January 23, 2005- HAVE YOU SEEN ME LATELY?

Well, after a short trip to New Jersey for a second wedding reception, I made one of my longest road trips since moving to L.A. It’s incredibly hard to get quality stagetime in town, so I scheduled a bunch of road work instead. Murphy’s law intervened so of course I was offered a great week of work at one of the Improv’s in town but because I am a man of my word, I kept my commitments to the two booking agents I scheduled gigs with out of town.

I'm still perfecting my new showcase set, so on Tuesday I performed it at the Hollywood Improv, in front of a crowd of 24, the set did very, very, well. I’m really hoping a get a chance to do it on TV before I change it up too much or it starts to feel old to me.

On Thursday, I began my road trip and drove up the coast, stopping in San Francisco to see my wife who was working there. From there it was on to Oregon for the weekend, then Idaho. So L.A., to SF to Oregon, to Idaho? Is this the “Paul is disappearing Tour”? My last show of this tour will be me standing on a mountain in Montana by myself telling jokes.

It’s fun to headline road rooms, but the accommodations are sometimes suspicious. One of the gigs I did in Oregon is cool but is notorious for it’s….oh what’s the right word.…..“shitty” hotel. I was going to use a softer word there, but “shitty” works the best. When I checked into the “hotel” the first room they gave me looked like a crime scene. The comforter on the bed was so old and dirty it looked like it was used to carry small pox to the Indians.

The kicker was that the thermostat looked like it had been used as a dartboard. There were no recognizable numbers or switches on it. I usually don’t complain but after eight hours of driving through freezing rain, I really needed the heat to work. So I got moved to a room where the heat sort of worked. I turned on the thermostat and noticed that a fan on the ceiling started to move, then a coil inside it started to turn red. I figured out this contraption was my heat for the evening. It looked like they had somehow hooked a stove burner into the ceiling with the hope that the fan would blow the heat around the room. It looked like someone was trying to turn my room into a meth lab. The only thing less practical than the “burning-ceiling-fan-heater” was the complimentary soap in the bathroom. I’ve seen some small soap in my day, but never have I seen soap smaller than a piece of chewing gum. But then again, if the hotel was great then what the hell would I write about.

The shows were cool, I sold a bunch of CD’s, then it was off to the beautiful resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho. It sounds like fun but there was about fifteen hours of ice covered roads in between me and my destination. Most of the drive looked like this picture: lots of white. I’m not sure anyone has every said this before but I was actually really excited to go to Idaho. I have always been a big Ernest Hemingway fan and I knew that he had committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho. I know that sentence sounds strange but I really wanted to find out more about him.

That part always blew my mind. I guess it blew his too!! (bad joke) A guy who was a famous traveler, lived in Paris, Cuba and Key West most of his life. Wrote some of the greatest novels and short stories, survived two plane crashes, gunshot wounds, a couple of wars, two or three wives and decides to call it quits in Idaho. It was always a mystery to me how he even ended up in this place.

Well, here’s what happened. The railroad wanted to find a location for a great ski resort, and all of the qualifications were met by Sun Valley, it’s absolutely gorgeous and ideal for skiing. So the resort invited movies stars and other famous people like Hemingway to come and stay here. The walls in the lobby are lined with pictures of the Kennedy’s, Lucy Arnez and her children, Hemingway, Gary Cooper and Clark Gable hunting and fishing together. Ernest stayed there for an entire winter in room 206 where he wrote the novel, “For Whom The Bell Tolls.” It’s one of my favorite books. Hemingway enjoyed himself so much in Sun Valley that he bought a cabin just down the road in Ketchum, only a mile or two away. I guess he had some health and financial problems, was unable to write along with other issues of depression which led up to his suicide and he shot himself inside his cabin in Ketchum not far from where he is now buried.

So after oh-so-many hours of driving, I finally get to Sun Valley and the place is absolutely beautiful. The town is lit up with Christmas lights all year round and always looks like it just finished snowing. The weather is surprisingly mild and with the sun shining I barely needed my winter jacket. They also had this great “hot pool”, which was an outdoor pool heated to 105 degrees.

I checked into the resort and my room was incredible. Flat screen TV mounted on the wall, DVD player and tons of other five-star amenities. Actual heat and a fireplace instead of a “burning-ceiling-fan-heater.” I could see horse-drawn slays passing outside my window, ice sculptures of animals lined the sidewalks and glowed in colored spotlights. It was, in fact, a winter-wonderland.

I had done some research and found out that Hemingway had written “For Whom The Bell Tolls” in room 206 at the resort and wanted to see if there was some kind of museum about it in the hotel. I asked the woman at the front desk if there was any type of tour or if the room was still there. To my surprise she said,”Well, I don’t think anyone is in there now. Here’s the key, you can go check it out for yourself.” How cool is that? It turns out you can still stay in the room and it’s in fact the most requested room at the resort. So I walked upstairs and opened the door to room 206. It felt a little weird, not haunted but there was definitely some weird mystique as I walked in. On the dresser there was bronze bust of Hemingway stating that he stayed an entire winter in this room writing his novel. It was very inspiring so I sat down in one of the chairs, but it felt kind of weird like I was snooping around in someone’s house. I looked around and tried to picture Ernest, pounding away on his typewriter, but then I look on the wall that now has a flat screen TV on it, and the Nintendo game controller on the table next to it. It was funny to think about Ernest taking a break from his writing and clicking on the remote to check out Sportscenter or maybe play “Legend of Zelda” on the Nintendo and drinking a couple Michelob Ultras. I didn’t want to take advantage of the nice girl who lent me the key, so I left after about ten minutes, and headed back over to my room.

There was a small turnout for both shows on Tuesday and Wed., but the cool and scary part about being at a ski resort was the free skiing. Now, I grew up cross country skiing a little, but I had only been downhill skiing once or twice. Six or seven years back, when I was working for the TV station I skied Mt. Shasta a few times. After initially falling down the entire mountain, I eventually got the hang of it. I even took a snowboarding lesson and did that a few times but it had been a long time and Sun Valley was a big, big mountain. I had no idea they had 4 seat, turbo ski lifts that moved so fast that I had to hang on and use the safety bar like a roller coaster. I went skiing for the first two days, but by the 3rd day I was beat and could barely lift my legs I was so sore.

So the last show was Wednesday night, and it started at 6pm which is really early for a comedy show. There was only about 12-15 people in there so it was a little disappointing. I went back to my room grabbed something to eat, and as I was walking by the bar that we did our show it was jam packed at 9pm. The resort is much like a cruise ship, with most of the employees being from other countries. I’m not really sure why, but it turned out that most of the employees were from France. Apparently, all of the people that work at the resort hang out there. So I dropped in, had a few drinks and joined in on the karaoke. I have some recollection and singing Copa Cabana with two guys from France but I can’t be sure.

I tried to imagine Hemingway living at the resort now. He gets writer’s block one night and stops down to the bar for a slice of pizza and a few beers. He finds that it’s Karoake Night, then a few of his buddies convince him to sing a couple of Barry Manilow tunes. I wonder how that would have influenced his writing.

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls…….her name was Lola, she was a showgirl.”

I said goodbye to Idaho the next day and began my long road trip back to Los Angeles. In the middle of nowhere in Nevada I saw this exit. Beverly Hills eh?

Thanks for Reading,

Paul C. Morrissey