Did you know there’s nightlife at airports? For starters, there’s the FOX Sports Bar & Grill and the Carolina Beer Company on opposite ends of the Charlotte airport. But considering how not fun airports are, bars should be in them for frightened flyers to sedate themselves and stranded travelers to kill time.
I’ve noticed a pattern: Every time I go to get on a plane to travel for the racing TV show I host, my personal life crashes. It was on my way to a shoot in Orlando that I found out my Mr. Big had a double life, and it was when I was leaving the Chili Bowl that I learned my fake maternity leave actually hit home for the woman I was unknowingly sharing a man with for three years.
And no, the Chili Bowl is not a chili cook-off, it’s a midget race — as in midget cars.
Anyway, I was headed to the Tulsa airport to fly to Salt Lake City for the Sundance Film Festival — I pulled up my e-mail to get my confirmation number and was greeted by an e-mail from the woman, indicating she was pregnant. And it turns out, the baby was conceived the morning I went to shoot at the race shop he was just fired from … he told me he was meeting about a job and, that night, we went to the Monday night football game.
Well, after receiving that news, I found myself utilizing airport nightlife. I marched my vacant uterus into the bar at my terminal and had a beer for the sheer fact that I could. But I need not remind you that alcohol is a depressant after all.
And apparently a girl with sad, baggy eyes looks like a terrorist because after having to switch planes, I was pulled aside and told I was selected for a special screening. I tried to get excited about it. “I’m the lucky winner — does this mean I get upgraded to first class?” No … but it did mean that I got to get an X-ray.
They put me in this contraption of an X-ray machine that made me think they were going to beam me to Salt Lake City, or maybe even another planet. However, it was essentially just X-ray vision. In other words, the security guards in the Denver airport saw me naked. They then went through my bags, checking for explosives. They obviously didn’t find anything, but they did confiscate my toothpaste.
When I finally got to Sundance, I went to a party where I had to occasionally retreat to the bathroom to re-apply my happy face. I always seem to make friends in the ladies room of bars, so I wasn’t surprised when a woman asked me if something was wrong. I was surprised, however, when I realized it was a woman standing with Paris Hilton. So, I gave them a comical synopsis of what ailed me. Paris just looked at me and said, “You win.”
Hold the phone … has Paris Hilton, for once in her life, made a good point?
In other news, Strike City is now open at the EpiCentre. As much fun as airport nightlife is, I opted to take the redeye home so I could celebrate my birthday at their grand-opening party. You can read about it at www.qcvibes.com, if you haven’t already.
This article appears in Feb 17-24, 2009.
