Together, let us face the wretched facts: Air travel ain’t as glamorous as it once was. It’s hard to feel like a sophisticated jet-age cosmopolitan type while you’re shuffling through security in your stocking feet. Jettison your standard-sized toothpaste tubes; they might be full of C4 for all the TSA knows. Was that baby vomit I just stepped in?

Once was a time when people dressed up to travel. Now the terminal’s crowded with fat sorority girls in pajama pants that ride low enough to bare their ample love handles. Pardon me, ladies, but this is Detroit, and it’s February. Put some daytime clothes on.

A friend likes to tease me about the way I mythologize the golden age of commercial aviation. Knowing how I used to fawn over United Airlines’ sky girls back in the ‘80s. I hadn’t flown United in years, until he told me I’d be “glad to know they’ve still got the same stewardesses.” I was excited, actually, until I found out he meant they were literally the same employees. Very professional, by the way, just not what I’d gotten my hopes up for.

The delays are longer, the complimentary drinks are gone and they sure don’t clean the planes’ interiors like they used to. But there’s been at least one innovation to improve one irritating aspect of the travel experience: RCA’s noise-canceling headphones.

Once the incessant whine of the engines bored into your skull like this—RRRRRRZZZZZHHHH —for hours on end. Now, with these foldable phones reducing background noise by as much as 15db, it merely bores into your skull like this—rrrrrrzzzzzhhhh. It probably works for train and bus travelers too, though I wouldn’t know (if I can’t go air, I won’t go there).

Now if only RCA would invent Lou-Dobbs-canceling technology for the gate area! Seriously, whose sadistic idea was that?

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