Liveblogging an Eternity at LAX

Ah, waiting in a part of the airport that is actually relatively quiet and clean. Worth the $50 I had to pay to get in!

I am probably going to spend the rest of my life at Los Angeles International Airport, so I may as well get comfy.

The story, in brief, is as follows:

1.) I get to LAX after a badass weekend (flew in Friday night, intended to leave early Sunday afternoon) of bonding with my new professional partner in media wackiness, Brian.

I ironed Brian's shirt so that he could go out on a date and not disgust the poor girl. He changed the shirt.

2.) I check in and get my boarding pass.

3.) I get in line for baggage check-in. After about 10 minutes, I ask an attendant if I should perhaps move to the front of the line, as it is 12:20 and my flight is at 1:15. She says no, I’ll make it in time.

4.) After 35 more minutes, it becomes apparent that no, actually, I am not going to make it in time. A wee hardworking man of foreign origin in a sassy American Airlines uniform tries to check me in, and then gets all surprised like, “Oh, no! We’ve already closed baggage for your flight!” Oh, really? Like I brought up to some dumb lady awhile ago? Now that I’ve spent 45 FUCKING MINUTES IN LINE, you tell me this? Excellent.

5.) I then spend another 45 minutes in line to get on standby for the next flight. It is now 1:20. My new flight is supposed to take off at 4:00 PM. I inform various profefssional and personal cohorts of this exciting new development.

6.) Then I wait in line at Chili’s Too for what I am told will be “like 10, 15 minutes.”

7.) After 35 minutes waiting for Chili’s Too, I get out of line and go to board my plane. Whoops! Scratch that! It’s been delayed 2.5 hours. Oh, and BTdubs, it’s overbooked, and I’m #20 on the standby list. So, there’s that. A flight attendant named Ember (like the burning stuff) tells me that I probably won’t get on a flight until midnight, since they’re all way oversold.

8.) I actually like Ember. She and I agree that I should treat myself to a $50 day pass to the Admirals Club. Good call, Me and Ember. But first, back to Chili’s Too to wait in line again!

9.) After about 15 minutes, I am awarded a coveted seat. I order a margarita, an iced tea, chips, salsa, and a muthafuckin’ fajita. None of it tastes particularly good, but I expect nothing more (or less) from Chili’s. Especially not from Chili’s Too.

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10.) Slightly tipsy, I amble my plebian ass on over to the elitist Admirals Club. Holy shit, is this place fancytown. They've got a Quiet Area, where I spot the very same Greek-American celebrity wife/actress who my cab driver to JFK had told me all about at the BEGINNING of this trip! Rita Wilson, you bring my life full circle. This weekend, anyway.

11.) So I've never spent enough time at LAX before to notice this, but people constantly look at other people to see if they are famous people. The actual famous people (not Rita Wilson, she seemed to do her own thing) look at other people to see if those other people are noticing that they are in the midst of famous people.

12.) Some cute dad just smiled at me. At least I think he's a dad. I think he brought some kids in here. He looked kind of like Anna Chlumsky's (sp?!) teacher in "My Girl," but this guy is actually attractive. Perhaps he's searching for his future second wife.

13.) Earlier this weekend, I thought, "Hell, I'd live in L.A." Now I think, "No. No, I wouldn't. Because that would mean leaving L.A. through LAX, and attempting to return to L.A. through LAX." Like I can handle LAX for business, but if I'm going to call anyplace "my" airport, it's Newark, which fucking rules.

14.) I just ordered the crab bisque (probably a terrible choice, even in this fancy lounge), a glass of red wine, and something called "traveler's chocolate." I don't know what that entails, except that a small cup is involved and the waitress says it's REALLY good.

I will continue this stirring narrative at a later point in time. Am going to work on blog post for MTV and edit some video as long as I'm here for the next five to six hours.

7:05 PM: Eating dark chocolate, drinking red wine, blogging as the sun sets through the giant windows...man, I'm having a really nice time on this 11-hour delay. I'm never NOT buying a day pass to the Admirals Lounge at LAX after this!

7:13 PM: Talking with Moms.

7:34 PM: This is weird. I'm having a really nice time. At some point whenever I go to L.A. I always have some moment in which I decide that I'm glad that I'm alive and not, you know, dead (or, like, stuck in some fucked-up nether region that is neither Here nor Beyond!) L.A. always weirdly relaxes me at some point in my trip...I think it's just so different from NYC in many ways that it inevitably has some odd soothing effect at some point, even if stressful things occur while I'm there.

7:35 PM: Maybe I have Stockholm Syndrome and LAX is just fucking with what remains of my mind. What am I thinking, L.A. is soothing? Their traffic is out of control! And the smog, feh. You can have it. (But I can visit it. I do like to visit.)

7:50 PM: Um, I should probably go look at the departures/arrivals board thing to see if I'm ever leaving California and returning to New York, like, not in a bodybag or something.

8:45 PM: Oh, awesome! Now my flight isn't leaving 'til 1:00 a.m. ... 11 hours and 45 minutes after I was supposed to get out of here. YEAH DAWGZ! It's darker and quieter now in the Admirals Club Lounge, or whatever it's actually called, and I'm editing video me and Brian shot when we were goofing around on Saturday.

Large headphones make me feel like I'm better at editing and life than I actually am.

8:47 PM: I thought I saw Paul Rudd and some sort of family member (perhaps a lovely wife?) sitting in the noisier, more social part of the Admirals Lounge, but actually I think it was just some guy who wasn’t Paul Rudd. And probably still isn’t Paul Rudd, actually.

9:38 PM: I just got weirdly emotional, like I was going to cry. I think it’s the red wine settling in. Granted, I finished drinking ONE GLASS an hour ago, but for me, that’s amazing, considering I had like half a margarita a few hours earlier at Chili’s Too. Big drinking day for me!

9:39 PM: This little fucking girl just goes, “WOULDN’T IT BE SCARY IF YOUR PLANE CRASHED HEAD-DOWN INTO THE GROUND? THAT WOULD BE SCARY!” Yes, little Madison, it would be. But what’s scarier than all that is the way I’m going to grind your heart into tiny bits using a fork.

9:40 PM: I have figured out that I am going to hopefully get into JFK at 10:00 a.m. and get home for like 12:00 p.m., sleep for four hours, and then go into the office at 5:00 p.m. for my first night at work (this weekend was my first few days at work, but this will be at the actual building where I’ll usually be working).

12:02 AM: Dude, do NOT fuck with a Qantas Airline flight attendant. I almost typed “stewardess,” but you KNOW she would sense that shit with her Aussie extra-sensory perception, which she probably gained on a walkabout with Russell Crowe and that band of his. I totally didn’t try to eff with her, but she was getting pissed all on her own about the fact that the flight she was working hadn’t yet started boarding. She kept wandering around bitching to another Qantas gal, going, “WHAT IS GOING ON?” And it was so weirdly assuring, in a slightly alarming fashion, to see a pissed-off flight attendant, that I instantly felt fondness for her.

Also, there are Chasidim using the automatic massage chairs. And some blond starlet with super-fake extensions is prancing around looking lovely but manufactured.

12:05 AM: In closing, I’d like to wrap by questioning why the night time anchor dude on Bloomberg News looks so much like Jimmy Kimmel. Also, why does Mayor Bloomberg own everything, and why does it not freak us out more that his reach is global? Also, do we think he’s gay like we think Ed Koch is gay? And if so, does that change our perception of him?

I’d also like to say that I hope this flight doesn’t suck ballz.

In addition: I got upgraded to first class. OH SNAP YES I DID YES I DID! Big shout-out to the folks working the reception/customer service desk at the Admirals Club at the American Airlines Terminal at LAX. These folks have been so attentive and overall in good cheer over the past 12 hours that it’s made a world of difference in what my mood might have otherwise been. DAMN, this place is nice. Do we have anything like this in NYC? If so, somebody tell me about it in the comments, cause I gotta buy into this fancy scheme. I didn’t even use the massage chairs and I had a nice time! (Turns out you had to pay, which is why I didn’t.) I got to edit the first of a series of YouTube videos I’m going to put up chronicling this California adventure; I read some Hitchens; I ate some snacks; I drank some wine; I even caught a woman in the bathroom pulling what I like to call a Self-Reflexive Mary Magdalene: washing her own feet.

They’re cleaning our plane now and we’re supposed to get on it soon!

12:43 AM: Aaaand I’m out (of this lounge, anyway.) Time to join the rest of my people down at the gate. Hope we get out of here soon. Thanks for reading along. And hey, if you’ve got any flight horror/joy stories, feel free to leave ‘em down below. Or horror/joy flight stories. I’m tired, guys. I’m sorry I said that mean thing about Madison earlier. About grinding her heart into tiny bits with a fork? I actually really like kids a lot. Except when they say neurosis-inducing shit at the airport.

And on those neuroses…I’ve managed to avoid a topic that I’d like to write about, mainly why this multi-hour lounge fest (and, in fact, this cross continental flight) represents something more to me than just the usual travel stuff. I think some people might relate, especially if they’ve ever been afraid to leave their own bedroom. I’d like to send a virtual high-five to all my former/current agoraphobes and panic attack sufferers and let you know that if someone as troubled as I am/used to be can survive a 14-hour stay in an airport and a cross-continental flight (at least one way–I’m not making any bets on the upcoming one, but I do hope I’ll sleep through most of it and not flip out, but you know, it could happen, so I’m just saying, I’m not like CURED or something), then I know you can, too.

(And jeez, I take meds, and it’s fine if you do, too! Don’t buy into the shit that you can just think it all away. It’s rad if you can, but if not…well, we’ll get into that later.)

Homeward bound!