Rude Bitches Make Me Tired: Slightly Profane and Entirely Logical Answers to Modern Etiquette Dilemmas (3 page)

Question: Should I attend the funeral of my ex-husband’s father? I always loved the man and I think he loved me, too. I don’t want to make waves, but I’d like to pay my respects.

Unless there is a compelling reason not to go (his widow hates your guts and loves to tell everybody you broke her son’s heart, for instance), I don’t see why not. Don’t try to sit with the family, though. Even if you had kids with your ex, take a discreet seat in the back, listen attentively, cry gently, and remember the good times you shared with this dear man.

Question: So, bottom line—black only at a funeral, or can we finally relax the rules a bit?

I know why you’re asking. You’re just itchin’ to wear that age-inappropriate yellow chiffon maxi dress you bought at Forever 21 the other day at the mall, aren’t you? You really shouldn’t. Not because it’s yellow but because it’s backless. Ick.

Actually, you don’t have to wear black to funerals if you don’t want to. Most mainstream religions are fine with dark colors. The trick is to look respectfully somber. Avoid floral prints and similar silliness. As always, it’s much easier for men: Wear a suit.

In some cases, the obituary provides guidance. A trend of late is to invite attendees to “dress comfortably.” Again, do not take this as a license to wear booty shorts and your favorite Kenny F*&!#ing Powers T-shirt.

Question: What’s with obituaries lately? The other day I, swear to God, saw one in which two adult children were scolded from the grave as “perpetually ungrateful and inattentive.” It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen something like that. Is this a trend?

Could be. Just this week, I saw an obituary for a Charlotte, North Carolina, woman that read much like the one you just described. One child was singled out as “the good one” (also, I’m quite sure, the one who placed the obituary in the newspaper), and another was termed “a tremendous source of heartbreak over the years.” I can’t state strongly enough that this—while compelling reading that makes you call your best friend as soon as you’re sure she’s awake and ask, “Did you read this shit?”—is an abomination.

There’s no way to be sure if this was the wish of the deceased or if it was planted by the Chosen One to tweak his siblings. I hope it was the latter because, frankly, I can’t picture Saint Peter swinging the gates wide for such a mean-spirited old cow, you feel me?

chapter 3

Sky Mauled: How to Survive Airline Travel Without Compromising Your Good Manners

There is perhaps no place on this big blue marble where manners are tromped upon with more frequency and variety than the world of airline travel. Tromp. Tromp. Tromp.

And while I appreciate the importance of homeland security, I do
not
appreciate having my middle-age body scanned in public with less privacy than is afforded at the gynecologist’s office.

The first affront is the public removal of shoes. Ghastly. But do it we must, and I try to put on my “big-girl panties” and quietly submit. (By the by, I’ve flown quite a bit this year, and
all
my panties are big-girl panties because every time I’m in an airport, the Cinnabon staff chases me down, flings me to the ground, and force-feeds a series of buns and crumb cakes into my gullet. Really, they’re quite aggressive. Somebody should do something.)

I’ve finally caught on that slip-on shoes or sandals are far preferable so you don’t end up spending ten minutes on a cold metal folding chair lacing and buckling and so forth. I hate flats and I hate wearing flip-flops anywhere but the beach, but (deep breaths) it’s really the best way.

It’s times like this when I remember my very first flight. It was a family vacation to California in the early ’70s. This was when people still dressed up for airplane travel (think shantung suits for the ladies, pocket squares for the gentlemen) and there was a better-than-average chance that you’d be served a decent hollandaise at some point on the flight. Compare and contrast with the way most people dress for a flight these days: a sweatshirt that simply says
COLLEGE
for the men and, for ladies, anything that has the word
PINK
scrawled on the backside.

Who can blame these fliers? Why dress up when you know you’re going to be wanded, frisked, and essentially felt up in public just to board the plane? My last TSA screening was so intrusive via wand, X-ray, and full-body scan that I called to cancel this year’s mammogram.

During this “violation” segment of preboarding, the old advice to “think of England” comes to mind. But even that doesn’t work, because that would require a transatlantic flight.…

So there you are, barefoot, walking on some disgusting rubber mat behind the sketchy dude with the fungal toes, your body scanned to a fare-thee-well, and now there is still the final indignity: actually boarding the airplane and flying.

Once on board, it’s important to follow a few basic etiquette rules to make things better for your fellow fliers.

• Move briskly to your seat. Do not stand there, clutching your ticket in your sweaty little hand, looking up at the numbers and letters identifying the row and seats as though you honestly don’t know what they mean. You’re a forensic accountant, for God’s sake. Don’t act like you inhaled stupid dust and suddenly can’t decipher these mysterious hieroglyphics overhead. Your seat is 15A. Find it and sit the fuck down so the rest of us can do the same.

• Once you have located your seat, do not spend more than a scant few seconds placing your paraphernalia in the overhead compartment. Do not place your puffy ski jacket or similar clothing into this compartment, because this just confirms what a dick you are. The overhead space is limited (duh) and clothing can easily be smushed under the seat in front of you. Also, always use the compartment near your seat. Do
not
stow your carry-on in the fourth row when you’re seated in the twenty-sixth row. This will lead to embarrassing intercom announcements from the flight attendant asking for the “douche sitting in the back row who placed his crap in the front of the plane” to please retrieve it. Happens all the time.

• Once you sit down, do not try to talk to me. I don’t want to chat. I just want to sit here, reading my magazine and feeling the magic of a well-timed Xanax purr through my frazzled brain. I don’t fly to socialize with strangers. Besides, you forget that I’ve seen your toes.

• I know this may sound silly, but you should try to feign attention when the flight attendant is going through his or her spiel. Of course you know how to fasten a seat belt. But when we’re all bobbing in the waves and you’re wondering how I knew about the whole seat cushion as flotation device thing, I ain’t sharing. You will not be like Leo DiCaprio clinging to the side of my plywood. I will flick you off like a wolf spider. Buh-bye.

• If you have to get up at any time during the flight, use the armrests to hoist your fat ass up and about. Do
not
grab the headrest of the seat in front of you. That is my hair you’re pulling out by the roots. Don’t make me ask the pilot to pull this plane over.

Damn! It’s Crowded up in Here

Now more than ever, airlines are hell-bent to fill every single seat. Gone is the day when you could view your decidedly sucky middle-seat, rear-of-plane assignment as temporary because, once airborne, you could cheerfully upgrade to a better seat, one with a window and without such noxious proximity to the shitter.

You know how you always spend forever waiting at the gate even though it seems that everyone has boarded? The delay is often explained by the dulcet tones of the pilot, who may mention that “we” are waiting for runway clearance
or
for a gate to open up at the destination
or
the ever-popular “weather, yeah, just weather,” but I believe it’s because someone has sent the flight attendants into the terminal to snatch random bodies to fill any empty seats.

I swear on a recent flight to Charlotte they drafted two Quiznos workers and the weird lady in the restroom who expects a dollar for handing you a Kleenex to make sure there wasn’t a single open seat. Done. Flight attendants, please take your seats.

This full-flight-or-bust attitude has created all sorts of discomfort for those of us doomed to sit behind the Recline Monster.

Entitled Recline Monster has paid for his seat and he gets to recline if he wants to. I mean, there’s a recline button right there. If reclining were so rude, wouldn’t they remove that button the same way they sealed up those tiny ashtrays that used to be in the armrest?

Technically, yes. Recline Monster has every right to recline. It’s just incredibly ill-mannered. It’s the same with taking smelly food aboard. The TSA can’t stop you from taking that garlic-and-onion calzone on board even though it smells like an incendiary device. But just because you can do something legally, it doesn’t mean you should.

Recline Monster abruptly reclines all the way for his maximum comfort, sending your laptop into your muffin top and your Sprite every damn where. He careth not a whit. It is all about his needs, which at least momentarily are fulfilled. It is nappy time for Recline Monster. What to do?

First, please don’t do what the pissed-off passenger on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Ghana did recently. Perhaps he had spent months silently seething at various Recline Monsters and he finally snapped. The passenger just hit Recline Monster on the top of his empty head as hard as he could.

Unfortunately, the TSA gets super cranky when one passenger assaults another, so the whole flight had to be canceled and I’m guessing the guy who did the hitting was given major stink eye from the disgruntled passengers having to deplane.

I don’t advise slapping Recline Monster, because violence is never the answer. I do, however, advise a slow, deliberate, and steady kicking of his seatback for the duration of the flight. It’ll drive him nuts, and if he complains, just explain that Dr. Oz said on TV that if you don’t move your legs on a flight, you could develop a deadly blood clot. You can up the ante by mentioning that Dr. Oz was speaking personally, just to you, through the TV, when he said that and you can make your eyes look all googly like a certified crazy person.

I’m guessing, because I am not a “1 percenter,” to use the political parlance, that reclining seats aren’t an issue in first class, where the air smells rather like fat leather wallets and warmed butter cookies. Bitter, party of me. And speaking of the rich folk …

Question: Why did everybody get so pissy at me when I wouldn’t shut off my cell phone? I was in the middle of a very important game of
Words with Friends,
and what’s more, I am a Very Important Actor. Just ask my brothers, if you can remember any of their names. Hahahahaha!—Alec Baldwin

Oh, Alec. May I call you Mr. Baldwin? I used to be such a huge fan of your work. The scenes in
30 Rock
with your ghastly TV mama, Elaine Stritch, kept me in, well, “stritches”!

But this stunt you pulled on that L.A.-to-N.Y. flight where you were rude to a flight attendant simply trying to do her job and then tweeted about it like you were the victim?

Don’t you think we’d
all
like to be playing
Words with Friends
on our magic phone boxes while awaiting takeoff? Do you think you’re somehow exempt from the rules of the airways? And, more to the point, what the hell are you doing flying commercial instead of by private jet? Don’t you know a Travolta or someone who could fly your curiously wide ass across the country whenever you need it? Hmmmm?

Question: I’m never quite sure which armrest is mine. I don’t want to appear rude and take the wrong armrest. Of course, I’d really like to just take both, but something tells me that’s not good etiquette. Can you help?

“Whose armrest is it, anyway?” is a great question. The answer is that they are all mine. All right, not really. The truth is, they are all Alec Baldwin’s. No, really. Here’s the rule: If you are on the aisle, you get the aisle armrest; if you are on the window, you get the right; if you are in the middle, you get both. It’s only fair because the middle is a craptastic location and everybody knows it. So, middle seater, sit down, stake your claim on both armrests, and never let go. Not even to eat your fifteen-dollar “salad.”

Question: I once heard someone say that noisy children should be safely stowed in the overhead compartment. Is that true?

Yes. Yes, it is. This is a little-known rule that is really pressed into service only after the child in question, usually a scrawny long-haired little turd named Mendelssohn or some such, has been repeatedly kicking your seat and using his outdoor voice while his clueless parents do nothing but affirm his “specialness.” He is not special. He is just another privileged little snot whose parents were way too old when they had him and now he runs the show. Press the Call button and ask the flight attendant to stow his obnoxious ass overhead. Owing to the ski jackets you insisted on storing overhead, you won’t even hear his muffled screams. Winning!

chapter 4

The Grand Old (Dinner) Party: Bring Wine and Trivia

I’m a huge fan of the dinner party, as long as I don’t have to host it, of course. As a matter of fact, Duh Hubby and I have become quite adept at soaking up invites without reciprocating. It’s the height of rudeness, but it does make life so much less complicated, yes?

So our New Year’s resolution this year was to do better, and by that, I mean to realize that while we consider ourselves to be exemplary dinner party guests (translation: we totally bring on the banter, and more important, we know when to leave), we realize that we’ve been selfish creatures and must return every invitation with a soiree of our own, or at least a few of them.