1996 Olympics Revisited

This weekend I visited Atlanta, Georgia to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play at the Philips Arena. It was probably the best concert I have ever attended. Number two is probably when I saw the Who in Atlanta years ago, back when half of them were not dead.

While in Atlanta, I went to Centennial Olympic Park to see a brick that my parents bought. In 1996 my family went to the Olympics, so I thought it would be cool to visit the brick we had not seen in nearly 13 years. Sure enough, it still had our names on it. Finding it was difficult because the computer that provides maps based on brick search results failed to make any sense. Pointing an arrow to the general area of thousands of bricks does not help specific searches.

While wandering around the sidewalks, I noticed two that I found hillarious:

1. Mr. Sparkle 1960-1994

2. Coondog and Goober

Near Centennial Olympic Park, a homeless man was ranting about baseball, stating "This is Braves country!"

I figured as much, what with Atlanta being the host city of the Braves and all. It was his next statement, after he noticed my baseball cap, that I found the most interesting though:

"Angels? Now I know you on crack!"

More impressive than a homeless man's assumptions of my baseball and drug preferences, though, was the citing of a man who looked a helluva lot like Ted Turner wandering aimless in the vicinity of the Georgia Dome. He was actually wandering aimlessly. As in, he was wandering in in circles, zig zags, and whatever other patterns you can walk in around the street of the Georgia Dome.

I really hope it was Ted Turner.

Basketball at the Grocery Store

My trip to the grocery store today was very basketball filled. And by "very," I mean two interesting things happened. First, I was turning the corner into the beverage and snacks aisle when some elderly woman saw and me exclaimed, "You play basketball, din'tcha?"

After getting over the shock of an elderly woman using poor grammar with me, I said, "I wish."

She followed my response with, "Especially professional?" She then laughed and continued with, "You'd make lots of money."

I politely laughed and walked away wondering what just happened.

In the same aisle, I approached the Goldfish crackers and put two packages in my cart. After closer examination, I noticed there was a picture of Dwayne Wade on the package with the message, "GET ACTIVE WITH DWAYNE WADE! BASKETBALL SHAPES INSIDE!" To me, nothing says, "Let's live an active, healthy lifestyle" quite like "Eat more crackers that are twice the size of normal crackers.

Speaking of basketball...

20-Year-Old Ass

I do not come from a family that regularly uses foul language. In fact, I'm the only person in my immediate family that does so. My uncle Tom does, but he only does so tastefully, if that makes any sense. My dad does very rarely and only in cases where he is quoting somebody, like the great Admiral Farragut quote, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead." I, of course, speak as though I had been making out with a toilet for hours. The point of all this, is that I heard my mother say, "ass" yesterday and I found it noteworthy.

My parents and I took my grandmother to have brunch at the Can Can on Cary Street in Richmond with my aunt Elizabeth and uncle. My aunt and uncle recently returned from spending a week in Key West because my aunt's family owns an entire block. My aunt's mother spends the entire winter there. During this trip, the house across the street from where they were staying was occupied by a sorority on spring break.

My uncle recounted a conversation with my aunt where he said something along the lines of, "Why should I care about the view? I'm surrounded by 20-year-old ass everywhere."

My grandmother, being hard of hearing, asked my mother what Tom said, so she told my grandmother that, "He was surrounded by 20-year-old ass in Key West."

So I got to hear my mother say, "ass."

I also got to witness another classic instance of my grandmother telling my aunt the same story seven times in a row. The result of this was that my grandmother was afraid she offended her when in reality she just bored it.

What has happened to the American dream?

As I drove to the dentist today, I passed a Hardee's. A poster in the window advertised the recent Little Thick Burger. I find the existence of this Little Thick Burger to be a very poor statement on the health of American society. America is based on everything being huge, and nowhere is this trend more present than in our fast food industry. That's why every college student orders two double cheeseburgers from McDonald's (I order three sometimes and eat the extra one for dessert) because they are twice as big as regular cheeseburgers. Joe Theissman's restaurant outside the District of Columbia serves a one pound burger called the Fullback because Americans want a giant portion of an animal carcass served to them with at least cheese and two slices of bread.

For awhile, fast food chains were in competition with each other to see who could make the most ridiculous sandwich by piling as many slabs of ground beef onto a sandwich as possible.

- McDonald's offered the aforementioned ultra-cheap double cheeseburger, as well as the American classic Double Quarter Pounder (Why didn't they just call it a half-pounder?). After a while, they even created the Double Filet-O-Fish Sandwich to accomodate gluttonous fake vegetarians.

- Arby's released three different sizes of roast beef sandwiches.

- Hardee's used boring and annoying advertisement to get the American public excited about the Monster Burger and later the Thick Burger.

- Burger King went absolutely insane with their choices. The Double Whopper begat the Triple Whopper. Later, they created the Double Stacker, Triple Stacker, and the legendary Quad Stacker so that the customer could not only have lots of beef, but a colon-clogging excess of cheese and bacon. Depending on the franchise one visited, the employees might even charge you for two Quad Stackers and give you the mythical Oct Stacker.

- Wendy's did not go as far as Burger King did with their Stackers, but they did add an amazing noun to the English language in the form of The Baconator.

But what happened to this trend? Sure, Burger King is still creating burgers such as the Angry Whopper, but it's not a monumental burger by any means. It's a regular burger with a little spice.

Hardee's too has let me down. Rather than offer the Triple Thick Burger That Ate A Monster Burger, what do they give us? The Little Thick Burger. The day Hardee's downsized their next product and offered this burger for the first time, a little piece of me died.

A little piece of America died.

It's been a long time coming, my dear

It's been a long adventure. My original purpose for starting BLT was to chronicle my adventures in far off lands. Due to a strange turn of events, I ended up enrolling in graduate school instead. As a result, I forgot about this for the longest time. Seeing as how I still have adventures where I am, I feel it is appropriate to re-open this facility, even if for no other reason than to take notes so I don't forget something. After all, this is about me, so it should serve me.

Yesterday my family went to dinner at a restaurant called Napoli. It is a nice little Italian restaurant along Jefferson Davis Highway. It is no Valentino's (another, better, Italian restaurant in the opposite direction along Jefferson Davis Highway), but it is still good. I ordered an a ham pizza and accompanied it with a nice Coors Light.

My now 89 year old grandmother asked me if she could have a sip of my beer. Being her birthday, I let her have some. I assumed she would take the glass and have a sip of it. That was not what happened. My grandmother had just finished stirring the cream into her coffee and scoop out some of my beer using the same spoon she used to stir it. I don't know why she did that, but now I know what beer tastes like with a twist of coffee.