Yes, the Scudder Road Circus is on the road again, taking its animal- and act-free self around the globe to bring pleasure to untold dozens of people, largely by rivaling Frommer’s, Fodor’s, The Rough Guide, National Geographic, The Dead Sea Scrolls, etc, with its insider travel knowledge and up-to-the-moment advice.
The first installment was going to be about Oaxaca, Mexico, until swine flu spoiled everything, so here’s something much more exotic: the old RCC in Terminal Seven, LAX.
1. On a Saturday morning, the Red Carpet Club is the perfect place to a) get some work done on one of six (count them) public desks; b) to enjoy a selection of breakfast cereals in incredibly tiny bowls, with a choice of skim milk or 2%; c) spot people who may or not be celebrities, because it’s hard to tell if they’re actual celebrities or just people from LA who have expensive clothes and small, taut bodies; and d) spot people who may be important government figures, based on the number of newspapers they’re reading (three), and the number of secret service guys in good suits and lapel badges lurking nearby (three), and the way they refer to the President as “Barack.”
2. If you don’t like cereal, don’t worry, because by noon it’s replaced with the RCC’s traditional native cuisine of greasy cubes of cheese, a selection of dusty crackers, and a platter of stunted, torpid vegetables arranged around dip of obscure provenance and gluey consistency.
3. Do not allow yourself to be distracted by the secret service guys, who stare at you each time you glance over at the mysterious government figure, muttering to each other as though they are about to detonate your laptop and cell phone the second you wander off to pour a cup of lukewarm tea.
4. Do not allow yourself to be distracted by the desk staff, who are dealing with a long line of upset people wanting to get into the RCC or upgrade or get a different flight. Sometimes this is hard, especially when the United representative shouts “STEP BACK INTO THE PUBLIC AREA, SIR!”
5. When you watch episodes of “30 Rock” on Hulu, do not allow yourself to be distracted by the guy at the next desk watching “24” on his laptop, or the way he turns around to glare at you for laughing aloud.
6. When you watch episodes of “30 Rock” on Hulu, do not allow yourself to be distracted by the ads they stick in for Foundation Rwanda, ads which involve plaintive children, especially if they remind you of the child in Mali who you’re sponsoring through Save the Children, the child to whom you’ve never written despite being urged to do so, at regular intervals, by the guilt merchants at STC.
7. Don’t worry if a lot of people in the RCC are wearing surgical masks, reminding you that swine flu is rampant across the world, and that you have neglected to take proper precautions – i.e. you’ve got your mini Walgreens-brand “Instant Hand Sanitizer Spray”, and that’s it, because Walgreens had sold out of everything else, and the woman who was helping you basically mocked you for being the last person in town to wander in looking for pandemic-flu-repellant products.
8. Resist the temptation to steal a copy of today’s Guardian off a sleeping, snoring man. Resist feeling irritation about the lack of international papers on sale at this airport – the lack, in fact, of anything much aside from the LA Times and pretend newspaper USA Today.
9. Focus instead on the twenty free copies of Ski magazine displayed on a nearby rack. Wish you found reading about skiing interesting. Wonder if you will ever go skiing in your life, and suspect that you will not.
10. Count the minutes until you can leave the RCC, walk over to Terminal Two, check in for your evening flight on Air New Zealand, and then find sanctuary in the Koru Club. Entertain the usual brief, disturbing fantasy that the rules will have changed since you last flew, and that the Koru Club door police will wave you and your RCC card away. Know that if this happens you will pay, on the spot, for Koru Club membership, because it’s still more than seven hours until your flight, and because this is LAX, with its Jetsons-like unlinked terminals, you will not be able to return to Terminal Eight and the RCC. Maybe then you’ll realize what you’ve lost, and how early it is, how early.
Brilliant Paula. I hate those Red Carpet Clubs, perhaps one should just buy a paper or magaizne and go to the departure gate and wait for boarding there.No point in trying to read yur book because of all the distractions. United Airlines shuld take lessons from Air NZ on how to manage it's frequent flyer facilities.
Posted by: Graham Beattie | May 02, 2009 at 09:54 PM
I love red carpets.
Posted by: celebrity oops | December 12, 2009 at 09:45 AM