Finally, I arrived at Austin Bergstrom Airport, tired and
stiff from a long, much-delayed flight. Nearly all flights departing O’Hare Field — as
older locals call it — in March have one thing in common: delays. I couldn’t wait to get to my hotel
room and settle in with a Shiner Bock and cheesy decade-old Law & Order reruns on TNT. Oh, how I
miss Jerry Orbach! But that’s another story…
It was springtime in Austin, and South by Southwest had begun a day earlier. Unfortunately, I wasn’t
there for the festival and didn’t have time to see any live music. Worse, the
only Hilton room I could find for less than $500 was at the airport Hilton.
(Yes, I’m a points whore, and Hilton is my hotel pimp.)
So I took the short taxi ride to my hotel hoping to check in
before midnight. Upon entering the Hilton, a strange, circular edifice, I immediately
heard live music and saw hundreds of hipsters meandering around the lobby. Wearing
my navy suit I stood out like a sore thumb. The music was pretty good—reminiscent
of George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic—but I wasn’t really in the mood to
hang out downstairs and listen after spending several hours eating lousy airport
fast food near gate K15.
Thomas Hobbes said life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
and short',” but I think he may have been referring to life while waiting for
your flight at O’Hare during a spring snow storm. (All except for the short
part as there are no short delays at O’Hare.) Still, it’s better than being delayed
at LaGuardia (LGA). I think Joseph Conrad nailed the essence of being delayed
at LGA: “The horror! The horror!” Horror,
indeed…two hours at LGA is on par with a visit to Dante’s fifth circle of hell.
It took me a while to find the check-in desk through all the
hipsters swaying to the funk, but I eventually found two rather sullen Hilton
clerks behind a large brown desk with a Hilton Honor sign slightly askew. They appeared
somewhat annoyed that they had to work, which was depriving them of joining the
throngs of people in the lobby in the Grateful Dead hippie dance.
I gave the clerks my driver’s license and credit card and
asked to check in. They greeted me with a faint-hearted “Welcome, Mr. Lively.”
Then the taller hotel clerk—a pretty girl in her early-20s with a nose ring, a
name badge that read “Becky,” and an overwhelming millennial vibe that shouted “I
can’t wait to get back to looking at my iPhone”—surprised me with her next
comment.
“Your wife has already checked in, Mr. Lively.” What? I was
traveling alone. My wife and kids were at home, sleeping as the snow continued
to blanket Chicagoland.
“Uh, I am not traveling with my wife,” I explained. The two
clerks looked at each other, then at me, and then at each other again with a
perplexed look.
“Uh….let us look into this Mr. Lively,” Becky said slowly in
a bewildered manner with a somewhat annoyed nasal tone. The two began typing
away on their hotel computer systems.
Every time I’m at a hotel or rental car desk, I’m routinely amazed
at how much the desk clerks type. In order to check-in a guest at the average
Hilton, I’m convinced the clerk must write a short novella just to determine
which room is yours. With all of their typing on this night, I’m convinced they
could have re-written Prousts’s Remembrance
of Things Past.
Then, Becky looked at me and said the funniest thing: “Mr.
Lively, has anybody ever told you that you look like that guy in The Hangover? What’s his name?” The
other clerk, whose name I never got, looked at me and agreed.
Confused and flattered, and trying to remember the movie in
question, I said, “Do you mean Bradley Cooper?”
“No, not him,” Becky responded quickly and definitively. "The other guy....what's his name?" At this
point, she and the other nameless clerk tried to remember the name of the famous
actor I resembled. After feeling flattered, I deflated and tried to figure out
to whom they were referring.
Just then, Becky blurted out, “Ed Helms. You look just like
Ed Helms.” And there you have it. No, I don’t look like Bradley Cooper, People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.
Rather, I resemble the nerdy character with the bad haircut and a missing front
tooth.
“Okay then, well thanks, I guess. Can you find out who is in
my room because it’s not my wife,” I responded.
“Yes, Mr. Lively, we’ll call her and ask now,” Becky
explained. She called the room and spoke with someone who claimed to be Mrs.
David Lively. In Chicago it is nearly impossible to find another person with my
last name. In Texas, however, there are a bunch of us and it is at least a
remote possibility that a distant relative from East Texas was upstairs
watching Jerry Orbach on TNT and drinking a Shiner Bock—though I suspect the
person in my assigned room scammed her way into a hotel that was fully booked.
After some discussion between the two clerks, they agreed to
give me a different room—the last available room in the hotel, in fact. I asked
the clerks to ensure I wasn’t paying for both rooms, then grabbed my hotel key
and began to walk toward the elevator.
As I walked away, both clerks said, “Hey, don’t forget to
check out The Hangover—you look just like Ed Helms.” I nodded, gritted
my teeth slightly, said thanks, walked slowly to my room, and flipped on the television.
No, The Hangover
wasn’t on that night. Nor were Law &
Order reruns—apparently I got there too late for those. Instead, I grabbed
a beer from the mini-fridge and watched an old episode of Mannix.
“Damn, Mike Connors was cool…almost as cool as Bradley Cooper.”
“Damn, Mike Connors was cool…almost as cool as Bradley Cooper.”
