Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Snapperpalooza IV
Friday
August 19, 2011
I found out today that I will be on the main internet broadcast team for the 2011 Father Ryan High School football games. Last year I worked as a fill-in, which I did more to keep my broadcasting chops up and to see my cousin Patrick Pickney play than anything, but I've been invited to fill an opening on the main team. The first game is tomorrow night, Father Ryan at Overton. Because I didn't find out about this opportunity until literally today, there are three games I won't be able to do because of prior commitments. But I had a blast doing them last year and I look forward to the games this fall, even if Patrick has graduated from high school and is headed to Knoxville and the University of Tennessee.
Tonight we celebrated Snapperpalooza IV at my brother Matt's place in Smyrna, just outside of Nashville, at the fourth annual mega-celebration of the birthday of our friend Snapper. It actually began last weekend out on the Tennessee River and is supposed to keep going all weekend long, but my part in it took place tonight. As Matt noted to me, it takes a special event to earn roman numeral status, like WrestleMania or the Super Bowl. Or, in this case, Snapperpalooza.
Last weekend on the Tennessee River (left to right): Titus, Snapper, and Dustin
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It's been more than two years since I moved out of Matt's house, and not living there has taken me out of the loop of seeing friends I used to interact with on a regular basis. My girlfriend Stacy was exhausted tonight and wasn't able to join me over there, which worked out well since she ended up going to sleep at 9:30 p.m. and I didn't leave Matt's place until later than 1 a.m. So I'm actually writing this 8/19 column in the early morning hours of 8/20. Deal with it (credit to LSUfreek).
Another perk of going over to Matt's place tonight was being able to use his tanning bed. When I lived there I split the cost of buying new bulbs for it with him, and at one point Matt was going to let me have it if I could get it out of his house (it's both very heavy and cumbersome to move), but he changed his mind and decided to keep it. As it turned out that was for the best; I can use it when I visit his place, and we consequently had room upstairs at our house (and when I say "our house" I mean "Stacy's house" since she owns it) for a Precor machine, which itself was very heavy and cumbersome to move up there but which worth every bit of effort to move and cash to acquire.
There's no way that Matt's house will ever have a crazier event than the first (and last) Swankxmas in December 2006, but tonight wasn't about people getting hammered or bizarre happenings like an impromptu MMA exhibition on the living room floor. No, it was more about hanging with our buddy Snapper and catching up on old times.
The closest thing to crazy tonight was Dustin holding the downstairs bathroom door closed as I took a leak, trapping me inside temporarily, but it was more a good-natured prank than anything. As it is, that door won't close properly (where you can click it shut) and hasn't since they redid the floor in there. That would drive me absolutely crazy if I still lived there. But since I don't... well, I won't link to the Jose Baez "Deal with it" .gif twice in one column, but you get the idea.
|  | Shawna with Titus, 3/22/2008
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One thing that was especially tough about moving out from Matt's house was not being able to spend as much time with his English Bulldog, Titus. I talked with my friend Shawna about Titus some tonight, and a remark was made (perhaps by Matt?) about how one of the very first pics we have of Titus is a memorable shot of her holding him as a puppy. When I made it home later I dug through the archives and found the photo to share with you on here.
My friend Jimmy DT recently moved back to the Nashville area; he has been in Cookeville in school for engineering at Tennessee Tech. He's co-oping over in Smyrna now, which is great. Jimmy is also a hardcore Miami fan, both for the Miami Hurricanes and the Miami Dolphins. It's incredibly easy to get him riled up about Miami sports, which I've taken to extremes before, such as taunting him on MySpace (back when people actually used MySpace) in 2007 as the Dolphins lost over and over and over, starting the season at a ridiculous 0-13 before finally squeaking out an overtime win in week fifteen to avoid a winless season.
That season I took pleasure in finding new pictures every week that documented Miami's misery and posting them on his MySpace wall. It wouldn't be all that funny except for how seriously he took all of it, and his angry reactions made me laugh long and loud, like Bart Simpson after hearing Moe Szyslak react to a prank call in the early seasons of The Simpsons.
I saw some of the beer pong being played in the garage and watched that for a bit, but knowing that I had to drive home, I opted not to take part in it myself. Mostly I chilled out in the living room area, watched NFL preseason football, and chatted with people as they came and went from the back porch to the kitchen and/or the garage. And, unlike the mostly SEC-centric group in attendance, Jimmy knew that Arizona Cardinals RB Ryan Williams was a great running back from his days at Virginia Tech... and that Arizona losing him for the season to a ruptured patella tendon in his right knee was big-time bad news for them.
The best part of the NFL preseason action was watching the 4th quarter of the Kansas City/Baltimore replay on the NFL Network. I knew because of Twitter that there was a less-than-pleasant exchange between Chiefs head coach Todd Haley and Ravens head coach John Harbaugh, and I was almost giddy with excitement to see what happened in the 4th quarter to make that happen.
The last time I had been that excited about the 4th quarter of an NFL exhibition game was in August 2003, and that's because I wagered $500 in Las Vegas for the Titans to beat the Bengals (a legal bet that I won, which I chronicled within a very detailed article about the trip). But it was amusing to me to see the Ravens score again and again and watch Haley get more and more angry on the sideline, and ultimately a cold handshake after the game punctuated things with what looked like some strong words being shared back-and-forth.
I've been negligent in writing updates on here for the past several weeks, and I have a full backlog of stories to tell. But, for now, and because it's 3:38 a.m. CT as I type this, you'll have to settle for a sampling of thoughts:
• I love Twitter, but being limited to 140 characters drives me bonkers. This afternoon I semi-jokingly told Stacy that I deserve a special exemption for Twitter than lets me have 280 characters per post. No one else should have that power, not even Shaq. Just me. And doing posts back-to-back isn't the same thing, particularly since Twitter feeds are often read from the newest working back in reverse chronological order, in short giving part two before part one.
• The story about a memorable Sunday lunch at a Chinese restaurant in south Nashville from earlier this summer is worthy of its own column. The lunch consisted of a group of four: me, Stacy, my sister Mary Beth, and my Grandmama Blaylock, who is 93 years old. She's my only living grandparent and I treasure all of the time I get to spend with her, even when some of that time takes place in an atmosphere that is part surreal, part hysterically funny, and part inconceivable.
You'll have to take my word for it that "Tip: one dollar!" immediately entered heavy rotation in the inside joke world for Stacy and me after that meal and that it's easily going to be the runaway winner for funniest line that makes no sense out of context for 2011. The 2010 winner of that award, by the way, was "What time done?" (shouted in a harsh voice) by the husband-and-wife team in charge of cleaning the rooms at the hotel Stacy and I stayed at during our May 2010 trip to Cincinnati.
• If you haven't yet, you really must listen to (and watch) the jaw-droppingly amazing performance of "The Edge of Glory" by Lady Gaga on the Howard Stern show on July 18, 2011. This is the version of the song that should be on CHR radio. It blows away the overproduced radio single version with simplicity: just a remarkable voice and a piano. Sometimes less is more. Even more impressive is that Lady Gaga pulled this off after going through the wringer with Howard, who is masterful at drawing out information from people that they never intended to say. If Lady Gaga was thrown off by anything that Howard had elicited from her, she didn't show it. Even if you aren't a Lady Gaga fan, give it a chance. Just trust me on this.
• I've become a one-man marketing campaign for spreading the word about Spotify, which launched recently in the United States. No, they're not paying me to talk about their product. I feel it's my duty to inform my friends, and now the readers of this site as well, about its greatness. Spotify is the biggest internet media breakthrough since YouTube, a way to listen unlimited and for free to almost every song not done by The Beatles that you'd ever want to hear. Best of all, it's 100% legal and licensed. The artists and musicians are compensated as their music is heard and enjoyed by fans far and wide.
Not every song is there, but you'll be shocked by the depth of choices, both in volume of artists and in albums. I put it to the test with obscure college radio tracks I knew from the 1990s and my time working as a DJ on the alternative rock show on WUEV, songs that are on the top of the charts now, 1970s classics, random tracks I've heard on thesixtyone.com, etc., and Spotify held its own amazingly well. Though, despite all of that, perhaps its greatest feature is allowing you to listen to full albums.
We've come full circle with the term "album" -- for many, an album used to double in meaning as a vinyl record, which became passe with tapes and particularly CDs, and certainly with downloadable music, where a single song began to mean more for a musician than an entire album did. But part of the beauty of Spotify is that it has entire albums of music, allowing those talented musicians who put out collections of great music that go beyond a 3:25 song aiming for pop radio breakout to have the full depth of their creativity enjoyed by larger audiences.
My favorite example so far is the album "King" by O.A.R. My former co-worker Matt/Spice from the BTLS show posted on Twitter about it, I pulled it up on Spotify... and I loved it. I told Stacy about it, she listened to it and, likewise, she loved it as well, enough to where she said she's thinking about buying the CD, as antiquated as that might seem to some in 2011.
The bottom line: I love Spotify, and while free/unlimited likely won't last forever, for now it's fantastic. As of this writing you have to sign up and then wait a few days to receive an invite, but it's worth the wait. You can thank me later.
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