Sunday Morning Wrap-up

I don't mind saying, I blogged the fuck out of last night. That about wraps it up.

See you tonight.

G'morning,

The Concierge

Gotta call myself out, too.

Someone just told me I should go home and get some sleep, and I said, "I reckon so" in a really poor country accent (trying to match up to the man I was talking to). I'm tired, alright?

I do have a tendency to talk like whomever I'm talking to. That means a lot of "Yes, ma'ams" with Southerners and a lot of "hey mans' with young people, but for some reason when it's someone who speaks a foreign language, that means this weird lilting accent of unknown origin. I know it's a little bit patronizing/racist/something, but they can understand me better, by God! I can feel it.

Super Lame Comment of the Week

Brought to you by the new Nissan Rogue

I know it's still early but I'm pretty sure I can go ahead and call this one. Guy calls up bout half past 3 in the morning, wants to reserve a room. Asks, sloppily, "Y'all got champagne,"
Me, smirking a little, because of the ridiculousness of the question and because someone was grabbing my butt: "No"
Him: "Well, can I bring some champagne and drink it at the hotel?"
Me, coolly (I got witnesses): "Hey, it's cool with me, man"

Him (This is the super lame part) "Ok, I'd like to make a reservation on a room" Pause. Really quite smugly,"Under the name Robert Zimmerman"

God, I can't wait to talk about Dylan with this kid when he gets here. I wonder what his favorite Dylan song is. Probably "Mr. Tambourine Man". I know mine's "Blowin' in the Wind"

crazy dream

I had this wild dream around 3:30 that Ben Stiller c. Something About Mary, Amy Winehouse after she'd gone to rehab for like ten years and gotten a thousand times prettier and learned to love herself and others instead of needing to be so ostentatious about drugs, M.I.A., back in her true home after a long hiatus and wearing some type of sailor-schoolgirl outfit, a really cute girl who looked like Harry Potter if Harry Potter was a real woman, but not in like a mannish way at all, she even had the glasses, oh yeah, and some rakish, roguish, foppish fop Englishman, who I actually think was supposed to represent my unyielding conscience, all came to visit me at the hotel, and we hung out and listened to Fleetwood Mac and "Tits on the Radio." In a way I guess it was a lucid dream, because it was pretty much exactly what I wanted to happen more than anything in the whole world, even more than a bevy of hookers. Come visit me at the Hotel Idiotica and perhaps you too could be in one of my dreams!

Oh, and I'm positive that sometime during the dream three dramatically over-tanned women came screaming and cackling through the lobby "Tits! Tits! HeeHeeHee" It was kind of like MacBeth, if you think about it.

Demographics

So here is an incredibly sketchy demographic picture of the hotel, based on whatever information i can gather from people's reservations and what their last names sound like.

4 spanish speaking
2 Spanish
5 Israeli
5 English
2 possibly Israeli
54 American (2 VA, 5 FL, MO, AL, WA, MD, 2 MN, SC, CO, IL, UT, OH, 4 TX, 19 CA, 6 PA, 3 LA, 3 OR, DC)
1 French
3 sound French
1 Italian
1 Belgian
4 Gabon(ian?)
4 Brazilian
4 Japanese
1 Angolan
1 Australian
1 German
3 Canadian
1 Colombian
1 Rwandan
1 Irish
1 Indian
1 Venezuelan
36 unknown English-speaking
4 not a fuckin clue

Comments: So this is just the person to whom the room is reserved to. Each room has between 1 and 4 people in it.

Out of all the English-sounding names, probably 75% are American and the rest are English or Irish.

This took a damn long time, so appreciate, mopes.


Postscript: Some person has the last name "Killer." That's pretty interesting. Also, one "Jeremy London" is supposed to be coming tomorrow. Its probably not Jeremy London from Out Cold and Dazed and Confused (or was that his twin?), but if there's even a chance...

Who just came into the hotel?

A guy with his girlfriend who was wearing the exact same hideous shirt that I wore for my school picture in kindergarten and 1st grade. Its long sleeve, with black, white, and light gray stripes. Can't remember what color the collar was. He also had on a black beret and and unimposing glasses. A little bit of a John Lennon vibe to him, which is only to say he was a little wispy.

Music

So far tonight, we've had Rodrigo y Gabriela, Oakley Hall, and now the Scissor Sisters, with the required Fleetwood Mac hour to come. I'm thinking it might not be Rumours this time, though. Suggestions always welcome.

p.s. Christ, why didn't anyone tell me about "Tits on the Radio" by Scissor Sisters?

Who just came into the hotel?

Shaggy, messy-haired dirty-blonde girl with a haircut that reminded of someone in Heart for some reason, although that could be way off (Did Heart have hair like any other 80s band except they were girls?) Her shirt had a rainbow line across it but for some reason I didn't think she was a lesbian

Being Professional

Someone just came into the hotel with the last name "Lafrance." I really wanted to call out "Vive La France!" to him as he got into the elevator with his friends, but I didn't.

Meet the Idiots: Mami (The Boss Lady)

So this is the first in a series introducing all of the characters who work at the Hotel Idiotica, beginning with who I like the most.

The boss lady is the woman who hired me, grandmother of a dear friend of mine to whom I owe more or less my entire life at this time. She is in her mid-70s and she is about 4 feet tall. Everyone who loves her here at work calls her Mami. She became the manager and part-owner of this hotel after her husband passed away ten years ago.

She is wonderful and kind, and she definitely still has both a spark and a twinkle in her eye, though I wouldn't go so far as to say a kick in her step. She calls me "darling" and tells me she loves me and that I'm her new grandson. Some of you know that this is all I've really ever wanted. She's always greasing my palm and telling me to get myself a nice meal.

She's also always bringing back food for me from her two sons' (both doctors!) on the holidays. This is somewhat hit or miss. Last week it was a really tasty apple strudel, but this week's offering looks like nothing so much as a chocolate fetus. Upon second inspection, it could be the internal organs of a dark brown, medium-sized animal preserved in formaldehyde (She says it too has something to do with apples).

For a while, it was assumed that she referred to all Asian people as Mongolians, but that has since been proven apocryphal (there actually are three different people from Mongolia working here).

Her voice is warm and soothing and scratchy, with familiar what-a-you-gonna-do, who's-this-wiseguy Jewish grandmother rhythms. Ooh, and every Sunday she comes in with her hair done like Marie Antoinette--puffy up front (positively bouffant!), with a cascade of cylindrical ringlets down the back. She is there every night when I come in at ten, and it is somethin' when she shuffles over to kiss me goodnight on the cheek before she goes to bed. Sometimes she gets to talking about her past, about coming over from Poland in the 40s and living in Williamsburg before it was Billyburg. She also doesn't have any compunction over talking about being in a concentration camp, and it is pretty heartbreaking. Somehow these talks always start out with her assuring me that its fine that I'm not a married executive by now, and end up with my lips pursed and my eyes heavy. Once in a while she gets a little cranky, but that really only adds to her charm.

She's the patron saint of hotel blogs.

temptation

When really douchey people ask me questions, its really, really tempting to fuck with them. The only two categories of customers like that for me are people who have already been dickish and young, gelled-up punks asking me where a club is. It would be sooooooo easy to just say, "Bungalow? Oh yeah just take the F train all the way til it ends. Have a blast!" That would probably get me in trouble, but it could easily be just a simple mistake: "Oh did I say 121st street? I could have sworn I said 12th!"

If you've got other suggestions for fucking with assholes, leave them in the comments!

And another thing

Something else I really like to do to pass the time: So I'm the only person working here the whole night pretty much, or at least the only person answering the phones. I'm supposed to take care of everything while I'm here: reservations, customer service, hotel switchboard, everything. Way too much for one man, right? So what I really like to do is, whenever anyone calls, I'll usually tell them that they've called the wrong department, put them on hold, and then pick up the phone again. So I'll be like, "Sir, this is reservations department. You want customer service. Let me transfer you." Then I'll put them on hold for half an instant, pick up and say "Customer service!"

Real, serious breaking news

Big breasts, spilling out of a pink and black striped top. It really made me realize how underappreciated that color scheme is. Also the leader in the clubhouse for the Dr.S's BB MotN

"You don't even know the half of it, buddy"

One thing I love about this job is that I get to pretend to be a grizzled New Yorker who's seen and heard it all. We always have to take the guests credit card numbers, just in case something breaks. And a guest will always say something like, "What, you think I'm gonna put my foot through the TV or something," and that's when I glance down, shake my head, and mumble barely audibly, "in this city..." The key is to murmur ruefully.

Breaking News

First woman of the night whirling her finger around her head like a helicopter. Somebody call the fire department

NY Giants Hazing Ritual

First drag queen of the night tonight around 10:15. We usually get one or two a weekend. They're almost always part or both of a couple. This one was with his conservatively-dressed prince, in a sassy black and sparkling gold ensemble. What really strikes me about these people however (even though they are usually extremely well-dressed) is that they are always, to a queen, absolutely massive. I don't mean just flabby, I mean like big and stout and lumbering and filled out like an offensive-lineman or an Easter-Island statue. And there's nothing latent in this post, so stop looking.

Name change

Ok, so as you can see there's been some cosmetic change here at the hotel, namely, um, the name. My lawyers advised me that really any lummox, even some of the people I actually work with, could have connected the dots between this hotel and its flagship, and then I probably would have been fired from the actual hotel and this blog would no longer be a haven for those unwilling to cave to the weekend party-ocracy. I'm not sure which is derivative of which at this point, but I need the voyeurism from the blog and the money from the hotel, so the name's got to change. So from now on it's the Hotel Idiotica. Unless I want to call it something else. Like the Hotel Suzerain. Or Hotel Itonthemountain. I'm still waiting for that perfect name to appear out of the clearing, but its Idiotica for now (Idioteque also acceptable). Thanks to commenter I<3Furries for the suggestion. And if you have better ideas, by all means, bitch, leave it in the comment section.

Coming tomorrow: Everything you'll need to know to get caught up and ready for Weekend # 2 Unless its nothing.

G'night,

The Concierge

Sunday Morning Roundup

Ok, so live-blogging was a little more complicated than I expected, mostly because I got bored and wanted to watch "The Wire" instead. Hey, its a work in progress. The future should hopefully hold more instantaneous analysis of just who's coming into the Hotel Idiotica on weekend nights between 10 at night and 8 in the morning, including (mostly negative) observations on their personalities as well as speculation about what in their past might have made them so terribly themselves. Also some in-depth features on the all the zany (read: wooden, plastic) employees here at the Hotel Idiotica, detailed itineraries of what exactly it is a frontnightdeskwatchman does, blasts from the past of the many highlights from my brief tenure thusfar, and unflinching psychological inquisitions into the self's inability to bear the weight of a decision, which might lead one to take a job at the Idioteque. Its coming to you raw and uncensored, folks, so bite your pillow and hold on.

And with that, a brief recap of the high- and lowlights of the past 10 hours (all subjects drunk unless otherwise noted).

--Short, cutish lesbian with a pink polo shirt, asking far too glibly about the hours of the Holocaust Museum, then showing her appreciation by winking, cocking her finger and making that terrible sound with the tongue on the roof of her mouth, then saying, "Thanks, hon." Now I know what a secretary at a golf club feels like.

--Pretty much every night I'm here, some girls will decide that its romantic or sexy or something to take the guys they've just picked up from god knows where and just hang out with them in the hotel lobby for three or four hours. Tonight it was two curvy Russians with a little bit of butterface to them, and I don't feel bad about that because first this is just some blog, but also because they were pretty vapid. I actually had to settle a bet between them over whether Times Square referred to the entire island of Manhattan. They brought in these two Russian punks who had the same red hats and white t-shirts with some really tacky, bullshit graffiti. At one point, they actually started making farting noises, and not the really funny ones you can do if you blow against the heels of both hands.

--Really sweet older Irish man just wistfully told me about his Jesuit priest friend and then tipped me 10$. We get a lot of Irish and they are awesome.

--Not too many "come-hither" type looks or moments tonight, which based on pure gut reaction are definitely the thing I like most about this job. The fear of elevators still haunts the women of this city.


Blueballs Moment of the Night, brought to you by Dr. Scholl's: 5:30 a.m, truly stunning, leggy Latina glides in and seems coyly broken up that she's locked her key in her room. A thousand possibilities flash through my mind. In the end I settle on giving her the spare key and she goes up to her bed and goes to sleep.

Well, that about wraps up the shift for yours truly. Thanks so much for staying with us at the Idioteque, have a lovely day, and I'll see you tomorrow night!

G'night,

The Concierge

Most Banal Exclamation that one goose of every gaggle of menopausal midwestern women inevitably thinks is the most empowering thing ever

"New York City ain't got nuuuthin' on me!"

I left my mom purse at home

Spritely young lady comes down looking for a safety pin or a needle and thread. She was wearing some funny, beret-type hat, the color of which I can't remember, even though she didn't leave but 30 seconds ago. In my mind's eye it was pink. I can't find a safety pin, but I finally locate one needle in a box full of keys and thread. I try fruitlessly to fish it out for about seven minutes, until I just dump the whole damn box on the desk. She's got a real sexy voice, not exactly sultry, more like adamantine or something, yet she throws me for a loop when she says, "I left my mom purse at home." Just what did she mean by that? I thought she was roughly 19.

Orange, Cherry, Grape, Pus?

Man, already forgotten nearly everything about him, except he comes in sucking on a sea green twin popsicle. I guess its green tea, but sheesh.

Thank you for looking for his underwear but Mr. James Brown is Okay

Seriously, first post on this blog, first time I even pick up the phone tonight, 10:03 p.m., older woman with a thick, crackly, Eastern European accent, "Yes. Hello. I was called this morning about things we are leaving in the room. Room 312." I try to ask her last name, but she cuts me off, jubilantly, "We have found them! We have found the underwear! Please inform the manager that Mr. James Brown is alright!" Click.

Welcome to the Hotel Idiotica.