By Jae-Ha Kim
Tribune Media Services
March 23, 2010
Actor-comedian Larry Miller is well known for his appearances on “Seinfeld,” “Mad About You” and the feature film “10 Things I Hate About You.” He also co-stars in the ABC Family television series based on the movie, which begins its second season on Monday, March 29. Of his travel schedule, Miller, 53, says, “Once you get married and have kids, and the kids have teams that play on the weekends, and I do shows on the weekends. … If my wife and I get one lone Saturday night free? Believe me, a fire and a drink and holding hands downstairs for 10 minutes is the best getaway possible.” Still, he’d love to get away to Hawaii one day.
Q. What is your favorite vacation destination?
A. Actually, my favorite destination is pulling into the garage every night! One place I really liked — but isn’t glamorous — is Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which is close to Norway, Iowa. It doesn’t sound exotic, but it was wonderful, very charming and beautiful. Cedar Rapids was like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting with the cornfields and the houses.
Q. Where are your favorite weekend getaways?
A. I really liked Shreveport and New Orleans, as well as visiting rural Georgia and Florida.
Q. What are you favorite hotels?
A. My only rule for hotels is quiet, quiet and quiet! I’ve been lucky enough to stay in some pretty nice ones over the years, and I think it’s difficult to beat the whole Four Seasons (fourseasons.com) operation. By the way, not many people know this, but the reason they call them “Four Seasons” is that that’s how long it takes you to pay for it. Ritz-Carltons (ritzcarlton.com) are great, too, but at a certain point with all these places, you get tired of Queen Anne tables with skinny legs and want a place you can put your feet up. The best hotel I’ve ever stayed at — no kidding — was a Days Inn (daysinn.com), because it was a brand-new Days Inn. The beds were new, the carpet was new and the paint was fresh. I was on the road working and a road hotel just needs to be fancy enough to make you feel like an official grown-up and regular enough to let you put your feet up. The room service was solid and right up the middle, and they had a great bar with plenty of light to read and big drinks. Or so I’m told.
Q. When you go away, what are some of your must-have items?
A. There isn’t anything that I must have for my trips. I was in a play in New York at the Music Box Theatre in 2001. My wife sent me some photos of the family and it was really nice to see them in my dressing room every night. I travel pretty light. When I’m going to a shoot, they already have my wardrobe. So I usually take jeans, T-shirts and a nice set of clothes if we go somewhere at night. Because of the new airport regulations, I usually get some things like toothpaste from a local mart like a CVS.
Q. Where would you like to go that you have never been to before?
A. Like most people in America, I have a list of places that I want to go. I’ve been planning a trip to Hawaii for the past few years. As you get older the list grows longer. Some of the most astonishing places are right here in the United States. It sounds mundane, but every block in every city can be most invigorating.
Q. How do you try to fit in when you’re a tourist?
A. I usually bring back stuff for the kids. At one time I would always bring something funny for my wife. Little things that said “Steve” on it like a license plate or a key chain. She’s a comedy writer, too, so she would play along with the joke.
Q. What is your best or worst vacation memory?
A. Our honeymoon was pretty terrific, because I got to know the hotel manager from a convention show I did there a few months before, and he traded me a free stay for a free show for his employees. This was at a very fancy hotel in Hawaii, on their butler floor, in a three-room suite; so fancy that. Bill Gates and his new wife were booked into the same room as us the following week, right after we left. So once my wife and I found that out, we made sure to, uh, leave no stone unturned in that room, so to speak. By the time we left, every square inch and couch and table and ottoman and relatively soft surface in that room had an intimate knowledge of us, and we of it. I always figured I’d run into Mr. Gates one of these days somewhere and my goal is to be able to shake hands with him without bursting into 20 minutes of uncontrollable laughter.
© 2010 JAE-HA KIM
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