Offspring’s Holland sings virtues of piloting plane
Offspring singer Dexter Holland is a pilot, so he flies around a lot. This worries me, because so many stars have died in little planes. Holland laughs at my concern. But he has had the same thought.
One day, long ago, he was piloting out of Sacramento, Calif., when he stopped in Burbank to pick up Beck and Tom Morello to give them a lift.
“So I’m looking at them on the plane,” Holland remembers, “and I thought, ‘This is (expletive), man. This isn’t right. Three of us on one plane – that’s just begging fate!’
“What could go wrong?” jokes Holland, whose band plays Saturday at the Boulevard Pool at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas – bringing such hits as “Self Esteem” to “Come Out and Play (Keep ‘Em Separated)” and “You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid.”
Holland actually has airplane news-you-can-use information, regarding recent airline humor.
Recently, Ann Romney was on a plane that emergency landed when smoke filled the cabin. Then Mitt Romney joked he didn’t know why commercial planes don’t have windows that can open, to air out the smoke.
“If you’re on a jet,” Holland explains, “you’re very high and the air is thin. You would pass out from lack of oxygen. That’s the main reason” passengers can’t open windows on commercial planes.
But Holland flies a little single-engine propeller plane. And he doesn’t fly as high as commercial jets. So he has a cockpit window that he really can open during flights.
“It’s fun! Put your hand out the window and just feel the breeze going by,” he says. “You probably wouldn’t do it at 200 (mph). But you slow it down to about 100 to 130 and open it up, and it’s kind of fun. It’s like putting the top down.”
What’s the maximum speed Holland can fly and stick his hand out of his cockpit window before the wind force breaks off his hand?
“About 150, probably,” he guesses.
It takes him about an hour to fly from Los Angeles to Vegas.
“The main thing about flying your own airplane is the air traffic control is gnarly. It’s very busy. Vegas controllers have a reputation for being kind of grumpy,” he says.
But they have good reason to be stressed, he says.
“I think they’re just overloaded from so much traffic coming in. So you better be on top of your game if you’re flying to Vegas.”
When he comes to Vegas for Saturday’s show, the band’s last stop on its latest tour, he and his band mates will be joined by friends from L.A.
“We’ll have a whole posse that comes out from Los Angeles to hang out in Vegas. It’s always a big party. It’s great.”
It’s just too bad he can’t fly his plane over the Boulevard Pool at showtime.
“I thought about dropping water balloons on the audience.”
Doug Elfman’s column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Email him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.
