Strut Eleven

TODAY'S POST IS IN TWO PARTS. MY PART IS NOW. BOB'S IS WHEN HE GETS TO WORK AND DECIDES TO STOP WORKING AND INSTEAD ADD STUFF TO THIS BLOG.

part one: billy's inebriated recollections

Strut - Cheetah Girls (mp3)
(Yes, I posted this song last year, and I will post it next year if I go. It's just too cheesy and perfect not to.)

Tonight was Strut Night. Or, as a classmate of mine put: “This is the best night of the year.”

While it’s up for debate whether he would state that so confidently without having imbibed an excessive amount of alcohol, his aim was true. The Bessie Smith Strut, now in its young adulthood as an annual tradition.

I don't want to ruin my mood or the spirit of the Strut by getting too verbose, but I can't help but break down the following 30-second video with the passion of Kevin Costner reviewing the Zapruder film.



Let's work from the right. Or, as Costner might say, Back... and to the left.

In the background, right-center of the screen, is what we delightfully referred to as the Quiet Grinders. The guy hardly ever moved. The woman hardly ever moved. But very, very, very subtly, they were grinding. Just trust me on this.

Next, the guy with the funky cloudy Hawaiian shirt thing. At first, he just looks kinda funny. But watch again. And again. If you pay attention, he starts to look like a marionette. In fact, if you can zoom in, you will see strings dangling from his left arm and both legs. I only know for sure because I did this exact same dance with one of my puppets back home when I was in 4th grade.

The guy in the yellow shirt. I love his shirt. I wish I owned that shirt. Actually, I'm pretty sure I own that shirt. Also, that's exactly how I bob my head when I'm at a concert I love. Also, I used to own jorts just like that. Holy shit. It's my twin brother from another mother!

And now, to the true star of the show. I've had to watch CARS roughly 100 times in the past few months because of my son's unhealthy obsession with the film, and I'm almost positive that the woman with the visor is the original owner of Mater, the tow truck voiced by Larry the Cable Guy. Early in this video, you see her playing the fabled Air Guitar. But what you fail to realize, because you weren't there, is that this laid the important groundwork for a later part of the dance where she stops playing the fret part of the Air Guitar, and it becomes more of a Madonna-esque, public masturbatory kind of experience where it's just her and the strumming along her private region.



In a better world, I'd love to tell you this was the kind of thing we watched, but it wasn't. It was bad. Real bad. So bad you start using bad English and stuff. So bad you start drinking Miller High Life and enjoying it. And drinking it faster so all of you can leave with the excuse of needing another beer.

And then there's the sideshows.

The preachers -- who, for the record, have finally realized that telling everyone they suck and are going to hell isn't working -- got nicer. Their big signs just have general vague non-threatening Bible verses on them. They scream stuff about love and forgiveness. They don't have goatees. In short, they're a lot more boring. But in a way Jesus would find highly relieving.

The vendors. This year's best item was the "OBAMA got OSAMA" shirt. I'm posing (in disguise) at right with the vendor.



The sales girls. At left, I'm posing with the sorority sisters who drew the short straw and had to chaperone the Oscar Mayer (Anthony) Weinermobile. This picture is the closest I've ever come to exposing a large wiener via social media, and I hope for my sake and yours to keep it this way. What you can't quite tell from this picture is that these girls, bless their hearts, really really didn't want to take this picture. They were just being nice. OK, maybe it's obvious. But bless their hearts for trying not to make it TOO obvious.

Here's your final advice for the night, at least from Billy and "part one": the food. Chicken on a Stick from Champy's should be the next menu item on the list if Heaven ever offers a 7-course meal. It was fried and just a little bit spicy and had potatoes and onions and chicken, and I'm honestly shocked that no one shot anyone else this year at the Strut merely from fighting over these delicious wonders.

My Harry Burns Moment

You Say Jump - Cheap Trick (mp3)
Salt in My Tears - Martin Briley (mp3)

“Sid Bream.”

If you are of a certain age, those two words, mentioned at any point in time, in any circumstance, conjure one and only one highly-specific and eternal moment in time. Back to that in a minute.

Last night, I attended a send-off party for a friend and coworker at a Chattanooga Lookouts baseball game. We sat in a special section in right field, the only section in the ballpark where wine and liquor can be downed. Which makes it both special and priceless.

In addition to serving as one of our trusty IT guys, he has spent years moonlighting as a photographer, and one of his areas of interest is on women in various states of undress. I don’t judge. For professional reasons, I’ve done my best not to oogle or in any way look at his shots in this area, because it just ain’t appropriate in my line of work.

While much of the crowd were coworkers and friends, we expected a few of his models to also show up for the festivities. One other guy and I actually had fun with this expectation, stopping everytime some female walked up the ramp to our section to look at one another and either shake our head or nod. To be honest, we always nodded, because it was funnier to think that all the women of varying levels of attractiveness coming up the ramp were models.

At one point, a semi-attractive woman walked past us, and we nodded that she was probably a model (or, that is, wished she was a model and paid for a “professional” photo shoot). When she walked past us, she looked at me and said, “Excuse me, is there a door?” The entrance to the inside area was a sliding glass door. She didn’t see the handle. Yup, a model.

Maybe you had to be there.

Anyway, in the fourth inning, two particularly eyebrow-raising blondes walked up and past us. They required that I actually walk over and confer verbally with my coworker.

“You think they’re models?” he asked.
“No way,” I said. “Baseball wives.”
“Yeah?”
“Gotta be. Only one way to find out.” I promised him I would find out before we left. Because I had been drinking beer, and beer makes one stupid and confident.

The bottom of the fifth hit, and rain began to fall, and we all filed into the party room area for shelter. I swallowed the rest of my present beer and with it the courage and stupidity to introduce myself to the two blondes. Because I was unavailable -- and believe me, they were clearly disappointed that my scooter-loving booty could not be theirs for the taking -- I only offered a few friendly lines before I got to the point.

“Home or away?” I asked. I figured if they were models, they would look dumbstruck or offended by my question, but if they were baseball wives...

“Home, actually,” one said quickly.
“Yeah?” I said. “Who are the lucky guys?”
The slightly older (and more attractive) one responded quickly, “He’s not playing tonight. Night off.”
“Yeah? Where’s he play?”
“He’s right field. Scott Van Slyke.”

My response was instantaneous, which is saying something considering I’m neither a baseball fanatic nor a Schwab wannabe: “Andy’s son?!?”

“Yes, actually,” she said, smiling. She was impressed by my connecting two simple dots. I wonder how often she had to act impressed at slightly-inebriated men connecting simple dots. Probably a lot if she’s a baseball wife.

I wasn’t that much of a baseball fan in 1992, but I had grown up knowing just enough about the Atlanta Braves to know they had a history of sucking. On a trip to Atlanta in elementary school, my parents bought me a book that included a history of the team and bios on all the players, and being bookish, I actually read it. Having watched only a few games, I knew details about Bob Horner, Bruce Benedict, Phil “Knucksie” Niekro, several other players and, above all, the inimitable Dale friggin’ Murphy, a.k.a. The Greatest Mormon Centerfielder Ever.

Watching them on TBS as a kid was not so much a habit as proof of desperation and boredom. Yet, knowing that they would always be on TBS, and that the Cubs would always be on WGN, somehow offered this strange comfort to me. Worst-case, I could watch baseball.

The name “Andy Van Slyke” SHOULD mean awesomeness. Big white stud of a baseball player who spent his prime with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Three-time All-Star. Five-time Golden Glover. Two-time “Silver Slugger.” All of these honors earned during his years in the ‘Burgh.

But that’s not why I know him. I had to look that crap up. No, I know him because I know Sid Bream.

More specifically, I know the 1992 National League Championship Series. Also Known As “The Greatest Series In The History of Baseball” for 80 percent of humans born south of the Mason-Dixon line.

This is glued into my mind because my girlfriend at the time, a freshman cutie named Meredith, the only girl who ever broke up with me -- I’m hardly bragging considering the teensy tiny number of females who dared even date me in the first place -- was a huuuuuge Braves fan. We spent most of our dates with Braves games on a TV in the background. (Oh come on. That’s kind of a funny joke even if it’s not at all true.)

To say I adored Meredith to the point of rational blindness is understated. I was drunk with smitten-ness even when I wasn’t literally drunk. It was very much the You Say Jump, I Say How High kind of relationship. Which is to say it was doomed from the start. But it was heavenly while I was privileged enough to be in it.

Our breakup took a month, because she wouldn’t do it. I was too nice a guy. I had to pull it out of her like an impacted wisdom tooth, and it hurt me worse than it hurt her.

My encounter at the Lookouts was a perfect Harry Burns moment:

Harry: Yeah, nothing from her not even a smile. So I down shift into small talk, and I asked her where she went to school and she said. "Michigan State", and this reminds me of Helen. All of a sudden I'm in the middle of this mess of an anxiety attack, my heart is beating like a wild man and I start sweating like a pig.
Sally: Helen went to Michigan State?
Harry: No she went to Northwestern, but they're both Big-Ten schools. I got so upset I had to leave the restaurant.
Sally: Harry I think this takes a long time. It might be months before we're actually able to enjoy going out with someone new.
Harry: Yah...
Sally: And maybe longer, before we're actually able to go to bed with someone new.
Harry: Oh I went to bed with her.
Sally: You went to bed with her?
Harry: Sure.
Sally: Oh.

“Scott Van Slyke” → Andy Van Slyke → Pittsburgh Pirates → Atlanta Braves → Sid Bream’s series-winning, series-ending tag-at-the-plate run in the 1992 NLCS → Meredith → heartbreak.

This chain of thought was instantaneous. Faster than the speed of night. This is how the minds of men work.

Plus, it’s a lot more fun to recall it all when I know the story has a happy ending.

Observations from The Strut

Strut - Sheena Easton (mp3)
Strut - Cheetah Girls (mp3)

The Bessie Smith Strut is an annual Chattanooga tradition, a Monday around which all portions of The Noog community gather on Martin Luther King Boulevard to enjoy music, vendor grub, and beer all in the name of togetherness, drunkenness, and blues baby blues.

For the second straight year, I was bullied and intimidated into attending Chattanooga's largest annual no-admission event by my BOTG partner in crime, and that's why you've gotta love Bob.

Originally I'd planned to write something about vampires today, but you can't be all hungover from Strutting and then not write about The Strut. So here are some observations from this year's adventures:

WHERE ARE YOU DIAPER LADY?
Last year, a super-skinny black woman in a neon shimmery green matching bonnet and diaper hung out near us and danced almost as badly as she dressed. There was no such lady this year. The freak eye candy wasn't nearly as fun this year, although we did have one guy who looked like he'd been excommunicated from the Hari Krishnas, and a large number of people with their entire bodies covered with terrible tattoos. (No, I'm not saying tattoos are terrible; I'm saying that the tattoos covering these particular bodies were terrible.)

POLISH SAUSAGE IS DA BOMB
After four beers, and after standing in 93-degree heat (heat index: 101) for a couple of hours, very few food items would taste bad. I ordered a delicious Polish sausage and ate it so fast I had to convince myself it wasn't just a dream. Unfortunately, Bob forgot a very important rule of food purchases: Make sure your Polish Sausage isn't charred black to the core. In all my years of knowing him, I've never seen Bob react to a bite of food like he reacted to his first bite of that Polish Sausage. In fact, his reaction was almost exactly like the lady's reaction to her Whammy Burger at the3:32 mark of this clip from "Falling Down."



GOD IS WATCHING US... BUT FROM A SAFE DISTANCE
It's called "plausible deniability," and God wants it as much as anyone. He's definitely watching us, as Bette Midler insisted so many years ago in her cheesy awful song, but I think He stays at a distance more for His sake than for ours. At moments, being at the Strut reminds you why humanity is so cool. Then overweight redneck white men start showing up with signs and handing out cards explaining why we all shouldn't get along because God will smite those who don't worship Jesus exactly the way overweight redneck white men do.

IF IT WALKS LIKE A DUCK...
Chattanooga, for all the great reasons to enjoy this town, has suffered a little bit of a crime relapse lately, and especially in gang-related matters. We had a shooting in a downtown park a few months back where the police insisted it "wasn't gang-related" even though numerous bystanders observed that the conflict involved two different groups sporting two very distinct and consistent color choices in their clothing. Last night, the Strut ended with serious crowd panic and dispersal -- although I never heard a gunshot, someone familiar running past me said he did. As I hopped on my scooter to find my next bottle of water, I motored past nine young black males, all wearing either red shirts, red bandanas, or red belts. Lot of red. Now, with as little as I know about anything, particularly inner-city life, maybe I'm jumping to unfair conclusions to say it was members of a gang. Maybe they were a soccer team. Maybe they were all wearing Spain jerseys in anticipation of their World Cup match. Maybe they're volunteer firemen. But I'm gonna go with the theory that it was a gang.

TANK TOPS... A GUILTY PLEASURE
This one probably speaks for itself. I probably shouldn't make much of an effort to explain it further. They're kinda cheap and low-class, but my goodness they can look nice.

"ARE YOU GUYS GAY?"
Bob and I concluded our evening at a local dive where they were holding Trivia Night. After we proved ourselves marginally useful for one team of competitors, the crowd mostly died down, and Bob and I sat at the bar nursing the night's final beer. Some early 20s dude in a white button-down over a white wife-beater and carefully-manicured hair pulls up next to Bob with the tremendous introduction: "Are you guys gay?" Bob and I looked at one another and shrugged. If I recall, Bob's response was something like, "Maybe, but we have five children between us."

Point is, if some dude you've never met comes up to you and starts his conversation with that question, please don't let him sit down and destroy whatever conversation you were having with your not-gay friend of the same sex. Especially if the kid was home-schooled and looks like a mix between Ducky and Patrick Dempsey from Can't Buy Me Love.

Consider yourself warned.

Live (rhymes with "jive") in The 'Noog

Mountain Girl - Blue Mountain (mp3)
Take a Ride - The Dirty Guv'nahs (mp3)

I owe my partner Bob a minor apology, or at least a clarification, in regards to live music and the worthiness of it in comparison to recorded music. (If you're just dying for Bob's original column and my response, there you go.)

You see, we were two of many hundred who attended last Friday's NightFall, a night in downtown 'Nooga where bikers and other strange people with a variety of fashion senses all gather to listen to talk to one another over the din of some random live music played on stage. NightFall is to concerts what the Macon Braves are to baseball, which is to say, people really go because it's cheap and a fun place to have a conversation whilst getting inebriated, all under the umbrella excuse of liking whatever's being offered at the venue.

Still, NightFall does have its true music fans, such as Bob and many other regulars. People who truly love live music but tolerate having to talk with others because they enjoy that, too. Best of both worlds for the Bobs amongst us.

Anyway, toward the end of Friday's set, we were all gathered to actually stop talking (more or less) and listen more intently to the band of the hour, Blue Mountain. Just three members. Geetar, bass and drums, aka Bob's preferred live music arrangement.

They had gotten themselves good and lathered up an hour into their set, it being hot as the fourth circle of hell in the D'town 'Noog, but they kept playing like they needed redemption and really wanted it. And I'm in total agreement with Bob that, with every additional instrument past three (four if you count vocals ala Rock Band!), live music risks getting muddier and more muddled, harder and harder to hear the the singer or any particular instrument. [NOTE: Bob, if I'm not expressing that correctly, just come on in here and edit it! You have the powah!]

The five or six songs I actually got to listen to (as opposed to just overhearing) were very appealing. They threw in their own rendition of "Squeeze Box" by The Who, which gave me an ecstatic moment of actually knowing the words they were singing. Fine job covering that song they did, sez Yoda.

I was so impressed with the 30 minutes I got to savor that I got in line and purchased one of their albums. (Yes, it just so happens that a ridiculously attractive woman was in line before me, but all we talked about while waiting was our children and how courageous she was to bring her 5-year-old boy down and watch over him while rockin' out. No exchanging of phone numbers. Or names. Or )

On Saturday, I popped that CD in... and it was OK. I'd hoped for a little more than OK. Could be that I picked the wrong CD to purchase. (The hot mom in front of me bought Midnight in Mississippi, their newest of all-new songs, so maybe I should have followed her on that, too.) Which offers me an opportunity to confess to a hole in my preference for recorded music over live music.

For bands about which I know little or nothing, live music can be every bit as vital, if not moreso, than their recorded music. Hundreds upon hundreds of wonderful live acts can probably put on one helluva show, wowing the crowd and wooing their die-hards, but somehow this electricity never quite makes it into the studio.

One key difference, and this can't ever be given enough respect in the music world, is the producer. It's tough for a Walkman powered with Everready or Ray-O-Vac batteries to hold up against something running on Duracell or Energizer. Likewise, it's hardly fair to compare these bands, with the only producers they can afford (and maybe on less-than-stellar equipment?), to the bands I adore and the producers their labels can bestow upon them.

For the Blue Mountains and Dirty Guv'nahs* of the world, give me the live act. Seeing these bands live is better than permanently possessing either of their CDs. In their cases, the explosive moment is far better than the long-lasting light bulb. That's hardly the kind of compliment I'd pay to my favorite bands.

* -- I discovered the Dirty Guv'nahs playing at Market Street Tavern early this summer. No cover charge, and we're enjoying a drink when this band kicks into a set that sounds more sincerely Rolling Stones-esque than any 'Nooga-centric band deserves to sound. They even closed the night by putting together a rendition of "Sympathy for the Devil" that not only seemed to last 20 minutes, but was also mighty damn good, as in I honestly think Keith and Mick could have sat there and said to themselves, "These redneck blokes ain't half bad."

"Mountain Girl" comes from Blue Mountain's 2008 compilation Omnibus. "Take a Ride" comes from The Dirty Guv'nahs' debut EP Don't Need No Money. The first picture was merely stolen from Google. The second was taken by my own cell phone on Friday night. I have not yet repented.