I just spent an enjoyable five days in San Francisco. It shouldn’t have been as satisfying as it was, since it rained the whole time, the nadir of which circumstance was being caught in a thunderstorm, which from a probability standpoint is rather like being caught in a forest fire in the Sahara Desert. I may detail some of my trip later, but I probably won’t, since the details are of little general interest save for the fact that I had lunch with two Olympians yesterday (and I doubt anyone’s impressed with that either).

It is a genuine riot that I was telling someone as I sat in the Manchester-Boston Airport last Saturday moments before boarding that Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) was possibly my favorite large airport in the country, meaning that I was able to traverse its corridors without my head down and a machete swinging wildly back and forth in front of me. This judgment has not only faded in the two stops I’ve made their since, but has violently reversed itself, to the point at which I must enthusiastically nominate PHL as the Most Bombable Airport of 2010.

When I was here on the 16th, I had a very difficult time finding a wall outlet that was not so worn out that it couldn’t retain a plug. I also couldn’t find a water fountain that worked worth a damn. This was already no longer my favorite large airport, that title having passed into the hands of DFW. At least wireless Internet remained free.

When I got here tonight, things had deteriorated drastically. Wireless Internet is no longer free. Not only do few water fountains work, the bathroom faucets don’t work, at least the few I tried. The express walkway between terminals B and C wasn’t working, at least in the direction I was going; I wasn’t troubled by this is I see such things as a contributor to the bloatardation of Americans, but it was still symptomatic.

Finally–and this has nothing to do with PHL specifically, but what the hell–I bought a single slice of pizza from Sbarro’s without looking at the price. “$4.74,” the counter lady said. I actually chimed in to say that I only wanted one slice, not two. But one slice of shit-ass pizza really does cost close to five bucks in an airport.

Another good reason to recommend this place for a fiery extinction is its proximity to Philadelphia itself, a city in need of euthanizing if ever there was one. A lot of big cities in the U.S. are generally pleasant places with some nasty sections. Philly is the inverse, a burned-out shithole with wide swaths of human and architectural misery peppered by a few nice areas and some places of rich historical significance. So clear out the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, evacuate the ten or twelve people I know personally there, and start the fuckin’ rally.

I’ll be in San Franscisco fro Jan. 16 – Jan. 21, for no good reason at all except that five years ago I spent six months there working on a research project at UCSF and have an amazing array of fine memories from that stint, and haven’t visited a number of good friends since. I don’t have any particular itinerary in mind–I’ll have to keep up with the work assignments I’ve got and I’ll be running with this or that person probably every day, but if there are any readers out there interested in hitting a coffee joint that doesn’t start with the letters S-T-A, I’m enjoy meeting you.

That is all. I’m in one of those phases where it seems to make sense to leave the florid bashing of the squint-eyed and the slack-jaw to others, but these periods never last long.