Ugly Bedroom Makeover

I've many, many photos from my recent trip to the California desert - looks like they are coming out in clumps, kinda like hairballs.

ANYHOO, out at the family's modest "Desert House" at Twentynine Palms, the Guest Room is legendary. The decor is blinding and has not changed since 1960. It invokes a time when Disney and Technicolor were still fairly new and people went nuts and tried anything. Menus included lots of Jell-O, Cream of Mushroom Soup and other bizarre ingredients.

Family lore has it that the godawful bright pinks and reds combined with classic green shag carpeting can cause time travel, or at least temporary blindness. It looks like something that might appear in a Charles Phoenix Slide Show.

Much like The Admiral, Mama Iva had had enough of the jokes and guests wearing sunglasses to bed. She decided it was time to bring the room into the current century or at least some vague century that wouldn't cause Martha Stewart to have a seizure.

Mind you, it wasn't just the loud hues, the drapes were faded in a perfect square thanks to the harsh desert sun searing through the cheap fabric. Also, they were torn at the top, mostly from decades of desperate and urgent tuggings to put them quickly aside.

Ahhhh, better, no? Of course it is. Fancy new mattress and everything. Then why does it look so weird to me? So sedate? I mean, one could actually get a soothing massage in this room as opposed to unwelcome acid flashback.

I'm all for decor improvement but less so when it comes to removing sources of traditional comic fodder. The Liver Bed, in the Master Bedroom, named for how easily it shook, was also removed in the makeover frenzy. Liver Bed was completely unstable the source of many midnight giggles between Mama Iva and myself. The springs were cattywampus, making it very easy to control the snoring of one's bed partner - just one little movement made the other person move and voila, silence.

Old stuff sometimes contains magic and laughter and the new stuff doesn't ... yet.