Flugtag!

Again, it's been awhile. What can I say? Life makes you busy sometimes. However, yesterday, neither The Girlfriend nor I were on call. She really wanted to go to the Jeff Fisher and Friends Charity Softball Game at seven in the evening, and I wanted to go to Flugtag down on the river front in the afternoon. Being the super compromisers (I know it really isn't a word thank you) that we are, we did both! I will let her tell you about the softball game. Here are my recollections of Flugtag. When the first thing you see after getting out of the car is The Oscar Myer Wienermobile, you know it's gonna be a good day. We made our way to the river and got ourselves a beer and some chicken on the stick. Quote of the day? "That's the best damn chicken on a stick I've ever had!" When pressed, The Girlfriend admitted that it was the first time she had ever had chicken on a stick.

At any rate, we found ourselves a spot and settled down. I'm not even gonna try to explain Flugtag, go to the website. First up was the Tennessee Titans entry. They quickly went into the Cumberland river. The crowd went nuts!

Cigars, rockets, planes and even a Rubik's cube went off the edge. My personal favorite was a pink car ridden by an Elvis impersonator. The big news concerned a team called "Rocky Top Rocket" that set a North American Flugtag record, flying 155 feet to shatter the old record of 81 feet. Their entry consisted of a giant banjo with a wing on top. As it went over the edge, the wing separated from the banjo and glided well beyond the former record. After all of the excitement, we went home and took a nap before the softball game. Check out The Girlfriend's blog if you are interested in how the rest of our day went.

Circa 1987

I recently went to a friend's wedding and was reminded of a road trip my buddies and I had taken after our freshman year in college. I went to the University of Tennessee which was across the state in Knoxville and my friends stayed home and went to Memphis State. A couple of weeks before we were to return to college to start our sophomore year, the guys pulled up in front of my house in Eddie's (in the back on the right) little Toyota pick-up. Danny (in the front on the right) jumps out of the back as informs me "We are going to New Orleans for the weekend, grab your crap and saddle up!" I wanted to know how we were going to get there and was quickly informed that Eddie was driving and already had a hotel room. The plan was for two to ride in the front and two to ride in the back and take turns swapping out. The rest of us had perfectly good cars with perfectly good back seats. I really don't recall why riding seven hours in the back of a truck seemed like a good idea, but that was the plan. This picture was taken after seven hours of driving. That's me on the left in the back. If I look happy, it's because I was. The bastards up front refused to swap out with the unlucky stiffs in the back. So after a full day of riding in the back of a truck on a major interstate, I was thrilled to be alive and there was no place I would have rather been at that moment than at Pat O'Brian's drinking my first hurricane.

Dinner With Co-Worker

My co-worker called around one-thirty yesterday. I couldn't answer the phone 'cause we were in the pool. The voice mail went something like this: "Bat, we aren't going to make it to dinner tonight, the wife is being a bitch. Tell Flat I'm sorry."

So we went to dinner alone at Stoney River. Great steaks and incredible drinks. In the middle of her tropical martini, Flat leaned back in her chair and said, "The bitch doesn't know what she is missing!

Flat can be a little catty sometimes.

A Month Of Sundays

I know, it's been a lifetime since I've put anything new here. I've been busy taking my finals at the clown college as well as finishing up my astronaut training, so my writing has suffered. Not that it had anywhere to go but up.

If by chance, you happen to be from Nashville and are interested in what's going on with the Predators, notice the new link for the Our Team website. It's a group of businesses that have come together to try and sell more season tickets. I think it's targeted for the corporate community, but I'm trying to spread the word to anyone that will listen. Right now the theory is that if we average 14,000 tickets per game, the new owner will be stuck with the arena lease for another seven years at least, giving us NHL hockey for a little while longer and insuring that Bat and Flat don't have to move to another city.


In other news, I am completely baffled by California. Most of us that live outside of that state have always believed that the citizens of that state are a little "touched", but this Paris Hilton thing is nuts! Let me see if I can summarize what's going on with Ms. Hilton. She violates her probation that restricts her from driving (moronic considering that if anybody can afford to be driven around, she can) and uses the excuse that her publicist told her it was ok to drive to work (I don't have a publicist, but if I did, I wouldn't rely on them for legal advice.). The judge doesn't buy the excuse (a sane Californian!) and sentences her to 45 days in the local slammer. Immediately, the sentence is reduced to about 23 days for good behavior. I used to work for a correctional facility, so I know that this is the way things work, but to the lay person it already seems like she is getting preferential treatment. So, after appearing at the MTV movie awards, which I'm sure she regrets since Sarah Silverman cut her pretty hard, Paris turns herself in and begins serving her paltry three weeks in solitary. After about three days, the sheriff sends her home to serve the rest of her sentence under house arrest. The prosecutors office gets wind of it (well, how could they not considering the fact that it was headline news on CNN) and protests to the judge. The judge has her hauled back into court. When the deputies pick her up, the television coverage is ridiculous. It's like O.J. Simpson all over again. Choppers in the air covering the trip to the courthouse, reporters getting run over by cop cars, breaking news banners on all of the "serious" news channels. Once she is in the courthouse, the judge tells her that she is gonna serve out her sentence in jail. Hilton starts wailing and blubbering and screams "It's not right!" You would think that she was going to the gas chamber. I just don't understand why it is news and here I am adding to the hysteria by blogging about it. Only in California. By the way, I've been to San Francisco a couple of times and really liked it, the people were nice, the weather was great and the city was fantastic. I would move there in a second except that it costs more to park a car there than it does to rent a three bedroom home in Nashville.

Finally, I reckon I will discuss a "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" issue. The Girlfriend told me to invite a co-worker and his wife to dinner Saturday night. When I spoke to him, he told me that he was starting his vacation this weekend and might leave Saturday, but if he didn't he would give me a call. Now, as a guy, this says to me "If we decide to go, I will call you sometime before dinner." It apparently mean something else to Flat. For the next three days she asks me repeatedly, "What has he said about dinner?" Or, "Have you heard from co-worker?" HOLY SHIT! While I'm sitting here typing this entry about the difference between men and women when it comes to the phone, Flat brings my cell phone upstairs and puts it on my desk. "You never know when somebody might call and tell you they are hungry." So, without even trying, she completely makes my point about the differences between men and women. I figure he will call if he wants to go, she thinks I should talk to him three times a day between the time we discuss going out and the time we actually do. Am I the only one dealing with this?