Retreating into madness ....
Sep. 18th, 2008 03:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
d_aulnoy... and, no, I'm not being hyperbolic. I just spent my weekend in a former asylum.
Well, okay, fine, maybe it used to be a convalescent home, but ... daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam.
We went to The Greenbrier. You will notice that this article makes it sound like a completely normal, rather ritzy, upmarket hotel with a long and honorable history. This is the impression that I got from my friends from West Virginia, too. They have all failed to mention that it is the unhappy compromise between The Castle of Otranto and "Boogie Nights." Seriously, think Johnny Depp with the lizards. You see, The Greenbrier was redecorated by Dorothy Draper after WWII, and her approach to things has been described as "big, brash, bodacious, bold, and border[ing] on what some would consider gaudy." Okay, seriously, some? Bordering? I am the most red-velvet-loving, tchotche-collecting, friends-feared-I-would-gild-the-cat ostentatious fan of opulence that you can imagine, and I thought it was too much. Seriously, this woman appears to have been operating under the belief that a room wasn't complete without a clashing pattern. Note that I say "pattern": I rather approve of many of her color combinations, as, being a good Russian, I think that red and green go together delightfully, and all the better if they've been accented with purple and gold and shiny. But, nevertheless, there. Are. LIMITS.
Hee. In point of fact, image-searching Draper's name for examples nets me a link to these complete strangers: the quotation marks around DD's name and the look on the woman's face make me think that they must have had much the same reaction. Because, we, when we got to our room? Had a moment of severe vertigo as we looked at the enormous blue cabbage roses the size of our heads that climbed the up the walls and onto the ceiling, at the woven green carpet they grew out of, at the green plaid armchairs that sat upon it, and at the completely random yellow footstool that floated amidst the rest like a misplaced bit of flotsam.
Check it out, baby! Also, note the highly patterned and contrasting dress lying flung upon the chair: while I feel that Draper would have approved, it's kind of not the effect that I had in mind when I packed it, the inducement of seasickness.
Seriously, check it out: the weird-ass perspective that the Gnu achieved (photgraphy students all over the world are crying with envy) doesn't really help with the Overlook Hotel effect:
So, in this environment, we dressed like cowboys! There are pictures, which I will spare you! Then, like virgins, for the White Party, which I will also spare you! Except, during the White Party, I really felt like I ought to be attending the Black-and-Blue Ball, because ... I shot a rifle for the first time and finally understood the concept of "recoil." I will never again say that I recoil from any idea or situation lightly because, again, I say unto you, daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn. Well, okay, maybe one photo, but this is for the bruises, and not the background:
Nice, huh?
On the other hand? Shooting? Best. Hangover. Remedy. EVAH. Seriously, I was all sad and mopey over the cat the night we got there, so I drank way too much, and no one around me remembered The Rule (to whit, that if anybody around me sees me mixing drinks on an empty stomach, they should slap me, hard), so I woke up the next morning feeling a bit ... unusual, to quote "Withnail and I." We'd been signed up for kayaking, but I consulted with my stomach, and my stomach said, "Lady, are you crazy?" So, instead, we went skeet shooting. And, after my first shot (which hit!) I turned to our awesome, straight-out-of-a-Stephen-King-novel-himself novel himself guide and said, "That was AWESOME." While grinning like an idiot. Methinks Fred took a shine to me, because he let me be the first one to shoot the semi-automatic rifle from the hip. Heh. I ended up getting 34 out of 50 shots, which isn't awesome, but which was better than half our party, and not too shabby for a beginner, I think.
I am now angling to get a gun: I figure it could be my next pet. The Gnu, alas, is arguing against this vociferously, on the grounds that he is Swedish: as he puts it, a Russian with a gun is basically his hereditary nightmare. We shall see.
Aside from that, we had the worst traveling day imaginable trying to get back: our multiple alarms failed to go off, and all the clocks in the room spontaneously reset to different times. No, seriously. The only reasons that we woke up in time to make our flight are, a) I need Diet Coke at intervals of no more than three hours, so I woke up at 6 to recaffinate, and b) our flight had been delayed by the heaviest fog I've ever seen in my life. You see why I compare it to The Overlook from The Shining, nu? But, eventually, we left West Virginia for Atlanta, where we had juuuuuuuuust missed our connection.
So we found a desk and asked to be rebooked, and kinda looked at one another askance when the agent handed us stand-by tickets for 4 different flights. Yeah, apparently Delta had overbooked every damned flight for the day by 20 seats or more. That was fun. We ended up spending 9 hours in the airport, and I have sworn a solemn vow to never fly with Delta again. Seriously, ever. I don't care about that anecdote about the leaked airline e-mail where the exec. said, "Who cares, they'll come back anyway ...." because I am seriously willing to spend more to avoid this kind of asinine incompetence in the future.
So, in short: The Greenbrier, wacky and awesome: guns, awesome and awesome; Delta, Teh Suck.
Well, okay, fine, maybe it used to be a convalescent home, but ... daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam.
We went to The Greenbrier. You will notice that this article makes it sound like a completely normal, rather ritzy, upmarket hotel with a long and honorable history. This is the impression that I got from my friends from West Virginia, too. They have all failed to mention that it is the unhappy compromise between The Castle of Otranto and "Boogie Nights." Seriously, think Johnny Depp with the lizards. You see, The Greenbrier was redecorated by Dorothy Draper after WWII, and her approach to things has been described as "big, brash, bodacious, bold, and border[ing] on what some would consider gaudy." Okay, seriously, some? Bordering? I am the most red-velvet-loving, tchotche-collecting, friends-feared-I-would-gild-the-cat ostentatious fan of opulence that you can imagine, and I thought it was too much. Seriously, this woman appears to have been operating under the belief that a room wasn't complete without a clashing pattern. Note that I say "pattern": I rather approve of many of her color combinations, as, being a good Russian, I think that red and green go together delightfully, and all the better if they've been accented with purple and gold and shiny. But, nevertheless, there. Are. LIMITS.
Hee. In point of fact, image-searching Draper's name for examples nets me a link to these complete strangers: the quotation marks around DD's name and the look on the woman's face make me think that they must have had much the same reaction. Because, we, when we got to our room? Had a moment of severe vertigo as we looked at the enormous blue cabbage roses the size of our heads that climbed the up the walls and onto the ceiling, at the woven green carpet they grew out of, at the green plaid armchairs that sat upon it, and at the completely random yellow footstool that floated amidst the rest like a misplaced bit of flotsam.
Check it out, baby! Also, note the highly patterned and contrasting dress lying flung upon the chair: while I feel that Draper would have approved, it's kind of not the effect that I had in mind when I packed it, the inducement of seasickness.
Seriously, check it out: the weird-ass perspective that the Gnu achieved (photgraphy students all over the world are crying with envy) doesn't really help with the Overlook Hotel effect:
So, in this environment, we dressed like cowboys! There are pictures, which I will spare you! Then, like virgins, for the White Party, which I will also spare you! Except, during the White Party, I really felt like I ought to be attending the Black-and-Blue Ball, because ... I shot a rifle for the first time and finally understood the concept of "recoil." I will never again say that I recoil from any idea or situation lightly because, again, I say unto you, daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn. Well, okay, maybe one photo, but this is for the bruises, and not the background:
Nice, huh?
On the other hand? Shooting? Best. Hangover. Remedy. EVAH. Seriously, I was all sad and mopey over the cat the night we got there, so I drank way too much, and no one around me remembered The Rule (to whit, that if anybody around me sees me mixing drinks on an empty stomach, they should slap me, hard), so I woke up the next morning feeling a bit ... unusual, to quote "Withnail and I." We'd been signed up for kayaking, but I consulted with my stomach, and my stomach said, "Lady, are you crazy?" So, instead, we went skeet shooting. And, after my first shot (which hit!) I turned to our awesome, straight-out-of-a-Stephen-King-novel-himself novel himself guide and said, "That was AWESOME." While grinning like an idiot. Methinks Fred took a shine to me, because he let me be the first one to shoot the semi-automatic rifle from the hip. Heh. I ended up getting 34 out of 50 shots, which isn't awesome, but which was better than half our party, and not too shabby for a beginner, I think.
I am now angling to get a gun: I figure it could be my next pet. The Gnu, alas, is arguing against this vociferously, on the grounds that he is Swedish: as he puts it, a Russian with a gun is basically his hereditary nightmare. We shall see.
Aside from that, we had the worst traveling day imaginable trying to get back: our multiple alarms failed to go off, and all the clocks in the room spontaneously reset to different times. No, seriously. The only reasons that we woke up in time to make our flight are, a) I need Diet Coke at intervals of no more than three hours, so I woke up at 6 to recaffinate, and b) our flight had been delayed by the heaviest fog I've ever seen in my life. You see why I compare it to The Overlook from The Shining, nu? But, eventually, we left West Virginia for Atlanta, where we had juuuuuuuuust missed our connection.
So we found a desk and asked to be rebooked, and kinda looked at one another askance when the agent handed us stand-by tickets for 4 different flights. Yeah, apparently Delta had overbooked every damned flight for the day by 20 seats or more. That was fun. We ended up spending 9 hours in the airport, and I have sworn a solemn vow to never fly with Delta again. Seriously, ever. I don't care about that anecdote about the leaked airline e-mail where the exec. said, "Who cares, they'll come back anyway ...." because I am seriously willing to spend more to avoid this kind of asinine incompetence in the future.
So, in short: The Greenbrier, wacky and awesome: guns, awesome and awesome; Delta, Teh Suck.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 11:20 pm (UTC)And, alas, no. Apparently, that was the first activity to be booked solid ....
no subject
Date: 2008-09-19 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 11:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 11:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 11:42 pm (UTC)Can you tell I'm a convert? It's like quitting cigarettes has sent my addictive personality off in multiple new directions to fill its time.