I am currently sitting on a Jet Blue flight, from JFK to LAX and I have watched about four hours of documentaries concerning ancient Egypt. The first one was about how the great pyramid was built (internal ramps, they think) and the one that is ending now is on Ramses II, a man whom until now, I most closely associated with Yul “So it is written, let it be done” Brenner in The Ten Commandments. Here is the “Pharoahs for Dummies” version of what I saw: he built a bunch of stuff, had 100 kids, lived to about 90 and had a hooknose. There you have it.

All these hours in, I have been fed about twelve cashews and a can of apple juice so small I could have eaten it whole, instead of recycling it. I have never understood the mentality of today’s airlines: eschewing meals instead of charging an extra five bucks for my ticket, so you can serve me a little something.

GG and I bought food before we got onboard: an egg sandwich, a muffin, two coffees and two waters and it was $25. With that money on the table, it’s funny that JetBlue didn’t use this opportunity to hoover it from our pockets. But they didn’t.

The best airline I have ever flown (and the carrier that has waxed Singapore Airlines in World’s Best competitions in recent years) was Emirates. I flew NYC to Dubai, which was 14 hours. We had used some sort of upgrade-deal and flew business class. On one of their new planes, with the lie-flat seats, They served us four meals, had tons of food lying around and the entertainment system had 600 different entertainment options. The fact that the airline also gave us a hotel room and a driver for our six-hour layover was over-the-top. But standard, apparently.

Now, you might argue that we paid for all of that. I won’t tell you how much the ticket cost, but let’s just say, it was a grip. Yet, I was actually looking forward to the flight home, despite laying on a beach in the Indian Ocean. But I wasn’t paying for it at the time, and I think that’s the distinction. When you pay for your flight, the money is already gone. The flight itself is a separate issue (in my eyes): and today, I feel like I am being squeezed harder than Diego Maradona by the Argentinian press.

I had read recently that RyanAir, a budget airline out of Ireland, is contemplating offering standing room seats. I imagine that will be popular, among budget travelers looking to bop around Europe for stag parties without having to spend real money.

Somewhere the CEO of Emirates is holding his head. And, more than likely, sitting up to eat something.

I am a terrible packer. I pack way too much and it’s not because I am such a clotheshorse. I’m not. I am just bad at figuring out what I will need at any given moment.

Put it this way, I am going away for six nights and, in addition to the clothing I already have earmarked to wear, I have brought three hoodies, a pair of Supergas and four pair of sunglasses. And socks? Please, I bring twice as many as I need. I have always been this way and it hadn’t really mattered until we were forced to start paying for overweight bags with our souls.

The reason I get so psycho is that I cannot just go into a local shop and purchase items like dress shirts or shoes. I am a 18.5 x 38 dress shirt and a 13EE shoe. I am basically an albino Shrek (as a distant friend once referred to me). And so, if I was, say, at your birthday party in Anguilla (just an idea, friend) and I needed some linen pants to wear to your party, I’d be seriously out of luck.

Therefore, I am condemned to bring way too many polos and t-shirts, crammed into my Burton bag, amid two extra belts and things like band-aids, stunt vitamins (to protect against the disappearance of my regular vitamins) and two baseball hats because we may be going to the beach one day and, presumably I need to change, what, my hat?

When it did all go so wrong for me? That’s what I would like to get a handle on sometime soon. Seriously.

At the behest of someone who regularly visits this space and for that reason alone, can occasionally behest, I am about to provide you with a list of my 20 favorite candy products. Think of it as the Magna Carta of junkfood edibles. Okay, don’t.

I have decided to “give up” candy through the Holidays. It will be difficult to “give up” even temporarily, but I am prepared. (In case you were wondering, the difference between “give up” and give up, is approximately one pack of candy every third day.)

But you never know how these things may go. I may go mental. So, just in case, I am leaving this document. It will prove to be invaluable if you ever need to talk about candy in mixed company you will at least know the difference between a Bounty bar and a Mounds.

Again, I have undoubtedly forgotton a few names here, this was only off the top of my head, which is pretty frightening now that I think about it.

Top 20 Candy Products:

1) Nerds—The pinnacle of taste and tartness. And texture. I can literally eat them all day. They lose points because of that chastity belt of a package. “Listen, Wonka, you dunce,” I want to say. “Lose the Chiclet-sized candy openings. We can regulate the amount of candy that goes into our own mouths. We’re adults.” Actually wrote to the Wonka people proposing blue-raspberry and tangerine mix and have not heard back. Yet.

2) Sour Patch Kids—Something like 250,000 varieties (or so) available, virtually all of them are winners. Special mention: Cherry, Blue Raspberry and the Fruits one. Ruthlessly efficient for a foodstuff. You can nearly inhale them. They are my version of Trail Mix. (Is that bad?)

3) Candy Corn—I could eat your weight in them. (Unless your name is Paul.) They resemble pieces of corn with an erection. Waxy sugar taste. Make the Fall worth living. Any variety other than the orange, yellow and white variety is as phony as Derek Jeter’s humility.

4) Maynard’s WineGums—You’re in Terminal 3 Duty Free in Heathrow. And there are these big burgundy boxes of Bassets Wine Gums. Spit on them. You have my permission. They suck. Instead, keep your money, go to one of the newsstands and load up on Maynards. The Sour Pastilles are my favorite, but they are all good.

5) Nut Goodie—Upper Midwest delight. Look like a Reggie bar from the 70s, but filled with a layer of crisp maple sugar, crowned with peanuts and covered with chocolate. They are addictive and I am an addict. There I said it.

6) Chewy Sweet Tarts—If the Eucharist were made into a candy, I would think that they would look and taste like Chewy Sweet Tarts. What else is there to say?

7) Good ‘n Plenty/Good ‘n Fruity/Good ‘n Spicy—Three variations of a classic candy. Good ‘n Fruity remerged last year with a reconstituted flavor, Then someone had the bright idea to mix label mate Hot Tamales in with the fruit and, viola! a third flavor was born.

8 ) Swedish fish—An exotic flavor, I used to have Swedish Fish on me when I was in college because I thought it made me look traveled. I also had a Dalî poster and Felix the Cat bed sheets. And a turtleneck. Thanks God that was before digital cameras.

9) Jawbreakers—From the Pan-Ferrara company that also makes Lemonheads and other smaller batch candies. A comforting flavor. The name Jawbreakers is only accurate if you have the jaw of a fruit bat. They make a gumball look husky. But the pale green box still speaks in a cool little language to people in my age range.

10) Razzles—They’re the stealth candy—been around since the 1960s. Candy, then gum. Seriously.

11) Dots/Jujy Fruits/Chuckles—All three taste like gelatin after it has dry humped a vat of artificial fruit flavor. But they are consistent and that is comforting.

12) Gobstoppers—Demand a certain mental acuity, with so many layers of flavor coming at you at once. Just remember: the flavors are all fake.

13) Chewy Lemonheads and Friends—Where have they been all my life? My friend Mary wrote recently complaining about the quality of the grape, cherry and sour apple flavors that accompany the Lemonheads. She’s nuts. This is a helluva pack of candy.

14) Bounty bar—The European version of the Mounds, but that is where the similarities end. Cream smooth coconut filling, with dark chocolate. Conversely, Mounds taste as if they were hewn by 12^th century Mongols. Rough tasting with a crummy chocolate shell.

15) Gummi bears—The original Haribo is the only acceptable gummi bear. They do not easily crumble under the pressure of gnashing teeth.

16) Twizzlers—Movie manna. Three-and-a-half servings in the package and they can get you through a two-hour movie. This is how a lot of us learned what imitation strawberry tasted like.

17) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups—Seriously, they need to go from a two-pack to a three-pack immediately. Very filling and they execute a sublime finish.

18) Skittles—110% sugar and that’s a very good thing. A few nice varieties like Caribbean and Sour, but the double-coated version that is out now are awful and pervert the Skittle consistency in an altogether unpleasant manner. (I know what you’re thinking: how can you pervert something in a pleasant manner, right? See No. 6. That’s how.)

19) Butterfinger/Payday: Two great bars, probably terrible for you. Butterfinger is filled with what looks like melted insulation and if Payday isn’t made with the stuff that clogs arteries, then I’m an idiot. Or idiot-er. But I would take them to a desert island with me, for sure. And probably build a shank from Butterfinger shards and Payday adhesive. So…where was I?

20) Mike & Ike/Jolly Joe/Hot Tamale—The big boxes are way too large to eat in one sitting. And all three are pretty great, in a pinch. But if I had to choose, it’d be Jolly Joes. The man or lady that invented that grape flavor needs an award. Or a medal.

Today was marginally better than the last couple of days, made so by the protracted goodbye of the leftover Halloween candy. It needed to go. There was piles of candy, stations really, set up all over the office, and everyone was eating far too much of it. And by everyone, I mean myself and Fran, one of the designers who weighs about 80 pounds.

All I can tell you is that yesterday morning, I had eight treat size packets of Chewy Atomic Fireballs in my office. And tonight, as I was leaving, I saw the final one playing dead next to my stapler.

So, it’s been a problem.

I have been writing up a mini-storm lately; all kinds of things. Much of it is as useful as in a jockey in a bar fight, but I am certainly keeping busy trying to figure out what to write about here, specifically, other than what I derisively refer to as ‘musings du jour’. I ready everyone else’s column here and enjoy them. But I privately (and now publically, apparently) wonder whether I encounter enough interesting stuff to write about. I am largely a creature of habit. The other day I was wearing an outfit that was a slight variation on the same thing I had worn in 1980.

On the other hand, I do change some things up. For example? Well, Chewy Atomic Fireballs are, like, my fourteenth favorite candy. Fifteenth tops.

Now there’s a subject that I can really sink my teeth into.

(Thanks, I’ll be here all week.)

Today was as rough a day of employment as I have had, probably ever. There were a bunch of people at work let go; one was a very good friend and a tremendous asset to the organization. When he told me this morning, I responded that I felt like vomiting all over him. That is how sick I felt.

A few of the other people I have a great deal of respect for and as of yesterday, had the pleasure to call them colleagues. And then today, we came in and they were gone. Poof. Like that.

It’s a weird thing when that happens, because you don’t have time to mourn or mope. The work doesn’t stop nor does it slow down. It keeps piling on, relentlessly and uncaringly. And that forces you to go about your business, almost immediately, when that is the very last thing on your mind.

As the day wears on and you realize that the work family you have become a part of has just been downsized, the thought keeps hitting you in the face like a wet dish rag: they’re gone. And in some cases, you weren’t even able to say goodbye.

By day’s end, my co-workers and I were willing it to be over, so we could scatter and have a drink, or some dinner with friends and loved ones. And eventually to write notes to the people whose talents we will be missing so acutely in the coming weeks and months.

And then, tomorrow? Well that’s another day, and that is the best news I have heard since I woke up this morning.

Aargh.

As I watched Bret Favre treat the Green Bay Packers most cruelly yesterday I was reading a story about Scientology. And, since I am me all day, every day, I began to reminisce about a show I used to watch as a kid in the 1970’s called “What’s Happening!” (Perhaps you were not even born yet, but indulge me for a moment.)

It was about three guys—Roger Thomas, Dwayne Wayne and Rerun— and three women—big Shirley (who Ghostface immortalized in “Biscuits”: “I keep big Shirley on my side, so what’s happenin?”); Mabel, Roger’s mother; and one of my favorite television characters ever: Roger’s little sister, Dee, who was like the fifteen year-old black girl version of Mitch Hedberg.

But, anyway, there was an episode where Rerun falls in with a cult and when the guys go to rescue him they find that the object of the cult’s worship was a head of cabbage. That’s it: cabbage. Clearly the show’s social commentary was way ahead of its time. (Yes, that observation doubled as a ‘head of cabbage’ joke.)

I began to see the similarities to Scientology. After reading the article I now know why Hollywood actors are members in such droves: because it is largely retarded and they are self-important morons who think that, because something has rules and ritual, that it must be good. Scientology apparently has a transaction where you give them money and they hook up a set of jumper cables to you and convince you that shazam! you are no longer a terrible person who should be ashamed. Now, you are a great person, albeit many thousands of dollars poorer.

I could easily sit here and make fun of it, because it was made up by a guy who wrote crappy science fiction novels. And the fact is not in dispute.

But you know, organized religion and I are not exactly bosom buddies. I believe that faith is exceedingly important for some, today especially, and I know people who attend church every week. I also know how, in many, many communities in this country, the church is its focal point and keeps folks from falling through society’s cracks.

Let me also say that over the course of my life I have met some good people, who feel that they are doing whatever Lord’s work, and so are generous with both their time and their bank. And so if it is this faith in an unseen force that prompts them to do it, then that is good enough for me, a person who considers himself Christian and yet only goes to church for good news and bad news.

But, at the end of the day, faith is intangible. If Scientologists want to throw their lot behind General Zod and the volcanic spaceship, they are entitled to, I guess. Christians cannot see the their messiah either. No one can.

So while we sit here and yuk it up about how insane Scientologists seem, they could sit there and make fun of Christianity. But as history has shown on numerous occasions and on every continent, Christians are so not to be trifled with.

Tonight is Halloween and my neighborhood has been overrun with all sorts of miscreants. They have come to the Village from far and wide to strut their stuff and prance down Sixth Avenue. Drunk, stoned and horny. And drenched, both from sweat and then some serious pounding rain. Men in women’s clothing, women in children’s clothing or, in some cases, teacup yorkies’ clothing. My friend Martin would refer to it as “a sexual washing machine.”

I was eating at Il Buco on Bond Street, carbo-loading for the big race tomorrow—nothing powers me up better than a whiskey sour and a pork ragout— and when we came out it looked as if the cobblestone street had been hit by a rogue wave.

We walked up and around Washington Square Park toward home and I was thinking about how earlier today I was discussing with a like-minded friend how embarrassed I am for adults who dress up for Halloween. Not that they should even give a crap about my opinion—seriously.

I find it’s kind of sad, personally, and feel like it’s a night for the kids. We should just get wasted and hand out candy to them not compete with them for attention.

We went to a Halloween party last year, about four blocks from our apartment. It took an hour and fifteen minutes to get there. Most everyone was wearing a get-up—mine was ‘irate husband’—and an easily identifiable one at that. There was a woman dressed as rock, paper, scissors, and the requisite gay guy wearing some sort of pornographically inappropriate costume, this being New York City and all. There was even a woman dressed like Agyness Deyn. (I guessed correctly; she seemed relieved that someone had.)

But that night I felt kind of uncomfortable watching everyone all gussied up, grinning like chimps, and I kept myself busy with other non-costumed folks.

So, I was thinking about all of this as we made our way into our building fighting through throngs of trampy civil service employees, drunk Lady Gaga’s in leotards and heels, and fallen Little Bo Peeps—both spiritually and literally— and I realized that I find guys who dress up to be kind of sad, but I have a slightly more evolved opinion about the women.