Super 8 Motel
3380 Hoyt Street
Muskegon, MI 49444

Look, you guys. I’m going to be honest with you. This motel was a goddamn disappointment. But if you stick around, I will talk about masturbation.

The evening began with Savory Avery and yours truly planning on going to Kalamazoo to stay in a motel that purportedly had all the mirrors smashed out and skulls drawn everywhere. Sounds dreamy, right? Well, it was “sold out,” and so was every other shit-motel in Kalamazoo. I don’t go to Kalamazoo to stay in a Holiday Inn Express. So, we decided to venture out to Muskegon.

Muskegon is about 45 minutes from Grand Rapids, where we live, and I haven’t been there since we covered Electric Forest in Rothbury, MI in July. However, when the weather decides to go from placid to blizzard mid-drive, it takes a lot longer to get there. We’re driving 35 mph by the time we get past the point no return, and pass wrecker after wrecker, car-in-ditch after car-in-ditch. When we finally arrive at the Super 8, located in a complex containing a Red Roof Inn and an American Legion, we’re pretty much stuck here.

As you can see, the Super 8 is very keen on the part where it’s been rated on TripAdvisor. Our research assistant, Megan Poertner, had been texting us a few choice comments from TripAdvisor. They included:

“half eaten hamburgers on headboard.”
“Our first room smelled of urine so bad that they gave us another.”
“Huge red stain on the carpet, pubic hair on the bathroom wall, MAGNUM CONDOM WRAPPER found next to the bed (not even joking)”
“we’re pretty sure someone got murdered in the room.”

Imagine our disappointment to check into Room 203 to find it to only slightly musty smelling. The only things under the bed were an empty Bud Light can, some chewed gum and a red Starburst. The metal meant to encase the lamp cords had been pulled off and the Bible looked as though someone had been doing some serious Devotions. But there was nothing that looked like blood and no evidence of SERIOUSLY LARGE NOT EVEN JOKING wieners.

The alarm clock is glued to the table. Which sucks, because I really wanted to steal it. I thought about asking the concierge if he could put us in a room that was “a little more murdery,” but Shawn was hungry.

We stopped at a nearby Italian restaurant called Verdoni’s. It was just down the street but took a year to get to. On the way back, the roads had iced over and it took nine years. A car was actually on its side, and everyone was driving about 7 mph. [Editor’s note: All of these numbers are extremely accurate.] Dejected about being snowed in with no chance for adventure, we settled back into our only somewhat shitty room.

Now, once would assume that two people who share a sexual attraction who are snowed into a room would, you know, have a bunch of sex. We did too. So, we turned on the telly and browsed for something sultry. We settled on a show called “Strange Sex” and hoped for the best.

WARNING: If you are trying to get into a romantic mood, DO NOT watch “Strange Sex” on the Oprah Winfrey Network. You will watch a segment on a woman whose vagina is so sensitive she cannot have sex, a bunch of hippies in a boring poly-amorous relationship where the chick has a baby in a bathtub and a disturbing woman who experienced a birth orgasm… also in a bathtub. And then, she’s DISAPPOINTED she didn’t orgasm during the birth of her second child. Disgusting!

To top it all off, Shawn fell asleep leaving me to watch a horrible show called “Unfaithful” all by myself. The whole show was about some whiny minister who had an affair with a parishioner who later left him. Following a dramatic reenactment of him sitting in a chair with a bottle of pills and self-pity, his stupid wife takes him back. That’s some real feminism right there, Oprah Network!

I looked around for a hammer to knock myself out with, but, finding none, just had to go to sleep the old-fashioned way. Autoeroticasphyxiation.

As you can see, someone else got stuck here and tried to claw their way out of the bathroom. They, too, failed at escape.

In the morning, the blizzard had subsided, so we decided to eat breakfast at the American Legion in front of the motel. Shawn refused to acknowledge he was eating Velveeta cheese.

We decided to explore Muskegon. Turns out Muskegon is mostly trees, pro-life billboards and industrial buildings. And this place.

Who let this 8-year-old girl buy a house?!

We stopped for a Bloody Mary at a place called Bear Lake Tavern before deciding we should probably hit up the Odyssey Showgirls Lounge. On a Sunday afternoon, the strip club/bar area was closed, but the worst-stocked adult novelty shop in the world was open. What a piss-poor selection of vibrators and crap videos! But they did have this gem, which begs the question: What do you do with the removable cock? Isn’t that just a dildo? Why would you take it off?

Nothing says romance like “inviting anus.” And nothing says oxymoron like “life-like mannequin face.” The Odyssey makes up for what it lacks in erotic novelty selection with peep shows, video booths and an adult theatre. However, women are not allowed in the booths, proving that sexism is alive and well in Muskegon! However, the man at the desk informs us, couples are allowed to go in the theatre for free.

The theatre is a small room with maybe 20 straight-backed chairs in front of a projection screen. They are playing a very awkward gangbang video where no one really has an erection and everyone moans too loudly. There is a recliner shoved in a dark corner where a man has pulled his shirt over his belt and is making a lot of furious motions underneath. Not sure what to do, we awkwardly sit down and pretend to be interested in the film.

The only interesting thing about the film is that during the money shot, they cut to a picture-in-picture shot of each man’s face during his optimum moment. “Who wants to see that?” Shawn kept saying. A man came in and stood awkwardly behind us, fiddling with his belt. Why didn’t he just sit down?! What is the etiquette involved with public self pleasure? Are you supposed to be discrete about it? Don’t these people have the Internet? Couldn’t they just buy a video to take home versus paying to go to the theatre? Haven’t they seen the film Taxi Driver?

When the first film ends, one of the men goes back into the main room to prompt the clerk to play another film. The film gets stuck on the menu for an inordinately long time. The man goes back out again and prompts the clerk a second time. Then another poorly made movie begins where a thinner version of the cook from TGI Friday’s is saying obnoxiously lewd things to a woman who appears to be mute.

We leave and one of the men exits a few seconds later. He seems disappointed in us. I’m sorry, Pee Wee Herman. I didn’t know we escaped the cover charge because we were supposed to entertain you! Hmmph.

Disappointed, we went to the mall to do some normal-ing a la “30 Rock”. Shawn rode the fun bus.

And I fed some ducks. Which is cool, because iPhone always autocorrects my texts to say stuff like, “I’m going to duck you in the mouth,” and “this ducking construction is a shot show.”

Then we couldn’t go into Chuck E. Cheese’s because we had outside drinks called coffee. Peep show booths, arcades… it just wasn’t my day. So we went back to Grand Rapids. According to my research, the Odyssey II in Battle Creek is where shit gets real. So… who wants to party?

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