Mr Pleasant

Mr. Pleasant – The Kinks

‘It is not blood sir! I am telling you, madam, it is not blood!’ the short Indian guy is gesticulating appropriately as he tries to convince us that the stains we just discovered in the bed sheets of his Pleasantville motel room are not of human or animal origin, but rather an unfortunate yet most sanitary side effect of the extensive cleaning process he subjects these same sheets to every single day. Although we haven’t made any mention of blood up to this point, it was admittedly the first thing that crossed our minds when we pulled back the sheets. Of course, I was still recovering from the dozens and dozens of tiny hairs (‘Hey, look, someone shaved a small animal in this bed’, my sweetheart Scot suggested) that first grabbed our attention when we opened the covers.

The outer rims of Pleasantville, New Jersey make for the perfect place to spend a night when you’ve been chewed up and spat out whole by nearby Atlantic City. Atlantic City is the gamble capitol of the East Coast; think Leaving Las Vegas, only without the glamour. Our motel is the kind of place that will embrace you when you have lost everything you hold dear in one fateful game of craps. It’s the ultimate rock to crawl under when you cannot and will not go home, if only because you gambled away the car keys in an attempt to win back your kids’ college funds. Our motel is the place where you wash up after you have gone down the drain. What’s worse: it’s probably the place you think you deserve to be in for being such a royal flush. The hair and blood on the sheets serve merely as reminders of your miserable human condition. I guess the Indian guy who owns the place doesn’t get many complaints.

We, on the other hand, are rich and happy, and healthy, and – however adventurous we think we are on our weekend road trip to Maryland in search of crabs (not craps) – we still appreciate a basic level of sanitation, even at a 40 bucks a night motel. I mean, it boasts having free HBO; we just sort of assumed grown-up TV comes after clean sheets. Of course, when we pull up the car we don’t know that this motel is the type of place that laughs in the face of hygiene. We don’t find out when we walk into the room either, largely because the main light switch doesn’t work. Sure, there is a certain musky whiff of fish wrapped wet newspaper in the air, but we naively attribute it to New Jersey in general – it always smells funny in Jersey.
We only realize something really isn’t quite right when Scot feels along the walls for any bedside light switch and notes that they feel strangely sandy to the touch, leaving a curiously sticky residue on his fingers. The bathroom light works. Its smudged glow finally allows us to size up the room. We are standing in what appears to be the remnants of a heavily flooded and then abandoned pet project by the love child of a suicidal electrician and a home decorator from hell. Everywhere we look, blackened sockets appear to have been ripped out of the walls in a fit of rage, umbilical cords of unprotected wires connecting them to a moist system hidden behind layers and layers of peeling, flaking wall paper bulging from water damage.



The walls actually give way to the touch – there must be at least three inches worth of wall paper slapped up against the boundaries of this room. Neither the refrigerator nor the microwave balancing on top of it, are plugged in; the plugs sway aimlessly over the grubby carpet in a sluggish hunt for the crab lice undoubtedly living it up in the fiber. Someone left food in the fridge, in a dewy plastic bag. Scot, ever the scientist, actually begins to pick up and poke at the bag for closer examination before the muted smell leaking out of it sincerely advises him to leave it be. The air conditioning looks like it blew up the last time anyone tried to hook it up. It probably blew up the person who dared to touch it, too. Whatever is left of that person is probably scattered beyond identification across the room, we reason – it would explain for the indefinable pattern on the ceiling. The TV works. Sort of. Lots of static. No HBO.

In the grand scheme of health hazard things the not-blood stains and the hair should probably be the least of our worries, but we decide it’s a good starting point to request another room. I am sent out to get us relocated.

‘Hello!’ the Indian guy at the check-in office cheers as he sees me. He doesn’t bother to wipe the soggy crumbs of whatever he was eating off his sweater. He smiles a wide grin, exposing his soggy-crumbed teeth. ‘The sir and madam decided you wanted a remote control for ten dollars after all?’ No, I explain, we would like a different room. The guy looks positively baffled. ‘What do you mean?’ he cries, his hands already halfway to heaven.
I tell him about the stains and the hairs in the sheets. ‘No no no, our rooms are very, very clean,’ the guy assures me. I point out that we have actually been in the room, and it is most definitely not clean. ‘You are most definitely mistaken. Our rooms are always clean,’ the guy insists. I tell him about the water damage and the pulled out sockets and the general stickiness. His smile fades into a look of disappointment and affront.
- ‘I cannot believe you. You are a most strange person. I wish to see this,’ he snubs my summary, and storms out to inspect the room, where Scot is trying to stay away as far as possible from all four walls and the ceiling, rendering him fairly vulnerable and faintly reminiscent of a magnet in a magnetic field, simultaneously pushing towards and pulling away from an unstable center.

‘Look!’ we tell him. We point out the hairs.
- ‘What are you talking about? I do not see anything.’
- ‘Right there! On the sheets!’
- ‘I do not see anything wrong,’ the guy insists.
- ‘Seriously, just look!’ we point out the holes in the walls, and the bulging mess of sticky wallpaper. At this point the little man is starting to get a bit agitated. ‘What are you trying to tell me? That my rooms are not clean? My rooms are very clean!’ That’s when we show him the stains. The guy responds as if stung by a bee. As he hits us with his this-laundry-only-looks-dirty-because-it-is-so-clean defense he is bouncing with indignation. By now he is gesticulating so laboriously that we fear he might propel himself into the dark night – or off to the ceiling for a closer inspection of the stains we haven’t pointed out yet. But no. When he sees we are not impressed with his story he redirects his flailing arms towards Scot and steers him to one side of the bed. ‘Alright, I will give you another room. But only this once. Now help me remake this bed.’

Scot stares at me, then back at him. Is he serious? ‘Please, take the sheet in your left hand and pull it straight into that corner, please,’ the guy says as he neatly tucks in the stained, hair ridden sheet on his side of the bed. We are both too confounded to do anything but comply. ‘No no no, not sloppy like that!’ the guy instructs Scot. ‘Be more careful. Pull the sheet up to precisely… That is better… Now do the same with the covers… Now fold it back exactly two inches. Are you watching this?’ he suddenly turns to me. He can rest assured I am glued to the scene. ‘Ha ha, you watch very carefully young madam, so you can make the bed for your husband when you get home,’ the guy chuckles as he attacks the dusty bedspread with vigor. ‘It is very important to make a good bed. Now,’ he turns back to Scot, ‘What are you doing? Help me get this straight! Pull there! Tuck in that corner! And pick up that pillow!’

Five minutes and one flawlessly remade – and still as outright dirty as we found it – bed later we trot to our second room of the night. Quick inspection learns that it is in slightly less decomposed state than the first. The sheets are clean. It’ll do. What about the promised HBO? we ask the guy as he is about to leave the room. ‘Yes, of course we have HBO! It is on channel 3!’ Our host is obviously fed up with our ridiculous requirements. I turn on the TV; it jumps to channel 47. ‘Push down to 3! Slower! Slower!’ the guy says impatiently. When I get there, two minutes after infinity, the TV channel jumps from 4 to 2. ‘See?’ I can’t help myself. ‘No HBO.’ Grudgingly, the guy pulls out a remote control. ‘You, hold the ON button on the TV. And switch the button behind you, on the wall. Now!’ As I hold and switch, he pushes 0-3 on the remote and holds it down, and, as if out of nowhere, a new station appears that could be anything – it could even be HBO. The second we switch channels, some ten minutes later, we never find it again.

For now, the guy is certain we must be content. ‘Now, have a good night.’
- ‘Wait!’ we call after him. ‘There was food in the fridge of the other room, you might want to…’
- ‘Of course. You are most allowed to bring it to your new room,’ he says and turns on his heels, undefeated. The house always wins.

Even Better Than The Real Thing

Even Better Than The Real Thing – U2

‘Forrest Gump Stopped Running Here’ says a sign by the side of Highway US 163, the road through Utah to Monument Valley. A bus filled with Asians has stopped right beside the sign; boys and girls stream out and line up to take a picture next to the sign. Never mind that the Monument Valley sandstone formations you see rising hundreds of feet into the air from up in the distance are the last remnants of the sandstone layers that once covered the entire region. Or that those layers contain deposited material eroded from the Rocky Mountains; or even that archaeologists have found numerous ancient Puebloan sites and ruins in the valley, or that it is Navajo territory today. No. Forrest Gump stopped running here.

Of course, Forrest Gump wasn’t a real person. He was the fictional title character of a movie that won 6 out of its 13 Academy Award nominations – and earned actor Tom Hanks his cute retard Oscar. Award winning rule for boys: play a handicapped guy, but don’t overdo it – remember poor Sean Penn’s all-too-real retard approach that cost him his win for I Am Sam! Sure, he got the obligatory nomination for taking on the part of a mentally handicapped grown-up in a drama, but actually portraying an uncomfortably convincing retard earned him slight moues of distaste in the final cut.
Admittedly, it was a bit of a downer. We want a fun Rain Man we can identify with; who likes Wapner just like the rest of us – even Daniel-Day Lewis’ left foot was more relatable, given what little he had to work with.
Dead funny Tropic Thunder pretty much sums it up: ‘Everybody knows you never go full retard!’

Golden rule for girls: go ‘ugly’. Watch Charlize Theron pack on 30 pounds and give up her concealer in Monster, Hilary Swank go butch in Boys Don’t Cry AND Million Dollar Baby (and snatch up an academy award both times!) or Halle Berry simply go barefaced in Monster’s Ball – so brave! (Note: girls should not play retards: Jodie Foster’s Nell was a heroic attempt, but there is a reason why nobody’s queuing up for the remake.)

Anyway. My point is, Americans have an interesting way of telling you that you are somewhere very special. Don’t get me wrong; I love pop cultural references as much as the next guy. They give me something I can relate to. Plus, there’s something absolutely giddifying about strolling around in places you have never been before and feel like home – like you know this place, grew up here; like you are finally introduced to someone you always assumed was an imaginary friend, or heard about in the words to your favorite songs; like the backdrops in your thoroughly thumbed Lucky Luke comic books just came to life.



What I find strange and slightly disturbing is that these infinitely gorgeous landscapes, with a billion years of history of their own, are ultimately reduced to the place where Marty McFly drove his DeLorean in Back To The Future III (Monument Valley); where Thelma & Louise drove off a cliff and into their closing credits (Dead Horse Point); where you get your kicks (Route 66).

Sure, in state and national parks you’ll find the obligatory historic background of a site, but more often than not these are dwarfed by numerous pop cultural references to movies and songs, linking the scenery to people that never existed and events that never took place – nowhere do you find so many allusions to things that never actually happened than on these majestic sites that pulsate with history, both man- and earth made. The ongoing emphasis on pop culture just doesn’t do these places justice. If anything, they make it hard to just be in any of them and soak up those billion years worth of natural history. Where exactly did Louise step on the gas again?

It works the other way around as well: places where really nothing happened turn into sites of interest, rendered immortal by a movie or a song. On our road trip through the South West, my friend Silke and I drive through Winslow, Arizona on our way to New Mexico. There is absolutely zero going on in Winslow, Arizona. There never was, the visitors that stayed away in large numbers agreed. But then The Eagles’ man Glenn Frey and singer/songwriter Jackson Browne came up with the song Take It Easy – including the famous lines ‘I’m standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona / Such a fine sight to see / It’s a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford / Slowing down to take a look at me.’

So today, when you drive through Winslow, Arizona, a gazillion signs carefully direct you to a random downtown Winslow street corner where you find a statue of a guitar singer in front of a carefully put up façade and a sign that say ‘Winslow Arizona’ and ‘Standing On The Corner’. They painted a bald eagle and a girl in a flatbed Ford on the wall, just to authenticate it up a bit. The shop on the other side of the street plays Eagles songs all day. You can buy the T-shirt there. The town has dedicated a website to the phenomenon.
Thing is, nobody ever actually stood on that corner to see a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford – let alone a bald eagle. It never happened. It’s a song. Glenn Frey and Jackson Browne sat down and made it all up.
(Of course, if it turns out that Frey and Browne met whilst hanging out on that very corner checking out flat bedded girls and crying out to their Maker, my face will be very red.)



Silke and I have lunch at the La Posada Hotel in the same Winslow. Built in 1929 for the Santa Fe Railway it is considered the ‘last great railroad hotel’ and pretty much a historic landmark, crammed with stories of real life adventures, romance and hardship. We are the only ones there. Wikipedia gives you a 76 word entry on the entire place.

For older tourists – or those happy few who missed out on Forrest Gump altogether – the information about Monument Valley makes sure to tell them that this is the place where Marion Robert Morrison put on a cowboy hat and became immortal as John Wayne. Silke and I spend a night in lovely, hot spring ridden Ouray, Colorado – recommended, by the way, by Lonely Planet as the little piece of paradise on earth John Denver must have alluded to in his song Rocky Mountain High – and we are looking for a place to eat. The girl at the desk of our hotel recommends the Outlaw restaurant. ‘Sure, they serve decent spare ribs, but did you know John Wayne left his hat there?’ she’s happy to inform us. And so we go. And take a picture of the hat of a legendary manly man movie character played by an actor who was known in real life for his hardcore right-wing, über patriotic, racist, xeno- and homophobic (and, as ironic rumor has it, closet-gay) views before lung cancer ate him up from the inside. Say cheese!



If the Southwestern landscape from Arches National Park to Grand Canyon tells you anything, it’s that mankind and all his shenanigans are fleeting, insignificant, not even an itch to scratch. Grand Canyon was there before man first wriggled out of the water, and will be there long after he’s gone. Why would national and state parks take away from that immediate sense of infinity and awe by tying it to the most fleeting man-made industry of all? Why try to make these places feel more real by invoking memories of things unreal?

Is Hollywood fiction really the only way Americans can relate to each other and their environments? Or are the endless undomesticated regions of the country just too uncomfortably raw – or, to fall back on the Oscars, too real of a retard – to appreciate in their bare authenticity? It would explain for the carefully added layers of relatability, the urge to be able to identify with every place you go to. In the words of Tom Robbins in Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, it’s all just ‘too damn vivid.’

When you arrive at Dead Horse Point State Park, you notice that it is physically impossible to drive your car all the way to the edge of the site – that would make for poor photo ops, not to mention very bad liability. You must park your car on the parking lot, a hundred or so feet from the edge, walk the rest of the way and stop at the waist-high brick wall put up to prevent you from stumbling over the edge.

So don’t be fooled. Thelma and Louise never drove off a cliff in Dead Horse Point State Park. The girls paid their 10 dollar per person entrance fee like everybody else; they parked their convertible in the parking lot leading up to the site; they walked up to the cliff and then they soaked it all in – the strange sensation of deafening silence that, in places like Dead Horse Point, or Grand Canyon, or The Valley Of The Gods, physically pushes its way into your brain and literally squeezes out any pop-cultural reference you might entertain. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Maybe it’s like breathing underwater on the moon in a dream – maybe free-divers know what I am talking about. It doesn’t need to get more surreal than that.



Watch the road trip video!