The 'ville is all about that delicate ratio of food : booze : music. And my fellow 'villienne's, crafty chemists that they are, have they're sound waves and liquids down! The solids? Not so much.
For example: a couple of weeks ago we saw my dreamboat, the only androgyne for whom I throw my beloved hubby over for: Eddie Izzard. He was at the adorable and intimate Ryman Auditorium and we had great seats that we bought that evening (for a modest surcharge over face. Remember this event sold out two months prior). Anyhoo I left with cheeks aching from laughter and joy in my heart that there are like-minded others who believe in the enduring and entertaining power of language and reason over snake-handling and mean otherness.
Even though the guy went on non-stop for two hours we weren't done. So we wended our way over to this fabulous club: 3rd & Lindsley (website attached) and walked into this local band who does nothing but Greg Allman band tunes (appropriately monikered The Midnight Riders)
OMFG! These guys had 2 drummers both with FULL DRUM KITS onstage and this badass Hammond B-3, two excellent guitarists (the one in the yellow shirt was so completely facile with those rich and wild Allman arrangements is was like he was benchpressing Arnold the Gubernator with his little pinkie). I mean there's not enough hyperbole in a Senate hearing on flag pins to describe how incredibly good and faithful these guys were. AND THE COVER WAS $7! I think drinks were all under $10. Talk about cost-benefit ratios!My new Nashville pal, Carol, loves the place and said when she returned to the 'ville from her exile in LA she walked into 3 & L and Lucinda Williams was playing: OK? 'nuffathat.
So you can fill your ears with the most unimaginatively excellent and varied stuff around. And you can swill really excellent wines and spirits from all over the planet. Fully compensatory for the less opulent and frequently ill prepared solids? I'll have to do more research on that but in the meantime there are good places: like Neely's...
NEW ITEM! Plug of the Post: this is a new department I've formed in the ever expanding empire of val-in-the-ville. Each post will have at least one unabashedly fawning plug for some product or service. These will mainly come from my new hometown but not always, and since it's a late arrival I've included two: one each from my old and new domiciles.
So Neely's - these brothers and uncles have been in the 'Q business since the late '80's and opened their pits in the 'ville in 2001. Oh joy! This is PERFECT 'Q: not too sweet or gooey; very well cooked and causing that divine sense of yumminess in all parts of the body once consumed. And they had me in mind when they created their 'Q salad: a big romaine salad topped (dare I say smothered) with your choice of 'qued pork, beef or turkey. I had the pork my first time and here's a shot of it half eaten!
They also do this intuitively obvious but new-to-me thing: 'qued spaghetti! Never saw it before either but doesn't that just make sense! Judging from the sizes I think I'll order that the next time I do a triathlon.
Plug of the Post: My beloved and dearly missed SF has a purveyor of hair/face/home stuff called Nancy Boy and Eric, the owner and resident maniac, writes this newsletter that LOL! And his products are really good too! No animal testing, and all natch, natch. I've pasted his latest billet to friends below. Check it out and enjoy a good laugh and some great pomades and pastes!
Next up: wildlife in the 'ville - they're everywhere - day and night, inside and out!
And now a word from Nancy Boy!
"Lucky for you we are off the hook with dope phatness, ready to provide up-to-the-minute reports on the unspeakable subversions of San Francisco where we're going to bed way past 10 pm and not standing during the national anthem and driving past a house where a sex party was held in 1991 and knowing people who smoke Mary Jane openly in the bathroom and the police don't do one solitary thing. Not only that, you heard it here first and sit your ass down because it's a shocker, the gays are getting married. Yes. As my Uncle Horace is wont to remark about the President's ears, "Don't make me no nevermind but how'd they get that way in the first place?"
A domineering mother, an absent father and too many Abercrombie catalogues lying around the house is the consensus view but other questions swirl through my head. Like how do they decide who's the man and who's the lady? Probably by getting the test from the drugstore that turns one color if you're the man and one color if you're the virgin then they know who wears the dress and veil. But I advise doing a few tests to make sure because when the man lifts the veil, if the lady is a man not a virgin all her hair falls out. And I mean ALL. When foreign tourists visit, I love taking picnic lunch to strangers' weddings and blowing our kazoos when the hair stays in—it's a beautiful ritual to share, and our foreign friends are always speechless with an emotion of some kind.
And what about one's hairy legs? Were I to appear in a stunning Members Only® designer gown, for which I might pay as much as $49.99 considering it would be a once or at most five-in-a-lifetime event, I'd want my legs to be smooth and silky, a concern shared with at least three of the women in San Francisco's fine intramural field hockey league.
"Not to worry," as Dick Cheney said before reloading. Our globally renowned shave creams have caught on among a phalanx of she-shavers who use it on their legs and underarms. Makes sense; with that much surface area, they know it's even more important to use the premium cream.
This month we salute our brides-to-be with the gift of true shaving satisfaction, the secret your own mother would have told you about if only we lived in a more open society. The pre-shave oil that virtually eliminates nicks, bumps and razor burn for men performs the same miracle for women. Skeptical? Then try it for free. Just place a July order with an after-discount total of $60 and choose Original Signature scent or Unscented-For-Sensitive-Skin pre-shave oil, a $19 value: http://www.nancyboy.com/home.php?cat=263 Or choose a full-size bottle of mild facial cleanser. Look for a box with these choices to pop up in your shopping cart when you hit the spending threshold. If you don't see the choices then stop pretending you don't need reading glasses and tell us what you want in the Customer Notes box during checkout. And by all means shop we're not doing this for our health: http://www.nancyboy.com/home.php
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