Strangers on a Plane

Bill Belichick and girlfriend Jordon Hudson, aka Bella Chick, who, tragically, did not win the Miss Maine contest last weekend.

Hello, hungry people.

So what’s your policy on striking up conversations with complete strangers on airplanes?

Here’s mine: Say hello when you sit down. Stake out your space on the shared arm rest. And shut the hell up.

But then, I’ve never sat next to Jordon Hudson on a plane. In which case, I would likely abandon my policy and chat her up.

Because isn’t it obvious?

She looks like a great conversationalist.

***

Romantic backstory: Bill Belichick and Hudson first met when they sat next to each other on a flight from Boston to Florida back in 2021 and the former Patriots coach noticed his lovely seat mate reading a book. Which, in these days and times, was astonishing enough to warrant a second look.

The title of the book was “Deductive Logic,” by Warren Goldfarb, the Walter Beverly Pearson Professor of Modern Mathematics and Mathematical Logic, and Professor of Philosophy, at Harvard University, a title so splendiferous that I just had to include all of it here.

The choice of reading material should shatter any argument that Jordon Hudson is just another pretty face. She’s a pretty face who knows the trick to falling asleep on airplanes.

I don’t know how the conversation went between Belichick and Hudson, but I can only imagine:

Belichick: So, uh, good book?

Hudson: Fascinating.

Belichick: So, uh, what’s it about?

Hudson (drawing from blurbs about the book by people who pretended to have read it): It’s about the rapport between semantic and syntactic captures of logical consequence, putting an emphasis on deduction and its insistence on motivating the various clauses of the rules of deduction by showing, for example, what would ensue had these clauses been flouted, thus filling a real lacuna and avoiding the common pedagogical pitfalls when applied to logic.

Belichick: So, uh, wanna hook up?

Hudson: That would defy all logic, wouldn’t it?

***

The happy couple, together for some time now, has been the object of vicious gossip in recent weeks, fallout from an interview-gone-wrong on CBS Sunday Morning and chatter about Hudson strong-arming her way to influence in the University of North Carolina football program, where Belichick is head coach, all the while amping up her profile as a contender for Miss America 2025, which fell apart on Sunday when she came in third in the Miss Maine contest as the representative of Hancock County.

This was a staggering blow to me, personally, even worse than Journalism losing to Sovereignty in the Derby, because I wanted this to be one of those malingering news items that keeps festering along with escalating absurdity, leading Hudson to win the Miss America contest, take the North Carolina Tarheels football team to the national championship, replace Suzanne Collins as a U.S. Senator from Maine and then, 12 years from now, when she’s old enough, set her sights on the White House.

Is it wrong of me to want to share another photo?

***

I know nothing about the winner of the Miss Maine contest or any of the other contestants, but based on what I’ve read and what I’ve seen and all my other misconceptions (not to be confused with my fantasies), I gotta say:

Had I been a judge, I’d have voted for her.

And I say this as a longtime Miami Dolphins fan, which would have disqualified me from being a judge, but who believes that anyone who can manipulate whip to submission put up with Bill Belichick is worthy, at the very least, of Miss Congeniality.

****

It’s important to note that Belichick autographed the copy of “Deductive Logic” that Hudson was reading. Even though he in no way resembles the author, Professor Warren Goldfarb, the Walter Beverly etcetera pictured here:

Coach Belichick signed the book: “Thanks for giving me a course in logic! Safe travels!”

Which, if any of you are a looking for a flirty pick-up line, is a proven winner.

***

We’ve made it this far and I’ve not mentioned that Belichick is 72 and Hudson is 24. Because that doesn’t concern me. Nor should it concern you.

What should concern you is that you’ve read this far only now to encounter a Really Bad Joke that I’ve been trying to find an inappropriate time to tell and now seems as inappropriate a time as any:

A guy sits down next to a gorgeous woman on a plane heading to Miami.

“So, uh, you live in Miami?” he asks.

“No, I’m attending a convention.”

“What kind of convention?”

“A convention of sex researchers,” she says.

“So, uh, you research sex?”

“Yes, I do. And I specialize in determining what kind of man makes the best lover.”

“Please,” the guy says. “Tell me more.”

“Well, my research has shown that, contrary to popular opinion, it is not Italian men, but Japanese men who are the most passionate.”

“Oh, really?”

“Frenchmen are the most romantic. Jewish men have the most endurance. And for the absolute best sexual experience of them all, my research shows that Southern rednecks provide women with the most pleasure,” she says. “But enough about me. What’s your name?”

“Shohei Pierre Lieberman,” the guy says. “But you can call me Bubba.”¹

***

That’s it. Thanks for reading. I’m on the next flight outta here.

***

And now for the incidentals, which you are free to ignore, but it will come back to haunt you.

And please, don’t be shy. Drop a comment. Extra points if it makes me laugh or gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

1. Credit for the bad joke goes to Greg Stout, of Tampa, or maybe it was Jim Swain, of Odessa, I forget which one because it was late at night and beer was involved.