In yesterday’s New York Times, Op-Ed columnist Roger Cohen waxed poetic about Pan Am and the commercial airline’s classy heyday. Alas, budget cutbacks and heavy security have taken most of the fun out of the friendly skies (dear people in line, stop making jokes about feeling like cattle–I am officially over cattle jokes). But let us not be so pessimistic! Friends, countrymen, fat Canadians who get two seats for the price of one, there’s still so much to love about the miracle of flight.

Drug dogs can smell your fear, you know.

7. Taking your shoes off at security: Whatever, I know everybody hates this, but I find it to be the ultimate equalizer. First class, coach, unaccompanied minors, the handicapped–everybody’s shit stinks and everybody has to take their shoes off and put them on the conveyor belt. Equality.

6. The views: How can you complain when you are IN THE CLOUDS? Also, can you believe how many pools that town has? Looking through a plane window is like looking through the eyes of God.

5. Turbulence: During a long bout of turbulence, when I think I’m going to die, I think about all the stuff in my apartment that I don’t want my mother to see and I pray that my roommate, in her grief, has the presence of mind to at least hide that book of Victorian erotica I bought off a card table in Midtown (as a joke!). Then it finally ends, the plane steadies itself and I feel like I’ve cheated death, which is pretty amazing.

4. Movies and sometimes television: What? I can watch John & Kate Plus 8 at 30,000 feet? I can see The House Bunny before its DVD release?

3. My “No Smoking” signs joke: Jerry Seinfeld has his “black box” routine, I have this: “What? Why do they still make planes with ‘No Smoking’ signs? Doesn’t everyone know that fire is probably a bad idea while in flight? And why are those signs lit? What is the deal with that? If the bulb ever died behind one, would somebody really pull their Marlboros out and light up?” Thank you very much.

Seat 17D is SUCH a Sawyer!

2. The flight attendant jokes on JetBlue and Southwest: How much do I want to be a stewardess on one of these airlines? The whole crew has so much fucking fun. They did the Hokey Pokey once on my Southwest flight from Hartford to Baltimore and it was amazing. After we landed, I bet they all went to the BWI bathrooms to smoke pot and play Uno. They are so much cooler than me.

1. Playing LOST: If the whole plane crashed on an island, who would be our leader? Do you think they’ll ask me to be their leader? Do you think we’d learn to work together or would we kill each other off like in Battle Royale? Who would be my island boyfriend? What if our island had Others? Would one of them become my island boyfriend? Nevermind, there aren’t enough hot passengers to play this game.