Hot Hot HOT!

It’s a Sunday, and it’s, thankfully, not nearly as hot as it has been. A massive heatwave has been static here in this city for days now. By Wednesday it’s going to be back up to 105 with the heat index. Now I’m all for the heat; one thing everyone should know is that the South is like the proverbial kitchen. If you can’t stand the heat, and so on. Me? I live for this weather. An excerpt from my other blog dated Friday, August 10th reads thusly:

<i>People are dying, literally. The poor are dropping dead under overpasses, the rich fainting on sidewalks, briefcases in hand. This is the time everything solidifies for me. I wouldn’t trade this heat for love nor money. Opening doors and stepping foot outside is like walking into hot oil. It will rain later, but it will only get hotter then. The heat will cling to the moisture in the air and this city will be a rainforest, awash with sweat and the anticipation of a Friday night.
This is it. Summer rolls her hips the sweetest and hardest this one last time and everyone in Atlanta sucks in and moans out deep and low. The blues were written for days like this.
Barefoot and moist, I find myself smoking on the front porch.</i>

A bit abstract, but that is the more luscious way to describe it. However, these past few days have gotten me closer and closer to retracting those words. It’s so hot, I’ve seen things I thought I might never see in this city:

a. The Corner Tavern (known also as The Coroner Tavern to those who are fans of the band) has closed their giant garage door to bar out the summer heat. Even in the winter they usually keep it open and blast heaters.

b. The homeless guys at the intersection of Freedom Parkway and Boulevard have ditched their scrawled “Homeless; Give $; God Bless” signs for buckets of ice with bottles of water in them. They charge anywhere from $2 to $4, but I can imagine those frosty bottles look pretty appetizing to the people who have no AC in their cars.

c. Even the cats are staying inside. Arthur’s lovely silver shorthair Sally, who usually delights in turning into a kitteh throw-rug in the odd shafts of sunlight, is now opting to decorate the hardwood floor of the kitchen next to the AC vent.

My advice to those that are unfamiliar with Atlanta in August, here is my advice to you: watch SurvivorMan. (Don’t settle for Bear Grylls, that guy’s a hack…FAKE ACCENT ALERT) There are two different episodes of the show in which the host strands himself in Rainforests. One in Costa Rica, and another in the Amazon. That will help you survive this intensity. You might have to bust open some coconuts to stay hydrated, but it will help.

In other news, Arthur is back from Italy as of Friday, and bearing gifts! But the best purchase decision he made, I believe, was this (purchased here). He’s been obsessed with Plague Doctors for a while, and I could tell he was excited. It’s going to become a pretty bitchin’ Halloween costume.

I am still a little sad about the whole thing; him going to Italy, having all that amazing fun. I don’t even really care about the fact that he went without me, but I put Italy so high on a Renaissance pedestal, that I ache every time I think about it. But that is all getting better. Slowly, but surely.

Lastly, in internet news, there is a pretty sweet article in the latest issue of Wired (the one with Martha Stewart on the cover, in the middle of icing a Wii as though it were a cake…way to go, Stewart. Some unfortunate nerd could have used that) that is all about how to make a meme and do it right. It’s pretty awesome, y’all should check it out.

A side note: The Word ‘Meme’

The Dog Days

Saturday night was enjoyed once again at the aforementioned Sampson Street Lofts. (or, as I discovered they are more formally known as “The Cotton Docks” due to the location once having been a cotton mill) This was a fairly uneventful evening for the most part, hoever atabout three am, I happened to glance up at the temperature gague on the ceiling of my car, and realized that it was 94 degrees fahrenheit. I hate to say it, but that’s what I love; I really don’t think I want to live anywhere that DOESN’T reach 94 degrees in the middle of the night.

Arthur will be back from Italy Friday. Most of the hurt has finally diminished, along with the prickly jealousy. I’m glad to be past most of it, too. I was pretty decently depressed for most of last week, and when consoled by my friends and family, all cooing gentl and telling me Arthur would be back soon, all I could do was scoff. I miss my boyfriend, sure. Somewhat. Mostly I’m just jealous that he is riding in a gondola, drinking Roman wine and swimming in the Mediterranean. But most of that is passing, as long as I don’t sit and stew about it.

We finally got a little bit of rain yesteday, too, so I didn’t need to water out back. Of course after that, it was so muggy I could barely breathe when I stepped outside. Small price to pay for not having to water.

Ok, it’s rant time. I’ve been pretty pissed off about this for a while, being someone that frequently watches channels like Court TV and The History Channel. Obviously I’m about 50 years away from fitting into their target demographic, and occasionally I am bombarded with commercials for LifeAlert and incontinence medication. But what I absolutely cannot stand is the fact that someone out there feels like they can sell something as ridiculous as this:

(I apologize, I can’t link this for some reason.)

http://www.corvettedollar.com/?cid=359602&gclid=CKbFpYiG4o0CFR3XgAodIixhrw

I feel really bad for the elderly people that feel that they need this shit. (Oh, and just in case you saw this, and decided you needed to get one for everyone you know, there is a STRICT LIMIT of five per caller!!!)

I would really like to start posting ridiculous chachka like this as well as discussing Atlanta. Because crap like this is just too hilarious.

I think that’s all for now. See everyone in class tomorrow!

Party Time and then Late-Night Eats

If, in the future, someone should come to you and advise you that there is a party on Sampson Street in the C apartment, I can tell you right now, if you’re into meeting new people and going places that do not suck, the Sampson Street Lofts is the place for you. I’m not totally sure what it once was, perhaps storage space or a factory at one point, But now it has been divided up into lofts and each one sports enormous, open, areas and industrial, old-brick atmosphere. There is room enough for anything you would need a lot of room for. Located in those weird little backroads between Freedom Parkway and Dekalb Avenue,

they are out-of-the-way, private, and host a majority of people between the ages of 18-30. Most of these people make up a very creative little community, people that paint the letters of their apartments on their doors in various creative and bizarre ways. Parties here feature ourtageous things such as acrobatic, arial performances, homemade beer served out of bathtubs, and old episodes of Transformers projected on walls. Even if you can’t get in to take a look at a unit, if you’re ever in the neighborhood, drive by and check it out. It’s truly an outrageous and fun place to be.
Say you’re at Sampson Street in the middle of the night, and you suddenly realize you are hungry. So you dig up a sober, responsible driver and head out into the night – but it’s so late! Where to go? Well, you’ve got some choices in this city.
flaunts a well-known reputation for being some of the best Chinese food in Atlanta. Plus they’re open all night most nights. About a year ago, Chinese Buddha was in a much less-desireable location, and was ssporting ratty carpet, and stained seat-covers. Now, in a swanky locale on 14th street, this little place has moved on up in the world, and along with slightly more expensive prices than one could once expect, now has romantic atmosphere, and an extended, better-dressed staff. For late-night fried rice cravings, this is all you need.
— Atlanta Diner is a bit more of a drive if you’re not in Decatur, but it’s worth it. This place rocks some of the best salads you can imagine, as well as an eggplant parmesan that has, in the past, shaken patrons to their very core, and given them just cause to re-evaluate their personal faith. Whatever you do, don’t talk to the street walkers that occasionally stumble in.
And of course, who could forget, Majestic. You have to really appreciate this eatery for what it really is: a greasy spoon that is open 24 hours, in which you will find a staff that tumbled right out of Hipsterville. The food can be anywhere from pretty good to horrifying, but nothing settles a drunken, rumbling stomach like pattymelt grease. And if you haven’t ever been there, well, it’s worth going at least once. It’s an Atlanta icon, like the Fox and Turner; just don’t slip in the occasional vomit puddles outside the bathroom.

CityTown USA

It’s been a little bit crazy these past few days; running around, house-sitting for Arthur, who is now in Italy, and of course, getting caught under the heavy thumb that is late summer in Atlanta. Hauling recycling to the curb of Arthur’s Virginia-Highlands house at two a.m. becomes surprisingly sweaty, no matter the brevity of the exertion, or lack of sunlight. A stale breeze is gently moving candy wrappers down the sidewalk, but doing very little to cool the backs of necks.

This presented the perfect opportunity for a late-night summer activity: a late movie, to be viewed in a large, darkened theater with the air conditioning on full-blast. However, Talk to Me was only showing at one theater. Atlantic Station. A shopping-living anomaly that is lovingly nicknamed CityTown. Atlantic Station haunts my nightmares. The ones where I wake up in a cold sweat, fearing that this will be how people live in the future.

It is, by design, not a new idea: people living above stores. Not a hard concept. Who wouldn’t want to wake up every morning in their charming little flat or studio to the smell of freshly baked break wafting up from the street; or hear jazz from the nightclub below in the cool of the evening?

Atlantic Station takes that brilliant concept of space conservation and shits all over it. In Atlantic Station, who’s tagline is “Life Happens Here” people have the option of living above the following: one or two overpriced restaurants, or, chain stores such as Express or Banana Republic. I have no desire, and I worry about the fact that it is a coveted living locale.

If you do decide to brave the bizarre, cardboard-cutout feel of Atlantic Station, be my guest. It sports a decent movie theater, and if you absolutely can’t live without those bitchin’ Guess capris that went on sale and you’d rather go to human hive of weirdness to buy them, that’s fine too. BUT REMEMBER. If you go to visit and not to live, you must validate your parking. Or else you will be forced to live there, on a neverending quest for the parking office in the lower bowels of the parking deck.

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Tomorrow afternoon, I have the rare treat of escorting an out-of-town guest around The Big Peach. Now here is something that I think I will be very good at, and I really look forward to it. How often do I get to take someone around my city and show them everything I love about it and try and get them to love it too? Though of course, like everything else in my life, there is bound to be some weirdness. Like the fact that my out-of-town guest is not REALLY from out of town. He’s actually a resident of an Atlanta suburb, Kennesaw, and has never, in fact, been to Atlanta. How this is even possible is beyond me, but it will certainly be interesting to show him what he has been living a mere 20 minutes from all his life, and never seen. And hopefully this will ignite some sort of desire in him to get out of that suburb up there where there are still occasionally public KKK rallies and camouflage is always in style, whether it’s on a shirt, a cellphone cover, or even use as a paint substitute all over your car. (coming in handy, of course, for hunting.)

Theresa asked me a few days ago if I knew what a ‘lifer’ was. She talked to me for a little while about the people in Alaska that will never move, and will remain in the place of their birth for the rest of their lives. As I thought about it, I realized that, no, I do not want to live in Atlanta all my life. I have no desire to move right away, but I will if called to do so by some illusive job op.

And what about location? Being a lifer in Atlanta must be very different than being a lifer in Kennesaw. Though some people love their small towns, and don’t want to change anything. They love the people they see every day, and have no desire to leave. In a city like The Big Peach, you can go anywhere and get lost in the heart of it. In the city, you can hide.

I think this little town where I’ve found myself house-sitting, Sugar Hill, consists mainly of lifers. And I think they must be out of their minds. But it’s their home and they love it. And even this place is going through it’s own changes. In 2000 the census took the population, and it was 11,399. That must be almost doubled. There are so many subdivisions here now, McMansions everywhere, and even upscale condos right on The ‘Hooch. Where there are suburbanites, there are liquor stores, Publixes, banks and restaurants. And that means mini-malls, and shopping centers.

Curious as to what this little town used to be, I did some research. This is their logo:

The city of Cumming, to this day, does not have a rail line. And back in the late nineteenth century goods were transported by wagon. Well, one of the wagons, overloaded, on it’s way from Buford to Cumming, (traveling on what we now call Buford Highway) lost a wheel while going over a large hill. The wagon overturned, spilling a few huge bags of sugar. From then on, it was known as “The Hill Where The Sugar Spilled,” and was used as a reference point on the road between Buford and Cumming. Then it became Sugar Spill, sometimes Sugar Hill, and eventually was a Georgia Militia District and finally was named Sugar Hill, and charted as a city on March 24, 1939.

One of the Outer Limits … of Atlanta.

Sugar Hill. Located about three miles to the West of 985, or, Lanier Parkway, (that’s what 85 splits into about 30 miles outside of the city.) this is probably considered one of the last suburban outposts before you get north of the lake, into “Banjo Territory.” (that’s what I call it anyway.)

My mother’s neighbors, a darling young thirty-something couple, has been paying me to house and dog sit for them for almost five years now. The last of these house-sitting ventures concluded about a month and a half ago; but it did not conclude without mishaps that, for some reason, occurred this time, as opposed to the last four-odd times I’ve stayed there.

Here is a invoice of the things that I owe my neighbors:

-One beach-themed plastic plate. (microwaved, when not microwave-safe. This is a very important loss to them, due to the fact that they eloped to the Bahamas about ten years ago, and their ENTIRE HOUSE is beach-themed. Shit.)

-One green, plastic colander. (microwaved, when not microwave-safe. During a drunken hunger-fest, I decided that the Pop Secret! Super Butter! would be too buttery, so I opened the package, rinsed all the pseudo-butter off, and threw it in the colander with a little salt and tucked that safely in a microwave; not even considering, of course, that all the salt fell right through the holes. I probably should have kept the result and called it ‘art’.)

-One Crate and Barrel Storage Table Unit. (gorgeous piece of furniture, and handy. It stores books, DVDS, remotes, and goes with just about anything. Unfortunately, it’s finish does not necessarily stand up to spilled nail polish remover. There is a much more interesting story behind this that I am simply too ashamed to share, but regardless: it was a gorgeous piece of furniture.)

- One wooden toilet seat. (no telling what exactly happened here. According to my boyfriend, it was whole one minute, and the next, it was split in half. This was also a crucial beach-themed ornament for their house. Or, at least, the top of the seat was, not the wooden, put-your-cheeks-here-part.)

Despite this poor couple’s multiple costs to their love nest, the female of the two recommended my dog/house sitting services to her sister, who lives here, in Sugar Hill. Thusfar in the week, things have been going just fine. Their dog is sweet, so is their cat, and the area is filled with wildlife. They even have a zip line out back that proves faster than I could ever imagine.

But the house is located in a subdivision that should probably be right out of The Stepford Wives. As a matter of fact, this neighborhood is so ’secure’, that they felt it necessary to instruct the people that live two doors from this house to re-paint the door to their house, which is red. Apparently the Neighborhood regulators claimed that it looked, and I quote my semi-employers, ‘like a house of ill repute.’

Besides the ridiculousness and the shitty weather, I’ve been having fun out here. It’s nice to be outside of the city for a while. I actually saw some deer, and an enormous rabbit. The ‘Hooch is a little low, (that’s slang for the Chattahoochee River to all you Yankees) but it’s been that way for a couple of years, due to the drought. I still would like to float it maybe later in the week. I’ll have to ask around, see if anyone wants to blow up a ‘tube and float on down with me. Of course we’ll have to design some sort of rudimentary device that will be capable of floating a cooler full of beer.

It’s good to be a-breathin’.

Tuesdays are Spoken-for.

I completely forgot to mention that that last entry was incomplete. I bet that last sentance was a little bizarre. I will have to check with Alissa on the ‘unfinished blog’ etiquitte.

Tuesdays are Karaoke night at the Famous, and for the life of me, I cannot understand why people hate Karaoke so much. Worst-case scenario, you show up just to watch, and everyone that gets up and sings sucks worse than anything the human ear has ever encountered, and you get some free entertainment that can, if you so desire, be magnified by the SAFE usage of alcoholic beverages. What’s the down side here?

Even if it’s not for some, I think the reason that the Famous is such a perfect venue for this long-running bar activity is because, as I explained in my last entry, the Back Bar (the ‘Sports Palace’ to some) is outfitted perfectly to accomodate this sort of thing. I’ve been to one or two Karaoke nights at assorted bars all around town, and I must say that being on a stage has a real effect on one’s performance. It usually seems to make the suckers suck harder and those with real talent shine brighter. I think it’s the best entertainment you can find at a bar.

It could be that I’m partial to Famous Karaoke because of the sweet little troll of a Lemmy wanna-be that runs the whole gig for Bob’s Karaoke. (we will call him ‘Jay’)

However, he can grow to be a little weird and plus he cut the Lemmy ’stache recently. A few months ago, a friend of mine used to work behind the bar on Tuesdays. She has since been fired, but that also has not stopped me from attending nearly every Tuesday without fail. Or maybe it’s that one girl that always sings old country songs and hits the notes with a better, more mellow and buttery tone than the originial singers. I like watching her apply her God-given talent to Whitney Houston songs and matching the And Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeaaaaaiiii perfectly; and due to the fact that she can actually turn “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” into a pretty song, well, she’s pretty much a goddess among mere mortals.

I go for the combination of all those things, of course. But I think the highlight is living in the whole shadow of the Cheers legacy. A lot of people know my name. Not only the string of assorted acquaintences and co-workers that I have Pied Piper-ed in to coming with me every Tuesday, but also a lot of the staff and regulars. It’s a comfortable comradery that I think we lose when we leave High School and College.

So is that it? Is that what kept Cliff, Norm and Frasier always coming back? Why do we want everyone to know our names?

This coming Tuesday is going to be pure Roman debauchery. Whether I decide to drink or not, I’ve already got a fairly lengthy list of songs I plan on butchering, and I’ve been practicing in the car. One of my co-worker regulars is finally going to be over his tonsil/adnoid removal surgery, and I plan on a Misfits duet. Life is sweet.

Getting Along Famously

So if it was not clear from the description, this blog is focused mainly on Atlanta and the places and people here. It will act as a product review outlet, a critique on mankind making his way in the heart of the South, and lastly, a memory album of sorts, in case I do have to leave the city of my birth. Or, at least, that’s what I hope it will become.

Let’s start with Decatur. I’m sure we’ll return there, and for now we can use it as a launching pad. Tucked in the Toco Hills shopping center on North Druid Hills Road, this dive-y bar doesn’t appear to have a lot going for it. Once through the front door, you will feel much the same way. If you order the chicken fingers, they will probably taste like many other chicken fingers you’ve had. The wait staff is courteous and fairly attractive, and the pool tables are in good condition. You’ll find a decently-sized, Emory-laced crowd there just about every night. At first glance, there is absolutely nothing special about the Famous Pub what-so-ever.

You’d probably totally miss the back hallway altogether if the bathrooms and the old Asteroids machine weren’t back there. Above the double doors is a neon sign declaring, in tacky relief, that the darkened cave you’re entering is known as the “Sports Palace.” Now if you want a good place to go, drink a Miller and strain your neck to watch one of the 4 wall-mounted projection T.V.s, then this truly is it. But if you find yourself in the Sports Palace on, say, a Saturday night, well. You’ll probably be the one person there that isn’t dancing.

Of course you could go to any old club to dance, but why pay for entry and over-priced pink drinks? At Famous, you can walk right in, go to the back and get your groove on. There are tables, for the less-adventurous, (or those just looking to be entertained) and of course there’s always the bar back there, and even two more pool tables. But for those with a wild hair, there is the tiered dance floor with the twin stripper poles at the back. Most come in with noses in the air when they see the poles for the first time. And I will freely admit, their presence can, on occasion, cause one to re-evaluate one’s presence at the Famous. However, they are rarely used, and when they are, the occupants are usually too drunk to realize that their performance is not going to cause ‘it’ to ‘rain’, nor is anyone remotely aroused. Therefore, the situation goes from laughable to downright priceless.

Now. With all this having been said, you can probably discern that I highly recommend the Famous Pub as a socializing locale just about any night of the week. But I have not yet mentioned Tuesdays.