Leave It

As we were at dinner tonight, at Dick's Last Resort on the Riverwalk (don't ask), this song came on:

Naturally it's on my iPod, now. But I wanted to share this with you.

My junior year at UT, I lived in a vegetarian, clothing-optional housing co-op on West Campus, so you can just imagine what that was like. One of the guys fronted a Celtic band. One very ambitious night, he told us, when he and his bandmates were in an alcoholically- and herbally-enhanced state of mind, they decided to cover this song.

They were not, from what he said, overly successful. Or they were about half successful. They got the words and the rhythm down pat, he said. But the actual notes were all over the place.

I happen to think this is an excellent metaphor for life, especially in San Antonio, plus I'm extremely tired from being verbally and emotionally abused and made to wear a silly hat, then spending two hours in a parking garage. But it's still a great song. Enjoy!

Reader's Digest: Good for Something

My in-laws subscribe to Reader's Digest, which I always read cover-to-cover when I'm here.

Okay, I read the jokes and the blurbs in between the articles. You can't read the articles themselves, because they tend to be inspirational stories of how somebody overcame all the odds to beat a life-threatening disease or got rescued against all the odds from an armed assailant in a convenience store or saved 17 children against all odds from an overturned schoolbus or bravely survived being buried by an avalanche in a cabin in the mountains, against all odds. Or, I mean, you could read those; but why? One is really enough.

Perhaps too much.

They also have well-known urban legends sent in as true by their readers, shallow profiles of second-tier celebrities, screamingly obvious self-improvement tips, Top Ten Things To Get Your Panties in a Wad About This Month, and plenty of amusingly indignant letters in the Letters To the Editor section. (For some reason, Reader's Digest readers are frequently indignant - and one suspects the editorial staff has more than its fair share of spelling corrections to make.) But the only parts really worth reading are the jokes, one in every seventeen of which may elicit a slight chuckle. Here's one that made me laugh and think of Tony, with some minor tweaking:

Four women are taking a cross-country road trip, each from a different state: Texas, Idaho, Indiana, and California. Soon after starting out, the woman from Idaho pulls a bag of potatoes out of her suitcase and tosses them out the window.

"What on earth are you doing?" asks the Indianan.

"We have so many potatoes in Idaho, I'm tired of looking at them!"

The Indianan, inspired, pulls several ears of corn out of her bag and tosses them out the window, as the Texan looks on in amazement. "Indiana is full of corn," she explains, "and I'm sick of the stuff!"

The Texan shrugs, opens up the car door and boots out the Californian.

The Travel Blog (sorta)

It's always hard to sleep in a hotel. Perhaps that's why they water down the coffee so much, in hopes that the first sip will send you instantly off to blissful dreamland.

They also try to help you sleep by thoughtfully ensuring that the free wi-fi doesn't actually work in the room, so you won't be tempted to sit up surfing the internet all night. I think this is a good strategy, and I've noticed a few hotels that employ it: the La Quinta in Alabama where Cheryl's Bitch and I got cozy the night before my high school reunion, for one, as well as the Bayfront Plaza in Corpus, where you actually could get internet in your actual room, just as long as you sat pressed right up against the door.

But with all its irritations, stresses and privations, I actually adore traveling. Even just to San Antonio, though after my car got broken into night before last I'm anxious about leaving the house unattended. We swept the glass out of the street and moved my poor little happy fun car into the carport. Who would break into a car with flowers on it?? At least they didn't steal the martini glasses.

Now I'm in the lobby of the Howard Johnson's at I-10 and the road I believed for years was, inexplicably, called Days of Allah. What a weird name for a street in a largely Catholic town, I always thought. Eric, Katie and Anna are sleeping back up in the room - finally. Eric's laptop's wireless card is a bit stronger than mine, so even though he kept getting bumped off and it was very slow, he still spent much of the night clicking away, and refused to allow Katie on to "check" her MySpace (though to be fair, this is a process that usually takes several hours), so the aura of resentment emanating from her, even in her sleep, was enough to keep the room fairly warm. Those two have been sworn enemies ever since they were, oh, about two and a half and zero, respectively. Do not stand between them. You will get hurt.

Anna falls asleep with cuddles and kisses, then kicks and punches all night. Still, she's basically a force for good.

I like staying in hotels, too, or at least the concept of it, so I'm glad my in-laws don't have quite enough room at their house to put up all of us, or put up with all of us, as the case may be. I love this section of Lileks' website with all the hotel signs - oooh, or check out this one. Someday I hope to meet someone who will take me there.

(And probably shouldn't hold my breath, seeing as how it's been demolished.)

I always wanted to check out the St.-El-Mo-Tel at Congress and St. Elmo: also recently demolished, though apparently the sign is (hooray! I love Austin!!!) being preserved. You probably wouldn't really want to stay there, but it would almost be worth the price of a night's stay just to go in and look around, maybe take a few pictures. Actually, during its later years you could probably get rooms by the hour. Probably the trendification of South Congress ultimately killed it.

Anyway, the main reason I was so bummed about my Lufkin trip getting cancelled was that I really, really, really wanted to check this one out. I could have found out if they still had the sign. I could have taken a picture for James, whose political views I find personally troubling but whose site has given me many hours of amusement during such long sleepless nights as have not been passed in hotels that advertise free wi-fi.

Hope y'all had a good Thanksgiving!