A Whirlwind French Biennial

Sadly, the thrill that is fave friend French visiting Atlanta lasted just 30 hours over the weekend. But we did a helluva lot in those 30 hours.

French is one of my five most beloved non-DNA-sharing humans on this earth (that list includes my moon-based friends, too, come to think of it). We’re both single, we’re both obsessed with live music and movies and travel, and each thinks the other is the cat’s meow — as great friendships should be. I visit him nearly every summer in D.C., and he’s averaging an every-other-year Atlanta trip.

We met cute at the end of 1991. French had just moved to Atlanta to start grad school, and he was rooming with an old college buddy of mine. She had a brunch to introduce him to her multitudes, and introduced us with: “This is French. He loves R.E.M., and he can’t wait for you to take him on a tour of Athens!” As she flitted away, French looked me in the eye and said, “I hate R.E.M. and I have no interest in seeing Athens.” I laughed and demanded that he show me his CD collection that minute before we could consider continuing the conversation. He was redeemed by his extensive Elvis Costello collection. I loved him — and his honesty — from that moment to this one.

Back to the weekend recap. French landed on Atlanta soil around 10:30 Saturday morning, and I gave him the 45-minute what’s-changed tour as we headed for lunch at one of his best-remembered spots: La Fonda (fan-damn-tastic paella and fish tacos).

The rest of the day was spent hangin’ in my ‘hood:

We started out, of course, at Decatur CD — one of the best CD shops in town — where French picked up an Atlanta Rhythm Section disc (you started something, Write Procrastinator).


Then on to Twain’s, where we sampled many, many IPAs (so many, in fact, that my elbows are rubbed raw from propping my tipsy head) and fed the cute waiter, Powell, many, many Jelly Bellies.


What else after an afternoon of beers but an evening showing of Knocked Up (which we both enjoyed and recommend)? Post-movie, we ended the day on the patio of The Angel, a pub off the square, toasting each other’s brilliance and nibbling away the night.

Sunday began with breakfast at Crescent Moon.


Fortified by eggs and grits and a shared appetizer of biscuits with sausage gravy, we hit Wordsmiths Books, which opened in the neighborhood this weekend. I picked up a couple of must-reads and perused the Baby Got Books shelf.

Sorry, Perry, but I love having a bookstore down the street!

The CD and books joneses were fed, so we headed to historic Oakland Cemetery, which has been interring Atlanta’s crème de la crème — including Margaret Mitchell and Bobby Jones — and hoi polloi since 1850.

Oakland Cemetery is a very cool spot in Atlanta, one I rarely get to. We spent more than an hour there, and still didn’t cover every section.

Former Mayor Maynard Jackson, who died in 2003, is buried here. One of the guides told us his widow comes out regularly to talk to him.


There are a lot of old magnolias throughout Oakland Cemetery, and most are beginning to bloom.

This lion status honors the CSA soldiers who died during the Civil War.

Isn't this warped cement cool? No cracks!

It was hot, damn hot, so we cooled off our cemetery-dead feet over my beloved margarita swirls. Damn, I love me some swirls.

With tequila coursing through our veins, we headed for the new World of Coca-Cola museum.

This was a bittersweet stop on the French tour. My father spent his career with Coca-Cola Bottling, and he loved all things Coke. This being my second Father's Day without him, I got a wee bit sad as we raced through the museum. He would have loved it.

These bottles were created around the world for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. They were on display at the Coca-Cola headquarters back when I worked there, so it was great seeing my old friends again.

From there, we raced to the airport so that French could make his 6 p.m. flight back to reality.

*sigh*

I’m already lonely. I miss my boy. But I’ll see him in a month, when I hit D.C. for The Wedding of the Year.

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The Now Explosion

A newbie in my orbit has me reliving my salad days. The wannabeau and I are the same age and grew up in Atlanta, so we’ve had a lot of “Remember when Lenox was an open-air mall?” and “My first trip to Oxford Books was” and “How many times did you ride the Pink Pig?” conversations.

Yank your nasty brain out of the gutter right now. Riding the Pink Pig isn’t a euphemism for how we hit that here in Georgia. The Pink Pig was an Atlanta tradition, a rite of passage, a kiddie train at the downtown Rich’s department store during the Christmas season. Why we celebrated Christmas by riding a train that looked like a pig is beyond me … but it was special, dammit.

All these conversations about the Atlanta of the 1960s and 1970s got me thinking about some coolness from the sixth grade … so I Googled and I YouTubed … and found that the University of Georgia has archived footgage from — wait for it — The Now Explosion.

You late fortysomething kids from Atlanta and Jacksonville and other blessed cities are squealing right now, aren’t you? The rest of you? I feel sorry for your lack of Now Explosionism.


What was The Now Explosion? Nope, not Larry Tee’s first band; my Now Explosion predates that musical marvel by about a decade. The Now Explosion was music videos. In 1970. Eleven years before MTV’s moonman and that Buggles song.

Why is that still a trivia question? Doesn’t everyone know that “Video Killed the Radio Star” by now?

The Now Explosion played locally produced videos for Top 40 hits. For several glorious months in 1970, Channel 17 — now known throughout the world as Super Station TBS, but then just a local UHF station — broadcast Now Explosion every weekend, for about twelve hours straight, Saturday and Sunday. It was a badge of honor to brag on Mondays about the number of weekend hours wasted watching Now Explosion.


The Now Explosion was just plain cool. No, not cool — groovy. Now Explosion was the epitome of groovy. Trippy, hippy graphics and dancing chicks. On TV. All weekend long. The right thing at the right time for an impressionable eleven-year-old girl already passionately in love with music. I was also fascinated with hippies in those days. A big thrill was the occasional Sunday drive down to Piedmont Park, where we’d watch the hippies. Being a complete and total dork, I used to make magazine photo collages of hippies.

Now Explosion was a beautiful moment that was of the moment. It was, as the marketing materials stated, providing television that young adults really dig. Since the videos were, for the most part, shot around Atlanta, you had the connection of a favorite song with a slice of your city. It was something just for us.

Here are snippets from some of the videos. I’ve watched this several times (more times than I want to admit) since I found it last night; I was surprised at how many of the videos I remembered. It’s well worth watching the full nine-plus minutes; some clips are brilliant, some hilarious. And now I know why I dance the way I do.

Try to stick with this video until the end, and you'll be rewarded with a non-silver-foxed Kenny Rogers singing and emoting to “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” (helluva great song).

My favorite isn’t included in this clip. It was a video of a beautiful hippy girl with long hair, playing Frisbee in Piedmont Park, with Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia” playing. I wanted to be that carefree hippy chick. I still want to be that carefree hippy chick.

Skinny Bobby Harper — a longtime Atlanta disc jockey, and a family fave throughout my childhood — was one of the DJs on Now Explosion (the term “veejay” had yet to be uttered). Here’s a clip of him remembering the Now Explosion days:



When The Beatles announced their breakup, Skinny Bobby played the video for “Let It Be,” which ended with the four-square photo collage from the album. As the song faded and the screen froze on the photo, he said something like “Look closely. This will be the last time you’ll see them together.”

Appropriately schwaaaaaaah.

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My Moment in the World Series Sun

My hometown team is out of the playoffs for the first time in fifteen years. But maybe that’s a good thing. We fans have taken winning for granted for a decade; we forgot the joy of winning. So let’s look back to that first great year.

The Atlanta Braves made it to the World Series in 1991 — a worst-to-first team that captivated the city. The Braves were young, cute, excited, ready to win. Many of them had come up together through the Braves’ farm system. So many come-from-behind victories that year. Baseball was damn fun that summer.

That October was one of the most thrilling times in Atlanta, even more exciting than during the 1996 Olympic Games. Whether you were pumping gas, or buying groceries, or watching the game at Manuel’s, everyone talked to everyone else about the Braves. It felt like a small town again.

The Braves didn’t win that series against Toronto (they won just once, in 1995) — but that didn’t crush the spirit of the hometown fans. And so we honored them with a parade. As an employee of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, I was selected as an escort for the players, assigned to David Justice and Mark Lemke. I got the cutest one … well, next to my beloved Tommy Glavine.

Mark Lemke, David Justice, and me

I was naughty; I put my hand on David’s inside thigh
while talking to him. Do you blame me?

David Justice was The Man that fall — young, beautiful, sassy, talented (and Rookie of the Year in 1990), not yet too full of himself. The ladies went wild as he drove by. All of the cars were mobbed — but ours had the biggest mob, thanks to all the women following Justice. I was getting knocked around by these desperate debs, so he pulled me into the car. I sat down between Justice and Lemke, waving like I was a proud wife. I was spotted by friends, who wondered what the hell I was doing in the Mustang with those two popular Braves. Renae even saw me on Peter Jennings!

After the parade, we got to hang out for a few minutes with the team. On a dare from an ACOG friend, I went over to Ron Gant and told him we’d voted him Best Ass in the NL East (oh, sweet Jesus, it was, too). He blushed, laughed hard ... then had me tell the rest of the team.

Go Braves.

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