The Board of Airport Commissioners for Los Angeles International has decided to build a terminal solely for the use of the rich and famous. Once the terminal is completed, those willing to pay a fee of $1500 to $1800 will be able to walk from parking lot to plane in a mere sixty or so steps instead of the 2200 paces the average schlub takes to get from the curb to the Southwest gate at LAX, all the while being kept cosseted with catered food and security personnel trained to treat them politely instead of as suspected terrorist meat, without getting so much as a whiff of we hoi polloi.
Those of us with a natural American instinct for democracy are disgruntled at this use of taxpayer funds, especially since the Gateway of the Stars concept is based on a similar terminal at Heathrow that was originally reserved for the use of the Royal Family, but it turns out we only have ourselves to blame. Apparently there are people out there who go completely bat guano upon sighting a celebrity. Ordinary reserved souls such as myself and both my readers might see, for example, the actress Salma Hayek bouncing through an airport terminal and say to ourselves “There goes Salma Hayek. She looks just as talented and breasty in person as she does on the movie screen,” without realizing that some of our fellow proles are thinking “THAT’S SALMA HAYEK! I’M NEVER GOING TO GET A CHANCE TO MOTORBOAT HER AGAIN!” and lunge after her well-regarded bosom.
Those of us enduring an interminable flight delay by stuffing ourselves with doughy goodness at an airport Sbarro’s would certainly object to some stranger coming up and stealing a piece of pepperoni off our slice, but that is life if you’re Kim Kardashian. And the stranger would run away yelling “KIM KARDASHIAN’S LIPS WERE ON THIS PIECE OF PEPPERONI!”
And then he would probably put it down his pants.
The Terminal of the Rich and Famous is also supposed to solve LAX’s paparazzi problem, which is apparently getting worse with each passing year, as these seekers of celebrity sightings jump over people in wheelchairs, hijack airport electric carts and kick babies while trying to get shots of celebs in sunglasses and baseball caps who quite clearly want to be left alone.
There are bound to be problems, though. To avoid the having to determine exactly who is famous enough to be granted admission to the Tinseltown Jetway, the authorities have simply set a hefty price for its use. Who is to say that any bro with an extra fifteen hundred in his fanny pack will automatically be able to restrain himself from abjectly begging for a selfie with Kate Upton? Or that security camera footage of Jessica Alba undergoing a strip search and possibly enjoying it won’t mysteriously appear on the Internet?
What about the leading men of Hollywood? Mark Wahlberg, who once claimed he could stop terrorist acts merely by force of his personality, is suddenly going to stop striding through LAX like a manly man and hide out in the Celebrity Weinie Wing once it’s built? The Terminator and Rocky aren’t going to be caught dead in the Frightened Old Actors Airport Lounge. You can take that to the bank.
People whose fame has long ceased to be lucrative need to be granted free lifetime passes, too. Once their fifteen minutes is up, people like Honey Boo-Boo need to be able to get on a plane without being molested, and Subway Jared without being punched.
So this issue is more complicated than it seems. But no time to dwell on it more here. My flight is boarding.
Those of us with a natural American instinct for democracy are disgruntled at this use of taxpayer funds, especially since the Gateway of the Stars concept is based on a similar terminal at Heathrow that was originally reserved for the use of the Royal Family, but it turns out we only have ourselves to blame. Apparently there are people out there who go completely bat guano upon sighting a celebrity. Ordinary reserved souls such as myself and both my readers might see, for example, the actress Salma Hayek bouncing through an airport terminal and say to ourselves “There goes Salma Hayek. She looks just as talented and breasty in person as she does on the movie screen,” without realizing that some of our fellow proles are thinking “THAT’S SALMA HAYEK! I’M NEVER GOING TO GET A CHANCE TO MOTORBOAT HER AGAIN!” and lunge after her well-regarded bosom.
Those of us enduring an interminable flight delay by stuffing ourselves with doughy goodness at an airport Sbarro’s would certainly object to some stranger coming up and stealing a piece of pepperoni off our slice, but that is life if you’re Kim Kardashian. And the stranger would run away yelling “KIM KARDASHIAN’S LIPS WERE ON THIS PIECE OF PEPPERONI!”
And then he would probably put it down his pants.
The Terminal of the Rich and Famous is also supposed to solve LAX’s paparazzi problem, which is apparently getting worse with each passing year, as these seekers of celebrity sightings jump over people in wheelchairs, hijack airport electric carts and kick babies while trying to get shots of celebs in sunglasses and baseball caps who quite clearly want to be left alone.
There are bound to be problems, though. To avoid the having to determine exactly who is famous enough to be granted admission to the Tinseltown Jetway, the authorities have simply set a hefty price for its use. Who is to say that any bro with an extra fifteen hundred in his fanny pack will automatically be able to restrain himself from abjectly begging for a selfie with Kate Upton? Or that security camera footage of Jessica Alba undergoing a strip search and possibly enjoying it won’t mysteriously appear on the Internet?
What about the leading men of Hollywood? Mark Wahlberg, who once claimed he could stop terrorist acts merely by force of his personality, is suddenly going to stop striding through LAX like a manly man and hide out in the Celebrity Weinie Wing once it’s built? The Terminator and Rocky aren’t going to be caught dead in the Frightened Old Actors Airport Lounge. You can take that to the bank.
People whose fame has long ceased to be lucrative need to be granted free lifetime passes, too. Once their fifteen minutes is up, people like Honey Boo-Boo need to be able to get on a plane without being molested, and Subway Jared without being punched.
So this issue is more complicated than it seems. But no time to dwell on it more here. My flight is boarding.
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