Last name Press, first name Ponytail, checking in for the night with another suitcase full of picks.
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Music’s many rooms
We have beds booked across the musical spectrum this week, from Rocky’s Gideon Bible-bedecked suite, to the infamous inn that turned away our Lord and Saviour. And no, we won’t be staying at the California. The actual hotel looks nice, but the song desperately needs a renovation.
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Qobuz!
-AK
Share your sonic travel advice.
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Horror hotels
The Shining (1980)
Dad?
Yes?
Do you like this hotel?
Yes, I do. I love it. Don’t you?
I guess so.
Good. I want you to like it here. I wish we could stay here forever... and ever... and ever.
Barton Fink (1991)
Oh boy, here we go, after The Shining we have yet another “tourist with a typewriter” holing up in a hotel with writer’s block. What’s the worst that could happen?
I gotta tell you, the life of the mind... There’s no roadmap for that territory... And exploring it can be painful.
The Lobster (2015)
Hotels—the perfect place to find exciting new love. Or else.
Psycho (1960)
Do you have any vacancies?
Oh, we have 12 vacancies. 12 cabins, 12 vacancies.
So no one else around to hear you scream…
Hotel Transylvania (2012)
This place is packed with countless more monsters than all of the aforementioned horror hotels combined!
-JB
READ
The motel life in The Motel Life and No Country for Old Men
I gave a little shout-out to Willy Vlautin’s The Motel Life way back in our 2022 Round-Up but its gritty Americana world continues to stick with me over three years later. Its methodical, matter-of-fact narrative is very reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s chilling thriller from just a year earlier, which I just read for the first time this spring, and which has its own generous helping of southern country sleaze.
It’s the transient motel life at the center of both novels that beguiles me the most, though. On the one hand, it’s a little offensive to romanticize such a life marked by a poverty and instability that many real life people experience. On the other hand, I’m such a sucker for a good road trip (I just prefer to have mine without unhinged hitmen on my tail).
-JB
We’ve paid our bill, and handed in our keys for the week. Bring your aprons next time, when we cook this newsletter with
I forgot to read The Motel Life, Joel. So thanks for the reminder!