OFFLINE JOURNAL
Motel Marquis
Dept. of Little Humors
Every time I open my crack motel room door, it's a pageant. Today was a bald headed deputy sheriff and a child services officer facing down a young man on the motel stairs. He was waving a clothes iron around (I think it was a Westinghouse Mark IV, 5 nozzle steadystream steamer. You hardly ever see those around here).
Yesterday it was child services officers doing a routine inspection of the usual suspects. Looking for child abusers, finding only dumpster divers, gypsy cabbies and subletting streetwalkers.
Do you remember those old Three Stooges chase scenes where you're looking down a hallway at a bunch of doors? A stooge runs into one door at the end of the hallway and immediately runs out a closer door as the person chasing him runs in to a third door out of which the second stooge runs?
Well, my doorway view is like that. A sheriff runs into 213 while the perp tiptoes out 117, another deputy backs out of 204 while Killer and Cabbage Patch fade into 108.
In the midst of all this is my roommate screaming into the weak courtyard payphone trying to pick up a movie extra 'rush job', the man with the mutant belly button is walking his three coyotes, Margo and Marie are on the sidewalk trying to pick up construction worker tricks and the smoking fat man is standing in the doorway of 118, watching. Smoking and watching.
As John Pascucci writes in his "Manhunter" prologue (entitled "Let Me Tell My Story") : "I know more about the world than most people do. At least, I know more about what's commonly called 'the real world.' But I'm not bragging. I'm confessing. Knowledge never comes for free. It always comes at a price, and I paid too much. Far too often, the price I paid was hurting people, breaking laws, and looking too long at the dark side of life."
What I've got here at the Motel Marquis, gentle reader, is an Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window" view of a Three Stooges routine. Forgive me if I find little humors from my long look.
Tags: offline journal, crack motel, pagent, child services officer, funny videos, Westinghouse, the usual suspects, child abuse, dumpster diver, gypsy cab, subletting, street walkers, Hitchcock, Three Stooges, deputy sheriff, Cabbage Patch, movie extra, rush job, mutant, tricks, Pascucci, Manhunter, dark side of life, Motel Marquis, jarvis, marquisdejolie, viral video, internet video
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