Too

I’m out in sunny LA. We left just moments after a serious mid-south tourist sesh. I hope that I can pay proper tribute to The Crystal Shrine Grotto and Graceland Too in the next couple of days – before the excitement wears off.

For now, I can tell you this – I can start at the end of my night on July 14th. At the end of a two hour too-close-for-comfort-loose-dentured-touchy-feely-mania-induced-name-dropping tour inside a musty tomb of Elvis memorabilia, we walked out on the porch to find a group of five people waiting to get inside Graceland Too, waiting for their turn, looking at us – trying to read our faces – anticipating awe and wonder and confirmation that the drive to Holly Springs was a great idea.

“How was it?” The only guy in the group asked.

“I have no idea.” I said, “I don’t know yet.”

I wasn’t sure if there was anything in my personal language reservoir that could express to anybody how that was. I needed to sit down. Have a coke. Review my emotions. Wash my hands.

And the next day, I read this and was even more dumbfounded that the author had had nearly the exact same experience of what I thought was an un-replicate-able experience. Down to the shoulder taps and obsession with rakes and millions of dollars and flags of New York. Of course the author of that article doesn’t mention being shown a personal photo of a raccoon that our host, the #1 Elvis fan in the world, shot on his porch. He showed that to us.

Jesus on a Tree

On the way back from a trip to the Memphis Memorial Cemetery to see the Crystal Shrine Grotto we came across this in a Ross Fashions/Fazolli’s parking lot (on Riverdale and Winchester):

The moss has clearly formed the face of Jesus on the side of the tree. Should I call the local news or what?

If you don’t see it, step back a few feet from the monitor -- maybe this will help:

Miss Leah actually alerted a security guard in a small truck but he wasn’t really too impressed. Maybe if it would have been Michael Jackson…

It’s been a very devotional week. More soon.

Slugburger Festival

I recently purchased a used book that features fun places to visit within a short drive from Memphis. If you have ever looked for such a book you would know that they are rare. This one was published around seven years ago so it is just possibly outdated enough to keep things interesting --Does that cafe still exist? How about that B&B? Are the owners still nice? And can you still smuggle pit bulls cross state lines through Arkansas?

Luck was shining on me because one of the super events recommended in the book was happening the day after I got it! As promised – an exciting event  just a short drive from Memphis: The Annual Corinth, Mississippi Slugburger Festival.

The festival started in 1988 and is essentially a small gathering of fair food, rides, and duh – slugburgers all in the quaint downtown of Corinth, a place also known for its Civil War history.

The Slugburger is a deep-fried mashed up patty of maybe a little meat and “filler”. According to the Borroum’s Drugstore menu, it originated in the great depression when meat was scarce. Any excuse to deep fry…

I tried one and it tasted like the skins of a Morningstar Farms fake chicken nugget. I do like mustard and pickles though so it was a winner:

**note the tablecloth of the Slugburger booth.

I took this picture knowing full well that our elders are people too and not tourist attractions but when you look this sweet eating a slugburger on the street, people need to see it:

We ordered old-fashioned sodas at Borroum’s – they were served in old-fashioned Styrofoam cups and tasted like extract of Charms blow-pops.

Here is the inside of the store:

And a picture of what being a dart vs balloon sharp-shooter will get you:

I’m going to use that as my personal identification/license plate from now on.

We didn’t interact with the locals as much as I would have liked. I believe my travel companion was too anxious (or nervous once he saw how super good I am at darts). I personally was mesmerized by the fair rides. They remind me of home and Truffaut. Heck, I remind myself of Truffaut:

I cannot wait to check out more of the day jaunts recommended in the book. I love driving on these southern highways. There is a hodge-podge car lot every seventeen miles so if your car breaks down you can just get another (or from the looks of it – the part you need). Most offer financing.

Love this place.

Deep Endeavors

I know that my birthday is an important day for so so so many people. I like to use my special day as a marker for new, longer projects (like stuff that could take a year). So two years ago I started a Los Angeles weather worship/description project called 80 and Sunny. The following year I started a project called Move back to Michigan/Spittin From the Mitten and I also edited the end result of 80 and Sunny into a fun paperback book. I finished it (with the help of some rad people) this birthday weekend. It’s now available at Lulu:

What is next, you wonder? What can I possibly come up with now? Well – enter Left at the Thrift Store  - a clearing house for photos that I (and you dear friend and reader) take of radical finds that you just couldn’t reasonably purchase at the thrift store – either the item was too big or too ridiculous – or too reminiscent of the hundreds of polyester mistakes that you have made in the past. There are many reasons we choose to pass up another great loveseat or ship painting even though we know what it is really “worth” – you don’t have to let it go forever – take a picture and send it in. It will live forever, or as long as blogger has bandwidth and as long as the web shall live.

I’m just starting this so any comments or ideas (and especially submissions) would be greatly appreciated. I need to figure out how to make a photo upload page – I expect an onslaught of submissions within days of this posting.

Autozone Park

I made this little photo collage today after reviewing my photos of the week (it’s much more impressive in full size):

Autozone Park, Home of the Memphis Redbirds

I Love All Kinds of Music

My birthday was grand thanks to my number one Memphis host, BB.

We had dinner at Molly Fontaine Lounge and this is a sampling of the kind of informative discussion we had in the background all evening:

I like the piano lounge experience in the south because it seems to be a 30-70 music/actual-singing to chit-chat-directly-in-the-microphone ratio. But older southern black women seem to know a lot about life and music so it makes sense.

If like, me you have lived for long enough to give advice to low-level people (like teenagers and younger siblings), you still qualify for some great perks. Like, for example, this super serious chocolate birthday cake:

Knife included!

Oh and thanks everyone for the birthday wishes. Special thanks to Heidi for pointing out that Nikola Tesla and I share a birthday as well.

Me, Proust, and Alice Munro

Were all born on July 10th.

       I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory — this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?    (Marcel Proust, The Remembrance of Things Past)

How appropriate, because I started my day off with a sprinkle cake donut (thanks BB!) that sent me across the vicissitudes of my past 33 years.

Redbirds/Isotopes

Still Life

Spotted at the Tiger Mart near McLean and Poplar at 1:50pm today:

And I thought LA was the only place we put our plastic friends in the back seat. When I see an mannequin in the car I wonder, “HOV lane or LOVE lane?”

Other things today:

• Fog of war is now even foggier!
• It is hilarious to tinker with low-brow food!
• I would like a poster of THIS.
• It’s Frida Kahlo’s Birthday. (Known fact – People born in July – with the exception of George W Bush and Arlo Guthrie – are known geniuses – and very sensitive according to astrologers)

Happy Birthday America!

Our founding fathers couldn’t have done it without the great founding mothers!

Holiday Research

I was on the internet looking up information on firework laws in Tennessee – when I got a call from Emma who told me, “what? Laws? It’s America’s Birthday! This country wasn’t built on LAWS! People have been blowing stuff up in my neighborhood all week already.”

So I changed my research to focus on one of the cool sights we came across in Little Rock last week: Ray Winder Field, the ol’ ball park for the minor league team The Arkansas Travelers (double A affiliate of the Angels). Check out pics at digitalballparks.com (I didn’t snap any myself). It is a fantastic field with wooden grandstands and old-timey lights. I found some information on ArkansasRoadStories.com that confirmed the park is indeed old (built in 1931) and historically important (you can just tell – anything wooden, including the Mean Streak at Cedar Point , is historically important) But, when I checked the Travs sight they directed me to Dickey-Stephens Park – turns out it is the new home for the team.  Looks a lot like a new-style-light-brick-in-the-city-side-ballpark.

Speaking of - I’ve been waiting for the temps to back off a bit to visit a Redbirds game here and I will soon.. especially if they have fireworks.

Hot Rod Redux

Like a thought-provoking photo of a person taking a photo of themselves in a room of mirrors, this self-reflexive masterpiece of auto-customization is infinity plus a flame:

(spotted in parking lot of William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, AR)

History-Tourist Break: GWTW

On this day in 1936, according to The Writers Almanac, Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With The Wind was published for the very first time.  Apparently she wrote it in a tiny, cramped, trashy, stinky apartment while she was bedridden from repeated self-injury (check the facts elsewhere).

I’ve never actually read the book but thanks to David O. Selznick, I got the gist of it: civil war, ripped bodices, bloody soldiers, home-birthing of babies, tara.

The last remaining location from Gone With the Wind (the film) is in North Little Rock but we didn’t have time to see it on this trip.

The Old Mill.

You can also check out Mitchell’s stinky tiny apartment in Atlanta at The Margaret Mitchell House – it’s being re-opened to the public this holiday weekend.  No mention of fireworks on the website.

Fiddle-dee-dee!    

Birth of The Road

Today marks the 52nd anniversary of my favorite American innovation: The Interstate!

You can find out all about it and read a fun “Interstate Fact of the Day” HERE.

(Taken Saturday on the way home from Little Rock)

I know that the current trend is toward saving resources and using less gas and stay-cationing and walking to the grocer and breathing 10% less air and carpooling to work while Al Gore, and movie stars, and state governors take private planes to go to work or visit their lovers and get special cappuccinos BUT lets not forget that it was the automobile and the open road that gave the working class mobility and freedom. 

Let’s not live in a prison of (corporate sponsored) green guilt while the Detroit City Council takes kick-backs from letting corporations dump whoknowswhat in the once-glorious Motor City. You want to drive to The UP? Go on and get yourself a pasty. You want to drive from NYC to LA? It’s your god given birthright and duty as an American. Remember women can’t even drive in Saudi Arabia (and a few other places)– proving just how powerful the act of driving really is – shall we say; driving is the new press? Get to it.

Oh - and read The Autonomist Manifesto published in the New York Times Magazine in September of 2004.

Paintings by Carl Rakeman -- check him out he looks a bit angry but maybe he just doesn’t like having his picture taken – maybe he’s rather be painting or driving.

Lucky Eleven… Days Until My Birthday

Let the wish lists start (of course you can also review any of my registries on the websites of Northwest Airlines, Amazon, Sephora, or Ford or Autotrader at any time).

Featured items:

Neck cooling bands.

AND:

Yoga Swing.

Sunday Style Section

Today I will feature Arkansas.  (More on our trip later when I am not bogged down with work work work.)

Pile Style:

Cute Shirts & Cute Couples:

Southern Snack Trio:

Ok, like the Banana Planks, I am saving the rest for tomorrow.

Happy Sunday!

Yes List

It’s been a month since I packed up all of my worldly possessions and moved to Memphis. These are things I like about this place:

• WEVL The Volunteer Radio Station
• WPLY The Public Library Station
• ChickFilA (given)
• Proximity to Mississippi River
• Proximity to “The Firm” filming locations

I Liked Him Best When He Was Shopping In Vegas

 

Derek Erdman’s painting says “Goodbye” and I say hello to a whole new round of “but I was a real fan” nostalgia wars.

Tennessee Style Thursdays

Sensible Vanity Plates:

Feminists:

Back window says: “I wanna be like Barbie – That b*tch has everything.”  (IMHO, not really – she can’t wear flats)

Gross! Children are watching.

One of my ol’ LA people has been collecting vanity plate pics for some time. Check it out.

Cooped Up

I always thought it was couped up. TGFSP! Couped up is when you are all intertwined in plots to kill political leaders or take over CEO’s of companies while they are having liver transplants.

This is what I finished alone outside of our place tonight:

Naw – that was just the pre-party leftovers from a show at the Hi Tone on Friday. It was 110 degrees so I don’t remember what it was. 110 outside and 120 inside! Hotter than arm wrastlin’ in a pizza oven. Hotter than road burn on a baby! I have started to carry a kerchief for my sweat. I wish I could find those “coolie band” things that all the Germans wear when they tour the Grand Canyon.

I did find THIS COOL DISTANCE CALCULATOR from a UK site. I used it and found that Little Rock is really not so far away. I am going to take a Bill Clinton walking tour tomorrow as soon as I have some coffee.

Other things my restlessness is making me realize:

• I wish I was a KID IN VANCOUVER.
• I want to DO THIS the next time I am in LA.
• There are a lot of “True Blood” fans in Memphis.
• You should be careful if you want to quote HL Mencken even if he says sick true stuff like, "It is hard to believe a man is telling you the truth when you know you would lie if you were in his place."
• On Questioning humanity: I was researching my particular migraine/stroke issue and I came across this awesome message board where people with medical problems swap totally unreliable and unsolicited medical advice. Everybody’s MB signature has a list of their “diagnoses” and medications. For example: 

     JOHN DOE

DX: Wegener's Disease, Migraines, Diabetese Type II, PCOS, Lactose Intolerant, Benign Heart Murmer, Depression, Asthma, Asperger's Syndrome, Necrotizing Gramultous Inflamation in eye, A.D.D., Acid Reflux

Medications: CellCept, Prednisone, Tri Nessa, Percocet, Metformin, Prilosec, Protonix, Zantac, Advair, Cingulair, Albuterol, Calcium + Vitamin D

     (taken from real message board contributor)

Sorry but – how many parties can that guy get invited to? Whoa. Well with the pharmies he might have a chance…

Anyway. Please come visit. It isn’t nearly as hot as I have been complaining about (bald faced lie) and I feel that I am experiencing a complaint backlash. Come on down or out – we’ll go Southern Gothic.

Signed,

SK

DX: Bipolar, ChocoANDshoeAholic!!, adrenaline junkie, late sleeper, coffee snob, carpal tunnel, farsighted, celebrity workout addict, migraines, compulsive driver, bitchslapper.

Medications: Baby asprin, almond stuffed olives, synthroid

Thought Clearinghouse of Southern Encounters these Past Weeks

Nashville Style Sightings:

• Flip-flops & skinny jeans (on mens)
• Pigtails on grown women (mostly braided)
• Gladiator sandals & short shorts on women (seen across US, really)
• Chewing tobacco – spit in tall bottles (much like Fowlerville circa 1992)
• Jager shots. Ice cold.

Best Overheard Fast-Food Patron Confrontation/Instructions:

I was inside a Chik-Fil-A on a weekday evening last week. There were four customers  - two dining-in and two, including me,  in line - in the store and five workers running themselves peanut-greased-haggard to fill the orders from the 6,000 people in the drive-through. And you know people unwilling to get out of their cars at 8:45pm on a Thursday evening are either; wearing stanky stanky PJ’s, harboring a refugee or kidnapped child, or starting on second supper. Either way, it’s not your hello, good-morning breakfast biscuit crowd.

I could tell my cashier gal was already having a rough shift when a big ol hungry mamma (in group three of the above mentioned possibilities) comes busting through the door holding a crumpled take-out bag in one hand and a XL box of ChikFilA waffle fries. She shoves the box of fries past the face of an innocent woman trying to place an order, until it reaches just under the nose of the other friendly ChickFilA cashier on duty.

“Y’all put cold fries in my bag.” It already sounds threatening-- like maybe somebody is already kilt somebody’s cousin. The cashier doesn’t say anything but grabs another box from under the heat lamp and gives it over to Two-Dinner Twanda.

“Awwww naw.” Twanda hits the new fries, “Naw, these are cold too.” She looks over at me. I try to concentrate on my Coke Zero and hope that I will sill get my extra pickles in spite of all the mayhem.

“Naw, these are COLD TOO. I know y’all got some hot fries back derre.”

Now all of us, including the backstage workers, are nervous. I’m nervous because I hope they have enough waffle fries to fill my order and they are nervous because there are strict regulations about how hot you can serve food (– and probably how forcefully you can restrain a customer) .

The red light finally comes up near the fryer and a new red box of XL Waffle Fries is produced and placed in Twanda’s hands.

She smiles. Holds the box in her left hand and slaps the other side with her right. I hope a golden waffle doesn’t fall out. I don’t want this to get obscene.

“That’s what um sayin’” She says. Slap. Slap. “Hot thru the BOX!”

We all look over at her. All of us from the fryer to the dryer.

“Hot thru THE BOX!!” She says again and hugs her crumpled drive-through bag and leaves ten percent slower than she came in.

The cashier that had given her the fries looks at my cashier and says, “My pleasure.”

I get my food and wait until I get in the car to feel the side of my fry box and they are, indeed, Hot right thru da BOX!

 

**Check out THIS ARTICLE on “The Cult of Chik-Fil-A”

Cultural/Arts Conversations Lost in Translation:

• Musm = Museum
• Dult = Adult
• TheeeYAYter = Theater
• Sack = Bag (leanrt from cute old lady buying her teen grandkid a stack of “Twilight” books “I don’t need a sack.”)

Randomly and Additionally:

• There are 52 comments on an article about a rumor about Jon & Kate (reality show stars) getting a divorce and 8 comments about Korea nuking Hawaii.
• Check out THIS CAKE. 2+Die+4. That is what I want for my birthday – which is coming up soon. The sun just entered Cancer. Rococococo!

Complaint Installment 2 of 1,000 in Reference to Southern Weather

First, a drive-by sighting of another great hair salon:

I don’t think Hair Efects is affiliated with the Detroit salon, Incisions.

And an exclusive feature of Memphis strip malls:

How cute! I know what goes in the blue boxes – but what or who is in the little space pod?

So, I am not used to this weather (yet). It is, as a few natives have told me, a bit hotter than usual, but it’s making my brain melt (current Memphis migraine count: two). I think it has to do with the strong upper level ridge of high pressure that weather.com has warned us about.

A HEAT ADVISORY MEANS THAT A PERIOD OF HOT TEMPERATURES IS EXPECTED. THE COMBINATION OF HOT TEMPERATURES AND HIGH HUMIDITY WILL COMBINE TO CREATE A SITUATION IN WHICH HEAT ILLNESSES ARE POSSIBLE.

   Weather by Memphis                         Straw sculpture by B. Mehr

I wish more people found it interesting to talk about the weather. I would make friends way faster here. As of right now, I know a sweaty lady from Arkansas and a teen at the Tiger Mart.

Hawthorne Logs

Aftermath of the downed killer tree. Chunks bigger than a small car. I think they shipped the midsection to the Log Ride (for Husky and Pretty Plus Riders) at a local amusement park.

We Are Back in Business

Our power was restored just moments after I sent a stern email to the mayor of Memphis! Coincidence? Hardly. It was Civic Power!!

Now I can get back to writing about my interesting life and ranting about quirky indie stuff and I can finally get down to business doing what I came here to do: complain about humidity.

Here is a photo of some flowers I saw today at The Dixon Gardens:

Admire them.

Blame It On The Rain

I have provided for you, dear reader, some video of possibly the exact moment when our power exploded. Don’t think for a second that it just went out. It exploded.

The sound got a lil wacked in the final cut but we can chalk it up to the bad storm or even the worthless quicktime 7.02.01 update:

I Would Wish This on My Worst Enemy for Sure.

B just asked me where I was and I responded with “at the end of my wits.” I meant to say “at the end of my rope” because my wits just never end. But on day four of this power outage, and two weeks into this new city, in this minibooth at Panera bread, I am indeed at the end of my rope. I’ve spent today going from one annoying place to another just to stay away from the sauna that was once known as our apartment. It is now owned by a pack of rotting bananas.

I stopped by today to try the light switches in case we just hadn’t been using them right. I pressed harder. I flipped them up and then down and then tried the “toggle” method I use sometimes when my ipod is f-ed up. Definitely no lights or power or anything that could make a fan or a fly move. So I sat at our little round table and addressed one envelope for something that I had meant to send out on Friday (before THE STORM) and removed the wrapper from one Band-Aid (name brand). Those two activities, plus flipping the light switches in the hallway, had generated so much sweat I had to change my shirt.

Our place is almost exactly human body temperature, but moister. It is like the inside of the Jade Steam Room at The Olympic Spa but without the naked ladies practicing yoga on slabs of therapeutic jade tile. None of that glamour - our windows have been painted shut and I left all of my hand fans at home. I have some great hand fans and I didn’t bring them when I moved to the south. I just wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t thinking then anyway. I’m thinking of a lot of stuff now.

Of course, things could always be worse. I’m just saying I don’t want to test that tiger, ya know.