YOU CAN CHECK OUT ANY TIME YOU LIKE, BUT YOU CAN ONLY LEAVE IN A BODY BAG

You know how sometimes you do something that you think is okay, but everyone around you knows the truth and you've just done the stupidest thing in your life?

You know...something like...ohhhh...checking into a hotel that has a local reputation of being "The Murder Motel"??

Yup.

Apparently, close to a year ago, somebody was shot and killed in one of the hotel rooms in the hotel I'm staying at.

I was told this by one of the ladies I interviewed yesterday. She said that it was apparently a drug deal gone sour (as compared to a drug deal going sweeeeeet) and a guy was shot and killed in one of the rooms.

So this explains the complete lack of cars in the hotel parking lot. I'm one of the few. The ignorant. The ones that don't mind staying in a hotel room splattered in blood and brains.

Actually, I can find no proof that the murder happened in my room. I checked the walls for bullet holes and ran a DNA test on every square inch of furniture in the room for blood.

Okay...I left my DNA testing kit at home. Mainly because I had no idea I'd be staying in....

THE MURDER MOTEL!!!

(Dum-dum-dum-dummmmmmm!!!)

I called Susie to tell her this after the interview. She told me to pack my bags and get out of this hotel at once.

I didn't do that. I'm a big boy. I think I can handle it.

Plus...I hate packing bags. I'm the world's lousiest packer. When I go on trips, I have Susie pack everything. When I return home, my bags look like the inside of a clothes hamper...everything just thrown in there haphazardly.

Soooo...from here on out, when I go on business trips, I'm checking with the local Chamber of Commerce for suggestions for hotels where nobody's been snuffed.

I'm all for saving the company money. But if that means sleeping in a dead man's bed...sorry boss. We're gonna have to pay the extra $15 a night so I'm not eating leftover pizza on a bed while a ghost with a crack habit watches over me.

My interviews went okay yesterday.

My first one was with the regional vice president of a ritzy department store. He was a nice guy, and he had two flunkies with him who chimed in whenever I stumped the VP with a question.

"When did you last have a loose bowel movement?" I'd ask.

The VP would stare at me until Flunky #1 spoke up.

"Friday!!"

I'd nod politely to Flunky #1 and continue my questioning.

The second interview was short and boring.

It was with a lady who represented an insurance company that was strictly for female truckers.

I asked her if they ever contemplated calling it "Mother Trucking Insurance".

She didn't get it.

The third interview was with an owner of a swanky boutique downtown.

I was expecting the lady to be very snooty and hoity toity. And even though she looked the part, she was very sweet and personable.

She had been a judge in several Miss America pageants which was pretty cool. She had autographed pictures of several Miss Americas hanging up in her store.

I asked her if she had ever seen any of them naked. She said no. I asked her if she ever thought about getting Mother Truckin' Insurance.

She didn't get it.

She's the one that told me about the Murder Motel.

It's difficult to come up with the proper reaction when someone tells you that you're staying in a hotel run by ghosts.

You feel as if you're in a bad Scooby Doo episode. I kept fighting the urge to say "Zoinks!" as she relayed the story.

She spoke very dramatically while doing her interview, taking her voice down to a low whisper several times throughout the interview.

I kept pointing at the tape recorder on the table in a gesture that said "Speak loud enough so that the tape recorder can hear you."

She must have thought I was just proud of my tape recorder or something. Because she kept doing the high shrill voice that swooped down into the dramatic low whisper on nearly every sentence.

I'm NOT looking forward to transcribing that tape.

The next guy was even worse.

A construction company owner, this guy's voice barely rose above a whisper.

Now...owning a construction company, you KNOW this guy's had to yell a few times on the job. He's had to make catcalls and wolf whistles at attractive young ladies as they sashayed past his projects. So I KNOW he could talk above a whisper.

Nope.

I sat there and all I could think about was that Seinfeld episode about the puffy shirt where Kramer's girlfriend mumbled everything and Jerry just sat and agreed with everything she said rather than asking her to repeat herself and ended up agreeing to wear a puffy shirt on the Today show.

I just prayed the guy wasn't asking me to give him a blow job or anything.

Because not only do I not like receiving them, I'm not particularly fond of giving them either.

Not that I have ever given a guy a blow job. I haven't. But I've choked on a few hot dogs in my day and believe you me .... that's no picnic, Mister.

I went to the mall here which was freakin' HUGE. I've never ever been in a mall the size of this one. I had to keep asking people if I was still in Idaho as I walked through it.

I went to Brookstone's and since it was a Monday afternoon, there wasn't a line of rednecks waiting to sit in the fancy $3,000 massaging chair.

So I jumped in it.

My.

God.

I don't know how many midget masseuses they have stuffed in the back of that chair, but man oh man...can those dwarves knead some flesh.

I sat there and had multiple orgasms as the midgets inside the chair massaged every part of my back.

Then I made a mistake of hitting a "hammer" button.

All of a sudden, pain was shooting through my back. It was like somebody was crashing a Ford Fairlane into my spinal cord.

I hit the off button to stop this painful torture, but the thing was SLOOOOOOWLY grinding to a halt.

So I hit the "Fast Stop" button which shut everything down immediately.

"How do you like it?" a pimply faced salesboy asked me as I sat there trying not to weep.

"It...it...was fine at first," I stuttered. "Then that hammer thing started and I almost died."

"It takes some getting used to," he assured me.

Oh yeah...I'm sure. Kinda like getting your penis pierced. At first you just want to die as you have a barbell jammed through your genitalia. But after several years, you get used to the feeling of having metal in your prick. I get it.

I rose out of the chair and limped out of the place, making a mental note to stay away from the hammer action next time.

So I get back to the hotel room, check for any bullet marks and decide to go get a nice steak dinner somewhere.

There's a dining guide in my room and I found a place that's supposed to have the best steaks in Boise.

I do a Yahoo Maps search for it and find out it's four miles from the hotel.

Cool. That's where I'm going.

I leave right at 5:00.

In rush hour traffic.

I proceed to miss the street that I was supposed to turn on and get stuck in even worse traffic.

I finally get to the street that I'm supposed to be on and don't really pay attention to the street address numbers which are going higher as I need them to go lower.

So I have to find a place to turn around in rush hour traffic which isn't as easy as it sounds. I putt-putt a mile or so, going a mile an hour and am able to turn the car around in the opposite direction.

I'm now sitting in even WORSE traffic this way.

To make a long story short, 30 minutes later I find the steakhouse.

....Which closed it's door on March 20th and moved to a new location downtown.

I curse the fact that the steak place is downtown now and decide that I'm so horribly lost that there's no way I want to go looking for the place downtown and decide to just eat at the first restaurant I come to.

Being Boise Idaho...your chances are exceptionally good that the first restaurant you come to will be a pizza joint because these bitches are EVERYWHERE here. These people eat more than their share of pizza in this town.

So I get to Shakey's pizza parlor.

I LOVED Shakey's when I was a kid. My family used to drive 30 miles to Peoria where us kids would watch the pizzas be made from behind a plexiglass window and beg our parents to stay long enough so that we could sing along with the "band" which consisted of two old men, one playing piano and the other playing banjo. The words to songs like "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey" were up on a projection screen above them with a bouncing ball and we sang our hearts out in this pre-karaoke atmosphere.

Man. I loved me some Shakey's.

And even though I've eaten NOTHING but pizza for the last three days, I pulled into the parking lot and went in.

You know how you can really love something as a child and then when you get to be an adult you find out that what you loved was complete and utter shit?

Like "Scooby Doo"? Or talentless boy bands like 'N Sync? (Trust me girls...you'll figure it out in 20 years...Joey Fatone has the talent of an infected wart)

Add Shakey's to that list, my friend.

I wouldn't say it was the WORST pizza I've ever eaten. But it was a buffet of pizza and the pizzas were OBVIOUSLY baked several hours prior to being put on the buffet line and kept in a warm box or something. Because it was dried out pizza...not fresh at all.

I had two pieces of pizza and a salad and left.

Cursing my childhood.

CURSE!!

Alright...I've gotta get up out of bed and get in the shower. My first interview this morning is at 7 a.m. which is an ungodly time for an interview, but my day will be over by 10 a.m., so I'm not hardly complaining.

Well...I guess I am.

I don't mean to be.

It's just the crankiness in me.

I'm sorry.

Peace out.