Room 867: Morning Pages

Today was the first day of my The Artist's Way Morning Pages. I'm capitalizing Morning Pages because they are supposed to be so damn important. (Side note: did you hear that cynicism creep in? It's a constant competition between my new agey, spiritual side and my perpetually rolling eyes.) Anyway, I started the Morning Pages today and even though Julia Cameron tells me not to reread them, I thought I would reprint some of my gems from 8:15am this morning:

"Hands hurting. Need to use the bathroom. My mouth tastes nasty."
"Wonder if it's cheating to do Morning Pages after potty time."
"I love ellipses."
"Foot's falling asleep. At least my eyeballs are awake...kind of."
"Sorry, Universe, Morning Pages had to come with me to the toilet."

I fear a common theme will thread itself through each day if I don't give myself the permission to make the Morning Pages second on my daily To Do list.

Amenities of Room 867: En suite bathroom. Stream of consciousness TV Guide.

Room 1022: Random Earth Day Thoughts That Have Nothing To Do With The Earth

The current list of podcasts that I subscribe to:
This American Life – Ira Glass and his weirdly sexy Chicago staccato voice.
Real Time with Bill Maher – Salman Rushdie and Mos Def. And that’s just one episode!
Dr. Andrew Weill – New Age Holistic Santa Claus with a medical degree.
Rick Steves – A hero to all travel nerds. What would Rick do?
Coffee Break French – 15 minute French language tutorials taught by a Scotsman.

I hate the Multi Grain Cheerios cereal commercial: “What else does the box say?” “The box says shut up, Steve.” Yes, Cheerios. All women like to make men feel stupid. (But my all time most hated ugly-acting-woman commercial? The diamond ad: Woman tells man to shhhh after he yells “I love this woman!” But then he gives her a ring. Then she hugs him and whispers “I love this man.” Yes, ad, women only love men when they give us diamonds.)

I love nature movies but I always watch them with a sense of dread. See a beautiful gazelle lapping up steam water? Don’t get used to it. Hello, Leopard!

CG Chester Cheetah is kind of smarmy.

Oh, and please recycle!

Amenities of Room 1022: Menu with today’s special of fresh meat, cheese puffs and cereal. Human interest hotel directory. No HBO.

Room 647: Paranormal State

I love ghost stories but not enough to actually witness anything. You hear me, ghosts! I have read all about Resurrection Mary, the Bell Witch and the Brown Lady. I’ve even lived in a haunted house. Or so I’ve been told. I didn’t witness anything. (However, I would not use the hall that went by the attic door. Ghost related? Maybe. But I think it may have more to do with my friend Amy and I exploring the attic and pretending an axe murderer lived up there. Oh, kids and their childish games!) Really, only the series of community theatre actors that rented rooms in the house “witnessed” things. And by witness, I mean, heard footsteps in the upstairs hallway. One night when I was seventeen, I came home to find all the lights on in every room. I turned them all out and sat down to watch TV. Then Theresa, an actress/tenant, called and said “Mandy, are you home? I couldn’t stay there by myself.” She would also sleep with a knife under her pillow. Not that the knife would do much to a ghost. Or an attic-dwelling axe murderer for that matter. (Side note: Theresa was the first person I ever met who had fake breasts. In fact, she was so proud when she got them that she demanded that I feel them. That was my brief stint with lesbianism.)

And this brings us to Paranormal State on A&E. This is one of the few ghosty investigation shows (like the aptly named Ghost Hunters!). PS is centered around a guy named Ryan who, because of some childhood ghostiness, is obsessed with the paranormal. He formed the Paranormal Research Society at Penn State with some spooky-lovin’ friends. Ryan is earnest. His voice over introduction is so fabulously dramatic: “We are students. We are seekers. And sometimes, we are warriors.” Awesome.

So the PRS goes and interviews people who are having ghosty problems. They often bring in a medium named Chip (!) to give some insight. He’s also dramatic. His assessment usually ends with revealing that someone died there and they are not happy. The team then has “Dead Time” when they and all their electronic toys are monitoring the house. “Dead Time”, according to Ryan’s earnest voice over, is the time when paranormal activity is most prevalent. Say 3am to 4am. Usually the time when I have to get up and go to the bathroom. It’s good to know that I’m not the only one wandering around at that time.

So what happens during “Dead Time”? Well, there’s a lot of infrared camera work and a whole lot of “Oh my God! Did you see that?” (No, we didn’t. You were too busy shaking the camera.) But if you’re lucky, you might hear some demonic voices on a tape recorder or if you’re really lucky, a possession!

The house is then blessed. And then we get a postscript that the family members are now OK and haven’t had another encounter. And then Ryan has a closing earnest voice over where he earnestly unveils what he “learned” from this week’s case. Earnestly.

Boo!

Amenities of Room 647: Attic-less Suite. Special Dead Time wakeup call. Complimentary Room Cleansing.

Room 1303: The F Word

More specifically, Gordon Ramsey’s The F Word. (He means “Food”; wash out your brain!) The F Word is my new obsession. And I should know by now not to watch even one minute of a new BBC America show because I’ll be hooked. (I haven’t done an in depth analysis yet so I don’t know whether it’s the accents or I’m easily entertained.)

So a little background. Very little because I don’t much about Gordon Ramsey except that he’s English, a chef, a former footballer or rugby-er, and he yells at people. And I’m not 100% on the sport thing. Besides The F Word, he has a show called Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares that is also addictive. This is where he goes to run down restaurants and kicks everyone in the ass and makes the restaurant fab. There’s always one employee of the restaurant who tells the camera that Ramsey can go fuck himself. That employee either ends up crying or quitting. The criers always thank Gordon at the end. The quitters are just bleeped a lot.

So. The F Word. I never had any desire to watch any Gordon Ramsey show but I caught the credit sequence. It’s Ramsey walking down a brightly lit hip restaurant corridor in a suit which he takes off in slow motion and dons his chef coat. This is all done to the tune: The F Word’s here and the F Word’s there. Laa la lalalala. That’s what did it. I watched the entire hour. I was just thankful it wasn’t a marathon day…

The main story of The F Word is that 50 guests come to his restaurant and he replaces his staff with 4 amateur chefs. They prepare an app, an entrée and a dessert. With each course, Jean Baptiste, the maitre d’, comes back and tells Ramsey and the amateurs how many of the 50 guests are paying for that course. Ideally, they want all 50 to pay up. After the dessert course, they add up the “pays” and that’s their score. And I guess (and I say “guess” because I haven’t been watching from the beginning and I’m watching out of sequence) that the highest “scorers” get supreme bragging rights at the end of the season.

And in between the courses and Ramsey yelling at the amateurs, there’s some fun food stuff: like teaching various East Enders how to cook for friends, feeding his pigs beer to give them a better flavor, testing Cliff Richard’s wine palette, and asking some Brit foodie to guess which animal’s testicles he’s eating.

Need I say more? Laaa la lalalala…

Amenities of Room 1303: Expletive laden hotel directory. Complimentary chef coat. Mini bar filled with Cliff Richard Cabernet.

Room 693: The Four Twitter Agreements

1. Be impeccable with your tweet.
2. Don’t take any tweet personally.
3. Don’t make any assumptions about tweets.
4. Do the best tweet you can.

You were put on Twitter to be happy and have fun.

Amenities of Room 693: Radio tuned to the Mash-up station. The Holy Bible in 140 characters or less.

Room 1274: I Am a Metal Pig

I cannot remember the origins of this but one day at work I asked everyone what their Chinese Astrology animal is. You know, being born in the Year of the Rat, etc. My co-workers would either look at me quizzically or say "I'm an Ox!". Well, it goes even beyond that: apparently, besides the animal, each year has an element as well. Earth, Water, Wood and Metal. Hence, Metal Pig. (Contrary to some Facebookers belief, it does not mean I'm into Megadeth and I'm messy. Oh, yes. The words "Metal" and "Pig" found their way into my Facebook status. I love statuses. Where else can you say you watched a Lakers game with Voldemort?) Now, I won't go into what Metal Pig means (besides being awesome!) but it brings up in me another obsession: books/websites about astrology/personality types. I'm not obsessed in the sense that I take stock in it or live my life by what some random stranger "says" is me, but I do have love for reading my type/animal/sign/archetype and going "huh."

Besides Sagittarian Metal Pig, I'm also a Comfort Seeking Nine with a One Wing ("The Dreamer") and I won't go into my Archetypes because, well, that's personal (Fun Fact! Everyone has twelve archetypes and four that everyone has are The Child, The Victim, The Saboteur and The Prostitute. The whole world is one-twelfth whore!). I'm now looking into what my Star Wars sign is (I'm guessing I'm a Han Solo with a shade of Jawa) and which of my Seven Dwarfs is the most dominant. Right now, it's Sleepy.

Amenities of Room 1274: Constellation mapped ceiling. Extra storage space for all personalities. Comfort bedding for the comfort seeking.

Room 785: Valentine's Day

I guess I'm just now able to talk about it.

I ate movie theatre refreshment stand cheese pizza while wearing 3-D glasses...alone. Then I went to Ross and bought three non-practical bras and a basket for my magazines.

There is so much wrong with those last two sentences. Who goes to Ross for sexy bras? I guess I have a wee bit of a commitment issue if I can't part with more than $6 for a turquoise push-up. I have to confess, though, that I love them. But I am a little disappointed that I didn't search for matching panties. Never underestimate the power of a matching bra and panties. I find that the older I get the more I want to be matchy in my lingerie choices. Now, don't get me wrong: I don't have to be so matchy that the bra & panties match and/or compliment the outer garments. Because that's not sophisticated and sexy; that's obsessive compulsive.

Oh, and I concluded the holiday by hand-washing those bras and hanging them to dry.

Amenities of Room 785: Complimentary white robe that goes with the complimentary white slippers. That does not match the drapes.