Southern Movie Fest

My friend J.J. paid a visit to Winston-Salem for a couple days and we took the opportunity to blaze through a slew of southern movies -- most of which I hadn't seen before.

• To get the Southern moviefest started, we popped in Junebug -- one of my favorite movies of all time. It was on the top five list even before I discovered that it was filmed in Winston-Salem (apparently a number of other movies have been shot in part in Winston-Salem, ranging from Leatherheads to Thank You For Smoking).
  
  
• After this, we went old school and watched Gone With The Wind. I had never watched it before, and now I am all the more confident that I will never have to watch it again. After almost four hours, if I have to hear Scarlet say "Oh, Ashley!" one more time I might have to kill myself.
  
  
• Next up we watched Deliverance, the point of which seems to be either (a) a cautionary tale to avoid canoeing down rivers in the south, (b) an opportunity to show Bruce Reynolds shirtless, shooting things with a bow and arrow, or (c) an attempt to make people feel a twinge of fear whenever they hear "Dueling Bangos."
  
  
• Not done yet, we shifted to Fried Green Tomatoes. Interestingly, I think this marked the second movie that I've seen with Kathy Bates swinging a sledgehammer. This movie was a little less scary than the first, but after viewing this one I will nonetheless probably find myself hesitating a bit before digging into the food at my next barbecue.
  

Contra Insurgency!

One of the things I missed most after being out of town for the better part of the last month and a half has been contra dancing on those fine Tuesday nights at the Vintage Ballroom.

I had heard of contra dancing before I moved to Winston, but really had no idea what it meant. I imagined that it was some sort of Latin dance. Well... no. Actually, it's much more like square dancing, except with hippies. As you can see in my little video from last Tuesday, some of the best leads are women (I'm talkin' about you, Jess!) and many of the dancers seem to think that shoes are optional or just get in the way. This is precisely the sort of dance that you would suspect would be big in Crunchytown, and my understanding is that it's huge there.

The Search for ESPN360

My plan to watch the Federer/Nadal final at the Aussie Open in Australia -- an event only 20 times more important than the Superbowl, only with worse commercials -- has been a complicated one.

Since I don't have cable, watching it on TV doesn't seem to be an option. BUT, I did discover that the game will be broadcast live online through ESPN360. A quick tour of their website (www.espn360.com) reveals that they "broadcast" all sorts of things through that channel, if you don't mind watching your sports through a computer monitor, including the Demon Deacons traumatizing loss today to some ACC cellar-dwellers. (Why do the Deacons have to start losing games just when I start caring?? **sniffles**)

In any case, a kink in the plan occurred when I discovered that my internet service provider -- Time Warner Cable -- does not support ESPN360! How could they do this? Apparently AT&T and Verizon both allow a person to watch events online through ESPN360, but not Time Warner. Lucky for me, it appears that I'll be able to leach onto a local stranger's unsecured network to watch the Aussie men's tennis final (thanks "Madam M", whoever you are...). But if Time Warner doesn't start supporting this in the future, I may choose to vote with my dollars to switch horses and give AT&T's internet service a spin.

Time Warner, you are on the clock, and it is ticking!

Mmmm.... A taco interlude

Sorry folks: I must admit that I have been struggling to find time to blog now that work has been piling up at the start of the year.

HOWEVER, as Winston-Salem's occasionally intrepid taco adventurer, I did feel it was my duty to put work aside, take a short timeout, and make a quick post to spread the world about this most amazing taco from Taco Town (thanks J.J. for bringing this beauty to my attention):



Mmm... taco. The only thing this baby is missing? That's right: Chicken McNuggets.

I swear, there will be some more substantial posts sometime soon.

Mr. Obama goes to Washington

A couple pictures from the Inauguration:

	It took us about two hours from the time we started walking near the Capitol to when we ended up at this joint near the Washington Monument to catch the Inauguration Ceremony. A good view of (just a SMALL) part of the crowd...
	At one point I hoisted up some young kid in the air so he wouldn't be stuck watching people's butts as Obama was taking the oath of office. But we also found that other kids had elevated themselves above the masses through other creative means...
	At the Eastern Ball, J.J. and I somehow found ourselves standing right next to Massachusetts Governor Patrick's wife, Diane Patrick, who had made it through the crowd to join us as we watched James Taylor perform.
	Finally, the Obamas made a surprisingly early appearance. President Obama talked briefly with the crowd, then danced with his First Lady Michelle for approximately 2 minutes before leaving. Total length of the visit: maybe 10 minutes max. But I still managed to snap off over 20 photos :-)

Another post about toilet paper

This is what they did to the main quad at Wake Forest after the Deacons won a big game against Carolina:I'm not sure how I feel about a university that encourages TP-ing the Quad. I heard that the old basketball coach Skip Prosser even joined in with the students on a couple occasions. Doesn't it feel like officially condoning TP-ing would somehow take out all the fun?

A New Day in Fairweather Land

AP Photo/Chuck Burton

Well, I thought that my local Fairweather season may have come to a close after the Wake Forest men's soccer team got eliminated from the NCAA tournament in December, but it has come to my attention that the Deacons are also fielding an amazing basketball team this season.

It is perhaps interesting to note that my fandom of the University of Illinois' Fighting Illini basketball team only took off after the Illini crushed (krushed?) the #1 Demon Deacons in December of 2004 to catapult past the Deacs and claim the #1 seed themselves.

Oh well... I will go wherever the fairweather winds blow. Go Deacs!

Old Scores to Settle

**DISCLAIMER: Some will find this post to be a little disgusting, I suspect.

As a Seattle-ite and fairweather fan, I was naturally pumped to see the Seahawks go to the Superbowl a couple years ago to face the Pittsburgh Steelers in Detroit. My friend Melissa was a die-hard Steeler fan, and so this provided an opportunity to begin some very pleasurable smack-talk.

Eventually, Melissa gifted me a package of Steelers napkins, and so I sent her this email reply:

"I wanted to thank you for the Steelers napkins that you gave me. Haven't used them yet, but when I run out of toilet paper, I will make sure to use them. This of course will be roughly analogous to what the Seahawks are going to do to your Steelers in Detroit."

Of course, we know how this ended up: some crooked referees ended up handing the game to the Steelers on a silver platter. But that isn't the end of this story. Fast-forward to two days ago, where I got back from my extended trip and found that the toilet paper in my bathroom was gone. What had my resourceful roommate decided to use instead while I was out of town? That's right. The Steeler napkins. I had not told him this story, and yet he also intuitively grasped the most appropriate use for Steelers napkins.

SEE YOU IN HELL, PITTSBURGH STEELERS! The Seahawks just suck so damn bad this year that I'll continue to live in the past thank you very much.