Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Fat Kevins

Guy and I are enjoying Celebrity Fit Club this season, featuring none other than Kevin Federline, also known as K-Fed, later known as Fed-Ex, still later known as K-Fat. In related news, a different fat Kevin got booted from a Southwest flight. As Guy pointed out, his mistake was in flying Southwest in the first place:

Kevin Smith 'Too Fat' to Fly Southwest
By Bob Meadows
Sunday February 14, 2010 04:10 PM EST

Kevin Smith, sitting on a second Southwest Air flight
Kevin Smith's most famous role is a guy who rarely speaks. But he's got a lot to say – much of it profane – after being kicked off a Southwest Air flight because he didn't fit comfortably into the seat.

"You [messed] with the wrong sedentary processed-foods eater!" Smith, whose next film, Cop Out, comes out Feb. 26, posted on Twitter. It was one of many Tweets recounting the actor/director's humiliating expulsion Saturday from the Oakland-to-Burbank, Calif. flight. Southwest said in a statement airline officials had called Smith to offer their "heartfelt apologies," but also stated his removal was for the "safety and comfort of all customers."

Smith, 39, originally purchased two tickets "as he's been known to do when traveling Southwest," the airline noted, but when he decided to fly standby on an earlier flight, only one seat remained. Although he had been seated, he was asked to leave.
"If a customer cannot comfortably lower the armrest and infringes on a portion of another seat, a customer seated adjacent would be very uncomfortable and a timely exit from the aircraft in the event of an emergency might be compromised if we allow a cramped, restricted seating arrangement," Southwest said.

Smith, who played Silent Bob in his Clerks movies and who has battled his weight for years – "I know I'm fat," he confesses – was given a $100 voucher and arrived in Burbank on a later flight. But he was in no mood to accept an apology.

"I broke no regulation, offered no 'safety risk' (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?)" he Tweeted. "I saw someone bigger than me on THAT flight! But I wasn't about to throw a fellow Fatty under the plane as I'm being profiled. But he & I made eye contact, & he was like 'Please don't tell...'"

After landing in Burbank, Smith wrote, "Don't worry: wall of the plane was opened & I was airlifted out while Richard Simmons supervised." Smith added that while the ordeal was embarrassing, his "Jersey Girl training" (the 2004 flop starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez) was helping him cope.

2 comments:

  1. Beebo, I forgot to thank you for sharing your insights on the Kevin Smith thing. It means a lot!

    Personally, I think they should charge more to fly and then make the seats bigger. Honestly. I knew something bad was going down the first time I saw a guy in baggy shorts and flip flops (not headed to any sort of warm climate) board a flight back in the late 80s, with a full complement of grimy, loud, seat-in-front-of-them–kicking children in tow, all prepared to settle in like the plane was their goddamn living room! It was actually startling! Why, I remember when air travel was elegant! I dined on ricotta-filled lasagna for the first time on a Pan Am flight when I was 8, years before that drag-ass Garfield ruined everything there was to like about lasagna. And back when people knew how to DRESS for the friendly skies!

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