Monday, March 21, 2011

Armadillos, Hoops, Jimmy the Greek's hot streak and Jackson Wedding

First off, I do not like to talk about my personal life because I do not feel a need to bore you with my real life, but I would like to let everyone know that I drove from Chicago to Jackson,MS and back in the span of 72 hours.  Yea thats right.  24 hours in a vehicle with some interesting spots mixed in.  On the way down, I picked up my co-pilot for the weekend Brian McCue and his gf Natalie at 9pm Thursday night.  You can see Brian's live tweets from the car ride at Bmac9@twitter.com.  There is some pretty good material.  After a night of listening to college hoops, Howard Stern, and some deep cuts from a band that goes by the name Grim Reaper, we arrived in Memphis for Breakfast at 6am.  So from 9pm to 6am, we drove 500 miles, stopped at 4 Pilots, had 3 coffees, and saw 1 armadillo.  Yes, an armadillo. Thing was the size of a dog.  By the way, the state of Arkansas is weak.  Just a real dump.  I would be curious to know what the hell people do there.  Anyways, in Memphis, we stopped at a diner name Blue Plate which was decent.  As far as cleanliness is concerned though, I give it an F.  As soon as I sat down and put my arms on the table I felt like I got slimed.  Just gross, but the omelet was above average and that is all that counts.  From Memphis to Jackson which is around 200 miles, I had the co-pilot take over.  We drove by the largest NISSAN car plant in the country.  Bmac did a little research and the plant employs 5,500 Mississippians and cost 1.3 billion dollars to build.  It apparently pumps out 500k cars a year and is almost a mile in length as far as the size of the plant is concerned.  We arrived in Jackson around 10am and just crashed hard.

Friday saw the first controversy between myself and members of the writing staff here at the cheese. I caved.  Don't even remember what happened and what the disagreement was about but I caved.  Friday also saw the Jimmy the Greek Hot streak.  I hope everyone parlayed the Greeks picks.  Dude was straight up fire.  With one weekend in the books, Greek is 6 for 8.  Pretty impressive.  Saturday the wife arrived and we literally went to the former ambassador to Portugal's house for a wedding day brunch.  The house was filled with pictures of him and W, Reagan and even Princess Di.  He was a typical Southern Gentleman and the house was insane.  Later that night was the wedding on Matt Tyrrell to his lovely bride Ana Maria Echibaru.  It was a great night with top of the line booze.  Tyrrell also managed to have his reception at a place that actually had tvs with the NCAA tournament on so we got to see Matt Howard get fouled 85 feet from the basket and Wisconsin pull off a great win over K-State.  Anyways, the day was top notch.

Sunday at 9AM we left Jackson for the Chi.  We grabbed some coffee at the local Starby's and headed back.  If you also happened to be making a 12 hour journey in a car yesterday then you probably got to hear some of the worst announcing of all time.  Not only could these announcers on Westwood One not be clear about telling you what was going on in the game, but they also hated each other. The wrath these two had for each other was seeping through the car radio.  Needless to say,  listening to what sounded like some amazing basketball was quite frustrating. Anyways, on the way home, stops included such lovely establishments such as Wendy's and a Subway connected to a gas station.  Usually I would never break my rule of not eating at places connected to gas stations, but I had consumed so many burgers and so much fried chicken, that the only horribly unhealthy thing my stomach could handle was a spicy italian from Subway.

The highlight of the trip home had to be our 30 minute stop in Graceland.  Lisa fucking Marie has totally pimped out what remains of her dad's life, possessions and Memphis in general.  She has planted trees and place barricades around everything so you pretty much cant see shit unless you buy a ticket for 35 dollars which gets you on the grounds and in the house, or a 70 dollar ticket which gets you the works.  Needless to say, the 10 dollar parking was all we were prepared to spend.  No chance we were spending that money to catch a glimpse of the King's life.  Needles to say, it was still pretty funny just being there and doing some people watching.  Place was jammed.  Lisa Marie must be making an absolute killing on that damn place.  Anyways, the rest of the trip was pretty easy. Caught a ridiculous lighting storm about 100 miles outside of Chicago and nothing really else eventful occurred. Hope I didn't bore you with this. I'll be back later to talk hoops and introduce a new segment we are calling "Who Cut the CHeese?"  Should be pretty good.  All in all, it was a great trip down to Mississippi and I wouldn't change a thing about it.  Special thanks to my wife, Brian and Natalie for making the trek with me and my notorious jimmy leg.

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