Archive | May, 2009

M4M at the gym

29 May

A while back we showed Very Small Array’s map of Craigslist’s top Missed Connection locations by state and marveled that Georgia’s is L.A. Fitness. But later, VSA shed some light on that ranking when she broke down the missed connections by gender seeking gender, and that explained a lot. The top spot for M4W and W4M was, of course, Wal-Mart. It’s the South, duh. The most frequent missed connection location for W4W was the Botanical Gardens. And M4M? L.A. Fitness! There must have been a lot of L.A. Fitness missed connections to drown out the star-crossed Wal-Mart lovers!

And I’m pretty sure 95% of those L.A. Fitness M4M missed connections are coming from the Ansley Mall location. I was unaware of this phenomenon till one Saturday I was dining at that sandwich shop at Ansley and saw some serious, serious mesh-swathed cruising going on between the gym and the Starbucks. I can’t believe Vice overlooked that spot in its “How to Get Laid By a Man (If You Are Also A Man)” but I guess they were primarily focusing on the Cheshire Bridge area.

Anyway, this is how overt L.A. Fitness is about its status as a hook-up destination! I actually saw this with my own camera phone.
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Make sure if you do go to L.A. Fitness this summer you’re fully decked out in attire from The Boy Next Door! The theme in their window display right now is “SWIM MEAT.”

Previously: Mapping what just wasn’t meant to be

A real whodunit!

28 May

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What? Are these pictures real? Were this hardboiled detective and streetwise gumshoe watching Chinatown or The Maltese Falcon when they got called by the no-nonsense police chief to investigate the park stabbing? The plot twist is that someone at the top of City Hall is behind the murders. I hope the corrupt district attorney doesn’t get involved!
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(Obviously I am making a joke about panama hats, not the actual gruesome crime. Photos via AJC)

Prêt-à-drama

21 May

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The documentary Valentino: The Last Emperor is playing a limited engagement in Atlanta starting tomorrow at Tara. I have it on good authority (the film’s website) that director and Vanity Fair special correspondent Matt Tyrnauer will be holding Q&A sessions after Friday’s 7:15 p.m. screening as well as following all the Saturday shows. You can see the trailer here.

Miss Darrow will probably be in attendance at all showings with a million questions about what it’s like to travel with Valentino’s half-dozen pugs.

Additionally, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, also a documentary, opens tomorrow at Midtown Art Cinema. I had the opportunity to see it last weekend and it is so good – hilarious and human and sad and redeeming. To top off how endearing the film is, Lips and Robb from the band Anvil will actually be there opening night!

According to the theater: Steve “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner of the band ANVIL will be at the Midtown on Friday, 5/22 for a Q&A following the 7:55pm showing. They will perform following the 10:05pm show. Anyone who has purchased a ticket for the 10:05 show will be allowed to remain for the performance. Do not miss this! These guys are incredible! Then go thrash at the Highlander afterward.

I feel cheated

20 May

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Why wasn’t this home featured on the Modern Atlanta home tour last weekend? Because it is in Snellville? Racist. Speaking of racist, did the AJC just describe the home as “Bollywood chic” because the family who lives there is from India? The house is more like “Less Than Zero chic.” Anyway, you have to see this photo gallery in AJC’s usually boring “Private Quarters” feature. But this time: prepare to have your mind blown by the Chunaras’ $100,000 worth of decor. I have never been inside Huff Furniture on Peachtree, but this is basically what I imagined.

I’m going to go watch Designing Women now.

Previously: The best “My Style” ever

This glorious occasion

19 May

Hear, hear! Congratulations to Thomas Wheatley for winning a Pultizer Prize for his coverage of Saxby’s fake victory party in 2008!
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Well, almost. He is actually a finalist for an Association of Alternative Newsweeklies award for his feature story “Sober.” Here’s to hoping the AAN doesn’t fold before Thomas gets to put on his finest L.L.Bean corduroy blazer and accept the honor! We are so proud!

Previously: War and Peace

Addendum to the tour

18 May

DSCN0531I’m sure there is some sort of visual metaphor for the human condition that can be found in this photograph, but instead I’m just going to say I want to add this to the hypothetical downtown parking garage tour as an example of freakish things that grow when both parking decks and Trees Atlanta have too much power.

Previously: The wonders of Atlanta’s parking decks

Professional development

17 May

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We ordered these sweet little website cards from Avie Designs in Decatur. Here’s Avis’ Etsy store and blog if you want to see more. Not sure what we’ll actually do with these cards yet (give them out???) but they were super inexpensive, arrived really quickly, and came in cute packaging so they were, you know, a perfect impulse purchase!

The wedding of your dreams

16 May

There is no place in this city like Le Maison Rouge at Paris on Ponce that will work with you so closely to customize your special event in ways you never dreamed possible. Their primary form of artistic expression in event design is through buffet decor. For example, you want to have a hockey themed shrimp cocktail table?
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DONE.

You want a skeleton playing an enchanted organ for your first dance? (more…)

Ding Dong- Where the hell is Tom Selleck in all this?

15 May

TomSelleck2While everyone has been carrying on about Ashton Kutcher is  “ding dong dicking” everyone, I have not been able to stop wondering where Tom Selleck has been in all of this. While Ashton has been busy showing off how many Twitter friends he has, Tom Selleck has been hovering in the background with aging heartthrobs all over Atlanta.

Filming for their Five Killers movie has been going on all over Atlanta in various office buildings for weeks now but still there is no sign of Magnum outside of reruns on A&E. Has anyone seen him?

Oh look, we have good taste for once

15 May

Picture 4Y’all, Modern Atlanta, y’all! I think Modern Atlanta is doing some of the coolest stuff in town, along with Pecha Kucha and Brunks on Dikes.

TODAY is the kick-off party for their annual week of design-y type events (this year’s theme: “Design is Human”). This weekend is the home tour, which everyone should attend because it will teach you that neighborhoods should not implement design guidelines because modern architecture is awesome and NIMBYs have no place telling people they can’t build beautiful eco-friendly homes. You can gaze in envy at some of the homes on the MA Flickr page. There’s still time to rush to Octane and buy tickets ($25 for students!) that will get you into the party and the home tour. I understand there is some sort of “interactive exhibit” at the kick-off party that I suspect will be sexual in nature, so you don’t want to miss that.

There are other events that are free, so study the lineup and try to at least send yourself on the PoMo tour.

The wonders of Atlanta’s parking decks

14 May

DSCN0523I was talking with someone the other day about where in Atlanta we would take a group on an urban hike, and we decided a tour of Downtown Atlanta’s parking garages would be the best learning experience we could possibly facilitate.

The highlights of the tour would be:

1. Robert Wyland’s Whaling Wall parking garage at Underground Atlanta that contains the Western and Atlantic railroads’ zero milepost (the spot which basically invented Atlanta).

2. Kell Hall at Georgia State University, which was a parking garage in the 1930s and now houses many of the various science departments. There are not many stairs in the building, just ramps and ramps and ramps from one story to the next. Incidentally, Kell is extremely handicap accessible.

3. That parking garage on Marietta Street at Cone Street, across from the State Bar and AJC buildings. It looks like a giant dog kennel (seen above).

4. The “Greek temple” garage on Ellis Street.

There were more we discussed, especially some creepy ones, but now I can’t remember them all. Here’s a map of every single parking garage downtown, thanks to CAP, if you want to do a self-guided tour. I’ll spend all summer researching and we can wander around Decatur Street in sweltering August, the best time to be Downtown.

I want to know how this is affecting Atlanta’s pigs, Mark Davis

7 May

As quickly as swine flu swept the AJC’s headlines, so has it given way to more important stories like “Atlanta says no to adult video store.” Many local residents even forgot that they finally thought they had the excuse they needed to be super racist, festively donning their finest green, white, and red leis and Mardi Gras beads on Tuesday so they could puke congealed queso in the On the Border parking lot.

Sarah the pig

Sarah the pig

Last week, we kept waiting for Mark Davis to diversify AJC’s breathless coverage of the outbreak and craft us a heartwarming tale of the eponymous species told from the perspective of Sarah, the therapy pig at Noah’s Ark. Or we thought he might weave a conceit that relates the terror of riding the Pink Pig to the fear of being stricken with the new strain of virus. He might even use the phrase “present perilous porcine pandemic panic.” But our good friend and loyal reader Mark Davis never fulfilled our simple wishes.

So we raced to the next best online news sources, the blog and website of the Socialist Swine. You might know him better as the pig who gets walked in Piedmont Park. Sometimes he wears a t-shirt. (You didn’t know he is a socialist, did you? That pig loves taxes and universal health care. And polyester blankets. Look it up.) But because he hasn’t updated his blog since 2006 we don’t really have much to report. Has he endured specism and discrimination in this trying time of infection? Has he had to learn to waddle a little faster to escape the frightened scorn of the park’s baton twirlers and roller bladers? Only Mark Davis can answer these questions.

Previously: Double D

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