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Birmingham Restaurant Week, or How I learned to stop worrying and buy bigger pants

Ahh, Birmingham Restaurant Week. You came and went too quickly.

For 10 glorious days, restaurant-goers in one of the fattest states in America could gorge themselves on much better food.

We were still giving ourselves diabetes, but a much higher class of diabetes; the kind of diabetes that knows which fork to use first in restaurants like Bottega and makes snide remarks about English majors.

For $30, $20, or $10, average Joes could wander into the finest restaurants in Birmingham and walk out stuffed with three courses of goodness. Here's part one of the rundown on my extended week of gluttony:

President's Day 2011: Hailing all 43 chiefs one-by-one

On Presidents' Day 2011, I usurped all my friends' social media feeds to honor each U.S. president in his own special way. Here is the full list of those honors, grouped by category:

My personal favorites:

In honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower, I will successfully invade a German chocolate cake. #presidentsdaytribute

In honor of George H.W. Bush, I will dine at a Japanese steakhouse tonight. You might not want to sit next to me. #presidentsdaytribute

In honor of Thomas Jefferson, whose second vice-president was named George Clinton, I will increase the funk. #presidentsdaytribute

In honor of Millard Fillmore, who joined the "Know Nothing" movement after his term, I will watch an hour of E!. #presidentsdaytribute

In honor of Zachary Taylor, exhumed in 1991 to see if he had been poisoned, I will @Netflix "Conspiracy Theory." #presidentsdaytribute

This sports journalist found his swagger covering the Gulf of Mexico oil spill

It's been more than a month now since my first trip to the Gulf of Mexico to report on the Deepwater Horizon/BP/Transocean oil spill/leak/explosion/debacle. Covering this ongoing story has been the highlight of my journalistic career (eclipsing even a college football national championship game), yet it has only come as a result of a national tragedy, the scope of which is barely being realized.

It was easy, even a pleasure to tell the story of people like Mike Reynolds, Alabama's Turtle Tsar. The Gulf Shores real estate broker has given countless hours of his time over the past six years organizing an army of volunteers to identify and protect sea turtle nests.

Reynolds' regiment of retirees marches over 47 miles of Alabama coast line every morning before most tourists get out of bed, marking new nests with protective barricades and signs warning the frolicking masses of the $100,000 fine imposed on those who disturb the nests. It's a purely volunteer organization, run with a precision that would make Nicholas II proud.

The Good, the Bad, and the Plumber: Showdown at the OK Commode

When moving into a new place, you find all kinds of little surprises along the way. Some are good, some are bad, all are expensive. The good surprises are the things that cost you slightly less to fix than you had anticipated.

The bad surprises are the ones you hadn't anticipated at all that tie a noose around your budget and leave it in the desert to die. 

Pre-purchase, I noticed that the toilet in the master bathroom was new and nice, but not all that firmly attached to the floor. The toilet still worked, and presumably didn't leak. It just had more swivel motion than is usually found in functional toilets.

My home inspector warned me that the swivel was the result of either a broken flange, which could cost $1500 to replace, or poor installation, which would only cost the plumber some time to bolt it down to the floor properly.

I called my home warranty company, on the off chance that anything found would be covered, and they sent out someone from an outfit called XXXXX Plumbing (name redacted for reasons you'll understand later).

CSI: My condo

Pop quiz, hotshot. What's the last thing you want to see when you're tearing out disgusting old carpet in your 80-year-old condo building?

Is it splotches of white paint on your vintage hardwoods, including white footprints that run the length of your hallway and master bedroom?

No. You were planning on refinishing those anyway, so while it makes you wonder what the heck happened, it's not a game-changer. Guess again.

How about the fact that whoever installed the last carpet did the job as if he were being paid by the staple, firing random bits of metal willy-nilly, like a 9-year-old with a new toy? Or perhaps the  telephone lines to each bedroom that were stapled every 8 inches down the middle of the hallway?

Nope. It's annoying for you to have to pull up all those staples, but after finishing, no one will know but you. Give it another shot.

Oh, I know. It has to be the CEMENT that some careless slob threw down on top of the hardwoods to level out a low spot in the floor.

Wrong again, although that will surely cost you.

Really? What could be worse than Portland cement in the middle of your hallway? Unless...

THERE'S A GAPING HOLE IN THE FLOOR OF YOUR MASTER BEDROOM!!!

Ding ding ding! We have a winner!!! Or loser, as it were.

City Stages conceived, corrupted and killed by George McMillan

Earlier this week, I wrote about what City Stages meant to me but it's becoming painfully evident that while City Stages started out as a great cultural event, the festival devolved into nothing more than a confidence scam the likes of which Bernie Madoff or Tony Soprano would be proud.

Organizers (accountable to no one but themselves) released a statement Thursday that the festival would not continue, blaming factors like the poor economy, the weather, nearly everything and everyone but themselves for City Stages' demise.

Not only did the organizers declare their Foundation no longer exists and ride off into the sunset with their bags of cash, they gave everybody the finger on their way out the door.

City Stages bounced checks to some vendors, stiffed others like the Bottletree Cafe and cleaned out the festival offices before this year's festival even started. I have a sneaking suspicion though that founder/chairman George McMillan got every penny of the exorbitant sum he paid himself every year to run the event.

City Stages 1999 to 2009: From 'must-see' to 'very optional'

I almost didn't go to City Stages this year... and I had free tickets courtesy of my employer.

In fact, the main reason I did end up going (besides the free tickets, of course) was an up-and-coming band out of Chapel Hill called Roman Candle. The trio created a four-minute burst of musical heroin titled "Why Modern Radio is A-OK" that has quickly been ratcheting up my iTunes most-played list for the past month.

Of course, once I dragged myself out into the heat and got inside the gate, I had a great time. Roman Candle put on a good show, even if the food vendor serving alligator on a stick seemed to draw a bigger crowd. 

Jonny Lang and The Neville Brothers worked the Miller Lite Stage in Linn Park, and I'm not a huge Dierks Bentley fan, but the thousands there who were seemed to really enjoy his set. 

Sitting in Linn Park, listening to Aaron Neville belt out his version of "A Change Is Gonna Come," (Sam Cooke's original is one of my all-time favorite songs. Ever.) I felt a wave of nostalgia rush over me as palpable as the heat on a June Saturday in Birmingham.

This festival has meant a lot to me over the years. My parents took me to the earliest editions before I was able to drive myself downtown. I remember dipping my feet in the fountain at the park and my parents yelling at me because the water wasn't clean. I remember sitting with them in the park for acts like Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Temptations and The Pointer Sisters. I vividly recall watching a young couple in front of me make out and graduating from the "girls have cooties" phase to being genuinely curious about what the young man was doing, and why he would want to put his hands there.

Foursome has fun, no golf talent

*Published August 25, 2006 in The Robesonian

Some of the best golf talent in the region has been on display at Pinecrest Country Club's golf course this summer in the Robeson County Golf Championship and the Kiwanis of Robeson All-American Golf Tournament.

Thursday afternoon, however, the course played host to four of the worst golfers at any level. I'm writing, of course, about members of the sports and copy desk staff of The Robesonian, who were invited to participate in the Robeson County Economic Development tourney.

I dare say it's been a long time since the course was terrorized by a group so inept as our fearsome foursome of Willis “that was a practice swing” Jacobson, Bob “worm-burner” Sloan, W. Curt “I could almost be respectable if I weren't playing with these clowns” Vincent and myself, Dennis “seriously, keep an eye on this one and make sure I don't kill somebody” Pillion.

It's not just that we finished last. Somebody has to be last in every event. We're all role players, and we could accept that role. Our finish was an embarrassment to last-place teams everywhere.

Quick trip to see the Bobcats not a fiscally sound idea

Published Jan. 3, 2006  in The Robesonian

There I was, just before noon on a slow Wednesday at the office, twiddling my thumbs and wondering how to fill this space.

The high schools' sports had adjourned for the holidays and The University of North Carolina at Pembroke wouldn't play another home game until January.

That's when it hit me like a 2 a.m. Taco Bell craving: The Bobcats had a home game that night against the Chicago Bulls.

I still hadn't been to the new Bobcats Arena, and the team was actually on something of a roll, having won four of its last six games.

My first thought was to try to secure a media pass, but then I had a change of heart. Instead of sitting in a good seat, where I could see the game and enjoy the free food and drinks most professional franchises provide anyone with press credentials, I would buy a seat, pay for parking and really experience things from a fan's perspective. I figured that with the NBA's $10 seats, plus some money for parking, gas and fast food on the road, I could make it a night for less than $40.

The five people you meet in Cleveland

*The following post was first published on DatelineAlabama.com in March 2005

I've already mentioned the cab driver, who was the first person I met in the fair city of Cleveland. On most weekends, he would easily qualify as the most unusual person I encountered. Not in Cleveland, however.

In Cleveland, they set the bar high and strange. The following are a few of the people I encountered on my four-day trip.

The Man I Thought Might Kill Us

The first and last people I met in Cleveland turned out to be the most interesting. The desk clerk at the hotel told us we could save money on a cab ride by walking to the metro station and taking a subway to the airport. So, Sunday morning at 5 (our flight left at 6:40), we hit the mean streets of Cleveland for the last time.

Cleveland looks the same at 5 a.m. as it does at 11 p.m. Dark, deserted -- except for a few homeless people -- and still too early for those 6 a.m. drink specials. My friend Buddy and I carried our luggage toward City Center, where the nearest subway station was located. Our suitcases had rollers that made quite a bit of noise as they bounced along the sidewalk.

That's when a homeless man approached us, saying "This is my street, what are you doing making all that noise on my street?"We kept walking, but he followed us to City Center. I figured he would leave then, but he followed us in, all the way to our track. At this point, I thought, "He can't hurt us here, there are at least three witnesses … right?"

That's when he made his pitch. He claimed he had just got out of jail the day before, after serving a 27-year sentence. He didn't say what his crime was, and I didn't ask. Then came the proposition. "I just want to get my [Richard Nixon] sucked," he said.

"I can't help you there," I answered.