Useless Advice Mondays: Bulletproof Glass

About 10 years ago, I made a mad dash from Cali-for-ni-ay to NYC. The reasons for said dash will not be discussed here, lets just say it was a necessary trip. Since I like to  drive long stretches, and since my arrival and return from the Golden Apple was time sensitive, there were not many non-danger-of-pants-crapping stops involved. Needless to say, upon my arrival at 2:30am, I was, as Austin Powers puts it, spent.

I feel that it is necessary to point out here that I had never been to NYC....or east of the Mississippi (and I did just sing the little song to spell that), well, not counting that one trip to Atlanta.....but I flew in and out of there, so we won't count it. So please keep in mind that I may not have been privy to certain metropolitan charms.

Having arrived (arrove...arriven....a rivet?) at such an ungodly time of night into an area with which I'd only known from movies and sitcoms where people with no jobs live in apartments I could never afford, I was a bit unsure of what my next move should be as I was not scheduled to arrive until 10 am....the next day (like I said....few stops were taken). I decided that the best course of action would be to check into a motel for a while.

So I'm technically in or around Weehawken, NJ (New Yorkers just chill out.....the rest of the world would consider this NYC) and I find a motel. Now, I'm not fully alert at this time, so some of the parts of the check in process that should have alerted me to what was coming went unnoticed until latter pontification. I walk up to the clerk, who is standing behind probably 4-inch bulletproof glass, and begin to arrange for a room. He asked me if I wanted the hourly or nightly rate (that's a key that I also missed). I opted for the nightly with some confusion. Keys and cash were exchanged and badda-bing I had a room.

I go into this room and immediately I realized that I had made a tragic error. The bed had an imprint of a roughly 5 foot 7 person in the center. By imprint, I mean that if the sheets were plastic, I could have filled it with water and bathed. OK....no problem.....old mattress. So I decide I'll pop on the tellie to see what's on....you know relax a little.

The TV had 5 channels. Each and every one of them were ass-slapping porn. Not just your run of the mill "Oh my pizza boy, do you have something ELSE you'd like to deliver?" porn. I mean the get the camera lens moist during close-ups, pull the sheets out of your ass porn. 

OK....so TVs out. Maybe I'll just take a quick shower and then go to sleep. Go into the bathroom and there is some kind of arachnoid hobgoblin that has set up domicile in the bathtub. Since I didn't have an arc welder or a low-yield nuclear bomb, I decided the shower wasn't the best idea. 

Out of options, I literally stood in the center of the room for a solid 30 minutes marveling at the various stain patterns on the floor, walls and (gulp) ceiling. I finally decided that there was no hope and walked out of the room to check out. When I went outside, it had lightened up somewhat...and I could really get an appreciation for the pit of rhino dung that I had checked into. Norman bates wouldn't check into this joint. It made Ed Gein's house look well kept. 

Now, in retrospect, I can see all of the little indictors that should have sounded the alarms in my head. I have stored them all in the cabbage salad that I call a brain, but I'll just give you the only one that you ever need to remember:

Advice: NEVER check in at a hotel through bulletproof glass.  If the hotel clerk is behind bulletproof glass, there is a reason, and you just need to leave.