It's All About the Benjamins

Jump to Comments See, I told you that I’d write about this! But, this write-up is so awesomee, so spectactularly multimedial, that you’re just gonna have to click on the more button to see it in all of its glory. Hahahaha!

Yeah, so Memphis! Memphis. With Hopper! Yeah! Now that’s what I’m talkin about. 16 hours spent away from ye grinde.

So, anyway, we get on this bus. Well, it’s more of an airport shuttle deal, but you know what I’m getting at. Hopper! is driving. Hopper! Oh my goodness! I can’t quite believe this. It’s insane. But, anyhow, I get on and sit amidships, left side, in an aisle seat. Surprise surprise. Anyhow, so I’m sitting next to Bobby, who’s a cool dude, and we talk about whatever or something for a while, until we get to some gas station in Nowheresville, Arkansas to get some grub.

Oh my goodness, right next to the import beers in the fridge cases is some of Nelly’s “Pimp Juice.” Well, you know, It’s All About the Benjamins, so I get some– and some crappy jerky and peanuts. Also, gum.

Rest of ride is fairly uneventful; get to Memphistopheles and we hit up their theatre, The Orpheum. Built in the 20s or the 30s, and rehabbed in the 1980s, this thing as a lot of similarities to the Circle Theatre back home where the Symphony plays. Except, this one is a bit bigger and incredibly appointed. Gilded plaster, red velvet, the works, man. Most exceedingly excellent. (Took some pictures throughout the trip; those’ll get posted whenever.)

Yeah, so, while we’re standing in the outer lobby to this place, I suddenly see out of the corner of my eye something pass by on the street. Green and white, and a bunch of glass. A microbus is my initial thought. Looking at it directly, it’s not a VW at all– it’s an electric trolley! (see fig. 1) Vintage pre 1945. “HOLY CRAP,” I exclaim, popping out the door to get a better look. Everybody thinks I’m being silly. Like, nobody told me Memphis had reinstalled its prewar public transit system with original (or replica, at least) rolling stock! Dude, I should be going to school there.

So, yeah, we do the downtown thing for a while– look at some other buildings, like the downtown Catholic church– absolutely magnificent. Hopper! made some remark about how, you know, none of us has everything right, but the Catholics have something that the evangelical protestants don’t– a respect for reverence. I agree with him wholeheartedly.

So, after this, we go to a place purporting itself as a ‘Grecian’ Restaurant (tee-hee). Because there’s not enough room inside, me and I think 7 girls (maybe it was five; as you can tell by fig. 2 I can’t remember who was all there and it might be that I’ve added too many seats) sit outside, which is fine by me. None of them have had significant contact with Greek (or Grecian, for that matter XD XD) food, so I order everything for them. In addition to the listed entrees we also got some bread with tzatziki sauce and some dolmathes. Everything was good; I think most all of the girls enjoyed what it is that they got, and it was fun was hightened by the lack of the usual dorm-regulated gender seperation or whatever.

While we were out there in the sunshine eating our meals, this crazy accident happens in the intersection Mississippiward (westward) of us. (See fig. 3) A white ford taurus making a slow, green-arrowed left turn gets swiped by this dark red merc flying through the intersection making a right on red, overshooting the turn. The Taurus summarily pops into a gold Lincoln towncar (pre-1999) across the intersection, stoped at a red. Nice thudding sound. The merc lost its airdam, the hood and headlights were toast, and I’m sure due to the leakage that the radiator and probably the wiper fluid and maybe even the A/C pump were crushed. Hahaha, loser.

So, After that we went to the Pyramid to look at this collection of art commisioned by the patronage of the Medici family in Florence during and after the Rennaisance. Dude, so freaking quality right there. I mean, indescribably awesome. Yeah. So, I’m not going to even attempt it. Anyhow, this figure to the left is on the rise and fall of the Medici as shown in artowrk thereof. (Why did I do this out of order numerically? I don’t know– it was like 2 AM!) So, there was this larger-than-life bust of Lorenzo il Magnifico, made out of terra cotta or wood or something. It was freaking awesome– the thing just exuded unpretentious, raw power. Lorenzo was nuts; this guy freaking invented banking, modernized currency, and really provided the capital for jumpstarting this whole Rebirth thing.

Now, on the other side, you’ve got his distant posterity, Grand Duke Cosimo III, who was portrayed with big hair and lavish clothes in a larger-than-life full portrait. Every familial resemblance is gone, here– too much intermarrying with European nobility has sucked the shrewdness (and big strong noses) right out of the bloodline. He also has none of that aura of authority– sure, he’s wearing velvet and ermine and dpeticted at his villa or whatever, but he lacks that spark that you could tell Lorenzo had. Also, he’s fairly portly, tee-hee.

Stay tuned for part two or Ben’s not feeling like writing the rest of this right now!

Hey, look, part two!

Yeah, so I purchased this oversided tome with a bunch of pictures of Florentine Renaissance stuff, since it was only 39 bucks and it’s the thing you’d normally see for 60 or 80 or whatevers. It’s definately most excellent. The level of detail in that art is absolutely magnificient! Yeah.

So, like, after that, we went to go see an art movie, because, you know, Humaities class, blah blah blah. I was hoping we would have seen Goodbye Lenin, since that looks pretty good. Instead, we saw Osama which was sad. Oh well. There was a Taliban dude that had a red beard, which reminded me of that thign Nazzy told me about his dad saying that there’s fair, skinned, red-haired dudes in Persia, like, just, out of nowheres. Tee hee.

Den, afta dat, we wuz hungry and got us sum good food. There’s a most excellent Memphis-style barbeque place downtown called the Rendezvous, oddly acessible from the service alley only. Didn’t matter, though, since the food was quite tastetacular. I sat by Chris and Bobby and Allen, and like Aleah and some other people, I think. It’s all getting hazy. I’d probably had like half a gallon of Coke by that time of the day, and only added to it– there were pitchers of the stuff on every table. I amused the people by using the Lamb Standard Waiter Call (raising hand, announcing “SIR” in the speaking voice) to get the dude to take our appetizer order, which you see to the left. Yes, nachos with pulled pork– I kid you not. This is some crazy stuff right here, but it’s such a tasty. For dinner, I got some beef briscuit, and some rolls to sop up the tasty Memphis sauce. Also, mustard cole slaw. Mmmhmm.

Hopper! got the tab (which was physically huge in addition to being monetarily enormous– Bobby and I calculated it was $375 at minimum), and asked the waiter for some dessert menus, but was informed of a lack thereof. So, it was off to the downtown mall for us!

There was an icecream joint in there– like Amy’s in Austin, Texas, for those in the know. You know, hard stuff, pick some toppings, they mix stuff in (with much less gusto that Amy’s, by the way), such a tasty. Got some cheesecake-flavored icecream with strawberry bits and some peanuts mixed in– yum. Hung with people for a little while; Allen and I hit up Tower Records and bought absolutely nothing. Then it was back home for us.

About midway through Arkansas, in some podunk stretch of humanless road, a state po po in front of us flashes his spotlight backwards at the shuttle and then pulls us over. “Turn off yer haih beeumz,” he shouts. Hopper! flashes his high beams on to show that he was running with his lowsies on, eventhough we were in the middle of nowhere and he had every right to have his brights on until the cop pulled out in front of us and did this. “Well, uh, those ‘r’ awful bright, then,” captain bacon says from his cruisier. No, really– they’re mounted high up on the front of a bus, you MORON. What do you expect?

I almost wish we were in the Range Rover somehow– that thing’s light package is incredible, and the high beams just blow things away. It’s freaking insane, I tell you.

Yeah, well, anyhow, we got back at 2330something I went back to my room and drew this stuff on my laptop, configured as in fig. 6. Fig 7 shows how I “fake dressed-up”, as I like to put it. I wore some jeans, oddly enough– bought them at JCP the day before, and that’s so totally like the first pair of blue jeans I’ve owned since 7th or 8th grade. They fit pretty well, but have some crazy button-fly. Whatev. I like them well enough, though, and they were a lot cheaper than the Lamb Standard Gap Khakis.


P.S. WTF, the pictures don’t show up in IE! Um, go look in http://www.iaatb.net/imgs/memphis/ for the pngs. Alo in there you’ll find the Windows Journal master file, and the mhtml document if you have just the MS WinJournal Viewer plugin for IE (stupid windows).