RONALD MCDONALD HE IS NOT

(We flew from northern California to southern California on Alaska Airlines. Apparently, they've expanded.)

In an America where corporations love to placate their customers with the faces of non-threatening spokespersons -- Betty Crocker, Colonel Sanders -- you've got to appreciate an airline that paints a giant, Big-haired Ambiguous Man on the tail of its planes. The logo stands out among the banal corporate graphics of the other planes like Bob Marley at a Pat Boone concert. He has two white tuffs of hair on either side of his head that kind of look like devil horns, and his expression suggests that he may have just smoked a big doobie. I think he's supposed to be an Eskimo, but he looks more like a wild apparition who wants to intimidate the ground crew into getting its shit together. Even Zachary asked, "Mom, who's the bad guy?"

I went to Alaska Airlines' website to learn more, but no luck. Instead, I read that they announced a week ago they'll begin flying "from Seattle to The Windy City." Their press release sums us up this way, "A business powerhouse and one of the busiest air travel markets in the world, Chicago is also home to Wrigley Field, the Sears Tower, and the Museum of Science and Industry." Maybe they should paint the wild guy on the wall of their public relations department, too.