Thursday, January 04, 2007

This Stuff Writes Itself

Every morning I diligently google “opera news” and patiently wait for the little cyber spiders to bring me juicy tidbits from the World Wide Web. Each morning I wake with a faint glimmer of hope that today will be the day that I get a headline like this:

Opera singer claims bedbugs bit her 150 times

To be honest, after I wiped the coffee off my monitor (come on – it’s a spit take headline – admit it!), I did quickly scan the article to make sure it wasn’t Deborah Voigt who was bitten. That would be tragic. That would be terrible. Would it be my responsibility to make sure she had calamine lotion backstage this Friday?

Fortunately for us, Deborah Voigt was nowhere near a Hilton Suites in Phoenix Nov. 20 -26, when the incident occurred. Unfortunately for soprano Alison Trainer, it was she who was sleeping in a bed, in a Hilton Suites, in Phoenix, Nov. 20-26, infested with bedbugs.

What does 150 bed bites cause? Well, aside from some itching and bleeding, it also left Ms. Trainer “afraid to sleep in a bed, caused her to lose weight and made her uncomfortable about her physical appearance.”

“She looks like a piece of wood that has been attacked by termites,” said Trainer’s attorney, Kenneth J. Glassman.

Wow. I mean really, wow. Who’s snickering right now? It can’t be just me. Where’s your schadenfreude?

She slept there (for SIX days) because, “She noticed the itching and the blood right away, but she didn’t know that this was being caused by bedbugs.”

Um, okay. But it was probably caused by something right?

I’m obviously missing the point. The point is: Somebody. Has. To. Pay.

How much? Well, Ms. Trainer is asking for 6 million dollars.

That’s $400,000 a bite. Hilton bed bugs have expensive tastes.

But never fear – Ms. Trainer has kept all her scheduled appearances despite the bites on her face, since the bedbug attack, Glassman said.

“She’s a professional,” he said.

I’m just going to leave it at that.

-Kari G.

1 comment:

Dominick F., bean counter/TBPAC said...

Ha, this is too funny! Of course to avoid litigation costs, this will probably be settled out of court, thereby raising everyone's liability insurance premiums to pay for Hilton bed bugs. FYI, in 2006 the rapacious US insurance industry recorded $59 BILLION in profit, so they ain't taking the hit--we are.

Naturally this should be a poster child for tort reform (although my selfish side prefers that I first have an opportunity to spin the big wheel myself before any reform is enacted).