LA-X-tra long wait (with updates)

Planes beckon outside LAX's Tom Bradley International Terminal but none will fly me to Sydney. I waited too long to book a flight out of Knoxville to LA (via Atlanta) and am suffering the consequences: loooong layovers. Mom dropped me off at Knoxville's Tyson-McGee airport at 6:30 am for my 7:30 flight to Atlanta, which landed at 8:30. Two-and-a-half hours later I was flying west, landing at LAX at 12:30 pm left coast time and leaving me with a ... {gulp} ... 11-hour wait for the flight to Sydney. Asked an airport employee where she would spend 11 hours at LAX; she immediately answered 'Tom Bradley'. Good call. Spent an hour devouring a perfect dish of chicken parm over linguini at Daily Grill and now have the laptop plugged into a Samsung kiosk while I battle the effects of being up since 3 am and tap-tap-tapping gently so as not to wake dozing travelers seated nearby.
UPDATE: This disparate melange of colors greets my uplifted eyes in the now darkened terminal:
UPDATE 2: Writing now from Gate 48, a familiar holding pen for Aussie-bound blokes and sheilas. Every one of my six LA to Sydney flights has originated from this circular purgatory of faded blue carpet and fake leather seats. On this trip, a sprinkling of Aussie voices is an appetizer of home after three weeks of deep-fried Dixie twang.

Arriving five hours before departure paid off in spades for this 6'4" flyer: exit row, aisle seat. Boo-yah! The kindly ticket agent worked keyboard magic to levitate me through levels of airline seat discomfort, from a wretched non-aisle-crippler to a slightly less horrific aisle-mangler to a mildly luxurious middle-exit-row to a coveted aisle-exit-row throne of pleasure. Travel tip: Never hesitate to compliment a ticket agent's elaborately painted fingernails.

Though I'm wearing the same clothes as when I cleared security without incident in Knoxville, I received full-potential-terrorist-treatment here in LA. Best part was when the Andy Kaufman lookalike 'personal screener' asked, mid-patdown and in a voice so sincere I'd swear he was auditioning for a daytime soap, "You're so patient with me ... you must be a doctor."

Let that sink in a moment. Now imagine the man saying it is passing a metal detector wand over your genitals and speaking in a voice that's part Mister Rogers, part Ted Bundy. While just to your right an old woman in a wheelchair is similarly having a metal-detector wand passed over her frail bones by a female personal screener.

You might understand what happened next as I drifted into a Starbucks. Words failed me. The barista, no doubt immune to the dull stares of air travelers, waited patiently. When language finally snaked its way through the sludge of my sleep-deprived and lunatic-assaulted psyche, I said, "America is losing its mind." Without a moment's hesitation and with a smile whiter than cappuccino foam, she answered, "A little bit more every day!"