In Eckleburg's Eyes - 5/28/2008

On Tuesday I ate two meals with SMA and tried a new restaurant.

I met SMA for lunch at Big Fatty’s Catering Kitchen Restaurant. We both ate the delicious blue plate special - chicken 'n dumplings.

We met immediately after his class in preparation for the bar examination. The class meets five days a week (excluding holidays) at the University of Tennessee College of Law and runs into July. Most of this week he will be viewing taped segments from Duke Law School’s renowned professor Erwin Chemerinsky. He was pleased that the notoriously liberal lawyer used a pro-Bush joke in his lecture:

Bill Clinton, Clarence Thomas, and George Bush competed in a spelling be. Bush won because he was the only one who knew “harass” was one word. (not "her ass", get it?)

I learn so much about the law just by osmosis with SMA. Before the end of his term, two of his own professors from Cumberland are slated to guest lecture as well. I got the impression he would prefer it if they sent in videos as well...

While eating, we ran into the church’s youth minister, TSC, and ZC. SMA has long said that he runs into TSC at least once a week. ZC has plans to attend seminary. He will make a great minister and I hope he can learn from my example what not to do.

On the drive home, I received a phone call from SMA informing me that "Gandhi (1868-1948) is a dumbass!" (Two quick notes: (1) “Dumbass” is not in the cell phone dictionary and (2) Both times “ass” was used in this post were me quoting SMA.) SMA’s call was in response to a bumper sticker that featured Gandhi’s famous quote on nonviolence, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and the whole world would soon be blind and toothless.” Citing that since we would have a remaining eye, an eye for an eye would only mean less depth perception “unless India is a land of cyclops, which I would have heard about...” This is sound reasoning with the exception of the fact that the quote, and not SMA, accounts for multiple offenders. Even so, I think new bumper stickers are in order.

On Tuesday night, I joined SMA and CST at the Kalamata Café (located at 9405 S. Northshore Drive). Neither CST nor I had ever been before. It is a wonderful Japanese restaurant. You know it is good because Japanese people actually eat there. We were especially fortunate at Tuesday is half-priced salmon day.

I sampled teriyaki sushi as well as CST’s dipping sushi. Dipping sushi is fried. This particular specimen featured salmon, cream cheese, and roe (yes, I know they are fish eggs). It was the best sushi I have ever eaten. I must note that I ate mine more authentically than SMA and CST. They used their chopsticks! CST recently learned from a program on the Mojo network that Japanese natives do not eat Sushi with chopsticks, but instead partake with their fingers. I was the most native, though it was because of my ineptitude with the chopsticks.

I must also admit that their tomato basil soup was also the best I have ever eaten, even surpassing Silver Spoon’s version.

The conversation was scintillating as always. We discussed the new Guitar Hero Aerosmith game which will be released on June 29th and our hopes for the upcoming season of Tennessee basketball. We are especially hopeful that Steven Pearl morphs more into the Incredible Hulk this season. We suggest supplying him with a smaller jersey and perhaps even only strings holding the jersey on at the top. If anyone has connections at the university...

After dinner, we went to Best Buy and then Staples in search of a presentation mouse for CST's upcoming job interview. We actually drove from Best Buy to Staples, which is ridiculous considering they are adjacent to one another.

CST’s job interview is on June 3rd with Courthouse Retrieval Systems. He has already had one phone interview with the company. Should he get the new job he will be training real estate agents and vendors on how to use the software they have purchased. He is doing well, but has made some cutbacks that come with being unemployed. Sadly, these cutbacks have included ending his subscription to WWE 24/7.

In other news:

• SMA and CST's 10-year class reunion from Bearden High School has been announced. They have no plans to attend.
  
• Our friend JS is in the process of recruiting in his position as assistant basketball coach at Roane State. There is not much to do as the team red-shirted eight players last season. This may have contributed to their subpar record. He is trying to get one of his players into the Rocky Top League.
  
• SMA and CST both gave positive reports of their Friday viewing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As always, SMA attracted the theater’s strangest people. An African-American woman, who was otherwise completely courteous, shook, stomped, and screamed “Snakes!” each time the reptiles were on the screen. Before the movie, a young girl chose to sit directly by CST despite the fcat that the theater was completely empty. He described this as one of the creepiest moments of his life. He was just lucky RLN was not there or rumors of another CST spawn would be rampant.
  
• MWD has reconciled with her boyfriend. The grievance against his mother must have been legitimate as he even acknowledged her behavior was inappropriate. They have agreed that in the future he will defend her. We are pleased with the reconciliation.
  
• The local professional wresting operation has returned and is being run by a wrestler who goes by the name “Ercules.” His character is a homosexual with an E shaved into his chest hair. Hopefully his creativity in leading a promotion will be better than creating his own gimmick.

After our search for a presentation mouse, we returned to SMA’s house where SMA made CST a concoction known as a “piranha” and we played FirePro Wrestling. It is a wrestling video game and admittedly one of the nerdiest things this group of my friends participates in. SMA wanted to present his new Norwegian tag team. As usual, CST predicted the matches of SAWW better than the two “experts.”

We called it an early night as CST met a friend from Walland, TN. I have lived in Tennessee most of my life and have no idea where Walland is.

In other Tuesday news, a massive picture of Lowell Cunningham ("and Frank", evidently his dog) appeared in the Knoxville News-Sentinel. Lowell is the creator of Men in Black and a regular at MoFoS. We are planning to frame the shot and have him sign it. He is an interesting character and we know him more from his less mainstream interests... Frank has never been in the store.

Finally, I stopped by the Bent Corner used book store (6716 Papermill Drive) again. If you get a chance go by Papermill Plaza and check them out. I really want them to succeed. They have the best service of any business I have ever been to. The owner will soon be leaving for a month and his capable assistant Allison will be running the store. If you can, support this business.