ATL 9/10/07 - Dave Matthews

I don't know where to begin with this photo; it's dated 1974 and tooth-wise, I'm between the headgear (to push all my molars further back into my head), oral surgery (to remove the teeth that just weren't going to fit), and braces (which I would wear...on two different occasions...until my junior year in high school.)

It's from a visit to Vancouver, British Columbia, to visit family friends. I'm not sure where this is taken (come on, I'm 10 years old) - all I remember about visiting Canada was that next to the English words on cereal boxes, there was a 2nd, funny-looking language, and zoo monkeys are loud when they masturbate.

ART/PLANT/NATION/LOCAL/FRENCH/WEB NEWS

MOVIE NEWS -"The Brave One" is released this Friday - Jodie Foster's first movie (where she plays a vigilante) since last year's "The Inside Man" (where she played a b&*%h - AND I LOVED IT!!!)

ART NEWS -"dark play or stories for boys" is playing now through October 10th at Actor's Express; can't say I know anything about it firsthand, but it sounds interesting, and I've never been sorry that I went to one of their performances.

PLANET NEWS - Buy fresh foods instead of frozen. Frozen food uses 10 times more energy to produce. And it goes without saying that local it better than imported.

NATIONAL NEWS - 5 men have been jailed in Washington state after killing a whale with a machine gun. Like all good NRA arguments in favor of automatic weapons, I'm sure this was a case of self defense.

LOCAL NEWS - We attended the Dave Matthews concert in Piedmont Park - along with 49,998 other folks. It was huge; that's all the participants in the Peachtree Road Race standing in the same place at the same time (as opposed to spread out along 6 miles of race course). That's 10,000 more people than fit into Turner Field. That's 1000% more that fit inside the Fox Theatre.

Traffic did seem negligible due to folks taking MARTA as promoted and I did have a great time, but the Piedmont Park Conservancy has a lot to improve upon if they intend to do this again.

1) PEEING - They seemed to provide the same number of porta-potties for this event as them have for Screen on the Green, even though there were 500% more people (and 1000% more beer). The event was made that much more green by guys giving up on the bathroom lines and returning the "recycled" beer to the wet(ter)lands at the north end of the meadow.

2) AISLES - During the evolution of the Screen on the Green event, they learned to help manage crowds by roping off aisles for moving through the crowds. Not so for this event. I would have bought more beer if I thought I had a chance in hell of being able to return to my spot in fewer than 45 minutes.

3) WATER - If you are not going to let people bring water in reusable bottles to a "green" event, then you'd better make sure folks don't have to wait 30+ minutes in line to purchase a $3.00 bottle.

I did feel like the oldest person there - the 16 year-old dancing next to me proclaimed me to be cool and not "old like his dad" and then told me his dad was 45 - 2 years older than me.

All the young guys were dancing around shirtless with each other, leaving their girlfriends to huddle-up and talk amongst themselves. I couldn't resist talking to one of them. "Is that your boyfriend?" "Yeah, we came in from Birmingham. Is that your girlfriend?" "Nope, that guy over there is my boyfriend." "OMG! You're gay? That's soooooooooooooo cool! OMG! Do you have a myspace page?" Even though I said 'no, I didn't', she still passed me her leopard print Jack Daniels flask.

While standing in the porta-pottie line, a drunk asked me if "someone made my necklace". No, no one made my necklace, the bead fairy just shat it out on my pillow one night. "Oh, that's cool."

Upon exiting the park onto Charles Allen, a group of staggering partiers asked out to the crowd "which way is Virginia Highlands"? Several arms swung up to point vaguely to the east. "Thanks", they said, turning to march off in that direction. They had 1.2 miles to go.

FRENCH NEWS - The McCann's, who reported their 4 year-old missing from their vacation hotel room in Portugal, have returned to the UK after being questioned as suspects in their daughter's disappearance. All of Europe has been riveted by this case.

WEB NEWS - Go here, enter your address, and this website will rate the how "walkable" your neighborhood is. For instance: my old house scored a 42 vs. our condo rates a 94.