Didja see Sunday's "Mad Men" episode? Remember that scene where the Sterling Cooperites are huddled around the transistor radio, learning that an American Airlines plane has crashed into Jamaica Bay? And then, about a minute later, people are cracking jokes about it? Kinda made you think about Howard Stern (see below) moments in your own sad life, didn't it?
Well, try not to laugh too loud when you read this news story out of Canada. Seems that Greyhound up there was running a billboard campaign to encourage young people to take the bus and ... oh dear.
By the way, speaking of Howard Stern, he's been hounded by that Air Florida bit he did ever since he did it. Problem was, in the most persistent version of the story, Stern actually dialed up the airline and asked to buy a ticket from D.C.'s National Airport to the 14th Street Bridge. It probably goes back to this PEOPLE magazine profile dated October 22, 1984, where the article writer screwed up by saying Stern "tried to call the airline" -- Stern and other sources contend, plausibly, that all he did was pretend to call the airline. Anyway, there's a passage in that story where Howard does a pretty good job explaining why he did what he did:
"I was incensed because they let a plane go up with ice on its wings," Stern explains. "People said I showed a lack of sympathy for the people who died. It was completely the opposite. Out of satire comes maybe some social action. I've done a lot worse than that in terms of tastelessness."
We may never know how Stern would handle the Greyhound incident ... he's off this week.
Am I the only one who notices these things?
Toward the end of the Mad Men episode this week, Don Draper is drowning his sorrows after resigning the Mohawk Air account so his company can pitch American Airlines business after their crash at Idlewild.
The song playing in the Asian restaurant during the scene was "Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto. Mr Sakamoto was himself killed in a plane crash in the 1980s.
Posted by: roy | August 06, 2008 at 10:05 AM