Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel #1023

My hotel room is bigger than my apartment.

Downtown Los Angeles sparkles outside my east-facing windows. The Hollywood sign is out the north.

Last night after work, I pulled my Hyundai into valet as Kate Walsh and the cast of “Private Practice” walked a red carpet across the parking lot.

Upstairs, I watched “Wanted” on-demand as Judas Priest played Jimmy Kimmel’s “Pontiac Garage” just below my room (and directly adjacent to Hollywood High School).

The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel was founded in 1927 by a group of Hollywood luminaries that included Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Louis B. Mayer. The hotel’s “Blossom Room” hosted the first-ever Academy Awards ceremony, on May 19, 1929. Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and El Capitan are just down the street. CNN and the Capitol Records building are down the block.

The ninth floor is haunted by Montgomary Cliff. Shirley Temple took her first tap-dancing lesson (from Bill “Bojangles” Robinson) on the hotel’s ornate stairway. Marilyn Monroe posed on the diving board of the hotel’s swimming pool for her first-ever ad, and now haunts a full-length mirror relocated from her former-room to the Roosevelt lobby.

A huge black-and-white photo of David Bowie hangs over my bed. I’ve got a dining room table, and some sort of white leather couch. And every night, when the cleaning staff rolls down my bed, they place a prescription bottle full of white M&Ms by my bedside.

Excepting the gaggle of douche bags mustered around the front door, it ain’t all bad.

(Still, I can’t wait to go home.)