Rabbit Holes

The weather has turned to crap, and I have fallen into scores of internet-based rabbit holes.

On the Sunday before the 2024 election, I started writing a story about watching the results of the 2016 election at the silliest place possible, the bar of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. That led me to the hotel’s Wikipedia page. I learned that Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young recorded “Long May You Run” at the Fontainebleau. Wikipedia says that the title of the song was based on the hotel. I didn’t believe that, so I looked it up. The title refers to Neil Young’s car, a 1948 Buick Roadmaster hearse, which died in 1962 when it blew its transmission in Blind River, Ontario. Young called this beast “Mort.”

The Blind River empties into Lake Huron. Trappers named it the Blind River because its mouth was hard to spot from a canoe. The town’s economy was initially based on the fur trade; timber soon became dominant, and cooper mining entered the mix.

Mort2 was Young’s 1953 Pontiac hearse. Many early rock bands used old hearses. They were cool, cheap, and roomy and had rollers in the back, making loading and unloading gear easier.

I researched 1948 Nash Station wagons. And now I want one.

The Fontainebleau opened in 1954 and went through several bankruptcies in the next seven decades.

So far, I have misspelled Fontainebleau every time I have typed it.

The hotel is the background for the aerial shot that opens the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger. 

After learning that, I had to look up Oddjob, a character from that movie who fascinated me in 64. He’s an Asian bad guy who kills Jill Masterson by painting her entire naked body with gold paint. I went to YouTube and watched that scene. Before he kills her, he knocks out James Bond, played by Sean Connery (the best James Bond), with a karate chop to the neck. My friends and I tried karate chopping each other in 64. None of us were knocked out. The paint clogged up all her pores, and she died from heat stroke. The guy who shot the YouTube video held the camera to his TV. He should see a doctor because he shakes like a paint mixer, and his TV sucks.

There have been 27 James Bond movies, only one featuring the Fontainebleau.

The hotel has been the background in many fine TV shows and movies, including The Sopranos. The Jerry Lewis movie The Bellboy was also shot at the Fontainebleau. Not all movies are winners.

On election night in 2016, I was with an Englishman named Rich, a Welshman named Darryll, and a Dutchman named Sjoerd, who is six-foot-eight. The Netherlands is considered the country with the tallest people. 

We were participating in a commercial finance trade show. We sold software and other services to lenders who financed companies that did not qualify for regular business loans. These borrowers had weak balance sheets and had to pay a ton of interest to stay in business, like your brother-in-law, who gets money from the payday loan store.

Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs used an old hearse early on. Sam was born in Dallas on March 6, 1937. However, another web page states that he was born on February 28, 1937. 

My buddies and I hit the bar at about 9. 

The Fountainbleau bar is all glass and chrome with hidden fluorescent lighting. It is round, for Christ’s sake. The floor is translucent glass over subdued lighting. In the late ’60s, Hollywood types like Frank Sinatra, the Rat Pack, and Judy Garland hung out there.

The Fontainebleau bar is the complete opposite of a fine Wisconsin dive. There are no slot machines or pull tabs; you can’t buy squares for next Sunday’s football game; there isn’t an electronic dartboard; the walls lack stuffed fish or deer heads; the Budweiser signs have been taken down (I suspect there were never any Budweiser signs). The stools don’t have torn upholstery. Where are the two old-timers whose noses are maps of red blood vessels? You know, the guys ordering $1 shots between their $2 beers.

The Miami bartenders are beautiful, fit younger men and women with perfect smiles and great attitudes. They work like dogs and get massive tips. 

They were not Sally, the divorced middle-aged daughter of the guy who bought a backwoods Wisconsin tavern in 78. If you are not a regular, she’ll get to you when she gets to you. The look in her eyes and the set of her mouth seem to say, “What’s your hurry, Bub? Keep your pants on.”

There isn’t a sign above the urinals advertising the Saint Stanislaus potluck dinner, Bingo Night, and Meat Raffle that happened three months ago.

Rich, Darryll, Sjoerd, and I buy booze for potential clients and old acquaintances for the next two hours. The hit on my credit card was for times as much as I paid for my first car.

At 10:39, the crowd turns to the 70-inch flatscreen TV on the wall. Trump has taken Ohio, and the dominos begin to fall. Florida goes at 10:53; at 11:14 – kiss North Carolina goodbye; at 11:56, there goes Utah.

At that point, Darryll asks, “What is the Electoral College?”

I started teaching Civics for Dummies. These guys are not dummies, and the whole hot mess of the US presidential elections dumbfounds them. We’re all drunk or drunk adjacent. They hear how we elect members of the Electoral College based on the number of senators and House members from each state. I go into the history of that thing and bring up how, at the country’s founding, the southern states got extra credit by counting each slave as three-fifths of a person. 

While writing this piece, I did the math. Each member of the Electoral College from Wyoming represents 195,000 citizens, and each Electoral College vote from California represents 743,400 people. The red states always win that equation.

My friends were stunned, but I was fascinated with one of the bartenders—a bleach blond.

At 2:30, the bleary-eyed CNN people announced that Wisonson had gone for Trump, and it was over.

I was so proud of Wisconsin.

The finance people shouted with joy and hugged each other.

Sjoerd and Rich staggered back to the elevators, confusion on their faces. Ten minutes later, I followed them, thinking about the future and that bartender. Darryll stayed until 4:30. He’s a great salesperson.

In 1948, a Buick Roadmaster station wagon cost $3,433.

Sam the Sham is of Mexican descent; as of this writing, he is 87.

No matter what happens in the country, I hope always to be kind to everyone.