Even the Art in Hell Is Bad

We have now lived in a two-bedroom temporary lodging "suite" for 28 days.  Twenty-eight days.  Twenty.  Eight.  Days.  It's getting dire -- we have run out of dishwashing tablets and the other day I had to beg the maid to give us some more toilet paper.  If I had a glass bottle, I'd write all of this on a note and chuck into the ocean, hoping a passing cruise ship would save us, but they don't seem to make glass bottles anymore and even if they did Bronwyn would just break them anyway since this place is about as baby-proof as a frat house.  The lack of baby-proofing is weird, by the way, considering this place is positively crawling with babies and toddlers.  There's one little turd down the hall who screams for his mom ("maaa-aaaahm!  Maaaa-aaaaahm!  MAAAA-AAAAAHM!") every morning at about 3.  Emily says I shouldn't call that kid a turd, but this is my blog and that's exactly what he is.  I'm sure he's cute and everything, but until he cuts out the 3 a.m. screaming, he's a t-u-r-d.  And look, I'm toning down what I really want to call him, so cut me some slack.

Blythe just came in our "living room" to tell us Bronwyn is hitting everyone with her Barbies. 

When Dante wrote The Inferno, I'm pretty sure he had this place in mind.  Sure, it's only something like $41 a day and sometimes we're privileged to get one towel to share amongst the six of us, but trust me, it is hell.  By the way, just in case you were wondering, hell smells like burned pancakes.  The elevator to hell smells like our van, only without such a strong turtle-corpse odor.

Before moving here, I had always wondered what kinds of artwork would be hanging in hell.  I always assumed it would be heavy on Thomas Kincaid and soft-core porn featuring Rosie O'Donnell, but apparently I'm wrong.  I've seen it with my own fresh eyes.  And the artwork hanging in hell looks like this:

 

Nothing quite warms the cockles of the old heart and makes you feel at home quite like a teddy bear bracing for an assault.  At least the wintry background, complete with leafless tree limbs, will give any kid nightmares, which in turn will cause him to scream "maaaaa-aaaaahm!" at 3 a.m. and thus get some quality cuddling time in a stiff twin bed.  And at least the depiction of a lifeless room with the most drab walls this side of the Soviet Union make you appreciate your own hotel room, even if there are four freaking kids inside of it.

 

In the same stairwell, there's this beauty:

 

 

Hey kids!  As if a picture of a teddy bear preparing to face his killer wasn't frightening enough, you might enjoy this reminder that you're never, ever safe from random, roaming hands!  Not even when you're fishing!  Bwahahaha!  Sleep tight, little kids in Room 1309! Seriously though, what the hell?  Look, I'm not an art expert by any means, but this is like Norman Rockwell meets Freddie Kruegger.  I don't blame the artist -- maybe he (and there's no way a lady painted this thing) was working through some childhood trauma, like the time he was fishing and some creep reached out and grabbed his head through a hole in a fence or something, so maybe it was therapeutic and it gave this poor dude some closure.  And you know, good for him and hopefully he's not the person about the slash the teddy bear in the picture above.  The person I fault is whoever thought it deserved to be hung on a wall -- especially one in a lodging facility crawling with kids.  I don't profess to be an interior designer -- sure, I know what mauve is and I can discuss the demerits of wicker furniture with the best of them -- but really, I could find something way better to hang in a hotel hallway than this terror-inducing travesty.

 

Something like this:

 

OK, maybe not.  I'm a pretty brave person.  I did deploy to Afghanistan and everything, and I once went on a roller coaster that went upside down, and sometimes I'll even eat meat that is older than its expiration date (which, to be honest, is par for the course if you shop at the commissary).  But there's something about the look on that rocking horse's face that just creeps me out.  I don't know, maybe it's THE RED EYES?!!!  Emily says I should feel bad for it because it's obviously an albino rocking horse and never gets to see the light of the sun, but I say keep that thing locked away in the dreary dungeon of a room it's already in.  I can't imagine hanging this beaut over my kid's bed: "Don't worry Rowan, that scary horsey with his red eyes will keep the teddy bear killer away for sure!"  You might as well just hire a clown to hover over your kid's face while he's sleeping and then wake him up by gently scratching his head with a meat cleaver.  And I'm not alone on this one -- Liam says this picture creeps him out too, and this is coming from a kid who survived an indoor bat (the flying, vampire type, not the baseball variety) attack at the age of 6 so he knows creepy. 

 

The weirdest thing about these pictures (and there are a few more but you get the idea) is that the rest of the prints hanging in the hallways here are heart-warming depictions of kids playing with puppies, praying with their 800-year-old grandmas, babies snuggling with their parents, and Beatrice Potter illustrations.  It's just this one stairwell.  Why?  Did the Air Force just run out of money and got a good deal in the Creepy section at Prints Plus?  Did whoever "decorate" this place lose a bet?  Or -- and this is far more likely -- is this particular stairway the Stairway to Hell? 

 

I honestly don't know.  I'd love to sit here and debate this with you, but the little turd down the hallway is going to start screaming in about five hours after dreaming about evil albino horses and grabby hands and cowering teddy bears.