Category Archives: Transhuman News

Pam Ann. Picture: Kelvin Bradley

Arm the doors, cross-check and brace for impact. Australia's first lady of air flight, Pam Ann, is returning home with Plane Filthy. As the title suggests, it's her most politically incorrect show about all things air travel yet.

"It's offensive to some people I guess," admits Caroline Reid, the Australian comedian who's travelled the world as the wicked air hostess Pam Ann. "I poke fun at all the airlines and air travel, and I get into culture and race and stereotypes and all of that. But it's also tailored to what's hot at that moment in the place I'm playing. So the Perth show will no doubt cover what's going on in Australia and in WA with its fly-in, fly-out workers and rural airlines - the low-cost carriers!"

Clearly the busiest hostess to fly the friendly skies, it takes three attempts over two weeks to get Reid on the air-phone. When she finally answers from her New York apartment (where she's been based for the past four years), the constantly jet-lagged Aussie admits she doesn't know where she calls home anymore.

"Perhaps the inside of an airplane," she jokes. "It's non-stop. I've just been touring Germany, Scandinavia, France, the UK, Canada, the US and all over the world really. Now it's Australia's turn. And to coin that great Qantas catchcry 'I still call Australia home' even if it's not my place of home."

Not surprisingly, the constant flying to gigs all over the globe gives Reid much of her Pam Ann material, with the airlines, pilots and hostesses tickled to have the world-famous airline comedian on board.

"I'm on the plane as much as the real hostesses! It's so art-imitating life these days. But every time I get on a new plane I meet new friends, so I love it."

Reid, 45, admits she works all their inside information and industry secrets into her shows. "I've got really good contacts with the airlines and because I work for some of these airlines they really take good care of me. I'm always talking to the cabin crews and pilots whenever I fly. I ask a lot of questions. We talk planes a lot. I'm like a sponge. And they love it too, so it works all-round. Sometimes the cabin crew are told not to talk to me but that memo often goes out the window once the champagne flows."

As funny as she is clever, Reid has a new app that's full of tips for frequent flyers and has a documentary and a television show in the works. She may even know more about air travel than the pilots and hostesses themselves, as this pop quiz proves.

Best airport in the world? "Heathrow's British Airways Terminal 5."

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Queen of skies takes flight

A roomful of college students got a 90-minute snapshot of the last 50-plus years of world history from the Bay of Pigs to the Vietnam War to the most recent events in Ukraine from a man who helped shape world events.

Felix Rodriguez, a longtime CIA agent and military colonel, talked with University of North Georgia Gainesville campus students about his involvement in the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba, gave his views on President John F. Kennedys assassination in 1963 and fretted about the recent call for a reduction of the U.S. armed forces.

Much of his presentation, which was sponsored by the colleges Politically Incorrect Club, was focused on the 1967 capture of communist guerrilla leader Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia. Guevara was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary and a major figure in the Cuban revolution.

Rodriguez, a Cuban exile who advised Bolivian troops in the hunt for Guevara, had been questioning Guevara when Bolivias president wanted him executed even though the U.S. wanted him detained for further interrogation.

Guevara told Rodriguez in a conversation before his execution, Tell my wife to remarry and try to be happy, Rodriguez told the audience gathered in the Continuing Education Buildings main auditorium.

He told the audience he believed Kennedys push to liberate Cuba from the communist regime led by Fidel Castro cost him his life in Dallas, Texas, in 1963.

Later on, President (Lyndon) Johnson ... said the promise of President Kennedy to free Cuba died with the president.

Rodriguez also served in the Vietnam War, where he flew hundreds of combat helicopter missions.

I was shot down five times and ... my back got in very poor condition, so, in 1972, I was evacuated to the United States, he said.

Later, he flew more missions in El Salvador in the 1980s to help its people defeat communist guerrillas.

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Ex-CIA agent gives firsthand view of history