Left, Me stuck at Chicago O'Hare International Airport contemplating suicide


It's been more than a week since I landed back in Texas from the Erma Bombeck Writers' Conference and I'm still feeling the jetlag. I had the most bi-polar flight experience of my life for this convention. The flight in was total Hell. Since I waited too long to get a direct flight, I had to catch three puddle jumpers from Dallas to Kansas City to Hades and then to Dayton. I missed the first flight because it was at 6 a.m. in the morning, a time in which the sun is too hungover to get up, but I caught a flight right behind it that would put me into Kansas City on time. It didn't. Four hours later, I'm in Chicago's O'Hare, an airport that should allow passengers to carry weapons in the terminal because it's the only way you'll survive. I was stuck there for seven hours and didn't get into Dayton until 11:30 p.m., 30 minutes before last call. I drank three Killian's with the speed, spirit and bladder of the Flash.

The way back was the best flight ever. I got diverted to Cleveland, but the flight was overbooked so I took a voucher for a later flight. I had seven hours to kill in Cleveland so I took an L-Train to the Rock and Roll Museum and spent every available hour there until they had to ask me to leave. I know some might view it as a little tourist trap in the middle of a town that even smog wouldn't be caught dead in, but it was a perfect day to ride the public transit rails and a museum dedicated to music that doesn't suck made up for the first class flight to Hell. I also blew $150 bucks on T-Shirts. See Disney, you're not the only family attraction draining cash from college funds with your funnel of fun.

As for the conference itself, I think got about five good stories out of the week, even if beer erased two of them. Here's the best of the best:

- Columnist Connie Schultz and I didn't have the best history to speak of. Her speech and her columns are some of the funniest political stuff around, but I took personal offense to a column she wrote about the lack of youngin's wanting to become journalists because they aren't willing to live a lifestyle without BMWs or fancy clothes. I disagreed. The reason they don't want to be journalists is because they want a living wage. I wrote her a response that said, "I'd beat a man to death with a fish for $20,000 a year." I brought it up to her and fumbled my way through the response because I couldn't remember her column word for word. But I redeemed myself by asking her if she and her senator husband have a Secret Service codename and if they get to choose it. "Smart ass," she mumbled followed with a giggle. "That's a dumb codename," I thought to myself.

- The whole weekend I tried to cozy up to this really cute college girl. I listened to her ideas for books and stories. I talked about life as a journalist. I even pretended to be a smoker, something that combined with the patented Ohio cold made me sound like the retarded offspring of Wolfman Jack and George Will the whole weekend. She remembered my name for more than a day, so I figured I done my job. That night I went to the Chad Vader guys' speech, two other people who I wanted to cozy up to strictly for platonic reasons although if they offered to let me help write their Chad Vader television pilot... That didn't go well, but it got worse before it got better. The same girl who I had gotten to know through a cloud of noxious death smoke stood up and hit on them in front of EVERYONE. They spent the whole weekend sitting at the same table in the hotel bar while I cried my spirit into a head-sized glass of Guinness. Patrick Swayze is full of it. Pain DOES hurt.

- I got my revenge. The very last night of the conference, some friends grabbed a table with the Chad Vader guys until the bartenders had to herd us out like sheep. For most of the night, the shorter haired one played this game with everyone at the table called "Who has the hat?" I won't bore you with the details, suffice it to say it involves repeated sayings of the phrase, "Who has the hat?" followed by screaming, name calling and generally hurt feelings all around. It's not so much a game, but more of a brute test of wits, smarts and resisting the urge to beat a grown man to death with your hands. The game literally lasted for hours. Around 3 a.m., the short haired one goes to bed in his plush suite hotel room and the long haired one, some friends and I venture back to his room for cards and wisecracks. I sneak a beer back to the room. Pretty soon, the long haired one tells me he has the short haired one's room number and dares someone to call him. I don't hesitate to pick up the receiver, dial the number and wake the poor bastard up just so I can ask him, "Uh yeah, hi, who has the hat?" He proceeds to call me a very un-lady-like name and I hang up cackling like the Cryptkeeper after he's made his 200th consecutive "axe you a question" pun. "That's a dumb codename," I think to myself.

Oh and Seth Brown and I got to meet rapper Lil' Wayne's security posse in the hotel lobby Saturday night. The man who sang "**** With Me Now" and "*****monster" attended the Erma Bombeck convention. If only O'Hare would have let me bring my gat, I could have gotten him and Garrison Keillor to sign it.