Worst. Person. Ever(12)

Liftoff.

The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000)

Budget: $58 million (estimated) Opening wknd: $10.5M (USA)

Gross: $32.5M (USA)

Genre: Family/Comedy Production co:

Universal Pictures

Summary: In this live-action prequel to the 1994 comedy hit, the Flintstones and the Rubbles go on a trip to Rock Vegas, where Wilma is pursued by playboy Chip Rockefeller.

I’m actually not a bad chap.

Really.

I listen to people if they have something to say, as long as they’re not too slow or too boring. I leave pennies in the penny jar, and I’ve been known to double flush in restaurant toilets—courtesy flushes, I believe they’re called. But sometimes I am tested by the universe. For example, when I heard the landing gear pull up, I unbuckled and stood up, whereupon a flight attendant screamed at me, “Sir, sit down immediately. We are experiencing a pocket of mild turbulence.”

Well, okay. I sat down.

*Ding!*

Good! It was the bell to indicate that it was okay to unfasten our seatbelts and move around, but it set the Buñuel children to expressing themselves with gusto.

Expecting to be reprimanded at any moment, I stood to retrieve my small, chaste Adidas bag from the overhead bin, amid a snowdrift of drool bibs, adult diapers, restraining harnesses and baseball caps reading BUÑUEL CHILDREN ARE PEOPLE TOO, with the intent of finding that cuntfart, Neal.

Just then, the drinks cart emerged from the mid-plane galley to begin a zombie-slow service likely to reach row 67 by the time the plane was over Greenland.

In my mind there existed a duality: I wanted a triple Scotch, but I also wanted to get as far away from the little Buñuel fucks as possible.

Dilemma.

In the end, the triple Scotch won. But when, after seventeen hours, the trolley limped past row 67 and I asked for a triple Scotch, she who told me to sit down during the turbulence said, “I’m sorry, sir, but EU regulations prohibit the sale of more than a single drink at a time on all EU carriers, either within or without EU airspace.”

“You sound like a computer program.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. I’ll have a single, then.”

As the vile, Tabasco-gargling sky-wench grimly slapped a Johnnie Walker and a clear plastic cup with one ice cube onto my tray, she gave me the evil eye. Then she favoured the Buñuel child to my right, who screamed for something incomprehensible, with a cartload of smiles, an infinite glow of love and compassion, plus a juice box featuring the face of a Toy Story character whose arrival created a brief interval of merciful silence before the sirens of hell once again flared. How the fuck do humans ever manage to reproduce if that is what lies at the end of the coitus/lust/DNA dance of doom?

Having downed my meagre ration, I set off to find Neal.

But you see, the thing was, I was looking for Neal somewhere in coach class. It never occurred to me that the dim fucker could have finagled his way into the business class seat that rightfully ought to have been mine. It was only after the third circling of rows 15 to 69 and back again that it dawned on me: Oh my dear God. No. This isn’t happening. No. It just isn’t happening …

I walked down the cabin, climbed the staircase into the plane’s bubble and there, in 77A, reclining in a pod like something out of a utopian sci-fi movie, was Neal, clinking champagne flutes with Cameron fucking Diaz.

Cameron fucking Diaz?

I loomed over him. “Neal, here you are. Business class? I think not. Come on now, chop-chop. It’s time for you to assume your rightful seat, 67E, at the back of the plane. Now.”

“Ray, relax. Have a drink with Cam and me.”

I was so peeved that Miss Diaz’s fame factor didn’t register.

“Neal, no. You’re my personal assistant and I command you to swap seats with me.” Other passengers were staring at us.

“Ray, chill. Cam here is just telling me about various formulas for generating prime numbers. A smart one, she is.” The pair made bedroom eyes at each other.

I lost it. “You fecal-scented golem, get out of my fucking seat now. What the fuck is your problem?”

“Excuse me, sir …” Lady Cuntly McRazorpanties, the flight attendant from down below, had followed me up into the bubble.

“Oh, it’s you.”

“Sir, I have to ask you to leave business class immediately.”

“Not bloody likely. I’m staying here, while this git who works for me takes his rightful place in coach.”

Lady Cuntly backed off to confer with a hag cohort out by the meal-heating ovens, then came at me again.

“Mr. Gunt …”

She knew my name. Bravo!

“Mr. Gunt, Mr. Neal here is a street survivor. We at the airline are honouring the homeless this year, and it was our airline’s privilege and delight to offer him the one remaining business class seat as a token of our faith in the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. With the full authority of the EU air system code behind me, I order you back to 67E.”