means I use toward my ends nixes any real justification. It's a whole lot of barely-veiled denial.

You have always been generous and I regret that I returned your kindness more in words than actions. And my crankiness compounded by the lack of back massages in your direction. And all the gnarly outgrowths of my failed relationship with elizabeth that I refused to prune.

I miss your wake-up faces and your cheshire smile, sensibility, and rare abilities, if you catch that meaning. and I never felt like I was spending time with you, but sharing it. You've gone through a lot of hell lately and have a lot going for you simultaneously. I may have made it easier before I certainly made it worse; I think we have spark and potential yet, so I hope something can be salvaged. After all, it's springtime and there are walks to be had and picnics to attend to. Water and dappled spots to be found. The cinema, the stage, and this little city we live in. pictures I haven't seen yet. Stories I've already told you. Food to eat and philosophies to bleed. Biking, if I ever get one. I don't expect anything of you, because you obviously have every right to hate my guts and I don't want to fuck up your life. But remember, you were once a cheater too, and more importantly, I really could be part of your life without fucking it up. It's been made manifest that you needn't put up with anything from me so I'm at your mercy. Maybe distinct compromises need to be enunciated. when the time comes, Stephanie, things will be different by necessity and by will and from experience.

Call me, write me anytime, and anything I can do for you, I owe it to you. Not for any obligation, but for you,

-Wm.

*I named him after this guy, obviously.

Also, be sure to add Crap The Blog to your RSS reader because one of the days Georgia and I are going to start updating it regularly, and plus if you have any submissions we have a new email account, crap@jezebel.com for that.

Related: ‘Moveable Feast' Is Recast By Hemingway Grandson [NY Times]

It's long been known that Papa had threatened to cut his mom off if she ever revealed anything about his childhood, and his sister's revelations about their early years explain why: according to Marcelline, their mother Grace was desperate for twin daughters, and despite the 18-month age difference between the kids, carried out the fantasy, holding her daughter back a year so the siblings would be in the same grade, and dressing the children in matching girl's clothes. Oh yeah — she also addressed her son as "Ernestine." To Have and Have Not, indeed. [MentalFloss]

While any novel is better when it considers the perspectives of both men and women, how many examples of classic literature have the reverse problem — that the female characters lack substance and exist only as foils for the men? Any Hemingway novel suffers from this malady; Philip Roth's female characters are a joke and even the more modern Romeos of literary wunderkinds like Ben Kunkel have trouble creating fictional women with any staying power. And yet these novels still manage to get to the pinnacle of the literary pantheon, while any female writer who writes mostly about women and their issues is relegated to the pink ghetto with a fuschia cover and a pair of heels.

And anyway, it's a widely accepted fact that men don't buy books in the first place. Are women more likely to buy something because it's pink? I want to believe that this is untrue, but then again Confessions of a Shopaholic, that carnation-hued mess, was purchased by millions so what do I know?

Weiner Is Talented Enough To Aim Higher [Philadelphia Inquirer via Galley Cat]
'Certain Girls': It's Not A Sure Thing [USA Today]

[Malibu, January 12. Image via Flynet]