Greetings from Tennessee

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

First: My computer is in cahoots with them; it keeps marking all read when it thinks I'm not looking, but this time I watched as it did it, and my hands were nowhere near the keyboard.

This compound the Enemy has created is really very convincing at first. It offers the superficial trappings of luxury; an underground shopping mall, an indoor river, buildings inside of buildings and ballrooms with grand chandeliers, conference rooms and waterfalls and fountains and endless restaurants, a district called simply "The District" denoted by street markers with the silhouettes of dancing people, complete with nightclub and Irish pub and a sports bar and several stores selling Western gear. And you wander through that, and at some point you can make it to doors that you THINK lead outside, so you go out into the world and the trees and the bushes and you head toward the grand library building in the distance but when you get close you realize that despite the columns and the sign, it's no library. It's a bar and grill, and you're still inside.

You start to realize that most of the people aren't real when you notice that they disappear around eight in the evening. Whole wings of the hotel, the ones you aren't supposed to be in at that hour, are eerily empty.

By the second day, you have started to realize that what you mistook for grandeur is merely gaudiness, and that the luxury is superficial, like the delicious-looking custard tarts that turn out to be made of instant pudding and artificial whipped topping. There is no good food here; it all looks like gourmet food cooked by professional chefs but it's Food Service of America dressed up on bulk-rate white china.  So you go to the other side, and walk in a straight line, a simple straight line, because you know it can't actually  go on forever, it must end. You find a vast hall, a vast empty falsely-grand hall with great chandeliers dripping with molded-plastic crystals, and you walk through and push the doors on the other side. The air is cold; you have finally found the real outside, not the outside-that-is-inside but the real thing. You set out briskly, your heart pounding in excitement and relief. Until you get to the other side and realize that the creek you crossed over leads to a swimming pool and that you. are. still. inside. You give up and go back to the bar on the fake island in the fake river and ask for a cup of tea. They have no hot water, so you order a $12 glass of wine. It's drinkable, barely.

I got out for a while, today. I followed the tornado shelter signs into a concrete staircase and downward until I reached a bleak corridor with a pair of metal doors at the end. Pushing through them I found an awning and two metal benches, occupied by old people smoking cigarettes. Beyond the curb, a mile of empty parking lot. They ignored me as I walked past them and across the abandoned asphalt, dry leaves crunching underfoot, fists thrust in pockets and my breath making bursts of fog in the cold air as I strode briskly into freedom.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I have to wake up in six hours, they only serve breakfast from 7 to 7:45 and then the lecture sessions start again.

[Reginald Ret]

And that was the last anyone ever heard of Nigel.

[Suu]

Ah, professional conferences.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm awake again. This is actually my vision of hell. After the horrible hotel eggs and imitation bagels it will be time for professional development, which I merely have to stay awake for, but after that we get a talk on bioethics and HeLa that should be good. And after lunch there's a p53 gene talk. Then it's more professional development, during which I will probably go try to find the jogging trail down by the river. This is probably the most optimistic point of my day.

[Eater of Clowns]

Why would you want to go outside?

This is where it all is.

This is where everything is.

[hirley0]

I'bioethics and a p53 gene

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioethics v http://www.bioethics.net/ v http://www.bioethics.gov/
By BOAT Plane or train ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P53 & http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/gene/TP53
Tits uP {should cover it // Very Well ?}COLORS

< ay at 10:15:25 am by hirley0

[Bruno]

We have some of the most talented homeless people in the world.


We're very proud of that.

[Ben Shapiro]

Isn't there a Andy Williams museum there?

[East Coast Hustle]

I'm not sure if you're actually in Tennessee or if this is a metaphor and you found yourself at Clackamas Town Center.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not sure if you're actually in Tennessee or if this is a metaphor and you found yourself at Clackamas Town Center.

It is kind of like that.

Here's a thing that I wrote as a PS on my architecture homework tonight:

Now, for a rambling side-note. I am spending the latter half of this week at a science convention in Nashville Tennessee, in an establishment near the Grand Ole Opry known as the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center, and this building is hands-down the most peculiar structure I have ever been in. Built in 1976-77, the original structure is clearly pulled from classical styles, and appears to have been several long, narrow brick wings surrounding a central courtyard. It was expanded in 1984 and in 1988, adding two large covered atria which are planted as tropical gardens, and again in 1996, doubling its size and adding an enormous semicircular third atrium that covers 4.5 acres of garden and a 1/4 mile river that includes an island with an antebellum manor and New-Orleans-inspired shops.

In 2010, the whole thing flooded. The pictures are well-worth looking at! It was renovated after the flood, and continues to reside in a sort of gaudy, schizophrenic, labyrinthine glory that is at once tacky and breathtaking and charming, with nine acres of indoor garden (and a little bit of outdoor garden as well, if you can find it) and almost 3000 rooms. Architecturally, I don't know what to make of it, but I thought it was so interesting that you guys might want to take a look, so here's a link to some pictures:

The flooding: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/03/opryland-hotel-flood-phot_n_561687.html#s87446title=Opryland_Hotel_Flood

As it is today: http://www.gadling.com/photos/nashvilles-gaylord-opryland-hotel/

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

The flood looks fun, anyway.

I don't get the logic behind a "luxury" hotel with plastic chandeliers and fake bagels, unless they were going for Dolly Parton plastic-jewelry tackiness. There needs to be a category called "kitschy-disturbing". 

[Golden Applesauce]

The flood looks fun, anyway.

I don't get the logic behind a "luxury" hotel with plastic chandeliers and fake bagels, unless they were going for Dolly Parton plastic-jewelry tackiness. There needs to be a category called "kitschy-disturbing". 

Have you ever been to Tennessee? We have an entire theme park dedicated to Dolly Parton. (I think she owns it, actually.)

It's exactly as you'd expect.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

I passed through a few times.
I didn't put any roots down, or even stop anyplace, really. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The flood looks fun, anyway.

I don't get the logic behind a "luxury" hotel with plastic chandeliers and fake bagels, unless they were going for Dolly Parton plastic-jewelry tackiness. There needs to be a category called "kitschy-disturbing". 

It's because it's a hotel and convention center masquerading as a resort. Because it's a convention center, it needs to keep the rates firmly in line with the middle-class ballpark, so it can't truly be a luxury hotel because then conventioners couldn't afford to stay there; or, at least, their companies wouldn't book there. It has to stay competitive with places like the Red Lion and the Doubletree. With that in mind, it is designed to give the middle class the impression of luxury, and most of them believe it. No one who is familiar with true luxury goods, gourmet food, or fine hotels would mistake it for any of those, but that isn't who it's marketing to. It's marketing to the American middle class; suburbanites who consider Olive Garden a nice restaurant simply because that's what's available to them in their area, that's what they know.