FedEx Forum Vista Video

The vantage point from down low inspired another vista video – this one indoors:

Just in case you did read the last post – we were sitting very close:

Just Another Tuesday in the Bluff City

Enjoying a glass of water near a pink carnation and

glancing out the window at:

And inside from our sick and twisted seats:

 

They (the seats, in case I didn’t mention) were so close I couldn’t keep up with everything including drinking so I just stayed sober and alert and kept my ears and eyes open so I could take in all the stuff you don’t get to see on tv or in scrub seats. For example – I saw Odom pull a stick of Wrigleys out of a plastic tupperware style box. I swear it was full of candy. I might be projecting.

It was promo night and I got a Grizzlies flag that will fit over my car antennae. It is too bad that mine retracts when I turn my car off because I do like that Mayo.

In The City

After we checked out J’s show, we walked through Chinatown:

On the weekends, the streets are barricaded off so there is enough room for people to walk and puddles to form. One thing I can verify about NYC: You have to carry cash.

Hey, I’ve got a dollar:

And then we tried to get in a tour of the Tenement Museum (and to see if Miss Kimberly was working) but we weren’t the only people with that bright idea and all the tours were sold out so we watched a projection of a History Channel documentary about immigrants in New York City. A lady behind us kept gasping when the video mentioned anything about how the tiny residencies didn’t have air conditioning or plumbing. We fell asleep because the room was dark and we had been walking all day but we were woken up by the announcement for the tour we didn’t have tickets for.

The next day on my flight home I scored an emergency exit row seat and the flight attendant stopped by to get the verbal confirmation that those of us sitting in an exit row seat were willing and able to perform the duties required (the other people looked fit enough to me so I felt safe saying yes). After he got the confirmation he told us to review the (comic strip) instructional brochure about the emergency procedures and that he would be stopping by again to quiz us on the first three steps.  I’ve never been quizzed before by the exit row police so I memorized the steps – the first of which is to LOOK out the window. He never stopped back by. Flight attendants really have ‘tude these days.

On The East

I’m back from a quick visit to the far east. Lots to report but here’s a taster before I have to get to work:

Half my time was spent in Jersey because my friends live in Princeton.

Before  we (E from Detroit, I from Memphis) came out, C (from Princeton) posted on her FB that she was excited for us to visit the Dirty Jerz and I posted this witty remark:

How dirty are we talking? Like bread bags on the feet dirty or hand sanitizer dirty?

And then just days later I find myself standing near a 85 ton memorial to a young man named Ray Tse:

And I look over to see:

Jersey Dress Shoes!

Everyone Else is Doing it

I haven’t been to NYC in a while. I was wondering what’s new in the fresh, uncynical minds of arty new yorkers and I found it on the streets:

We All Sleep Under The Same Google Sky

Good night.

Meat Box

Delta Rib Blow-Out Sale.

Certified Notes

• If I could captivate an audience as long as I waited in line at the Post Office today I would be too busy booking my post-Pulitzer book tour to keep up with this blog. 
• It is possible to extend an errand into an epic. Just get behind a woman who wants to write a check for her two return receipt letters totaling $6.84 and make sure the clerk checking her out doesn’t have 1)an updated prescription for his bifocals and 2) any paper in his register to give her a receipt.
• I got a new fancy Android phone. It has a touch screen and syncs all of my contacts with my gmail account and even my facebook friends so I have been accidently texting, calling, and messaging people I only know through having been on a group email at one point.
• While I was purchasing this fancy phone the friendly Tmobile communications specialist was juggling another customer - a faded red-head holding the hand of a young boy.  She said to him, “I just want you to get the text messaging off this phone. I .. I don’t need it. I’m not a teenage girl.”     Oooh ma’amm..sounds like you wish you were.
• During lunch today I saw a man walking down a busy industrial road holding a can of beer, wearing an unbuttoned plaid shirt and a hammer hanging from his belt loop. He looked as much like a carpenter as Memphis looks like St. Lucia.

Jewel of the Delta

The latest Vista Video was filmed without models on a rainy day in Mound Bayou Mississippi:

Happy V-Day

Your Fragrance

I was in Office Max yesterday and the clerk guy said that he liked my fragrance. I found this odd because before I came there I’d eaten a bunch of those crispy snacks made from vegetables and he did not look like a vegetarian. When you tell someone you like their fragrance it could be misconstrued so I would just go with “I like your perfume? What kind is it?” And then I could say “fried veggies.”

What about that Opening Ceremony? We went to a Chalet-themed party to view the procession of athletes. They had fondue!

I did not ask the models for permission to post this photo so I hope their modeling agents do not contact me with a cease and desist letter.

Anyway – Canadian Diversity was the theme of the opening ceremonies and what I got from all of it (including the beat poetry) was just that all the icy blue jackets and lights reminded me of a box of pills I had at home called Simply Sleep. 

The fondue was memorable though. Go USA!

Memphis Cotton or Memphis Snow?

Nervous Observing

I had a meeting in Jackson, MS and I stopped at the Mississippi Museum of Art on my way out of town to check out the Jim Henson Exhibit (in case you didn’t know, he was from Mississippi so even though this was a Smithsonian traveling exhibit it means more in sweet Miss).

So you are not supposed to bring camera into the exhibit and I accidently had my flip video out  when no one was around for just a few seconds I swear and just a few minutes after I put it away a security guard came out of a hidden door and said, “We don’t allow cameras…so…” and I just said, “ok” and acted like I was reading notes and sketches for The Dark Crystal and she left and then I felt like a total A and was convinced that I was going to get the shakedown when I tried to leave.

I hate getting caught as much as I hate my compulsion to take video of stuff just because. Really though, what is this big issue of not being able to videotape or take pictures of things?  On the upside it may force us to just observe and enjoy what is in front of us in the moment, but at the same time the way we observe and enjoy things has changed as technology has changed. People need to catch up – Look at where we are headed – the human black box is coming.

Anyway – here are some unauthorized stills of some super muppet puppets:

I’d almost forgotten how spectacular the opening of The Muppet Show was until I saw Henson’s sketches.

While the Henson exhibit was worth the trip, the museum’s permanent collection from Mississippi artists was truly impressive. I loved the paintings of cotton fields in the delta and sleepy swampy trees along the Yazoo and Eudora Welty photos and the Theora Hamblett stuff and even the illustrations of Edgar Parker:

Most of all, I like the names of southerners – like Ethel Wright Mohamed and Dusti Bongé. When I think about all the Kaitlyns and Madisons and Jaydens coming up in the world it helps to know that down here, everybody gets two first and two last names or just one lyrical eponym.

Emotional Report

“Don’t ask me again” – I like that button on some of the windows that pop up on my computer. I’m going to put that option on the bottom of my emails and see what happens at work.

You know what happened at work the other day? I was going through the paper remains of the last person that worked in my position and found some personal notes about toddler dance classes, losing weight, taking a trip to Cabo San Lucas, and a blank copy of a Hurt Feelings Report.

I wonder if she used this if any toddlers complained during dance class.

What would be the reasons for filing this report?

*I don’t appreciate the typo in, “The weather is to cold”.

There really isn’t anything funnier than making fun of hurt feelings and if you want to really get under someone’s skins make sure you tell them they are not a hero. That’s a bar fight waiting to happen.

Thawed, and Now Paper

The ice has melted and the mud is here. The beginning of the week is really busy for me because in addition to the day job, (reminder: job is pronounced Johb like the Book of Job in the Old Testy) I teach in Forrest City in the evening and when you get out of class late only to find that you are out of windshield washer fluid and cannot possibly get on the highway (there’s a lot of weathery splashback on the I-40 that can render a windshield opaque with one passing of a Geo Metro) until you refill and you find after stopping at four different gas stations (taking up a total of 30 minutes) that everyone needs windshield washer fluid and the only place left to get it is WalMart in Forrest City and even though you are lucky enough to find windshield washer fluid at WalMart for an unbeatably low price, there are only two lanes open at WalMart in Forrest City and they are looooo-ooong long, and its getting later and later and so you pick the self-checkout line and get stuck behind two women self-checking-out specially reduced bags of oranges and three boxes of sugar cereal with crumpled up expired coupons and you can’t believe something could take so long but it does and it is and it makes you get home very very very late and not so thrilled when you have to go to work in the morning where everyone behaves like they are at a self-check-out with cases of reduced fruit and no-one behind them.

So tonight after aerial yoga class (where we spent sufficient time discussing the aerial yoga applications that Pink used in her Grammy performance), even though I was tired tired, I watched a documentary on origami because I knew it would be super and therapeutic. I hope I have elaborate folding dreams.

THIS is cool. So is THIS.