Welcome to the Happiness Hotel

I'm generally a cheap and cheerful kind of traveller. The old adage of "just a bed and a clean room is enough for me" usually applies – and it's just as well. Most of my personal travel has been on a backpacker's budget as I prefer to spend my money on getting out and doing things rather than paying for somewhere to store my bags during the day.

There's a common perception that you get what you pay for, and it's largely accurate. But sometimes cheap is not always that cheerful. We can all tell horror stories about places we've stayed at – and mine won't be anywhere near as drastic as some, but I'm sure some common themes would emerge. While rude (or non-existent service) has long been romanticised in a Fawlty Towers kind of way, some things just aren't funny.

A while ago, my partner had an overnight stay in Auckland. He found a deal at a budget hotel chain in a central city location close to where he needed to be. It looked fine. He checked in to find an untidy room and someone already asleep in bed – Goldilocks, perhaps? After reporting his finding to reception, they simply asked him who was in the room and did he want a late checkout tomorrow. Really?? The room he ended up in wasn't fantastic but at least there was no-one else in it.

I've stayed in a place with rooms that are so small that there was no room for luggage once we shut the door. (Luckily our large group had booked out the whole place so we could keep our bags outside in the hallway.) Multi-storey buildings with broken or non-existent lifts were commonplace when backpacking in Italy, making the Hotel California in Milazzo not so pleasant.

A South Island motel I stayed for a work trip was so cold that you could see the damp dripping down the walls. The heater was broken and so we opted for an early night, but I was still frozen even while wearing all of my clothes in bed and laying my coat on top of the covers. Then there was the congregation of cockroaches and silverfish hanging out on the wall ... I think this place takes out top prize for the worst ever work accommodation. I guess you just have to put up with what you've got when you stay in small towns with limited (or singular) accommodation options.

But apparently bed bugs also like luxurious hotels and are no longer content to just hang out in cheap dives. And why wouldn't they? If the conditions are basically the same everywhere, you'd may as well take an upgrade if it's on offer. (By the way, how do you get upgrades to better rooms, or even half-decent ones?)

I once complained about being given a tiny room in Auckland that looked nothing like the photo yet was called (and cost) an 'executive' room. It didn't even have an external window (as shown in the photo), apart from a tiny one above head height in the bathroom. The response? "Most hotels have a broad variety of rooms and will naturally display a photo of one of their better ones in a brochure or website." So apparently it's perfectly acceptable to show photos of just one room and customers have to accept that theirs will look nothing like the one they've paid for.

Then there was a place where the extractor fan in the ensuite wouldn't turn off ... until 6 am, when it finally decided to get some sleep. (We'd given up trying long ago.) Also, a hostel opposite a night club in central Auckland where I got a grand total of zero minutes sleep and ended up leaving at 4.30 am to catch the early airport bus, figuring that airport noise is preferable to thumping music and street fights outside my window.

A song comes to mind ...

The Muppet Show marathon

I am a huuuuuuuuuge Muppet Show fan. I was thrilled to be given boxed sets of Series 1 and 2 of The Muppet Show on DVD for my birthday and have enjoyed watching classic episodes during mini Muppet marathons (half-marathons, maybe?). Each episode is short enough to watch just one or two (or three) at a time whenever you need a pick-me-up. They're also incredibly addictive. Luckily I still have plenty more episodes to watch, then it will be back to the beginning again and again.

There is so much to love about the Muppets, with an endearing cast of characters and great running gags. I'd forgotten how many one liners George the Janitor quipped on the dance floor. I always preferred Veterinarian's Hospital to Pigs In Space. The two resident hecklers, Statler and Waldorf, are surprisingly sharp, as poor Fozzie Bear knows all too well. Then there's the perpetually hapless Great Gonzo, whose greatest admirer is Camilla the Chicken.

Here's Fozzie telling the world's funniest joke. "Good grief, the comedian's a bear!" Cracks me up every time.



While many of the special guests have faded into oblivion or weren't quite as funny as they thought they were, some were truly memorable. I loved Rita Moreno's dance sequence where she effortlessly, then exasperatingly, threw her Muppet admirers around the room. Her episode finished with Animal accompanying her on the drums while she sang "Fever". Of course it went wrong for her. I always remember Ben Vereen's smiley, happy cabaret-style episode. Although I don't really know what Avery Schreiber was famous for, he was certainly one of the funniest guests.

But really, it's the musical numbers that set The Muppet Show apart. Rowlf the Dog is an astonishingly good pianist and definitely one of my favourite characters. I love his renditions of classical arrangements, many of which I learned to play myself. He almost met his musical match when Bruce Forsyth played a beautiful version of "Let There Be Love" during his guest appearance. Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem are my heroes and Zoot is an absolutely legendary sax player. Just listen to his fine form during one of my favourite numbers, "Sax and Violence".



Classic. Timeless. Hilarious. Muppets rock.

Veterinarian's Hospital

One of the many things I love about my iPod is the surprises it can deliver when I set it to shuffle. No matter what music I currently have on the 'little' 16 GB iPod I carry around with me, I always have the original Muppet Show Album on the playlist. Always. I know every word of every song and skit and never tire of the humour. Although I usually listen to the album in its entirety, it sometimes becomes interspersed with the rest of my music.

While I was out walking today, this episode of Veterinarian's Hospital came on in among everything else and I laughed out loud while I listened. That's another thing I love about my iPod: there's no way you can tell what I'm listening to unless my foolish grin gives something away. :-)



Laugh it up on your Friday afternoon.

Which type of Muppet are you?

I don't think people appreciate just what a die-hard Muppets fan I am. I'm not talking about Muppet movies and the annoyingly cutesy pie Elmo here, but the original Muppet Show. This is my mobile phone ringtone and this is my txt message tone. The Muppet Show Album from Season 1 is always on my iPod, even when space is at a premium. To me, being called a Muppet is actually a compliment, not an insult. As musicians, Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem truly rock. Get it?

When surfing the net today, I came across an opinion piece likening everyone's personality to one of two Muppet types. Muppet Theory - cool! Apparently we are all either a Chaos Muppet or an Order Muppet. Think about it: the fuzzy blue Chaos Muppets are busy rushing around being creative and impestuously chasing cookies (chocolate/coffee/cheese) while the Order Muppets are neurotically perplexed by keeping the show going. As in any kind of relationship or workplace, a healthy balance of chaos and order Muppets is essential.

I took a bunch of Which Muppet are you? quizzes and, interestingly enough, every single result was different, ranging from Bunsen Honeydew to Miss Piggy, Kermit the Frog to (shock, horror) Sam the Eagle. Maybe being a bit of both actually makes me a Faux Chaos Muppet? It certainly sounds appealing.

Which type of Muppet do you think you are? And which type would you family and friends think you are?

Musical interlude

Time for a little musical interlude. Some random, nostalgic picks to make you smile on a Friday.

I have yet to see the movie Boy (2010), the coming-of-age film by Taika Waititi, but hope to get to it while it's still showing in theatres. I chuckled as I read his tweet this morning about "Poi E":

I do declare! After 26 years the song "Poi E" (from BOY) is now back in the NZ top 40!!! Let's try and get it to #1 by Christmas!!!

How choice would that be? ;-) So, here's a bit of nostalgia for everyone growing up in New Zealand in the 1980s.



I changed the default ringtone on my mobile phone this week, after realising how much I hated my old one, yet still managed to keep it for 2-3 phones over the years. I think this is a much better choice. It's also what I want played at my funeral, complete with the heckling and Zoot's wrong note at the end.



And while we're still reminiscing about the 80s, the Ghost Busters theme was all the rage when we were kids, even if my friend and I had nightmares after going to see it at the movies for her 9th birthday.



And, finishing with the 80s, this was the height of cool when we were kids, even if we were far too young to see the movie Beverly Hills Cop (1984). We would all try to play it on our classroom keyboard. I had recently started piano lessons so considered this to give me a bit of a head start, although that wasn't necessarily true. Axel F by Harold Faltermeyer - not a stupid frog in sight!



Enjoy!! :-)

National Poetry Day 2009

The Well Read Kitty informs us that today is National Poetry Day in New Zealand. Montana has been sponsoring this literary event since 1998. The first time I was aware of it was at a former workplace when a number of poems popped into my inbox one Friday from various staff members, encompassing a wide range of topics, styles and moods. That practice was, sadly, stamped out in future years once staff were prohibited from sending blanket emails to all other staff members. However, I fondly remember the poetic surprises of that day.

To be honest, while I am struck by the beauty of words and can happily read prose for hours on end, I struggle with poetry (apart from song lyrics). Try as I might, I end up expending unreasonably amounts of energy my the effort to decipher the poetic language, the meter, and whatever hidden meaning I'm sure is lurking behind the words I read at face value. I end up incredibly frustrated (at myself, more than anything else) and it usually doesn't end well, lol.

But here is a poem I've enjoyed since my childhood, possibly because I first heard it as a beautiful piano piece played by Rowlf the Dog (of The Muppet Show fame) and sung by Kermit's little nephew, Robin. It was written by A A Milne and is short and sweet. It doesn't really mean anything; it is loosely about being happy with indecisiveness. That sums me up perfectly at the moment.

Halfway down the stairs, by A A Milne

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair where I sit.
There isn't any other stair quite like it.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top,
So this is the stair where I always stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up, and isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery, it isn't in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't really anywhere! It's somewhere else instead!"

Care to share your favourite poem for National Poetry Day today?

Muppet Babies

A friend started sending me muppets on Facebook recently, and it got the ball rolling. Everybody could do with a muppet or three to brighten their day. :-) It's the usual trick of unlocking different muppets once you've sent so many, and you can collect the whole set. So far, I have received Baby Gonzo, Baby Kermit, and Beaker (me me me meeee). But what's with all these baby muppets? They're kind of cute and all, but not a huge part of muppet culture ... until I remembered the adorable animated series of Muppet Babies from the mid-80s.

We got to meet Scooter's twin sister, Skeeter (whatever happened to her?). Bunsen still looked like an old man. I remember Nine Take Away One Equals Panic, where poor Fozzie thought he was being cast out of the nursery, but of course Nanny wouldn't do that - she was talking about the chair he was sitting on! Did Piggy ever become "the first farmer in history to figure out a way to grow an ice cream tree"?

It's Saturday morning now, and that's when the Muppet Babies were in their glory, so here's a flashback from our weekends growing up.

The Muppet Show

The Muppets rock. I grew up on The Muppet Show and never quite grew out of them. This is my phone's wallpaper (on the left).

I have the 25th anniversary collection on my iPod (as well as the original Muppet Show cast album, which had some gems on it that I've yet to find elsewhere). It's also got some extra bits and pieces from the unfortunate Muppet movies, but is always guaranteed to make me smile. The resident band, Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, are outstanding musicians and provided much entertainment and drama. Here is a collection of some of my favourite Muppet Show clips, just because.

The opening theme:



Here's my txt message tone:



My favourite Swedish chef recipe for chocolate moose:



The hugga wugga song:



Mr Bassman (missing from the 25th anniversary album):



"Sax and Violence" - awesome musical improvisation with the most underrated sax solo of all time:



Closing theme - I want this at my funeral (complete with Statler and Waldorf's heckling at the end):