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Airport horror stories are like assholes: Everybody has one.

But the thing that happened to my partner and me last week, well, it's pretty crazy. It's also the kind of experience that makes me think twice about ever flying on Delta again. Not that it's any better with any of the other carriers these days.

We'd been looking forward to our Africa trip for weeks. We had plans to visit South Africa and Zambia, four cities in 10 nights, with a handful of small side excursions along the way. We'd both endured a regimen of vaccinations and had started taking anti-malaria pills two days before traveling. Everything was good to go, or so we thought.

We arrived at the Atlanta airport with plenty of time before our evening flight to Johannesburg — which never happens with us. We're usually the two you see running to the gate just before the door closes.

As we made our way up to the gate, the BF was ahead of me in line. He handed his passport to the Delta agent, a short, spinster-looking woman who might've been Ugly Betty's aunt. The agent took his passport, did a fast flip through the pages, then said, "You're not flying. Next!"

The BF thought she was kidding. So did I.

"Excuse me?" he said.

Ugly Betty took the passport again, did another flip-through, then repeated, "You're not flying today. You don't have any blank pages. Next."

What? No explanation, no sympathy. Just, "Next."

At this point I stepped forward and asked her what the deal was. The BF said, "Are you joking?"

She asked to see my passport and did the same flipping motion.

"It looks like you do have some blank pages, so you can fly. But this guy can't. He'll need to go back to the ticket desk. Next."

I think we were both in shock and couldn't believe that this woman could treat us with such blatant disrespect, such disregard. Ugly Betty gave us a look like we were being irrational and holding up the line.

"Sir," she said to me, raising her voice, "Are you going to get on the flight or not?"

I told her I wasn't about to get on the plane without my partner and that we needed someone to explain to us what was going on. Ugly Betty rolled her eyes and yelled for another agent to come over and take her post.

She hurried us back up to the gate counter and asked for both of our passports again. Then, she sighed and said that it was a rule with South Africa. You have to have two fully blank visa pages in your passport or you won't be allowed to enter the country.

This was news to both of us, obviously.

"How were we supposed to know this?" the BF said.

"You should have done your homework," Ugly Betty said. "If you were frequent travelers, you would have known."

Hello — the guy has no blank pages in his passport! Doesn't that say "frequent traveler" to you?

We asked what the airline normally tells passengers when this sort of thing happens. A tall, heavyset Delta agent who was working next to Ugly Betty chimed in that they usually send folks to the New Orleans Passport Office to get more blank pages added. But all the flights to New Orleans had left for the day, he said.

At least he was friendly. Ugly Betty was giving us a look like she'd like to see us dead. I've never been treated so poorly by an airline employee in my life.

She told us to go talk to the ticket desk in the international terminal, then walked away. I should have written down her name, but I was still in shock. We both were.

We gathered up our bags and went in search of the Delta ticket desk. It was hard to miss: The line snaked back from the center of Terminal E almost to the escalators.

We stood in that line for two impossible hours.

The BF pulled out his laptop and began investigating options for getting more pages added to his passport. Turns out that advice the helpful guy had given us back at the gate was wrong: The New Orleans Passport Office will not see you without an appointment. The first available slot was five days away. So, if we had taken his advice and boarded a flight to Louisiana, we would've been stuck in the Big Easy for a week. (Though, honestly, there are worse places to be stranded.)

After about an hour in the ticket line, the tall Delta guy from the gate came through the line and handed out cups of water to the people waiting. A nice gesture, I'll admit.

We finally made it to a ticket agent, a tired-eyed lady who looked like Aretha Franklin before she gained all that weight. The ticket lady listened to our story with no sympathy. The tall man came over to try and help. Bless him.

After plenty of back-and-forth on what our best options were, we decided to just fly home to London and try to get the passport issue sorted at the U.S. Embassy here. Aretha asked to see our boarding passes then, she suddenly threw up her hands in a motion that said, "Git!"

"Oh," she said, "this ticket was booked on SkyMiles. We can't handle no Miles tickets here at this desk. You gotta use the telephones."

She pointed us toward the bank of red "help" phones beyond the desk — phones that had been sitting open during our two-hour tour of the queue.

"Next!" Aretha said.

The BF didn't lose his temper, though I knew he was about to.

"So what you're telling me is, because I'm a loyal customer and someone who accumulates SkyMiles and then uses them on an award ticket, I don't get to talk to a person? That whole business model is just backwards."

"That's just the way it is," she said.

We were on hold for almost an hour at the red "help" phones. Another hour. It was getting close to midnight by now. I was worried about where we were going to spend the night.

As we stood there waiting, I watched a sorority girl have a complete meltdown at the ticket desk. She had missed her connecting flight while her plane sat on the tarmac for an hour. The ticket agent (not Aretha) talked to her like she was a dog who had peed on the rug. The girl's face was bright pink and snot was coming out of her nose. The Delta agent was as cold as concrete.

All of this happened almost a week ago. We finally made it back to London and have since mailed our passports off to have more pages added. Our Africa trip has been postponed indefinitely.

I guess I'm still in shock. I'll admit that I'm angry. I'm mad that we didn't know about South Africa's passport rules. That's probably my own fault — but I'm surprised that the airline doesn't take the time to alert its passengers beforehand, especially if other travelers experience this same problem. That one tiny oversight led to us losing thousands of dollars in hotel reservations and missed flights, not to mention extending our visit to Atlanta by a few unplanned days.

The passport issue aside, I'm still reeling at the way the Delta employees treated us — and everyone else around us. We've been dedicated Delta customers for decades. The BF is even a Medallion member. It just seems like the airlines don't care anymore. We're not customers; we're cattle. The industry is broken. Next!

John Doh!

I was having a hard time coming up with ideas for this week's Blotter illustration, which involved a man, "John Doe," who had falsely reported being stabbed. I just kept going back to the old sketch book but nothing seemed to take. That's usually a bad sign. Damn that fickle muse!

Once I decided to relax and just have some fun with it, the main face sort of drew itself. The others followed. I was also surprised with how the colors turned out. It started with an all-white background, but that didn't seem to capture the gravity of the situation.

Blotter: JOHN DOE'S BIG DAY: At 11:20 a.m., an officer responded to a call about a person stabbed at a store on Joseph E. Boone Boulevard. The caller had a male voice and said he was at the pay phone outside the store. "When I arrived on scene, there was no one standing at the pay phone or outside of the location," the officer noted. All the store workers said no one had come inside saying they were stabbed. A fire truck and hospital medics also arrived at the scene. Eventually, the officer saw a man and woman arguing about 50 yards away. The officer asked the couple if there was a problem. A woman yelled out, "Ask him, he's the one who called. I was just walking to get away from him." So the officer asked the man why he'd called to say he had been stabbed. The man said "because" and tried to walk away. The man said he fell on something at his house, and got a small scratch on his shoulder. The man never explained why he claimed he had been stabbed and he would not give police his name. Eventually, the woman walked away – crying, screaming and yelling at the man to leave her alone. Police charged the man with abusing 911 services. The officer wrote, "Mr. Doe had police, fire and Grady [Memorial Hospital] all respond to the call with lights and sirens going, with the roadways icy, for a fake stabbing call."

Favorite Songs of 2009: It's Not Fair!

Another calendar is about to close, which means it's time for a new Favorite Songs of the Year list.
I started a preliminary playlist back in middle November with the hopes that at least two or three additional tracks would make the cut before January, just to give the lineup a tad more variety.
No such luck.
This year's roster is heavy — like, embarrassingly heavy — on electropop artists. It's weird for me to notice the trend. I blame it on living in Britain, where pop music in general remains a venerated genre.
This was a year when I found myself drifting away from many of the indie folk acts and singer/songwriters who had dominated my headphones for the better half of the decade. New material from Neko Case and Sufjan Stevens, two former favorites, didn't make the final list, nor did several other artists that I expected to be there (Wilco, Rosanne Cash, Monsters of Folk, even Mary J. Blige).
Instead, a quick peek at iTunes tells me that my most often played track of the year was "One Day" by the Juan Maclean. Really? How'd that happen?
As with years past, I'm not being a total stickler for release dates; I know a couple of the tracks technically hit in 2008, but they registered on my radar in '09. So there.

Here's the playlist, in no particular order. And here are the previous years: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.

1. "Not Fair" – Lily Allen
I couldn't get enough of this song in 2009. Country twang + off-color lyrics + Lily's angelic vocals = sheer brilliance. Plus, the video is exceptional, with a cameo from Porter Wagoner (!).

2. "Bulletproof" – La Roux
La Roux's catchy debut was easily one of my favorite albums of the year, and one of the few that I listened to on repeat. The video for this song reminds me of a level in Super Mario Galaxy.

3. "Million Dollar Bill" – Whitney Houston
I know, I know. It's just too easy to hate on Whitney, and it shocked me how vicious some folks were about her new album. "Bitch can't sing!" "She looks busted!" "Her dress fell off!" Well, enough with all the vitriol, OK? Admittedly, the comeback has had some issues, and yes, the album is fairly one-note, with way too many "look at me, I survived my struggle" anthems. But not this song, which deserves a place up there with some of the greatest Whitney tracks of all time.

4. "One Hundred Million Years" – M. Ward
I said before that 2009 was a year when I stopped listening to much folk. The new M. Ward is a glaring exception, the kind of album on which every track is a keeper.

5. "Teeth" – Lady GaGa
I'm shocked — shocked, I tell you — that this song ended up on my favorites list. I was a slow convert to the GaGa gang; I stupidly predicted that she would be a one-hit wonder. Then came singles like "Paparazzi" and "Poker Face" and I had to chew on my toes for a while. For me, this song is just so weird and unexpected, more like Shania Twain with lyrics by Anne Rice. I'm dying for HBO to catch wind of the song and use it in the promo spots for season three of "True Blood."

6. "One Day" – The Juan Maclean
As I said before, my number one most played song of the year. Crazy. It makes me think of Human League.

7. "Clean Up Woman" – Leela James
Poor Leela. She keeps trying, but nothing seems to work out -- not yet anyway. Her effort for '09 was an album of covers, which sort of smells of desperation. Still, I loved this version of Betty Wright's "Clean Up Woman," and also found myself singing along to "Baby I'm Scared of You."

8. "Heartbreaker (ft. John Legend)" (Laidback Luke Remix) – MSTRKRFT
Such an interesting combination of vocals and synths. Makes me excited to see what this group does next. (The album version is a lot more mellow, but I love the pounding energy of the remix.)

9. "Heavy Cross" — Gossip
Beth Ditto and co. are on everyone's best-of lists this year. They deserve the acclaim. I didn't love the entire album, but "Heavy Cross," "2012" and "Pop Goes the World" were definitely keepers.

10. "Day 'N Nite" (Crookers Remix) – Kid Cudi
At the last minute I almost switched this track out with Cudi's "Pursuit of Happiness." Either way, one to watch.

11. "Sexy Bitch" (f. Akon) – David Guetta
When we visited America in May, every other gay man I talked to was gagging over that damn David Guetta/Kelly Rowland song. You know the one. But for my money, this was the standout track on the album. I just love how silly the lyrics are: "I'm trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful; Damn, girl, you're a sexy bitch." (Call me crazy, Akon, but I think you need to try harder.)

12. "Please Don't Leave Me" (Digital Dog Club Mix) – P!nk
First heard in '08, but it was the remix and the video for this one that had me hooked. The video is an amazing homage to "Misery." Seriously.

13. "Dance Wiv Me" – Dizzee Rascal f. Calvin Harris
Apparently this was released in the UK in '08, but I didn't catch it until it showed up on Calvin Harris's "Ready for the Weekend" this summer -- hands-down one of my favorite albums of the year. "Stars Come Out" almost made my list and "I'm Not Alone" got played a few times too many in our flat this spring.

Honorable mentions:
"Lala Song" – Bob Sinclar; "New in Town" – Little Boots; "Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart" – Alicia Keys; "My Girls" – Animal Collective; "I Do Not Hook Up" (Bimbo Jones Club Mix) – Kelly Clarkson.

Happy New Year!

Farewell, Fawcett

Here's my latest illustration for Creative Loafing's crime report. The doll and the box design are taken from by an actual Farrah Fawcett toy from the '70s, though I changed the layout slightly to make her name pop.

Blotter: A 44-year-old man walked into the Zone 5 precinct and said he hired a moving company to move his stuff to his new apartment on Piedmont Road. He said after the movers left, he noticed that three bins filled with pennies were missing (about $300 worth). The man called back later and added that his 10-inch collectable Farrah Fawcett doll was missing, too.

Merry Mixmas 2009: Everywhere It's Christmas

About this time each year, I put together a CD of holiday music to share with friends and family. I'm embarrassed to admit how many hours I end up devoting to the annual project, which I started in 1999.

When I started compiling songs for this year’s playlist, I thought about going for the Full English: a CD of traditional carols. Then, 500 downloads later (seriously), I decided to ditch that idea and do what I’ve always done, which is try to put together a playlist that I’ll enjoying hearing year after year. Maybe it reflects the experience I’ve had living in London these past nine months. As much as I love the culture here, all the quirks of London life and the British character, living in the UK has made me realize just what an American I am. Boxing Day? Figgy Pudding? Mince pie? It’s all still a little overwhelming.
Anyway, here's the playlist:

1 Everywhere It's Christmas - The Beatles
2 Polly in the Holly - Dordán
3 Come On Ring Those Bells - Kristin Chenoweth
4 Sleigh Ride - The Three Suns
5 Interlude: It's Father Christmas! (from "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe")
6 Christmas Is Coming - Harry Belafonte
7 Mary's Boy Child - Boney M
8 The 1st Day the Beat Dropped - Dynamix II
9 Bah, Humbug! - A Christmas Carol
10 Nuttin' For Christmas - Sugarland
11 All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth) [MJ Cole Remix] - The Nat King Cole Trio
12 Pat-A-Pan - David Archuleta
13 A Child's Christmas in Wales - Dylan Thomas
14 Frosty The Snowman - Fiona Apple
15 Little Jack Frost Get Lost - Peggy Lee & Bing Crosby
16 Winter Wonderland - The Funk Brothers
17 My Mom And Santa Claus - George Jones
18 Another Word from Father Christmas - Various Artists
19 Jeanette, Isabella - Tori Amos
20 Christmas - Teddy Thompson
21 What's Today My Fine Fellow? - A Christmas Carol
22 Angels From The Realms Of Glory - Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band
23 We Wish You A Merry Christmas - The Greentrax Choir
24 I Am Blessed (Wax Tailor Remix) - Nina Simone
25 Life In A Northern Town - Twinkle Twinkle Little Rock Star

Download: Merry Mixmas 2009: Everywhere It's Christmas

Hot Water

Another week, another drawing. Here's my latest illustration for Creative Loafing. The crime this week: An employee at the Georgia Aquarium admitted to stealing bottles of Vitamin Water — totalling $1,087! That's a lot of water.

Blotter: At the Georgia Aquarium, a security guard called police after an employee allegedly admitted to taking items.

What Should We Call This Crazy Decade?

Alright people, the countdown is on. We've got 15 weeks to go before the decade ends, and yet folks still haven't settled on a common term for it. The ohs? The aughts? The naughties? Anyone? My guest post on naming the decade is now up on The Critical Condition. Click over and have a look:

What Should We Call This Crazy Decade?

(Many thanks to Mark Blankenship for giving me the chance to chime in on his always thought-provoking site.)