or, TaxCut2007, Konono No.1, and You.
Pink Floyd The Wall poster I got for my 18th birthday from my dorm roommate, Vince.
I got sick on Wednesday from the strain I’ve been placing on my body lately. It has something to do with booze, a little to do with work, and a lot to do with Rock Band. Specifically, too twice in the last three weeks I have found myself awake at 5:00 playing Rock Band at the Fell-tel. These two instances have been the grain of sand around which the mucous-y pearl of this nasty cold slowly built itself, until Wednesday it reached critical mass while I was driving to the DMV at lunch, and .. pried the clam of my … OK, forget it. There’s nothing pearly about this cold. Although the Xmas post I never wrote would have mentioned the awesome electric toothbrush my parents got me, complete with wireless LCD clock timer, which has been pearling my whites ever since. And the white snowflakes that piled up on our heads in the sunriver hot tub on Xmas day didn’t get much play on the Jo-tel neither. Bygones. Since getting out of work on Friday, I’ve actually been able to take care of some shit around here. I sent out the Bachelor Partyette email. I went to the DMV and the post office. I folded my t-shirts. I read The Subtle Knife. If it hadn’t been for this opalescent cold, I probably would have been playing Rock Band at 5:00 this morning. Instead I am listening to Konono No.1 and about to do my taxes and simultaneously do the first installment of my Jo-tel Object Lessons series that I’ve been thinking about for over a year.
The Jo-tel is a special place for me. I’ve lived here for six years, since long before it even knew it was a Jo-tel. Now I’m listening to all the songs on my computer that have “Cave” in them, because for some reason I don’t have that Cave Singers album on here. Over the years the tides have washed up many objects that through natural brownian jostling have come to rest in each of their niches where they belong. So I took pictures of them and here they are. I guess we still occasionally entertain the notion that one or two of our readers don’t actually know us personally. If you are that mythical beast, and you’ve never been to the Jo-tel, then maybe one day without trying you will find yourself in a narrow hall with hung with cobwebs from a halloween party even though it’s July and you’ll make out through your drunkenness a light gleaming off of something and squinting you’ll see it is a garden gnome who is also a personal trainer, and you might even get a first date with PETE in the bargain.
Without further ado, I give you the Jo-tel Objets d’Art. Let’s start in the hall:
[more pictures after the jump]
Clockwise from top left:
- Enormous SF Opera poster that PETE hooked up when he worked there.
- Hip E. on top of Half Dome (8,836 ft).
- Shark on top of Glen Pass (11,978 ft) on our Rae Lakes Loop backpacking trip.
- One of my first concert posters, which I’m 98% sure refers to the mounted police who patrol the fenceline at Shoreline looking for claim jumpers.
CW from TL:
- This mild-mannered gargoyle has a dark side: when you walk by him, he opens his eyes and sings Wild Thing. It can be quite startling to the uninitiated. We stole him from Romie. Romie has objects like this overflowing from every crystal and hammock in his tree house.
- Drawing by my little brother Bain. When I was home over Xmas we cleaned out the basement and found a photo of him drawing this. He was really skinny. Great drawing.
- These last two are actually in the bathroom, but that is sort of part of the hall. I flush the toilet speaks for itself. Courtesy of PETE, this is what you see when you’re sitting on the South toilet in the Jo-tel. If you close the door, that is. If you stand up to pee, you see:
- Sperm Whale was part of a series of sea creature prints that hung in my dining room when I was a small child. Later they were demoted to the basement. When I was in high school I grabbed Sperm Whale and put it up in my room and I’ve had it ever since. For about eight years I had a strict personal rule that it always had to be hung up crooked. “The most well-known of the whales. Full-grown males can measure 60 feet in length.”
Next time on Jo-tel Object Lessons: Hip’s room.
10 responses so far ↓
Mike B. // Jan 28, 2008 at 3:29 pm
What’s your xbox live gamer tag?
Thrill // Jan 28, 2008 at 6:46 pm
That “I Flush the Toilet” is actually a replacement I bought for the original, which was mangled badly (as that one now is, clearly). It came along with the other three I ordered, all of which I placed on the wall (one in each stall, including the urinal) in the SF Opera 4th floor (staff) men’s room one night after work. No one knew it was me… presumably no one does now, either, unless Emily or Kyle read this.
Hip E. // Jan 29, 2008 at 2:06 am
Holy shit, I got that Wall poster almost 11 years ago.
Reid // Jan 29, 2008 at 12:12 pm
where’s the sign from the kitchen that reads “please wash dishes due to rat feces”
PETE // Jan 29, 2008 at 12:35 pm
The “I Flush the Toilet” was originally stolen from the bathroom of a church. It was right next to the sign that said “I Pee All Over the Seat Because I Laugh so Hard When I See the ‘I Flush the Toilet’ Sign.”
Great series, here.
PETE // Jan 29, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Also, Stickler is the best Rock Band player I know. I personally saw him get a 89% or whatever on “One” on GH3. If 89% isn’t good, then it was better than 89%.
Hip E. // Jan 29, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Reid, we are in the hall. Also we haven’t had a [live] mouse in the house since before halloween. Although (dirty little secret alert) we do have a dead mouse on the floor back under the utility sink in the laundry room. I found it there while cleaning for the anti-anti-anti-halloween party. Patsy has tried to get me to remove it many times, and that’s an idea I support in theory. Of course, IN THEORY, Communism is a great system. But what happened was when I found it I had just come back from Walgreen’s where I had bought some stupid halloween decorations including a candle in the shape of a gravestone that says R.I.P. I put it next to the dead mouse, and every time I go to maybe remove him, I see the grave stone, laugh to myself, and decide to wait until someone else has seen it and been appalled.
Shannon // Jan 29, 2008 at 7:01 pm
You should really have another object in these object pictures for a sense of scale.
Hip E. // Jan 29, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Good point. Perhaps a wang?
Hip E. // Jun 13, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Nah, wouldn’t want to make the posters look small.
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