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5-28-04 // 3.02 pm tennesseeing is tennebelieving (or tennessee sucks in the summer) NP: Billy Joel - "The Nylon Curtain" More movies. I finished "High Fidelity" this morning over a bowl of tomato soup. I just got done with "Full Metal Jacket" (I'm basically just watching stuff in my collection that I haven't dug out in a while), and I'll probably hit "Fight Club" and "Annie Hall" later on today. Nashville was an adventure. Left Wednesday morning, buckets of rain delaying my departure. Picked up my cousin Alex and hit the highway a little before noon. The drive down is boring but went quickly since there was someone to talk with. Kentucky was one huge downpour. Made it to Tennessee just in time for a dry spell; crawled through rush hour traffic and endless construction zones and got settled in our hotel out by the airport. Watched local TV news weather forecasts and kept hoping that the huge line of storms in the area stayed to the north of the city. So we headed off on one of Nashville's many "parkways" in search of the amphitheater. It actually wasn't terribly far away from the hotel, it just took ages since it's just kind of plopped down in the middle of a normal suburban strip kind of area. Parked the car and got in line, got frisked and got inside. Looked at merch but it was stupidly expensive and the designs weren't even worth it even if the prices were lower. Found a good spot on the lawn about the equivalent of 10 rows up and waited for the show to start as hawkers kept coming by trying to sell cotton candy and funnel cakes(?). The crowd was great, a carnival mix of aging hippies, kids, nerds, shirtless middle aged rock dudes, acid casualties, regular folks and even a guy in one of those spinal-injury neck halos. The band came on at 7.30 as the sky grew ominously dark. The rain held off, thankfully, and the moon and the stars even came out during the second set. All in all it was a three hour set covering most of the band's career. The playing was tight for the first night of the tour. Setlist: Instrumental Medley [Finding My Way->Anthem->Bastille Day->A Passage To Bangkok->Cygnus X-1 ->Hemispheres (Prelude)] / The Spirit of Radio / Force Ten / Animate / Subdivisions / Earthshine / Red Barchetta / Roll The Bones / Bravado / YYZ / The Trees / The Seeker (cover #1) / One Little Victory (with FIRE!) I'd have preferred to see more originals instead of the covers, but hey they're promoting that covers EP they're putting out, so hey. Either way, more originals and at least fewer covers would've been nice. Bonus points for airing out Between The Wheels for the first time in 20 years! Made a surprisingly quick escape from the venue and parking lot, gave Erin a call and went in search of a late night bite to eat. This being south of the Mason-Dixon line, all we saw was an endless procession of Waffle Houses. Nothing wrong with that, but we were after a Steak n Shake. We asked the guy working the front desk of our hotel if he knew of the closest one, as we remembered seeing a billboard coming into town. He led us on a wild goose chase that culminated over an hour later in Alex and myself eating at the fucking Waffle House right across the road from the hotel. Wa-hey! Thursday morning we got up semi-early and were on the road by quarter till ten. I promised Erin a cheesy t-shirt so I planned on stopping at the airport to find a gift shop. Keep in mind that the airport exit was like 3/4 mile from the hotel. No sooner do I get on the airport exit ramp do I hear "ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk scrape". Upon further inspection, it was a blown out tire, most likely a casualty of all of the random crap on the highways due to all the construction. Anyway, literally a minute after I put on my hazard lights, two highway patrolmen pull up behind me on their motorcycles. "You can't stay here", they say, as if I was planning on having a picnic and putting my feet up. "How soon can you get this out of here?", they ask. "I'm on the phone with AAA right now, hold on". I tell them it could be up to an hour. "That's too long!" the one guy shouts, almost having a stroke in the process. Apparently the one, the only GW Bush was flying in to that very airport in under an hour, and they had to have the ramp and the highways clear for his motorcade. So the cops say they're going to call their own tow truck, and I protest -- why would I want to pay for a tow when I've already paid for AAA? After more complaining they finally just called in a TDOT highway response truck which came out, moved me out of the way and put my spare doughnut on while he was at it. Thus ends Act I. Act II. We roll around on the spare looking for a tire shop. I finally find one, but they don't have the weird size tire that my car takes. So they locate another place that has the tire. They try to get me to let them order it from that store, which means at least an hour and a half delivery wait plus the time to actually do the work. I say thanks but no thanks and just head down to the other shop. They take the car and get to work, Alex and I wander over to get a bite of lunch and kill time in a village-sized super Wal-Mart. An hour later, the car was ready, the new tire was on and I was set to get the hell out of Nashville. The guy working the tire shop even gave me a $20 discount because he was "having a terrible day and wanted to spread some good karma" or something like that. I told him that I firmly believe that sort of thing, thanked him and we were on our way around 12.30. Got back around 5-ish, which was good because Alex's sister Shannon had her junior high graduation at 7 o'clock. The graduation was nice, my grandparents, my parents, my sister & her boyfriend all showed up. The gym was stiflingly hot, though thankfully the ceremony wasn't too lengthy. Shannon was the class salutatorian, gave a speech and also won a presidential achievement award, very cool. As the ceremony let out and people started to filter out to their cars, a few drops of rain began to fall. That soon turned into a slightly steady rain -- I made a mad dash for my car. About 20 feet from the car the heavens burst open. I made it into my car but I was soaked. No problem, just dried off with a t-shirt from my duffel bag. So I tried to make my way home...the storms got way stronger. Sheets and sheets of rain, lightning strikes, high winds, some street flooding. The main highway through Belleville was flooded like crazy, save for the passing lane in the middle. I eventually made it home without getting stuck, thanks to sticking to the highest-ground path and by listening to the radio for people calling in with reports of road closures and wash-outs. Got back to the apartment just as the sky was starting to clear a bit. Put some things away, called Erin, and sat down on the couch after a long, long day.
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