Last Saturday I lucked up and inherited a pair of tickets to hear David Sedaris read some of his work to us. I had read some of his short stories before in the New Yorker - stories that will make you laugh hard enough to wet your pants. In fact, I think there should probably be warning signs at his performances to "go" before you settle into your seat for an evening of entertainment. On this particular night at Vanderbilt, there were signs - signs that warned you that the nearest restrooms were in the next building on campus. I probably should have made the hike. I was glad to be out of the rain, however, and eager to find our seats. We were three rows from the stage, which was great until we needed to leave early. No matter - I enjoyed the show. I've gone to NPR.org and listened to sound clips of the same material, but I have to say that they were much better when you could see the smirk on his face as he told the punch lines to his best jokes. It was a delightful experience.
There are certain things about Nashville which would drive a Baptist minister to drink - in public. One of these things is the entity known as NES. Whenever NES isn't out butchering trees, apparently they're arbitrarily turning off power to entire city blocks. Granted, we had a storm the other night. Granted, there were a lot of people without power, and there was a transformer damaged. But notifying Vanderbilt 15 minutes after you've already done it that there will be "intermittent" power outages, then leaving the power off for an hour and a half, just doesn't seem Kosher to me. Blakemore is very busy street, as is 21st. I know that the traffic lights on Blakemore between Natchez and 21st were out, no police presence, just reliance that folks driving in Nashville would know to treat the intersections as 4-way stops. Since I swear two-thirds of the population doesn't understand the concept of a 4-way stop, this was a bad idea. Meanwhile, back at the ranc...
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