Fresh Loaf

THANKSGIVING RUSH AT HARTSFIELD-JACKSON: Delta’s new 8-foot-by-6-foot carry-on luggage allowance was a hit with passengers.

(photo by Joeff Davis)

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Al and Juan: “Christmas in Hollis” by Run-DMC. We grew up in New York, so we know what it’s about having Christmas in Queens. Also, they had midgets and elves in the video. The worst is “Here Comes Santa Claus.” Are we supposed to duck? Give me a break. We’re brothers. We never got presents. Here comes Santa Claus? Well, guess what. He never came to our house, but Run-DMC was always there in our radio every night for Christmas.

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Candance: “Back Door Santa” by Honeymoon Killers. It’s bluesy and trashy. We really don’t have a lot of that around Christmas; Santa sliding down your chimney, sneaking out the back door. I just like old, dirty blues songs. The fact it’s a Christmas song makes it even better. The worst is those dogs barking to “Jingle Bells.” It’s the most annoying song I’ve ever heard. I don’t like small dogs, or babies, and that incessant barking makes me crazy.

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Larry: “Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto” by James Brown. I could relate to it. When it came out, I was living deep in the city and I thought what a cool idea for a song. Instead of giving to the haves, how about giving to the have-nots? Worst is “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” When you think about Christmas, you don’t think about something that morbid. As a songwriter it caught your ear pretty much but in the spirit of Christmas it failed miserably.

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(photo by Joeff Davis)

Brad Peeler is a wild-animal removal specialist in Marietta. He captures animals in or near people’s homes and relocates them to parks and refuges.

What is the most interesting call you’ve ever gotten? That’s a tough one. There have been situations where people had squirrels in the house begging for food. There was a standoff between a dog and raccoon in a kitchen. It became very interesting for everyone. It’s a delicate matter. You don’t want anyone to get hurt.

What is the most interesting animal you have encountered? A mother fox and seven pups. She burrowed under a deck, and eight feet under the foundation made a den. It was in Alpharetta, so it was a populated area. There were even neighbors’ dog toys drug under the deck. While catching the cubs before the mom, there was a brief standoff. I was watching how protective she was of them. I literally asked her, “Let’s not do this.” I ended up releasing them all together, healthy, on my granddaddy’s land.

Do you ever have to deal with escaped exotic pets or other non-natives? Occasionally, people’s snakes, i.e. boas and pythons. One time, we had to track down an eight-foot [snake] that made its home in a crawl space. They may not like you dragging them out of that space. No parrots or llamas, personally, but it happens occasionally. Like that crocodile on the Chattahoochee. Not a whole lot of non-natives. Some have made their home here, and are essentially natives now.

What is the most frightening situation you have ever been in? Having to stare down a raccoon in a crawl space where she had her young. In the process of getting traps out, she evacuated her young and came after me. I fended her off. I’ve probably never moved that fast in my life. I was at a disadvantage. She was on all fours and very angry. I was crawling. You know Looney Toons? Raccoons can be like that sometimes, jump up and latch on and start tearing away. It’s not a pleasurable experience.

Have you ever been injured by an animal on the job? No. I’ve managed not to get bitten. We wear thick gloves. The worst case is being stung by a hornet or honeybee. Nice thing is, things like that don’t typically happen … or I’m just lucky.

How did you get interested in this career? I was raised in a small town in Kentucky, so I have always been out and about, in the woods. I went to school for recombinant genetics. I was interested in biology and stuff. I also used to manage restaurants.

How do you feel about the animals that you remove? They’re doing it because we encroached on their land. I don’t begrudge them. We, as a species, spread out and knock down more land. This is an effect of that. Everything lives and adjusts to us. Turnabout’s fair play.

What is your favorite animal? I love raccoons. They’re amazing creatures. Very intelligent. Amazing dexterity; they can open up a trash can, a door. They’re fantastic climbers. And they’re pretty laid-back if you don’t have them cornered in a crawl space. To me, they’re just neat creatures, like a cross between a cat and a dog.

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After CL Senior Writer Mara Shalhoup reported Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory was to plead guilty to federal charges resulting from his co-leadership of the Black Mafia Family cocaine ring, comments began to pour in to Fresh Loaf.

“What happened to ‘DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR’ so now Big Meech is now ‘LIL MEECH’…”
– ‘Muhammed’

“Fuck coward ass niggas like Muhammed. I bet you wouldn’t say that shit to Meech’s face.”
– ‘Ziploc Moe’

“u cant be mad at meech unless he snitch.”
– ‘abdul-aziz’

“. . . for u ignant coccsuccas, pleading guilty DOES NOT mean u working with dem faggitz. . .”
– ‘Crystle Boeckman’

“How did I know this thread would be full of illiterate morons spouting about the ‘code’.

“Meech is a criminal who made millions from the misery of others and led an organization responsible for murder of innocent people.”
– ‘Dale’

“I’d rather live in a neighborhood with a bunch of Meechs then most people- who lack character and integrity.”
– ‘Sayword’

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Marisa: At the Highlander. They do a really good Thanksgiving dinner, then you can get drunk and not have to worry about the shame of doing it in front of your folks. That’s the spirit of Thanksgiving! And instead of hearing early Christmas carols or crappy family music, you get heavy metal. Sweet. I’d be more thankful if my fiance was down here. He’s in Canada. Canadians have their Thanksgiving in October. But it’s not a real Thanksgiving, much like their money and their army.

Frank: Make your own dinner. It doesn’t have to be turkey. If your favorite dish is lasagna, cook lasagna. Bring your music, spoil yourself. Take that long shower or bath. A holiday is a day off. The pressure people put on themselves to make the turkey is almost like a wedding. It’s just a freakin’ Thursday. Relax. With turkeys being so big, you can roast a chicken with the stuffing and turkey gravy. It will be just like Thanksgiving, and you will still have leftovers.

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Shenise: Thanksgiving is a really wonderful movie day. There are no Emory students in there. They’re out of town, so you get to enjoy your movie and hang out with cool people who actually want to see the movie. Have you ever been stuck behind an Emory student at a movie? You know they’re Emory students by how many times they say “like” in a sentence. They sit in front of me with their really big heads and ruin my Wes Anderson movie.

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THE POLICE AT PHILIPS ARENA SATURDAY: “Let’s see, 18,000 people, multiplied by about $120, divided by three band members. Not bad.”

I need to start doing yoga, lounging on Lake Como, or maybe start frequenting German brothels.

In short, whatever Sting’s been doing all these years, I’d like to start doing. He looks great and moves like a man 30 years his junior. And most importantly to a fan and writer who paid $52 (plus a $10.40 Ticketbastard convenience charge) to see the Police’s first concert in Atlanta since 1986, Sting’s voice is still a wonder – every bit as limber and bracing as it was in the band’s heyday.

The band struck a great balance between delivering hits and being adventurous. They added extended instrumental sections to many songs, allowing guitarist Andy Summers to solo at length – something he never actually did on any of the band’s recordings. They also unearthed some album cuts I was expecting to hear, including “Walking in Your Footsteps,” “Next to You,” and “When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around” — which is not only my favorite song by the group, but the best dog-walking song on my iPod by far.

The evening’s only bum note was the woman behind me in Section 303 who kept yelling “Desert Rose,” which was only amusing the first four times she did it.

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(photo by Joeff Davis)

A native of South Africa, Peter Swerdlow moved to Atlanta 11 years ago to work as a software consultant. When the dot-com bust left him unemployed, he found a way to make ends meet: make friends meat.

What started as sausage-making in his kitchen is now Griller’s Pride, a full-service kosher butchery in Doraville with customers all over the country.

Thanksgiving is his third-busiest time of year, following Passover and Rosh Hashanah.

Swerdlow says he’s sold about 500 turkeys in the two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. “That’s a lot of turkeys, believe me.”

Kosher turkeys are slaughtered by slitting their throats, then draining the blood.

Lesions, broken bones or even strange preslaughter behavior is enough to disqualify a bird from kosher status.

Swerdlow gets most of his poultry from Canada. “Canadians far and away have the cleanest and most featherless poultry you can get.”

Swerdlow’s turkeys are kosher when they arrive at his plant, but he also has kosher and USDA inspectors on-site to be sure.

His grandfather was a butcher and his father built slaughterhouses.

Despite his pedigree, Swerdlow says he never expected to get into butchery. “That was the furthest thing from my mind.”

On running a delivery-based business: “Atlanta is so dispersed that wherever we located a store would be out of the way of 70 percent of the market.”

Swerdlow delivers meats by truck throughout metro Atlanta and to several cities in the Southeast. He has mail-order customers as far away as Switzerland.

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Pounds of trash the average American generates daily: 3.3

Pounds of trash the average Georgian generates daily: 6.6

Tons of solid waste disposed of in Atlanta in 2003: 192,363

Tons of recycling collected in 2003: 27,910

Cost of disposing Georgia’s trash in 2004: $90 million

Value of raw materials made if that trash would have been recycled: $250 million

Amount of greenhouse gases, in million metric tons, kept out of the air in 2000 because of recycling: 32.9

Tons of garbage a StarTech Plasma Converter could annihilate in one day and convert into energy: 2,000

Cost of a StarTech Plasma Converter: $250 million

Sources: Atlanta Business Chronicle, Atlanta Department of Public Works, Popular Science, National Recycling Coalition, “Georgia Statewide Waste Characterization Study,” Georgia Department of Community Affairs

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Alex: Ben Franklin believed the turkey was more of a patriot than the bald eagle. Ben said the bald eagle was nothing more than a fish eater and a pirate. I don’t know why we chose the bald eagle. The turkey is more representative of Americans. We’re fat and we eat each other. The bald eagle is majestic, but is America really majestic? Are we really the land of majesty and purple mountains? I don’t see any purple mountains. I see the turkey as the rugged underdog which is America.

Page: We would look foolish. You call people turkeys when they act like a doofus. A bald eagle is regal. It flies into the sky and then plummets down and eats whatever it wants to. It could eat a turkey, too. Eagles are intelligent and turkeys are just kind of stupid. They just run around and they let us eat them. If I could have called it out, I would have picked the hummingbird. They’re adorable. You can fit four of them in a teaspoon when they’re babies.

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Patrick: It’s a delicate situation right now with us and Turkey. If we were to switch the national symbol, Turkey might feel good and that could save thousands of Kurds. Turkey would feel honored. Who wouldn’t? The bald eagle is in Alaska and that’s about it. We already have Alaska, so they can’t do anything. Are they going to secede or something? The turkey is not as majestic, but maybe a little more accurate as to what America is. We’re a lot goofier than we think, but I’m OK with goofy.

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Percentage by which Alpharetta City Council Post 4 incumbent Debbie Gibson was defeated: 2

Page views of DUIDebbie.com, a page showing video of Gibson’s March DUI arrest: 18,000

Percentage of Doraville mayoral vote received by former Doraville City Councilman Tom Hart: 18

Number of months Doraville police chief served in the Army National Guard in Iraq before Hart voted to fire him: 18

Number of times Doraville Mayor Ray Jenkins forbade Hart to speak to city clerk Betty Cloer because of his alleged penchant for verbally abusing her: 1

Number of votes by which 20-year-old Libertarian Joshua Patterson lost his bid for City Council in Hampton: 3

Number of “Friends” Patterson has on MySpace: 30

Sources: AJC, DUIDebbie.com, city of Alpharetta, Dora-blog

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PHIL WILAYTO (from left), SIMIN ROYANIAN AND ROSTAM POURZAL ARGUE AGAINST WAR WITH IRAN AT GEORGIA TECH: Phil’s way less blurry in person.

With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan going so gosh darned well, now’s the perfect time for the United States to expand the War On Terror™ franchise with an attack on Iran. The Iranian people are hankering for a heaping cup of regime-changey, smart-bombey goodness. They’ll greet us as liberators. It’ll be a cakewalk. A slam dunk. A cake dunk!

Unfortunately, not everyone agrees. Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday, three peace-loving killjoys gave five presentations around town arguing against a war with Iran. Rostam Pourzal, Simin Royanian and Phil Wilayto say there’s no evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and that Iran is not a threat to the United States. They want the U.S. and Iran to settle their long-standing differences through — get this — negotiations. It’s just the sort of level-headed, fact-based approach to foreign policy that might end up ruining this country if we’re not careful.

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THE PIPETTES AT VINYL: Singer Gwenno Pipette can’t believe how much parking costs in Midtown. (Photo by Perry Julien)

The Pipettes are a British group whose sound and matching polka-dotted look harks back to the era of the so-called girl groups — artists like the Ronettes and the Crystals whose popularity peaked after Elvis was drafted, but before the Beatles played “Ed Sullivan.”

In support of their debut album, We Are the Pipettes, the Pipettes played a proper gig at Vinyl in Midtown on Friday. A couple of hours earlier, though, they marched into Criminal Records in Little Five Points and played a fantastic three-song acoustic set to a roomful mostly of men – many of whom were, presumably, like me, there to find out if they would look and sound as good in person as they do on YouTube and CD.

The answers: yes and yes. The Pipettes are cuter than puppies in toilet paper commercials and their three-part harmonies are as lovely live as they are in-studio. They sounded so good, I almost bought a second copy of their CD. No joke.

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VETERAN’S DAY PARADE IN DOWNTOWN ATLANTA: “It’s simple. In lieu of adequate health care, disability pay and job protection, they give us a parade.”

(photo by Sarah Harms)

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Daniel: It will keep me off the streets. When it gets dark, I head in. I don’t want to be out amongst the criminals anyway. You don’t need to be out on the streets at night. You need to be home taking care of your business and your families. I was raised on a farm. By 8 o’clock, we was in the bed. You should be able to do anything you want to do in the daylight anyway. I like it because it’s for the kids. They’re out early in the morning catching the bus for school.

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Tracie: It messes up my schedule. Your body has to adapt to it and mine usually takes awhile to adapt when it comes to what time I’m up, what time I go to bed. I’ll probably have to stay up an extra hour at night just because. At the store I work at, we close at 8:30 during the week and now it’s going to be a whole lot darker. That’s not good for females when we’re walking out to our cars on the street. People usually commit their crimes when it’s dark.

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