Fine Dining

Baby, my plan is to take you to the finest cafe in Atlanta.

As Seen on TV in Underground

I really respect a store that refuses to acknowledge that the internet exists and has somehow done so since 1988. Fuck the internet. I only buy what I see on TV! Always have, always will.

Collect Them All

Memorial Drive Chevron has ALL my holiday gift needs covered.

I Have a Comment

Last comment received: August 12th, 1996.

I just wanted to say that we've been so impressed with the MARTA service for the Olympics. An international city with world class transportation! Great work MARTA!

weird dude, where you headed?

i like to imagine that this guy was totally pissed that his girlfriend asked him to pick up a twelver of Mountain Dew Voltage and some contact lens solution right after he got ready for Dragon Con.

nobody sends Saruman to the CVS!

Dear AJC.com "My Style"

Dear AJC.com "My Style" Column,
Don't you ever change.
Love,
Me

the strangest flyer

this was pinned to a utility pole in my neighborhood. i still have no idea what it means.

Great Moments in Marta Advertising

You know that new movie, the one where a madman takes a train full of innocent transit riders hostage? You know what would be a really clever place to promote that movie? How bout a train full of innocent transit riders!

Sure enough, on my ride home on Marta last night, I watched in amused amazement as Transit TV broadcast the trailer for The Taking Of Pelham 123, complete with shots of a pistol-wielding Travolta forcing riders to the ground of a train cabin that looked a lot like the one I was currently sitting in.

I kind of thought I had imagined it, until I stepped out of the train a few minutes later and saw a HUGE AD for the same movie on the side of a Marta bus pulling out of the station.

Marta, I know they probably offered you like 250 dollars and all, but you're allowed to tell them no. Especially when its a movie about, you know, the threat of violence on public transit.

Atlanta's Regrettable Apartments

So, I think I'd like to start an ongoing survey of Atlanta's residential architectural mishaps. This little gem sits right down the street from me.  Nothing makes me feel quite as noble as entering my townhouse through a triumphal Roman arch. It also offers the convenience of having your front door sit immediately on the driveway. 

Neo Shark 4 Ever

I was in São Paulo Brazil a few weeks ago, and I kept a little journal of badass English expressions i saw on t-shirts, signs and graffiti. It's a weird thing, but I think the use of edgy-sounding English words down there implies something cool is automatically being expressed. And it absolutely is.

Graffiti
"Neo Shark 4 Ever"

T-Shirts
"College Attitude Is Only Hard Rock"
"Cyberdogg 2008"
"Cash For Chaos"

Clothing Stores
"Dress to Party"
"Opera Rock"

P.S. Enlarge image to check out the crafty broken bottle anti-burglar terracotta shingles.

please don't

i often find myself having a conversation with friends about what sort of things i would want in my neighborhood. a good deli, pizza by the slice, cheap asian food/karaoke and, of course, high-end pet clothing and accessories for the discernible animal.

finally my dog and i can have matching juicy couture sweatsuits.

plus, small dogs can get an "anal tidy".

Change of Heart

Has anybody else noticed how the Joel and Associates dude has gone all soft recently? What happened to the angry dad x3 who used to scowl at me from the side of every Marta bus in metro Atlanta? The new chin-on-fist Olan Mills shot brings to mind a swan trainer or dollhouse collector, which is simply not going to cut it when I sue my boss for letting me burn myself on the break room toaster oven.

awesome and painful

i came across this looking for a paul simon video on you tube.

it's almost so earnest you can't make fun of it.

Enlarged to Show Detail

An Unfortunate Decision on Spring Street

Sometimes when I'm at work and need to "clear my head," I'll go for a walk through midtown. The other day I was on one such walk when I spotted a pile of discarded CDs and party fliers in a lonely patch of weeds across from the Cheetah (I go there for the articles).

One way to know for sure that a demo CD is going to be awesome is if you find it half buried in mud and Arby's coupons outside an Atlanta strip club. So I dusted off my copy of "Thou Art Traficking Cocaine" and brought it back to play in my computer at work.

Well, now its stuck in there, making sandy grinding noises. I've been avoiding getting the IT guy involved, cause then I'll have to tell him the whole shameful and gross backstory -- "it's a perfectly honest mistake, you see, I found a compact disc on the side of the road and crammed it into this nice computer I don't deserve."

Now I'm going to have to belly up to the Apple "Genius Bar" and take my medicine. After they vacuum the georgia clay out of my computer and make me feel small, I'm going to go down to the lenox mall food court and eat a sad sack of Taco Bell cinnamon twists, occasionally looking up from my plastic tray for someone to be my friend.

Bolton Road Break Up

Back when I lived on Atlanta's west side (or the NWATs, as no one calls them), I used to go to this gas station on Bolton Road that had these incredible gas pump ads for low budge online greeting cards with strange as hell phrases addressing abstract emotional concepts.

My favorite was the "Break Up" card (shortened to an elegant "BU" brushstroke for stylishness purposes). Perhaps the clearest way to tell someone you don't want them in your life anymore is to break up with them via online greeting card you saw advertised on a gas pump handle.

one sad little park

As we all know, the "city of trees" is, ironically, totally deficient in green space.  So, despite it's lush canopy, I was further saddened to see that this counts as open space in our city. A 12' median in Vaggie-Hi.

At least we have Piedmont Park!

Spread the Love

I guess this makes up for holding a prayer sesh for rain on the capitol steps last year.

“It’s about three hours of the most fun you could possibly have,” 

a special valentine

another email from the archive for valentine's day

-----Original Message-----
From person 1
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 4:27 PM
To: person 2
Subject: RE: farwell ballzton

What's her last name? It's time for a Google/Friendster search.
I know it might not cool, but hey, I like to cyberstalk people! So sue me!


From: person 2
To: person 1
Subject: RE: farwell ballzton
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 15:21:44 -0500

yeah, right. like i'm gonna tell you her last name. please, i can already
see the forthcoming mockery of her friendster profile. i only say that
because if i didn't know her, i'd likely do the same.
are you and b-bag doing anything for valentine's day?
body chocolate anyone?
i'm gonna stand in her doorway nude and cover myself in magic shell.
then i'll just yell until she answers the door.
then i'll clench my ass muscle and crack the entire shell.


-----Original Message-----
From: person 1
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2006 3:24 PM
To: person 2
Subject: RE: farwell ballzton

Don't be a pussy, Sack--I have two words for you: AIR POWER.

What if when you clenched your ass muscle the shell didn't break. And you
were just standing there making a grimacing face and she was just watching,
waiting for something to happen?

Mile High Atlanta

West Georgia municipal airport + pubed-up cot + certificate of achievement = the most creative Valentine's Day date you ever got divorced on.

Throw in a bottle of Cook's and a keepsake c-rag, and you have yourself one classy Hotlanta drill sesh.

Dave Navarro

So there's this flyer on my walk home from the bus and it makes me think two things.

A) For those of you who felt sorry for yourself that you had nothing to do for new year's, you could have been somewhere much, much worse.

B) You missed out on the most balls-down party imaginable. 

DeKalb Bangerz

Ummm . . . if you haven't had a chance to check out DCPD Bangerz, it is pretty much the best album of all time.

The backstory is that the DeKalb County Police website used to have these awesome different themed lo-fi crunk instrumental beats for each section of the website. So this dude took all the beats from the site and made an entire concept album from them. The real genius of it comes in how he writes lyrics based on the police website info. To me the tightest joint of all is "Meet The Chief."

Full album + more info available here.

The only downside is that DeKalb County Police has now tragically removed the original beats from their site.

Introducing. . . the crazy bench!

(click to enlarge crazy)

People in Atlanta always want to whine about how we are second best at stuff. But I disagree. In my experience, Atlanta is a top tier town for chilling w crazy folk. You really don't have to do much digging to run into a guy who's screaming at his own hand while gesturing to some points of interest on an unseen wall map.

By way of example, I offer this piece of improvised furniture left by the two 50-year-old hermit dudes who used to live down the street from me, before promptly disappearing one day. There are plenty of second and third hand stories to share about these gentlepersons, but I think their own words (scrawled in blood-like red sharpie on a homemade bench) really paints the picture best:

Darryl
Clarence
Eating Food
Happy Meals
A Lot of Tickle
Yes Yes Yes Yes
Happy People
Private Shopping List
Remember to Have Sex
Naked Penis Big Dick

The Boy Who Loved Trolls

I had been puzzling for an irritatingly long time about a made-for-t.v. movie I saw a bunch of times as a kid but couldn’t remember the name of. The thing is, I remember EVERYTHING, so when a face or memory pops up in my mind and I can’t place it, I go a little nuts. I’m usually able to solve these quandaries with a good ‘ole search on the interweb. That’s where I found the title of a book I remembered reading in my childhood but all I could recall about it for years was that the story involved a creature called “the wicked Oni” who lived under the earth and had one eye and that it was incredibly creepy. (The book is called, “The Funny Little Woman”, by the way. It’s a Japanese folktale. Glad I put that one to rest!)

There were a few concrete elements I remembered from the t.v. show but most of it was the mood of it... the vaguely menacing and nightmarish quality. I remembered there being some sort of alternate universe that a kid goes to and realizes he can’t stay in. That’s about it. Then last week I had a breakthrough: one of the main characters was played by Sam Waterston. I thought I was on the right track until my various Google permutations for “Sam Waterston” 80s and t.v. yielded a bunch of unrelated garbage.

Until last night, that is, when I was bugging B with my various fruitless searches and finally came upon a filmography for Sam Waterston and scrolled down to the 80s part. The title I’d been searching for for years literally jumped out at me and I screamed it out: “The Boy Who Loved Trolls”! Lo and behold, there exists about 15 minutes of it on YouTube and goddamn, it’s exactly as I remember it: the weird synthesizer music, the narrator’s voice, the depressing mall montage, the condescending parents, the prepubescent boy and his inappropriate fixation on trolls (while at the same time admiring ladies lingerie?).

Take a look:

But what I didn’t remember (and wouldn’t have) were all the obvious drug references and the general bizarre spaciness of it all. (What’s up with all the rainbows?) B and I were watching it and remarking to each other, “These people were totally HIGH!” It was part of a series that ran on PBS in the 80s and 90s called “Wonderworks”. Back when I was a kid living with hippie parents out in the woods, our little t.v. only got one channel (unless it was windy) and it was PBS. At some point we got a VCR and it was a pretty big deal, but the great part is that we almost never rented VHS tapes... instead we would tape things off t.v. and watch them over and over when, say, PBS was running a pledge break. I remember taping various episodes of Wonderworks and basically memorizing them from start to finish. The trolls episode was one of them and obviously it’s never really left my consciousness.

With all that settled, I feel like I’ve reached a new chapter in my life. Next up: ordering the DVD from Amazon and totally tripping my balls off.

A thank you to the d-bag behind me

I was doing some work at a coffee shop in my neighborhood and some dude, who is clearly about to graduate from business school at Emory, assumed that everyone there wanted to hear his conversation. But it was worth it. No shit, this is what he said...

"My resume is FUCKING money! I mean, I killed it on my cover letter!"

Then he proceeded to read his cover letter to his friend over the phone. Trust me when I tell you his cover letter was far from "fucking money".  Still, I just want to thank that chump for providing me with such sweet overheard conversation.

this is how we party

just a couple dudes working it out

Electric Avenue

Electric Avenue, Vine City, Atlanta, GA

I hardly imagine this is where one might "rock down to".

Dinner at the Crub

For the first time in six years, B and I spent the holidays with his family in Florida instead of with my family in the Midwest. The benefits of this are numerous, not the least of which is: Christmas Dinner at the Club. B groaned and dragged his feet, dreading the unpalatable meal we would undoubtedly have, rushed by the unexplainable impatience of the elderly. But not me. I enjoyed every minute of the experience.

The last time we dined chez the Crub, you see, was Easter of 2007. The tables were decorated with pastel napkins, there was an ice bunny sculpture and, get this: a full Dixieland band. I wanted so badly to get up and dance (no one else was) but was cautioned against it in the name of humiliating B’s parents. Poor B passed the meal in an exceedingly hung-over state, begrudgingly ingesting one tiny bite of food every 10 minutes or so.

The Christmas experience was only slightly less entertaining than the Easter Extravaganza, due to the distinct absence of live music. But yet there was the requisite ice sculpture, the guy carving meat and making corny jokes, and loads of old ladies wearing sparkly vests and men sporting their holiday ties. I unabashedly loaded my plate with shrimp and crab salad and drank a split of Korbel before moving on to the dessert table for apple crumble and vanilla ice cream. It was glorious.

As if we had languished over our buffet-style meal (we had not), the room was nearly empty by the time we left. I was still finishing my wine when B’s father announced he would pull the car around (meaning, he would hand his keys to the valet) so I barely had time to avail myself of the free tampons and mouthwash in the ladies’ room before darting out to the running car to be whisked back to... nothing really. Door-to-door I’d say we were gone from the house for an hour and a half.

Sure beats being stranded in the Chicago airport for 11 hours listening to inane cell phone conversations and watching our delayed departure inch later and later.