SOUTHERN THINGS IN EUROPE (WHAT ARE THEY DOING THERE?)

The American South and Europe have nothing in common really. But a dilapidated building or an unusual bug in Italy or Switzerland looks very much the same as those in Georgia. Look, see, here.

Trampolines can be universally dangerous.

Things fall down and get overun by plant life in Italy too.

ATVs have become popular in Italy. Rather than possums, there are wild boar to run over or hunt with a crossbow.

Now, I know where to park.

Abandoned farm houses are common in the Tuscan countryside, though a little sexier than those in Alabama, if you ask me.

There are bugs here too, though really not so many. I don't miss them much.

These Swiss kids are having a very safe trampoline experience and will live to become bankers without major head injuries.

Liberty architecture is not so far off from Victorian.

CUPCAKE STORE CONCEPTS

Recently, my wife and I drove around town looking for cupcakes for my daughter's preschool class. First, we stopped at something called the Cupcake Lounge in Grant Park and didn't go in because that really wasn't what we were looking for. Then, we headed to a tiny cupcake shop in Poncey-Highland, which had perhaps 12 cupcakes available for $3 each (We needed 20). The only other items for sale that I noticed were rice crispy marshmallow treats and sad looking office coffee. How does that place manage to stay in business? Not wishing to be raped in our search for reasonably priced, not necessarily ornate cupcakes, we ended up at Kroger. Since then, I have noticed a couple more cupcake stores in town and it sparked my imagination enough to come up with a few ideas:

1. The sign says GUNS & KKK MEMORABILIA to attract yokels, but when they go in, it's just cupcakes, though some with confederate flag designs. Having been lured in, they may decide, "Oh, I was looking for a hunting rifle and a grand dragon T-shirt, but I guess a cupcake will do."

2. A cupcake shop in Little Five Points with flavors such as hemp, hacky sack, nasty burrito, grunge and methamphetamine, three for five bucks. The hacky sack ones can be kicked around for a while until they fall apart.

3. Boutique Cupcakes in Virginia Highlands might have cupcakes ranging from $4 to $8, flavors include acai blackberry for those who will eat something disgusting, as long as it's healthy, the organic chai yoga aromatherapeutic cupcake for the upwardly mobile and socially conscious mom on the go and a microbrewed, heady, pale ale craft cupcake for dad and his sweater vest.

4. Cobb County Cupcakes, perhaps owned by the conservative Marietta Daily Journal newspaper, could sell Newt Gingrich Cupcakes, pompous, red-tinted sweets with white frosting on top and jowls, anti-Commie cupcakes, which are opposed to government-run healthcare for the poor and sick, so are overpriced and benefit drug companies and insurers, and pro-marriage cupcakes, which preserve the sanctity of the holy act of marriage between a man and a woman in a somewhat gay looking cupcake.

5. A cupcake shop catered to successful, urban, single women, much like an idiotically themed local steakhouse that recently opened in Atlanta. The designer cupcakes are overpriced, undersized and locally grown.

4 SETS

Dear Mayor Kasim Reed,

Next to my house, there is this sign, which cautions motorists of approaching speed humps, apparently patterned in "4 Sets." However, you will not encounter eight speed humps on this street. What does this sign mean by "4 Sets?" Sets implies more than one of something. There are only four speed humps. I guess that could be one set. Please remove this baffling sign!

Sincerely,

Outraged Citizen

GOOFY

Is beloved Goofy another unkind Southern stereotype?

Yes, he dang well sure is.

HILLBILLY GRANDPA TERRORISTS

A group of four pissed-off, hillbilly senior citizens (between the ages of 65 and 73) in North Georgia were allegedly planning terrorist attacks in the U.S. with chemical weapons and explosives. Perhaps not having the brightest light bulbs in their heads, they quickly hooked up with FBI informants and were arrested yesterday. Here is the story:

http://news.yahoo.com/4-suspected-ga-militia-members-accused-plot-125152827.html

SIGNS OF THE SOUTH III

Though the combination is inviting and odd, I think I will go in the other direction.


I do not want this weird looking rasta cat doing any plumbing in my house.

As your fantabulous mayor, my first priority is to sexy up this dowdy city hall.

Reads "If the North is so great, why don't you go back!"

What could it have been?

The poor Jews of Cartersville pray here.

We will update other specifics later.

My cat has gotten so fat, I done need a cat scale, and a shower, and some home cooking, and maybe some gas.

THE COLONNADE

An odd Atlanta institution, the Colonnade (1879 Cheshire Bridge Road, 30324), in business since 1927, is a restaurant of unparalleled Southern hospitality, where genteel ladies and eccentric queer sofa salesmen eat grilled calf's liver and wash it down with a Sea Breeze. Opening at 5 pm on weekdays, the restaurant quickly gets packed with the 70 and up crowd, who order dishes that no longer exist in present day reality. Later, the Colonnade's clientele gets gayer and louder, tending toward groups of middle aged men talking smack about some guy named Leonard. The two spacious rooms and bar clear out by the early 9 pm closing time, 10 on weekends.

Not far from the door is the Colonnade's affable host, an elderly Don Knotts looking fellow, who announces through an amplifier, "Constance, party of three, Engelbert, party of five, Sodom, party of two." All the wait staff are as sweet as butterscotch pie and the food is endearing and heartfelt, ranging from traditional Southern classics to uppity, somewhat schmantzy specials to dishes that began to go out of favor during Reconstruction.

At the table next to you, you might overhear someone ordering...

"Now let's see, I will have the grilled polecat with apricot remoulade and zipper beans on the side and oh, I guess for my second side, how about fluffy whipped parakeets. And I'll start with the dill osprey salad with... goat beard vinaigrette."

"And what would you like to drink? Perhaps some flannel tea with a little lemon zest or a Heifer Gingerale," asks the waitress enthusiastically.

"Uh, no, I think I will live a little and have a cocktail. How about a Hotel California with two cherries and a mint?"

"Coming right up. And you sir?"

"(Spoken slowly with beard in mouth) I will have the Rutherford B. Hayes smoked pork loin with the tomato aspic and the Prussian mayonnaise salad, easy on the giblets, and to drink... a Nipper with a twist of green fruit."

Such is the daffy world of the Colonnade, where bow ties are still in style and gooseberries are always in season

The bar at the Colonnade (those are not real books.)