Flight security paranoia

OK, so we are in Chicago and feeling good again after sleeping 9 hours solid. This trip was really long and stressful.

Flying has long become a pretty grim experience, but this was ridiculous. We got into Brussels with an early flight from Milano. We noticed that the "go to gate" sign for our flight to Chicago looked pretty early (two hours and more before departure), but did not think much of it. Then we walked to the gate and it was like this: the concourse was blocked by a kind of checkpoint manned by people (probably Irish rentacops) in AMERICAN Transport Security Airport uniforms. In an European airport! Everyone that had not checked in in Brussels (including of course yours truly) was had to go through another X-ray check (the last one had been like 50 meters from there, in the same airport), and some of their hand luggage (including my guitar) had to be checked in.

Having done that, we had to go through ANOTHER questioning of "have you packed your luggage yourself, sir?" (no, you moron, my butler did it for me, what did you think?). This was taking really long, and an American gent ahead of me complained to a Belgian hostess: he said that he was keeping each passenger for like five minutes, which multiplied by the number of passengers in a 747 meant the plane was going to leave 2 hours late. The hostess said no problem, when more people came the process would speed up and there would be no delay. So I broke in and asked "What this means is that he's got time before the flight needs to go and he needs to look like he's actually doing something for his wage, so he'll waste the time of the early comers, then speed through the rest, right?" and she made a face like she had swallowed somethiong cold and slimy and said she was sorry.

In time we managed to convince a really rude black lady with incomprehensible English that yes, this was our hand luggage and we had packed it ourselves and no one had tampered with it. Well, no one except airport security, and frankly I do not trust them too much, they might be infiltrated, you know what I mean. Then they let us give our boarding passes to the gate. Then they called us for actual boarding and the same guys asked us AGAIN if that was our luggage and anything weird had happened with it. This is five meters from the earlier questioning, and perhaps 20 from the TSA checkpoint. An industry built on paranoia - and consequently a paranoia lobby - is born. These clowns do not make me feel any safer. Quite the contrary.

Anyway, we landed in O'Hare, got admitted by immigration, cleared customs, showed our passports a million times, were questioned some more and now we are here. I'll stop this now and go to sound check. The show is about to begin!