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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Angela: Daylight-savings time is fake. We need to go back to the real time. Time is not artificial. Time is a device that was created by humans to follow the movement of the Earth and the sun and the hours of the days, and the days of the year. Going back will put us back in the way that nature is. Now when I wake up, it’s 8:30, but my body wakes up at 7:30. So now it’s going to be correct and it will wake up at 7:30 eastern standard time, which is standard, which speaks for itself.

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DINNER AT THE FESTHALLE IN HELEN: It was the wurst of times.

On Saturday, I grabbed my passport and some Euros before jumping into the family Volkswagen and heading north. My destination, Helen – North Georgia’s very own German alpine village.

The reason for my visit was Oktoberfest, which draws so many people to the town that Helen’s führers leaders have conveniently extended it into November.

There are two Oktoberfests. There’s the daytime Oktoberfest of families and bikers shopping for fudge and “Not Sober Fest” T-shirts. It’s Dahlonega-meets-Underground and I could do without it.

Then, there’s nighttime Oktoberfest – a cheerful, easygoing, family-friendly party at the town Festhalle fueled by beer, bratwurst, knockwurst, bockwurst, and danceable oompah music courtesy of the Dan Witucki Trio – all four of them.

Das ist kitsch, certainly, but the spirit is warm and communal in a way most bars or even neighborhood festivals aren’t to me. It was a bit like a happy wedding reception.

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STEVIE WONDER AT PHILIPS ARENA LAST THURSDAY: It was 25 years ago, but he still beats himself up over “Ebony & Ivory.”

(photo by Perry Julien)

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Percentage of bridges in metro Atlanta rated “deficient” in a recent study: 20

Percentage of major roads and highways in metro Atlanta that are considered “congested”: 76

Percentage of Atlanta commuters who drive to work alone: 65

Total number of people killed in traffic accidents in Georgia from 2001-2005: 8,182

Projected cost of a planned “colossus of roads” for metro Atlanta: $50 billion

Pounds of pollutants MARTA kept out of the air in 2001: 300 million

Number of vehicles MARTA keeps off the roads daily: 185,000

Number of times “public transit” is mentioned as a possible solution to Atlanta’s traffic woes in the aforementioned study: 0

Sources: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; “Future Mobility in Georgia,” TRIP; Atlanta Journal-Constitution, U.S. Census

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(photo by Joeff Davis)

Ashley McMillen is a psychic and spiritual healer in Marietta specializing in psychic aura readings. She first began developing visions and energy feelings at 16.

What is your full name and title? Ashley McMillen. I am Atlanta’s European Psychic Ashley.

What services do you offer? I offer tarot card readings, but I specialize in psychic readings, reading auras.

How did you learn about your abilities? My mother is psychic. At 16, I developed visions. They were difficult for me to comprehend. My mother helped me understand my visions and energy feelings. I was fully developed by about 20. I use my abilities to help people. I’m a spiritual healer.

What were your visions usually about? Just about people I would see in passing. If they had torment or obstacles, I would pick up on them being withdrawn and sad.

How did you develop your abilities after you learned that they existed? Did you have a mentor? My mother. Psychic abilities are definitely inherited. You can’t learn them or teach yourself.

Why did you choose this as a career? This is something I can’t turn off. I’m not in this for financial reasons. This is a gift to help heal people. I saw people succeeding from my guidance. There are times when I can tune it out, and there are times when it’s very intense.

What makes you a European Psychic? I’m from outside of London. European psychics read more clairvoyantly. You use more energy and fewer tools, like tarot cards, tea leaves and palms. It involves a strong intuitiveness. I prefer to read what I see; that’s auras.

Did you ever consider other professions? Interior design.

What kinds of questions do people usually ask you? Relationship questions. Relationships and love. A lot has to do with careers. They ask questions about financial stability. But most are about relationships and love.

Do you ever have to turn people away? (more…)

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Anna: The Roxy. Every time I walk in there, it’s the same crowd — the Buckhead Betties. You get in the bathroom line and you know your favorite song is going to come on while you’re waiting, and it does, and then you’re pissed off because all the little girls are putting on their lipstick real slow. Get some more bathrooms! And when you go to a rock concert, you’re rockin’ out, you get thirsty, and they get angry if you ask for a cup of ice water. I’m a SoPo (South Ponce) girl. The Roxy is just too fabricated.

Gene: Gwinnett Arena. I hate shows there. It’s too big and impersonal. The bands don’t enjoy themselves because they don’t sell as many seats as they would like to. Tool totally sucked there. The [security] guys at Gwinnett are dicks. That’s the biggest part of it. The kid sitting beside me lit up a cigarette and was kicked out. They could have just told him to put it out. If you light another one, then we’ll kick you out. Come on, it’s a rock show. We all rage against the machine.

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Sharon: HiFi Buys. If you’re on the lawn, you’re not going to see anything except the big screens. I saw Elton John there and I got a Coke thrown on my back because I wanted to stand up and dance to the songs. The sound is not very good. It’s loud but you can’t pick up the nuance of the music. I don’t go to shows there anymore. The ambiance is like going back to high school. And last time I was there, they frisked me down worse than the TSA.

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Steve Farris controls one of Buckhead’s abundant tower cranes. Perched 300 feet in the air for 10 to 12 hours at a time, the 30-year-old endures danger and bottling his urine to build Atlanta’s high-rises and elevate Atlanta’s image.

“There’s a lot of stress on me. Everyone within my [crane's] reach, I hold their life in my hands. The people I work with don’t realize how easy it is for me to kill them.”

Farris takes a DVD player and a GameCube into the cab in case he has free time, which he currently doesn’t. He’s heard of other operators taking refrigerators, microwaves, wives and “not wives” into the crane.

Farris is known on construction sites by his nickname, Shotgun. It was given to him by his now-father-in-law after Farris sired his granddaughter and married his daughter, in that order. Since his father-in-law was also the one who got Farris into the crane-operating business, the handle stuck in Farris’ construction life.

“I don’t mind [the nickname] at all. There are some people on the job site I don’t want to know my real name. It helps me separate work and home.”

There’s no time for bathroom breaks, so Farris urinates into a bottle: “You’re left to your own devices. If you have to poop, good luck.”

His brother-in-law, also a tower-crane operator, says their experience has given them exceptional timing and restraint.

Farris’ crane has a barbed-wire fence around its base to dissuade Atlanta’s infamous crane-sitters. He isn’t sure why people climb cranes. “Maybe because they’re like you. They’re just interested.”

He takes almost no time off. “Right now it’s pretty much straight into the next job. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are a lot of these [cranes] up in Atlanta right now.”

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MUSLIM AND JEWISH COMEDIANS AZHAR USMAN AND RABBI BOB ALPER AT GEORGIA TECH’S FERST CENTER: This photo is one Catholic short of a really memorable caption.

(photo by Sarah Harms)

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HALLOWEEN TOUR AT OAKLAND CEMETERY: To keep from awakening this tomb’s brain-eating zombie, please turn your cell phones to vibrate.

(photo by Joeff Davis)

Unless you’re a security guard, a trespasser, or dead, Oakland Cemetery is usually off-limits to you at night. Last weekend, however, the cemetery gatekeepers welcomed visitors who paid up to $15 for spooky, Halloween-themed, nighttime tours of Oakland’s graves and mausolea (which is a real word, by the way). Tours were scheduled to start between 7 and 1o p.m, but turnout was so high both nights the cemetery was turning people away by 8:45.

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REGGAE LEGEND TOOTS AT VARIETY PLAYHOUSE THURSDAY: Inventing reggae apparently has its perks.

(photo by Joeff Davis)

Despite his iconic voice, a catalog of classics and the fact that he’s credited with coining the word “reggae” in 1968, Frederick “Toots” Hibbert never achieved the commercial success of fellow Jamaican Bob Marley. Nevertheless, Toots still developed a great reputation in this country for rollicking live performances like the one he gave at the Variety Playhouse last Thursday.

On stage, Toots was James Brown-esque — spinning, shimmying and pumping his fists in time with the music and lighting. Nearly every song, from “Pressure Drop” to his cover of John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads,” ended up exploding into frenzy, with an age-defying Toots flickering around at the center of it all. The only time Toots slowed down was to remove fans from the stage, remove fans’ undergarments from the stage, and to explain (with song) that he, not Marley, invented reggae.

And in a winking bit of late-career bluster, he responded to a song request for his early hit “54-46″ by forcefully shouting, “Shut up! Shut up! I’m gonna play a song from my new CD, and you’re gonna enjoy it!” He played “54-46″ two songs later.

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Marietta police say 21-year-old Matthew Cherry was suffocated to death with duct tape during the Oct. 21 armed robbery of the GameStop store he managed on South Cobb Parkway. Below is the responding officer’s description of the scene.

(Click on image above to enlarge it)

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(photo by Joeff Davis)

While studying marketing at Howard University in D.C., John Dabney opened a party-supply store that provided clowns for parties. After moving to Atlanta, business was so good, he started clowning himself to keep up with demand.

“There’s a tremendous market for African-American clowns. Overwhelming.”

“I think African-Americans think the [African-American] clown might have a better connection with the children. The weird part is that it does not matter to children at all. Unfortunately, it is an adult issue.”

His clown name is Bobo. “There was a clown who worked with us in D.C. named Bobo. He stopped clowning, so I stole his name.”

“As a clown, you can educate. You can give them safety tips. They really enjoy it, because it’s not from a parent or teacher.”

On kids who are afraid of clowns: “At 1, they are OK. At 2 and 3, they know what’s going on and when one child screams, it’s a domino effect.”

On adults who are afraid of clowns: “It’s a fear they had when they were children. They’ve never dealt with it.”

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