H is for the many things she told me. No, that's not right...
I volunteered over at Bad, Bad Ivy's to play in her little reindeeer game whereupon you have a letter assigned to you on which to expound. While I don't share Kat Coble's disdain for vowels, I was sort of hoping to get "schwa." Uhhhhhhhhh.
But instead, to quote Morgan Freeman as Letterman, "and then Andy Defresne found himself trapped in a cell with two of the meanest bull queers to ever soil the earth. It was the longest night of his life." Oops, wrong Morgan Freeman quote. "Today's post is brought to you by the number 4...no IV... no Ivy and the letter H.
Haute Cuisine
I love good food. I have no problem with simple food like a great bbq sandwich, a greasy plate of fried chicken or a neighborhood meat and three. But there is something to be said for a special meal in a wonderful environment at a high-class restaurant. Ten years ago, the default television in our house was MTV and ESPN. Five years ago it was Home and Garden. Now, I can't move from room to room without seeing some Food Network show that RUABelle has left on as she flits through the house, wasting kilowatts. I fully expect to eventually evolve into an elderly Weather Channel watcher.
Through my job, I have been lucky enough to eat in some great restaurants all over the country. The highlight was the chance to eat at Thomas Keller's French Laundry in Yountville, CA, often acclaimed as America's #1 eating establishment. Through business, I've also had the opportunity to get some couch dances from beautiful strippers all over the country, but I don't remember any of them vivdly and I never really had the orgasmic experience I had at the French Laundry. I remember every bite of every course and every glass of unbelievable wine that accompanied each morsel. I kept the menu and gaze at it more lovingly and longingly than any polaroid anyone could have ever taken of me and a stripper.
Hot Chicken
A culinary treat unique to middle Tennessee that I love to partake in every couple of months for the same reason Hunter S. Thompson told me he still used acid a few times a year, "just to clear out the pipes."
I won't even speak of the poseur hot chicken spots around town. With me, it begins and ends with Prince's. A plate of Prince's hot chicken rubbed hellishly black with Cayenne cooked in a huge cast iron frying pan full of 10W-40 served on two slices of Wonder Bread can lead to a capsaicin buzz which verges on the hallucinatory.
The first time I ever had it was at Summer Lights many years ago when they were selling wings out of a booth downtown. I was second in line behind an hunched over elderly couple. The smiling proprietor of the booth looked like Raj's mother from "What's Happening." She beamed at the old man and asked, "What'll you have, sweetie?"
"I'd like and order of extra-hot wings."
"Oh naw, baby. You don't want extree-hot. Why don't you try medium," she cooed helpfully.
"No siree, ma'am. I want extra-hot," the man said as he cut his eyes boastfully to his bride of many decades.
"Aw baby, this is the last chance I'm giving ya'."
"Nope, extra-hot is what I ordered and extra-hot is what I want!" he said defiantly.
She served him a red checkered paper basket of molten lava wings with a big smile on her face and watched him walk away as I stepped to the front of the line.
"Crazy motherfucker," she muttered softly.
I said, "I'll have one order of medium wings, please."
Even medium was difficult to eat and I made the crucial error of going to the porta-john BEFORE I'd washed my hands. You don't realize that everything down there is glandular until your glans bursts into flame. Fairly warned be ye, says I.
And Prince's will definitely, how shall I say this, burn you twice. A friend of mine had the unfortunate situation of having to ask his girlfriend to drag a box fan into the bathroom and point it at him while he spent hours on the toilet. I never found out which end the fan was pointed at...
Haliburton
I'm convinced that Dick Cheney still runs this place and the Iraq war is a direct result. Between Haliburton and the oil companies, the profits from this war are obscene. I also believe that the plan was originally hatched over the Bush Thanksgiving table. "GW, either you or Jeb is gonna have to become president and finish what I started. Call it in the air."
I like what Jay Leno said when the retired generals turned against Bush. "But not all the generals are against him. He still has the support of a lot of generals: General Electric, General Dynamics, General Motors."
Hybrids
I want one. I don't think they make sense economically based on their current cost structure and the cost of gas, but I think it's the right thing to do. I'd like to rent one first to see what the experience is like, though.
Hopkins, Lightnin'
The burning, raw electricity that comes from this man's blues as he plays the Texas slide guitar with a medicine bottle still sends shivers down my spine. I defy you to listen to "DC-7," his haunting account of a plane crash in the middle of a west Texas desert and not be affected.
Les Blank made a great documentary entitled, "The Blues According to Lightnin' Hopkins." The old bluesman's speech is so deep and garbled that Blank had to subtitle his own film. But what he does say is fascinating. Joe Bob says check it out!
Hamilton Lake
This is a beautiful lake in upstate New York where I had an unfortunate incident on a snowmobile that changed my life forever. We rednecks should be limited to jet skis and four wheelers. I broke my ankle every way you can break it and four years, eleven pins and two screws later I can still predict the weather and have a couple days a month where I still need to use a cane.
Harvey, Paul
I've been listening to him on the radio for over 25 years even though I disagree with 90% of what he says. I just can't stop myself!
Is there anybody uglier than this man on radio today? (And I'm including Howard Stern)
Oh, yeah. Maybe his son, Paul Harvey, jr.
Halloween
This has always been one of my favorite holidays because it combines drinking with dressing up in costumes with interacting with children. I just say that because we've always striven to be the house that nobody wants to send their kids to so we don't have to stay at home that night. When I got my first place, we handed out Marlboros and Vienna Sausages. No repeat customers that night. At my second house, we told the kids that the next door neighbors were handing out five dollar bills. Now I travel so much that we handed out Southwest Airline peanuts this year.
Homophobia
I'm against it in all forms. I'm a member of the Advisory Board of the Franklin Brooks Philanthropic Fund of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.
The Brooks Fund exists to protect the dignity, the safety and the health of Middle Tennessee’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) community by supporting and encouraging nonprofit programs targeted thereto. The Brooks Fund increases philanthropic options and opportunities to ensure that there are always funds available to support these efforts. This effort to build bridges is a part of the legacy of Franklin Brooks. For 25 years, Brooks, an associate professor in the French and Italian departments, was one of the most beloved figures on the Vanderbilt campus. The Fund, created after Franklin’s death, perpetuates another avenue of Franklin’s work, his forthright championing of human rights.
If you're interested in learning more about the Brooks Fund or the bad-ass travel raffle we have going on right now, go here.
I've always tried to help these sort of human rights causes out with paper donations and earned some acclaim within the fundraising community by my response to a comment from one of my homophobic EX-employees. I asked when some paper was going to get to a printer for a job we were doing for Nashville Cares. He growled, "ain't that all them fags?!"
I responded, "Well, if it makes you feel any better, asshole, at least they're all DYING!" I'm glad he's an ex-employee.
Huaraches
H is sometimes silent and I shall be as well.
But instead, to quote Morgan Freeman as Letterman, "and then Andy Defresne found himself trapped in a cell with two of the meanest bull queers to ever soil the earth. It was the longest night of his life." Oops, wrong Morgan Freeman quote. "Today's post is brought to you by the number 4...no IV... no Ivy and the letter H.
Haute Cuisine
I love good food. I have no problem with simple food like a great bbq sandwich, a greasy plate of fried chicken or a neighborhood meat and three. But there is something to be said for a special meal in a wonderful environment at a high-class restaurant. Ten years ago, the default television in our house was MTV and ESPN. Five years ago it was Home and Garden. Now, I can't move from room to room without seeing some Food Network show that RUABelle has left on as she flits through the house, wasting kilowatts. I fully expect to eventually evolve into an elderly Weather Channel watcher.
Through my job, I have been lucky enough to eat in some great restaurants all over the country. The highlight was the chance to eat at Thomas Keller's French Laundry in Yountville, CA, often acclaimed as America's #1 eating establishment. Through business, I've also had the opportunity to get some couch dances from beautiful strippers all over the country, but I don't remember any of them vivdly and I never really had the orgasmic experience I had at the French Laundry. I remember every bite of every course and every glass of unbelievable wine that accompanied each morsel. I kept the menu and gaze at it more lovingly and longingly than any polaroid anyone could have ever taken of me and a stripper.
Hot Chicken
A culinary treat unique to middle Tennessee that I love to partake in every couple of months for the same reason Hunter S. Thompson told me he still used acid a few times a year, "just to clear out the pipes."
I won't even speak of the poseur hot chicken spots around town. With me, it begins and ends with Prince's. A plate of Prince's hot chicken rubbed hellishly black with Cayenne cooked in a huge cast iron frying pan full of 10W-40 served on two slices of Wonder Bread can lead to a capsaicin buzz which verges on the hallucinatory.
The first time I ever had it was at Summer Lights many years ago when they were selling wings out of a booth downtown. I was second in line behind an hunched over elderly couple. The smiling proprietor of the booth looked like Raj's mother from "What's Happening." She beamed at the old man and asked, "What'll you have, sweetie?"
"I'd like and order of extra-hot wings."
"Oh naw, baby. You don't want extree-hot. Why don't you try medium," she cooed helpfully.
"No siree, ma'am. I want extra-hot," the man said as he cut his eyes boastfully to his bride of many decades.
"Aw baby, this is the last chance I'm giving ya'."
"Nope, extra-hot is what I ordered and extra-hot is what I want!" he said defiantly.
She served him a red checkered paper basket of molten lava wings with a big smile on her face and watched him walk away as I stepped to the front of the line.
"Crazy motherfucker," she muttered softly.
I said, "I'll have one order of medium wings, please."
Even medium was difficult to eat and I made the crucial error of going to the porta-john BEFORE I'd washed my hands. You don't realize that everything down there is glandular until your glans bursts into flame. Fairly warned be ye, says I.
And Prince's will definitely, how shall I say this, burn you twice. A friend of mine had the unfortunate situation of having to ask his girlfriend to drag a box fan into the bathroom and point it at him while he spent hours on the toilet. I never found out which end the fan was pointed at...
Haliburton
I'm convinced that Dick Cheney still runs this place and the Iraq war is a direct result. Between Haliburton and the oil companies, the profits from this war are obscene. I also believe that the plan was originally hatched over the Bush Thanksgiving table. "GW, either you or Jeb is gonna have to become president and finish what I started. Call it in the air."
I like what Jay Leno said when the retired generals turned against Bush. "But not all the generals are against him. He still has the support of a lot of generals: General Electric, General Dynamics, General Motors."
Hybrids
I want one. I don't think they make sense economically based on their current cost structure and the cost of gas, but I think it's the right thing to do. I'd like to rent one first to see what the experience is like, though.
Hopkins, Lightnin'
The burning, raw electricity that comes from this man's blues as he plays the Texas slide guitar with a medicine bottle still sends shivers down my spine. I defy you to listen to "DC-7," his haunting account of a plane crash in the middle of a west Texas desert and not be affected.
Les Blank made a great documentary entitled, "The Blues According to Lightnin' Hopkins." The old bluesman's speech is so deep and garbled that Blank had to subtitle his own film. But what he does say is fascinating. Joe Bob says check it out!
Hamilton Lake
This is a beautiful lake in upstate New York where I had an unfortunate incident on a snowmobile that changed my life forever. We rednecks should be limited to jet skis and four wheelers. I broke my ankle every way you can break it and four years, eleven pins and two screws later I can still predict the weather and have a couple days a month where I still need to use a cane.
Harvey, Paul
I've been listening to him on the radio for over 25 years even though I disagree with 90% of what he says. I just can't stop myself!
Is there anybody uglier than this man on radio today? (And I'm including Howard Stern)
Oh, yeah. Maybe his son, Paul Harvey, jr.
Halloween
This has always been one of my favorite holidays because it combines drinking with dressing up in costumes with interacting with children. I just say that because we've always striven to be the house that nobody wants to send their kids to so we don't have to stay at home that night. When I got my first place, we handed out Marlboros and Vienna Sausages. No repeat customers that night. At my second house, we told the kids that the next door neighbors were handing out five dollar bills. Now I travel so much that we handed out Southwest Airline peanuts this year.
Homophobia
I'm against it in all forms. I'm a member of the Advisory Board of the Franklin Brooks Philanthropic Fund of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.
The Brooks Fund exists to protect the dignity, the safety and the health of Middle Tennessee’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) community by supporting and encouraging nonprofit programs targeted thereto. The Brooks Fund increases philanthropic options and opportunities to ensure that there are always funds available to support these efforts. This effort to build bridges is a part of the legacy of Franklin Brooks. For 25 years, Brooks, an associate professor in the French and Italian departments, was one of the most beloved figures on the Vanderbilt campus. The Fund, created after Franklin’s death, perpetuates another avenue of Franklin’s work, his forthright championing of human rights.
If you're interested in learning more about the Brooks Fund or the bad-ass travel raffle we have going on right now, go here.
I've always tried to help these sort of human rights causes out with paper donations and earned some acclaim within the fundraising community by my response to a comment from one of my homophobic EX-employees. I asked when some paper was going to get to a printer for a job we were doing for Nashville Cares. He growled, "ain't that all them fags?!"
I responded, "Well, if it makes you feel any better, asshole, at least they're all DYING!" I'm glad he's an ex-employee.
Huaraches
H is sometimes silent and I shall be as well.
posted by ceeelcee at 8:13 AM
4 Comments:
H -- for How the Hell are You? and How's Your Jetlag?
Glad that you're back.
You rock SO much!! Love the list.
BTW, I am planning on blogrolling you sometime. I have been meaning to for a long time, I'm just lazy. Eventually, you'll be blogrolled, no worries!
Ivy, you need to switch to Blogrolling. It's much easier to update the blogroll.
Mr. Smarty pants. I dare you! Show me up and use schwa. Not only would you pick a VOWEL, but you'd pick the ubersnotty vowel that doesn't even use it's own sound. It's like the Vowel's Sekrit Handshake.
You ladies are turning my head. thanks for the props. The jet lag is currently lagging. Thanks for asking.
Kat, I'd take you up on your schwa challenge, but my keyboard doesn't have an upside down "e." Are you willing to stand on your head while you read it?
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