Nashville, TN

Running back Chris Brown has re-signed with the Tennessee Titans.

Brown was drafted by the Titans in an attempt to fill the gap left by Eddie George. And while Brown has been good at times, he’s been hampered by injury for most of his career. He’s missed a lot of games and that opened the door last year to Travis Henry coming in from Buffalo and having a great season.

Brown starts this year with a desire to get the starting job back.

If he can remain injury free, he might have a good chance.

I hate when this happens.

What? you say. (I heard you)

I hate when a restaurant closes before I get a chance to decide if it should be closed or not. That’s what.

Oh, you say. (you’re pretty obvious)

I heard that a very longstanding and reputable Nashville eatery suddenly closed their famous 65-item salad bar and left over 30 people without the jobs they had the day before. I also hate when that happens.

When questioned about the abrupt closing, owner Frances Guess said it was, and I quote, “simply standard operating procedure in the restaurant industry. We did not relish the decision.”

Seriously? Is this really the time to be making puns? Ha ha funny guy. That was a hilarious. I bet you say that every time you send dozens of people to the unemployment line. Don’tchew. (ha. who’s the funny pun-maker now???)

The clouds were looking ominious as I drove into work this morning. Dark and full of rain, which we desparately, desparately need.

It rained yesterday just long enough to get the ground wet and make it incredibly humid and uncomfortable as it evaporated off the streets.

I hope we get some good, substantial rain today…heaven knows, we need it.

Interesting thought here. Last week, the governor of Georgia asked the state to pray for rain and…guess what? It rained. I think we here in Tennessee need to follow their example and pray for rain as a state….

I finally found this movie! I admit though, I ended up buying it at Borders instead borrowing it from the library. It just seemed easier at the time.

Who’s in it: Samantha Mathis, River Phoenix, Sandra Bullock, Dermot Mulroney, KT Oslin, Trisha Yearwood, and other semi-familiar faces.

Best things about this movie: the four main actors actually wrote their own songs for their character’s Blue Bird Cafe auditions. Did anyone else know that River Phoenix wrote Lone Star State of Mind?? This was also River’s final film. Almost the entire movie was filmed in Nashville. You can tell too. The director wanted Nashville to be a prominent feature of the film, so he used the widest lens he could find to achieve maximum depth of field. At any point during the movie you can look past the actors and see, in great detail, the background. The exterior of the real Blue Bird Cafe was always used, but they built an exact interior replica in LA for the scenes shot inside.

Worst thing about this movie: Samantha Mathis’ New York accent. Come on girl, embrace the South!

Would I watch it again? Sure…especially since I now own it and there’s no where for me to return it. No, really - this was a great movie. Very depicting of a singer-songwriter’s pursuit of fame. Charming and telling. I give it 3 3/4 stars. (You know, out of 5).

Eleventh verse, same as the first ten…

Adam “Pac-Man” Jones is wanted for questioning in relation to a shooting in Atlanta. From what I saw on Channel 2 this morning, it appears the incident took place outside a strip club in Atlanta.

I have a feeling that means we won’t be seeing Jones at all, on the field in a Titans uniform this year. If he’d shown good behavoir, he might have been back in ten games instead of gone all season.

Now, that doesn’t look so good, does it?

Of course, this is all early, so details could change.

But wouldn’t it be nice to not have to hear about this crap surrounding Jones every few weeks? It’s a shame to see a guy who such huge talent on the field completely and totally flush it down the toliet off the field.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, “people die at Bonnaroo.” But then again, people also die after years of smoking, or jumping off a cliff.

I wasn’t there, so I’ll give you some quick linkage if you want to hit the highlights of this annual peace-loving festival phenomenon. But in not so high-lights - for the sixth straight year in a row, Bonnaroo produced a casualty.

Will you Bonnaroo next year? I’m thinkin’ about it…

The weekend is almost here! Just a few more hours and we’re free. Free to be you and me. Sorry… I think everything is a song.

Last night I got to meet a bunch of Nashville bloggers at The Flying Saucer. Some of these people I have met before, but many I had only previously read or ogled their photography skills. But even the one’s I’d never met before are all people that I “know” from Nashville is Talking. This weekend you can find me directing traffic over there.

The Flying Saucer is known for having just about every known brand and flavor of beer distributed in the U.S. I cannot personally attest to the quality of their swigs, but their Space Club is pretty awesome - considering this is a bar and they serve, well, bar food.

Happy weekending & Happy Father’s Day!

My nephew loves Thomas the Tank Engine. He loves it when I come over to play “tracks,” building up a complex layout of wooden tracks for his trains to cruise around on. And when I baby-sit, we always read the same Thomas book for the bed-time story. (Seriously, I could probably recite it for you…)

That Thomas, he’s a popular train.

There’s been a recall of Thomas the Tank Engine toys due to lead in the paint. The toys were produced from 2005 to the present and are part of the wooden track sets. If you look at this .pdf, it will tell you which toys are recalled and how you can get them replaced. I looked at the list and it looks like it’s mostly toys with red paint on them.

Just wanted to share this as a public service warning…

Yes, we all know the big music festival is taking place this weekend. But for those of us who didn’t get tickets or just don’t want to stand around being hot and stinky for three days, there are some other options available.

One is it’s time for the annual Moon Pie Festival in Bell Buckle. Featuring a marathon Saturday morning and the world’s largest Moon Pie, this festival is a yearly tradition (and one that I am going to make it to one of these years). And how can anything that celebrate the greatness that is a Moon Pie be a bad thing?

Another event is the annual Hypericon speculative fiction convention that takes place this weekend. Festivities kick off tomorrow afternoon at 4 p.m. and run all weekend until mid-Sunday afternoon. Lots of authors will be in town to talk about their works and the featured guest this year Scott Nicholson.

I’ll be up at the con Saturday afternoon, helping out with a couple of panels on the greatest TV show of all-time Doctor Who.

I’m sure there is a whole lot of other great stuff happening this weekend. So, tell us what’s going on around middle Tennessee!

Monday’s game did not go over so well.

Not only did anyone play, but my mom broke the rules and googled the answers.

Not only did she google the answers, she posted them in the comments section.

Thanks Mom! Thanks for…not playing….?

It’s ok, I’m seriously just glad someone is reading this. **tap tap** is this thing on?

Anyways, all that to say, I shall now segue into Thursday’s post:

Nashville’s most commonly used nick-name: Music City.

We don’t grow a lot of beans in these here parts, so it’s not for an excess in legume-consumption that we get this mighty fine name. No-siree, we are known as Music City because…well, if I have to explain this in much detail then you probably can’t read anyways. It has something to do with such local landmarks as the Grand Ol’ Opry, CMT, the County Music Hall of Fame, the Ryman Auditorium, and a little historical street housing music publishers, recording studios, and labels we like to call Music Row. Nashville has a habit of making the lesser-known talents into big time headliners. We welcome these headliner-hopefuls from all four corners, but unfortunately, not everyone makes it to the Stage. Still, there is a certain charm and romance here that is served with our famous southern hospitality, so even the ones who don’t find their dreams, usually end up finding their home.

Anyone want to take a bet on if we’ll ever see Adam Jones play again in the NFL, much less a Titan’s uniform?

::crickets chirp:::

Yeah, I didn’t think I’d get many takers on that one.

Well, the good news is that Jones has dropped his appeal of his year-long suspension. I guess having the Las Vegas D.A. move forward with charges made him realize he might have other issues to take care of in the coming months. That said, I wish Jones’ attitude was more like Chicago’s Tank Johnson, where Johnson has repeatedly stated that he considers his suspension to be the minimum and is going to work to make sure he’s back in six games. (He is suspended eight but could only get six for good behavoir). How amazing would it be if we heard Jones say something like that?

I’ve got to say it’d be pretty close to unbelieveable. I hope Jones doesn’t make this kind of statement while I’m driving because I’d probably faint in disbelief, thus causing all kinds of headahces to area motorists.

I have to admit I’m of two minds here–I respect what Jones can do on the field as a game-changing type of player. But his off the field antics are just reprehensible and the guy needs to grow up…and fast.

Last week I posted a call for help finding movies filmed in Nashville. The only two movies found were, Nashville (surprise…and surprisingly BAD), and The Thing Called Love.

This morning I was reading a blog by this Nashville local (who by the way played very nicely during my “Songs About Nashville” game) who mentioned he was in The Last Castle. One light bulb going off in my head, and a quick google/IMDB seach later, not only did I confirm that The Last Castle WAS, in fact, filmed in Nashville, but was led to the motherload of all documented films made in Nashville. Where was this list last week, I implore??!! Probably right here, where it resides now.

Currently still searching for The Thing Called Love. But in the mean time, I have plenty of others to keep me busy.

Mr. Mantooth, why did you not tell me about this last week??

Best-selling author Homer Hickam will be in Music City this evening, reading from and signing his latest novel, The Far Reaches. The event takes place at Davis-Kidd and begins at 6 p.m. Admission is free.

Hickam is the author of Rocket Boys, which was eventually made into the movie October Sky. There is the Tennessee connection to the movie–it was filmed near Knoxville.

Today’s City Paper has an interview with Hickam about his new book.

Contest time! Can anyone out there name all five of Nashville’s nick-names?

Hint: one is REALLY easy…and another is right in front of you.

One & only rule: no looking this up on the internet!

and…..GO!

Saw the news in the Tennessean this morning that Nashville’s weather hot-line is off-line due to a lack of corporate sponsorship.

The time and temperature service, a long-time tradition in the Nashville area, is AWOL, at least for the time being.

Dial 259-2222 and the message you’ll hear these days is an apology that your call cannot be completed.

To be honest, in the day and age of the Internet and the Weather Channel, I had no idea that such things as the WeatherFone still existed.

Still, I’m sure it’s a resource to many and here’s hoping it finds a corporate sponsor and gets back on-line soon.