Heidi Klum: Bury My Art at Wounded Knee?
Heidi Klum has been slammed for using a Native American themed photographic shoot and she may have to bury her art at Wounded Knee, or in Utah, which is where the shoot took place. The 40 year-old fashion icon and host of Project Runway is being called racist and accused participating in “cultural appropriation.” For those who have no idea what that means, a definition may be in order.
Michael Late and The Late Mike Show Due to Hit Las Vegas
Michael Late and his act, The Late Mike Show, is currently in Las Vegas
plugging his international show. Billed as the first Lederhosen Magician; Michael is an award winning magician who has worked extensively in Europe and just finished a three week tour in China. The Austrian performer wowed the Chinese population and won an award for his show and has been invited back, but, this time for a three month tour.
*DO TO THE FACT THAT THIS HOTEL VISIT WAS NOT OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED, I HAVE NOT GIVEN THE NAME OR THE LOCATION. BUT, FOR THE CURIOUS, IT IS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.*
**This has been posted because of the interest generated by my other post about Urban Exploration. Time will tell if this is a popular enough feature to make it a regular thing.**
1. The building and it’s abbreviated history.
The hotel first opened in the late 1500’s. It has been known by two names, one was when it first opened. In more modern times it was known by another. Writers, painters, politicians and celebrities have stayed in the hotel over the years. Infuriatingly I can’t find a specific date for when the hotel closed down. There are plenty of references to the fact that this historic place now houses a world famous coffee house and a hiking gear retailer, but, no date anywhere about when it closed its doors for the last time.
It had to be open as late as 2003 because I remember going there for a work’s party. It was old and had the look of a shabby but stately lady who’d seen better days. The carpet was plush, if a bit faded and the walls and ceilings were stained almost dark brown from cigarette, cigar and pipe smoke that had been exhaled over the years.
My daughter worked at the newly fitted coffee house and it became a regular talking point amongst the employees as to what sort of condition the place was still in, whether squatters were living there and if it were haunted. One of the coffee house managers told them that he had keys to the hotel and if they wanted to have a look to let him know and he’d give them the keys.
2. Entering the Dragon.
My daughter and a colleague decided to take him up on the offer and one day after their shift had finished they did indeed ask for the keys. Armed with the keys and nothing else but a growing sense of excitement they unlocked the door and went in.
Despite the fact that the hotel had only been closed for a few years everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. This was probably due to the advanced age of the building itself, it was built in the late 1500’s and old places tend to manufacture dust, and it’s location in the town center.
The electricity was off and the whole downstairs area was dark, dank, and eerie. It was also deathly quiet. The entire hotel, in fact, felt as if it had been wrapped in an insulating layer of cotton wool that refused to allow the noise of the busy town to invade its dead halls.
The two coffee shop explorers wandered over to the reception desk and found most of the room keys were still mounted on the board behind the desk. Telephones and stationary still adorned the counter top. Letter boxes still awaited post for guests who were never going to stay there again.
My daughter’s exploration mate found where the mains electric box was and he turned on the electricity. The entire hotel hummed visibly as the electrics geared up and started running up and down its three floors. They both went to the lift (elevator) and went up to the first floor (second floor in the US).
They headed down the hallway and looked in rooms with open doors. Some of the rooms were in complete disarray, while a few others still had beds with linen on. They looked like a guest had just awakened and thrown the covers back to get out of the dusty bed.
In one room, they found holiday snaps (pictures) that a guest had left behind. Pictures of a better time, perhaps, but in the haste of leaving and heading to their next destination had been left behind. No one it seems from the hotel staff had bothered to collect the pictures and see that they were sent to the missing owner.
Besides an air of sadness the hotel felt as though it were still inhabited by some sort of ghostly guests. “The rooms,” my daughter said, “felt as though the floors, ceilings and walls were full of memories just waiting to come out and be noticed.” Not too surprisingly they both began to get a bit spooked by the place.
Especially after they’d found the ‘bird room.’
One of the hotel’s guest rooms had a broken window and birds from around the town had obviously set the room up as a giant nest haven and nursery for their young offspring. Nests littered the walls and floor. Broken eggshells and loose feathers were scattered everywhere. The only thing missing were the birds.
As they rode the lift down to the ground floor and turned the electricity off, they heard noise coming from the vacant floors where they’d just been moments before. This added to the already spooky feeling that they both felt growing in them. The beat a hasty retreat to the hotel’s connecting door to the coffee shop and it wouldn’t open.
Fighting back a rise of panic they began to bang on the heavy oak door to get someone’s attention. Finally after what seemed an age the manager opened the door. With raised eyebrows he asked them why they hadn’t just opened the door themselves as it was unlocked.
They explained that it must have been locked or stuck. The manager shook his head. “No to both of those ideas,” he said, “It wasn’t locked and I opened it with one finger on this side.” My daughter and her colleague looked at each other and said, “Oh.”
3. The big finish.
Neither one of them ever went back to tour the old place again. Like Shirley Jackson‘s The Haunting of Hill House, whatever walks the halls of that hotel, walks alone.
It’s that time of the, uh….week….again. I’ve been very kindly nominated for (and graciously accept) The Liebster Award. The kind soul who nominated me was the most excellent Tyson Carter over at Head In A Vice. And just to reiterate Tyson, thanks for thinking of me and my little site!
Now, as is the custom for these award nominations and the ‘penalty’ for accepting (I am joking here by the way, it’s not really a penalty, it’s just a bit of fun) I need to present the rules and my nominations for this award.
As I said in the above paragraph, these awards are just a bit of fun and as Tyson so eloquently put it in his own recipient spiel, ‘These awards are just a bit of fun and are really about shedding some light on the community and getting to know more about the folks who populate it [sic]’. They do have a sort of ‘chain’ letter feel to them, but hey, if someone is kind enough to nominate me, the least I can do is play along.
Besides, someone else has already taken the option that I was going to try. As I like to think of myself as blazingly original, I won’t mimic them.
So the rules are:
The Rules:
1. Each person must post eleven things about themselves
2. Answer the eleven questions the person giving the award has set for you
3. Create eleven questions for the people you will be giving the award to
4. Choose eleven people to award and send them a link to your post
5. Go to their page and tell them
6. No tag backs
11 Things about me:
1. I am writing a book (or two) very, very slowly.
2. I am a ‘double’ divorcee.
3. I am hopelessly addicted to ‘caffeinated’ coffee.
4. I am a dual citizen of both the USA and the UK.
5. My true ‘mental’ age is my real age divided by 2.
6. I once met and talked to actor Alfred Molina for five full minutes before I realised that he was the star of the film we were working on.
7. I am a Thespian (I still have the card and the membership number!)
8. I used to be afraid of heights till my daughter and my second wife got me a micro-lite flight for my 50th birthday.
9. I have wanted to be a writer since the age of eleven, I just got very distracted for a lot of years.
10. I love eggnog and would drink it every day year round if I could.
11. I love playing Modern Warfare 3, although I have to admit that any Uncharted game will knock off MW3 from the top spot of game favourites.
Now for Tyson’s Head In A Vice Questions:
Would you rather have a pet polar bear or a pet kangaroo?
Definitely a pet kangaroo, the pouch thing would be very handy.
Would you rather be a movie star or be a singer?
Movie star, hands down.
Would you rather eat a dead rat or a live roach?
I’ve seen Demolition Man and read James Clavell’s King Rat, so it’s got to be dead rat.
Would you rather be a vampire or a dragon?
Vampire, but not of the ‘I can stand outside in the daylight, have sparkly skin and not be full of attitude’ type. More like the Lestat type, you know, rock star cool type of vampire.
Would you rather die in the arms of your one true love or your one true love die in your arms?
This is a tough one, since I’d really not like to die at all, so I’ll have to go with my true love expiring in my arms (but only if she’s not too heavy).
Would you rather be buried alive or stabbed to death?
Buried alive, just because I think I am stubborn enough to not give up on digging myself out.
Would you rather turn invisible or go through time?
Go through time, most definitely. Getting the chance to see how
people really lived and acted back in that time known as ago.
Would you rather walk through walls or control the weather?
Control the weather. In my world, days would be filled with sunshine and the rain would be relegated to nights.
Would you rather always be hot or always be cold?
Hot. I much prefer taking things off to get comfortable versus bundling up.
Would you rather be eaten by a shark or a gorilla?
Gorilla! Because as herbivores they wouldn’t be interested in consuming my raggedy ass.
Would you rather sneeze 1000 times a day or hiccup 1000 times a day?
Hiccup. I had a friend once who collapsed a lung by holding in a sneeze…twice. I know, you would have thought he’d learned from the first incident.
The next step is the laborious (not really, it just sounds good when I put it that way) task of choosing which 11 bloggers to nominate for this prestigious award. And the bloggers are, in no particular order, as follows:
And just when you thought you weren’t going to have to read another word, here are the 11 questions. I warn you now they are a bit eclectic.
1. What is your favourite genre in film?
2. If your fairy godmother popped in to grant a wish, what would it be?
3. You’ve just been told that a huge publishing house wants to publish your work, which book would you choose to present first?
4. What has been your ‘finest’ moment? (or ‘worst’ moment if you haven’t had a finest moment yet)
5. If by law you could only ever have one pet, what would you choose?
6. What is your absolute favourite game? (it doesn’t have to be a console game)
7. What book, film, or television show first made you cry?
8. The buses have all broken down and you are three miles from your destination, what would you do?
9. If you had the option to live forever, would you take it?
10. What scares you most?
11. What is the one thing that you love the most?
And that, friends and neighbours is truly the end of this very long blog. Except of course to say that I will perfectly understand if you do not want to do any of this. Like I said at the beginning it is all just a bit of fun and helps the community know one another that little bit better.
Also I’d like to point out that if I missed your name out, I can only plead that I follow so many excellent blogs it was hard to choose just 11. So I took the cheaters way out and just randomly picked the names.
I’ll close now ( I know, I said two paragraphs ago that we’d reached the end. I lied, okay?) by thanking Tyson over at Head In A Vice once again for putting my little site into the hat.
Cheers mate!
Mikes Film Talk 
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