Bruner Blog

Note to self: leave New York City at your own peril.

First bad sign: at LaGuardia, waiting for a flight to Jacksonville Florida, an obese mother and obese daughter and an obese friendly stranger were conversing with one another in hickish accents about their respective visits to NYC. The mother and daughter had been to seen Phantom of the Opera, something else equally as awful sounding and Hairspray (which I presume they chose not realizing the friendly looking obese main character was actually a man in women’s clothing). So, the obese friendly stranger mentions that yesterday she saw Bono in Central Park. “Who?” says the mother. “Bono. Of the band U2.” “Never heard of them.”

So, I’m now here in Amelia Island Plantation, a so-called luxury resort in northern Florida. If this is what passes for luxury in America, I hope I never get rich. It’s basically a huge parking lot on the beach with a dozen or so stores, restaurants and boxy hotel buildings.

I dined at the Beach Club restaurant, with all the charm of a Denny’s, six muted TVs (if you’re going to ruin the atmosphere of a place with TVs, WTF is the point of putting them on mute?) and no view of the ocean, despite being about 100 feet from the Atlantic.

What really has me so bitter is this: they put me up in a condo unit, a complete apartment with its own kitchen, living room and three bedrooms (as if I’m going to get so lucky at the doubtlessly miserable resort “night club” tonight that I’m going to host an orgy at my fabulous pad…YET NO FUCKING INTERNET CONNECTION!!!! (Did I mention I’m here for an Internet conference, obviously, as that’s what I do for a living?) What is this, the 1950s? No Internet connections in the room? What’s wrong with these inbred hillbillies?!

So I’m blogging this from the bar area of the main Inn of the resort, which does have (highly unreliable) wifi. But it comes at a serious price: a hideous one-man-band-and-karaoke-machine strumming out deafening versions of James Taylor classics (he just mercifully finished “Cheeseburger in Paradise”) to the shrieking delight of a bunch of real-life desperate housewives on a group bender.

Dear God, I know I’ve never believed in you, but finding myself here in the Bible Belt, maybe I could see the light if you just sent a fork flying across the room into the eye of this talentless hack (without my finger prints on it).

UPDATE:

To be fair, by morning light, this place is still full of asphalt, but it’s prettier than perhaps last night’s harsh assessement does it credit. I woke up to the sound of a woodpecker, which we don’t have a lot of in Manhattan, putting me in a better mood. The workout facility is also pretty good. Haven’t yet gotten to the beach. That should also improve my mood. Still, though, my condo has not yet sprouted Internet (and another conference-goer who also has a condo was saying that the ocean view made up for the lack of Internet, which would be true if I had a view of the ocean instead of a golf course).

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 21st, 2005 at 9:33 pm and is filed under aa-home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.