The Hyatt Earworm
Posted on May 3, 2007
How many sleepless nights have you had that can be attributed to an ohrwurm. Ohrwurm is earworm in German, a tune that plays over and over in your head like a faucet drip or Barry Manilow at “The Copa?†One, for me, is the theme music from BBC World, always a welcome relief on the telly from the convenience store shootings and celebrities-in-rehab pulp of US cable news. This digital ditty, sounding like a teletype machine on weed, hasn’t changed in at least ten years, nor have the BBC presenters. The BBC World theme plays in my head for days after I hear it. Unfortunately, the only place I hear it is in hotel rooms overseas. “Auntie’s†(at the Brits call the BBC) face in the US is not the BBC World the rest of the world sees but the lowbrow BBC America, a collection of Benny Hill fart jokes and silly walks.
In Vancouver last week, the BBC theme was not the only earworm I had to shake. The folks at Hyatt tried to infest my noggin with something truly sinister, something more akin to the evil Khan’s brain termite in Star Wars. Every night I returned to my room, the TV was blaring “Its the Hyatt Touch†on a continuous loop like a pain reliever ad, forcing me to frantically search for the remote to end the torture. We already see ads in elevators, above urinals and at the produce counter at the supermarket, but a hotel room is a home away from home, a place you expect to go for solace after a busy day of touring or a blowzy night of Karoke.
Not only that, this intrusive noise was coming from a big, power-sucking plasma screen. And you ask me to conserve energy by reusing my towels?
I can hear myself catatonically mumbling “It’s the Hyatt touch†as they wheel me away to “The Shady Willows,†the last stop before that Grand Hyatt in the Sky.
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