I hate to admit it, but I really do need a solar-powered mole repeller.
This wasn't the first thought I had when I got up this morning-- damn moles, the way they lounge around in the sun all day, who do they think they are?--but now it seems clear that my material world is not complete without said mole repeller. I've discovered a need I never knew I had. I've had the Sky Mall experience.
Ever since the U.S. Transportation Security Administration banned carrying liquids on planes, airports have seen a 20% increase in checked baggage, and I've noticed on the last two planes I was on that a lot of passengers, weary of getting frisked and shaken down at the metal detectors, have given up. More people seem to be striding toward the gate without any hand luggage at all--no computer bag, no backpack, no purse.
Even terrorism has its upside. The last security line I was in moved expeditiously, and when I got to the plane there were acres of storage in the overhead bins.
The trouble is that when you finally do get buckled in, you have nothing to do--unless you're flying JetBlue, which gives even the poor schlubs in coach video to watch. How long, after all, does it take to dispatch a typical in-flight magazine? Then you're left with the literature of last resort: the Sky Mall catalog, a quarterly collection of electronics, specialty gifts, household inventions and, well, the indescribable. Would you really describe a coffee-table aquarium as home decor?
Sky Mall is an extraordinary document. In the annals of merchandising, few catalogs have the reach--1.8 million pairs of eyeballs, desperate for diversion, each day, the publisher says--and none that I can think of has what might be called the soak time. There are no audiences more captive than those incarcerated on a plane. Eighty-eight percent of domestic flights have Sky Mall catalogs on board (in the seat backs, right behind the complimentary barf bag). The catalog rakes in more than $100 million annually.
Christine Aguilera, president of the Phoenix-based company, understands the relationship between security and her readership: "The fewer things people can do on a plane, the more interested they are in the airline amenities, which include Sky Mall," she says.
