Fresh Loaf

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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ATLANTA HUMANE SOCIETY FREE MICROCHIPPING ON SATURDAY: “First, my testicles. Now, my civil liberties.”

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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BATTLE OF ATLANTA: Prior to last weekend’s re-enactment, little was known about the Mad Hatter’s participation in the Civil War.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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On Monday, the state parole board issued a 90-day stay of execution for Troy Anthony Davis. Davis was sentenced to death in 1991 for the murder of off-duty police officer Mark Allen MacPhail in Savannah. Since his trial, seven of nine witnesses whose testimony helped convict Davis have recanted. The 90-day delay followed a week of public demonstrations in support of Davis, including last Thursday afternoon’s rally in Little Five Points led by Amnesty International and Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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CORNDOGORAMA AT LENNY’S: Warning: Mixing hot dogs, cornmeal batter and Pabst Blue Ribbon will impair your judgment.

(Photo by Lauren Grundhoefer)

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ROBOCUP 2007 AT GEORGIA TECH: “The iPhone? Yeah, I fucked her.”

In 2025, when robots take over the world, enslave the human race and force me to work 15 hours daily in a silicon mine, I will look back on last week’s RoboCup 2007 research robotics competition with regret. In the meantime, I will marvel at the thought of robotics engineers from 37 countries staging a robot soccer competition on Georgia Tech’s campus.

RoboCup’s goal is to field by 2050 a robot soccer team that can beat a human soccer team. I think they’re well on their way. I’m pretty sure Team Osaka Kid, winner of RoboCup’s “Best Humanoid Robot” prize, can already beat me.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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SOAP BOX DERBY CHALLENGE AT STARLIGHT SIX DRIVE-IN: Cheating was apparently rampant.

(Photo by Lauren Grundhoefer)

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DEERHUNTER AT THE EARL ON SATURDAY: Blue man sings the whites.

Saturday’s sold-out show at the Earl in East Atlanta featured not just one, but two rock-snob favorites.

Brooklyn’s the Fiery Furnaces headlined. Led by brother-and-sister duo Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, the group makes “experimental” pop music, by which I mean music that is both grating and unpopular. I like it though.

Local favorites Deerhunter managed to get the writers at Pitchfork to stop fellating them long enough to open the show. Live, the band forgoes the dreaminess and textures of its records, swapping for an amps-to-11 wall of sound. I like it, too. But my ears are still ringing.

(Photo by Andisheh Nouraee)

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BLIND JAVELIN TOSS: Less dangerous than it sounds.

On Saturday, we stopped by Marietta High School for the U.S. Paralympics Track & Field National Championships. The event features hundreds of athletes with a variety of disabilities including amputations, paralysis and cerebral palsy competing in classic track and field events including, believe it or not, blind javelin throwers. Among the weekend’s competitors was Scott Winkler of Grovetown, Ga., whose 10.01-meter throw set a new world record in the men’s F54 shot put. Winkler became paraplegic in 2003 after he was injured while serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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CHAMPION EATER DALE BOONE AT ZOO ATLANTA: Hot dog, we have a wiener.

Dale Boone won his fourth Southeast regional hot-dog eating title since 2002 at Zoo Atlanta Saturday afternoon. The metro area’s top competitive eater downed 21 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes. Second-place finisher Bubba Yarbrough ate 22 hot dogs, but judges hit him with a two-dog penalty after chunks of bun were found floating in the Kool-Aid he used to wash down the dogs. Boone will represent Atlanta in Nathan’s Famous July Fourth International Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island in New York City.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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COMMITMENT CEREMONY AT ATLANTA PRIDE: Committed lesbian action!

Gay Pride started 38 years ago as a riot in response to an NYPD raid on a gay bar in Greenwich Village. Over the decades, it has morphed from a charged political protest into a cheerful, weekend-long party. This year’s Pride headliners included camp icon Leslie Jordan and former teen pop sensation and “Skating With Celebrities” star Debbie Gibson. She goes by Deborah now.

The weekend is not politics-free, however. As in years past, Atlanta Pride’s schedule included a Friday night commitment ceremony for same-sex couples. Asked why she and partner Gina Pollut participated in the ceremony even though Georgia and most of the country refuses to legally recognize it, Meleia Hudgins replied simply, “Because I love her.”

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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CYNDI LAUPER AT CHASTAIN LAST THURSDAY: Girls just wanna block sun.

(Photo by Perry Julien)

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PROTEST AT EXXON: Let’s all make a point to get stabbed elsewhere.

“Exxon, Exxon you are bad. How’d you feel if you got stabbed?” and “Exxon, Exxon go to hell. We’ll go shopping at the Shell.”

Those were just two of many chants offered by 15 people protesting at the Exxon at Ponce de Leon Avenue and Monroe Drive last Wednesday afternoon. The protest was organized by Atlanta Progressive News founder Matthew Cardinale, who was stabbed during a robbery attempt near the station two weeks earlier. Cardinale says the attendant on duty turned him away when he walked in bleeding and asking for help.

Cardinale wants an apology from the store and for the employee who turned him away to be fired. CL was unable to reach the store’s owner, but day-shift employee Samad Sam says the employee on duty during the incident no longer works at the store. “Quit or fired. I don’t know,” Sam says.

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ELEVEN PAIDEIA STUDENTS LIVED IN AN INMAN PARK PLAYGROUND FOR FOUR DAYS LAST WEEK AS PART OF A HOMELESS-IMMERSION PROJECT: “Can we have class inside today?”

For four days last week, 11 students from Atlanta’s Paideia private school forsook all the comforts of home — including a home itself. They lived in an outdoor playground in Inman Park, and were permitted to bring a blanket, a plastic sheet, $5, the clothes they had on, and a pair of old shoes.

The students were participants in teacher Elizabeth Hearn’s homeless-immersion class. The goal is to teach about the challenges of being homeless, to humanize homeless people and to show students how materialism “inundates our culture.” According to Atlanta Children’s Shelter, there are 2,500 homeless children in the city.

The 11 students who participated were chosen from a pool of 17 applicants. During the day, they walked around Atlanta, visiting with real homeless people on the street and volunteering in homeless shelters.
Maddie Mitchell, 13, says the most difficult part of the experience was “getting [dirty] looks from other people” while she walked down the street.

Lying on a cardboard box and looking up at the sky, 10th-grader Aryelle Cormier described an encounter the students had with a group of people in a homeless encampment in southwest Atlanta in almost spiritual terms.

“They didn’t have anything,” she said, “but they did.”

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RUDY GIULIANI AT OGLETHORPE: “I was worried you were gonna ask about Bernard Kerik.”

GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani delivered his “I was mayor on 9/11, so vote for me” speech to a room of 200 or so supporters and onlookers last Wednesday at Oglethorpe University. The two-term New York mayor is credited with taking credit for the city’s drop in crime during the 1990s.

Although Giuliani’s Atlanta visit came a day after his much-talked-about declaration during a Republican debate in South Carolina that he’s pro-choice, nobody actually asked him about abortion or whether he thinks the position reduces his chances of winning the GOP nomination.

Additionally, no one asked him why, after the 1993 WTC bombing, he still thought it wise to put NYC’s terrorism response command center in the WTC complex. Nor did anyone ask him about his proposal to add an unelected, 9/11-justified “emergency” extension to his second mayoral term.

If elected, Giuliani would become the first bald president since Ford and the first elected bald president since Eisenhower.

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HITCHENS AT MITCHELL HOUSE: “Wait, I’m thinking … nope, I still don’t believe in God.”

Contrarian author Christopher Hitchens visited the Margaret Mitchell House last Thursday to promote his new book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. The main attraction: two invigorating intercourses between Hitchens and Emory Christian ethics professor Timothy Jackson. The subject: the existence of God and the worthiness of religion.

The two men covered a lot of ground, including the bombing of Nagasaki, Adolf Hitler, evolution, the Ten Commandments and religion in politics. Hitchens, as expected, lobbed a couple of rhetorical bombs. He called the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who had died the previous day, “a big tub of crap.” He questioned Martin Luther King Jr.’s commitment to Christianity. And he mocked his debate opponent’s professorship, calling it a “very modest” job.

Hmmm, do you think Hitchens undermines his arguments by being such an asshole?

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KOREAN POP STAR RAIN’S PRESS CONFERENCE AT MIDTOWN’S FOUR SEASONS: “I swear, I’m very famous in Asia.”

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

Last Thursday, Korean singer and actor Rain held a press conference at the Four Seasons in Midtown. The reason: to introduce the “pan-Asian heartthrob” to American journalists before his first U.S concert tour, which starts in Atlanta June 19 at Philips Arena. Speaking through a translator, Rain described his music to CL as “East meets West,” which, translated into nonpublicist-speak, means he sings Timberlakey R&B in Korean and appears shirtless in lavishly produced music videos.

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IRVINE WELSH SIGNING AT HIGHLAND INN: “After you sign it, could you maybe vomit on it and rub the vomit around with the pen?”

Irvine Welsh, the Scottish author whose 1993 novel, Trainspotting, made poverty, heroin addiction and infanticide fun again, spoke to an adoring audience at the ballroom of the Highland Inn Saturday night. Hosted by A Cappella Books and local lit-mag the Chattahoochee Review, Welsh read three chapters of his most recent novel, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, including one with a sex scene so vile it makes the toilet scene in Trainspotting seem airy and whimsical by comparison.

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Photo by Joeff Davis

When the words “rapper” and “community service” appear together in a newspaper, the accompanying verb often seems to be “sentenced.” Not so last Wednesday afternoon when College Park’s Yung Joc stopped by downtown’s Loudermilk Center.

The man whose latest single beckons us to let him introduce us “to thug karmasutra” joined 11Alive’s Brenda Wood and Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears to honor Atlanta and DeKalb County Public School students for their community service work.

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MILLION MARIJUANA MARCH IN FREEDOM PARK: We had an awesome caption for this, but we, like, forgot it.

Contrary to the stereotype, pot smokers don’t just get high and sit at home. On Saturday, some of them got high and sat on a hill in Freedom Park.

They were local participants in Saturday’s Million Marijuana March, which consisted of coordinated pot-legalization rallies around the globe. Atlanta’s rally was led by Paul Cornwell. Cornwell heads the Atlanta branch of the Coalition for the Abolition of Marijuana Prohibition, which is difficult to say even when you’re not high, so they just call it CAMP.

With the scent of sweet, sweet cheeba in the air, Cornwell’s rambling speech emphasized the injustice and hypocrisy of keeping marijuana illegal. It was interrupted repeatedly by passing cars honking (presumably) in support, and once by Cornwell’s own cell phone, which he stopped his speech to answer.

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FIESTA ATLANTA CINCO DE MAYO CELEBRATION AT CENTENNIAL OLYMPIC PARK: Bringing Atlantans together

Photo by Alan Friedman

The enthusiasm with which Americans embrace Cinco de Mayo must puzzle Mexico. It’s a minor holiday there. It’s the equivalent of Mexicans getting together every Groundhog Day for Michelob and baked potatoes.

Atlanta’s biggest Cinco de Mayo celebration was Fiesta Atlanta in Centennial Olympic Park — held on, um, May 6 and featuring food, art, mariachi music and a performance by Miami-based Mexican singer Maria Lourdes.

Lourdes looks like a stripper, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately, she also sings like one.

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