Holiday Inn Quotes

For the record, folks; I never took a shit on stage and the closest I ever came to eating shit anywhere was at a Holiday Inn buffet in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1973.

I’d been staying at the Holiday Inn with my girlfriend, honestly the most beautiful woman I’d even known, for three days under a phony name, shooting heroin. We made love in the bed, ate steaks at the restaurant, shot up in the john, puked, cried, accused one another, begged of one another, forgave, promised, and carried one another to heaven.

I understand your position, Dave.  It’s a big story, and you worked hard to get it.  But if you don’t drop me at the Europa, I’ll blow your head off.  Imagine how big that story would be. There’s no need for these histrionics.  We’ll go to the Holiday Inn.  You can rest, shower, debrief.  You’ll be among friends. Last chance, Dave.  You can be the hero or the headline.  Your call. Let’s talk it out. No.  You talk too much. He started a new line of argument, but before the words passed his lips his brains passed them on the way out. A dirty reddish slime painted the windshield; it covered the dashboard and console. It poured and dripped from the ceiling to the seat.  The driver was covered on one side of his head and body.  The mess made the crowded taxi undrivable. -Also, someone crapped their pants.

Did you know I was born in a Holiday Inn.

I wish there was a song called “Nguyen and Ari,” a little ditty about a hardworking Vietnamese girl who helps her parents withthe franchised Holiday Inn they run, and does homework in thelobby, and Ari, a hardworking Jewish boy who does volunteerwork at his grandmother’s old-age home, and they meet afterschool at Princeton Review. They help each other study for theSATs and different AP courses, and then, after months of study-ing, and mountains of flashcards, they kiss chastely upon hear-ing the news that they both got into their top college choices.This is a song teens need to inadvertently memorize. Now that’sa song I’d request at Johnny Rockets!

I like Holiday Inns

I'm fairly certain that, at this very minute, the [Mars Polar Lander] is floating somewhere around the Neptune feeling tired and cranky and looking for a Holiday Inn. Of course, you'd have to have a heart of titanium not to feel a twinge of sadness while watching those dejected NASA scientiest waiting by the phone like the class wallflower on prom week. On the other hand, it was kind of fun to watch a bunch of men waiting by the phone and seeing how they feel when someone promises they'll call and then YOU NEVER HEAR FROM HIM AGAIN.

Now there’s always a chance that if you find acid hidden underneath a mattress in a Holiday Inn, left there by two guys you’ve never met, who were hiding it from the police and who are now in jail, it might be spiked with strychnine or something worse. But there was also a chance that it might not be spiked with strychnine or something worse, and Abby preferred to look on the bright side.

As it is, I guess I find "Jack and Diane" a little disgusting. As a child of immigrant professionals, I can't help but notice the wasteful frivolity of it all. Why are these kids not at home doing their homework? Why aren't they setting the table for dinner or helping out around the house? Who allows their kids to hang out in parking lots? Isn't that loitering? I wish there was a song called "Nguyen & Ari," a little ditty about a hardworking Vietnamese girl who helps her parents with the franchised Holiday Inn they run, and does homework in the lobby, and Ari, a hardworking Jewish boy who does volunteer work at his grandmother's old-age home, and they meet after school at Princeton Review. They help each other study for the SATs and different AP courses, and then, after months of studying, and mountains of flashcards, they kiss chastely upon hearing the news that they both got into their top college choices. This is a song teens need to inadvertently memorize. Now that's a song I'd request at Johnny Rockets!

A couple, both age seventy-eight, went to a sex therapist’s office. The doctor asked, “What can I do for you?” The man said, “Will you watch us have sexual intercourse?” The doctor looked puzzled, but agreed. When the couple finished, the doctor said, “There’s nothing wrong with the way you have intercourse,” and charged them $50. The couple asked for another appointment and returned once a week for several weeks. They would have intercourse, pay the doctor, then leave. Finally, the doctor asked, “Just exactly what are you trying to find out?” The old man said, “We’re not trying to find out anything. She’s married and we can’t go to her house. I’m married and we can’t go to my house. The Holiday Inn charges $93 and the Hilton Inn charges $108. We do it here for $50, and I get $43 back from Medicare.

2d. J. (still gone 100% pale a la Dostoevsky's Nastasya F.) abruptly acquiesces w/r/t adulterous Holiday Inn interlude {tone flat = '"Mm, OK," she said.'}

They considered this. One of the girls said, “Are you a genius? Like in a movie?” “No,” Luke said, smiling, “but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Rondó por la piscina Del Holiday Inn Y de golpe se sintió completamente inútil La imagen de una piscina A medianoche En Texas Pobre Texas Excavada Como todas las demás 3/79 San Marcos, Texas

The strangest thing about becoming an atheist was how little things changed. With no divine rules or threat of eternal punishment hanging over my head, I still somehow managed to not lie, cheat, steal, or kill anybody. Although to be honest, I was a little confused as to why we weren't lying, cheating, or stealing. Not killing people still made sense, but why, for example, should we not steal some peanut butter crackers from the unmanned mini-mart in this Holiday Inn?

If somebody else is feeding you—even if you entered the community or the building of your own free will, even if all the doors and gates are currently open or unlocked—you may already be living in your future prison. All it takes is a change in management to turn your Holiday Inn into San Quentin.

Wealthier Mennonites even though they're not technically supposed to be wealthy do their drinking in North Dakota or Hawaii. They are sort of like rock bands on tour in that the rules of this town don't apply to them when they're on the road. An embarrassing situation for wealthy Mennonites is to meet other wealthy Mennonites at the swim-up bar at the Honolulu Holiday Inn.

I want you to give me a chance.” “A chance at what?” Shifting so that he could press his forehead to hers, he said one word. “You.” Her breath caught. “Sean,” she breathed. “Because you’ve got me,” he said. “All of me.

So... Dell had been a good boy with bad friends. I knew this – I used to be one of them. I’d always known Dell would disappear one day; he was too decent, too golden. This place never tainted that, and I don’t know why. He made me feel dirty. Dark and corrupt. It hadn’t always that way, and I don’t know when it changed... but I felt it now. I only knew I couldn’t hold onto him tight enough to stop those long legs carrying him away somewhere better. A day’ll come when everybody’s had you and nobody wants you anymore... As Dell drove Erin away in their rent-a-car from the Holiday Inn into the early evening traffic, I felt the walls closing in, the world swelling around me, and I knew that day had finally come. Tomorrow, I leave Paradise. It’s true. Shanise was right. I turned away as the car disappeared up the slushy street. That was the last time I saw them alive.

Veba and Sanja got marrried in the summer of 1993. They signed the papers at the municipal government building—Zrinka was the maid of honor—and ran under sniper fire to a taxi, which drove them down Sniper Alley at incredible speed to the Holiday Inn, where they had a drink (Zrinka's treat) in lieu of a wedding reception. A passing French journalist was so astonished at Sarajevans still getting married that he gave them a bottle of wine. "Have a good life!" he wrote on it.

New York is the loneliest city. It doesn’t smoke anymore, it doesn’t drink much anymore, it doesn’t do drugs, it’s too rich and too expensive. The people who made the fun for the people who made the money have moved out. It’s safe. But the city that doesn’t sleep can now barely stay awake for dessert—if it ever ate dessert… In a generation, New York swapped Studio 54 for an African-dance class. We don’t just connive in our own humiliation, but in our own loneliness, too. A. A. GILL, “The Sorrow and the Pilates,” Vanity Fair, January 2007.

He pulled back, leaving them both breathless, and then tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I’ll follow you to the inn since it’s on my way home.” She nodded, her lips swollen from his kiss, her eyes a little glazed. “Are you okay to drive?” She smiled then looked down at his dick. “Well, if you can drive with a second stick shift, I think I can make it.” He threw his head back and laughed then let her get in her car.

The Chelsea has changed. It’s not like it was.” It had been gentrified, they said, domesticated, tamed like the whole neighborhood, which, since the mid-90s, had turned distinctly upscale. The greasy diners were gone, replaced by uniform Starbucks. The boarded-up storefronts were now upscale spas. The neighborhood dives were now exclusive nightclubs replete with guest lists and doormen who turned the “wrong” people away. Everyone was saying the hotel, the neighborhood, all of Manhattan, had sold out.

Money drives the Mercedes called Manhattan. Individuality and eccentricity take the bus. Gentrification, boutique hotels, prefab Olive Gardens and Home Depots are the coils tightening around the Chelsea. No more getting on bended knee to beg Stanley Bard to give you a room. In fact, the new owner, busy with intensive renovations, isn’t admitting anyone into the hotel. No doubt, if he does, it’ll be the moneyed elite, standing surrounded by their Louis Vuitton bags, checking in while dialing their iPhones. But that’s another story.

I'm not resigned, Jean. I'm angry. We need to cease being powerless as soon as possible.' 'Right. So where do we start?' 'Well, I'm going back to the inn. I'm going to pour a gallon of cold water down my throat. I'm going to get into bed, put a pillow over my head and stay there until sunset.' 'I approve.' 'Good. Then we'll both be well rested when it comes time to get up and find a black alchemist. I want a second opinion on latent poisons. I want to know everything there is to know about the subject, and whether there are any antidotes we can start trying,' 'Agreed.' 'After that, we can add one more small item to our agenda for this Tal Verrar holiday of ours.' 'Kick the Archon in the teeth?' 'Gods yes,' said Locke, smacking a fist into an open palm. 'Whether or not we finish the Requin job first. Whether or not there really is poison! I'm going to take his whole bloody palace and shove it so far his are he'll have stone towers for tonsils.' 'Any plans to that effect?' 'No idea. I've no idea whatsoever. I'll reflect on it, that's for damn sure. But as for not being rash, well, no promises.

Survival Spanish: Your uncle's hotel sounds very nice, but I have reservations at the Holiday Inn. El hotel de su tio debe de ser muy lindo, pero tengo reservacions en el Holiday Inn. I would like your least expensive room. Quisiera su habitacion menos cara. I would like a better room. Quisiera una habitacion mejor. I would like any room not damaged by the recent earthquake. Quisiera cualquier habitacion que no sufrio danos en el temblor reciente. The local women do WHAT to cause fermentation? Las mujures aqui hacen QUE para causar la fermentacion? I don't question your abilities, but I am already married. No dudo sus habilidades, pero estoy botin. My friend is drunk and I am lost. Mi amigo esta borracho y estoy perdido. My friend is lost and I am drunk. Mi amigo esta perdido y estoy borracho. My apologies. I thought you asked me to dance. Disculpeme. Pense que me invito a bailar. Have I broken a law? He violado un ley? May I offer you the gift of money? Puedo ofrecerle un regalito de dinero? Did I say twenty dollars? I meant fifty. Dije veinte dolares? Queria decir CINCUENTA! You can have our women, but leave the plane tickets. Pueden llevarse a nuestras majeres, pero dejen nuestros boletos de avion.

Where do the biggest movie star of his generation and a revered director (and great actor in his own right) stay when they are visiting someone? Would you believe the local Holiday Inn? Hoping to forge a better connection to Chris, Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper came to see me and the rest of the family in early spring of 2014, before they started filming American Sniper. The unpretentiousness of their visit and their genuine goodwill floored me. It was a great omen for the movie. Bubba and I picked them up at the local airport and brought them home; within minutes Bubba had Bradley out in the back playing soccer. Meanwhile, Clint and I talked inside. He reminded me of my grandfather with his courtly manners and gracious ways. He was very funny, with a quiet, quick wit and dry sense of humor. After dinner--it was an oryx Chris had killed shortly before he died--Bradley took Bubba to the Dairy Queen for dessert. Even in small-town Texas, he couldn’t quite get away without being recognized, and when someone asked for his photo, he stepped aside to pose. Bubba folded his arms across his chest and scanned the area much as his dad would have: on overwatch. I guess I didn’t really understand how unusual the situation was until later, when I dropped them off at the Holiday Inn. I watched them walk into the lobby and disappear. That’s Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper! Awesome!

Grace adored Amelia. The older woman was a close friend of her grandmother and mother, and a constant in Grace's life. She visited Amelia often. The inn was her second home. As a child she'd always raced up the stairs and raided Amelia's bedroom closet, and Amelia had encouraged her unconventional behavior. Grace had loved dressing up in vintage clothing. Attempting to walk up in a pair of high button shoes. Amelia was the first to recognize Grace's love of costume. Her enjoyment of tea parties. She'd supported Grace's dream of opening her business, Charade, when Grace sought a career. From birthdays to holidays, the costume shop was popular and successful. Grace couldn't have been happier. She admired Amelia now. Her long, braided hair was the same soft gray as her eyes. Years accumulated, but never seemed to touch her. She appeared youthful, ageless, in a sage-green tunic, belted over a paisley gauze skirt in shades of cranberry, green, and gold. Elaborate gold hoops hung at her ears, ones designed with silver beads and tiny gold bells. The thin metal chains on her three-tiered necklace sparkled with lavender rhinestones and reflective mirror discs. Bangles of charms looped her wrist. A thick, hammered-silver bracelet curved near her right elbow. A triple gold ring with three pearls arched from her index finger to her fourth. She sparkled.

In one of the most scathing of these reviews, New York Times critic Robert Palmer wrote: “He has mastered the art of making lyrics that are banal—and, when they are about women, frequently condescending—sound vaguely important. He has mastered the art of making the simplest drum accent sound as portentous as a peal of thunder and of introducing his side-men’s solos with such dramatic flourishes that they almost sound like gifted, sensitive musicians rather than like the hacks they are. He has won a huge following by making emptiness seem substantial and Holiday Inn lounge schlock sound special.

I was in Love once. I think I stayed at a Holiday Inn. Or maybe I was in Loveland, Co. But either way it felt great to be so directionless and unaware of my surroundings and so utterly lost.

On the drive over, Richards kept marveling at the transforming power of having a felony to commit. His brother looked more like his "normal" self now than at any time in the previous weeks, that is, like a calm, basically reasonable individual, a manly sort of fellow with a certain presence. They talked about Richards' daughter and along other noncontroversial lines. At the airport Richards stood by quietly, if nervously, while Joel transacted his business at the ticket counter, then passed a blue daypack, containing the kilo of cocaine among other things, through the security x-ray. Richards had planned to stop right here--just say good-bye, go outside and start to breathe again--but for some reason he followed his brother through the checkpoint. In silence they proceeded down a broad, sparsely peopled corridor; Joel, with his daypack slung casually over one shoulder, a cigarette occupying his other hand, had given Richards his fiddle case to carry. Soon they became aware of a disturbance up ahead: a murmurous roar, a sound like water surging around the piles of a pier. The corridor forked and they found themselves in a broad lobby, which was jammed now with Hawaiian travelers, prospective vacationers numbering in the hundreds. Just as they arrived, a flight attendant, dressed like a renter of cabanas on the beach at Waikiki, picked up a mike and made the final announcement to board. In response to which, those travelers not already on their feet, not already formed in long, snaky line three or four people abreast, arose. The level of hopeful chatter, of sweetly anticipatory human excitement, increased palpably, and Richards, whose response to crowds was generally nervous, self-defensively ironic, instinctively held back. But his brother plunged right in--took up a place at the front of the line, and from this position, with an eager, good-natured expression on his face, surveyed his companions. Now the line started to move forward quickly. Richards, inching along on a roughly parallel course, two or three feet behind his brother, sought vainly for something comical to say, some reference to sunburns to come, Bermuda shorts, Holiday Inn luaus, and the like. Joel, beckoning him closer, seemed to want the fiddle case back. But it was Richards himself whom he suddenly clasped, held to his chest with clumsy force. Wordlessly embracing, gasping like a couple of wrestlers, they stumbled together over a short distance full of strangers, and only as the door of the gate approached, the flight attendant holding out a hand for boarding passes, did Richards' brother turn without a word and let him go.

On the drive over, Richards kept marveling at the transforming power of having a felony to commit. His brother looked more like his "normal" self now than at any time in the previous weeks, that is, like a calm, basically reasonable individual, a manly sort of fellow with a certain presence. They talked about Richards' daughter and along other noncontroversial lines. At the airport Richards stood by quietly, if nervously, while Joel transacted his business at the ticket counter, then passed a blue daypack, containing the kilo of cocaine among other things, through the security x-ray. Richards had planned to stop right here--just say good-bye, go outside and start to breathe again--but for some reason he followed his brother through the checkpoint. In silence they proceeded down a broad, sparsely peopled corridor; Joel, with his daypack slung casually over one shoulder, a cigarette occupying his other hand, had given Richards his fiddle case to carry. Soon they became aware of a disturbance up ahead: a murmurous roar, a sound like water surging around the piles of a pier. The corridor forked and they found themselves in a broad lobby, which was jammed now with Hawaiian travelers, prospective vacationers numbering in the hundreds.
 Just as they arrived, a flight attendant, dressed like a renter of cabanas on the beach at Waikiki, picked up a mike and made the final announcement to board. In response to which, those travelers not already on their feet, not already formed in long, snaky line three or four people abreast, arose. The level of hopeful chatter, of sweetly anticipatory human excitement, increased palpably, and Richards, whose response to crowds was generally nervous, self-defensively ironic, instinctively held back. But his brother plunged right in--took up a place at the front of the line, and from this position, with an eager, good-natured expression on his face, surveyed his companions.
 Now the line started to move forward quickly. Richards, inching along on a roughly parallel course, two or three feet behind his brother, sought vainly for something comical to say, some reference to sunburns to come, Bermuda shorts, Holiday Inn luaus, and the like.
 Joel, beckoning him closer, seemed to want the fiddle case back. But it was Richards himself whom he suddenly clasped, held to his chest with clumsy force. Wordlessly embracing, gasping like a couple of wrestlers, they stumbled together over a short distance full of strangers, and only as the door of the gate approached, the flight attendant holding out a hand for boarding passes, did Richards' brother turn without a word and let him go.

It’s everyone who ever lived in London. That was what the sign above the entrance to Hell had said. He saw it in his memories every day. He had so many questions. He worried about what that meant in practice. He’d seen, in Hell, people from all time periods. Did ‘everyone’ include visitors to London? Was one night at a Holiday Inn in Clapham enough to sentence you to eternal damnation? Better

But who knows when night’s going to fall anyway.” “Well, you should. Shouldn’t you?” “No, why would I –” “Isn’t that part of your job?” “Knowing in intimate detail the prerogatives of a fickle and broken sky?” “Yes.” “You are aware that even professional astronomers and astrophysicists are unable to explain why the atmosphere changes colors at random and why the sun can rise and set three times in an hour and why we haven’t all just died already, right?” “Yes.” “But you still think I have the answer to that universal mystery. Because I work for a Holiday Inn.” “Yes.” “You’re kind of special, aren’t you?” “That’s what my mommy likes to say.” “I’m gonna... go now. I’ve got... towels.” Catrina

The only lights on now were from Room 6. Jane. Probably the most alone person I’ve ever met. I’d seen plenty of lonely travelers at the Holiday Inn in Seattle and even here, but no one like Jane, who seemed half in the world and half out of it. She has been, in the few times I’ve actually seen and spoken with her, nearly without life. Still, she has Cissy. How exactly, we do not know, but it is clear she has in her a formidable ally. I wonder if she sees it that way, is aware how far this stranger has taken her under her wing. A

living out our moments, it can also be a decision we are challenged to make.

said.

was reaching for another when his cell phone rang. He checked the ID, saw that it was Belinda, and ignored it. He wasn’t ready to start another job for a few days. He wanted to hole up in his tiny trailer, drink a few beers, eat bologna sandwiches, and watch old reruns on television with Sassy beside him. When he got ready to work, he’d call her. This was a holiday, by damn, and he deserved a little time off. He looked around at the tiny travel trailer and imagined Melanie in the kitchen, like she had been that last night they were together. They’d spent every weekend they could get out of the big city camping out at the lake—doing some fishing, having a few beers, and planning their future. He blinked back the tears. He’d lost her, all over a quart of milk. She’d needed it for breakfast the next morning and insisted on driving into town while he fished for their supper. After the auto accident that killed her, he drowned his grief in

Whether ghosts exist, it was silly to go to an expensive, infamously haunted inn if you didn't at least want to pretend. There was no need to be the sort of person who goes to a horror movie and points out it is all fake. We know. It's a movie. We suspended our disbelief when the lights dimmed. You are not made erudite by waving at the projectionist.

if I did something like that, I’d have to tell them. I don’t want to have to show up and say, ‘Yeah, I’ve had a fight with my wife and slept at the Holiday Inn.

it is never too late to be who you might have been.

I guess a true romantic might see the artistry of a handwritten note,” I suggested.

When I opened the curtains in the morning I saw the intersection of two six-lane highways. It was a comfortable, well equipped, practical sort of place, as Holidays Inns tend to be. You can be happy at a place like this so long as you stay away from the coffee. And the restaurant, if you want to be sure. Perhaps not happy, but not unhappy. Or if unhappy, at least not threatened. A good motel creates a kind of stasis for the soul in transit. One should leave no worse than one arrived: that is the minimum requirement.

Uno de los casos que Harry aún no había logrado resolver era el de una persona cuyo cadáver había aparecido en seis pedazos: uno en cada descanso de la escalera de incendios de un hotel de Gower Street. Aquel crimen atroz no había escandalizado a nadie en la oficina. Incluso corría el chiste de que por suerte la víctima no se había alojado en el Holiday Inn, que tenía quince plantas.

The three senior guys in the campaign,” an incredulous Bannon went on, “thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the twenty-fifth floor—with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers. Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately. Even if you didn’t think to do that, and you’re totally amoral, and you wanted that information, you do it in a Holiday Inn in Manchester, New Hampshire, with your lawyers who meet with these people and go through everything and then they verbally come and tell another lawyer in a cut-out, and if you’ve got something, then you figure out how to dump it down to Breitbart or something like that, or maybe some other more legitimate publication. You never see it, you never know it, because you don’t need to.… But that’s the brain trust that they had.

We were marching against the humiliation of the fact that your money can’t buy a hot dog, can’t rent a Holiday Inn. It was sense of the dollar dignity. We weren’t fighting just to be with white people.

The theme of music making the dancer dance turns up everywhere in Astaire’s work. It is his most fundamental creative impulse. Following this theme also helps connect Astaire to trends in popular music and jazz, highlighting his desire to meet the changing tastes of his audience. His comic partner dance with Marjorie Reynolds to the Irving Berlin song “I Can’t Tell a Lie” in Holiday Inn (1942) provides a revealing example. Performed in eighteenth-century costumes and wigs for a Washington’s birthday–themed floor show, the dance is built around abrupt musical shifts between the light classical sound of flute, strings, and harpsichord and four contrasting popular music styles played on the soundtrack by Bob Crosby and His Orchestra, a popular dance band. Moderate swing, a bluesy trumpet shuffle, hot flag-waving swing, and the Conga take turns interrupting what would have been a graceful, if effete, gavotte. The script supervisor heard these contrasts on the set during filming to playback. In her notes, she used commonplace musical terms to describe the action: “going through routine to La Conga music, then music changing back and forth from minuet to jazz—cutting as he holds her hand and she whirls doing minuet.”13 Astaire and Reynolds play professional dancers who are expected to respond correctly and instantaneously to the musical cues being given by the band. In an era when variety was a hallmark of popular music, different dance rhythms and tempos cued different dances. Competency on the dance floor meant a working knowledge of different dance styles and the ability to match these moves to the shifting musical program of the bands that played in ballrooms large and small. The constant stylistic shifts in “I Can’t Tell a Lie” are all to the popular music point. The joke isn’t only that the classical-sounding music that matches the couple’s costumes keeps being interrupted by pop sounds; it’s that the interruptions reference real varieties of popular music heard everywhere outside the movie theaters where Holiday Inn first played to capacity audiences. The routine runs through a veritable catalog of popular dance music circa 1942. The brief bit of Conga was a particularly poignant joke at the time. A huge hit in the late 1930s, the Conga during the war became an invitation to controlled mayhem, a crazy release of energy in a time of crisis when the dance floor was an important place of escape. A regular feature at servicemen’s canteens, the Conga was an old novelty dance everybody knew, so its intrusion into “I Can’t Tell a Lie” can perhaps be imagined as something like hearing the mid-1990s hit “Macarena” after the 2001 terrorist attacks—old party music echoing from a less complicated time.14 If today we miss these finer points, in 1942 audiences—who flocked to this movie—certainly got them all. “I Can’t Tell a Lie” was funnier then, and for specifically musical reasons that had everything to do with the larger world of popular music and dance. As subsequent chapters will demonstrate, many such musical jokes or references can be recovered by listening to Astaire’s films in the context of the popular music marketplace.

Where Jolson conquered, Bing Crosby convinced and charmed, and like Astaire, Jolson too for that matter, he did not possess the physical gifts of a standard leading man (angles and ears and hair, yet again). Also like Astaire, he made it all seem easy, with the laid-back acting and the unforced way that devastating baritone could pour out and swing out. In one crucial sense he was more beholden to Jolson than Astaire, being primarily a solo performer who sang to people more than he sang with them. Recall: who was Crosby’s only steady partner on film? Bob Hope, in a partnership based in jokey rivalry. Other singers in Crosby films, besides Hope and Dorothy Lamour, seldom counted. Nor did most of Crosby’s films. Paramount, his home studio, was a formula-bound factory for most of the 1930s and ’40s, and the golden goose of the Crosby films did not countenance feather-ruffling. One after another, they were amiable time-passers, relaxed escapism that made a mint and sold tons of records and sheet music. For many then and some now, these vehicles offered unthreatening comfort—few chances taken, little deviation from formula, a likable guy ambling through some minor plot and singing mostly great songs. On occasion there was something as glaring as the ridiculous Dixie: as composer Dan Emmett, Crosby speeds up the title song into an uptempo hit only because the theater’s caught on fire. Generally, his films lacked even that cuckoo invigoration, which is why posterity dotes on Holiday Inn and its splashy, inferior semi-remake, White Christmas, and few of the others. While it would not be accurate to view Crosby as another megalomaniacal Jolson type, he lacked Astaire’s forceful imagination. Greater professional curiosity might have made his films—not simply his singing—transcend time and circumstance.

Through the portals came, among others, five attorneys, three art directors, seven models, ten would-be models, twelve said-they-were-models, one journalist, three hair-dressers (one specilizing in color), two antique dealers, one typewriter repairman, one manager of a Holiday Inn, one garbage collector, two construction workers, one toll collector from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, three policemen, two firemen (one from out of state), seven hustlers (three full-time), one elevator operator (Garfield’s landlord’s son), one bass player, five doctors, twelve students, one ethnic dancer, two restaurateurs (one fancy, one shit food), one judge (rather old, but Garfield had to remember business),

Richard found a job at the Holiday Inn, keeping the place clean, carrying luggage, and doing light maintenance work. The money wasn’t bad and there were lots of women for him to look at. He had become acutely aware of women and sex; he would masturbate frequently as he imagined different scenarios—most involving bondage—with the attractive women he saw around the hotel. His first problems at the Holiday Inn occurred when he was in the hotel elevator with two girls in their teens. He smiled at one of them and told her he thought she was pretty. She said thank you and promptly told her parents Richard had made a pass. Her parents complained to the assistant manager, who told the manager, who promptly summoned Richard to the office. Richard was told he was not to flirt with the guests’ daughters and was warned that if another such incident happened he’d be fired. He promised it wouldn’t. The manager made him apologize to the girls’ parents and the incident was forgotten. After being employed at the Holiday Inn for three months, Richard was given a master key to the hotel’s rooms. He says he got it from his friend, who had worked at the hotel but had been fired for being late and not showing up. By now Richard was 5′10″ with taut, sinewy muscles. He was very well coordinated, the fastest runner in his class. He was still enrolled in Jefferson High, but for the most part he didn’t attend classes. From the very first, Richard had gone back to the hotel at night to look in the windows. The hotel had curtains of stiff fabric, and there was frequently an inch or two where someone could look in. The unsuspecting guests had no idea he was there, spying on them, fantasizing about them. He began testing himself, becoming bolder and entering the rooms with his pass key while the guests were sleeping. That’s when the most valuables were there, he realized.

perhaps I can’t understand how heart-retching it is to

A Holiday Inn restaurant with unshrouded windows! We sat by one, looking out at the tumbling tiny Virgin River while the Muzak doggedly chewed and swallowed Scatterbrain: “STILL it’s CHAR ming CHAT ter SCAT ter BRAIN.” During the meal Katharine talked about Barry: “We were at dinner once, in Los Angeles, and a girl came over to the table, one of his patients that he hadn’t seen for

Any guest who wants to participate can take a photo of them doing the task they set out to do, and then send it to the printer. I decorated a huge board and put it in the parlor where everyone can add their photos.

I want to go on a sleigh ride, build a snowman, decorate the tree, drink hot cocoa, and put our socks out for you to fill. I want to go into town and look at the windows. I want to build a fire and roast marshmallows. I want to bake cookies, go ice skating,

It was no accident that one of the advertising slogans for Holiday Inn, a chain that found success by building hundreds of motels near freeways and interstates, was “Holiday Inn. The best surprise is no surprise.” In this way, freeways have helped to rob many places of their personalities, smothering regional character under a blanket of sand and gravel. The interstates are designed to be monotonous, engineered to the same standards, governed by the same speed limits, with signs in identical colors and fonts indicating the distance to the next city. As a result they induce highway hypnosis, providing an experience less like motoring than like sitting on a vast concrete conveyor belt, cruise-controlling along with no effort required beyond keeping one eye on the road and another on your gas gauge, for mile after mile after mile. That numbing sameness reduces the landscape to a blur interrupted at regular intervals by overbright outposts of gas stations and fast-food chains, replicated in slightly different configurations right across the entire country, so that you can have breakfast at a Denny’s in the morning in Nashville and dinner at what appears to

Mother’s yellow station wagon slid like a Monopoly icon along the gray road that cut between fields of Iowa corn, which was chlorophyll green and punctuated in the distance by gargantuan silver silos and gleaming, unrusted tractors glazed cinnamon red. Mother told me how the wealth of these farmers differed from the plight of the West Texas dirt farmers of her Dust Bowl youth, who doled out mortgaged seed from croker sacks. But because I was seventeen and had bitten my cuticles raw facing the prospect of fitting in at the private college we’d reach that night—which had accepted me through some mixture of pity and oversight—and because I was split-headed with the hangover Mother and I had incurred the night before, sucking down screwdrivers in the unaptly named Holiday Inn in Kansas City, I told Mother something like, Enough already about your shitty youth. You’ve told me about eight million times since we pulled out of the garage.

She was. The undercover agent managed to get her out. She’s on her way to a safe house. I’ve been asked to pick up the baby and the aunt and bring them there.” I couldn’t help but grin. “Can I come along?” Wilder shrugged. “Sure. I don’t see why not.

Wait? Okay. I could do that. Wilder was right; there was nothing I could do other than wait.

What now?” I asked. “This feels like a real lead.

In the end, all the animals, including Ramos and Tanner’s five dogs in training, were given prime rib out on the enclosed porch.

Colt raised a brow. “That is a very good theory. Someone could have planted a tainted medicine in his home even before he began exhibiting symptoms. I’ll gather up all his medications and take them to the lab.

And then, in the split second that it took for a single person amongst the billions who populate this planet to make one tiny error in judgment, everything changed. The easy passage of time I’d once enjoyed was stripped from my life only to be replaced by a grating existence where each moment was so acutely raw that it demanded to be consciously and agonizingly experienced. I’m honestly not sure how I got through those first days of darkness, which, at the time, seemed to stretch endlessly into a cruel future I no longer recognized. There are those who say that time heals all wounds, but I’ve pretty much decided that isn’t really true. Wounds that dig into your soul and change you forever never really heal. They scab over and cease to ache every moment of every day, but every now and again, an unrelenting itch reminds you of their presence, and with that awareness comes a wave of grief that momentarily pushes you into the darkness once again. In a way, I supposed that I’ve learned to live with that darkness. I can’t speak to the experience of others who’ve suffered loss, but for me, the passage of time has allowed for the presence of more ordinary moments in my life, and with an increase of ordinary moments, life has mostly returned to normal. Of course, the word normal is a tricky one. I imagine each individual must define it in their own way, but for me, normal is a state in which the moments of my life count down silently and uninterrupted, until the next unordinary event affects their flow, sending me careening toward the darkness once again.

Sex always made me hungry and I wished we’d had time last night for a snack break.

It's not always ho ho ho on the high, high highway. Extended time in the car reveals human frailties. Dad's refuse to stop. They hearken back to the examples of their forefathers. Did the pioneers spend the night at a Holiday Inn? Did Lewis and Clark ask for directions? Did Joseph allow Mary to stroll through a souvenir shop on the road to Bethlehem? By no means. Men drive as if they have a biblical mandate to travel far and fast, stopping only for gasoline. And children? Road trips do to kids what a full moon does to the wolf man. If one child says, "I like that song," you might expect the other to say, "That's nice." Won't happen. Instead the other child will reply, "It stinks and so do your feet." There is also the issue of JBA---juvenile bladder activity. A child can go weeks without going to the bathroom at home. But once on the road, the kid starts leaking like secrets in Washington. On one drive to Colorado, my daughters visited every toilet in New Mexico. The best advice for traveling with young children is to be thankful they aren't teenagers. Teens are embarrassed by what their parents say, think, wear, eat, and sing. So for their sakes (and if you ever want to see your future grandchildren), don't smile at the waitstaff, don't breathe, and don't sing with the window down or up. It's wiser to postpone traveling with children until they are a more reasonable age---like forty-two.

While the women carried their own equipment, the players on the men’s team didn’t have to worry about such things. While the men’s team traveled to games in luxury buses, the women traveled in vans. The men stayed in better hotels and had better accommodations for flights, too. “We were staying in hotels that had cockroaches in them, and we had to drive to games in hotel shuttle buses. We actually went to a game on a Holiday Inn shuttle bus once,” Julie Foudy says. “I’d take pictures of us in every single middle seat going up the plane. Back then they had the smoking section, and our seats were always the ones before smoking—we were sitting 10 hours in smoke-infested quarters on long flights. Little things became big things.” At

You got a bed, your meals, the meds—all-inclusive, baby. It’s the fuckin’ Holiday Inn.” She laughed, a cackly, high-pitched laugh. Slapped her cheeks with her frizzy dyed-orange braids.

He and his entourage took up almost all the Holiday Inn out by the interstate, and reporters from as far away as Asheville descended on us. Sonny was big news, and so was the state of his marriage.

All she had was the number of the news agency and the last Holiday Inn he'd bothered to phone from.

Run On” started with an ostinato piano part, and I passed the exit for the Holiday Inn where Robert Downey Jr. and his family had lived when they were moving out of Darien. Robert Downey Jr. had been my best friend in third grade. We’d bonded because we were both neurotic eight-year-olds, and his parents and my mom were the only adults in Darien who smoked pot.

It wasn’t at all what I expected. I guess I’ve seen too many Fawlty Towers reruns with Mom, so I had pictured a run-down place with eccentric characters running around. The Cardington was as modern and comfy as a Holiday Inn.

In merchandising, the development of franchising (McDonald’s, Holiday Inns) has made it possible to go from coast to coast having identical experiences eating and sleeping. You can go all the way on the interstate highway system and never really see the particularities of a town. A sport like baseball, although a small universe of rule-regulated behavior, is actually a refreshing realm of diversity. The games are like snowflakes. They are perishable and no one is exactly like any other. But to see the diversities of snowflakes you must look closely and carefully. Baseball, more than any other sport, is enjoyed by the knowledgeable. The pleasures it gives to fans are proportional to the fans’ sense of history. Its beauties are visible to the trained eye, which is the result of a long apprenticeship in appreciation.

John, in Revelation 18:9 prophecies that when Babylon falls, “the kings of the earth…shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,” and in 18:11, “the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise anymore.” Obviously, if the entire nation of Iraq, let alone Babylon (whether with a Holiday Inn or even a full theme park), were to fall today, the kings and the merchants of the world would not be shedding tears and mourning over the loss. Even if Iraq stabilized, it would have a long way to go. Ancient Babylon is not the Daughter of Babylon

The International Herald Tribune reported on April 21, 2006, that the “crumbling mud-brick buildings” in the area Hussein was trying to re-build in Babylon, “look like smashed sandcastles at the beach. The newspaper observed that Babylon had been “ransacked, looted, torn up, paved over, neglected and roughly occupied…soldiers had even used soil thick with priceless artifacts to stuff sandbags”. The Mayor of a nearby village, Hilla, told the newspaper that he still had hopes that Babylon could someday have “restaurants, gift shops, long parking lots…and maybe even a Holiday Inn.” Iraqi officials are quoted as saying they would still like to turn Babylon into “a cultural center and possibly even an Iraqi theme park.” In spite of this, one Bible commentator wrote recently, that it was “enormously significant” that the U.S. had agreed to invest $700,000 (that’s thousands, not millions or billions – enough to buy a couple of nice houses) into re-building Babylon as a ‘tourist attraction.’ He wrote that ancient Babylon would become “the wealthiest and most powerful city on the face of the planet.” In arriving at this conclusion he has interpreted the Bible’s Daughter of Babylon verses as applying to the site of ancient Babylon.

Hey, I have an idea.” Kellan angled his body to face Vic again. “What if you leave your cell phone with me? You’re going to be right there, within walking distance. I’ll call the front desk if anything happens.” Vic frowned. “Walking distance? You’d better not do any walking, that egg could fall right out of you!” Kellan smacked his forehead. “First off, that’s ridiculous. It doesn’t work like that. But that wasn’t what I meant. I was talking about it being walking distance for you.” He stroked Vic’s cheek, petting the soft beard hair. “I won’t be able to relax, and neither will you, if you’re here, knowing that they’re running around at the inn dealing with all the holiday madness.” Vic’s expression radiated pain, the mental struggle over what he should do showing on his features as his brow creased and the muscles ticked in his clenched jaw. He let out a long sigh. “All right. I’ll agree to that. But promise me you’ll rest? And keep my phone with you wherever you go, even if it’s in the bathroom. Oh, and I’ll be back every hour to check on you. Deal?” Kellan gave Vic a soft kiss, his poor, stressed-out mate trying so hard. “It’s a deal.

It was past eight on a Friday night, so calling the Homeward to speak to Dr. Casbus was out of the question. The head nurse would never bother him this late. A sly idea struck me. Just because I couldn’t call the doctor, didn’t mean I couldn’t go see him in person. I’d gone to the Homeward at night before. On those nights when I’d been afraid for my mother, afraid she’d be scared, or missing me, or they would be hurting her with their treatments. The head nurse, Mrs. Huds didn’t like it, but Casbus always showed up to save me from her lecture on rules. He didn’t let me have a room to stay in—it wasn’t the Holiday Inn, but he’d let me stay long enough to dial down my fears a notch or two. And sometimes, I learned more about myself, like the last after-hours session, when Casbus had explained why I had holes in my memories.

God put sisters together for a reason, and I believe that those paired by fate should find a way to share the lives they were meant to share.

Wat ons, Europeanen, snel tegenstaat was voor de Amerikaanse reiziger vanaf de jaren vijftig juist een groot pluspunt: waar je ook belandde, de kamers in een Holiday Inn en de smaak van een McDonald’s waren precies hetzelfde. De consistentie en de eenheid van het product, de saaiheid zo je wilt, vormden de basis van deze succesformule. Je kon – en kunt – er altijd van op aan. Aan de andere kant, in de lijn van wat Steinbeck ook schrijft: als mensen smakeloos – en bovenal hygiënisch – voedsel niet alleen acceptabel vinden, maar zelfs gewenst, wat betekent dat dan voor het emotionele leven van een land?