Scene & Herd - Animal farm
Orwellian in a non-1984 way
If you've always wanted to own livestock, but worry that your two-bedroom West Paces apartment or Fulton Cotton Mill loft lacks enough pasture, think again. On Sunday, I discovered a whole farm full of barnyard animals that are sized for your intown lifestyle. It's called Tanglewood Farm.
Tanglewood is nestled (I love that word) in the beautiful rolling hills of Canton. It's a long drive from downtown Atlanta, but when you get to the sign in Cherokee County that reads, "Welcome to Macedonia," you can make the drive worth it by pretending that you've accidentally driven to southeast Europe.
Upon entering the farm grounds, you get a bucket full of bread and instructions about which animals are OK to feed and which fenced pastures are OK to enter. For no particular reason, me and my bread headed straight to a pen called the School House. It's so-named because of a miniature replica schoolhouse, complete with a bell, in which miniature horses (roughly the size of golden retrievers) were lunching on hay. Around the School House, miniature African pygmy goats frolicked and asked me for bread. They don't talk. They ask with their soulful, pygmy goat-eyes.
The animals were all friendly. You can pet and even hug them. They were never aggressive about getting my bread, but in an adjacent pen in which the barn was named for the fictional law office of "Dewey Cheatum," a sheep almost knocked me to the ground while running by. In that same pen, there was a horse with different-colored eyes; one brown and one blue. Just like David Bowie!
None of the barnyard animals smelled bad, which surprised me. In fact, the stinkiest animals on the farm were the five mini Jack Russell pups in a small-fenced enclosure. They were cuter than cuteness itself, but they smelled like puppy pee.
There's no way I can gracefully work this observation in, so I just have to drop it thusly: If you go, note the farm's soda machine. In place of a giant soft drink logo, it has a life-sized, full-length photo of deceased actor Gordon Jump, whose famed roles include Maytag TV pitchman, boss at WKRP, and Neptune, King of the Sea in "Diff'rent Strokes."
Mmmm, art: The ShedSpace backyard shed art series opened last Saturday night in Ormewood Park with an installation by Susan Cipcic__. Cipcic encrusted her shed gallery with various baked goods made with ginger. There were ginger snaps, ginger loaves, gingermen, and even a tiny, flat ginger house, which, given its Ormewood Park address, was probably worth at least $200,000. Cipcic's notes about the exhibition explain that some of the ginger pieces were meant to be milagros. A milagro is a miniature offering to god(s) that symbolizes one's worries. It's also the name of a ponderous Carlos Santana album from 1992, but that's not important right now.
Peach Buzz moment: Cathy "It's your loss, 4th District voters" Woolard stopped by the show.
I and I: Did you know that Aug. 6 is Jamaican Independence Day? Neither did I until I got a press release from Armada magazine announcing the Jammin' Freedom Fest Block Party at CJ's Landing in Buckhead. Live and learn, I guess.
I went by for a couple of hours Saturday afternoon. Soon after I arrived, 96 Rock's Southside Steve emceed a co-ed Bobbing-For-Koozies-In-A-Kiddie-Pool contest outside the club. In exchange for some of his dignity, the winner, Joe Saucier, earned himself $250. Not long after that, party-goers competed in an elimination Rock, Paper, Scissors contest. Dignity intact, the winner earned a trip to Jamaica.
Other than Red Stripe, there wasn't much Jamaican-ness outside. Inside though, I heard a great local reggae band called Eastern Standard. The rhythm section was phenomenal. It was a joy just watching the bassist's fingers. Like all great reggae, the genius of the tunes made me forget how many of the songs have lyrics about how a late African despot, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, was actually the Second Coming. Selassie was born Ras Tafari, the -ism.
Trapper Keeper: On Friday night, singer/songwriter/composite celebrity-look-alike David Mead played an acoustic solo show at Red Light Cafe to a nearly packed house. Before I talk about his performance, I'll explain what I mean by composite celebrity look-alike. A CCL is someone who looks like a combination of two or more celebrities. Even celebrities themselves can be CCLs. For example, sometimes when I look at John Kerry's face, I think of Jay Leno crossed with one of the irritable, talking trees from The Wizard of Oz. I think that Mead looks like a blend of "Starsky & Hutch"-era David Soul and Gary Burghoff, "M*A*S*H's" "Radar" O'Reilly. Do some Google image searches if you don't believe me.
Back to the show. Mead opened with a relatively happy cover of "Pink Moon," a song by the late Nick Drake announcing the Apocalypse. Volkswagen once used it in Cabriolet commercials. The bulk of his set was his own material, though, with particular emphasis on his great new CD, Indiana. It's filled with dreamy, poetic and melancholy tunes that, 30 years ago would have been played on the radio in between Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon, but now are only ever broadcast when they're soundtracking the heartaches of photogenic young people on WB programs.
Mead's musical signature is the effortlessness with which his voice moves in and out of falsetto. He's an amazing singer. During a gorgeous rendition of his song "Beauty," my friend even turned to me and said, with resentment-tinged admiration, "It's the falsetto Olympics." How appropriate then that Mead ended his set with a cover of "Human Nature," a song made famous by pop's best-selling falsetto, Michael Jackson.