Where Everybody Knows Your Name

I don't sleep that well in hotels, so here I am at 6:30 am on a Wednesday morning banging away on the keyboard. The place we are staying at is nice enough, it's one of those deals where they take an old rundown chain hotel, bring in some fabulous Top Design prodigy and turn it into an uber-chic, too-cool-for-school joint. Then, they can charge you double what they used to, because you have a better mattress, some abstract art and a flat screen in your room.

I don't have a lot of tales from the road so far, but I did find myself in a bit of an uncomfortable situation last night. Because we are in Boston, we ate dinner at Cheers. By the way that place is full of shit, there was no Norm or Cliff and I'm pretty sure that no one knew my fucking name. Anyway, we knocked down some burgers, beers and foo-foo drinks. The girls flirted with the waiter and bartender, Bob and Steve respectively. I was hoping for a Neil and Bob or an Adam and Steve, so that I could make a bunch cliched jokes all evening, but no such luck.

As we were leaving I decided to shake the dew off the lily and when I entered the mens room there was a guy at the sink with his belt open and he was wet around his "region", and then there was another guy taking a piss and spitting a lot. They were both in there 50's and I felt like I'd just walked in on the after glow of a lemon party. (If you don't know what a lemon party is you can do some internet research, but I will warn you that it will scar you for life, and you'll never look at grandpa the same way again.) I went immediately to my urinal, kept my eyes on the wall in front of me, drained the main vein, and headed for the door. As I was leaving, I started singing to myself:

---

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name

and they're always glad you came

On the way out of the mens room, there was a scale where you can pay to weigh yourself. I found this kind of odd, it's not like there were a bunch of jockeys or boxers around who needed to make weight. I can't imagine an instance in a public bathroom I would need to know my weight. "Hmmm, well I weighed 220, then I ate a 1/2 pound burger and I just took a big dump, I wonder how much I weigh now? Wow, 220, I guess my dump and that burger weighed the same amount, I'm really glad there was a scale in here to provide me with that knowledge."

Time for me to jump in the fancy shower and try to wash last night's ick off of me. Hopefully, the maid won't find me curled up on the shower floor in the fetal position, like Elizabeth Shue in Leaving Las Vegas after she'd been gang raped.