Scene & Herd - Everyone knows it’s windy
Except me
On Sunday, I tried to imitate what normal people do on Labor Day weekend by leaving town. I got as far as Pine Mountain, which is about an hour southwest of Atlanta and home of Callaway Gardens. If you’ve never been, you really should check it out. It’s a manicured nature resort with lodging, bicycling, golf, skeet shooting, fishing, and so much more — a veritable Swiss Army knife of natural fun!
I went for the Sky High Hot Air Balloon Festival. In the fields surrounding Callaway’s Robin Lake Beach, there were supposed to be hot air balloons in which visitors could take short rides that were relatively affordable compared to most hot air balloon rides. I was very excited. I had it all worked out in my head for the column, right down to the “Oh, the humanity!” Hindenburg-disaster-announcer-guy caption under my balloon photo.
Sadly, it was not to be. When I arrived at the park, around 1 p.m. on Sunday, I learned that the weather conditions were too windy to fly. Or to be more specific, the weather was great for flying, but not so great for landing either safely or anywhere near Callaway Gardens. My inner Jules Verne was disappointed, but fortunately my inner Jules Verne is tiny, inconsequential and already dead. He only existed for the purpose of completing this paragraph.
I instead spent an hour at Callaway’s Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center. The “Day” in the center’s name is the same guy who invented the Days Inn hotel chain. The center is a glass tropical conservatory in which visitors gather to gawk at 1,000 or so butterflies, and another 1,000 or so people gawk at each other. Particularly abundant and frisky on Sunday were the black and blue Heliconius sara. You couldn’t get away from them. My favorite was the Caligo eurilochus. It looks like it has eyes on its wings.
On the way home, I briefly considered stopping at the nearby Wild Animal Safari park. According to a banner hanging near the park’s entrance, they were hosting a barbecue that afternoon. It all somehow seemed like a bad idea, so I passed and came home.
In my white tee: On Labor Day evening, after 2.5 episodes of “Law & Order” (I just got cable again!), I drove to Lenny’s over by the Capitol for a late evening with the Kirkwood Ballers Club. K.B.C. isn’t a group, it’s the name for the free-form, anything-goes musical conversation that happens at the club every Wednesday. Sorta like a jazz session, only mostly without such pesky limitations as melody, rhythm or chords.
That’s not to say that K.B.C. isn’t a good show. It is. It’s experimental and formless, so there will be bits that you don’t like. If your favorite Lou Reed record is Metal Machine Music, however, and your favorite beach blanket novel is William Burroughs’ The Soft Machine, you’ll find plenty to love at K.B.C.
The show started with a violinist whose mic ran through a guitar effects pedal operated by someone else. Accompanied by a drummer, the violinist played minimally while her pedal pal would turn knobs so that the sound would bend and echo. Soon the knob-twiddler picked up what I think was a tin whistle (it may have been a flute) for several minutes of what sounded like Celtic music beamed from Mars. Other highlights included a rapid-fire rapper named Zano who, even though I didn’t really understand, I still enjoyed because of how he bent his syllables as far around the beats as possible without being off-rhythm. One of these days, I may go to K.B.C. and perform my Beach Boys lip-sync puppet show there. I think the crowd might appreciate it.
Who needs Gretsky?: Writing about great comedy is difficult. “Omigod, that was so funny,” just doesn’t do the comedy justice. So cut me some slack as I try to give proper credit to Jacob Banigan, Josh Dean and Mark Meer of Edmonton, Alberta’s Rapid Fire Theatre. The trio performed at Dad’s Garage Friday night as part of the Destroy All Improvisers Theatresports Tournament.
The trio’s performance, a sketch comedy montage titled Sweet Zombie Jesus, was masterful. Imagine your favorite episode of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” only funnier (as much as I love Python, admit it, all their stuff has lulls) and longer. Add to that the thrill of having it performed live, right in front of you.
Examples of funny, please, Mr. Andy. OK, how about merging Hamlet and “Punk’d” in Haml’t. In Haml’t, Ashton Kutcher “fools” the prince of Denmark into thinking that his father was murdered. Kutcher then taunts the young prince with a cloth figure representing his father’s ghost.
Another sketch depicted Gandhi’s success as a great leader and moral beacon as the result of annoying passive-aggression. Among those tied for my favorite was “Night Chat with Barry Hamper,” an amazing spoof of the sickening concentric death spiral celebrity worship that dominates our culture. In the sketch, a talk-show host interviews another talk-show host and the two get lost in a maze of questions and “clips” of the show.
Paved paradise: I spent the hours around sunset Sunday at the Starlight Six Drive-In’s legendary Drive Invasion. Drive Invasion works thusly: You show up during the day, park your car, drink, watch some live rock bands, drink, check out some of the classic cars that people have brought, drink, then, when the sun goes down, watch a few classic movies that you may very well be too drunk and tired to remember.
The part I enjoy the most about Drive Invasion is the elaborate home-away-from-home setups that people build around their cars. The finest of the fine was the mobile tiki lounge labeled “Trailer Vic’s.” “Inside,” musician Johnny Knox served Hawaiian beverages in bamboo tumblers freshly cut-to-order. Another standout was the pickup truck-bed craps table. Rest assured, Atlanta Vice, no money was exchanged. They were playing for valueless chips.