Savannah, y'all

Dad came to visit last week and we went to Savannah.  I was thrilled to visit Paula Deen's restaurant.  As you can see, Paula's cardboard cutout was equally thrilled to meet me.  For those of you not familiar with her work, she presides over a southern cooking multimedia empire.  We had dinner at her "The Lady and Sons" restaurant, and even though we only had crab cakes and salad, we were totally defeated by the quantities of food and the fat content. Our waiter was concerned, and we had to assure him that the dinner was delicious, but we were from the North.  The thing that did me in was the visit from the young lady who introduced herself as "The Bread Girl", and who encouraged you to put maple syrup on your corn bread pancakes.

We also visited the birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the American Girl Scouts.  Our tour guide was straight from central casting, and kept referring to all of us as "babies", i.e. "The chandeliers are original to the house, babies."  I learned to my amusement that Juliette's no-good drunk of a husband died of a "social disease", and apparently, tour groups of Girl Scouts find this fascinating.  The guide said the girls always try to guess which one did Mr. Low in.   

GGG

Yesterday I held a yard sale.  It was moderately successful, considering that it was rainy and chilly all day.  Several people commented that my signage was excellent.  Indeed, I devoted a lot of thought to lines of sight and letter size when making and posting my signs, and I invested in helium balloons to mark the path to amazing deals.  

Yard sales always attract interesting characters.  A fellow, whose appearance struck me as a public service announcement about the dangers of smoking, glanced at my stuff and asked "Do you have any guitars?" (I should note that his pronunciation of guitar placed emphasis on the first syllable, "GUItar.")

I smiled and answered, "No, I'm afraid I'm not very musical."

"Are you sure?"

(Sure that I'm not musical?)

"No, sorry." 

He continued, "When I come to these sales I always ask people to dig around a bit because it might be worth it to them.  Do you have any old or broken gold?"

"No, sorry - just what you see here."

"How about guns - you got any guns?"

I tried very hard to restrain my eyebrows from shooting up to the top of my forehead. 

"No, no guns for sale here."

As he walked away, he declared loudly "Guitars, Guns and Gold - that's what I'm looking for."

And I haven't even moved to Texas yet.

Mollie on TV

A while back, Mollie and I were out for a walk when we were stopped by a tv crew doing a story on animal rights organizations.  The resulting footage of Mollie is at 0:19:

http://www.wsbtv.com/video/19453136/index.html

Water Slide

To celebrate the end of my GT teaching career, I devoted part of my afternoon to the Athletic Center's water slide.  Not surprisingly, it has a clever design, spinning the slider in a clockwise direction most of the way down, but then surprising you with a hairpin turn, making you feel like you're going to fly over the edge before spitting you into the pool.  Many endorphins were released.  I noticed that there was a lifeguard at the top of the slide, possibly to curtail horseplay.  Therefore, I had to behave myself.

Gone With the Wind

In honour of the 70th Anniversary of Gone With the Wind, there was a screening last night at Atlanta's FOX Theatre - a movie palace whose aesthetic is part Arabian Nights, part Egyptomania, and all fabulous. Movies at the Fox are introduced with a performance on the cinema organ, "The Mighty Mo", played by a man wearing an entirely white suit, and accompanied by a player piano that rose out of the orchestra pit on an elevator. I liked the fact that the player piano was equipped with a chandelier, even though nobody is actually playing it, and therefore there is no need for a light source. Show biz!

The theatre was packed, and I was treated to the odd and somewhat awkward experience of watching what is an extremely dark and troubling Ur-text of the American South with an audience of Georgians. For example, Mammy got lots of laughs - and I mean, a lot of laughs. This made me uncomfortable, as it was hard to tell if the audience reaction was saying "Wow, check out Hattie McDaniel's nuanced performance" or "Ahhh, the good old days".

Another puzzling phenomenon was the large number of audience members taking flash photographs of the screen during the movie. They weren't photographing one another, but rather, they were trying to get a shot of their favourite shots in the movie. This is weird, no? I felt like shouting "It's called a DVD! Look into it!" Of course, it added a certain drama to the screening, as "I'll never be hungry again" and "...I don't give a damn" were punctuated by a veritable lightning storm of flashes.

Look the Part

My students started presenting their final projects today.  One student, who normally attends my 12pm class, appeared just before my 9am class to ask if he was going to be asked to present that day.  I said maybe - I was going to pull names out of a hat to see who would go first, so he should come prepared.  He replied "Ok, then, if there's a chance I'm going to go, then I'll go shave."  I said, "Uh...OK... That's not really necessary, but if you think it will give you an edge..."  

He has been cultivating a fairly substantial college-student beard, but, I thought to myself, maybe he thinks it's holding him back.

When I arrived at the classroom for the 12pm class, he was all set to go.  He had shaved his head. 

Fortunately, it's a good look for him.

Counting the minutes...

For the most part, I *heart* my students.

But, sometimes they start papers with sentences like this:

"In general, I harbor a disdain for painted artwork as I find it either to be too abstract, too simplistic, or too devoid of meaning."

Sentences such as these cause me to struggle to restrain myself from the swift and repeated application of my forehead to my desk.