The human trampoline.

That's a reference to the Paul Simon song "Graceland," which is where I was last week. It was my good friend Mikey B.'s birthday on Thursday. He had the week off and wanted to get out of town. I enabled him. I spent more money than I should have, but we had a ton of fun.

We left on Wednesday. Stopped in Bloomington for lunch (a little Italian place), and then in St. Louis for dinner (at a brewery). Saw the famous Arch:


And it was warm enough that we ate outside on the patio! Stopped in Portageville, MO for the night at a little place called the New Orleans Inn.

The next morning we headed on into Memphis and hit Sun Studios around noon. Took the tour there -- it was as cool as I remembered from having taken it back in '94. However, they have stopped serving food at the studio, which was kind of a bummer. This young lady was our tour guide, and we picked up her CD, which is really great.

Then off to Graceland itself:



It was really amazing. Much smaller than I had anticipated. I had thought of it more like an amusement park kind of place, but it really felt like someone's home, albeit someone with a lot of money and lowbrow tastes but pretensions of upper class sensabilities. The tour was great, very low key and informative. It left me with a lot to think about in terms of the nature of celebrity and art. And of course I had to pick up a couple of souvenirs! Oddly, Elvis and Graceland were in the news just today!

After that, we were starving, and we started looking for somewhere to eat. We were using the guidebook that I had bought when I moved to TN three years ago, so it was a little out of date, and the first two places we tried to go were closed. But then we ended up here, and it was awesome. The food was incredible! Not a lot of atmosphere, just really great BBQ.

And in the evening we scoped out the infamous Beale Street. It was pretty quiet -- maybe because Mardi Gras had just been that Tuesday. We did see some cool live music, but overall it felt pretty sad and touristy. More like a Disney attraction than any kind of actual historic landmark.

On Friday we hit the Crystal Shrine Grotto in the morning:


I don't know what to say about this place. It's hard to describe if you haven't been there. Mike took some pictures with his camera, so I'll try to post them if they turn out (it was pretty dark inside). Try this site for some more info on it.

The rest of the day was less intense -- checked out the Center for Southern Folklore, which seemed like it might be really cool if we hadn't been there on a school day; wandered around downtown and had lunch at the Front St. Deli, which was good but underwhelming; went for coffee and cribbage at Java Cabana, which was actually very nice. Then we had dinner at another great tiny BBQ place (called A&R), headed to a movie ("Ultraviolet" -- don't bother), and then out to a bar for the evening (the Young Ave. Deli). Good times all around, but more laid back than the day before.

Saturday we drove back (grabbing a quick lunch from Corky's on our way out of town -- it was that good, people!). We decided to come back by a different route, and planned a stop in Metropolis, IL to visit the Super Museum:


It wasn't the coolest place ever -- the lighting especially left a lot to be desired -- but I've heard about it for years, and I'm glad we went. We got home around midnight. Just in time for it to snow on Sunday! Sigh.

Other stuff that has happened recently:

We had a squirrel loose in our house for a week. Heather finally caught him. She rocks!

The Oscars happened. I only guessed 10 out of 24 in my pool! I wish I knew other people who get as wrapped up in them as I do, because when I'm wrapped up in something by myself, I always feel kind of lame. I ended up not even watching them because a) I got the time wrong and had already missed an hour when I thought to start watching, and b) somehow once they're happening, they don't feel as important as when they're being anticipated. I don't know if I'm describing the phenomenon well, but I don't like it.

My brother had a birthday. Happy 27th, bro!

My dad came over for a visit. We had dinner and went to "Match Point," which was really good and not at all what I was expecting. It struck oddly close to home for me, not literally but in weird allegorical ways that I won't go into here (maybe in a later post). So just don't go thinking that I'm cheating on my aristocratic British wife with a crazy American actress, 'cause I'm not.

Oh, and my computer at home has ceased functioning. I think the power supply has gone kaput. I'm going to try to scavenge one from an old computer at work and see if I can't eke a few more months out of the old boy. Cross your fingers for me!