I hope the holidays are finding you well. Try, try, try to only give your therapist fits, if anybody, during the season. Don’t be like the country girl who turns every holiday into a homewrecking opportunity. And if you are feeling stressed by a sociopath in your midst just relax and enjoy our double holiday issue. It will take you through the new year so we can get off the weekly treadmill and enjoy the seasonal food, festivities, and the occasional family dysfunction ourselves. As long as it is an honest breakdown of the nerves and not deliberately destructive like you know who.
Though we will not be printing a new issue the week after Christmas, we believe we have left you with plenty of information to get you out of the house and enjoying yourself. And we will see you again, back on the streets and at all your favorite locales, plus some new ones we are adding such as Fresh Market on 280 and the Rave in Vestavia, after the holidays.
This issue contains extended calendar information that will get you through the new year and almost to the January 9 NCS game so many are waiting for with bated breath. I always wondered about that expression, since the country girl calls it baited breath, but of course there was always something fishy about her. And does the term gator bait apply to LSU fans who have their own swamps within their territory? At this point I have to remind you I am an honorary Cajun. I rode on a float in the Mardis Gras parade before I was born, so I think I innately know how to enjoy a new year’s eve celebration.
And we have included some options for what to do then if you really feel you need to get out and prove yourself again. Once again, please talk to your therapist, and try to get off the sleeping pills this year. And I have to say our house therapist’s suggestion for a Xanax lick is a particularly bad idea--but if some semblance of morality could be chemically induced in the country girl since all other methods have failed, I am all for it.
We have especially tried to take care of you musically, with all the calendar information about who is playing where, and we even have a few of our own suggestions--such as one of my favorites, Great Book of John, and another very talented Birmingham guitarist, Van Hollingsworth, whose band The Magic Math will be playing at the Villa right here in Avondale (details within), and Van is even releasing a new CD.
Coincidentally, the same night some great bands like the Banditos will be playing at the Avondale Brewery. So 2 december 22, 2011 - january 5, 2012 our neighborhood is the place to be that night. Someone ought to run a shuttle. You should stop by and check out the new offices of the Birmingham Weekly.
Oh, I forgot, we are taking the week off, so for once we will not be here working. We will be checking out the bands and brews ourselves, with any luck. But there are still plenty of do-it-yourself opportunities.
You can find those on our website. We might Tweet to direct you to our Tumbler page to get you on Facebook to send you directly to our webpage. That seems to be the way things are done these days. And if I call Bunny she does not answer. Alas, I have to text her. And she can hardly find her own house anymore without her location-finder app because she is way more technologically advanced than me.
So if by chance you do not see your event in our listings (maybe you forgot to send it in, or maybe you used the postal service), you can still go on our website and place your own listings in the calendar for everyone to read. You should check that thing at least twice daily!
And that reminds me: bands - if you have not uploaded your band info to our website at www.bhamweekly.com, what is wrong with you? This is your great opportunity to go on there and place all your own information about who your influences are and where you will be playing--you don’t even have to wait to give a Rolling Stone interview.
So if you have not done that yet (too busy drinking PBR, getting the van repaired, or engaged in notorious band personality conflicts?) people will be checking out Duquette Johnston, Matthew Mayfield, and Good Morning Lucy, but not you, at www.bhamweekly.com. See, you need to get with it.
Help us help you keep you going through the holidays. I don’t want to be cropping photos on Xmas eve or NYE either. But you can put your event on our website even while we are drunk or sleeping. Just go on the site and check out the calendar function. Then upload your data. Presto! Everyone will know.
Meanwhile, in this holiday double issue, we will tease you with a little Best-of the new Birmingham Weekly. In 2012 we will be even newer, with new writers like Chris Hastings and Corey Hinkel. And we are working up the best annual restaurant guide ever.
In this issue, we are starting with a little preview of the Weekly’s Best of 2011 since new management took over in June and embarked on new editorial directions in September. For example, this issue contains a teaser for the best of Now Eat This--which is what we call our new anonymous restaurant reviews, starring Bunny.
While we are tooting our own horn about what we have done for you lately, see if anything else in the paper looks familiar--you may have seen it recently but we decided we could published it with a better photo spread to complement the editorial so we are doing it again.
When we play tennis I never let the country girl end the session on a bad shot. She does not take very well to such moral instruction and did not really absorb the lesson, culminating in her worst transgressions ever, so let’s just focus on what we can control ourselves. If you happen to catch what the re-do is, write in to bhamweekly@gmail.com and win a 6-month membership to Sportplex total fitness center.
Speaking of mental fitness, some have asked how, last week, when I was talking about the stories of the year, I could forget the tornadoes. And I tried to make up for it by actually climbing into some of the condemned and abandoned houses to take daredevil photos to let you see what is still sitting there, not just last April, but this December.
I am trying to make up for the omission. It is true I almost blocked it out because at the time I was dealing with another disruptive force otherwise known as the worst girlfriend ever who seemed to cause maximum turbulence just for the fun of it (at least tht’s my excuse, if you are believing it). Every day I am still learning of some new way she was backstabbing or pulling out the rug that I did not even know when I finally ran out of patience and second chances and dubbed her the most destructive single person I ever encountered on the planet.
The same is true of the brutal storms. Those funnel clouds towered to unbelievable proportions. Their residue remains as attested by the photos taken just a few days ago. So these issues are still with us. It is just something else for our spirits to rise above, as well as work for our hands in rebuilding. It will show that, country girl amongst us notwithstanding, Birmingham and Alabama do have character.
Enjoy the holidays, and there will be a lot more to look forward to in 2012. december 22, 2011 - january 5, 2012 BIRMINGHAM WEEKLY 3