The Problem With Travel

The problem with travel is... well, really the problem is that there are probably a million ways I could complete this sentence. (Stay tuned for the airport etiquette column I'm scripting in my head, and in the meantime please step back from the baggage carousel so that the rest of us can see our luggage coming too.)

The most topical way to finish the statement today is that I'm often stuck at a hotel that overserves the 24-hour news channels and underserves the shows I want to watch. For two nights I've had no Comedy Central and no Bravo. (During new episodes of Project Runway, and in the time while we wait for digital TiVo, this is a loss.)
So instead of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, I was listening to Bill O'Reilly (shudder). Or Wolf Blitzer, or Keith Oberman (like him at least a little.) And boy, have I seen enough of the JonBenet Ramsey case now.
What's particularly irksome is that the 24 hour newschannels run in a continuous repeating loop, so I saw that super creepy John Karr guy be walked through the airport six times, but never got any deeper into the story. (Like what about the "strange ransom note" the anchors kept on mentioning but never really talking about?)
I found myself lying in bed at night flipping: MSNBC, FoxNews, CNN, CNN Headline News, the local news, and quickly back around again, until one was undistinguishable from the other, the competing anchors seeming to complete each other's sentences.
Can you imagine if it had always been this way? (My first Fark.com link, courtesy Jason.)