He was a Hotel Detective

Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to get inspired by random, spur-of-the-moment things, to have an idea creep up on you from the most mundane of origins and infiltrate your brain, where it nags at you enough that you just have to get it out and make it reality.

Like, say, putting your iPod on shuffle mode while working on a Chaucer paper and as you listen to They Might Be Giants' "(She was a) Hotel Detective," the creative part of your brain starts whirring and purring even though you're only paying about 5% of your total conscious attention to the song. Then images of John Linnell--defying odds since you know it's Flansburgh singing--looking intense in a trenchcoat, a Barretta cocked in his hand, start to emerge, as if slowly illuminated by the pulsating red glow of a neon "Vacancy" sign in the window of a seedy hotel through a haze of driving rain. He's there to investigate a murder, the death of a dame--but it's always a dame. They're all the same: just another bright young thing who got mixed up in some racket involving booze and gambling, and soon she owes a hefty debt to Johnny Hart*, a notorious bookie who works undercover as an accordion-playing street musician. Pleading and begging are useless, and before you know it some simian thug puts two slugs straight through her breaking heart, leaving her life to stain a grubby sheet in the top floor of the Gramercy Grand Hotel. It's always the same thing, another case that involves a stiff bourbon to keep your eyes focused and your aim sharp.

...yeah. That would be a nice thing to experience.
(Made in Adobe Photoshop CS2. Photo of John Linnell from tmbg.com; gun and hotel photographs from iStockPhoto. Vacancy sign and rain effect created by me.)
*Linnell released the Christmas children's song "Olive the Other Reindeer" under the alias Johnny Hart.