The Most Expensive Foosball Table

A little about my airplane trip:

Business Class Seats

The airplane was a 767-200 with a strange looking business class area. There were three aisles in business class, with one seat in each aisle. The seats each looked like little oval cubicles. You can't see it from the picture, but there's a separate footrest in each cubicle.

I wasn't one of the fortunate who could afford such luxury, but economy class was also not so bad. Three aisles, three seats in the middle aisle and only two in each of the side aisles. Not like the jumbo 747's with 9 or 10 seats per row.

VOD

Each seat had not only it's own video screen, but the screen was a touchscreen with VOD services. There were about 40 or 50 movies, the same number of television episodes, and a few dozen music stations. There were also dozens of pre-loaded albums where you could listen to the entire album, shuffle the songs, or create your own playlist. Neato.

There was a games option in the menu system, but it wasn't yet working.

Each screen also had a USB port. I'm not entirely sure what this did, but I suppose it allowed you to listen to your own music while charging your device. I don't think it let you upload or download songs from the system ;-). It might also have let you, or in the future let you, access the onboard internet system.

Pretty wild. I was planning on sleeping, but as someone who doesn't own a television, it was hard to pass up the opportunity of 12 hours of screen time.

The selection of movies was interesting, too. I watched Wild Strawberries. A classic Berman film on a plane!

I saw Paris, Je T'Aime, a series of 20 short six minute stories all set in Paris. An interesting film and a fun watch. The episodes had nothing to do with each other, despite all supposedly being about some sort of love. The best was a short about a young Muslim girl and three punks she overhears catcalling women and a Wes Craven short about a couple who go to see Oscar Wilde's grave. Natalie Portman played in one of the segments as well, and while she was good, the segment was only so-so. Elijah Wood played in a really dumb but stylistic short about a vampire.

I saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and part of a 20 minute "making of HP5" which was really just an advertisement for the movie. I like all the Harry Potter movies, and they all feel like they were directed by the same director. They're all well acted and well directed. Unfortunately, they're paced and scripted as action films, not the slow paced, humorous child-like books they are based on.

I began watching an anime movie called Paprika, but quit after 20 minutes when it was obvious where it was going. It's essentially a Dreamscape like movie, with dreams and reality completely confused in a wild acid trip. I easily dismiss it, but if you're an anime fan you'll probably love it.

I saw episodes of Frasier, Desperate Housewives (first time, just to see what it was about), and the first 10 minutes of a nature show Planet Earth, narrated by David Attenborough.

I listened to Early Days: The Best of Led Zeppelin, and an absolutely wonderful audio book Kingfisher Days by Susan Coyne. Susan's book is a story about a lovely summer during childhood where she discovered a hidden fireplace and received mysterious letters from the hidden elves who lived there in secret.

Expensive Games

I've got a new entry into the world's most expensive board games: Deuce game tables and tabletop games. I've asked for a price list, but so far I know from the in-flight magazine that prices range from $28,000 to $38,000 for game tables such as Backgammon.

The in-flight magazine also listed what is surely the world's most expensive foosball table: the Opus from ElevenForty.

What's interesting about the Opus isn't so much it's laser crafted this or service to anywhere in the world that, but that it's advertisement says that they will craft the players on the table to whomever you want, for example the Ghandi team versus the Hitler team (that was the actual example given in the magazine).

Price: $27,000 to $46,000.



Yehuda