Gone Astray: Russell Johnson » Hotels & Resorts http://connectedtraveler.com/wordpress News, opinion, podcasts and video on travel, world culture, media, science and technology. Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:52:57 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 ©Russell Johnson rjohnson@connectedtraveler.com (Russell Johnson) rjohnson@connectedtraveler.com(Russell Johnson) travel 1440 travel, culture, humor, music A fresh quirky take on people and places around the world, Russell Johnson Russell Johnson rjohnson@connectedtraveler.com No no http://connectedtraveler.com/images/RJHSBlog.jpg Gone Astray: Russell Johnson http://connectedtraveler.com/wordpress 144 144 Feed the Tiger: The Future of Las Vegas http://connectedtraveler.com/wordpress/2008/01/21/190/ http://connectedtraveler.com/wordpress/2008/01/21/190/#comments Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:06:10 +0000 Russell Johnson http://connectedtraveler.com/wordpress/2008/01/21/190/ ces_traffic_hotbabes

 

Traffic at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (c) Russell Johnson
Feed the Tiger: The Future of Las Vegas

 

When will it end? Why as our salaries shrink, our expectations dwindle, our house values plummet, our IRAs squeal like piggies being led to slaughter, does that supersize-me oasis of bare buns, aged sirloin and greedy motives called Las Vegas keep on getting bigger. Last week the strip got its latest boob job called the Palazzo, a 1.9 billion hotel implant that would dwarf the crumbling palaces on the Grand Canal and make a Doge weep. Outside of Las Vegas, what else could 1.3 billion get you? According to the UN, you could immunize every child in the world against deadly disease for 1.3 billion a year. But then, what happens in Bangladesh
stays in Bangladesh…Las Vegas is a different reality.

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]]> http://connectedtraveler.com/wordpress/2008/01/21/190/feed/ 0 The Hyatt Earworm http://connectedtraveler.com/wordpress/2007/05/03/the-hyatt-earworm/ http://connectedtraveler.com/wordpress/2007/05/03/the-hyatt-earworm/#comments Thu, 03 May 2007 18:39:02 +0000 Russell Johnson http://connectedtraveler.com/wordpress/2007/05/03/the-hyatt-earworm/ 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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