What I Learned at 35,000 feet

I generally do whatever I can to avoid redeyes because they turn me in an absolute zombie for the entire next day and sometimes even beyond that. But this week, I didn't really have a choice, so I showed up at the San Jose airport last night ready to climb on a 10:00 pm flight headed east.

Unfortunately, the inbound flight had been re-routed to Denver because of a medical emergency on board, so by the time the plane did make its way to NoCal, we were already almost three hours behind schedule, finally departing San Jose at 1:00 am PT.

I don't often sleep on planes, even in the middle of night, and this trip was no exception. I managed to get about an hour and a half of restless sleep in the middle of flight, but was jostled awake by some pretty aggressive turbulence somewhere over Iowa.

Thanks to JetBlue's promise of 36 DirectTV channels at every seat, I at least wasn't sitting wide awake for 5 hours with nothing to do. In the darkened cabin with my little TV screen glowing in front of me, I caught up on a couple of original Law & Order episodes and as a result, was exposed to a number of commercials that would NEVER make primetime.

(As an aside, I have to say that I was kind of thrilled (in a deliriously tired sort of way) to find the original Law & Order episodes since Ben Stone, played by Michael Moriarty, is my favourite L&O character ever. Now, apparently I can find him on TNT at 3:00 am if I'm in dire need of hearing him deftly negotiate a plea bargain.)

But back to the commercials. It turns out that while most of us are peacefully slumbering, the Chia Pet has quietly taken a stranglehold on late-night TV and is now promoting all sorts of product extensions this holiday season. I saw ads for the standard Chia Pet, but also for Chia Garfield (the fat orange tabby seems to also be making a comeback), Chia Scooby Doo and Chia Shaggy. Ok, not such a stretch for those (remember Chia Mr. T? I pity da fool!), but THEN I saw a commercial that I thought must have been one of those Saturday Night Live spoofs.

Get this -- You can buy a product called "Chia Cat Grass". You get a little ceramic planter (decorated with Sylvester and Tweety Bird of course!) and within said planter, you can grow this amazingly fast growing grass that is supposedly going to solve the problem of your cat tipping over and generally making a mess of your other potted plants. (Not ever having owned a house cat, I had no idea this was even an issue.) Never mind that now you've introduced something that looks like your worst neighbour's yard after months of neglect into your home. Yeah, THAT's progress.

You can also buy Chia herb gardens. But really, would you ever actually eat ANYTHING grown as a Chia??

Oh, and by the way, I did a little Google search on Chia Pets and imagine my lack of surprise that the same company who brought us the Chia empire is also responsible for the Clapper.... and its ridiculously annoying, droning jingle.

Aside from the Law & Order element, I will be quite happy to avoid middle-of-the-night TV for the foreseeable future and let the Chia's multiply without any of my support, either moral or financial.

Ch- Ch- Ch- Chia!