August 3, 2004 - Motels & Nerves

I've just set up this site, after finishing travel arrangements to Santa Barbara, where the film starts shooting the middle of this month.

This is peak season in Santa Barbara, so finding a room in Santa Barbara was like trying to find a room in Santa Barbara during peak season. I savvily managed to avoid (wait, is "savvily" a word? No, I don't think it is, well it is now) a motel that reviewers said looked as if it was managed by Norman Bates, and found a very nice place.

I've stayed at a Bates motel. Twice. Two different Bates motels, you know, he had a chain for a while there. Both were in central California on the way from San Diego to San Francisco. One was a weird little house on the grounds of a motel--"It's the only room we have, most people don't like it because they think it's haunted." Oh, nice. So of course, I took the chance, and spent all night dreaming that the walls were bleeding.

The next night-at-the-Bates was this dive attached to a place that called itself a restaurant but really seemed to only be a bar. It was 15 miles off the freeway, but we were running out of gas and didn't have much of a choice. The room had a window--but there was no glass in it. It had a bed, but I wouldn't call what it had a mattress--it was more like sheets strung between the frame, so when my wife and I were on it we both fell into the center. It had a shower but it was green--not green tile mind you, but green mold, top to bottom. And all night people ran up and down the hall, screaming, which caused us to slide a bulky chest of drawers in front of the door--though nothing was protecting us from what might have come through the window, not even curtains.

But I was young, I was stupid, and now I'm older and less stupid, so I avoided the motel from hell and instead found a really nice place. I don't know if I should tell you where we're staying, lest you mob the hotel (yes, that's likely, or not). Nor will I tell you what room. Just look for a couple that look like Brad and Jennifer and that won't be us.

I'm excited--and a little nervous, but my wife has informed me that if I say one word about being nervous she will do something unspeakable (and therefore automatically unmentionable), since she knows I'm a ham and will love it so just shut up already.

She can say this because she has all the funny lines in our scenes. I'm not sure how I ended up being George Burns to her Gracie Allen, or why I am using a reference that makes me seem like I'm 87 years old, but who can explain these things?

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