Free In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks: And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy by Adam Carolla

least a half hour away. I drove there like an old man drives through a farmer’s market, ignoring all laws of man, nature, and God. I screeched around the corner and into the long-term parking lot about six forty-two, grabbed my luggage, and sprinted toward the security line. This was pre-9/11 so I still had a chance.
    I’d made it through by about six fifty-three and started scurrying down the endless terrazzo-covered corridor toward the American Airlines gate. When I arrived I was surprised and relieved to see Dr. Drew standing at the check-in counter. I looked to the left and saw our plane was parked right behind him with the gate still hooked up. I was weak from fluid loss but still had enough energy to let forth a celebratory “Hell yeah!” And that’s when I noticed Drew was arguing with the woman. “Sir, the door has been shut. We can’t reopen it.” I found out later their “on-time” schedule is based on when the door shuts, not when the landing gear goes up. And since it was the first flight of the morning, it affected the entire day’s schedule. I started in on the woman. “It’s two minutes to seven, the plane is parked, the jetway is still attached. Why are we standing in front of the plane arguing?” This bitch was clearly not going to let us onto our airplane.
    Drew took this opportunity to make a couple of points. One was that his brand-new camel-hair overcoat was still on the plane because he got off to look for me. Two—the gig we were going to was at the University of Florida at a nine-thousand-seat basketball arena. This was easily the biggest show we’d ever done. As I began a third round of shouting/pleading with the unhelpful representative from American Airlines, Drew turned his ire toward me. “You couldn’t have driven yourself to the goddamn airport? You had to get a listener to do it? That jacket cost my wife two grand and this is the first time I’ve worn it. It was a gift.” (Quick side note on gifts: Why does everyone get caught up in the that-coffee-mug-was-a-gift argument? Doesn’t that make it more expendable?) I fired back at Drew, “If we could have just carpooled like human beings, I wouldn’t have had to rely on the listener with the heart of gold and the alarm clock of marzipan.”
    As the arguing wore on, I realized the plane and the jetway still had not budged. I pointed out to the bitch in the blue blazer that I could have been on the plane and drunk by now. She repeated for the fourteenth time, “Sir, the door has been closed.” Then the final indignity. I saw a worker walk out of the jetway. The door had been open since we’d been there. At that point, I went into a fugue state. I don’t remember much after that, just that whenever Drew tells the story he says all I kept repeating to her was “Get me the guy from the commercial. Get me the superhelpful guy that makes everything right. The guy who chases weary travelers through the terminal with the attaché case they mistakenly left behind. That guy. Go get that guy.” This argument went on and on while the plane didn’t move and the jetway didn’t move. It’s another one of those letter-of-the-law, spirit-of-the-law arguments. Thank you, dickhead lawyers. The door not opening was no different from the overhead compartment not closing.
    Almost every form of transportation has improved over the last forty years. Cars are safer and more comfortable, trains are faster and less expensive, and even buses have improved—not counting the whole segregation thing. Airline travel’s the only mode of transportation we’ve taken a step backward in. The passengers dress like defendants on The People’s Court , the stewardesses have gotten uglier or gay, and a flight from New York to L.A. still takes six hours, exactly the same as it did in 1963 except that now you have to get to the airport two hours earlier for the prison-style pat-down and delousing. And instead of sitting across from guys with ascots, I’m