LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: WELCOME TO THE FUN ZONE!

For the uninitiated, the Fun Zone, is like, totally amazing. This Shangri-La is a cozy little lounge in the corner of JFK airport that has three video games and a COUCH MADE OF ROCK for the free and unlimited use of anyone whose initial flight was an hour late and thusly missed their two connecting flights and has to sleep in the god damned airport overnight ON A SLAB OF ROCK. The Fun Zone is the most comfortable spot in the parts of the airport I am currently allowed. And I have checked. This sucks it so hard it's not even funny guys.

Places that do not seem like they will be fun to spend the next 10 hours in:
A) JFK airport
Materials that said airport decided to make its lounging vessels out of:
A) Granite
Times not to change your crying son's diaper:
A) While he's standing on a chair in front of me at the JFK airport's MacDonalds.
Things that are not stimulating my appetite:
A) Your son's bare McNuggets
Perceived age at which you are too old to be wearing a diaper anyways:
A) 8 years old

For the love of God. There are so many screaming infants and crying toddlers around me I feel like I've just paid to go see a movie called The Colicking in an IMAX theatre. In 3D. These little ones be straight bawlin', son! OK, relax. I'm just going to close my eyes and imagine that I'm in a tropical jungle and it's really the jubilant peeps of exotic birds looking for mates, punctuated by the occasional cry of a holwer monkey. (15 minutes later) I am now totally fine with letting a howler monkey take one of these kids up in a tree to eat it.
Truly, being in an airport is a lot like being in a movie theatre. It's the same feeling of being in a little, indignant country that has its own stupefyingly expensive economy that you are expected to accept. But this one is run by a dictator whose brother owns a granite mine. Grrrrr! Now I want popcorn.

As I watch the power trickle from my laptop, here are things that I am considering doing for the next 600 minutes:

A) Playing Ms Pacman in the Fun Zone
B) Getting drunk and playing Ms Pacman in the Fun Zone
C) Applying for a job at the Montblanc pen store
D) Developing a bad back
E) Building a comfortable armchair out of all my clothing and a plastic stool from KFC, then charging people $20/ hour to sit in it
F) Going insane
G) All of the above

MUSIC: Missing Persons: Destination Unknown

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Hello! Welcome to airport town. The bars here close at 11pm. I am in the Sam Adams Restaurant and Beer Servery, trying my damndest to beat the clock and drink two pints of beer before they kick me out. Things I see:

*A dad in a ridiculous pair of navy, prescription Crocs and a corporate emblazoned polo awkwardly hugging his obviously embarrassed pubescent son. (Clarify for me just what is the exact age where utility and comfort trump looking sane, and you're content to shuffle around looking like a cross between a door prize at a golf tournament and a toddler in the rain?)
*A 7 year old Jarvis Cocker handily wheeling luggage who appears to be traveling by himself
*A hasidic jew in a heavy hat and hair looking hot and haggard. I wonder if he's sweating from something he just ate from the Kosher vending machine (Hot Nosh! 24/6) I saw?
I am being asked to leave the bar. Alright, Ms Pacman, I am asking you on a date. A twenty five cent date. I am slightly light headed and in a bit of a better mood. The howler monkey may have eaten a few of those kids. Time: 11:05 pm. Eight hours to go.

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Seriously Ms Pacman? You want me to pay another quarter for our date and I've already put in 3 and haven't even played yet? You trollop! I am out of American quarters! Here I was thinking we were going to have all sorts of high scores together, eating ghosts and pretzels all night, and here you end up being just another overpriced facet of this whole ugly carnival. I hate to tell you, but you're not exactly the most modern form of entertainment. All in, you're one step up from an abacus. And you are so fat you're basically a pie chart.
And so, refused 8-bit distraction, I have spent the last 5 hours drifting in and out of sleep, sharing the germy air of the other mouth-breathing citizens of the Fun Zone, the Zone that has never heard of upholstery, splayed out on a bench whose clinical discomfort would make a church pew sinfully cushy in contrast, feeling my discs and joints slip into unnatural configurations. Thinking about fresh food and a white sand beach is making me cry a little. 4 AM has rolled around, and I head up to check into my flight. Goodbye Fun Zone! It was absolutely, categorically, 100% the very antithesis of Fun while it lasted.