Not a Closet Banya Fan

There was a man at the hotel last weekend. He was fairly nondescript--shorter, brown hair, round head--and he wore a black cowboy hat. He wore that black cowboy hat all weekend. The other thing he did all weekend was make incredibly hackneyed, semantic ontological jokes. He reminded me a lot of that character in Airplane!, the assistant in the control tower who just prances around shouting completely inane things (according to IMDB, he's "Johnny," and in Airplane II he's "Controller Jacobs," so my hypothesis is that the character's name is Johnny Jacobs. Real life: the late Stephen Stucker). He actually looked a lot like him, too.

When he first came in on Saturday night, I complemented him on his hat. This was a mistake, because evidently it gave him license to say things that no one should ever say. Sometimes, being warm and kind to everyone really comes back to bite you in the ass.

Anyway, he comes in on Saturday, and asks for the key to room number, I dunno, 1313. He asks kind of gruffly, so tell him I like his hat, because I like it when people do things gruffly. Immediately, his face lights up like it's his first big number on Broadway. "Oh my God, wow!, are you like a fortune teller or something??" He's referring, obnoxiously, to the fact that I didn't check who he was before handing him his room key. I say, "nope," and grimace a little.

The next morning, after I've been standing behind a desk listening to Lucinda Williams for 11 hours, he comes downstairs. He seems shocked and frightened. "There was a stranger in my bed last night!" Pause. "It was me!" Then he giggled uncontrollably.

That night, I'm talking to a young lady circa one in the morning (I used the 'Let the terrorists win' gambit), when the cowpoke comes rollin' in. Sadly, he only manages to lamely recycle last night's non-sequitur: "There's some hot guy in my room!...Me," he yelps, wiggling his chest.

I expected better of you, Mr. Lame Semantic Ontological Joke Man.