My building is being painted.

So the painters, who arrive at 7:58 am and have a key to everything except the deadbolt, are unable to open my door because I lock the deadbolt behind me all the time when I’m in the house asleep like a good New Yorker does.  Their remedy for said situation knowing I’m home is to drill out the deadbolt.   It seems knocking is a lost art form in Los Angeles but destroying a perfectly good door costing my landlord hundreds of dollars and sending me to a cheap hotel.

The Travelodge in East Hollywood is an effective place to feel wretched with summer wheat painted walls and beige just to this side of white of linoleum tiles separated by dirty grey grout.  The Frat fridge doesn’t work, the microwave is really a 1981 Convection oven and there is no deadbolt.  The Meth freak who occupied the room several guests before me ripped it out of the wall in a fit of political pique when the Chester A. Arthur refused to have brunch with him.   Three doors down, the locals who claim to have killed Geri Rosenthal are screaming about aliens coming through the Flat Screen TV’s via Pardon the Interruption.

As I wait for the elevator, a late twenty something couple who judging from their accent are from the Upper Midwest and ignored whatever advice they received on Hotels.com to avoid this place, cower as the disembodied voice behind the brown door that separates room 225 from the hallway screams “Hector!  Hector!  I’ll chase you around the bed until I catch you!  Hector!  Hector!”   These screams are followed by crashes of ceramic plates and the breaking of glass.

“Hector sounds scary,” the female end of the Late Twenty Something Couple from the Upper Midwest in Lisa Loeb glasses said.

“Just like the one who was in that bad ass film Troy that took place in Athens,”  The male end of the Late Twenty Something Couple from the Upper Midwest in an ironic strawberry beard said.

“The one who was killed by Bob Pitt,” the female end of the Late Twenty Something Couple from the Upper Midwest in Lisa Loeb glasses said.

“The very one.  They named him after that tendon in in your knee,” The male end of the Late Twenty Something Couple from the Upper Midwest in an ironic strawberry beard said.

I am forced to conclude discussing the word Hector as a proper noun as well as a verb would be pointless.