Scene & Herd - Adopt a dog

I wonder when El Vez’s birthday is

While buying doggie shampoo on Sunday at the PetsMart on Ponce, I got hypnotized by an adorable rat terrier mix named Mickey. He was sitting in a little pen with five other puppies in front of the store. Mickey is a foster dog in the care of the Southern Hope Humane Society. He’s deer brown with jet black whiskers and a pointy snout that makes him look like a rat. I love him. I wanted to take him home, rename him Carlos (he so looks like a Carlos) and make him my new man’s best friend. I resisted the urge, on account of the two other man’s best friends already making a mess of my home.

Southern Hope manages Fulton County Animal Services. A couple of representatives of the group sit outside the store on nice weekend days to entice people with sweet, adoptable dogs. The most popular group was five puppies sharing the pen with Mickey/Carlos. I was standing around for well over an hour and there were onlookers when I arrived who were still there when I left. The star pups were pit bull/Staffordshire terrier mixes. They had their manipulative puppy cuteness routine rehearsed perfectly — from sleeping on top of each other to stepping in their own water bowls and expertly-timed yawns.

One person who wasn’t suckered by their routine was Mario. Mario was an adult pit bull mix who barked at almost everyone who passed by. One woman leaned toward his cage and said, “I understand why you’re so mad. You wanna be free. I’ve been on a safari in Africa. I know that animals need space to walk around.” I swear I’m not making that up.

A fool such as I: If you walked into the grocery store Saturday and noticed a shortage of peanut butter, bananas and Wonder Bread, then you probably already know that Saturday was Elvis Presley’s 70th birthday.

As you know, residents of the Southeastern United States are required by law to conspicuously commemorate the deceased king of rock ‘n’ roll. I fulfilled my legal obligation by blasting Elvis on my car stereo, eating a lot of fried cheese, watching Blue Hawaii, lying dead on my bathroom floor, and going out to see one of Saturday night’s many Elvis tribute shows.

Specifically, I dropped by Northside Tavern for a couple of hours to see Johnny Knox and Hi-Test. The stage was decorated with a gold-suited cardboard cut-out of Elvis, a lighted sign reading “70,” and five drum heads painted with the letters E-L-V-I-S (note to Northside Tavern: keep those lettered drum heads handy in case you ever book the Evils).

Although I expected the group to lean more heavily on Elvis’ earlier, rawer songs, they surprised me by picking gems from Elvis’ entire catalog and deschmaltzifying them when necessary. The result: The band sounded just as rock playing the late-Elvis ballad “Kentucky Rain” as it did Sun Records-era “Baby, Let’s Play House.” Incidentally, Knox’s multiple electric rockabilly guitar solos on the latter track were so, well, electrically rockabilly, that it was easy to forget that the song is about miserable and murderous jealousy. They just made it sound fun.

I normally don’t cover more than one music event per column, but I made an exception this week because A) it’s not fair for a band to have to compete with a newspaper’s Elvis coverage, and B-) I really, really love the band’s music.

The band is called Spy. (Full disclosure: Last summer, Spy let me photograph its recording sessions with the legendary Steve Albini. It was a fun, geeky art project for me. I’ve never had a business or financial relationship with the band in any form.) They played at Midtown’s Vinyl on Friday night. The band plays hard, melodic rock that compresses ’70s classic hard-rock glam into single songs. It’s always a good sign when a band starts its set with six people standing in front of the stage, and finishes with about 30 people watching.

There were two other notable occurrences that evening. First of all, someone was smoking some expensive-smelling weed in the stairwell adjacent to the stage during Spy’s set. The smell lingered forever, even though the stairwell’s door to the outside was propped open.

Secondly, Goodie Mobster and Dungeon Family member Cee-Lo was walking around the club. Now that I think of it, I wonder if the two occurrences are related.

Press Release of the Week: The winner of my approximately twice yearly Press Release of the Week award goes to PR Productions for the e-mail announcing last week’s “Saturday Night Exclusive” party at Buckhead’s Electra Lounge. The big letters at the top of the message read “Saturday Night Exclusive. Everyone Is Welcome.” Everyone is welcome? Sounds pretty exclusive!

I declare: I’m a photographer and I like looking at attractive women in their underwear — that’s why I’m so disappointed in myself for not thinking of The Panty Project myself. The Panty Project is a photography show by Erin Bennett at Young Blood Gallery featuring blurry, gold-framed images of women wearing panties. Each photo was labeled with a gold tag with a name written in black, fancy cursive writing. My favorite was “Nico.” Her panties were see-through.

By the way, I’m dead serious about being disappointed in myself for not thinking of it. At the show, I tried to make up for it by talking my girlfriend into letting me photograph her in her panties. She agreed. I’ve included the photo, taken at Young Blood that night, in this week’s column. As you can see, she had her pants on. It’s a start, though.

I don’t: On Saturday afternoon, I stopped by the Stunning Weddings Bridal Show at the Georgia World Congress Center. Sadly, the bridal gown fashion show that I intended to photograph was canceled, so I did not take any pictures. I did browse a bit, though. For the bride with too much hair, there were a couple of booths offering information on the latest in hair removal technology. Adjacent to them was a booth selling wigs.



For more information on eating, I mean adopting puppies, check out www.andy2000.org.