Hotty Toddy, Part VIII: Naked Sorority Ghouls

The next morning, we slept in a little too late to go grab breakfast anywhere. We decided to brunch it Troy King style, so we all just nibbled on some moon pies and downed 'em with some RCs to tide us over till lunch. Our friend and Ole Miss grad Melanie Jolly (actually, she's my wife's friend, but if I don't also say she's my friend, too, then she might get miffed if she ever reads this. If she does, then, Hi, Melanie! How's the baby?) recommended Proud Larry's for a fine dining experience (her words). Proud Larry's is famous for its pizza, but Penny didn't want pizza (of course), so we instead ordered calzones (which, you know, is completely unlike pizza) for all. I was hungry, so I almost finished half of mine before I grew so stuffed that I think I began hallucinating, 'cause the molecular structure of Mose Allison (whose concert poster was hanging on the wall) became suddenly apparent to me. Ooo-eee. We drove back to the Congo, dropped off the remaining calzone to-go boxes in the fridge, took a quick drive out to Sardis Lake,

and in about half an hour we all four got out to play. It was a beautiful day, a touch too humid for my liking, but Penny had packed our cooler with water and juice and diet snack crackers, so we were all good to go. We pulled the big green ball out of the hatch, and Nicholas and I played kick and catch for about five minutes. Georgia then decided she wanted to play, too, but that didn't last long; she asked Baboo to throw it to her, and he did...as if she were someone his size. She tried to catch the ball, but, in fact, the ball caught her. Not good. Time to put the ball away. Nicholas was bummed. Penny tried to cheer him up,

but it didnt' work. He moped around and around, his head down, not looking where he was going, and then WHAM! He ran into a large metal pole*. It was the playground! We all ran over to play on the elaborate set. Nicholas had fun there on his own, but I had to help Georgia walk up the ramp, crawl through the tunnel, and walk down the slide about fifty times, repeating the same pattern, never deviating. Penny helped by keeping our morale up, sitting on the bench, eating her diet snack crackers, and cheering whenever it seemed like we (meaning I) needed an uplift.

Thirty minutes later, Georgia started getting fussy, and she needed a diaper change. Penny took her to the bathroom, and Nicholas tagged along. He came back quickly, though, and asked me if could play kick and catch till they returned. I obliged. We kicked the ball back and forth for a few minutes, then we decided to start being creative with our kicks. Nicholas displayed his Karate Kid Crane Kick, which you can see below.

Before that, I showed Nicholas my jump-up-in-the-air-then-do-a-split-then-land-kicking-the-ball trick, which I termed my So-You-Think-You-Can-Dance-Winner-Josuhar-Pookie-Allen Kick. Unfortunately, Penny hadn't yet returned from the restroom in time to snap a picture of it.

We soon grew hot and tired, and we left the Lake. On the way back, Penny and I talked about needing to go back home tomorrow, and Nicholas sighed. We told him that he knew that we'd eventually have to return to our house, and hadn't we had fun yet? He said he had. Why the sigh, then? Nicholas told us that all Dad talked about on the way up was going ghost hunting, and that we hadn't seen any yet. Yeah, kid, that's what you think.

Penny reminded me that I was thinking out loud again. Oops. "Well," she told Nicholas, "I believe there's still one haunted place we haven't been, right Dad?" I nodded.

"What's that?" Nicholas asked.

"It's a haunted fraternity," I told him.

"What's a fraternity?" he asked.

Penny interjected, "Nicholas, a fraternity is a group of boys who live together in the same house in college because they don't know how to live with girls and are too childish to live on their own."

Nicholas then asked why this fraternity we were going to see was haunted. I told him the haunted fraternity house were going to see, Delta Psi's St. Anthony Hall, has been haunted for quite a number of years by....

"Let me tell this one," Penny said. "Nicholas, it all began nineteen years ago, in the fall of 1989. In the fraternity house lived a big-headed young man...."

"Did he really have a big head," Nicholas asked, "or did he just think he was great?"

"Both," Penny said. "This young man-everyone called him BM."

"Mom," Nicholas said, "that's ugly. That's what the doctor calls it when you have to go to the bathroom. BM stands for poo-poo."

"It sure does," Penny said. "Anyway, BM lived in St. Anthony's Hall with all his friends. At night, they liked to get together to talk about all the sorority girls they wanted to date, whether they were pretty or nice or smart or not. Well, what BM's fraternity friends didn't know was that BM had been doing the unthinkable: he was dating a girl...who was not in a sorority! Of course, he was dating her before he ever joined the fraternity, but he didn't tell his friends that. That's important, because in a fraternity, you have to date a sorority girl, or your friends won't think you're cool anymore--and BM wanted his friends to think he was cool ('cause he really wasn't).

Nicholas giggled, and then he asked "Then why'd the girl who wasn't in a sorority ever go out with him then?"

I added, "Yes, I'd like to know that one myself."

"Oh...who knows," Penny said. "It's just a story. Anyway, one night BM and his girlfriend were attending a party on campus. Some of BM's buddies came by, and BM started talking to them, never introducing his girlfriend. A few minutes later, a girl walked by, and one of BM's friends asked her if she was in a sorority. She said she was. They then told BM that he should go talk to her and maybe ask her out on a date. He said to them, "That's a great idea. Don't mind if I do." BM's girlfriend was shocked--how could he say such a thing in front of her? BM then turned to his girlfriend and said to her, "Honey, I'm sure you understand. She's in a sorority, and--well--you're not. Don't worry, though. If she doesn't like me, I'll come right back. Don't go anywhere, now!"

"What'd the girlfriend do?" Nicholas asked.

"She stayed right there, didn't she?" I responded.

"No! She did not!" Penny said. "As soon as BM left, the girlfriend rushed to the kitchen, grabbed a steak knife, and went upstairs to BM's room. She waited for hours, and then finally, she heard a high-pitched giggle: it was BM. She heard a girl with him, too. She waited behind the door, and when it opened, the girlfriend rushed over and chopped BM's head off! Yeah!"

"With a steak knife?" I asked her.

"It was sharp," Penny said, "but I'm not done. As soon as his big head fell on the floor, it was so heavy, that it crashed down to the floor below, leaving a huge hole in its place. The girlfriend wasn't done, and she pushed the sorority girl down the hole, too. Then, the girlfriend ran downstairs, out the door, and was never heard from again."

"You sure about that?" I asked her.

"I'm just repeating the story as it was told to me," Penny said. "And to this day, Nicholas, the boys who live in that fraternity still say that on some nights--and some afternoons, too--they see a huge head, floating around the house, looking for it's body."

Nicholas didn't move. He was frightened. Why? For there was the haunted fraternity!

Okay, so it doesn't look so frightening in that picture, so how about this?


Ah-hah! That's more like it. We asked Nicholas if we wanted to go inside and tour the house, but he politely declined. 'Bout this time, Georgia woke from her nap, and she told us she wanted to go to her favorite place: Wal-Mart.
So, we went to Wal-Mart. Shopped. Took a picture of a bird in the parking lot.

After eating left-over calzones for supper, we wound down by watching Ratatouille. As soon as Georgia fell asleep, Nicholas asked if I ever saw a ghost in that fraternity. I told him no. He asked if it were possible for the ghost of that fraternity to follow us back to the Congo. Penny and I both told him no. Why was he asking? "Because," he said, "there's one here in the Congo right now!"

Tomorrow: Hotty Toddy, Part IX: The Finarle.

*Note - Later, Nicholas told me that he didn't bump into the pole by accident. He told me he was imitating his mom, who once ran accidentally ran into a goalpost while running laps around the track next to her high-school football field.

Hotty Toddy, Part VII: Who Do You Love

After cleaning ice cream off the kids, we drove back out to Taylor (but I made sure we steered clear of the Idea House) to dine at the Taylor Grocery Restaurant, which Penny and I had wanted to see and visit for several years. Since Georgia had fallen asleep (thank goodness) on the way over, Penny let Nicholas and me out to go reserve a table. We had to wait for thirty-or-so minutes, but we didn't mind it, 'cause the temperature started to drop, and a nice breeze blew by every now and then while we were sitting on the porch waiting for our table.
After about ten minutes of waiting, Nicholas told me he wanted to go inside the Taylor Arts store, adjacent to the restaurant. Penny had taken him in there the day before while I was browsing through Square Books, and Nicholas had seen a plane that he wanted. I looked at the price tag and told Nicholas that I didn't think it was feasible for us to buy him another wooden toy because the last one he received has been sitting underneath the bedroom dresser for just about a year now. He asked, "Feasible means the fee's too much, doesn't it?" Something like that, yeah. I did see a carved wooden piece that I would have liked to buy, however. A local Taylor artist had carved a rectangle-heavy, three-foot sculpture of Bo Diddley, complete with cigar-box guitar. The clerk told me that the artist always carved a sculpture for her store of any Mississippi artist that had recently died. Ouch. Anyway, the scupture only cost $375; a fair price, I thought, and oh, it was sweet. If you squint real hard, you can see it, head and feet obscured, through the right picture window in the picture below, just behind/underneath the red/yellow sailboat.

But oh, how to justify to Nicholas buying that for myself when I wouldn't buy him the wooden plane. Hmm. "Nicholas, when Mom comes up, why don't you tell her that--since she didn't buy me anything for Father's Day--that this sculpture would be a very nice gift."

"Who is that, Dad?"

"You know who it is!"

"No, Dad, I don't know who it is. Why don't you just tell me?"

"Well, let me give you a hint. 'Who Do You Love?'"

"Mom," he said.

"Okay...let me try another one. See if you can finish singing this song."

"Dad, I'm not going to sing."

"Okay, then just say the words."

"What words, Dad?"

"Just listen. Here goes: 'Women here, women there....'" Nothing. "Okay, here's another hint: 'Women, women, everywhere'" and I immediately pointed at him, and...nothing. "Okay, here's a big hint. I'm going to sing, and I want you to answer. Okay?" He nodded. "'Hey, Bo Didd-ley!" Again, nothing. "C'mon, Nicholas. I just gave it to you. Here it goes again: 'Hey, Bo Didd-ley!'"

"I...I got nothing, Dad."

"C'mon, son, we used to sing that one in the Jeep!"

"You used to make me sing that in the Jeep."

"You enjoyed it."

"No, Dad. You enjoyed it because I didn't."

"Nicholas! I would never do that."

"Whatever, Dad."

"Anyway, you should know who it is by now, son. Who is it?"

"Duh, Dad. It's Elvis." At that moment, Penny walked up. I nudged Nicholas and told him to ask her. "Mom, Dad says that since you didn't get him anything for Father's Day, that you should get him that statue of Elvis in there, but I don't think that's fair, because he wouldn't get me the plane 'cause he didn't have enough fees."

"Oh...he did, did he?" asked Penny.

"Yeah, he did."

"Ask him how much it costs." I told them. "Okay. Nicholas, please tell your father that I would gladly buy him that for Father's Day...if it was still Father's Day."

He told me. We waited around for about fifteen more minutes while Nicholas and Georgia tried their best to break either the rope or the bell that was attached to the door. Just about when the rope's threads started to unravel, a waitress came outside and told us our table was ready. We went in and sat down and began sweating, for the restaurant took its theories on how best to cool an old building in the South in the summertime from William Faulkner instead of his wife. We then gawked at all the old-timey, tacky, and incongruent decorations around the restaurant.

While we were looking over the menus, a young man--Chad Nordhoff--started singing and playing guitar on the restaurant's small (about three by five) stage. He played a few blues songs, some gritty original fare, and come outlaw country. He had--and I'm sure still has--a great blues voice, gruff and serrated, and his guitar playing matched his voice, all meaty and ruff-and-tumble. About four-or-five songs into his set, our waitress arrived and took our orders. Since so many of our Rebel friends had highly recommended it to us (all using those exact same words, "I highly recommend..."), Penny and I both ordered the catfish; mine blackened, and hers, uh, not. I don't quite remember what Nicholas ordered, but I'm sure it was chicken tenders or chicken strips...but it could have been fish that we just told him tasted like chicken.

Georgia, on the other hand, decided to play the part of the true Southern Belle. She removed her bib, placed it on her lap, ever-so-slightly threw her head back, smiled, and said, "Why thank you, m'am, I'd be glad to place my order. Hmm. Well, so that I'll still be able to maintain my girlish figure, I fear I must forego the appetizer, but I'm sure you quite understand. For my entree, though, I'd like to request something not on your menu. Now, don't fret dear child, as fine a restaurant as yours I'm sure would have no problem whatsoever in obliging me my one simple desire, and I'm sure it will be no trouble a'tall, for, as you see dear, all I want...is just a mite bit of ketchup and lemon. Just a smidgen."

The waitress and the cook did indeed oblige, serving Georgia her meal just a few moments later. She ate it daintily, as a true lady should, and later paid the waitress the nicest of compliments. Nicholas enjoyed his chickenfish, and as for Penny and me...to us, the catfish was divin...okay. The catfish was catfish. It was good, though.

Penny tidied up the kids as I waited in line to pay our ticket. By the time it was my turn at the register, Penny and Georgia and Nicholas were at the door, waiting on me. I paid, told the clerk we enjoyed it, open and held the door for my family, and I looked back in to nod at the clerk, but she wasn't there. In her place stood Colonel Reb, with a catfish head where his face should have been. It nodded at me. I didn't nod back. I hurried the family to the Jeep and told them that we had to get out of Taylor right now. Penny asked why, and--so she wouldn't think I was some sort of looney (for I was now sure she hadn't seen the Brownies earlier that day)--I told her I was having intestinal difficulties. This satisfied her curiosity, and we dashed back to the Congo. Of course, to keep up my ruse, I had to writhe in pain for a few hours, but it was worth it, for Penny was none the wiser, and--unless she reads this--she'll never have any inclination that Taylor wasn't the most idyllic of towns.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #314

#314: "Boll Weevil" (2005) - The Taylor Grocery Band



Since this week has been Oxford-Taylor Trip Week, what more serendipitous spot to drop the Taylor Grocery Band's one song on my countdown than right here, one post before I detail my family's visit to Taylor Grocery itself.


The band, of course, takes its name from the store, and the music they play perfectly captures the aura of the area, an amalgamation of blues and bluegrass, a combination of country and rock, a music they call electric catfish, which, according to the band, is "a collision of musical styles native to north Mississippi, combining the stomp of Memphis jug bands, the soul of delta R & B,the spirituality of country blues and the drive of appalachian string bands." Their description is more accurate than mine, though I'd argue with the "native to north Mississippi" line, as the Taylor Grocery Band's sound, whether purposeful or not, derives also from The Band, the Robbie Robertson musical group of "The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek" fame, four-fifths of whom were Canadian.

Being derivative of The Band is not necessarily a bad option, and it's quickly becoming a popular one, too...least it is 'round these parts, where roots music aficianados and troubadours sprout up quicker than Elvis sightings. Often, these folk artists (and jam bands, and country artists, and blues purists) pride themselves on their authenticity, how pure the music is. Pure poppycock to me, the theory that the more the music sounds real, the better it is. What's real music anyway? If I pull out my Casio keyboard (actually it's my son's) and plink out a Prince-esque melody, it's automatically worse than if, say, my organic-farmer/folk-musician friend pulls out his acoustic guitar and picks out a Mississippi John Hurt-style song? Well, in this case it would be, because I can't play piano and Daniel can play a guitar, and I can't sing and Daniel can, and I'm a terrible songwriter and Daniel's a good one...but still, you get my drift? No? I don't blame you. I'm awful at analogies.

Anyway, whatever my point was, the Taylor Grocery Band has, uh, nothing to do with it. Their music may sound authentically folk at one point, and phonily electric at another. From what I've seen (at the Neshoba County Fair three years ago) and heard (from their self-titled 2005 album, from whence this song hails, and their songs/videos at their MySpace site) from the band, they bring to the song whatever they think it needs, be it full drum set, electric guitar, cardboard box, or improvised-on-the-spot lyrics, even changing the song's structure around, whatever it takes to make it sound great...all of which amounts to a damning case of inauthenticity. The vulgarians! The heatherens!

Here, on the century (or more) old folk song, once recorded by the likes of Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, David Frizzell, Albert Lee, Jimmy Page (!), and Brook Benton (who had the biggest pop hit out of the song--and the biggest of his career--in '61, taking it all the way up to #2 on the Billboard charts), the Taylor Grocery Band take the chestnut, put it on the washboard, and scrub it clean, ridding it of the stink and stain of staying up in the antique store too long. They slow the song down, rid it of clutter, letting it breathe again, infusing it with a lively humor already inherent in the song, humor absent from every recording I've heard. This version actually comes close to being a novelty record--not there's anything wrong with that--but the Taylor Grocery Band boys are too talented to reduce this record to being just a joke song. It's funny, yeah (my family thinks it's a hoot), but the playing is hot, and the bluegrass-meets-barbershop-quartet harmonies are smooth and cool. Their "Boll Weevil" is a below-the-Mason-Dixon-line cousin and catfish kin to those WWII-era Spike Jones joints. Like those records, it's goofy, but it sure ain't no goof. For real.

Hotty Toddy, Part VI: The Cream and the Crack

From a museum housing a few twisted Southern Gothic sculptures we went to the home of the man without whom there would be no Southern Gothic: William Faulkner. Heck, even the assonant name of his home drips with Southern grandeur, corruption, and mystery.

I'd wanted to see Rowan Oak ever since high school, after reading "The Bear" and "Barn Burning" and "A Rose for Emily", and hearing Ms. Miriam Mars (then Long, now no Long-er) teach me and my classmates of the author's fictive families; and later in college, after reading "That Evening Sun Go Down" and As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury and Sanctuary, and hearing Dr. (can't remember his name) regale me and my classmates with tales the author's peculiar eccentricities. The man was no mere Nobel Prize-winning author; the man was a legend. All my English teachers (high-school, community-college, and university alike) deified and worshipped him to such a level that Faulkner would have been disgusted. Alas, he would have been disgusted with me, too, for I've romanticized the man as much as my teachers have.

Nothing de-mysticizes a man, though, as much as a trip through his house, and this axiom holds true--up to a point--for Faulkner as well. We saw the kitchen where he ate, the bed where he slept (with a marker stating, "Faulkner Slept Here"), the table (and wallpaper) where he wrote, and the books that he read--though I couldn't read the titles as they were too far away in the roped-off bedrooms, which just goes to show you that as educational an experience as this was, that Rowan Oak is a museum, not just a house, further romanticizing the notion of author as legend and celebrity, untouchable--in this case quite literally, keeping us at arms' length, all--intentionally or not--further perpetuating the aura of the South's exclusivity.

Adding to the legendary allure of Rowan Oak are occasional reports of a ghost--allegedly Faulkner himself--walking the grounds and writing on the wall of study, where he once in life scribbled down notes and outlines of his novel The Reivers in order to keep track of all his plot machinations. My son asked one of the tour guides of this ghost, and the guide told him that though he'd never seen nor heard him, those that had observed the specter had seen him in the study. We looked as closely as we could, but we neither heard nor saw the spook. Penny tried to take a few pictures of the room, so we could inspect them later for any evidence of supernatual skullduggery, but--for some reason--her camera stopped working. Just in that room. Hmm.

Still, the more I saw of Faulkner's home, the less I viewed him as a god sitting atop Mount Rowan Oak, and the more I saw of him as a man, a husband, a father: looking at his daughter's room and seeing the radio he bought her for Christmas one year; looking at his wife's bedroom and seeing the air-conditioner that she bought and had installed the day after Faulkner's funeral (for he refused to allow air-conditioning in his house). Here was a man whose genius not only left a prominent mark upon literature, but in fact created an entire sub-genre of fiction, a man whose books have had a lasting effect upon Southern society and its perception; yet, at his home, here was a man.

Leaving the house, we walked back down the oak-tree framed path leading to (and now away from) Rowan Oak's front door. I looked back. When we first walked up to the mansion, the grand stateliness of the surroundings intimidated, the path a red-carpet walk announcing the greatness of its owner. Now, the view--while still impressive--seemed less daunting, as a bit of the aura and air of awe punctured by Faulkner's own humanity. Just as we were nearing the turn near the gate, Nicholas stopped us and asked us if we heard that. Heard what? He told us to listen. I did. All I heard was the hot wind rustling the leaves. His mother asked him what he heard, and he said he heard different people whispering. What they whispering? He said he didn't know, that the words sounded funny. What were the words? He told us heard whispers of Compson, Snopes, and Sartoris. We looked at him, and then I felt the wind again, and I looked back to the house. From behind the trees stood several people, looking our way. These folks were not behind us on our way out. We had not seen them in the house nor on the grounds.
I turned to Nicholas and asked him if those people were the ones he heard whisper, and he asked me, "What people?" I looked back at the house, at the path, and they were gone. Had they hidden behind the trees? I walked back up the path to look, but I saw no evidence to reveal that they were there or, if they were, where they had gone. I strode back to my family and told them of my fruitless efforts. Penny asked Nicholas if he had seen anyone. He hadn't. Penny said she hadn't either. Nicholas looked at me and then turned to Penny. "Mom," he said, "Dad's a looney."
Penny giggled, but she then reached over and felt my forehead.

"Maybe so," she said, "but maybe he just got a bit too hot. I think he needs something to cool him down. I think he needs some...ice cream!" The children thought so, too, as they cheered, both chanting "Ice cream! Ice cream!" Penny rememberd a sign advertising the dessert somewhere on Oxford square, so we drove there to find some. We parked at one corner, and Penny got out of the Jeep to go over and check, just to be sure. When she shut her door, Georgia started crying--both for her mommy and for ice cream. I explained to Georgia that Mommy would be right back, and that we'd then go get ice cream, but she wasn't buying it. Georgia wanted her Oompa-Loompa now!

Penny came back, and before she ever got to the door, she started shaking her head, an ominous portent of doom. Penny told us that the store didn't sell ice cream, and the ice cream sign was in fact atop the sign for Square Books...which didn't sell ice cream either. Georgia screamed. I drove around the square again looking for some place that sold ice cream, but none was to be found, and Georgia screamed. We drove through downtown Oxford and noticed a Baskin Robbins in the distance, and told Georgia we'd found the ice cream store, and she still screamed. We tried to find a road enabling us access to Baskin Robbins, but we were unsuccessful, and Georgia screamed. We got lost and misdirected, and Georgia screamed. We then happened upon a McDonald's, and though I argued against it because if we bought Georgia ice cream there and then found Baskin Robbins, then Georgia would want even more ice cream, demanding to hold the McDonald's cone as well as whatever else we bought her...we pulled in line at the drive-thru, and Georgia screamed. Finally, we bought her a vanilla cone, and she stopped screaming (though she whimpered in-between licks).

We were still determined to find that Baskin Robbins store. After thirty more minutes of fruitless driving, just as we were about to give up and go home to the Congo, Penny spooted a sno-cone/yogurt stand. It wasn't Baskin Robbins, but--to paraphrase Eddie Murhphy--even a plain, stale, dry cracker would taste like a sumptuous saltine to a hungry man. I parked the Jeep in front of the stand's adjacent umbrella-covered tables and benches as Penny and Nicholas ordered four rounds of dairy delights. They returned, and we decided that since Georgia had calmed down, to just sit there, relax, and enjoy the spoils of the hunt. A few minutes later, our moment of reverie evolved into one of jocularity. A man and his wife came to sit at the table in front of the Jeep, the man with his back do us. Every time the man--whose shorts rode low on his waist--bent to take a bite of his yogurt, we cracked up.
Soon, our laughter grew to uproarious levels, and the stand's customers noticed, turning their heads our way. We didn't want their suspicion or our laughter to alert or embareass the plumber in front of us, so we left, returned to the Congo, and readied ourselves for supper.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #315

#315: "The Whole World" (2001) - OutKast

Dissertation: Multimedia Popularity and Personal Fulfillment in the New Millenium.(by) Andre Benjamin and Antwan Patton. November 11, 2001.

Abstract: The barrage of constant catastrophe mixed with the broadcast of innocuous, irrelevant material made newsworthy only by the beauty and celebrity of the subject often overlooks and overshadows the true tragedies and economic pitfalls of the common man, and despite such frightening information, one must make the music that gives meaning and clarity to life in the new millennium.

References: Shuffling, bouncy beat; tinny piano/keyboard; witty verses; and internal rhyme upon internal rhyme.

Hotty Toddy, Part V: The Sulton of Sw...whoah, what is that?

When we returned to the Congo, we washed our faces and cooled down, resting for a few minutes, deciding to forego lunch (as the Beacon's food still sat heavily). Though I contemplated staying at the Congo for the rest of the day in an effort to avoid any further phatasmagoric experiences, Penny convinced me to soldier on, for we didn't know when we would ever come back to Oxford and have this opportunity to visit all the unique places we'd heard about for so many years. We looked at the itinerary and saw that our next stop would be to the University Museums on campus.

We pulled into the lonely parking lot (our Jeep the only vehicle there), and Penny suggested putting Georgia in the stroller. Foolish woman. Didn't she know how ridiculous it would look to be pushing a stroller through an art museum? Didn't she know that our child would want out of the stroller not five minutes after we put her in there? "Oh, so let me see if I got this right," she said (for apparently, I didn't realize I had spoken my thoughts aloud). "You're the one that worries about being embarassed in front of two or three total strangers because you're strolling your two-year-old daughter, yet I am the one who's foolish? You're the one that would rather hold her for forty-five minutes straight instead of thirty, yet I am the one who's foolish? And--you're the one who says his wife is foolish out loud, in front of her, right when she's about to stroll your child, so you won't have to carry her, yet...."

"You're right," I said. "I'll get the stroller. I'm sorry. I was wrong." Penny harrumphed.

"Mom," Nicholas asked, "what are you and Dad arguing about this time?"

"About whether he's wrong or I'm right," she answered.

"Mom," Nicholas asked, "doesn't Dad know by now that you're always right? That's what you always tell him. Dad, you know Mom's always right. You shouldn't try to argue with her. That's foolish." Nicholas was more right than he knew.

I put Georgia inside the stroller, and we went inside the museum. The first exhibit we ran into (literally) was the Millington-Barnard Collection of Ninteenth-Century Scientific Instruments. The largest instrument displayed was a fifty-foot in diameter, hand-cranked, mobile of the solar system; this wrought-iron contraption greeted us at the door, and Nicholas greeted it back with his head (as he wasn't looking where he was going). He didn't hit too hard, though; we asked, and the mobile said it was okay. Other items among the antiquated artifacts and tools were: old sextons, quadrants, prisms, numerous swirly-durlies, mechanical bubbledy-pops, spinning whatzits, and the crumpled remains of the laboratory set--donated by Mel Brooks--from the 1931 Universal film Frankenstein (unfortunately, most of the truly marvelous equipment seen in the film was destroyed four years later when Boris Karloff pulled the level that caused Castle Frankenstein to collapse upon itself).

We next saw the David M. Robinson Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities, which showcased Greek and Roman vases and coins over two-thousand years old. The vases, my favorite aspect of the collection, were exquisitly carved and illustrated by master craftsmen (my God, I sound like a Franklin Mint commercial), and they depicted scenes from The Illiad, The Odyssey, and other poems by blind Grecian bards. I was particularly fascinated because not two weeks before, I had taught some of these stories, these legends of the Greek world of gods and monsters. Since Nicholas was by my side now, I thought that this would be the perfect time for a literary lesson in ancient literature. We closely examined the vases, and I began to regale him with stories of Perseus and Herakles, when--every time--he'd exclaim, "Dad! Look! A coin!" and we'd have to leave the vase and its story to determine if that coin was the quivalent of a quarter, or a nickel, or a penny, or a fifty-cent piece, or a silver dollar, etc... (Nicholas still thinks that the Greeks and Romans were pretty poor people because apparently they couldn't afford any Susan B. Anthony dollars).

We viewed an exhibit on quilts, one on Civil War memorbilia, on one dolls, and then--at the butt end of the museum--we saw an exhibit showcasing the sculptures/whittlings of the late Mississippi/New York folk artist Sulton Rogers, and I knew I was in the prescence of greatness...weird greatness. Rogers's carvings are the most nightmarish pieces of art I've ever seen first hand. The figures seem simple at first glance, resembling, from a distance, painted wooden pieces not unlike one might see at a county fair or fall festival, housed on tables and booths. Seen clearly and closely though, Rogers' art definitely stands head and tails and possibly an extra breast above (possibly below) and beyond the ordinary. Rogers's distinctiveness lies in his juxtaposition of the ordinary and the grotesque within the same figure. This quality lends his sculptures the disturbing air of the nightmare, where often what frightens are not the horrifically ugly, but the just slightly out of place--a normal person with cat eyes, or large pointed ears, or, well, just look:

D'ya see that middle guy? I've had nightmares about him before I ever saw that figure!

After being properly disturbed, we all made our way back through the museum to look at an exhibit of just ordinary (but, like, really really good) paintings, one of which depicted a pale, overweight, middle-aged man with long unkempt hair and a beard sitting on a tollet. Georgia looked up, pointed at the picture, and said, "Daddy! That Daddy!" Penny and Nicholas laughed for the next ten minutes solid, all the way out the door, into the Jeep, and over to our next destination....

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #316

#316: "Move by Yourself" (2006) - Donavon Frankenreiter

A week ago this past Thursday night, my band performed at the Neshoba County Fair. During our break, an adoring fan nicknamed Big Country asked me, "Hey, dude, ya'll know any Jack Johnson?"

"Naw, man. Sorry. We know some Robert Johnson, though." I told him.

"Is he, like, related and stuff, man?"

"Naw, man," I told him. "I don't think so."

He replied, "That's alright. But it'd be cool if he did." He walked off, and I saw someone ask him what I'd said. Big Country told the guy, "Nope. But, dude, they like know his cousin or something. Surfs, too, and all that stuff." They other guy gave Big Country a low five (backwoods brother of the high five), they both re-adjusted their straw hats, and walked away.

Why in the world would anybody in backwoods, central Mississippi care about surfing? Why would anybody raised in this state care about the music of Jack Johnson? Where did they learn of such things? Okay, I know they discovered the music in college, but the college they attend is Mississippi State University--the Cow College--only sixty miles away from home. Back when I was in school, the music fan's music was either metal or country, and that was all there was to it. Sure, at college, others not from around our part of the state listened to alternative music (R.E.M., Violent Femmes, Sonic Youth, etc...), and maybe we did, too, but when we came back home, to the Fair, we jammed out to the Crue, not the Cure.

For those of you who don't know, Jack Johnson--first a surfer, then a musician, now both--plays a variation of what's popularly known as jam band music. Jam bands are (primarily) rock bands that thrive on improvisation, playing music that's not written or previously rehearsed. It's somewhat akin to the bebop subgenre of jazz, but it's much more limited: jam bands vamp using much fewer root chords and chord progressions, the soloes aren't abstract or dissonant (in most cases), and the instruments used are different, too, obviously. It's jazz-lite. It's (often) for musicians who seem to snob and sneer at typical rock music, but still use the tenets of the (rock) genre as a basis to connect with their fans. Emphasis for jam bands is placed on instrumental creativity and prowess, while vocals, lyrics, melody, hook, and song structure are all of secondary importance. Multiple percussionists (sorry, bro) are often used so that the drummer can solo without worrying about keeping the beat. And then there are the fans.

The first modern (post WWII) jam band was the Grateful Dead, a group known as much for its followers--Dead-Heads--as it is for its music. Dead-heads traveled cross country with their band, attended mulitple shows, shared multiple bootleg tapes of these shows, and smoked multiple doobies. The Dead were around for so long, toured so often, that the original hippy Dead-Heads were joined by younger Dead-Heads, eager for a taste of the experience (which matters more to them than the music). Alas, the Dead died with Garcia in '87, and what were the new Dead-Heads to do? Why, they could latch on to the Dead's musical and spiritual successor: Phish. Now, we've got...Phish-Heads.

Phish, though (while being a much better band than the Dead), was a short-lived group (short-lived relative to the dinosaurian Dead), and even when they were together, they took lengthy hiatuses, leaving the Phish-Heads without a pond in which to swim. But soft! What light thru yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Widespread Panic is the sun. But soft! There's another light breaking thru yonder window. It is the, uh, west? And the Dave Matthews' Band is the sun! By this time, we're all living on Tatooine, as multiple jam-band suns start rising in every which direction: The String Cheese Incident, Gov't Mule, moe., Animal Collective, Ben Harper, G. Love & Special Sauce, Rusted Root, Medeski Martin & Wood, the aforementioned Jack Johnson, his friend and fellow surfer Donavon Frankenreiter... (ad nauseum).

Wait...did I just say Donavon Frankenreiter? But he's the one...it's his song being spotlighted here at spot #316, right? What gives?

Frankenreiter started his career on Johnson's heels. The two grew up together in California, surfed together, and after Johnson picked up a guitar, the two started jamming together. Johnson hit it big first, receiving widespread popular and critical acclaim (though not from this critic). Soon, Frankenreiter followed, releasing his solo debut in 2004, a record similar in style and sound (extremely laid back, think early-to-mid '70s AM radio) to the records Johnson (who produced Frankenreiter's debut) had recorded. His album was a massive hit in Australia (they've got surfing, too), and his constant touring (and association with Johnson) won him enough acclaim that he was able to change surfboards in 2006 to a more prominant record label (Lost Highway, who've released recent albums by Elvis Costello, Ryan Adams, and Willie Nelson).

There must have been something in the water at Lost Highway, because Frankenreiter's first album from them (second solo) departed as greatly from the sound/style of his first album as could have been conceiveably possible. It's one helluva bold move. The lush tones and acoustic strumming of his debut were replaced with honest-to-Stevie-Wonder funk. "Move by Yourself," the first single and best track on the album, epitomizes these changes, as Frankenreiter uses his stoner voice to surf along the hard-hitting waves produced by the funkiest drumming and clavinet playing since Stevie pounded that very-same shore with "Superstition" back in '71. No other jam band/performer has ever ridden a groove as great as this one; moreover, it's a groove with direction, the instrumentalists well-rehearsed, knowing exactly where they're going, pulling us up by our swim trunks and taking us with them, daring us not to dance--with our feet and hips, not just with our hands. I can dig this. Pass the surfboard on the left-hand side.

Hotty Toddy, Part IV: The Haunting of Idea House

After making the ten-minute jaunt to Taylor, we parked and walked to see the Southern Living Idea House.


The clear sky, the sun, and the three-mile walk from the parking lot to the house itself helped clear our dazed and confused minds, putting us all in much better moods. The event drew a healthy attendance, but the numbers weren't overwhelming, and we didn't feel crowded. We reminded Nicholas not to touch anything, and we told Georgia the same, and she agreed, but we wondered how much of our warning she understood, for as soon as we walked up the brick steps to the front porch, Georgia said "Jump!" and bounced from the third step right into the flower bed. "Look Mommy! Flowers!" she said as she ripped a dozen or so buds off the stems, quickly reducing them into colored clumps in her fists. I picked her up, and we entered the house.

Penny and I admired the house. It was spacious, the layout uncluttered, allowing one to flow through the house easily. The designers used just-this-side-of-pastel colors and selected furniture that looked comfortable and unfussy. The house seemed like someone's home, it seemed clean but almost lived-in, and that overall sense of unpretentiousness put us (somewhat) at ease; we didn't feel as if we were walking through an antique store, as if the kids were going to break something with every step and touch.


Our children enjoyed walking through the house as much as we did. They liked the openness of it, the cleanliness. Nicholas remarked, "Dad, why can't our house ever be this clean?" Instead of answering Nicholas verbally, I chose to turn him around and point towards his sister, who had just discovered the childrens' niche and shelves and was now in the midst of emptying her third basket full of toys, strewing them about on the floor, tossing them back over her head, saying, "Whee! Toys!"
She and I cleaned up her mess, and to insure that she wouldnt' create similar havoc again if ever I took a second to blink, I told her of the toy trolls that traveled through the air vents in the ceiling, coming down to carry away little girls who left toys in the floor. She looked at me and said, "Daddy? Georgia have a troll, please?"

"Dad," Nicholas said, "she doesn't even know what a troll is. She doesn't even know what a troll looks like."

"Do you know what a troll looks like?" I asked him.

"Duh, Dad. A troll's a hairy creature, who stinks, who wears ugly caps, and who has an ugly face." Penny then came by and fussed at Nicholas for talking badly about his father. I asked her if she was ready to go, and she said she was, but she wanted to look at the kitchen one more time.

"Here," she said, handing me the camera, "take a picture of us. I want to be on your Hoddy Toddy, Part IV blog post!' I took the camera, told them to say cheese, but my hair dipped down into my mouth, and my words came out mangled. Nicholas told me he thought I told him to "feign sleep," while Georgia--and who knows how she interpreted what I said--didn't say cheese, either. She said, "Trolllll!"

We went downstairs and paid closer inspection to the kitchen. It was roomy, plenty of counter space, held five hundred and fifty-two cabinets, and had an oven whose door resembled two regular pull-out drawers. This disguise impressed me, and I called Penny over to look at it. "See," I said, " it looks like just a regular drawer, but it's actually the door to the oven!" I then pulled open the drawer/door to show her the ooh-coolness, and...I jerked a bit too hard. The drawer/door came off its hinges and screws to reveal not the inner workings of the oven, but the inner workings of a miniature factory, populated by acorn-topped brownies.
One of the tiny creatures, apparantly the foreman/leader as signified by the flowers adorning his acorns, shouted something harsh to his hundreds of workers, and he stormed over to me. He raised his mushroom stalk, shook it at me, condemning me in a language I didn't understand. Then, he spat at me and walked back to his previous post overlooking the other brownies. He crossed his arms, took one look back at me, exclaimed something profane, and stared. I think I understood the spirit of his speech, if not the word. I quickly put the drawer/door back in place.

I looked around to see if anyone had noticed, and I saw Penny's face right in front of mine. Startled, I slipped down. She told me to get up, that she wanted to walk out back and look at the guest house. I asked her if she had seen what I had seen, and in response, she handed Georgia to me, telling me it was my turn to carry her. She left the kitchen. I followed.

The guest house was fully equipped with cot, sink, tollet, curtains, carpet, and an artist's easel. A canvas sat atop the easel, and someone--maybe even from the Taylor community--had drawn in pencil & ink a sketch of Ole Miss's mascot Colonel Reb, in his traditional stance, with a catfish head in the place of the Colonel's head. Supposedly a mish-mash of the nearby university and the seafood catch du jour of Taylor, the piece, I'm sure, was designed to be kind of cute, kitschy, ginchy; it didn't have that effect on me, though. To me, it looked like equal parts Hieronymus Bosch and Norman Rockwell, maybe something designed by a Southern Gothic Lewis Carroll. It unnerved me, and I had to get out.

Georgia and I left Satan's little back-deck cottage, and we noticed a cute little doghouse (must have cost two grand, easy). Georgia let her mother know what she saw, so Penny and Nicholas (finally) came out of the cabin to coo over the dog house. Penny then said she wanted to go stand under the gazebo, that in this light and on this day, it would make for a perfect Canon XL-250 GPS moment. We then heard a cat meow from somewhere within the doghouse, and this tickled Nicholas, who noted the irony. As I tried to explain what the term irony meant, giving cogent examples of the three types from both literature and foreign film, Georgia wandered to the opening of the doghouse. She peered inside and said, "No, troll, no! Let Kit-Cat go! Let Kit-Cat go!" I ran over and jerked her up, not wanting to think about to whom she was talking. I told Penny it was time to go. She grumbled, but we left.

By that time, it was nearing noon, and the early pleasant atmosphere gave way to Southern heat & humidity. After the five-mile trek back to the parking lot, I was drenched with sweat, and we were all thirsty. Luckily, the fine folks of Taylor seemed to be holding some type of flea/farmer's market, and the shading tents and mason jugs of lemonade there sure looked inviting. As we approached the culinary market, we heard music, and we saw three musicians atop the bed of an old pickup. They were playing Bob Dylan's "You Ain't Going Nowhere," and the woman singing was fantastic, using her drawl to great effect.
We all perked up, but as we approached the tents, I noticed a strange smell. I asked Penny if she smelled it; she did. "Pee-you," Georgia said. We then noticed a two-story house to the left. The bottom floor's windows showed what looked like some time of diner or bar or restaurant inside, so Penny told me to walk over there and get us all something to drink, that she'd just wait with the kids, as she needed to stop walking for a little while.

I walked up to the door and was about to open it, but I looked inside the door's window first. I'm glad I did. The room was filled with people, all dressed in the same khaki pants, all wearing the same style of Polo shirt, some white, some black, some grey, some maroon. They moved and mingled about robotically, from table to table, none of them ever sitting, mouths open and closing, but--and I knelt down (so as not to be noticed), and I pressed my ear against the crack in the door to be sure--only talking gibberish. Their eyes were all glazed over, and their skins all pale. Something evil this way had come...and stayed. I didn't want to stay with it.

I non-chalantly walked back to my family, and I told them that a private party was being held in the house, and that we just needed to go, that we'd be okay once we got the air-conditioner going in the Jeep, that the Congo was just ten minutes away, and that we could get something to drink there, that we could wait that long. We started walking to the Jeep, and Nicholas asked me about asking those people over there [by the tents] for some lemonade. I told him that he wouldn't like it, that there was something in the water here.

"Dad," he said, "I don't want water; I want lemonade." I told him that he'd have to wait, and then I noticed that the band was still playing the same song, that they'd apparantly started over, as I heard the first verse again, the woman singing, "Clouds so swift/Rain won't lift/Gates won't close/Railings froze." I told Penny to keep going to the Jeep, and I stopped to turn and look at the band. Now, my eyesight's not the best, and I was straining, but I saw that the band not only had the same pale, glazed look as the people inside the two-story house, but also that they sat completely still. The guitarists strummed, and the singer moved her mouth to sing, but that was it--no other movement. I looked around at the tent people, and they, too, were not moving; in fact--and I'm now almost sure of this--they hadn't moved an inch since the moment we first saw them.

I quickly caught up with my family. Penny and I loaded Georgia in the Jeep, Nicholas hopped in, and we drove away. I asked Penny what she thought about the house, the neighborhood. She said, "Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

"My sentiments exactly," I said.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #317

#317: "Honestly" (2002) - Zwan

γνῶθι σεαυτόν

Know thyself. Inscribed upon the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, the priestess Pythia (the alleged author of that aphorism) could have been directly inspired by Apollo (the god of light and music)himself to speak directly to Billy Corgan, the leading light of the now-defunct, one-album supergroup Zwan*. Comprised of former members of semi-prominent alternative rock bands (okay, they were semi-prominent in the alt-rock world; in the mainstream world, no one ever heard of the bands Slint, Chavez, and A Perfect Circle; all making the moniker supergroup for this band kind of, uh, relative) as well as two members (Corgan and his drummer Jimmy "I-Wouldn't-Know-A-Straight-Beat-If-It-Fell-On-My-Foot-And-Kicked-The-Drum-Itself" Chamberlain) of a very prominent alternative rock band, Zwan set out to make loud, distorted, melodic, romantic rock and roll...all-in-all, quite the departure from the previous couple of albums from Corgan's previous band Smashing Pumpkins (who once made loud, distorted, melodic, angsty rock and roll), whose music had started to drift off into the experimental electronic ether.

The first single from Zwan's only album Mary Star of the Sea, "Honestly" seems at first listen to be a simple paean to romance, a confession of love, a Hallmark card that opens to the sound of a memorable melody backed by layers upon layers of distorted guitar and a chorus of melding voices, all filtered through a flanger effects pedal. It's power-pop at it's most romantic, the sweet sentiment and melody tempered by the heavy (but not too heavy) rock and roll (the roll is important, as this isn't a power ballad) underneath. It sounds just like an early (first three albums) Smashing Pumpkins record; in fact, "Honestly" is the best straight-forward/traditional rock-and-roll record the Pumpkins never made. It's a solid record....

...but it doesn't seem to be truly extraordinary. It's not inventive, it's not innovative, and it's more than a bit derivative; it seems to be just disposable hard rock, just a bit of ephemera...upon first listen. A closer inspection of the song (and the kitchen-sink production of the music here makes this inspection a worthwhile study, as all the different parts of the song seem to fuse together as one, giving the record a very holistic sound, with no single element ever jumping out to jar or startle or make one take especial notice) yields fascinating lyrical depth. On the surface, the words seem pretty simplistic, as Corgan seems to push the more prosaic phrases ("I feel love," "There's no place I could be without you," "I believe") to the forefront. Underneath the veneer and connecting the aforementioned lines are words that suggest the speaker's doubt ("I don't know, honestly") in the relationship ("Is it true/Do I care?"), his conflicting emotions ("I'll break your heart so you must ask/Is this the way to get us back"), and maybe some control issues ("When I think of you as mine"). The speaker may even indeed be living in a fantasy world, nostalgia coloring his perception of the past, remembering only what he wants to remember, convincing himself that his perception of their (he and his lover's) time together is reality ("you can try to wipe the memories aside/But it's only you that you erase"), unwilling to admit that perhaps what he believes to true--the perfect romance--may only be in his mind, refusing to acknowledge any other reality than the one he perceives, for in that direction ("It's too far to discard the life I once knew") lies the destruction of self; therefore, the speaker begins the song by chanting a mantra: "I believe." If he tells himself that enough times, perhaps it will be true. He must swear an oath to it, so that not only will his lover believe him, but that he will believe himself. The oath? It's the title of the song. As Shakespeare wrote:

No, not an oath: if not the face of men,/The sufferance of our souls, the time's abuse--/If these be motives weak, break off betimes,/And every man hence to his idle bed....and what other oath/Than honesty to honesty engaged,/That this shall be, or we will fall for it?

...or, as my father would say, if you're saying "honestly" now, does that mean that I shouldn't believe you the rest the time?

*Notes - Zwan is certainly an unusual name. Corgan has stated that he chose the name just because he liked the way it sounded. I buy that. Of course, knowing Corgan's lyrical and thematic fascination with the Gods, I wasn't surprised to find out that Zwan is an actual word. It's meaning: Greek spam. Apropros, I believe.

Hotty Toddy, Part III - The Rebel, the Waitress, and the Wardrobe

We awoke early the next (Saturday) morning, for the Idea House opened at nine, and we were determined to eat breakfast at one of Oxford's many fine dining establishments before we trucked to Taylor. We showered, shaved, shimmied, shucked the sleepy from eyes, and were dressed and ready in a jiffy. Penny, feeling renewed and full of it, wanted just to hop in the Jeep and see where the road took us. Yeah...as if. I had to remind Penny that the last time we let the spirits of Easy Rider and Two Socks sweep us away we found ourselves in downtown Pontotoc sitting at the restaurant-with-no-name*, whose trucker-hatted (even the ladies) and pine-straw bearded (even the ladies) patrons stared at us as if we were pariahs of distaste; a diner whose waitress glared down at us, Copenhagen leaking from the left corner of her lips, saying only, "'Spose you gon' want a high-char--ain'tcha;" where an eight-foot plaster-of-paris statue of Vegas Elvis stood in the corner, carrying a real hollow-bodied guitar onto which someone had scratchily carved in large letters, "Only Jesus is King." Penny shuddered and assented that yes, we should follow my itinerary.

We jumped in the Jeep, backed out of the parking space, and Penny asked me if I knew where I was going. I told her we were going to the Beacon. Did I know how to find it? Well, considering the restaurant's name, I told her we'd just look up in the sky, and we'd be sure to find it. Nu-uh. Not going to work. I called Patrick. He answered, huffing and gurgling. I asked him if anything was wrong, and he told me that he was practicing for the Neshoba County Fair's annual triathlon by competing in a triple Iron Man. He sounded very strange, short of breath, and I asked him if he was practicing right then. He was. What was he doing? He was doing the swim (just as Elvis did the clam), which for this particular triple Iron Man began at Pensacola and ended at New Orleans. He said he had just passed what he thought was Long Beach, and that I should hurry with my question, for he was soon to enter the Mississippi Sound and wouldn't be able to hear me. I asked him my question, he answered and hung up, I parked the Jeep, and we walked back inside the Congo.

"Okay," my wife said, "now that we're back inside, do you mind telling me why we're not going to the Beacon?" I turned to her, grinned, and tilted my head for her and the kids to follow me. We walked to Patrick's bedroom and entered his closet. At the far end of the eighteen-foot-long walk-in, a full-length Archie Manning poster decorated the wall. On the poster, right underneath the "1" on his jersey was a doorknob. I twisted and pulled the doorknob, and we all stepped inside...The Beacon!

Faux-wood paneling plastered the walls, small diamond designs spotted the linoleum floor, and pale-green linoleum tiles covered the counters. To our immediate left stood a paneled platform raised about a foot off the ground, and a waitress slinked down, cigarette in hand, smiling in her calf-length, black-sashed, maize-yellow, small sunflower-print calico dress, her brown hair parting her head to reveal a windshield of bangs, while the remaining shower curtain of locks dropping and curling up expertly at her shoulders. With three menus in her other hand, she showed us to an open booth. We sat down on the red, artificial leather seats, and the waitress put our menus on the formica-topped table. She turned to me--"Coffee, sugar?"

"Yes, both please."

She didn't register my response, and she left. Penny had a strange look on her face, so I asked her what was wrong. Before she could answer, Nicholas asked me, "Dad, how did we get here so fast? I don't see the Congo outside. Your friend Patrick must be weird."

"Well," I said, "Patrick's always been a bit, uh, eccentric. And he's a physician, so he's allowed to be as eccentric as he wants to be."

"Andy," Penny asked, "I don't like this. What's going on here?"

Nicholas interrupted, "Dad, I don't know what you mean."

"What I meant was that Patrick is a doctor who makes enough money--and is good enough at his job--and is so nice a person--that people don't care how weird he is."

"Kind of like you," Nicholas said. He laughed. Penny didn't. She repeated her question. I just shrugged my shoulders. Georgia cried out for bacon. At the opposite end of the restaurant, Bobby Gentry sang about this being another sleepy, dusty, Delta day. "Dad! Look! Those guys have hair as long as yours!" I looked behind me, and saw two sandal-footed gentlemen eating eggs at the bar, no one else near them. The waitress returned, poured us some coffee, and asked if we were ready to order. We weren't. She told us to take our time, she'd come back. She pinched Georgia's cheek and cooed. Georgia recoiled quickly, clinging to Penny, her free hand covering the cheek that the waitress grabbed. The waitress left.

"Andy. Listen to me. I don't really want to go into detail--not here--not now, but we need...to go." Nicholas asked why, but Penny ignored him, saying to me, "We'll talk about this later, but I want you to politely excuse us all out of this place. Here's what you can say. You tell the waitress...." And there she stood.

"Yes, honey?" the waitress asked.

"Uh, no thanks," I said, "we won't need any honey, but I think I'm ready to order. Nicholas, do you know what you want?" Penny's stare bore a hole through my head.

"Bacon!"

"Uh, okay. Anything else?" He told the waitress what he wanted, and I ordered for the rest of us.

"Andy, look at Georgia." I didn't notice anything strange, so Penny said, "Georgia, let Daddy look at your cheek." Georgia didn't want to move her hand, so Penny had to move it for her, and Georgia began to whimper. I leaned over the booth, but her cheek looked fine to me, didn't look red at all. I told this to Penny.

"I know it's not red. It's white." I peered closer, and indeed a small area did look a bit paler than the remainder of her complexion, but I thought the discoloration didn't signal any signs of danger. "Feel it," Penny said. I did. I then felt her forehead; it was warm. I put my hand on her cheek again, and...."Cold," Penny said. "Ice cold!"

"I can pour you a new cup, m'am. I don't mind at all. Just let me set these plates down, and I'll get right to it." Penny jumped back in her seat, back to the wall, startled by the waitress's sudden appearance. She put plates of bacon, gravy biscuits, pancakes, eggs, sausage, and grits, more than enough to feed all of us.

"Andy," my wife said, "I don't think we should eat this," but she spoke too late, for Nicholas was crunching down on his bacon. She turned to him and began to tell him not to eat any more than he already had, but Georgia was already scooping eggs into her mouth.

"Might as well enjoy it while it's here; it just smells too good not to eat," I said. I stood up and took Georgia from Penny's arms and placed her in an old wooden high chair that the waitress must have at some time moved to the end of the booth. I dug in. A few minutes later, Penny did, too.

And it was delicious. Greasy, but...that was as it should have been. Best breakfast I believe I've ever eaten. I think the rest of my family felt the same, as we all devoured our food like rib-thin vagrant dogs. Nicholas, Georgia, and I wiped our plates clean, but Penny's plate still harbored one lonely link sausage. The waitress returned. "Let me clear that for you," she said. She gathered all the empty plates first, and then she grabbed Penny's plate.

As she started to pull it away, Georgia leaned up from her high-chair, grabbed the waitress by the wrist, stared her in the eyes, and said, "Don't take my mommy's plate!" The waitress froze and stared back. Georgia never averted her gaze. The waitress flinched, took a deep breath, and returned Penny's plate to the table.

"I'll just come back for this later." She took her free hand, straigtened her hair, her dress, and her back. She lay our ticket on the table and walked to the kitchen. We didn't see her again.

"Andy?" Penny said, but I didn't feel I needed to answer. I knew what she wanted. I stood up, took the ticket, and told Nicholas to come on. Penny picked Georgia up from the high chair, and they followed right behind us. I walked up to the platform and handed our ticket to a different waitress, though her hair and dress matched her co-worker's. She took the ticket, and Penny tugged at my shirt sleeve. "Andy. Look at these papers. Look at these headlines." One paper, The Oxford Eagle, announced the withdrawal of American troops from Cambodia; the other paper, The Daily Mississippian, sported a headline questioning the effect the President's lowering of the voting age to eighteen would have on the upcoming Democratic and Republican primaries. Before I had a chance to look at the dates, the waitress at the platform caught my attention.

"Sir, that'll be $3. 57."

"M'am?" I asked. "Could you, uh, say that again? I don't hear well sometimes." She repeated the price. I turned to Penny, my eyes wide. Penny reached into her pocket, never taking her eyes from mine, and handed me a five dollar bill. I looked at her for another second or two, but her expression never wavered. I handed the bill to the waitress and told her to keep the change.

"Come back again, y'all, when you've got more time to spend with us. Here, why, we've got all the time in the world."

We exited through the glass double doors and walked into Patrick's closet. We walked out of the closet and went to the living room and sat down on the couch. "Dad," Nicholas said, "can we go back there again tomorrow morning? That food was great."

"No, Babo, no. No, Babo, no," Georgia said.

Penny and I looked at one another. I picked up Georgia, suggested we drive to the Idea House, and Penny agreed. On our way out, Penny took a framed Sports Illustrated--with Archie Manning on the cover--on the wall near the door, and turned it around, its back now facing outwards. We went to the Jeep and drove to Taylor.

The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #318

#318: "45" (2007) - The Saturday Knights

The Saturday Knights are a Seattle-based four-piece rap-rock act. Rap-rock? Like Limp Biskit? Kid Rock? Linkin Park? Good God, no. These MCs' skills have a much funkier, earthier, and more natural flow; their lyrics wittier; the band (yes, a band, as one of 'em's a guitar/keyboard player)'s range of rock much broader (Oh, deary, did I just say "range of rock?" Wait--gotta answer the phone. Jack Black's calling, and he wants his line back).

Here, on "45" (from the group's eponymous debut EP), the Knights mount their mighty steed and travel back to the psychedelic era to retrieve the fabled Farfisa organ from the clutches of that most dangerous of monsters, the Wooly Booly, whom the Knights defeat with their swinging medallions. They then set sail across the Flannel River to venture forth into Nirvana, to rescue a former producer in distress. The Knights are triumphant, and they place the producer safely within the confines of a drum set. The Knights must then make their trek back home. The digable planets seem to align for our heroes, as they manage to traverse through the treacherous cypress hills unscathed. They finally return back to the throne room in the Kingdom of Paul's Botique and appease their lord by having two of their group act as court jesters and two as minstrels, regaling their master with a pun-filled tale of the most storied legend of the land, Sir Mock Braggadocio.

In the tale spun, Sir Brag must face the dastardly Dark DJ. All seems amiss, as the nefarious one smashes Sir Brag's most glorious wax weapon. Not to fear, though, as Sir Brag uses his terrible track list to vaniquish his enemy. Sir Brag rides triumphantly through the village and down Wall Street, where accolades are heaped upon him, and he responds in kind with gangsta signs.

King Paul is pleased with the Knights' tale, and so he asks the troubadours to remain in his land and continue sharing their stories. The Saturday Knights kindly oblige, though they tell the king that their next tale is much longer, and if his highness were willing, they'd weave their epic of the meager serf, his descent into the dreary garden of sound, and his quest to dethrone the evil, horned Dap King of Muscle Shoals. King Paul told the Knights that yes, indeed, he'd like to hear their tale, that it sounded like quite a doozy.

Hotty Toddy, Part II

Our trip began Friday morning peacefully--relatively so. We planned on leaving at seven in the morning, but left at noon instead because after having bathed Georgia, she decided that she wanted to wear a hat like Dad, so she put her pancakes on her head. She also said she wanted a tan, so she treated the dripping syrup as if it were tanning lotion and smeared it all over her body. We bathed her a second time and went to clean up her morning mess. When we returned to the bathroom, Georgia was sitting in the bathtub, and she greeted us with, "Mommy, Daddy, see, I potty! I poot!" We were so proud of her, though we wished she would have left the tub to do so.

A couple of hours (and a mishap involving frayons and Penny's seventy-year-old Nancy Drew books) later, we departed, and Georgia behaved herself for two solid hours of travel. And then there was Bruce (the town, not the late kung-fu star). On the northern outskirts of the one-traffic-light town, we passed some anonymous soul's testament to tires, a monument of the Michelin Man.

Penny noticed it first, and she beckoned me to turn around so she could take this picture. After a couple of hours of travel, I was feeling a bit ornery, and I told her that I was ready to get to the condo, asking her why she wanted to take a picture of a bunch of used rubbers anyway. She growled, Nicholas pleaded, and I begrudgingly turned the car around. Georgia apparently didn't like her mother's idea either, so she started to fuss, cry, and pitch a fit, saying "Congo! Go Congo!" with tears streaming down her face. Penny promised her we would as soon as she took this picture. Georgia would have none of it. She cried until the moment we turned back around and headed north again. I asked Penny how the picture turned out, and she just told me to shut up. I know not why.

We had yet to travel two miles when I happened to spy some strange wood carvings in a yard to our left. "Was that what I thought it was?" I asked Penny.

"No. Just drive. We're ready to get to the condo...aren't we, Georgia?"

"Congo!" Georgia replied.

"Wait. I think it was. I gotta see this." I said as I turned the car around. Georgia started to cry again, and Penny was about to fuss, too, but I gave them both solace when I explained what we were about to see. "Georgia--look! It's a crocogator!" Her whimpering stopped immediately. We pulled in a long gravel driveway, and sure enough, there stood a whittled replica of the infamous Bogue Chitto Swamp Crocogator.

"Dad," my son said, "there's no such thing as a crocogator. I looked it up in the dictionary and the encyclopedia, and it wasn't there."

"Son," I said, "you didn't find it because you weren't looking in the right places. I've got a couple or three encyclopedias at home that list creatures like the crocogator."

"Dad--comic books are not encyclopedias."

"I'm not talking about comic books, son. I'm talking about cryptopedias--encyclopedias listing the various creatures whose existence has been documented by multiple sightings though there is as of yet--yet--no scientific proof. These creatures--like the crockogator--are called crpytids."

"Dad," my son said, "you're cryptid." He giggled. Penny told us both to hush and for me to just drive. Georgia enjoyed our conversation though, for as soon as Penny admonished me, my daughter shouted, "Cryptid Congo! Go Cryptid Congo!"

And we did. We arrived at Pat's Place, and as I was carrying in Georgia and all of our luggage (all at the same time, too), Penny (who was unable to carry any luggage, for she was carrying a half-filled cup of cappucino) opened the door, walked in, and screamed. "What's wrong?" I asked, hurrying to the door.

"Somebody's been shot!" Oh my goodnesh-nellish! I froze where I was standing and shouted for her to run back, that'd we find somewhere else to stay. "Oh, there's no need. Fahgeddaboudit." I asked her what in the Sam Hill she was talking about, and she said, "C'mere!" I did. She continued, "It looks like someone shot Colonel Reb and he bled red, blue, and white all over this place. He's got Rebel stuff everywhere!"

"Well, honey, " I said, " we are at Ole Miss."

"Oh...shut up and put the clothes away...and change Georgia's diaper...and go to the bathroom for me, I'm going to lie down." I complied completely.

About an hour later, we decided to explore Oxford, and Penny and I both marveled at how clean and orderly the campus seemed, at the grandeur of it all. We were sincerely impressed. We wondered aloud about why Ole Miss's campus was so much prettier than MSU's, about why so many of our friends went to State instead of this gorgeous university, and we developed a hypothesis: the founders of Mississippi State University must have known that they couldn't have established anywhere near as fine a campus at the University of Mississippi, so they deliberately settled MSU 120 miles south of Oxford so that most of the state's high-school graduates would go to MSU because Oxford was just too darn far away.

After leaving campus, we found our way to the city square to visit the famous bookstore, Square Books; however, our children were hot and bothered, so we went to Off Square Books (Square Books' annex of bargain books--which is actually on the square) first and cooled down in front of their industrial-sized fan. We regained our physical composure, and then we crossed the street to Square Books, Jr. , which is the best children's bookstore I've ever seen. Their inventory is huge, easily doubling what Books-A-Million or Barnes-and-Noble have in their children's section. The atmosphere was open and friendly, allowing the children to talk and ooh and ahh and laugh without any worry of shhhs or raised-eyebrows. The employees allowed the children to take down toys, play with them, and leave them wherever, with nigh a sigh or grumbling to be heard. We loved it. We let the children down to play and browse, and we were able to do the same.

After about an hour there, we knew we needed to go so that we would be able to eat, and I would be able to go to Square books before they closed. We told Nicholas he could get any book he wanted, no matter the price, but he had to choose quickly. He put his hand inside a small basket in front of the register and pulled out a rubber, green fish that looked as if puke and puss was being expunged from its orifices if you squeezed it. "I want this," he said. "You can put the books back." My son the scholar.

We left the bookstore and crossed the street over to Old Venice Pizza Company (which I thought was native to Oxford, but have since discovered is a chain), a restaurant some of my Ole Miss buddies praised. The pizza there was good, but I've had better. Nicholas and I had fun, though, playing a fun little magic/logic game with the sugar packets, and Georgia enjoyed herself, too, kicking her sandals off, tossing crayons here and there. She seemed to agree with me about the quality of the food, as she took one bite of her three-cheese pizza and immediately decided that it needed a little something else. What did it need? Why, more cheese!

After we finished eating, Penny rode the kids around Oxford proper while I browsed through Square Books. I liked it, but I've visited similar bookstores in this state before, and greater ones (in New Orleans, in San Diego, etc...) elsewhere. As I waited in line to purchase a couple of books, I called Penny to let her know I was about to check out. She answered, panicked. "I can't figure out this square," she said, "and I've been driving around it for ten minutes. I seem to be caught in the loop, and I can't find my way out. And I need coffee." I told her to give me five minutes to check out, and I'd just meet her in the middle of the square, hop in, and help her figure out how to exit. Sounded good to her.

Fifteen minutes later (because of waiting for the workers to grind the coffee, pay for it, and then going back downstairs to pay for the books), I stepped outside, and Penny was driving around the square, one hand on the wheel, and the other hand pulling the hair on her head. I darted across the square's outer lane (thankfully, no traffic) and started running around the inner lane, gaining speed. A few seconds later and here comes Penny, the Jeep kicking up dust like a turkey in the straw. She reached across the seat and somehow managed to push the door open without slowing down. Luckily, I timed my pace just right, and I jumped in the moving vehicle and slammed the door. Penny was frantic, and I had to calm her down. I finally breached through the dense fog in her head, and I was able to direct her out of the square. Whooh.

We drove back to the Congo, refreshed ourselves, and decided to drive down to Taylor to find where the Idea House was located, so that we wouldn't get lost or be in a rush looking for it early tomorrow morning. The scenic drive over and back, with the windows down, the children quiet, at dusk, the soothing sounds of Tom Waits and Randy Newman at their most elegant, all provided Penny and me with the most peaceful, relaxing, and spiritual moment of our trip thus far; it was a Commodores moment we were sharing, as the world seemed easy, easy like Sunday morning. It finally felt like we were on vacation. It was all we ever wanted.

Tomorrow: Part III

No Bull

This doctor is full of it.

Revenge of the Nerds

Remember high school? I do (well, bits and pieces here and there). A couple of weeks ago, I talked to an old high-school buddy I hadn't seen in a few years at Yates' Deli, and the very same day I talked to another high-school classmate at Wal-Mart, and I then realized that next year will mark twenty years since I graduated from Philadelphia High School. I didn't attend my ten-year class reunion, so I told my wife I'd like to go to my twentieth--but what if there wasn't one? What if, since attendance was so poor (or so I'd heard) at our ten-year reunion, that the powers that be decided not to have a twentieth? Oh, noes!

I could not allow that to happen, so I got out both the phonebook and our senior yearbook, and I was determined to make some phone calls and start this tornado rolling. As I was flipping through our yearbook, looking at the senior portraits and other random photos, I realized...I might not really want to see all of these people again! Browsing through the yearbook jogged not only memories of days gone by, but it also dredged up the bad feelings, ill will, resentment, petty jealousies, and hostility I'd had toward some of my classmates since as far back as elementary school. Slightly immature, ya think? Hold a grudge much?

Well, a-yeah! Wouldn't you?

I mean, while I was studying scholarly materials, these muscleheads were working out with weights. While I was completing classwork, these lotharios were wooing women. While I was analyzing foreign films, these idiots were shotgunning beer. While I was practicing my musical rudiments, these tone-deaf turds were combing their hair to Rick Astley. I was insulted, shunned, picked on by the brainless bleached blondes and their duck-tailed, tanned, sockless, collar-popping boyfriends. The shame! The humanity! I was better than them all, and in time, I was gonna prove it!

Where does that leave me now? Have those low-lifes yet realized the error of their ways? No! I still need to throw my scholarly success in their face! I can do it, too, for now--twenty years later--I am a teacher! Ha! That'll show 'em.

I can't wait for the reunion, now. I'm getting on the horn tomorrow, and I'll have the entire shin-dig arranged by the end of the week. Heck, I'll even throw in my DJ services for free, and no one can resist a free DJ. They won't be able to refuse. They'll have to come. They must. There must be a reckoning! The hammer must fall!