ORDSFO SFOORD
This week I went to San Francisco for about 28 hours, not counting travel time. Here’s how short this work trip was: the television in my hotel room didn’t work and I did not even tell anyone. (I actually meant to say something at checkout but forgot.) Spent an hour in a terrible hotel bar,* eating a terrible grilled cheese** and watching a terrible sport,*** went back to the room, paid a king’s ransom for wi-fi, watched more Deadwood on the iPad, took an Ativan and went to sleep. The next day I went to a meeting where I think I said about 50 out-loud words, and then I went to the airport and got back on a plane.
I should not complain, as I actually like going to these things, and if I am going to tell editorial boards and chief editors what to do all day I suppose they should actually see my face once in a while. It was a disorienting couple of days, though.
*The bartenders seemed to consider it a terrible imposition to serve me, although the bar was not busy. I think that filling a pint glass with beer might actually be more interesting than staring into space, examining one’s fingernails, or straightening stacks of bar napkins, but judging from the sighs and eyerolls when I asked for another I guess not. That amount of attitude almost made throw exact change on the bar and just fucking leave, but my contrary streak made me think no, I will stay in your gross bar and drink more beer specifically because you seem to hate it so much.
**This trend of thick bread has got to go. I think the menu called it “Texas Toast,” which is a term I have never heard before but whatever. A grilled cheese is mostly about the CHEESE, don’t make me bite through a quarter-mile of BREAD to get there.
***Sorry World Cup fans but all the flopping really got to me in whatever game was on during my bar experience. Oh please you are NOT HURT. Tape an aspirin to it, you whiner.
Overheard in SFO: “It was baller. Massively baller. Massively, massively baller.”
(This guy was on the phone and eating some kind of kale salad out of a box.)
Overheard in ORD: “Sorry. I be tweakin’ on doughnuts.”
(This was a female maintenance worker who stumbled into me while cleaning one of the bathrooms.)
The weirdest thing about my trip was how I was stalked by ambient music. The place I waited for the shuttle from hotel to meeting was piping in a creepy whale song-ish piece. The airport security line area played a bouncy hurry-up-let’s-go medley of peppy beats that seemed designed to increase people’s anticipatory anxiety. (Is that what you want? Is it a strategy to make terrorists or drug smugglers reconsider?) And strangest of all, there was a rhythmic Brian Eno-esque whooshing/sighing sound from deep in the building that I could hear all night in my hotel room. I tried several times to record it on my phone but a more standard electronic hum from the minibar kept getting in the way. But it haunted my Ativan dreams, just like the crap grilled cheese and the lyrical profanities from Al Swearengen.
—mimi smartypants ain’t no hooplehead.