theology&geometry

Y’all. I read Aunt B‘s book. I loved it. Like, really, really loved it. I couldn’t read it in one sitting, however. Because it kept creeping me the fuck out. I figure that is the hallmark of a successful book of ghost stories.

I can’t remember the last time I read something that was both very beautifully (and funnily, at times) written that was also quite unsettling and made me see things in shadows and hear noises that may or may not have actually been made. The icing on the cake is that the author is someone I very much respect and admire and am proud to know, and that she’s writing about a place that I actually know and have dwelled in off and on for years now.

So please go have a look at the review/interview I put up on The Shelf Life, when you get a chance. And, if you are at all inclined toward the supernatural or the ghostly or the historical or the local or, shit, just the proliferation of good art in this world, please buy the book. It will scare you and make you smile and, hopefully, give you a whole new way to look at your city, wherever you live.

This is one of the sweetest things I have ever seen:

Congratulations to Mary and Kepa! May you have many, many happy years together.

I don’t wanna brag or nothin’ but look what Mz. Melissa Sweazy sent to me for this bit of internet interactivity (seriously, it’s hard for me to understand how that thing is a shoe; I have seriously imprinted it in my memory as a cast). I am super excited to frame this print and pick out the perfect spot for it. That is, of course, assuming I don’t gobble it up entirely.

Thanks, Melissa! And for the rest of you, if you’re not already following her excellent photoblog, might I demand politely but demandingly that you do so immediately? She is the rare photographer who actually makes me want to get engaged.

Topical and hyper-local. You’re welcome, internet.

I really can’t take credit for the idea. Blame this guy.

Previous years: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.

[Project 365]

The ever-enterprising Erica set up a little ladies-who-lunch event up at Sekisui with her and me and Amie and Emily. Meeting Amie (finally, after years of online acquaintance) and seeing Erica and Emily again was awesome. And you guys? I ate eel and liked it. And raw tuna! And scarfed down more mackerel in one sitting than I’ve had in my entire life. (Click the photo for potentially accurate information about what is pictured. Feel free to edit me with further notes.)

As a person who is not a big fan of seafood, I consider this a pretty big achievement.

Sushi is still a bit weird to me, but I’m told that if you give it long enough, it will infect your psyche and you’ll start to crave it. I await the hostile takeover of my brain.

[Project 365]

It’s time for a blogger/internerd enthusiast get-together. Right now the plan is vittles at Hephzibah, drinks somewhere(?), and bowling at Imperial Lanes, our fair city’s 24-hour bowling emporium (which is so gol-danged photogenic, I just about can’t stand it). All this is slated to go down the second weekend of May, which I assume to mean a Saturday night, but it could last for days and days and days because that’s how we roll in the 901.

Dave sez:

if you blog, or write, or do anything of the sort in or around the greater memphis area, you are invited, nay, i say OBLIGATED to join us, provided you feel up to photographing/writing about/documenting the entire evening, for the amusement and edification of whoever it is that reads or follows your personal internet space.

This little get-together has been at least a year in the making, BUT IT’S GONNA HAPPEN, Y’ALL. IT’S HAPPENING!

(crossposted at The Memphis Blog)

Met up with @fancycwabs for lunch today at Lobster King, continuing my quest to de-weirdify Asian food to my palate. Had the cashew chicken and the hot and sour soup. It was great. I ate tofu, y’all. TOFU. Well, a little. Like, maybe a tablespoon or so. Still not sold.

This is the fortune I got. I want very badly to believe that there is some big cosmic meaning behind the usage of “prophesy” instead of “prophecy,” but the fact of the matter is that it’s a lame semantic error in a lame fortune. You can’t even add “in bed” to the end of it.

[Project 365]

Last night as I was leaving work I saw two rockabilly dudes with tight jeans and plaid shirts and slick black hair peering into the windows of Sun Studio, taking pictures through the glass because the place was closed. It made me smile. I get a kick out of living in a place that’s a mecca for a lot of people searching for some cultural roots.

My co-worker David wrote this this morning and it’s just about as perfect a description of life in the Dirty South as there is:

OK, this is me. I like living in Memphis. I like the whiff of lore and hijinks here — and of the Wonder Bread plant, when the wind is right. I like driving past Sun Studio on my way to work every morning. I like a chopped pork sandwich piled about four fingers high, but hold the slaw. I like the South. Yeah, the North thinks we’re mostly hicks down here, thinks we wear the taint of defeat like it’s this new cologne. But we write like sons of bitches, down here. I mean William Faulkner. I mean Eudora Welty. I mean Flannery O’Conner. I mean Tennessee Williams. I mean William Gay and Tim Gautreaux and Cormac McCarthy before he went Out West or to the End of the World or wherever he’s hanging these days. I could go on. You give me a snort of Kentucky bourbon and I will. And we sing like sons of bitches, too. I mean Hank and Patsy and our boy Elvis, Carl Perkins and the Drive-By Truckers, too. I mean Memphis’ own Lucero, the best rock ‘n’ roll band running. I mean Blue Mountain. I mean Amy LaVere. Those Avett Brothers. Emmylou, the queen. I mean Robert Belfour, who sings the blues like he’s got them at gunpoint.

Yeah, I quoted the whole thing. It was too good to chop.

Wow, time got away from me last week and I find myself at home, back in cat hair-covered pajamas, just as god herself intended it.

My trip across the state and back was amazing, as I fully expected it to be. And exhausting, like any good roadtrip vacation. Aside from the insomnia Tuesday night that knocked me out of doing the Jack Daniel’s tour Wednesday morning, everything else was smooth sailing.

Let’s see if I can break it down into digestible nuggets. Ew, “nuggets” is a gross word.

CHATTANOOGA

I got to see Nick’s new digs in the Scenic City. Holy crap, Chattanooga has done a fantastic job on their downtown/riverfront area; how neat to see a city using its public art budget creatively, or at all. The pedestrian bridge across the river is a nice touch, especially when it’s full of shirtless young men jogging. Hey-o! I kid. But seriously, that town is serious about its jogging.

Our afternoon was spent at the art museum, which houses American art, and is a pretty swanky place. We are twelve years old, so we mostly spent our time making inappropriate, anti-intellectual comments about the artwork. The highlight of the trip was the visiting exhibition by William Morris, whose blown glass works are absolutely insane. If you ever get a chance to see this guy’s stuff, do so. (I snuck a picture here.) It will boggle your mind. Also, there was a lifelike sculpture there of an old lady taking up money for charity. Nick decided that it nearly resides in the uncanny valley. I couldn’t stop looking at her, waiting for her to move. It was sick. Also, awesome.

We spent the evening bar hopping — conservatively, compared to the drinking pace he and his last visitors took. I particularly enjoyed Pickle Barrel (which I obnoxiously refer to as “Hobbit Bar” because it’s roughly three feet wide, some of the stools look like they’re carved out of logs, and it seems like the kind of place tattooed, down-on-their-luck hobbits would go after a long day at the hobbit office), which was super cheap and laid back (so much so that we were served by some dude in super tight pants who apparently didn’t even work there). We saw a movie (“Tropic Thunder,” which was horribly offensive but terribly funny) and had dinner, then roamed around the riverfront some more so I could try my hand at blurry nighttime photography. We met up with Nick’s work friends at The Big Chill, which is a gay bar that doesn’t want to be called a gay bar lest some of the more prickish patrons decide to stop patronizing once they realize teh gayz are everywhere! We had entirely too many rounds and Adam spilled some unholy peach/Jager combination all over my hand and convinced me it was okay to take two of the bar’s cups home with me. I tipped $10 and called it even. Adam is evil. Evil!

The next afternoon, Nick let me take a look at the classy Times Free Press newsroom where he works. It’s a big open lofty-looking place with shiny old hardwood floors and clean lines everywhere. Classy! I wish I had taken pictures but I got a case of the chickenshits there with all those other journos. I felt touristy enough just being there, I suppose.

We came home, watched a documentary about the infamous “tranny nanny” in Dyersburg in which Nick has a starring role (separate post about that coming up soon), and I hit the winding road out of the ‘Noog and back into Middle Tennessee.

[More Chattanooga pictures here.]

NASHVILLE

Lesley was kind enough to let me swing by her house for a shower so I could go meet Brittney and some of the other Nasvhille bloggerati without being a disgusting sweaty mess. We don’t do a lot of blogger meet-ups in Memphis (I know, I know, this wasn’t technically a meet-up), so it was a surreal experience meeting so many of the people I’d previously only known as avatars, and doubly surreal to actually be recognized by some people. I’m not going to name everyone I met because just thinking about accidentally leaving someone out makes me break out in hives, but suffice it to say that if I met you Thursday night, I am so glad to finally know you in meatspace. Lesley took a funny picture of me drunkenly, nervously rambling about who knows what, smarmy grin plastered on my face. Lordy, boozehound, easy on the vino.

That night I spent some time with Kristin, looking for midnight vittles (The Herm was closed by the time we got there so we ended up at some place whose name I cannot recall, but I do remember ordering some Korbel bubbly and having it served in a small airplane bottle with no glass, heh) and a nightcap. We dodged aggressive panhandlers with skill and ease, and returned back to her and Lonnie’s house pretty late. The next morning I tagged along while Kristin ran errands around town. Bought some crap at Target. Bought some crap at World Market. Realized that I like shopping when I a) am not looking for anything in particular and b) do not need anything. We ate lunch at that dairy bar over on Charlotte and I had a fanfuckingtastic chocolate milkshake. We sat on the patio and watched the traffic whiz by while golden oldies played on the PA.

MUFREESBORO

I left Kristin’s and booked it to the ‘boro to meet up with Megan for dinner and drinks at the Mellow Mushroom. (God, Murfreesboro just keeps sprouting strip malls.) We spent some time cussing (Megan’s a champion cusser just like I am) and boozin’ and then, upon realizing that I had nowhere to go until my friend/home base for the night JR got off work, Megan invited me to play poker with her and her friends. I know nothing about poker and they were playing for money, so how could I possibly say no? Sure enough, I got my ass handed to me, but in the meantime, I actually learned how to play poker. And I got to see someone do this:

After the game, I met up with JR at his house and made him watch the aforementioned tranny nanny documentary, like I’m some kind of tranny nanny documentary evangelist, traveling from home to home, spreading the good word. The next day we laid around the house like lazy, drunken cats, me editing photos and him watching football and trying to Google hott pictures of Bristol Palin, only to stumble upon rumors about Trig and his suspicious parentage. This is what journalists do on their days off.

We had lunch and then trucked it back to Nashville. At some point, my car reached its 3,000th mile since its last oil change, and John McCain’s VP pick began to look really fucking stupid.

NASHVILLE, AGAIN

JR and Lonnie sutured themselves to the recliners in front of the Alabama-Clemson game, and I nuzzled up to my laptop to continue editing pictures. Nick was in town and already drunk, so he sat beside me and said weird things, as he often does. Kristin came home from work, and then Matt and Amanda came over, and we set about figuring out a plan to get us out of the house and away from the all the football-related yelling.

Cut to Larry’s Karaoke Lounge in Antioch, which is where we met up with Cox, who was in from Oregon for the weekend. There was drunken warbling, there was blurry picture-taking, there were hugs, there were dudes dancing with dudes (closely!), there was a long line to get to the toilet, there was Rickrolling and there was a Total Eclipse, and I somehow even ended up on the dance floor. Twice? It was marvelous, the whole night.

The next morning I stumbled into the shower and into a fantasy football draft, which was one of the more pointless and confusing things I think I’ve ever taken part in, besides voting. I reckon my team is pretty solid. Actually, I have no idea, but apparently my kicker is to be feared. Fear the Bironas, y’all. Fear him.

I finally got my ass in gear and left Kristin and Lonnie’s and headed toward Saltillo for a quick powow with the family before returning to Memphis yesterday. I got back to a new camera lens, a pretty clean litter box (my catsitters are fucking professionals), and some wine I’d forgotten I had. Score, score, and score.

It was a busy, busy week, and living out of my car was not necessarily easy, but it was pretty damned fun, just drifting from couch to bed to bed, wherever I could find a place to stay. (Thanks to everyone who lent a shower, couch, or bed.) I got to see old friends I don’t get to see a lot, which is always so much fun, and make some new ones along the way. My car got to trace the highways of Tennessee as the land swelled and swayed into the mountains of East Tennessee and then back again. I am fortunate to live in a state with such amazing beauty — both in its rural lands and in its major cities. There was so much to look at, so much to relish along the way, that there’s no way a week could ever do it justice.

[More pictures are here; they're sadly out of order for the time being, thanks to my own drunk hands changing the date on my camera at some point in the middle of the week.]

Thanks to Chris Wage, I’ve not been able to get this song out of my head for the past couple of days. So what better way to exorcise it than to post it here?