The Only Ten I See

Thoughts on the Volunteer State from the Eyes of a Yankee Interloper

Clean Streets, Dirty Deeds

Friends, I am sorry to report that the West has fallen. In the airport, with my glasses on, I remind myself of the sullen chudjak, if just because of the glasses and a bad haircut that has since been remedied, more on that later. I arrived in Nashville around 10 PM after a short flight, where I got to see the first half of A24’s “The Iron Claw”, which I will write about once I’ve seen it in it’s entirety. I picked up another rental car, whom Mrs. Hudson and I deemed Mel, rather than Edsel. Melanie is a pretty name. Melvin is not. Were I a Melvin, I would go by Mel. Mrs. Hudson said she would go by Melanie.

Nashville is a safe, clean city ripe for degeneracy. As I deplaned, I saw a very fat, very drunk woman don a pink cowboy hat and declare to all who could hear that she needed to “find a cowboy to ride”. That poor soul, I calculated, would need to have the tensile strength of the Golden Gate Bridge to not buckle under the stress. When the whale’s equally drunk friend said “We can probably find a mechanical bull in one of the Honky Tonks”, the whale did away with her cleverness and yelled “I just need some dick”. This declaration was in full earshot of several families with young children, one of whom was just flown in from the border, based on their luggage, which was a few dollar store totes and a red cross blanket that the youngest boy was holding on to. Perhaps they, like myself, saw the whale and wanted to get back onto their plane and go back to where they came from.

Nashville is full of fat, drunk white women all wearing the same uniform, like some kind of invading army. Pink T-Shirts with suggestive or vulgar messages about their upcoming nuptials, Cowboy hats, unfortunate Daisy Dukes and thigh high white boots. The brides are distinguished by their sashes, equally crass or suggestive as the shirts. They are legion, they are many. You go to Broadway, the epicenter of Nashville’s adult Disneyland and find a row of Honky Tonks, some historic, some vanity projects. Don’t go to Kid Rock’s, do go to Layla’s. I also enjoyed a beer at Robert’s and Legend’s Corner. Nudies is fine, just go upstairs.

If I were a country music writer or singer, I’d write “Don’t Let Your Daughter’s Go To Nashville”. It’s a perfectly safe city, which is part of the problem. It’s like when the libs open a clean needle facility to stop the spread of disease. Give them a safe, clean place to do their dirty, dangerous deeds. I relieved myself at Robert’s and found in front of the urinal, a poster that declared, “Heroes get tested for STDs. Be a HERO.”

The prize for hitting up every Broadway Honky Tonk in a single night, known as “The Music City Mile” is a case of syphilis.

On Our Stuck Culture

The tradition of these Honky Tonks are thus: Dive Bars let musicians play for tips, selling cheap(ish) drinks. The musicians show off their stuff for the brief chance to get discovered by some esoteric Country Music executive or one of the passerby country music stars and legends who return to the bars as a rite of pilgrimage and deference to their roots. “Remember where you came from”, “Pay it forward”. Pretty good deal in a healthy eco-system.

But then, the bachelor and bachelorette parties attacked. No longer are these young musicians playing for fans of the genre and those looking to keep the tradition going, but instead that legion of drunken children I mentioned above. The incentive structure is now “Pass the hat and if we make enough, we’ll play your favorite song”. Freebird typically costs $100, in case you were wondering. Nickelback costs around $60. The question I asked myself was, “Who is to blame? The audience with no imagination or the musicians with no talent?” The musicians, while talented in the technical ways of playing their instruments (They have no sheet music and can play most any song requested) aren’t playing anything original. I went to five different Tonks, stayed a while at each one and not one song played was written by the band on stage. We live in an age where the barrier to getting your music out there is so low, anyone can become a sensation overnight, yet we have yet to see it. Is it all fake? Soundcloud rappers were proven to be a fraud, most of the “undiscovered talent” were signed to labels and then had their music pushed by the almighty algorithm. If the talent was there, surely they’d do whatever they could to get their songs into people’s ears, maybe even the right people’s ears.

But then there is the pesky audience and their low brow taste and their drunken entitlement. A group of girls trying to “feel themselves” don’t want to hear something new. They want “Wagon Wheel” or Carrie Underwood or Taylor Swift. Give the drunken men “Freebird” and Chris Stapleton and (surprisingly) Pantera. Our culture can’t handle new. Maybe it’s that we don’t have the capacity to make anything good. Lord knows I prefer the classics to most of the books Dissident Lit is putting out these days (Sorry, guys).

I saw this, even at The Grand Ole Opry, the birthplace of Country Music’s ascendance in the American Mind and while it was family friendly, wholesome, and rooted in tradition, I couldn’t help but notice that of the several acts that performed, most were doing covers of older, better songs. The strength of the genre is in the lyrics, as much of the instrumentation stays within established norms and tracts. Newer songs are bland, lyrically light weighted and thematically shallow. Women sing about love and happiness and heartbreak, but with a middle school understanding of these things. Men sing about women and trucks and “having good times with the boys”. I wanted to like Nashville, I don’t want to be one of those guys who just hates everything. Anyway, more hate.

Boomer Hate

I wish it was just the young and dumb and full of cum who were the problem in Nashville. The transient oat-sewers who will look back fondly on their weekend of debauchery before settling into domestic life, getting divorced after an affair or two, then being left to rot by their children in old folks homes as they sunset into dementia and are abused by “caregivers” who don’t speak English. You know, the American Way(TM).

But there is a worse group of partiers, the object of my ire, the great white whale in my battle for civilization. Not the hordes of illegals flooding the country, not the NPC shitlibs, nor the list of aphorisms given by the media to a certain group whose color we can’t say (But it’s a scary color). No, my enemy is the boomer. The American who was handed the pinnacle of civilization and pissed it away to keep their booze cruise afloat.

What happened to ageing with dignity. Camille Paglia wrote once about a family matriarch she’d met at a beach once in a working class vacation spot. She had her children there with her and her grandchildren and the potential for a great-grandchild soon on the way. This woman sat in her beach chair, a widow, looking over at what she’d brought into the world, then over to a spot where another beach chair once sat, and contemplating about the ups and downs of marriage, raising children and the final years of her life that she was in the middle of experiencing.

My grandmother had dignity. My grandfather had dignity, even when his brain had turned to mush. My father, I am sorry to say, and the members of his generation, lack that dignity, that grace. They party like it’s 1985 and they come to Nashville to pretend that they are just as young and hip and happy as the millennials they castigate as lazy, entitled, spoiled and worst of all, ruining their good time. My grandparents generation could look back on their lives and see what they’d built and left behind. They could die with dignity because they could be proud knowing they’d done their best. The boomers are leaving the world worse than they’d found it, no great war, no great accomplishment. Just a big party. A celebration for being born into the height of Western Civilization.

I don’t think boomers wanted to be parents. I think many did it out of a begrudging obligation to their own parents, who they were happy to lock up in nursing homes, then be surprised when their spawn contemplate the same. History will end with them one way or another, they guarantee it. They must see their grand project of self aggrandizement through to the end. They are the “Me Generation”.

Aptly Named Museums

The Cash museum is costly and not worth it. There, I saved you several minutes. I think Johnny Cash would burn his museum to the ground if he were alive today, the only thing that would stay his hand is that Patsy Cline’s museum lived upstairs.

Why is there Hockey here?

It’s weird that Nashville has a hockey team. It’s even weirder how much the city loves the team. Predators gear is everywhere you look. Every sports bar has the games. The arena is in the heart of downtown. It’s good for the sport, but I can’t get past the idea of hockey being played where there is no snow. But at least the Coyotes are moving. The Salt Lake City Soakers are going to be a force in the league with their unmovable defense and static offense.

America And Her Cities

There are three tiers of American City, the first tier being the “International City”. These cities are in movies and TV. These are the cities foreigners visit most. The world sees America through these places. The best restaurants, universities, museums, shows, etc. live here. New York, LA, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and DC. These places are also all homogeneous, having the same stores, same problems and the same people living in them. Your over-educated elite types. Even the architecture is the same. I took a river cruise in Chicago once that boasted about the City’s unique architectural style. Save for a few Art Deco pieces that survive, it’s the same glass and steel vertical longhouses that every city has these days. They even sell Brooklyn style pizza now.

Tier two is full of your “Americana Cities”. These cities are allowed a few ‘quirks’ but try to starbuck themselves to get to Tier 1 status. Portland lives here, but try as they may, it’s slipping back down to where it belongs. I think of these places like Greek city states. They have massive influence on the places around them, the regional hubs of the American heartland. Portland, Dallas, Miami, Denver, Las Vegas, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, and KC. Nashville wants to jump up to tier 2, and they will get there. They need to step up their restaurant game, though. They’re growing fast. Driving in Nashville, you get the sense that there is life and growth. I love to see cranes and construction sites and men building things. It absorbs the blackpill’s contents. They’ll get to keep the Music City moniker in tier 2. You’re allowed 1 thing that makes you unique in that tier. They may need to drop the hot chicken sandwich. I hope they don’t.

Tier three, then, is the rest. The local legends. Some once great rustbelt metropolises and young upstarts that want desperately to escape the mediocrity of “the rest”. These places have personality and a lot of local flair. Some of it is not great, but you take the good with the bad. Knoxville is this, where we stayed for about half the trip. Knoxville and Nashville get along about as well as estranged brothers fighting over the family inheritance. Knoxville was devastated by the Civil War. Nashville was left alone save for a small battle during the Franklin Campaign. Knoxville had it’s own Civil War, many East Tennesseans divided on the question of slavery and secession that kept the city in turmoil for a long time. Nashville was taken over by the Union fast enough that they could not question much of anything, creating some solidarity against the occupying force. Nashville kept it’s wealth, Knoxville went through several periods of boom and bust. Nashville has Music Row, Knoxville had a World’s Fair in 1983. The “Sunsphere” is still there, though I suggest you skip it on your visit.

Knoxville enjoys tier three, if only because it keeps itself apart from it’s striving brother to the West and it’s dying brother further West (I didn’t go to Memphis, Graceland will have to be another trip. Need to tackle Shiloh as well, I see the Hornet’s Nest in my dreams). Knoxville is a litany of dispensaries, homeless missions and craft breweries. They like it like that and while it’s not as clean as Nashville, it’s still a far cry from somewhere like Portland.

Knoxville: One Good Season From Being Nice

Nashville has Vanderbilt, a beautiful university and more “conservative” values. They still have succumbed to the mind virus of leftism and the cringe inducing “wokeness” that is just a cover for race-based nihilism and resentment of Western achievement. The same university that came out with “I’ll Take My Stand” employs huckster Michael Eric Dyson. Knoxville has Tennessee, the Volunteers and a very nice stadium that Peyton Manning used to play in. Both of these SEC teams have seen better days and while the Vols have had more recent success than the Commodores, that is like saying that nerds have it a bit better than geeks in high school, since the jocks need them for homework help and such. Alabama stuffs Tennessee into a locker and drowns Vanderbilt in a mixture of its own tears and toilet water. Being an A&M fan, I sympathize with the faithful of the state, but hope they never see success. I do believe that if Tennessee had a good season, Knoxville would see a jump that would shake them out of their complacent malaise. Mrs. Hudson thinks that’s sad. I tell her “that’s America”. Somehow, it’s not the rebuttal I thought it was.

There’s a small diner in Knoxville that everyone in town goes to. It’s the epicenter of business, it hosted many celebrities whose signed pictures are on the wall. Everyone raves about the eggs. Next to the wrestler Kane and his compliment on the biscuits and gravy are several little league photos of the owner’s grandsons. The walls are lined with small time celebrities and local legends and titans of Knoxville’s recent history. This is where the town lives and breathes. I like it there.

The Pillar of Civilization

I went to my first Bucc-ee’s in Tennessee. I’ve not roadtripped in Texas, but when I do, I’ll only stop at Bucc-ee’s. The smiling beaver mascot is a hate symbol on the ADL’s website, right next to the OK hand signal and milk. It’s easy to see why many on the right have latched onto Bucc-ee’s, but it’s at the same time so sad. They serve crap food, cheap chinese merch, and cater to fat Amerikaner ham beasts. But the bathrooms are immaculate. I see Bucc-ee’s and see that decline is a choice. The Texas chain started in 1982 with a novel idea “what if people had a clean place to do their business on road trips”. They don’t allow trucks to crowd the cars, the gas prices are in line with other pumps and stations, and they built a recognizable brand that has only gotten bigger in the forty years since it started. All from the idea that people would prefer a clean place to relieve themselves. Every Bucc-ee’s has a help wanted sign with the pay printed for each position. You can make $20 an hour to clean a bathroom. Decline is a choice.

The Dodge Brothers sued Henry Ford when he tried to take the profits of the Ford Motor Company and use them to improve the lives of his workers. That case, Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, upheld the idea that a corporation must operate in the interests of it’s shareholders first and foremost, at the expense of any other parties involved. I am no socialist, but if Bucc-ee’s has shown me anything, it is that there is a way to benefit all parties involved in a business when the interest of that business is a quality product over profits. Bucc-ee’s operates with a profit, people are getting rich off of that beaver. It’s sad how exceptional they are. I stand with the beaver, I wear a hat. I stop when I see one.

The Enemies of Bucc-ee’s

The largest Bucc-ee’s on earth is in Sevierville, TN, hometown of Dolly Parton. It also has a 3.9 rating on Google Maps, which shocked me. I knew there had to be some skullduggery, I was willing to put money on it. I was correct.

A man and his pet duck were ejected from that Bucc-ee’s because they have a no animals policy. I won’t dignify them by naming the duck, his owner, or the large social media following they’ve built. All I will say is that I stand with Bucc-ee’s and against weirdos. Firstly, because as we all know, ducks are the natural enemy of beavers. Secondly, because I detest weirdos and those who abuse the rules. He’d been able to skirt around many places rules about animals by getting the duck certified as a “Support Duck”. Like all good and proper things in this country, weirdos and douchebags have to go and ruin it. Support animals for veterans, the blind, and the most fringe cases are a good thing and a social benefit. These days, anyone can claim to have a service animal for any reason, usually “anxiety”, that made up disorder that covers any and every symptom and whose prevalence is a mask for over-socialization and absent parenting. I saw a support pit-bull at the airport with an official-looking vest and a muzzle. What kind of support animal is likely to bite someone who comes near?

Interviews with the man who owns the duck and the social media account show that he was looking for a way to spice up his juggling routine (He’s a professional juggler) and increase his social media following. His blatant charlatanism scratches at my ideals. He profits off of the suffering of others. Quit stealing my moves.

I doubt this essay from a small, mighty blog for a small, mighty magazine (issue 12 on sale now) will ruffle any feathers, but I’m sure the water fowl enthusiasts are scouring the internet for any bad press their mallard of preference might be getting. If you’re here from “Big Duck”, fuck you. I yearn for the good old days when jugglers with pet ducks were locked away in insane asylums and prisons. Brooks was here and all that. I don’t see how a duck can help with mental retardation, of which the owner clearly suffers.


America’s Inheritance

Talks about National Divorce and a breaking up of the United States are becoming more regular in mainstream spheres. I wrote my first novel based on the premise, though I pray that whatever Post-Liberal order emerges is done peacefully and democratically. We love democracy, don’t we folks.

The part that doesn’t get discussed and that I will miss most about a contiguous United States, if I live long to see the breakup, will be the destruction of our National Parks. Park Rangers are the only federal employees I like. They’re knowledgeable, helpful, passionate, and are doing God’s work of stewarding creation. I can only imagine the horrors that the Smoky Mountains will be subject to once the protection of the Federal Government goes away. Whether it’s business interests, third world invasion, land development or a combination of the three, the beauty and majesty of this land that has been preserved for future generations to enjoy will disappear with the government. Sure, Florida will probably keep the everglades if a government can weather the storm of collapse, but places like California, Oregon, Washington State, these places are on the brink of spilling out their poor policy decisions into the hinterlands out of their cities like a bursting dam. Go visit a national park or forest before it is too late. And not in some gay climate change way, either.

Gatlinburg

Well, it was Gatlinburg in Mid-July and I’d just hit town and my throat was dry, so I thought I’d stop and have myself a brew. Gatlinburg no longer has saloons or streets of mud, nor neglectful fathers dealing stud. Instead, we’ve got a working class family vacation spot, with so many miniature golf courses and arcades that you’d be hard pressed to play them all. They have the world’s largest sky-bridge, spanning across the tops of two mountain peaks. You take a ski lift to reach it. There’s a place you can still get confederate flag apparel, including speedos and bikinis for your more well endowed woman.

You’ll also noticed that the whole town is run by Indians. Dots not feathers, which is one of the funniest things I ever heard when I first saw Good Will Hunting and still use to this day. The hotels are run by Indians, the mini golf, the t-shirt stores, even the Christian souvenir shops (There are 2). There is a sex shop above one of the Christian souvenir shops that I bet is also run by Indians. Outside of Gatlinburg, I didn’t see another Indian person in the whole state. Make of this what you will, but I thought it worth commenting on.

There is a sandwich shop in Gatlinburg, not run by Indians, called Tennessee Jed’s. They’re a hippy sandwich shop, a more common occurrence than I once thought. I later learned that many hippies call Tennessee home, which is a neat piece of trivia, I’d wondered where they’d gone. If you’re like my buddy

Christopher Sandbatch

and want to eat a Rueben and the best potato salad I’ve ever had while listening to the Grateful Dead, check out Jed’s.

Pigeon Forge and Dollywood

The main strip of Pigeon Forge leading to Dollywood is like Gatlinburg, but more-so. There’s an upside down court house, a replica Titanic, a wax museum and all manner of dinner theater performances. You want to see the Hatfields and McCoy’s feud while you eat a chicken, they’ve got that. You want to see knights fight for a lady’s favor while you eat a rotisserie chicken, they’ve got that. You want to see sky pirates fight over who gets to bed the space mermaid? Well, they don’t have food, it’s a mini-golf course, but they have it in Pigeon Forge. In my essay on Portland, I distinguished the way that Portland is weird from other kinds of weird. Pigeon Forge is the fun kind of weird. If you have a family and want a Disneyland experience for less than an arm and a leg, check out Pigeon Forge and Dollywood as well.

I thought the gates to Dollywood were weird, a golden rod fence in the shape of a giant brassiere, opening from the middle to reveal something big, beautiful and worthy of photographs. Just kidding, we didn’t go to Dollywood. Maybe next time. I doubt the park is breast themed, in fact if it’s like the other properties, it is probably quite family friendly and wholesome. Their slogan should be “Like Disneyland, but we don’t want to chop off any parts.”


On Books, Bookstores and Enjoying Things

I found a bookstore in Tennessee that caters to all of my tastes, no matter how eclectic. The first way you can tell if you’ve found a quality book store is if they carry any of the following publishers:

Everyman’s Library

Library of America
Modern Library

NYRB

These four publishers of classics and hidden gems let you know you’re in a serious place that understands the importance of the classics and the more shelf space is given to these kinds of books, the less is given to the modern female experience authors of the publishing industry who turn out crap like “All The Queefs We Cannot Smell”, “Where the Menstrual Pad Sings”, or “I Murdered My Husband Because I’m A Libra”.

Everyman’s Library Classics and their modern classics are made well, with love and by people who are less affected by the nihilism that has stained our culture overall. The Leopard by Lampedusa would not be widely available in English without Everyman’s Library. Yes, they bow to the modern trends (I don’t like James Baldwin), but they also have Wodehouse and Greene and McCarthy and Thomas Mann in well made hardcover editions that will last longer than the regime who wishes to erase Western achievement.

Library of America publishes bulk volumes on bible paper, adding to the sacred nature of such an endeavor. They include an entire author’s oeuvre, even letters, notes, sketches and articles by the writer. I’m midway through Vonnegut’s whole body of work and that alone, in one place, is worth the price tag, which is always put on sale by the way.

If you don’t like hardcovers, Modern Library makes a damn good paperback. I prefer them to Penguin Classics and Oxford for no particular reason other than they feel better made. It’s a paperback, so go with what you like, but brand loyalty exists and for me, it’s Modern Library.

Stoner by John Williams is my favorite book and without the New York Review of Books, I wouldn’t have found it. We wouldn’t have several great hidden gems of the 20^th Century without their efforts and though I doubt I’ll get invited to their parties, I have to extend my appreciation to them. They have a great volume of Thomas Mann’s essays, which leads me to my next screed…

They’re enjoying him wrong. It doesn’t matter that Mann liked to go bumming. It doesn’t matter than Ursula Le Guinn and Vonnegut were shitlibs. They were great and they were great in spite of their deficiencies. I see tons of books about WWI poets and their work, but only if they’re gay like Siegfried Sassoon (He repented and converted to Catholicism, but don’t let the truth ruin propaganda). I have no real point here, except to say we don’t hate journalists and professors enough.

Anyway, there is a rare bookstore in Knoxville that has many old first editions within. It was a rare treat to see Walker Percy’s signature in both “The Moviegoer” and “A Confederacy of Dunces”. I’d just read “American Pastoral” and there was Philip Roth’s masterpiece behind a glass cabinet. I have a collectors mentality. I own most of McCarthy’s works as first editions. My office looks out of sorts. I will probably never read all the books I own and I can see how I have fallen into the CONSUME mindset, just more pretentiously. My hope is that the collection will be well loved past my death, in the family, on a plot of land with a large library. That’s how I justify it at least.

Mel The Mommy Mobile

My rental was a brand new car with the bells and whistles. I disliked driving it. More accurately, I disliked fighting with it as I tried to drive. Turn on the car without your seatbelt fastened? You get a chime until you comply. Turn off the car? You get a chime to remind you to check the backseat for children or small dogs. Want to change lanes? Here’s a blindspot detector that goes off in areas that are not your blindspots. Break too sudden? Another chime. Changing lanes with the blinker on? The car will turn your steering wheel back towards your lane anyway. It even yelled at me when I got close to the rumble strip on a turn down I-70. It literally tried to keep my in the lines. The Good Ole Boyz are right, better find a used car on Bringatrailer.com and keep it running forever.

The Importance of Barbers and Barbershops

Looking in the mirror of the airport bathroom, where I’d made the chudjak comparison with my own reflection, I found by chance a local barbershop that did walk-ins. My hair has always been cut by women or dispassionate men, whether it was my mother for all of my childhood, the army’s coterie of on base clip-masters, and later in life, just heading to the super-cuts or it’s equivalent to be in and out.

This place was no such unpleasant chore, but rather, for the first time, I understood why men frequented the same barbershop and only ever saw the same barber. There was a fully stocked bar that was free to use, but it was done matter-of-factly, rather than the spectacle that most businesses that cater to men try to use. There was no axe- throwing or “MAN CRATE” feel to this place. Just a relaxing atmosphere where one could sip on bourbon or whiskey or a beer until it was his turn to get a hair cut. There’s an old dog in the shop that lays there and gives you a ball to roll towards the other end of the shop. Everyone who walks in gets a turn, I think it’s a vibe check. You like the dog? You get to stay. You don’t? Leave.

My barber was new in town, a Cajun from rural Louisiana. He had a kind of Rust Cohle vibe to him, always speaking philosophically, but he was cheerful, a happy warrior. He is 35 and unmarried and travels a lot. He is wise, quoting a poem by Hausmann that I happened to also know. Even if he were less intelligent or less well read, I know we’d have gotten on well because he is authentic. “If I didn’t like you, you wouldn’t be sitting in my chair.” There’s something fundamentally American about that, something wider society is missing. A barbershop should be a kind of club, I’ve learned from this experience. A couple men are sitting, reading or watching the small television. This isn’t an Ice Cube film. They aren’t cracking wise and laughing loudly at nothing. This place is mature and allows men to be men.

We talk about religion, he enjoys that Tennessee has such deep Christian values, though he is more “spiritual”. I share my faith. I’ve been getting better at doing so without the self-conscious voice in my head that tells me I’m being a bible thumper. Thump away, I say, look how shit the world’s become without it. My barber would make a great Christian, I think. He’d also be a good husband to a woman. He does not like to be tied down to commitments. “I’d like to wake up and move to Japan one day and I’ve never found a girl who could deal with that.”

I tell him I’ll pray for him. He thanks me for that.

When I get back to my home state, the first thing I do is look for a more permanent barber shop. It’s mostly supercuts and lady’s hair salons. There is one, but that is more of that “Man pandering” that surrounds modern men than the authentic experience I did not know could be afforded to me in 2024. Get a proper barber.

Stay in Hotels for God’s Sake

Tim Dillon was right, AirBnB sucks. Their costs have gone up, the hidden fees are a joke and you as a guest are treated more like an inconvenient friend in town than paying consumer of a hospitality service. Our AirBnB was fine, but that’s about as good as you’ll get. It never feels worth it, unless you’re staying in a real shithole and then, you wished you’d spent the money. Every action and request you make will affect how the owner rates you. They could get you kicked off the platform for spite. I’ve done worse for less. God Forgive me. It’s a pretty good racket for the app. They’re just a broker. They don’t have any real standards for their hosts except don’t murder your guests, steal their stuff or sexually assault them. Everything else is pretty negotiable. Stay in hotels, folks. I say this, but the hotel we stayed in had used tissues behind a pillow in the cuck chair. I got us out of the room. Mrs. Hudson asked why? I told her I didn’t want the sun to wake us up. It was easier than the truth.