Memorable Memorial Day

I'm still in fun mode from the great long weekend Doc B. and I had and now it’s Friday again.

World travelers and spontaneity freaks won't think there is anything special about our weekend but it was right up my alley. It was a nice mixture of home time and social activities. Here's the scoop if you'll indulge me while I write my "what I did over summer vacation" version of Memorial Day.

We started off Friday evening with a pay per view movie. What a great invention by the way. You check to see if there are any movies on at the time that you want to watch, hook up a phone cord between your Dish receiver and a telephone jack, and voila, you are watching a movie. The charge miraculously appears on your next billing statement and is the same price as a DVD rental at Blockbuster. Now, if I could only figure out a way to have my dad’s famous popcorn come through that same phone line? So, what movie did we select? It was between "King Kong", that was 3 ½ stars but also 3 ½ hours long, or "Memoirs of a Geisha", that only got 3 stars but was just 2 hours long. Since my friend Matthew says that "Memoirs of a Geisha" is his life story, that’s the one we picked. Well, actually we picked it because it would be over by 10:00PM, just slightly later than our bedtime. Since it was a holiday weekend, we figured we could lose the sleep. Little did we know that would become the trend for the following few days.

Saturday we hit the new Lowe’s for some plants and spent the day in the yard. That evening we went to an early cook out at a friend’s house and then joined our neighbors at the Starlight Drive-In movie theater for a double feature. None of us really cared what the movies were, we just wanted to go sit out in the open air, eat really salty popcorn, drink beer, and watch a couple of shows. I think the last time I went to a drive-in was about ten years ago with my middle sister and her husband. I don’t recall what the movie was, but I do remember we enjoyed sharing a bottle of Hot Damn. Once again, an alcohol theme emerges. The first drive-in movie I ever went to was back in the 70’s. The movie was "Saturday Night Fever" and as I recall, we were on a family vacation out west. We all just piled on top of the van to enjoy the show.

Anyway, the movies we watched this time were "Poseidon" and "An American Haunting". I was only eight when Shelley Winters won best supporting actress for the 1972 original "Poseidon Adventure", but I did later see the movie. This updated version was no match for the original, especially with Josh Lucas thinking he was Matthew McConaughey (who, by the way, has broken up with Penelope Cruz and can be seen jogging the streets of Atlanta while he’s here filming a movie), Richard Dreyfuss trying to play a gay man, and Freddy Rodriquez (one of my favorite "Six Feet Under" characters) getting killed off early. And "An American Haunting" also left much to be desired, but it did have some big names in it – Sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland. The movie was an early 1800’s ghost story. And what is it with Sissy Spacek and scary movies? Try saying that fast three times. First she’s the telekinetic heroine of my namesake’s movie, "Carrie", and then she joins in for "The Ring Two". I think she was also in that movie called "In the Bedroom"? But scariest of all was for sure "Coal Miner’s Daughter". We didn’t get home from the double feature until 1:00AM – closer to our usual wake up time than our go to sleep time.

Sunday we again spent the day in the yard. That evening we went to our favorite Atlanta concert venue, Chastain, an outdoor amphitheatre. A friend of ours is connected with Chastain’s ticket sales and had recruited us a few weeks ago to help out with the phone lines. We blatantly hinted around that some free tickets would never be turned down. Low and behold, we got an e-mail that there would be two free tickets waiting for us at will-call to see "Jewel". We had no idea where the seats would be, we were just thrilled to get to go. We packed our picnic basket with snacks and vino, headed to the ticket window and were pleasantly surprised to find our tickets were in Row B – the best seats we’ve ever had at Chastain. We were so close, that we didn’t even need our binoculars to see that Jewel had in fact had her teeth fixed. I’m not a huge Jewel fan, but I do like her music and have some of her CD’s. She did an amazingly good show and was very funny. She at one point admitted that she knows we all think she sometimes sings like Kermit the Frog, but that she didn’t care because it’s worked out well for her financially. At one point, a guy in the crowd yelled out "I LIKE YOUR DRESS" and she replied, without missing a beat, "I LIKE YOU DRINKING BEER". And at 11:00PM, when Chastain has to turn off the sound system because they are located in a residential area, Jewel was still yodeling. On our way home, we stopped for a slice of pizza and didn’t get home until after midnight…again.

Monday was yet another work in the yard day followed by dinner at Kali's house (nickname not changed as she has nothing to hide). Kali prepared some superb chicken on the barbie, not to be confused with chicken on the ken. After a very pleasant dinner, we made our way home at, finally, a reasonable hour.