Posts Tagged ‘review’

Best Western Hotel

420 Constitution Drive Livermore, CA 94550

 

Ideally situated between the Livermore Costco and Miss Fanny’s Gentleman’s Club, this Best Western Hotel is a 100% felon-free property (in all likelihood). Before graduating to a Best Western Hotel, the property began as a Good Western and then worked itself up to a Better Western Hotel before finally achieving Best Western status.

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Fun Priceline Fact: If at the end of Double Jeopardy all the contestants are in negative territory, the world ends.

 

The following are Certified Reviews by Verified Priceline Guests:

 

6.0    David Hardiman of Reno, NV

Pros:          Had a life-changing, boundary-dissolving experience where I transcended my body, journeyed to the Godhead and became one with the empyrean treasures of the universe.

Cons:         Could’ve used more towels.

 

8.8    Mahatma Adams of Brookline, MA

Pros:          Most of the Swastikas had been painted over.

Cons:         At the breakfast bar a business man was using the waffle iron to press his tie.

 

3.14  Physicist Calbert Martindale of Pasadena, CA

Pros:          Gravity functioned normally and, from my frame of reference, light seemed to travel at 186,000 mps

Cons:         Upon arrival there was urine in the toilet.

Management‘s Response: Well, where else would you want it?

 

8.5    Malcolm Gulliver of Lilliput

Pros:     I was unnerved by all the chalk body outlines on the floor

Cons:    Bullet proof window glass came in handy a few times during our stay

 

8.0    Mrs. Dalai Lama – Citizen of the World

Pros:          Mr. Lama had yet another boundary-dissolving experience where he transcended his body, journeyed to the Godhead and became one with the empyrean treasures of the universe. Ho-hum.

Cons:         Place could use some updating. Chamber pots didn’t flush. Not enough candles and I was hoping to bump into Rita Moreno.

 

10     Cindy Medici of Kitty Hawk, NC

Pros:          I’d give it an 11 if I could. Friendly staff helped me with my bikini wax for well over an hour. At least they said they were staff.

Cons:         Omelet station chef forgot to remove the plastic wrap from the cheese in my omelet.

 

9.0    Meeee aaand Mrs, Mrs. Jones (the one who’s “gotta thing, goin’ on” with the singer)

Pros:          Those sprinkler heads were so handy to hang clothes on.

Cons:         There was a guy in our bed.

Management’s Response: We apologize for the guy. But at least we’re pretty sure he wasn’t a felon.

 

5.5    Eleanor Rigby of Liverpool, England

Pros:          My key worked on all the rooms

Cons:       The supposed Hershey’s Kiss on my pillow wasn’t wrapped. In fact it wasn’t even chocolate.

 

10     Sildenafil Hardman of Stratford-upon-Pfizer

Pros:          I don’t know how a place can be “LGBTQ Pet Friendly,” but this place was.  

Cons:         Someone left their Service Turtle in the bathtub wearing its little “Please Do Not Turn Me Over” yellow vest.

 

10     Leni Riefenstahl of Bavaria

Pros:       Lock left open on adjoining room, so we managed to sublet it for 100 Euros.

Cons:      There wasn’t any hot water. In fact there was no running water. It barely walked.

Management’s Response: This is a supply chain issue.

 

8.0    Wally Walters of Walla Walla, WA

Pros:          Rusty water was great for my anemia.

Cons:         The door knobs and the remote were both sticky.

Management’s Response: We do that intentionally to promote a better grip. Yeah, that’s it.

 

7.0    A Real Housewife of Orange County

Pros:          Easily operable dials and switches on thermostat

Cons:         However there was absolutely no correlation between the room temperature and the thermostat setting. It actually seemed to do the opposite.

Management’s Response: This is pretty much standard at all hotels now.

 

10     Candy Apple of Syracuse, NY

Pros:          Somebody left some Gummies in the nightstand

Cons:         For a certified smoke-free room there sure we’re a lot of cigarette burns.

Management’s Response: That’s because the last woman who stayed in that room was smokin’.

 

7.0    Homer Simpson of Springfield

Pros:          Everything was very well run and extremely secure

Cons:         Night Manager insisted I refer to her as “Warden Kathy” and suggested maybe I’d be better off returning to my cell.

 

8.0    Cialis Valencia of Lilly, WI

Pros:          Rabbit Ears allowed for excellent TV reception

Cons:         Reflection in mirror didn’t do what I was doing.

 

4.0       Bernadette Cumberbatch-Humperdinck of London, England

Pros:          Good value

Cons:         Didn’t understand what I was consenting to when I agreed to make my own bed in order to save money. Then they gave me a hammer, a saw, some boards and nails and told me to go make my bed.     

 

Best Western Hotel Amenities:

• Our hair dryers blow
• Our vacuums suck
• Our donuts are holy
• Our irons are ironic
• Our breakfast bar proudly serves generic oatmeal and even well-behaved Belgians
• We still send and receive Telegrams <STOP>

 

 

Hotel Features

Happily situated just off Interstate 666, this Livermore hotel is within a 10 minute drive of 4 Urgent Care Centers, 3 Not-So-Urgent-But-Vital-Enough Care Centers, 2 We-Can-Wait-Awhile-But-Not-Too-Long Care Centers and 1 “for profit” orphanage. For hygienic free-spirits, the lobby features a communal bidet. The Fitness Center has been reimagined as a well-equipped Fatness Center where an honest chubby  person can go and “get your lipids on.”

All guest rooms come with free atmosphere, gravity and hidden webcams. Guest rooms at Best Western also come with 42-inch High Definition Microwave Ovens where nothing takes longer than 5 seconds to heat. A deluxe continental breakfast is served every morning. Unfortunately it’s served on the continent of Europe. The front desk is staffed 24 hours, although those hours aren’t necessarily consecutive. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is 2 miles away (follow the plutonium glow).

 

We hope you enjoy your stay at the Best Western and if you don’t agree this is the Best Western you stayed at, we’ll give you a coupon for a free Continental breakfast…served on the continent of Australia.

Ombudsmandry Throughout the Ages

by Frank Knarf

St. Albans Press, 341 pp., $55.00

 

In Frank Knarf’s bracingly inconsequential book Ombudsmandry Throughout the Ages, within the span of 3 pages the author tells us everything we’d ever want to know about ombudsmen. How he manged to concoct another 338 pages on such an esoteric topic I’ll never know. This is not an overly long book. Crime and Punishment was a long book. This book makes eternity look like a coffee break. To read beyond page 10 is a crime. To read beyond page 20 is both a crime and punishment. At least the middle section has centerfolds of historic figures like Attila the Ombudsman, Vlad the Ompaler and Donny and Marie Ombuds. Ombudsmandry Throughout the Ages is a tough read. In controlled clinical trials, professional scholars have attempted to “binge-read” the book and in all cases have suffered spontaneous narcolepsy or herniated cerebrums. It simply can’t be read at a sitting and I’m at a loss as to why St. Albans Press decided to publish it instead of the more titillating Hunter-Douglass corporately-sponsored catalog titled 50 Shades of Shades.   Read the rest of this entry »

 

That line is from the movie Jaws, where an incredulous Richard Dreyfus surveys the peculiar wreckage of a shattered boat and announces, “This was no boating accident.” And in a sense this could apply to Terry Castle’s review of Siri Hustvedt’s novel The Blazing World. That is, at first glance the decimated boat looks just like any other wreck, but upon closer inspection Dreyfus observes the imprints of shark teeth and the telltale splinters and concludes otherwise. Similarly, at first glance, Castle’s well formatted review looks just like any other review, but upon closer inspection, we see the imprints of snark teeth and the telltale heart of the reviewer and I conclude: “This is no book review.” It’s something much more interesting than that and I was on to it early – I could smell the blood in the water.

 

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As a dilettante of the second order, I occasionally glance at The New York Review of Books just to see how the other half lives. Alright, just to see how the other .00000000025% live. Except for Presidents giving a State of the Union Address, no one reads any more. Instead they troll for satisfying videos of some do-gooder giving a homeless guy $100 or an abandoned kitten being breast fed by a honey badger. I know I do. And I get it. Reading takes time and application. It’s proactive, but it is ultimately more rewarding and nourishing than idly surfing some video screen seeking temporary fulfillment. Well that’s as preachy as I’ll get because Wimp.com just posted a video of a Dolphin making oatmeal. That Dolphin happened to be former Miami Dolphin fullback Larry Csonka.

The NY Review of Books is bone dry and devoid of juicy gossip. If it were any drier it would spontaneously combust. It’s a narrow publication appealing to people who sometimes equate intellectual heft with spiritual awareness. The NY Review of Books is replete with bravura verbal muscularity and apposite aphorisms, soft as church music. However as comprehensive as it may be, the following words or ideas seem to creep into about half the articles or reviews. For example I’ve detected these recurring themes or phrases throughout the NY Review of Books:

• • Sylvia Plath’s suicide changed nothing. She was still unhappy.
  • So that was it. Jane immersed herself in English romantic poets as a means of coping with her intractable psoriasis.
  • Harold’s homosexuality was known only to his wife, Ralph.
  • All we had were parsnips. Fortunately all we wanted were parsnips.
  • the Zionist experience of Jewish Semites
  • the Jewish experience of Semitic Zionists
  • the Semitic experience of Zionist Jews
  • the influence of chivalric modalities in 12th century Hohoenzollern 
  • Marcel Proust would often mispronounce his name as “Proust.” Knowing that if anyone were to write about the event, no one would be able to know how Proust pronounced “Proust” in the first place. 

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