Every comedian that I’ve ever seen in concert, heard on my stereo or watched in a club has their own rant about going to the airport. It’s only natural, I guess, since the life of a stand-up comic consists of criss-crossing the country where they spend the majority of their life running to catch airplanes and the other half trying to open those little plastic bags of peanuts while trying to not to get a thumb cramp.

But it gets a little repetitive hearing comics make fun of the stewardess’s little pre-takeoff speech about oxygen masks or why the pillows they give you are so small and consequently, it becomes unfunny. So since I don’t have an airport rant of my own yet and since airports have gone through such drastic changes in the past months, I figured it was time to develop one. So don’t expect a lot of guffaws and funny witticisms tonight. Besides, it’s not like you expect that any other night.

First off, airport security has mutated into some new procedure where its main goal is to make them support it and totally aggravated at the same time. I’ve never seen so many people look so pissed-off and so safe at the same time. They’re standing in these lines at security checkpoints that are longer than Louie Anderson’s shopping list and they all just want to leash out at the subhuman mongoloid running the X-ray machine who never seems to find anything dangerous in them except the few times when he calls for an attendant to open your bag and check it because he thought he saw a porno mag in there that he could confiscate for “security reasons.”

But they all know that this extra inconvenience is for their own good, so they just stand there and pray that they can make their flight on time without setting fire to the person in front of them as a protest because then they’d get shot by the armed military guard that’s standing behind the baggage checkers. In every airport across the country, I kid you not, there are guys (and gals, please ladies no more letters unless your phone number or bra size is involved) in military fatigue standing behind the metal detector with automatic rifles as you walk out the baggage check area. It’s almost like they’re teasing the people in the airport who trying to sneak the gun on the plane by sticking it up their ass.

Plus, it’s a psychological tactic against the terrorists as well as a physical one because when you’re holding a gun, it’s really hard to stare down a guy with an automatic weapon and a chest strap filled with grenades. It’s so much easier to overtake a plane when you’re biggest obstacle is a stewardess with a drink tray and a handful of roasted peanuts.

Then before you get on the plane, there’s another security check. I’m not kidding, and what’s scary about this check is that they don’t even check everybody that gets on the plane. They pull random people out of line and check not just their luggage, but also everything on them including their clothes, their pockets and even their shoes. Of course, I know why, ever since Richard Reed hid a bomb in his shoe aboard a Delta airlines flight and everyone is paranoid that some Richard Reed fan club president might try to cop his idea, and they should be. But what happens if someone tries to hide a bomb in their lower intestine aboard an airplane. Does this mean that airport security will now include mandatory appendectomies? Sure they could just use an X-Ray machine, but if it’s the same guy who’s running the X-ray machine who has the ability to spot porno magazines in a single bound, then whip out the sodium pentathol and sharpen up the scalpel.

Then getting on the plane is a whole other story. You would think that just because your bags, your shoes and your lower intestine were given the OK by the crack squad of high school graduates running airport security that everything is okie-dokie terrorist wise, but things only get worse. Now the stewardess continue the scare tactics just as you are getting comfortable, including the ones that asked you to stop slapping their ass and saying, “Get me another cold one, sweet thang. What the hell, it’s my mom’s credit card anyway.”

They tell you that there are emergency exits located in the front, middle and rear of the plane. Emergency exits? How are those any good? If a fire breaks out while we’re in the air, how is exiting the plane at thirty thousand feet going to save any lives? Then she says that the seat I’m sitting on can also be used as a floatation device. Why? Is the pilot going to open the pool in an hour or has my flight been redirected to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean? Then if case of cabin pressurization, a small oxygen mask will fall down from the ceiling…STOP! If I’m suffocating five miles from the nearest lithosphere, the last thing I want to do is play with an oxygen piñata. There’s something rather unfulfilling about having the last few seconds of your life turn into a six-year-old’s birthday party.

Oh geez, I’m starting to sound like Jerry Seinfeld on crack. I’d better quit while I’m ahead. Next thing you know, I’ll start complaining about cold medicines and how there are a million different kinds that only cure runny noses and a million different other kinds that only cure my sinus headache. Don’t get me started.