B-List Celebrity Sighting Smackdown

Thursday night: Newlyweds Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson spotted at Maggiano's Little Italy. Apparently he lives here, and they were in town for the Nashville stop of their Marriage is Sacred tour. They looked every bit as classy as they do in this picture.



Friday night: Gunnar Nelson, one half of early 90s pop duo Nelson, spotted at Rafferty's. I had no idea what Gunnar Nelson looks likes, but enough people at our table were sure enough that I concurred. Here's a picture of the fab duo back in the big hair days:



The Gunnar sighting happened just before we went to see Snakes on a Plane, which is every bit as fun and trashy as the title suggests. All in all, a high cultured couple of days.

Disturbing...

A friend at work told me to go to youtube.com, and type "Russian dog video" into its search engine (parental guidance suggested, kids; Kate - don't look). What you find is research footage (Russian, apparently, though the narration is in English), where they have decapitated a dog and hooked up the head to some primitive blood bypass machine. The head is therefore still alive, responding to smells and touch and so forth. The whole thing is set to a tinny, crackly orchestral soundtrack that makes the whole thing seem a lost video from the Dharma Initiative. It could be a hoax, or it could be real. Either way, it is one of the more disturbing (and sad) things that I have ever seen. And since I couldn't think of anything else to post, I share that disturbance with you.

Random Things I Dislike

Call weekends: They come around once a month, and are extremely unpredictable. Sometimes you don't get called in at all, and sometimes you spend all weekend there. Unfortunately, last weekend was one of the latter. Sad. General theme of this particular call weekend: People who enjoy crack.

Lebanon: So this nation, (not the town in middle Tennessee, which, for all I know, is eminently likeable) is upset about Israeli troops on its soil, messing with its sovereignty. The thing is, with a militant uncontrolled Hezbollah running around the country, they never had sovereignty to begin with. The civilian deaths are very tragic, however Beirut would not be in ruins if the Lebanese military would have disarmed Hezbollah when it was supposed to.

James Blunt: So his song, "You're Beautiful", was nice enough the first 500,000 times I heard it. However, a while back Kate and I watched him perform on Saturday Night Live, and his facial expression while singing fell somewhere between seizure and severe constipation. It was kind of disturbing, enough so that I didn't want to see him ever again. Since then, everytime I hear him I remember his creepy song-face so I can't listen to him anymore, either.

Summer tv season: 250 channels of crap. Need new Lost and The Office now.

This Really is Music City

A few weeks ago a large group of us went to see Guster and Ray LeMontagne at the Ryman. Beforehand, I didn't know too much about Guster (but have since listened to their latest cd, Ganging Up on the Sun, compulsively. Thanks Lara.), but was very much looking forward to Ray, since I was a big fan of his cd, Trouble.
It was a very good show all around, with some drama right in the middle. Much has been discussed elsewhere about Ray's panty-wadded exit, so I won't go into any details. According to his Myspace page this has happened in Baltimore, Indy, and elsewhere, so it wasn't just an annoying Nashville crowd. Dan's take on the whole deal was pretty much the best I've read on the subject. However, since his treastise came in the form of a long-deleted e-mail you don't get to read it. It was spot on, though.
Then, last Sunday I went to perhaps one of the best club shows I've ever seen: Josh Ritter at 3rd and Lindsley. Club show audiences in Nashville are notoriously annoying and loud (Ray could not tolerate), however Ritter pretty much completely captivated the audience. A very very quiet song, "Idaho", is just a softly picked acoustic guitar and him singing just above a whisper. The amazing thing was the complete attention of the crowd, with a rapt silence that would have made The Bluebird jealous. Ritter is a terrific songwriter; go iTune his music. I like his first major cd, Golden Age of Radio, the best. But they are all good.
Next up in live-music world, Nickel Creek back at the Ryman. I've never seen them live, but I'll bet they make a more graceful exit than Ray.