BAM!
Nov 20-21, 2004 : NYC
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Part
4: Life at the Marriott
So it's Saturday night in Brooklyn at this point. I forget exactly what time the Commercials and Experiments session ended, but frankly I didn't really know what time it was even then. Alls I knew was that it was evening and I was hungry.
A bunch of people showed up at this point -- Nick, Yossi and David H were all at the show, and then Michal joined us in the lobby afterwards. I had some ridiculous idea earlier in the day that we would go into Manhattan for dinner, but I was soundly disabused of that notion, and we all went to the hotel instead and hung out in Kellie's room.
So we were fourteen strong tonight -- Danny, Cathy, Patrick, Kellie, Martha, Andrea, Michal, Yossi, Alaina, David, David H and Nick, plus Peter met us at the hotel, and at some point Kellie's husband Tom showed up. Fourteen Pigs, left unchaperoned in a hotel room. It wasn't exactly Sid and Nancy at the Chelsea Hotel, but it had its moments.
Here's what stands out for me.
There was pizza drama. As the hungriest and orneriest in the room, I had
to take charge of the pizza ordering process, and it took approximately
forever. Apparently ordering pizza to a hotel room is a fiendishly
complicated process that requires a native guide and a sharp stick to keep
the wildlife subdued. At some point we received unwanted Caesar
salads.
There was also beverage drama like you wouldn't believe. The Brooklyn Mariott was fairly clean and reputable looking, but for some reason you couldn't get a soda there for love nor money. There were no vending machines on the floor, contrary to common hotel practice of the 21st century. There was a gift shop off the lobby where you could buy drinks, but at some point, the cash register "crashed," and they wouldn't take our money. I for one couldn't imagine a hotel without vending machines. Every other hotel I've ever been in has been nothing but vending machines! Vending, as far as the eye can see! Not so at the Brooklyn Marriott, known throughout Brooklyn as The Land That Vending Forgot.
At some point, Cathy and Alaina went off in search of liquid. They were gone for quite some time. They returned empty handed, and quite frustrated. They'd been directed to the only vending machine in the place, which was down in the garage somewhere. Alaina wasn't wearing shoes -- she thought they were just going down the hall, not into the sub-basement -- and a bellboy wouldn't let her go into the garage with no shoes on. It was all very fraught. Of course, the next day, we discovered that the rooms had complimentary bottled water hidden behind the television. But who knew? I forget what we did at the time, maybe we boiled our urine.
What else? Andrea brought some puppets and coloring books, which provided us with more amusement than you might expect. The puppets were little "puppet 'n parts" type deals, with interchangeable features. All of mine were the Grand Vizier in various guises, including the Grand Vizier as Santa Claus and the Grand Vizier as a Pretty, Pretty Lady. Other people did funny stuff with the puppets too, but I couldn't hear what they were doing because I was talking at the time.
The coloring books were part of some kind of hippie communal arrangement that Andrea sets up sometimes; they'd been used by various children and/or friends before ending up in our sweaty paws. Some pages were colored in, or colored on, or defaced in various ways. We decided early on that we were the End of the Line as far as these coloring books were concerned, and granted ourselves carte blanche to do with them as we pleased.
One of the books was called Here Comes Christmas!, so I colored in the
title page and put a word balloon from Grover's mouth that said
"DON'T TELL THE JEWS!" Alaina drew on a page with a picture of
Elmo standing near a Twiddlebug dollhouse-type village. In her version,
Elmo had just walked through like Godzilla; all of the 'Bugs had
crossed-out eyes and were saying things like "Goodbye cruel
world!" and "Oh, the humanity!" That was excellent. Peter
did a very nice job on a picture of Twiddlebugs making a snowman, except
for the fact that one of the 'Bugs was pissing on the snowman, turning it
yellow.
Michal and David had a Muppet Treasure Island book, and were busily turning Tim Curry and Kevin Bishop into zombies. Meanwhile, I was having fun with the Muppet Christmas Carol book, giving the Ghost of Christmas Future long red press-on nails and tarting Michael Caine up with lipstick and eyeliner. There's a great page with the Ghost pointing its hand at Scrooge's tombstone, and Scrooge registering understandable surprise. I gave him a nice big word balloon, with the words "HO-LY FUCK!!" which I thought accented the moment nicely.
We flipped through the Muppet Christmas Carol book, marveling at the hours a young child might spend diligently coloring in page after page of Michael Caine in his many action poses. Here's Michael Caine standing! And here's Michael Caine pointing his finger! Here's Michael Caine fretting! And here's Michael Caine pointing again! The fun doesn't stop. Ain't no party like a Michael Caine party.
What else happened? Somebody brought Ryan Roe's head on a stick, I forget
who. That whole thing was a little mysterious to me. It was a photo of
Ryan Roe's head pasted onto a popsicle stick, so that he could be with us
in some way. Many, many pictures were taken of Ryan engaged in various
activities. Let's just say that Ryan Roe got a lot of play that night and
leave it at that, at least until the photos surface.
Patrick's back was hurting him, and Michal gave him a massage. I don't know what the circumstances were for this, but at some point, Patrick said to her, "You're aware that I'm gay, right?" She assured him that she was. This led to a discussion of how often Patrick uses that phrase, and under what circumstances.
Unfortunately, I can really only report on what happened on the bed I was on, which was mostly me, Peter, Alaina and Kellie coloring and reading from The Book of Mormon. A lot of the action on the other bed was a mystery to me; I only know of it from stories. There was some kind of action with David unhooking Cathy's bra, and being very good at it. I don't what that was all about.
So, yeah, Mormons. There was a Book of Mormon in every room, which seems
like an exorbitant expense, unless there's a very high Mormon-to-Marriott
ratio. If the intention is to catch the eye of non-Mormons and recruit
them, then the church might want to try out a different tactic, maybe with
a book that's a little more user-friendly. I read quite a bit of the Book
of Mormon (out loud, naturally, and with dramatic inflection), and
honestly none of us could make heads or tails of it. And we tried, oh how
we tried.
We read mostly from the book of Helaman, which we chose because he sounded like a superhero. It's all about the Nephites, which is a group of people I don't know very well. I know the Assyrians, the Sumerians, the Bulgarians and the Vegetarians, but the Nephites, I'm not familiar.
The book of Helaman appears to be some kind of blow-by-blow accounting of how much contention there was among the Nephites. "And now it came to pass in the forty and third year of the reign of the judges, there was no contention among the people of Nephi save it were a little pride which was in the church, which did cause some little dissensions among the people, which affairs were settled in the ending of the forty and third year. And there was no contention among the people in the forty and fourth year; neither was there much contention in the forty and fifth year. And it came to pass in the forty and sixth, yea, there was much contention and many dissensions..." It goes on like that. It doesn't say what the contention was about, only the amount and ferocity of the contention. "And in the fifty and first year of the reign of the judges there was peace also, save it were for the pride which began to enter into the church... And it came to pass that the fifty and second year ended in peace also, save it were the exceedingly great pride which had gotten into the hearts of the people..." It's a good read, actually.
Anyway, the really upsetting thing is that we found a gap in the
accounting. Fifty-first year: Peace, pride entering the church.
Fifty-second year: Peace, exceedingly great pride. Fifty-third year:
Helaman died, succeeded by his son Nephi. Fifty-fourth year: Many
dissensions, plus a contention. Fifty-sixth year: Dissenters stirred up
the Lamanites to war against the Nephites.
And we were like, wait a gol-darn second. What the fuck happened in the fifty-FIFTH year? Huh? You got me all into the rhythm of this, one year and then the next, and then you go and skip a year. It's just not right. I think they have something to hide, and I'm going to get to the bottom of it.
Anyway, enough fun with the Mormons for now. (Although in real time, that discussion took approximately two and a half hours, mostly just me, Peter and Kellie giggling off in the corner and threatening to call Quinn.)
We actually did call Nate, which was fun. There was a lot of discussion about who to call, and whether it was okay. Many names were floated. By now it was about 11pm, so people weren't sure who it would be okay to call. We figured John would be out somewhere, so we called and left a harassing voice-mail message for him. We also passed Nate around, and everybody had their way with him.
I bet there was other stuff. If I hadn't had my nose buried in the Book of Mormon I'd probably remember more. But that's all I've got. Then we went to bed.
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