Given that, let's just start with last Friday, when my friends Elizabeth and Ben invited Bryan and I to go see a comedian with them at the Tennessee Theatre. Elizabeth's dad bought four tickets, since it was a Rotary Club fundraiser, and Jeannie and Brian turned her down so Bryan and I got to be the backups. I'm totally ok with that, because Jeannie and Brian need date nights and Bryan and I do not. Well, not with each other, anyway.
Before the show, we met up at the Crown and Goose pub downtown for British food. I had a big lunch on Friday, so I perused the menu for a small dinner, and decided on the Ploughman's Lunch:
Yes, it's a cheese plate. I'm living the Dean & Deluca life, let me just tell you. Seriously, though, it had more cheese on it before I took the picture, and it was really good.
I love cheese.
I didn't love the band that opened for the comedian, though. I'm sure they have many fans, since they look like the kind of people who have big families, but I'm not one of them.
They were a cover band playing hits from the sixties, seventies, and the eighties, which was a happy coincidence since most of the members were also in their sixties, seventies, and eighties. Don't believe me? Take a peek at the only rock guitarist in the world older than Keith Richards:
I'm not an ageist. I've heard some fantastic older musicians, but really, after this:
Tom Petty should sue, sue, and sue again. The problem here has less to do with age and more to do with the lead vocalist painfully squeezing out notes like someone not getting enough fibre painfully squeezing out a bowel movement. It's just that when the band stands around like cranky elderly neighbors about to yell at kids to get off their lawn, it makes it feel like one of those awkward family moments where your gramma sends you to the corner market for beer and cigarettes.
(Love you and miss you, Nanny Maggie.)
Saturday started out much better, as it is now Roller Derby season again in Knoxville. Kristin, Bryan, and I started the evening with sandwiches at Steamboat Sandwiches, which opened on Market Square a few months ago. My pimento cheese sandwich, with bacon (this is my new favorite way to have pimento cheese sandwiches since I had it that way on our trip to the Parthenon), was ok but not spectacular:
because the cheese had this weird industrial texture, like processed pimento cheez food. Bryan noted that the restaurant seems to poorly utilize their floor space:
They could fit at least a fourth more tables in there if they moved them closer together. The staff was very nice, but I can get a better sandwich at the Square Kitchen three doors down or at the Tomato Head directly across the square, so I probably won't go back unless I'm really hungry and there's a line at all the other places.
I'd go back to Derby no matter how bad it was, though, and Saturday's bout was the most disastrous ever. This was not the fault of the Hard Knox Brawlers, though, even though they had a very poor showing against the Demolition City Destruction Dames:
No, the disaster was because of an actual disaster: the sprinkler system in the civic center started leaking:
Water on the track is dangerous for girls skating on concrete, so play was suspended for twenty minutes while they tried to clean up. To distract us, the belly dancers who were supposed to be the halftime show between bouts went on early:
The ceiling kept leaking, though, and from more places:
More dancing followed:
but so did more leaking, which led to tense trackside discussions:
and, eventually, a lot of mopping:
and finally by a much better second bout where we ran the Rogue Rollergirls of Fayetteville, North Carolina, into the ground:
Also, I saw the best Nikes ever:
Do you think those come in men's?
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