STUPID ACTOR

It was a gorgeous day, blue skies, almost uncharacteristically blue, and the date was 9/11/01. My first granddaughter was due in a couple of months, and life seemed good. I was working in my home office where I had the TV on and suddenly I saw it: That first plane hit the World Trade Center. I was stunned and all I could do was sit with my hand over my mouth thinking what a horrible, horrible accident I had just witnessed, when I saw a shadow on-camera and watched in horror as that second plane hit the other tower, and I, like millions of others, realized this was no accident. America was under attack, and surely thousands of people were dying in front of my eyes. Suddenly another plane was involved, heading for Washington and my heart stopped beating for a few seconds as the implications of what was happening took me to my knees. I ran up the stairs, woke my son, turned on his TV and we sat there and held each other and cried, scared, shaken to the core, sickened.

Anybody who flies frequently knows how security changed immediately. First, every plane was put on the ground, and days went by without one jet stream visible, a surreal silence from noise we never even realized we noticed it was so common. Suitcases were searched thoroughly, I was pulled out of line often and wanded, probably because I was doing some flying one-way, with only a carry-on bag, but one thing was certain: I would not ever, in a million years, try sneaking even a toy weapon onto a plane in my carry-on bags.

January 15, 2009, at LAX. Not much has changed. It's still a royal pain in the ass to fly. Take off your shoes, bag up your liquid makeup and your toothpaste separately, remove your laptop computer from its case and be sure to take off your jacket, all to be put through x-ray. it takes three times as long to get through Security now even when things go smoothly and nobody causes any glitches.

Hopefully you don't ever have Johnny Knoxville in front of you with his carry-on bag with a GRENADE packed in it. He forgot it was in there. It was a prop from a movie and he just happened to forget it was in his bag because Security has become so much more lax since 9/11 that you might just think it would be okay to drop a grenade into your bag and then try to get through there.

The star of "Jackass" really made one of himself. Everything came to a screeching halt. People were held up even longer than normal and I am pretty sure most everyone behind him in line thought exactly what I am about to say here...STUPID ACTOR. Get a damned grip. Nobody cares you were in a movie, I've never even heard of that movie. Just because you are a stupid actor does not mean you are going to get the nod to take a hand grenade through Security at LAX. Jeez.

I don't know...I think it's going to take awhile for me to find someone to overtake this guy for the Stupidity Award.