I have never attempted to make a secret of my love for Airplane! There is a great deal that can be said of me, but not that I ever concealed or minimized my affection for this most excellent of films.

Last year at the Turner Classic Film festival at least two of the Zs in ZAZ and Robert Hays were on a panel discussing Airplane! before a late-night showing. I was there with my dad, as is proper; it is right and meet to watch Airplane! with a dad, your own whenever possible. I took away from it two things: Airplane! remains one of the greatest, most nearly-flawless comedies every made by human men, and that the Zucker brothers love giving Robert Hays endless shit. He’s a chatty dude, by all accounts, and his stories have a tendency to ramble, but come on, Zucks, you’re two of the wealthiest and most successful comedy filmmakers in America and he hasn’t acted since I was a kid, let him tell his stories.

So I guess I’ve always had a soft spot for Robert Hays. And my parents honeymooned in Door County, so Wisconsin’s good with me too.

Where is this going, I hear you ask yourself. Get to the point. Very well: Robert Hays and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have reunited (non-canonically, as someone on Twitter pointed out to me, since they do not share screentime during the original film) to promote the Wisconsin Tourism Board. Why? I don’t know. Sometimes God sees fit to give gifts.

I was so excited when I saw this I called out for Nicole and my Midwestern accent came back. “NICOLE! THE GUYS FROM AIRPLANE ARE DOING AN AD ABOUT WISCAAAAANSIN!” It’s mesmerizing. First of all, all jokes aside, Wisconsin really is a lovely place in the summer. Second of all, Robert Hays brings roughly 400% more pathos than is strictly necessary, and I salute him for it.

“Stryker, you’re flying too low!”

“I know!” he calls plantively — his voice almost cracks — then his face softens and blurs — “But Wisconsin is so beautiful in the summer.”

This is the face of a man whose life has not gone quite the way he hoped he would. Success didn’t follow success, exactly; age came quicker than he thought it would. He made choices that closed doors only in retrospect, and woke up one day bewildered to find himself having never lived up to his early promise.

“There’s so much to do! Boating, fishing, biking! I wish I was down there.” The way his voice drops on “I wish I was down there” — he is a man who wants to go to Wisconsin, dammit. And I want him to get the chance to go.

A minor quibble: it is not appropriate for the autopilot to be given lines, as his character was non-speaking in the original film. But I will not look a gift horse in the mouth. I will look it squarely in the eye and whisper “Thank you.”