Althouse: Just 3 TikToks to tide you over. I was highly selective! Let me know what you liked best.

May 15, 2022

Just 3 TikToks to tide you over. I was highly selective! Let me know what you liked best.

1. Just how excellent can an airport be?

2. The exquisite subtlety of the dish towel.

3. Mr. Horse Girl.

34 comments:

MadisonMan said...: I will say awesomeness of the tile on the floor and drawers and drawer hardware distracted me the dishtowel -- but why was that dishtowel pattern only on one side?; 5/15/22, 11:31 AM
Leland said...: All of them showed the problems that created the term “adulting”. First one is a grown person playing like a kid in an airport. Second one is a grown person making an instructional video for a sloppy, likely younger, person. Third one is a grown person that lets kids bully him.; 5/15/22, 11:42 AM
FleetUSA said...: Yikes. Airports are best left quickly, they aren't a tourist attraction. Dishtowel man seems a bit hyper given his ultra top of the line stove.; 5/15/22, 11:43 AM
madAsHell said...: Living in an airport?? Didn't Tom Hanks already make that movie?; 5/15/22, 11:48 AM
Heartless Aztec said...: The airport vid was the best. Informative and a look see to a place I probably won't get to - certainly not for 24 hours.; 5/15/22, 11:55 AM
Carol said...: Is there an easier way to view these besides backing up thru multiple tiktoks to get back here?

I thought I saw Ann's avatar over there but now I can't find her account at all.; 5/15/22, 11:56 AM
madAsHell said...: "Horse Girl" is a movie title from Netflix. I have no idea how it relates to brown bag school lunches.; 5/15/22, 11:56 AM
chuck said...: @Leland leaves me little to add, but I did find the airport interesting even if the narrator was annoying. Indeed, all the narrators were annoying and made me wonder how annoying I would be if I made a video :); 5/15/22, 11:57 AM
hawkeyedjb said...: Airport. I'm gonna move there.; 5/15/22, 12:09 PM
Temujin said...: Not even close. Singapore Airport hands-down.

My comparisons are Atlanta (well run, ridiculously busy, but with horrible food options. Seriously- just awful food at this airport), Detroit (surprisingly nice, great food options from Detroit Coney Island Hot Dogs to Middle Eastern to Sushi to a gourmet grocery with Zingerman's scones. Problem is when you exit the airport you're in Detroit), Sarasota (ahhh...home), San Francisco (quick...let's just get our bags and get out of the city), LaGuardia (will our cab ever make it up to the terminal? Will our flight ever leave on time?), LAX (the Uber line is cut-throat, best get a taxi and hold your breath all the way), Las Vegas (I love this airport because it's so....Las Vegasey and it means I've just arrived and I'm about to donate a few thousand dollars to the mob), O'Hare (the incredible shrinking aisles in the terminals. Or, maybe it's that all the newer airports seem so much roomier. When you arrive, you walk out of your jetway and take 8 steps to find you're entering the jetway across the aisle. It's narrow there. But at least you can get Nuts on Clark there), Orlando (my God, THIS is where all the kids went), Seattle (my God, THIS is where all the nose rings went), San Diego (nice, new, mellow), Indianapolis (seems like the city around it has grown but the airport has not changed in 3 decades. Is that possible?), New Orleans (cannot even remember the airport. Only the heat leaving the airport and the stinky cab with no AC. Is that a regular feature, or do I just look like the guy who requested that?), LaGuardia (I know I already listed it, but I'm still waiting for my cab to get up to the terminal), Portland, ME (I like it there. Nothing to do at the airport so you have to leave it quickly, which is good because there's plenty to do in Portland and the rest of Maine), Dallas (how many people can fit into a rental car shuttle bus? They're still working on it at DFW. This is where they turn the AC down so cold in the summer that you end up with a Dallas sweatshirt you bought at the airport for that two hour layover. Food options suck.), Savannah (smallish, but easy enough. Believe it or not, better food than at Atlanta.)

Just a quick rundown on a few of the places I spent my last 30 years. I've never been to Singapore. I've wanted to go and now...I still don't think I'll get around to it.

The kitchen towel guy is doing what he's doing on purpose, right? Or, he needs to start off by cleaning the exterior of his drawers, then tossing the towel into the laundry room. Yikes. Clearly not a food science major.; 5/15/22, 12:48 PM
JK Brown said...: Dishtowel man apparently doesn't use his oven much. When I tried that location, every time I opened the oven, the towel basically touched the floor.

But attached to that one I got served up this weird animation on, well, I don't know the point, basically a mother who won't cut the cord

https://www.tiktok.com/@short_films_3d_2d/video/7092725679636155653; 5/15/22, 12:52 PM
Iman said...: Nessie sprung!; 5/15/22, 1:01 PM
tim maguire said...: The Singapore Airport is amazing, but my favourite moment is when dishtowel guy said, “oh shit!”

What’s a Horse Girl? My daughter is out riding a horse right now so it’s hard to imagine it as an insult.; 5/15/22, 1:07 PM
reader said...: No. 2 is just wrong. Why hang the tea towel (which is what my family calls the dish towel) on a low oven door so that every time the oven door is opened the towel touches the floor. It shouldn’t be hung from the dishwasher handle either.; 5/15/22, 1:09 PM
tim maguire said...: FleetUSA said...Dishtowel man seems a bit hyper given his ultra top of the line stove.

I found his generally anal-retentive presentation incongruous with his slovenly attitude towards the cleanliness of the dishtowel.; 5/15/22, 1:09 PM
GrapeApe said...: Nothing on this highly selective list even remotely appeals to me. The absolute worst was the teacher who brought hi feed bag to school when he was a kid.i guess the late summer pattern of going to get a new lunchbox and thermos are long gone so his students haven’t a clue.

Seeing the food on offer in articles I have seen on school lunches in the last fifteen years? Would even pigs (the animal) eat that mess? You’re better off with a bag of popcorn, a bologna sandwich and a bag of popcorn.; 5/15/22, 2:19 PM
Mark said...: Doesn't matter how nice an airport is, if you are stuck there because of a delayed/cancelled/missed flight, it is nothing more than a jail. And if it is a long layover, instead of hanging out at an airport, I've left and gone into the city to explore the sights there, such as a six-hour layover at Charles de Gaulle.; 5/15/22, 2:21 PM
Dave said...: Quality is in order of listing for me. If I get a chance to route a trip through Singapore, I will do so. Hopefully you can pay for a fake tourist caning photos. Second one was funny when he dropped the dish towel. I also enjoy the silliness of such "lessons" in the mundane. Last one is take it or leave it. If he were were a super jacked Stone Cold Steve Austin guy, it would be a better video.; 5/15/22, 2:22 PM
Richard Dolan said...: Have to go with Airport Man. They other two were funny but also a bit pathetic.; 5/15/22, 3:22 PM
Nancy said...: Leland, that is perceptive!; 5/15/22, 3:47 PM
Jamie said...: That's "one of" his favorite airports? Geez!; 5/15/22, 4:01 PM
cf said...: Fleet says Yikes, leave quickly, and I would agree, but sometimes you can't.
like when I had an all night layover in Houston 37 yrs ago with my 1 year old, so long ago everyone still was allowed to smoke, and the long broad causeways were softly foggy. seems since covid, consolidation has meant more double stops for a lot of locations.

So, go Singapore!; 5/15/22, 4:02 PM
Saint Croix said...: Cafeteria food must have improved since I was there. Brown bagging it was definitely a thing.

I used to mock the shit out of lunch boxes though.

I was a lunch box guy for most of elementary school. I was a Scooby Doo guy. And then I was a Hardy Boys guy. I might have gone Batman or Justice League, I can't remember. And then one day, boom, had to be a brown bag.

Cafeteria food was square pizza and shit meat loaf. When I was an attorney and I had to show up at jail to interview a client, I was kind of shocked at how decent his food was. Jail food is way better than cafeteria food, at least what I had.

I think now they have Chick-fil-a and all kinds of awesome fast food. Cafeteria food at college was really good. But the public school cafeteria from 1-12? Awful. Adam Sandler nailed it.; 5/15/22, 4:47 PM
Ralph L said...: Airport guy has great teeth, but what happened to his poor nose? Maybe that's why his teeth are so good.

I keep 2 active dish towels, the left one for hands, on a rod under the island counter overhang, plus an inside-out, old cotton sock on a hook on the trash drawer front for real messes. The towels must be folded once to fit both, unfortunately, but they still dry out.; 5/15/22, 4:59 PM
Wince said...: "My name is Towelie. You wanna get high?"; 5/15/22, 5:26 PM
Curious George said...: Strike 3. Grab some bench.; 5/15/22, 5:50 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Is there an easier way to view these besides backing up thru multiple tiktoks to get back here? I thought I saw Ann's avatar over there but now I can't find her account at all."

I have an account just so I get served things I like, but I don't post or do anything to collect things I like over there (which I don't even know how to do).

I would embed over here, but TikTok embeds don't look right. One thing I could do is share from TikTok to Twitter and then embed my tweets, but that would change my presence on Twitter, and I don't want to do that.

So that's why I'm doing it this way. It lets me give my own titles, which is a creative project for me. Low level, but still. And the finished post is compact and clean-looking.; 5/15/22, 5:55 PM
Leslie Graves said...: Towel man.; 5/15/22, 5:59 PM
wildswan said...: I would never use my dish towel to wipe down the counter. I have three towels folded in three - one for dishes, one for the counter, one for the glass-topped table. I refold every time so the towels will dry out and and I line them up to hang at the same height. I'm quite adamant about it all - that Swedish side will come out.; 5/15/22, 6:18 PM
Bob_R said...: The airport reminded me of "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" I enjoyed that as a child.; 5/15/22, 8:31 PM
Next Adventure said...: I'm in Singapore for work, and confirm that the airport is amazing. The voiceover put me off a little, but I'm happy to get reminded of how pretty and functional they made a collection hub for the area.; 5/15/22, 8:53 PM
dbp said...: I was thinking along the lines of others, regarding the dish towel guy. He must never use his oven. Every once in a while, we forget how bad the oven handle is for keeping a dish towel, but since we use our oven all the time, we are quickly reminded. The towel always touches the floor when you open the oven and falls off the handle about half the time. Also, I agree with Madison Man, the tile on the floor made the video worthwhile.

A good place for dish towels is to mount a ring on the side of the cabinets which are on either side of the sink. Towels never fall off and they never touch the floor. Most kitchen towel use consists of drying your hands after using the sink, so it's a better location than the oven, where you might be tempted to use the towel as an oven mitt.; 5/16/22, 7:00 AM
farmgirl said...: I watched Horseguy, Airport & Towelguy.

For some reason, I found the towel one hysterically funny. The more he talked, the harder I laughed. Idk why? It just struck me as the most mundane, unserious thing to take the time to do and he seemed such a novice- like, why post this?

Oh, I know!
To make me laugh tears!; 5/16/22, 11:12 AM
Ernest said...: I've passed through Singapore airport several times. It is my favorite airport. Not just due to the amazing activities as the video mentions. Just walking through the place gives off - for me - a peaceful feeling I don't get at any other airport. It's my favorite despite a somewhat scary event I experienced there once. I was on a long layover, something like 12 hours. I had arrived in the evening and my flight out was not until about 8 am the next morning. I was too cheap to book a hotel room, so I camped out near the check-in counter of my outgoing airline on a soft chair. I fell asleep and was woken up by three security guards with machine guns - asking for my papers.; 5/16/22, 11:16 AM