Knoxville520.com

"'If calamari rings were made from the squid they would be the size of tractor tires', he added."

Salutations, People of 520, I am Strapping Young Lad, I Come in Peace,

You ever get the feeling you are looking at a sign? Maybe you are standing witness to something that your gut is just adamantly certain is a grand omen. The oracles of the universe are smacking you on the face, but you still can't seem to see what the big meaning might be. These are the heebies jeebies that boogie woogie up my spine when I read stories involving hugungous cephalopods. It seems weird to me that a creature that is usually right at home six thousand feet below, usually very happy being an elusive creature of the deep, makes a trip up to the world of us meddlesome monkeys. It seems darn right eerie that stuff like this is happening more and more often and feels strangely connected to those inconveniently truthful photos of polar bears stranded on ice cubes round the North Pole. I just gotta feel a little bad for that colossal squid, though. Dude decided to venture up to strange waters, I guess to finally try the Chilean sea bass, and the ends up yanked out of the water, frozen, and shipped off to a place called Te Papa. Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed when you’re a 900 pound invertebrate. Anyhow, the whole incident has got me feeling that some cosmic funkiness is afoot. That and we are gonna need one big ass bucket of marinara.

Last night, the cosmically funkiest thing kicking was the film footage of William Tiberius Shatner reciting the lyrics to Elton John’s “Rocket Man”. I had seen this footage before, but it never ceases to confound at every viewing. This and many other video oddities were presented last night at Cocktails at the KMA: Addicted. On exhibit as well was half of local photographer Tovah Greenwood’s very well done series of photos, also themed on addiction. Apparently the other half of the exhibition they couldn’t show conjures up naughty thoughts and would have melted my cherubic like innocence I have been fighting tooth and nail to maintain all these years. I hear the series in its entirety will be on display somewhere soon. All in all, it was decent event. Personally, though, I would have liked to have seen more ‘art’ in the hall with all the drinks and people. I like schmoozing and I like art-ing, and history has shown that the two go together like smelly cheese and water crackers. More facilitation of the schmooze to art ratio would be welcome. Regardless, I would recommend catching the next one of these events. It was a great way to kick off a meandering night of mellow cavorting downtown.

This is exactly what my lovely companion and I did last night. It was a quick scoot from the KMA to downtown on a fairly easy going Wednesday evening. Had a few drinks at Pres Pub, listened to Big Bad Jukebox play “Kid Charlemagne”, cruised around in the freakishly pleasant weather and ended up at a fairly decently crowded Cabaret Night at Sapphire. It was a darn fine evening, I tell ya.

Oh, and if you are looking for a hot investment tip, there was a gentleman hanging around downtown last night selling 40 dollar winning lottery scratchers for only twenty bucks. All the signs say this is a winner, how can you lose?

TONIGHT’S PICKS: Normally I wouldn’t recommend the same act twice in one week, but Matt Urmy is playing a goodbye Knoxville/movin to Nashville show with his band of cohorts tonight at Barley’s. If nothing else you should go to check out the relatively new to the scene Hudson K open up the show.

Keep your eyes on the signs, fair readers, and until next time,

This is Straps, signing off.