my fun day at LAX
five years ago myself and the g/f were flying to the states to get married (at vegas, with elvis, classy me.) we land at LAX and have to go through Immigration. They give us a nice form to fill in with details of where we're staying. now we're staying with friends and didn't actually think to get their address before we left, what with them picking us up from the airport. So we get up to the counter and say this and the big immigration guard with his gun gets shirty and makes us queue up somewhere else. Here the friendly immigration guard says 'just put 15 springfield drive, there's a springfield drive in every town in america'. so we do, and go back to the first guard, who knows we don't know where we're staying but he's happy now and let's us through. Onto passport control. The g/f's passport has an old pic in of her with dreadlocks. This causes confusion and 'are you sure this is you?' questions.

Eventually we're through and into the customs hall. The family in front of us with no baggage except a big clear bag of brown powder is let through no problems. The g/f is let through no problems. me? Suitcase on the desk, 'can you open this for me sir?'. So he goes through my suitcase piece by piece asking happy questions as we go along. We get to 2 books i've bought over for my friend. Ecstasy and Malibu Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh (it was hard getting IW books back then apparently). He picks up Ecstasy and stares at it for a couple of minutes. Me: 'it's just a book.' he looks at me, at the book, at me again 'Do you take drugs sir?' Me: 'Um, no' Him: 'Now don't lie to me' Me: 'Err, well not in the last ten hours' Him: stony face. looks at book again. Me 'c'mon, it's just a book, same bloke who wrote trainspotting' Him: 'that book about, err, heroin' Me: 'err yeah'. Now, my bumflaps are starting to fwap, i'm seriously thinking i'm about to be hauled off for an intimate body search, but he suddenly gets bored and let's me through with a wholly inappropriate 'have a nice day'. we get through to outside to be met by our friend and his big homemade 'Welcome to America, we love Brits' banner. Ha

To this day i'm convinced this was all because i joked about importing snails on the plane (you're not allowed to import snails to america. it says so on the landing card)

apologies for the length etc.
(andysith vs. the becardiganed mousethra. EEK, Sun 15 May 2005, 8:36, Reply)