The Shade

It's cool and rainy where I am, and frankly, I like it.  Even though I didn't even bring a jacket (who would think you'd need a jacket in July in this place?), I'm sitting here with the sliding door to the balcony wide open. After the stifling heat of New York City in the past month, this sixty-something degree weather feels awesome. Now, if it were sunny and 65, I'd be happy as a pup who just discovered the chocolatey treats in the litterbox. (Sorry, that's gross, but why DO dogs eat poops out of the litterbox?)

Usually I stay at a hotel in Hermosa Beach, called the Beach House. I adore the Beach House, because it's quietly luxurious and a little funky.  They have all the nice amenities -- the fluffy robes, the big down comforters and pillows, beds so big you could plant an acre of corn on them, Aveda products in the bathrooms. And every room has a balcony that looks out onto the beach and the Pacific.  It's heaven, and I sleep the sleep of the just and true when I'm there.

So this trip, the travel agent flaked, and I ended up at this place called The Shade, further north on the Strand, up in Manhattan Beach.  It's nice, but a little too too, if you know what I mean.

The lobby is this ultra-modern room dominated by the bar with low, leathery divans all around (the better to drink your $14 cosmoramostini or some other such nightmare drink that because it's served in a wedge-shaped glass, they append "-tini" to the name. I'm a purist about these things. Ya can't call a drink a "something-tini" if it doesn't consist of gin/vodka-vermouth-and a twist-of-lemon rind-olive-onion. It's just not right.)  Anyhow, they have dance music playing all the time, and jarringly, sports on the televisions behind the bar.

I got onto the elevator, which is painted gray, and the lights in the elevator are BLUE. No one looks good in blue light. So I rode to the 2nd floor bathed in this light that makes me look like a consumptive.

I guess the room is "nice," whatever "nice" means in modern hoteliery (is that a made-up word? Probably.)  Maybe if "twenty-first century porno set" is considered nice.  Once I figured out the console of buttons inside the door, mainly through random stabbing at the buttons to see what I could make them do (god knows I couldn't READ the buttons, because they're all about 1/4" to a side and printed with tasteful, tiny Helvetica type saying things like "Chroma Therapy" and "Fire Cycling") I threw my suitcase on its little rack.

I decided to take a bath to unwind. The bathtub is actually one of those jacuzzi tubs, and to add to the ambience of the red strip lights around the bathroom ceiling, the tub has a built-in light that changes colors while you whirlpool. So I flipped around in this giant tub like a baby dolphin while watching myself change from blue...to green...to gold....to pink underwater.  Trippy. And oh so very, very Ron Burgundy.  I suddenly wanted to hear some jazz flute and drink white zinfandel.  Stay classy, San Diego!

But at least I was now relaxed enough to go to sleep.  I padded happily over to the nice big bed and flipped back the comforter, dropped the towel I had wrapped around my body, and threw myself down with real glee.

Oh, shit.  They have Tempur-pedic mattresses here.  Gaaaahhhhhh!  And Tempur-pedic pillows!  Double-gaaaaahhhh!

There ensued a night of tossing and turning and sweating -- those Tempur-pedic sponge mattresses are fucking convection ovens -- punctuated by terrible totalitarian dreams of jackbooted, no-faced regiments of brownshirts. I swear it was that fucking foam mattress and those fucking foam pillows, and the awful oh-so-moderne decor in its hideous shades of puce and slate.

I awoke at 6, completely unrested and cranky, to find that the overhead light fixtures in the bathroom had what could only be 25-watt bulbs in them, so I am sure I'm walking around so garishly painted that I look like I stepped out of a remake of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane."

After the car service driver nearly killed me on the 405 by chatting merrily away on his cell phone while changing lanes without checking his rearview mirror, I arrived at the plant in a state.

Judy asked, "How was the Shade?"

"That," I said, "was the worst night's sleep I've ever had in my life."

Needless to say, she was on the phone immediately with the travel agent, begging her to find me a room at the Beach House. Unhappy, unrested Aileen means unhappy press okays and lots and lots of remade plates, which is the printing equivalent of standing on Crenshaw Boulevard and setting handsful of $100 bills on fire.

Somehow, despite some volleyball tourney, a room was found for me in Hermosa, at the Beach House.  And not just any room.  An ocean front room.

When I checked in, all I could say to the girl at the desk was, "Oh, thank god you guys had a room for me. I've never been so happy to be here in my life."

And when I opened the door of room 314, and saw the sweet little suite, with its giant fluffy white king-sized bed with its giant fluffy white goose down pillows, and its slatted doors to the balcony overlooking the ocean, I actually said, out loud, "Hello, Beach House! I'm home!"

While all this was going on, the redheaded pressman was texting me to see if I had arrived, was I jet-lagged, where was I staying, and was I going to, well, see him later? I will admit to feeling the teensiest bit excited that I am going to see him.

After I checked in at the BH and Judy and I ate burgers at Hennessey's on the pier, we got back to the plant just after shift change, and there, on the first press as I walked in, was the Woodpecker.  I said hi, he said hi, both of us all professional and shit, and as I walked past, he gave me just the tiniest wink and half-smile. 

Naughty, naughty boy.

And five minutes after I walked past him and came upstairs to the client lounge, my phone kadunked with a text sent from the pressroom floor: "Damn! You look great."

And for that, I have to say, "Thank you, MWBMH(tm).  Makes it all totally worth it. "

I am so getting laid tonight.