Nashville News Blog

For those of us cursed with an addiction to the NY Mets it's been a tough week of anguish and recriminations as the Amazins consummated one of baseball history's most stunning late-season collapses. "For sheer collective failure," wrote George Vecsey of The New York Times on Sunday, "the Mets seemed to be making their own history." Watching this train wreck from afar was hard enough...and then Salman Rushdie came to town.

Set the TiVo for 5 a.m. Monday, as our own Bruce Barry will be the center of attention on C-SPAN2's Book TV. He'll discuss his new book Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace, mixing the left with hard rights in a manner more befitting to ESPN. Be sure to check the Amazon ranking after Monday.

UPDATE: The show will actually air 4 a.m. CST Monday. In the old days, that would have made him a great lead-in to Farm Digest with F. Murray Miles.

Writer-director-star Ray McKinnon is in town this weekend to promote Randy and The Mob, his comedy about a small-town huckster and his gay antiques-dealing twin who end up in dutch with gangsters. The Audience Award winner at this year's Nashville Film Festival, where it made its world premiere, the movie opens today at Green Hills. McKinnon will appear at both evening shows tonight and Saturday night.

The movie co-stars Lisa Blount (McKinnon's wife and producer) and The Shield's Walton Goggins, both of whom get some big laughs, with Burt Reynolds and Bill Nunn. McKinnon, an Oscar winner for his 2001 short "The Accountant," has a two-decade track record in film and TV: he's probably most familiar from his roles in O Brother Where Art Thou? and on HBO's Deadwood. But he's also a sharp writer: check out this amusing and insightful piece he penned on acting for The Oxford American's recent Film Issue. And give him a warm welcome.

Former Scene staffer Willy Stern has just returned from a stint as an embedded journalist in Iraq with the First Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood, Texas. His embed was co-sponsored by two running magazines, Runner's World (U.K.) and Marathon & Beyond. One of Stern's anecdotes from his trip follows, and there are more at his brother's website here.

I'm crammed into the back of a C-130 cargo plane flying into BIAP, Baghdad's international airport. There are 50 others in the cargo hold with me, mostly soldiers, and two pallets of equipment. The temp is 124 outside. Inside the plane, there is no A/C. I suspect it's 130 degrees, maybe more. U.S. Army regulations require that we wear long pants, long-sleeve shirts, body armor and a Kevlar helmet on these transports. We are packed in so tight that the soldiers on either side of me have their bodies crushed against my side. We are allotted exactly 20 inches of butt space per person on the bench. The female soldier across from me has her knees in my crotch. My knees are shoved up against her thighs. Rucksacks sit heavily across laps. The heat is unbearable. The soldiers all have brought large bottles of water. Some also have camel backs. I have no water and am sweating profusely. The flight time is around 1 hour and 20 minutes, but if we take ground fire, it could be far more. The soldier across from me and to the right sees that I am dehydrating quickly. He pulls out a water bottle and offers it to me. We're all wearing earplugs. There's no way to talk over the roar of the engines. But he hand-motions that he has more water in his ruck. I reluctantly take a swig and hand it back. He insists I keep it. Over the next 90 minutes, I slowly drain the bottle. He declines repeated offers to share. It isn't until we are close to landing that I realize he has given me his only water bottle.

Nashville Scene publisher Chris Ferrell announced to the staff this morning that he'll be leaving the paper soon to start a new media company. Dubbed "Boy Wonder" by this newspaper during his time in the Metro Council, Ferrell took over as publisher here Jan. 1, 2005, succeeding founding publisher Albie Del Favero, now publisher of The City Paper.

"A local investor has offered me the opportunity to build a new media company," Ferrell says. "I'm going to be looking at acquiring and starting new publications in markets around the Southeast." Asked whether the company is a new media company (no compound adjective) or a new-media company (a little hyphen can dramatically change meaning), Ferrell declines to say. And asked whether any of his new ventures might be in Nashville, he says with a grin, "Nashville is in the Southeast. Given the fact that I'm going to continue living here and this company is going to be headquartered here, it obviously would make sense to have publications here." He says he will be announcing more details in the coming weeks. Filling his corner office while the search for a new publisher is underway will be corporate group publisher Stuart Folb.

Ferrell announces his pending departure on the eve of the Scene's biggest annual issue, next week's Best of Nashville edition. He will stay on through that, hosting next week's annual party at the Country Music Hall of Fame to celebrate what is always an issue dense with copy and advertising hailing the city's favorite people, places and things.

"I have worked with some of my favorite people in Nashville for the last three years, and week in and week out we put together a paper that matters to this city in terms of our coverage of news, our support of the arts and of culture," Ferrell says, sitting on this editor's thrift store couch drinking coffee from a chipped mug. "And that's across the board—from our edit staff to our marketing and promotions department to supporting our advertisers and causes that they support. I have loved my time at the Scene. This was just too good an opportunity for me to pass up."

As we wrote in this story almost three years ago, Ferrell, 38, is a young old hand who over time positioned himself uniquely at the nexus of business and technology, politics and religion—and now publishing—in Nashville, a city where disparate social spheres overlap and interweave. A graduate of Furman University with a master's in divinity from Vanderbilt (and a Ph.D. in the works), Ferrell is a lifelong Baptist—but he's also been the honorary grand marshal of the city's gay pride parade. He's a businessman who voiced support for a living wage, and a council member who championed affordable housing before it was cool. He was also instrumental in securing funding for a domestic violence shelter here, successfully urging the government to donate property for the site.

Running for a seat on the Metro Council in 1995 at the tender age of 26, Ferrell was the youngest person ever elected to that body (until Jason Alexander beat his record in 1999). Ferrell cleaned up in the countywide race and was easily reelected in 1999. After term limits ended his council career, Ferrell ran for vice mayor but lost to Howard Gentry. He then surprised local political watchers by abandoning a 2002 run for what's now Jim Cooper's congressional seat, citing the demands of raising a family.

During his professional career, Ferrell has worked for two Internet companies, Telalink and CitySearch. He's run a marketing firm and, before becoming Scene publisher, a company that provides performance improvement, customer service and management training workshops for hospitals. In short, he's a businessman and a preacher, a politician and an Internet pioneer.

And, by all accounts, since Ferrell has been publisher, this newspaper has enjoyed two of the best years it's ever experienced in terms of revenue and profitability. Del Favero and founding editor Bruce Dobie together transformed the Scene in 1989 from an irrelevant shopper into an irreverent, well-read weekly. Since then, the paper rose in popularity and profitability before Del Favero and Dobie sold a majority interest in it to a newly created company now known as Village Voice Media, which now owns New York's Village Voice as well as the Scene and 15 other alt-weeklies around the country.

As a dejected staff filtered out of the conference room in the Scene's new Gulch office this morning, the fair-haired Ferrell received pats and hugs and informal salutes, tributes to him and to a management style that has motivated rather than maligned, encouraged rather than intimidated and fostered team work over selfishness.

We'll miss you, Boy Wonder.

OK, so Nashville Opera doesn't have a concert hall like the Schermerhorn, or for that matter a sugarmama like Martha Ingram. Still, Nashville Opera is about to get a new $6 million headquarters building, the company will announce this morning. The 26,000-square-foot Noah Liff Opera Center will be located on Redmon Street in West Nashville. Among other things, it will contain an opera studio for rehearsals, a garden, education center and board room. The company's news release is reprinted below. Nashville Opera's first production of the season is the steamy and romantic Samson and Delilah. You can get more information and tickets here.

Guess what? If Fred Thompson wins the Republican presidential nomination, he'd stomp any Democrat in Tennessee. That's according to a new Rasmussen Reports poll. Here's the real news: Hillary Clinton runs ahead of Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney in our state.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the Republican presidential contender whose free-trade/hard-money/scrap-the-IRS stances have made him a force to be reckoned with on YouTube and the Web, will appear at a downtown rally 1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 6, at the War Memorial Auditorium. This should be an interesting test of his grass-roots efforts, which resemble some indie rocker's scrappy guerrilla-marketing push (complete with phone-pole flyers, stenciled signs and viral videos) more than presidential politics. Indeed, the initial notice I got about the rally came from the leader of one of Nashville's best punk bands of recent years.

You can also pay upwards of $500 (the campaign suggests $1,000) for an 11 a.m. meet-and-greet the same day at The Pinnacle atop the downtown Sheraton Hotel. Now that's presidential politics.

As I'm sure you all know, our Best Of Nashville issue is set to hit newsstands (and the intertubes) in just a few short weeks. Our lovely marketing director was perusing similar honors in other local media and came across some rather antiquated—some might say offensive—language. For the past five years The Lebanon Democrat has had a Best of Wilson County readers' poll. For each of those years there has been a category for "Best Oriental" restaurant.

Now look, I'm the last guy who could ever be confused with the PC police. Remember this? But the term Oriental hasn't been applied to anything besides carpets since slap bracelets were banned from public schools.

Could this be why there's no good Chinese food in Middle TN?

P.S.: On page 16 of the Best of Wilson County, the chef/owner of the Best Oriental runner-up refers to his restaurant as an "Asian eatery." There's also the sweetest message from the owner of the Best Oriental winner to his customers on page 14.

P.P.S.: Image swiped from here.

It's not boring old "raspberry," mind you—it's RAZZBERRY!!! Raspberry with a rude new attitude! Raspberry on steroids! RAZZBERRY!!! Raspberry that slaps your mama and doesn't apologize! Raspberry that screws your girlfriend, then comes around asking to borrow money! RAZZBERRY!!! Raspberry that's hip and now, the choice of a new generation! Freer! Faster! Go! GO! Raspberry that walks right past your parents and pretends not to know them! Raspberry that seizes every moment of pitiful existence like sand slipping through Apollo's fingers and shapes it into a cathedral to the very essence of artificial berry flavor engineering! RAZZBERRY!!! RAZZ-GODDAMN-BERRRREEEEEE!!!!!!!!! YAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

This message has been brought to you by new M&M Razzberry. "Get Razzed!"

Fisk University's ongoing efforts to unload—um, we mean save—its famed Stieglitz Collection continue to unfold. In the latest installment of the saga, Fisk reports this morning that its board of trustees has agreed to a $30-million deal to share the collection with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. Alice Walton, a Wal-Mart heir, founded the Arkansas museum, which is scheduled to open in 2009. And she needs new art to stock her aisles—ah, that is, cover her walls. Of course, the O'Keeffe Museum in New Mexico has said publicly that it will oppose the deal. And there is at least some speculation that if O'Keeffe were alive she'd be rolling in her grave. A copy of Fisk's statement is reprinted below.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers traveled to Ghana earlier this year. Sacred Journey, a CD/DVD package documenting their trip, will be released Oct. 2, and the Singers will perform at Fisk Memorial Chapel on Oct. 6. With all the haggling over Fisk's attempted fundraising of late (more on that in a minute), it is worth noting that the Fisk Jubilee Singers first set out, in 1871, to raise money to keep their school from closing.

OK, so there's this piece in the Sunday Times' Fall Travel mag on Nashville's "underground" music scene, and like so many we're-not-just-country retreads, it finds "new" torchbearers to symbolize the cutting-edge, off-the-grid sounds emanating from Nashville's shadowy corners. Too bad the folks mentioned in this story are far from new around these parts—and that the greatest little secret in Nashville is, drum roll, David Rawlings and Gillian Welch. Uh, Welch plays Bonnaroo and sells out City Hall for cripes' sake.

The rest of the piece waxes cheerleadery over Todd Snider (noteworthy, but hardly new) and the Jeff and Vida Band, who recently moved here from Orleans. And guess what? East Nashville is cool! And everyone the author loves is someone we should all love, too, because their music is real and true, and no matter what you like, you'll love these people. You just will. Sigh. This isn't the first time the Times has gotten us wrong—remember the travel video diary from their "Frugal Traveler" series where they stood in front of the Ryman and pronounced it a dusty landmark rather than an active venue? (The piece has since been edited and corrected.)

It feels like it was written by someone who doesn't actually live here, and, once you note the byline, it makes sense. Turns out the author is local writer Ann Patchett, an odd choice to write this kind of piece, mainly because she's a pretentious West Nashvillian who's well known for wearing homely curved collars and floral fare a la Laura Ashley, and probably couldn't find Five Points with a GPS system and laminated map. Why her? She's a darling of the New York Times.

The real shame, of course, is that there actually is a fascinating, new non-country music scene in this town, from noise bands to art punk to dance pop to cock-rock, but you'd have to put your ear to the ground to find it. "Swaths of the Kentucky Derby" need not apply.

Casting is underway in Memphis for Nothing But the Truth, the new film by Rod Lurie, director of the Oscar-nominated The Contender and the current Samuel L. Jackson drama Resurrecting the Champ. Signed on so far for the film are Kate Beckinsale, Matt Dillon, Vera Farmiga, David Schwimmer and Alan Alda, with more to be announced soon. The film, produced by Lurie, Yari Film Group mogul Bob Yari and Marc Frydman, commences shooting Oct. 10 and is expected to wrap by Thanksgiving.

Like The Contender, Nothing But the Truth is a topical drama, with some similarities in this case to the Valerie Plame controversy. "There is a reporter, and a CIA agent, and the reporter goes to jail," says Lurie, a veteran journalist who turned to feature filmmaking with the 1999 thriller Deterrence. In a rather unusual twist for contemporary movies, the journalist is a deeply principled hero. "Hopefully you guys will get behind this one," Lurie says playfully.

Even more unusual is that the film is not set in Memphis, but in northern Virginia. "It's very good for Tennessee that it's not set in Memphis," says Lurie, who filmed his 2001 drama The Last Castle with Robert Redford and James Gandolfini at the Tennessee State Penitentiary facility in Nashville. By showing other filmmakers that Memphis can double for other cities, Lurie explains, it will generate a lot more production interest. "If you can create a generic city here," he says, "that's going to open new horizons of film work."

Lurie also cites the state's new incentives package, a project that took years and a heavy political toll, as a major draw. "It shows great wisdom on the part of the government," he observes, as "each dollar goes through three or four generations."

Lurie credits Perry Gibson, executive director of the Tennessee Film, Entertainment and Music Commission, with convincing him to move the production to the state. "I don't think I've met such an energetic woman," the director says. "She found a way to deliver everything we needed." Between Gibson and Shelby County film commissioner Linn Sitler, he says, "they've taken such good care of us that they've whetted our appetite for shooting our next film here." That could be Lurie's announced remake of Sam Peckinpah's still-controversial rape-revenge drama Straw Dogs. Stay tuned.

In this week's edition of Not Screened At Press Time Theater: Resident Evil: Extinction. After the jump.

Conservatives are outraged because the Washington Post called Fred Thompson a big liar in the first installment of its Fact Checker presidential campaign feature.

As part of the feature, the Post applies the Pinocchio Test to candidate statements. One Pinocchio indicates some shading of the facts. Real "whoppers" are designated with four Pinocchios, which is what Thompson was given for saying in a campaign speech: "You look back over our history, and it doesn't take you long to realize that our people have shed more blood for other people's liberty than any other combination of nations in the history of the world."

Post reporter Michael Dobbs pointed out that 623,288 Americans have died in wars since 1898 and added: "In World War II alone, the Soviet Union suffered at least 8 million casualties, or more than 10 times the number of US casualties for all wars combined."

To which The American Spectator's Quin Hillyer retorts: "Oh, yes, that's right: the good old Soviets, having encouraged Hitler to invade Poland anyway as part of a formal alliance with the Nazis, and having taken arms against Germany only after being attacked, and using their counter-assault to enslave half a continent, still could be seen as fighting 'for other people's liberty' because the British and others benefited as well. By that warped and morally bankrupt logic, the victorious drug lord in a deadly gang-warfare battle is a veritable altruist. Just think of all the other gang's clients who escaped deadly overdoses that night because their suppliers had been gunned down!"

But, according to Hillyer, what the Post's new feature really shows is this: "The American mainstream media consistently fails to hide its utter contempt for conservatives' values and their political preferences. It is no wonder that conservatives actively despise that media in return."

I've gotten accustomed to people looking at me as if I were on crack when I say this, but...the most entertaining movie I've seen this year is about the cutthroat competition between two guys to see—take a deep breath—who can set the world record at Donkey Kong.

It comes as no surprise that Seth Gordon's documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, held over for a second week at the Belcourt, has been picked up for a Hollywood remake. There's no way, however, a remake could possibly match Gordon's hilarious, engrossing—and yeah, suspenseful—telling of the showdown between Billy Mitchell, the joystick superstar regarded as the Pinball Wizard of '80s arcade staples, and challenger Steve Wiebe, a Washington-state science teacher whose wife confides how little in his life has actually worked out.

Oh, man. You get a tutorial on the hazards of Donkey Kong, an infernally tough game that requires memorizing countless patterns and shifty moves lest you get conked back to Level One. You get one pregnant-ass metaphor in the game's Sisyphean difficulty, which rewards world-class play with a lurking "killscreen" that simply stops the game dead when it reaches the end of the line. (I just know Maureen Dowd has the killscreen tucked away for next year's election coverage.) You get a peek inside a subculture where, as someone said of academia, the conduct is vicious because the stakes are so low.

Best of all, you get two protagonists so richly drawn that Hollywood could only whittle them down to toothpicks. Long-haired, leather-clad and full of art-of-war bromides about videogame competition, hot-sauce salesman Mitchell comes off as the movie's villain. (My one problem with the movie, actually, is how easily it chooses sides, even though Mitchell does himself no favors in the events shown onscreen.) But one look at Wiebe—an elongated Charlie Brown who's shown early on as a teenage athlete choking in the championship game his dad was coaching—and your heart just goes out to him. The scene where he rigs a camera to record his high-score attempt in his garage, while his young son wails "Daddy! Wipe my butt!" offscreen, is one of the funniest portraits of single-minded niche-culture obsession I've ever seen.

I'm tellin' ya, no description can make this movie sound as much fun as it is. Press screenings are usually dull as dust; at this one, the joint broke out in an uproar at the ending. I won't give anything away, but Gordon handles it perfectly. It's the first time I've ever seen an audience burst into cheers at the sight of a conjunction.

There hasn't been a good topiary movie since Edward Scissorhands, so we're looking forward to a film that's sneaking into Regal Green Hills this Friday. Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson's documentary A Man Named Pearl tells the story of Pearl Fryar, a self-taught sexagenarian topiary artist who took discarded plants from a local nursery and set about transforming his three-acre yard in Bishopville, S.C., into a riot of fanciful shapes and patterns.

A sort of green-thumbed Howard Finster, Fryar has been profiled everywhere from The New York Times to Southern Living. Galloway, who is self-releasing the film for now, says he is delighted with the way audiences have responded to the movie: it's been running in Knoxville for four weeks, and if it does well in Nashville, it may expand to other cities.

The trailer is only available on the movie's website (see the link above), but we found this slideshow of Fryar's topiary garden online. You'll want to take some clippers to that privet hedge in the backyard.

If that cover image this week left you feeling hungry for, well, more hairy redneck persona, you're in luck. Check out our slideshow of photographic outtakes. More leg, Jackie! (That belly fat advertisement is a complete coincidence, by the way.)

So I'm checking out what passes for blogs over at Tennessean.com and I come across this piece by some fella named Steve Simms, a self-described "attitude-engineer" out of Brentwood. His views on "Righticals" are not what give me pause, however. No, it's the title of one of his books (his bio's up in the right corner). Here it is: \\Your Sperm Won: Experiencing Your Value as a Championship Human Being\\.

You know you want to see this guy's website. Here it is. I especially recommend his thoughts on "Jesus toys," for example:

Have you heard about Walmart's talking Jesus toy? It sounds like a good idea to me.

Many small children have a natural love for the real Jesus, so I am sure that this toy will be loved as well. I fondly remember several toys from my childhood, but I never had a talking Jesus (or even a Cool Hand Luke style plastic Jesus).

I think it would have been nice to be able to listen to a toy Jesus quote Bible verses. It would have been fun to have my talking Jesus preach to my toy soldiers and to teach my cowboys and Indians how to love each other. I would have liked to have my toy Jesus heal my other toys.

My toy Jesus would have been great in the bath tub. He could have walked from one toy boat to the other. And when the toy boats were being pulled down the drain, toy Jesus could have spoken and calmed the whirl pool.

I think it would have been very moving to reenact the crucifixion with the toy Jesus and child like faith. And how joyful it would have been to bring toy Jesus out of the tomb alive to celebrate with his disciples.

A federal judge has just blocked next week's execution of Jerome Harbison. District Judge Aleta Trauger ruled that Tennessee's lethal injection procedures violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusal punishment by presenting "a substantial risk of unnecessary pain."

At the same time, Trauger denounced state Correction Commissioner George Little for rejecting the recommendations of a committee that studied execution procedures this year. The committee, conducting a review that Gov. Phil Bredesen ordered, offered recommendations to safeguard against botched executions. But Trauger said Little "was deliberately indifferent to [Harbison's] excessive risk of pain."

This article in this week's Scene details testimony in this month's hearing before Trauger on lethal injection.

The state Attorney General will amost certainly appeal Trauger's decision to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The only thing noisier than a Boeing 737 taking off is a bunch of angry East Nashvillians—at least that seems to be the case, according to this Tennessean story. In June, Nashville International Airport began routing its takeoffs over East Nashville, to comply with an FAA regulation saying that climbing planes have to fly higher than any building in a three-mile radius. But those feisty East Siders (OK, I'm one of 'em) pitched enough of a fit that, according to an Airport Authority official quoted in the Tennessean story, "The FAA is going to look at another method of following the rule and not flying over these neighborhoods." In the meantime, the airport has returned to its former flight pattern, allowing East Nashville's bohemian throngs to sleep off their hangovers in peace.

The head of the local investors group that's bidding $193 million to buy the Predators told the Sports Authority this morning that he and fellow investors plan to drop a potentially pricey—and controversial—request for an amended lease with Metro.

The suggested provision outlined that the Preds must average 14,000 in average paid attendance—the magic number of tickets the team would need to sell to qualify for full revenue sharing under NHL requirements. As the Scene reported here, the provision could've been problematic for Metro and the city's taxpayers, who would've have to foot the (open-ended) bill to buy up oodles of unsold tickets.

David Freeman, head of the local investors group, told the Sports Authority that he and his partners realize that the Preds organization and its fan base—not Metro—should be responsible for the success of the team. Freeman wouldn't wade into specifics about exactly how the investors group expects to accomplish a plan that, as he put it, would "eliminate risk for the city."

And there is still no word on when the investors will come before the Sports Authority and Metro Council with their proposal for a revised lease. It should, however, be before Oct. 31, which Freeman identified as the deadline for Metro and the NHL Board of Governors to approve the new deal.

In Tuesday's Tennessean puff piece on new Metro Schools administrator Benjamin Wright, reporter Jaime Sarrio says "Wright's experience aligns with [MNPS Director Pedro] Garcia's ambitious plans for Metro schools." One hopes that Garcia and school board members have spent some quality time getting to know Wright through his bizarre, at times stream-of-consciousness personal website, in which he modestly labels himself a "visionary Transformationalist" (capitalization his).

Wright's thoughts on leadership are especially trenchant:

Now every leader in history had a particular calling, the greatest leader in America that we know was Jesus Christ, there are other countries that knew Buddha, Mohammed, some just knew God, Allah, Yahweh; and then there were men, Attila the Hun, Hannibal, Mansa Mussa, King James, Lancelot, Russo, Socrates, Plato, Martin Luther, Gandhi, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Benjamin Wright, leaders whom we consider the great achievers.

The role of education has never changed it had the intention of creating life long learners who can be self-sustaining members of society.

We can now begin to identify why blacks aren't learning and achieving at the same rate whites are, even though today Asians are outperforming everyone, I keep forgetting that Asians are white by America's definitions, as a matter of fact so are many blacks.

In a thread below someone suggested legalized marijuana as a way to improve Nashville. As you've probably already heard, Metro's been scouting the offending weed by helicopter (take that, Sky 5). Why are we spending so much time and treasure on destroying plants that make end-users mellow, happy and predisposed to snack food? This is the drug of lovers, not fighters. And is dope not good for the economy? Why doesn't the nacho cheese lobby get behind legalization?

Anyway, WPLN's Blake Farmer went along in Metro's pot duster and filed a report, wherein a lieutenant tells us "there's only one thing that smells like marijuana and that's marijuana." Listen to it or read the transcript here.

Can you tell which photo is Dubai, and which one is Nashville's Gulch? Well, of course you can. Still, we're making our case for renaming The Gulch "Li'l Dubai." From now on, don't be surprised if you hear us reporting from "The Scene offices in Li'l Dubai." Rumor has it that the Burj-al-Arab is opening a 5-star luxury hotel in the lot across from City Hall. This might explain the "Halliburton Halibut" we saw on Watermark's menu last weekend.

Yesterday's Titans-Colts match up was heart-pounding, gridiron perfection. The world champs swaggered into our house but the home team played tough, losing by less than a field goal and staying in the game 'til the last tick of the clock.

You never would have known that listening to Titans fans. I was shocked by the milquetoast nature of the Music City crowd at LP Field yesterday. On big plays, as their team stifled one of the NFL's most potent offenses, these "fans" yammered away on cell phones, yawned or just sat there staring.

During one of the most crucial plays of the game two people behind me sat there talking about a church function or something equally insignificant. I think that the couple next to me was dead.

On my walk from the train—yes, true to my word, I'm making a habit of it—to the Scene's office this morning, I couldn't help but notice this trailer parked in front of the Hard Rock.



I've been interested in the smart car since its conception in the '90s as a joint venture between Mercedes and Swatch. The watch maker is no longer affiliated, but the design was so unique, it's currently included at the MoMA (and Lane Motor Museum).

So, now we have a new mayor, one who is sometimes described as progressive, forward-thinking and not originally from around these parts, and who believes it's "all connected." (Did he mean all corners of his face are connected by his stubble? Perhaps without the campaign grind he'll find time to shave more frequently.) Anyway, with the Dean era nigh, and in light of the recent PITW thread about Music City Star, and another over at Bites about the possibility—or, at least, the faint glimmer of hope—that we might someday get a Trader Joe's in Nashville, now's as good a time as any to talk about what else Nashville could use. Or, as the case may be, what it could not use (e.g. more stop lights in Green Hills).

Light rail of some sort is obvious, if the city is going to continue to grow. So what else does Nashville need? I keep holding out hope for a full-on independent movie store now that Spun is gone (c.f. Facets in Chicago or Scarecrow in Seattle), modern architecture, something that better utilizes the river and, of course, dim sum.

Your turn.

I don't know what they're paying Kleinheider over at News2, but they need to give him a raise. This was an excellent find.