Random Photos Part Four

I am pumped to see Nightcrawler starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo. It is supposed to be amazing.

Jennifer Lawrence made her first red carpet appearance since the hacking occurred.

Jennifer Lopez on her way to a meeting yesterday.

Julianne Moore at the premiere of her new movie.

Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel or reasonable facsimiles of them in New Zealand.

Kathy Griffin runs for the paps to make sure they get her photo.

Richard Branson gets hit on for free tickets from Ashley Tisdale, Jamie Chung and Kellan Lutz.

Karina Smirnoff after being injured during rehearsals for DWTS.

Lindsay Lohan looks pretty healthy here.

Lea Michele looks pretty happy. Must have been her one meal a week.

Always Wear Something To Bed And Kate Winslet Is A Hero

I have always been one of those people who wear something to bed. It does not have to be much, and more often than not because of my drinking, I pass out before I could get all my clothes off anyway, but I believe there should be something. One of the reasons is the real possibility you will have to run out of the house in the middle of the night to either escape a fire or to follow the rabbit leader. Again, drinking plays a big role in my life.

Another reason to is because that way I would not have to spend all day thinking of Richard Branson like this. “It was terrifying for me because my daughter and nephews, nieces, friends were all staying in the house so I just ran, naked, towards the house to try to see if I can, to make sure I can, get people out.”

Yes, that's right, during a fire that destroyed much of Richard Branson's house in the British Virgin Islands, Richard ran from an adjoining property, flapping away to try and save people. Admirable, but by the time he got there everyone was out of the house, including his 90 year old mother who was literally carried out of the house by Kate Winslet. All told there were about 20 people who made it out just fine and were there to greet Sir Richard as he ran up with his Union Jack waving away. I think he just wanted to show Kate Winslet what he had.

The fire was caused by the high winds of Hurricane Irene and reached up to 90 m.p.h

Dear Richard

Dear Richard,

I know it has been awhile since I last wrote, but I have been backpacking the Himalayas and I am sure you were trying to make yourself useful to the royal couple prior to their wedding. I trust they had the good sense to refrain from hiring your airline's catering company for their food. They must have, otherwise I would have already seen the reports of an epidemic of sick wedding guests and gales of laughter of the quality of the food.

Alas, as much as I would like to stop writing you, I just had to drop you a line after what happened to me on my most recent flight. I was transiting through the US on my way to Ghana for a bit of bird watching, and the most remarkable thing happened. I had just rested my weary head and was watching the inflight video system which, you might want to take note, actually works, when right before my eyes, two men suddenly broke into a fistfight. I do enjoy a good round of boxing. I did a little boxing back in my school days Richard. Well, this was new. I had no idea that United Airlines offered live boxing on their flights. Novel idea Richard if I do say so myself. However, one of the men must have broken the rules of the fight because the next thing you know, they are being restrained and the fight is making an emergency landing. As it turns out, the boxing match was not part of the inflight program, although I do think it is a marvelous idea, it seems that one of the men reclined back, and the other man took offense to it. So, a fight ensued and the plane had to make an emergency landing while being escorted by fighter jets. That is a few million dollars down the drain paid for by the American taxpayer.

The Greatest Complaint Letter Ever - Origin Of Dear Richard Letters

Yesterday one of my friends from the UK e-mailed me and asked me why I had not bothered to call since I was in Liverpool. Huh? Then I remembered the Dear Richard letter I wrote. I figured that if someone who reads the site on a regular basis had no idea what the reference point was to the Dear Richard letters then it might be time to post the original letter again. Last January, a man flew on Virgin Airlines and had an awful flight. He wrote the owner, Richard Branson, a letter about his experience and included pictures. Since then, whenever an airline story pops up on my radar, I use his style of writing to discuss the event. Now, his letter from last January, with my set up first.

On a recent flight from Mumbai to London, a man had the opportunity to fly Virgin. As you can tell from the flight, he was irritated about every aspect of the flight. Richard Branson has confirmed that he did call the man and speak with him and thanked him for the comments. I hope maybe he gave the guy a free ticket just for the originality and comedy in the letter. If you don't laugh at least a little when you read this, then you need to close your office door and concentrate. Long, but brilliant.

Dear Mr Branson

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at the hands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it:
I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in:I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn’t custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.

I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.

Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this:
Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.

Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.

By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it’s baffling presentation:
It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.

I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.

Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on:
I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel:
Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.

My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations:

Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.

Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.

So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.

As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it’s knees and begging for sustenance.

Yours Sincererly

XXXX

Dear Richard

Dear Richard,

How are you dear boy? I feel like it has been an age since I last sat down to write you a letter. Alas, it has also been an age since the last time I was on your airline and for that I could not be more pleased. As you know it was a bank holiday weekend in the UK this past weekend so as is my custom I decided to take a quick jaunt down to the Continent. You know, just to check on the state of things. I settled on Germany because it has been awhile and I do so love a good wurst. Do you love wurst Richard? Fantastic. A little sauerkraut and some beer and all is good with the world. Nicht wahr?

Anyway, as I was departing I happened to bump into two women that were traveling like me from Liverpool to Germany. They had with them a man who was in a wheelchair. They told me he was 91. He had on the nicest pair of sunglasses and so I asked him where he had got them. No answer. The women told me he was sleeping. But they knew where he had purchased the sunglasses so all was right with the world. I attempted to keep chatting them up about things to do in Germany and places to eat but they didn't seem interested. They kept looking around nervously as if they were hiding something. My questions still didn't get anything from the man either. Well, the women finally got to the front of the check in line and the customer service people started to ask the man questions and he wouldn't answer them either.

Well, the customer service people said they needed to talk to him. As it turns out Richard, that was going to be very tough to do because the man was dead. That's right. He must have eaten some of your airline's cooking on the way to the UK because he was deader than a doornail. I had never seen anything like it. Well, that is not really honest of me now is it. I did see it in Weekend At Bernie's 2 which your airline said was a "new release." Lovely.

Dear Richard

Dear Richard,

How have you been my old friend? Well, not exactly an old friend or even a new friend, but how are you just the same? I heard space tourism isn’t doing as well as you had hoped. Does this mean you will be refocusing your efforts towards better service or entertainment for your passengers on Virgin? Might I suggest something which I saw this past weekend on an Air India flight I took from Sharjah to Delhi.

I know, I know it isn't the route one normally takes Richard, but I was feeling a bit plucky and said, "why not?" Oh, and I am ever so grateful I did Richard.

As you know Richard I have a fondness for Indian food and Bollywood cinema and so was looking forward to the inflight entertainment program. Imagine my surprise when the crew decided to perform live theatre right before our eyes. It was heaven. It started off with a flight attendant going forward to the cockpit where she was struck by one of the pilots and then shoved through the door back into the passengers. It almost looked real. Then the purser on the flight confronted the officer who pushed the flight attendant and at that point both pilot came out of the cockpit and began punching and fighting with the purser and some of the other crew.

It was tremendous. Of course no one was flying the plane, but Richard, oh Richard the passengers were enthralled. This was entertainment involving everyone. Well, at that point the entire crew took a short break for intermission as we had a stopover in Lucknow.

Lucky for the passengers who embarked in Lucknow they got to see Act 2 of this production as the crew decided that another round of yelling and fighting was needed to give the passengers value for their airline dollar. Fantastic Richard. It was I daresay a production that will be unmatched. It isn’t often you get both the pilot and co-pilot out of the cockpit at the same time to engage in something like that. Oh, sure there were some screams from the passengers when they realized no one was flying the plane holding 300 people, but those who recognized the good entertainment value like myself simply applauded and shouted, “Bravo,” asking for more.

The reviews must have been poor though Richard because the plane was met by Air India personnel and the crew were all suspended pending an investigation. Oh sure they could have drawn more blood or raised the tension up a few more notches, but for live, in-flight entertainment from amateurs I think it was splendid.

Dear Richard

Dear Richard,

I may have been to quick to swear off your airline for good. On Tuesday I found myself flying from Charlotte to Los Angeles on US Airways. I had just started enjoying my complimentary snack pack filled with six bagel looking chips and two pretzels when a man in the back row of the plane suddenly got up. Nothing unusual about this except for the man was wearing no clothes.

Now, this was entertainment. You should take note that a live production on a plane is much more exciting than the drivel you call in flight programming. The man proceeded to walk up and down the aisle displaying his, well, you get the idea. While this was happening, a medical emergency was happening in a different part of the plane. This was exciting. At first I thought they were having one of those mystery games and all the passengers were involved. You do know how I love theatre in the round Richard.

So, with the medical emergency in one part of the plane and our free love passenger bounding back and forth, there was just one flight attendant to deal with our naked passenger/actor. She tried to cover him with a blanket but he would have none of it. Much the same way as I run from your food he ran away from the blanket and the flight attendant didn't seem keen on making a second go.

Then, like a flash two undercover air marshals were on him. I must say Richard that I almost let out a rather undignified yelp. This was good. How come you can't arrange for this kind of show on your planes? It isn't like you are focusing on any other aspect of customer service. After the men wrapped him with a blanket and secured him to a seat, the medical emergency was dealt with and a diversion was necessary.

The flight diverted to Albuquerque which is a lovely city Richard. You really should visit. I hear they have a wonderful hot air balloon festival and we know how much hot air you posses. A perfect match for you I dare say.

Alas, our time was short in the city and soon we were on our way to Los Angeles. I will be there for several days before flying back to London. I see that you have non-stops from Los Angeles to London. I'm not sure my stomach or my mind can handle it, but perhaps I will give you another chance.

Complaint Letter Update

Thanks to everyone who wrote, e-mailed, commented or otherwise informed me about the offer from Virgin to the writer of the world's greatest complaint letter. If you have not read the letter you can click here.

Meanwhile, FOX News is reporting that the author of the letter has been given the opportunity to sample food for Virgin whenever they test new meals at the catering company. The author of the letter has not decided whether he will accept. But, if he does, I can assure you there will be no peas in the dessert. "Richard. Do you hear me Richard?"