Scene & Herd - The talking heads
You may ask yourself, why such dull events this week?
Last Sunday, I joined hundreds of Falcons fans on a MARTA train bound for Vine City, where the grass is green, the girls are pretty, and the NFL plays just across the street. One dilemma, though: I didn’t have a ticket to the game nor the money to pay a scalper. So I did the next best thing. I walked downhill on Northside Drive until I reached the Georgia World Congress Center and paid $10 to get into For Sisters Only, an entertainment and marketing bash aimed at African-American women.
The event consisted of row-upon-row of vendor booths, surrounded by performance and seminar stages. When I walked in, gospel/contemporary Christian singer Smokie Norful was finishing up his performance. You may know him from his most recent funky single, “Can’t Nobody,” which features the evocative refrain “Can’t nobody do me like Jesus.” Despite making it clear that nobody can hold him “in the midnight hour, like you, Jesus,” several women in the audience dashed screaming at full “A Hard Day’s Night” lustful speed to be first in line when someone announced Smokie’s presence in the autograph room. This columnist had the ill fortune of being near the autograph line at the time and was nearly trampled.
Over at one of the lecture stages, I caught author Yasmin Shiraz talking to young girls about standing up to bullies. Shiraz is an author and motivational speaker who, among other things, teaches people how to get into the entertainment business. It’s good to know that there’s someone out there trying to alleviate this country’s chronic shortage of aspiring celebrities.
My favorite part of conventions like this are the vendors. They don’t necessarily tell you about the people attending the convention, but they do tell you what the event organizers and the vendors think of the people attending the convention. For example, it appears the event’s organizers think that the women in attendance were interested in purchasing bucketloads of bad, pseudo-Afro-centric art with color palettes straight out of Theo Huxtable’s wardrobe. Are paintings of women in brightly colored head wraps carrying water pails on their heads the African-American equivalent of those awful Thomas Kinkade snowy cottage paintings?
Mmmmmmm, Atlanta: What is the Taste of Atlanta exactly? Sort of asphalty, with an infusion of tire rubber and drizzled with motor oil.
Taste of Atlanta is also a great weekend food party at Lenox Square, the net proceeds of which benefit Atlanta Community Food Bank and a couple of other charities. Last weekend’s was the third annual one. My “job,” if you can call it that, was to walk around and sample dishes from some of Atlanta’s best restaurants. I should remember that next time I feel bad about having to work on the weekends.
Among the most rewarding dishes that I sampled for my “job” was Osteria del Figo’s (aka Figo Pasta) Zucca, a lightly sweet butternut squash ravioli in a creamy sauce that I would eat at every meal if I could and drink through a straw if I ever broke my jaw. Another of my favorites was the wonderful eggplant salad at the Imperial Fez table. I’d probably drink that through a straw, too, since it’s already mushy.
The biggest surprise mini-meal was from Cafe 458. I didn’t know that I liked white beans until I tried their poached salmon on bed of white bean salad (just to clarify, it was the salmon on the bed of white bean salad, not me). Located on Edgewood Avenue, the restaurant provides free meals to the homeless during the week and the waitstaff donates its tips to Samaritan House of Atlanta.
Other than eating, the event’s other big draw was celebrity chefs. The “headliner” was Emeril Lagasse. The Justin Wilson of the 21st century made gnocchi with blue cheese sauce. And just like he does on TV, he said “Bam!” a lot. The crowd ooh’d and ahhh’d when he did.
Flicks: Iranians are rapidly becoming the favorite swarthy foreigners of American cinephiles. With our soulful dark eyes, stylish chadors and ample back hair, who can resist us? Well, the High Museum can’t. All month they’ve been screening important contemporary Iranian films. On Saturday night, I joined a mixed audience of Americans and Iranians for The Fifth Reaction, a depressing film about women getting trampled on by savage patriarchy dressed up as respectable religion. It made me wanna punch an Iranian man, so when I got home, I punched myself in the arm a few times. Honest.
Free as a bird: To many Atlantans, the Libertarian Party is merely the beard that Neal Boortz uses to make-believe that he’s not just a garden-variety right-wing radio hack repeating Republic Party talking points. The Libertarians are in fact a living, breathing, thinking political party. Their motivating principals are individual liberty, free marketeerism, and very limited government.
On Sunday evening, the party’s presidential candidate, Michael Badnarik, spoke to a five-tabled ballroom of the party faithful (and me) at the Atlanta Northwest Marriott in Marietta (it’s the heinous building near Windy Hill Road that looks like something the Soviets would have built in the ’70s if all of their architects were Navajo). Badnarik’s points about personal liberty have an appealing ring. He decries government’s increased restrictions on free speech and got huge applause when he promised to veto any unconstitutional legislation if elected. The only time he said something outrageous (to me) was when he suggested that Libertarianism would have prevented 9/11 because passengers on the airplanes would have been allowed to have guns. Does he not realize that the terrorists were themselves passengers and, therefore, would have had guns, too? How exactly does that make us safer? Keep in mind, readers, that I’m a happy gun owner.