GRABBINGSAND

01-27-06_2201.jpg
Originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

Brokeback Mountain. 10:35pm. Alpharetta.

(Actually, other patrons did show up. About six or seven more. Of course, two of them left in a seeming fluster about half an hour in.)

Same shirt … Different team
Originally uploaded by tonysimon.

We’re suckers for Threadless t-shirts. BJ, Joseph, Nikki, myself. Just something about those quirky little designs screams “Buy me!” and so we do. Apparently, we’re not alone, as evidenced by last night.

The kid on the left (my right) is … dang, I can’t remember his name and I feel bad for it … super nice guy … anyway, after the first question of the night, I look up and see this guy, grinning, saying “You have my shirt!” And, hey, I did.

Or he had mine.

Anyway, Tony is a smart man with an eye for bloggable (and humpable) material, so he whipped out his Treo and snapped the 2-dimensional memory you see here. “We need a picture of this,” he explained. “For the Internet.”

After a couple more questions, I was beckoned over to my twin’s table. His team are regulars, just like us. They call themselves “Kelly Is A Girl’s Name.” (The announcer, his name is Kelly, and he’s a guy, so …)

Seems they needed a picture of their own, also for the Internet. So somewhere today, there’s another photo just like this one.

Update: The photo has now been approved for the Threadless gallery.

Made Of People
Originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

Too tired for an all around recap. Maybe tomorrow. For now, know this: There were two occasions, both bonus questions, where I revealed the absolute depths of my geekery in full. The first? James Bond trivia, musical scores in particular. The second? Knowing a minute detail from Toy Story.

But hey, geekery pays. $50, to be exact.

Bonus Bond Track:

“Thunderball,” as originally belted out with hearty Welsh fervour over the opening credits of 1965’s James Bond film of the same name. Make no mistake, as I think the best Bond themes were the three done by Shirley Bassey, particularly Diamonds Are Forever, but you can’t count out Tom Jones. The sheer bombast of this recording is beyond awesome, and once you’ve heard it a couple of times, you’ll find it entering your skull at the oddest times. You’ll be in a meeting at work or standing in line at Starbucks, when, all of a sudden, you’ll get this urge to strike a mic-in-your-hand pose and sing, “And he strikes …. like …. Thunnnnnn! Der-Ball!!!!!!”

Or maybe that’s just me.

Ultra-Violet By The Roomful
Originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

You’re going to have to click to enjoy this slice of American marketing history. Then you’re going to have to click again to see the absolutely awesome fine print. What are we selling here? The latest (as of 1950) innovation in lighting, brought to you by the enterprising minds at Westinghouse. What this has to do with a spooky chalk-line drawing of a classroom is slightly beyond reach, but the rainbow is there to draw your attention to the wonderful rays of … well … here’s a bit of the copy:

Everybody needs ultra-violet for health. Everybody likes ultra-violet for tan. Most everybody gets too little …

It’s a new kind of sun lamp: Flourescent. It’s long; it’s tubular; it bathes a wide area with cool, low-level but effective ultra-violet.

Yep. Flourescent lighting, back when it was new and hip and just as good as the Sun itself … and before anyone noticed that flourescent light makes humans look ever-so-slightly cadaverous.

In other news, a co-worker of mine — brilliant girl, ought to have her own blog (this is a hint, yes) — offered me some candy she acquired from Australia. Not sure how it got all the way over here, but that’s not the point. These were Life Savers. Musk-flavoured Life Savers. At the time, some other officefolk had just arrived and so they lingered to see my reaction. I was leary. The mottled pink ring smelled slightly familiar. So I popped it in my mouth and pondered. Then it hit me:

These things smell like they taste, and they taste like Junkman’s Daughter (the trendy shop in Little Five Points) smells. Think patchouli mixed with vinyl, something velvet, several hundred candles, and other notions that don’t bear mentioning.

Of course, maybe the best description came from one of the anxiously observing co-workers. “It tastes pink.”

I agreed, but added, “Pink, sure. But not Sanrio, Hello Kitty pink. This is more like, you really ought to be 21 before you eat this candy pink.”

According to the musical aggregator at last.fm, these are the top ten artists or groups I played on my iPod from January 15 to January 22:

1. Scissor Sisters
2. Saul Williams
3. Over the Rhine
4. The Roots
5. Imogen Heap
6. Kanye West
7. The New Pornographers
8. Queen
9. Jeff Buckley
10. Morningwood

If you don’t have a last.fm account, please get one. They’re free. And it will make me feel better to know that I’m not the only one who is steadilly becoming more and more fascinated with patterns in my own listening habits.

01-20-06_1707.jpg
Originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

Competition.

Somehow, We Won.
Originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

There’s just no explaining this one. So here’s the facts:

Roll Call: Alyssa, B.J. (Happy Birthday!), Darcey, Joseph, Nikki, Rusty, Tony, and your humble author.

Final Score: 95

Place: 1st

I was ready to make a post about how Joey Bishop really ought to have a more memorable name, and besides, shouldn’t a person have to actually sing or dance or do anything entertaining before being considered a fully-vested member of the Rat Pack? Fine. He married Debbie Reynolds, maybe? No, that was Eddie Fisher.

Of course, at 87, Bishop is the only surviving member of the aforementioned Pack O’ Rats. I guess that counts for something. Maybe he gets free upgrades from grande to venti at the Malibu Beach Starbucks.

01-13-06_1718.jpg
Originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

Ice Doesn’t Count
Originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

Today’s Fact:
The Empire State Building does have its own zip code, 10118. Kelly — the MC of Bustin’ Heads Trivia — owes us beer.

Knowing this, would those extra fifteen points — the 10 points we would’ve won from question #10 (”Which of the following building has its own ZIP code?”) and the five points we lost — have pushed us into the winner’s circle? Not likely. Like a Yugo fueled by gasohol and paperclips, our stalwart gang of triviots were far from firing on all cylinders. We chose a good name — “Hispanics with Stare Decisis In Their Eyes” — and we had a pretty full roster (Alyssa, Nikki, Tony, Rusty, Joseph, B.J. and your humble author — Darcey was either home with a flu or hanging out with five-course foodies). But for every question that left us staring into space, there were two that sent us into discussions that strayed far from the correct answer.

Tokyo and LA are busy airports, but we went with Hong Kong and Paris. The “Enola Gay” decimated Hiroshima, but the best we could come up with for Nagasaki was that famous fighting flagship, the “Chuck Norris.” Our worst moment? Telling B.J. that there was no way that Antarctica has the highest average elevation of any continent. Our reasoning? Ice doesn’t count.

It does.

So after a tie-breaking overtime, the big winners were our old rivals, The Olsen Twins. Better them than the whipper-snappers of Kelly Is A Girl’s Name. I mean, come on, we all know that Kelly is a girl’s name …

Howdy Doody Time
Originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

Not Belt Buckle. Bell Buckle.

We spent the daylight of New Year’s Eve in a tiny town in Tennessee.
We were in Murfreesboro for the holiday, visiting Cort & Julie, so this side trip was perfect for curiosity seekers like us. The primary industry of this former stop for the L & N consists of antiques, fudge and ice cream. In fact, the Bluebird has been named the finest ice cream parlor in Tennessee for three years running.

While it wasn’t at all crowded during our visit, Bell Buckle experiences a huge influx of people during two yearly occasions: the quilting festival and the “RC & Moonpie” festival. No lie.

(This was originally going to be a ranty post about our white knuckle return home. I had plans to denounce most of my fellow holiday motorists — particularly those from Illinois, who appeared to be mounting a rolling assault of slow-moving minivans and swerving SUVs on Monteagle Mountain and the interstate that cuts through it — but I decided to stick to just the photos for now. Enjoy the pretty pictures.)