Is anyone else watching the "Best of This is Sportscenter" special right now? I'm willing to admit that quite a few of the old one-offs are still funny, and a dash of self-deprecation still goes a long way with this viewer.

Still, after about twenty minutes -- 8:30-8:50 roughly -- I couldn't take it anymore. Why? By my count I'd heard no less than four people, in those fake, 20-second retrospective things, lay out with a variation of "after all these years, people in airports will still say __ to me".

Then it hit me. No, our airports aren't hotbeds of stranger-to-stranger conversation. Rather, the airport must stick out to the Stu Scotts and Karl Ravechs of the world because its their last bit of contact with us little people, non-20-year-olds  on South Beach division.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich actually wrote about this awhile back, locating airports as a fairly unique site in American life where even the Lords of the Realm are forced to share social space, however briefly, with the other 99% of us.

It must be so quaint for Steve Levy to eat at a Chili's 2 in O'Hare!