And just like that, there I was last Sunday, standing in an Alaska Airlines boarding line. LAX to NYC. Delayed a mere 2 hours because of a “toilet” issue. Sure. The day after their Portland-to-Ontario flight had what Boeing, the aircraft’s manufacturer, now calls a mid-air “mistake.”

Memo to Boeing CEO: calling a door unplugging at 16,000 feet a “mistake” might qualify as one of the decade’s spectacular understatements.  At least, it felt that way to those of us preparing to board one of your doubtlessly fine products less than 24 hours later.

“I looked it up, did you look it up, and well I did and because I know it’s silly, and that it really doesn’t matter, or maybe it does, or but it turns out this is a 737 Max 900, not a 737 Max 9, so I guess we’ll be okay, or at least I’m praying we will and what do you think?” said the lady jitterer who was next in line, drawing breath only to comment, “Nice sneakers, where did you find them?”

They are nice kicks, highly recommended, but that was beside the point.  As the always insightful Bob Brihn later commented, “if I’d been on board that thing, it would have changed my life.” His view, similar to what you frequently hear from near-death still-breathers, is that these events tend to shift life into two sharp categories—what matters and what doesn’t.

Memo to self: make sure to encourage friend Brihn not to fly Alaska in the future. If something untoward were to happen, he might classify advertising in the “doesn’t” category and thus vanishes one of the industry’s better creative minds.

But it does bring to mind this guilty secret: when boarding a flight, the left brain almost always has a passing “what if” muse about getting to the other end. Generally, the right brain answers back, “at least you’re doing what you love.”

Goes double now that I’m mostly flying to go shoot something myself, instead of sitting in video village, watching someone else have all the fun. 

This, the psychologists tell us, is all about maintaining the pretense of control over absolutely uncontrollable events. Why I’d always prefer to walk into hospital operating rooms, or up the scaffolding, putting the metaphorical noose around my own neck in either case.

But still. You start contemplating prospective life-contrasting events and suddenly, taking a careening two-wheel left turn at the concrete wall, and you realize we’re on the doorstep of a hella disquieting year.

The year that AI automation is going to collide, silicon head-first, into the way we all live the aforenoted lives.  

The year that will bring us a presidential election that could propel an orange-dyed Voldemort back into the Oval, hellbent on dictatorial vengeance.

The sliver of silver is that we actually can have some influence on the suckage by the simple virtues of getting informed, getting proficient, and getting involved.  Unlike getting sucked out of an airplane at altitude.

Speaking of which, I’m on another flight to LA at end of next week.  Please, dear god, tell me there’s someone other than Alaska who flies direct.