The Lou Pickney Homepage
The Lou Pickney
Homepage


Online since
August 1995

2024 NFL Draft
Draft King

NFL Mock Draft
2024 Prospects

MORE
NashvilleLou Live
NashvilleLou.com
AcePurple.com
TigerDriver.com


Lou Pickney's Online Commentary

Little Rock

Monday
November 19, 2007

Taking I-40, you can get from Nashville to Little Rock in about 350 miles. And, with it being all interstate driving, that's not too bad. However, to get everyone together for the trip, the crew that went to the Arkansas/Mississippi State game met up in Aberdeen, MS, which took us well out of our way. But the trip also allowed us to see areas of Tennessee and Mississippi that I'd never visited before, and to that end I was happy. Visiting new places for the first time can be a great adventure; you never know what you'll find.

In hindsight, I think most of my angst with the trip was due to a severe lack of sleep. I can't stress enough how much happier I am when I have a solid eight hours of shut-eye. Push me to six and I am much more likely to make mistakes, be off-kilter, and in general be out of sorts. Go to 2-and-a-half hours and all bets are off. I think that, even more than time to myself, sleep is a major factor in my ability to interact happily.

My friend Carla let us stay at her father's lake house in Aberdeen, which was a perfect spot for us. With two sets of bunk beds and two other bedrooms, along with a fold-out couch/bed, we were set up great. Major props to Carla for hooking us up with that.

It was great seeing Klista; she is a fun-loving girl who is blunt enough to speak her mind, usually with hilarious results. She is thinking about moving up here once she finishes up with school next year, which would be great fun.

The trip to Memphis and then Little Rock on Saturday morning took us through some small towns. Again, it's always fun to see new places, though I find it interesting how the education level of a given area is often proportional to the churches per capita. The less education, the more churches. Because, hey, simple answers and basic rules to follow, with the promise of an unverifiable eternal reward, tend to particularly appeal to those with lower intelligence and education.

Lou in a Mississippi State sweatshirt
Here I am sporting a Mississippi State sweatshirt.
I don't write this to piss anyone off -- it's just reality. The end of the road with death, and nothing after, is a depressing thought. And telling people what they want to hear, particularly those with lower cognitive ability and capacity to question/doubt what they're told, is a more appealing option. And if you can skim 10% off the congregation's incomes and legally not having to pay property tax on church land and buildings, that's a nice business plan. Or it's a nice way to provide the path to eternal salvation; believe what you will.

Little Rock proved to be an interesting city. It has a downtown area and high rise buildings and the like, clearly deserving its status as the flagship city for the state. I wore a Mississippi State sweatshirt that Carla gave me (and which most of us had), and surprisingly I caught very little flack over it.

One exception was when Matt and I were leaving the stadium. A group of girls walked by, saw the sweatshirt, and instead of giving me the typical "Hmmm, you might be interesting" look that I sometimes get, they glared at me in disgust. One of them spoke after we passed, saying, "Mississippi State sucks, *unintelligible*, shaved head..." I turned to them and retorted, "Keep it classy, ladies." I wanted to turn into Elegant Elliot Offen and throw some gangster talk at them, but that would have been pointless.

There were some hot chicks there, as you would hope to see at an SEC football game. But, again, wearing the M-State sweatshirt was the equivalent to "OFF!" for Arkansas women.

The real fun came when we returned to Starkville, after I had slept on the drive back down to Aberdeen. Klista, who had long sense sobered up, was our driver. We hit two bars, the first being The Bistro, a place that I bitched about last month when they insisted that I remove my Rick's wristband. This time around was much calmer, though we found a trashed Jonny Tahai already blitzed on his 25th birthday.

From there it was on to Rick's, which amazingly was also having a slow night. There were a number of factors that I later learned had a large amount of people out of town; so it goes. We paid $10 each to get in, which wasn't exactly smart money since the place had one hour till closing time, but that's life.

The craziness came when a migraine hit Klista. Trust me, I can sympathize with her on that one. Despite rules and laws against this, I gave her an Imitrex (I carry that stuff almost everywhere with me, just in case.) She told me that in the past it hadn't worked for her, but fortunately this time around it did the trick. Considering that she was the sober driver, we would've been in a tight spot without her.

Jonny found us at the last minute at Rick's, and somehow we ended up having him and his sister ride along with us. Poor Klista was a trooper through this, waiting for the Immy to kick in and having to deal with crazy Jonny.

Finally we managed to drop off Jonny's sister and, after some craziness on M-State's campus, we left Jonny at his house. I'm still not sure if he made it inside or not before passing out.

I realize that this story isn't the most compelling, but it was a pretty chilled out night, at least for me. I was dead tired, what can I say.

Overall it was great to see the Mississippi crew, and I'm glad that I got to attend the Arkansas game (I already wrote about that at length here).

Next up is Swankxmas '07. That will be a home event, which means I call the shots on sleeping, which means advantage: me. Matt is going to want $$$ from me for it, which I understand, though cash is certainly tighter in the interim between the savings from my time at Adenus and the start of the cash flow from Draft King. But, somehow, I'm sure we'll get it to work out. Things almost always do.


November 2007 Commentary Page

Commentary Archive

Return to the Lou Pickney Homepage


Except where otherwise noted, all content on this website is copyright © 1995-2024 Lou Pickney, all rights reserved.
The views expressed here are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of any media company.