WED, July 9th - MON, July 14th - The Baseball Part of the Trip (Part I)

PITTSBURGH, PNC PARK
Astros vs Pirates, 7/9
After five days of a road trip agenda that was predominantly centered around barbecue, alcohol, and SEC cities, it was time to inject another facet of Americana into the mix. And really what says "good ol' USA" like the Pirates and the Astros on a random Wednesday night in July? IT's MOEHLER ... IT'S VAN BENSCHOTEN ... LIVE AT PNC PARK!!!!!

I had heard for a couple years now about how awesome PNC Park in Pittsburgh was, mostly from my dad. A couple years ago, he and his wife went on a road trip around the country seeing various ballparks throughout the Midwest and Northeast (I know, the apple doesn't fall from the tree). Miraculously, my dad remains married to this day. Anyway, he gushed about how great PNC Park was, that it was his favorite ball park he saw the entire trip. So I had to see for myself.

Despite the fact that at this time of year my radio show centers more around topics like the chances of Tom Cruise making a "Top Gun" sequel than rabid discussion of the Pirates and Astros battling to see who is the taller midget, the Pittsburgh Pirates were kind enough to provide me with a media pass to the game. As you can see from the picture above (taken from seat 46 in the front row of the PNC press box), the engineers got it right with this yard. Bordering the Allegheny River and with a beautiful view of the highly underrated Pittsburgh skyline, PNC Park is exactly what the baseball gods had in mind when the renaissance of nouveau ball parks started with Camden Yards back in the early 1990's. The only problem as I see it is the fact that the Pirates haven't put a compelling product on the field since Barry Bonds skipped town in 1994. Since then, a combination of a mass exodus of marquee stars (Bobby Bonilla, Doug Drabek, Bonds), poor decision making (Jason Kendall for $10M a year anyone?) and the general financial dysfunction between the haves and have-nots in baseball have left the once proud Pittsburgh franchise a laughing stock. So you have a gorgeous jewel of a ball park with an utterly crappy baseball team. Imagine the producers of the movie "Vacation" deciding to put Amy Winehouse in the Ferrari instead of Christie Brinkley. That's what this was -- a beautiful vehicle with the homeliest of gnarly scum whores driving.

To be fair, this Pirates team has some young players you can get behind, most notably center fielder Nate McLouth, but bad is bad, and this team is ... well, as Charles Barkley would say "they not turbull, but they not verah good." The banners on the wall say it all -- the last time this franchise accomplished anything truly noteworthy was when the Pops Stargell-led "We Are Family" Pirates won a World Series in 1979, coming back from 3-1 down to beat the Baltimore Orioles.

And yet miraculously, the Pirates were able to convince the city to build them maybe the most plush yard in the bigs. As I sat high above the field before the game, I watched each of the 13,000 fans file into this 40,000 seat superstructure (seriously, it was so sparse that the usher to fan ratio allowed for each paying fan to have his/her own personal usher .. or so it seemed). All I could think of was the argument that all of these owners who are/were seeking new ball parks in mid-level to small markets espouse -- that without a new park, they won't have the revenue streams to compete with the big boys. And yet here are the Pirates with the most beautiful yard in the league, and on July 25th they are practically in last place and dumping Xavier Nady (and his .330 batting average) and Damaso Marte for a bunch of New York Yankee farmhands. Same old Pirates, same old baseball. But it is a damn fine yard, a Ferrari to be sure. Too bad the team is Amy Winehouse.

PRESS BOX NOTE: Perhaps my proudest moment as a media member was one that none of you will ever see nor hear. You see, the Pittsburgh press box is glassed in with windows before and after the games. During the games, they open the windows allowing for you to feel like you're at the park but also allowing in a fair amount of insects on warm July nights. Well,
after the game there was a junebug sitting to the left of my seat on the counter at seat 46. Well, perhaps fearing that PETA may actually consider an annoying little flying insect an animal, rather than squash my new press box neighbor, I decided to flick it down the counter away from my personal workspace toward seats 47, 48, 49, and so forth. (NOTE: There was no one sitting to the left of me so it wasn't as though I was depositing a new pet into someone else's area.) Well, I gave the little bugger a mighty flick with my right middle finger and it went in the laptop extension cord hole past seat 50! SWISH!!! You can see the hole in the counter to the left of Seat 50. To give you an idea of the degree of difficulty of this shot, it's like the equivalent of chipping in from about 120 yards, according to my calculations.

I don't know why I am sharing this with you other than to show how it's really the little things in life like flicking a defenseless junebug about 25 feet into a two inch hole that make life worth living. Isn't it?

PITTSBURGH CUISINE NOTE: For those wondering, yes, I did make it out to a Primanti Brothers restaurant while I was in the 'Burgh. If you haven't had a Primanti Brothers sandwich, you are missing out on one of the truly unique sandwich eating experiences. If you're not sure if you've had one, then you haven't. The sandwiches have been a staple in Pittsburgh since the 1930's. There are times where eating establishments or food companies will combine seemingly unrelated food products into one eat-it-simultaneously amalgamation with hopes that they are discovering the eating equivalent of plutonium. Sometimes the results are historically great, like when the dude accidentally plunked his chocolate in the other dude's peanut butter. VOILA! Reese's cups are born! Other times the results give you disastrously sharp stomach pains all day, like McDonald's deciding it would be a good idea to use miniature, maple saturated pancakes as the bread device for a breakfast sandwich. VOILA! The utterly horrific McGriddle is born, complete with complimentary Pepto Bismol.

Primanti's sandwich combination (freshly made cole slaw and french fries cut right in the store, along with your choice of meat and the best bread you will ever sink your teeth into) just works. There's no other way to put it. And like anything this gluttonous and messy, it's always better at around 2 in the morning with a twelver of Iron City beer coursing through your veins.

Me, I went with the roast beef. It's the old reliable, never disappoints. Got the lovely and talented Aubrey to flash the double rods as well. Viva La 'Burgh!!!

PRIMANTI BROTHERS - PITTSBURGH, PA
FOOD: ROAST BEEF SANDWICH (w/ slaw and fries)
GRADE: rock solid A

TUESDAY, JULY 8th (Part II) - Goodbye SEC, Hello West Virginia

Seeing as we are about to move forward with the northeast leg of my cross country road trip, allow me for a minute to summarize the part of the country through which I had driven up to Tuesday afternoon. To recap, I spent the first five days of my vacation traversing Louisiana, cutting through Mississippi on my way to Alabama, before making a sweet sojourn through Tennessee which begat a beautiful two day ride across Kentucky. Along the way, there were plenty of green mountains, friendly people, fine food, and beautiful women. This was virtually across the board, in the rural areas and in the cities. The college campuses I saw ranged from pleasantly quiet (Southern Miss) to SEC Awesome-riffic (Alabama, Kentucky). I bring this up because people who attended SEC schools -- those who earned their degrees and the remaining 90% who either dropped out, played sports, or didn't attend Vanderbilt -- are very parochial about SEC football and SEC country and how it is different than any other conference. Truth be told, I always rolled my eyes at it a little bit. I mean I know the football is great in the SEC, but good college towns are good college towns, or so I thought. And to some degree, that is the case. Ann Arbor and Austin have every bit the college cache as Tuscaloosa or Knoxville. But there are certain places where the difference between "SEC college town" and, well, "not an SEC college town" can become very pronounced. The trip from Kentucky through West Virginia is one of those places.

The drive through West Virginia itself, if done on the interstates, is nearly identical to driving through most of Tennessee and parts of Kentucky. It's very green, very hilly, and very rural. But get off the interstate in one of the cities with a major college (and in West Virginia, there's really only two -- Huntington which houses Marshall University, and Morgantown which houses criminals), and immediately you can tell that you're not in SEC country anymore.

In SEC country, football stadiums are majestic cathedrals, surrounded by meticulously manicured landscaping, reminding its fans that this is where the best of the best have brought them to a higher place on Saturdays for decades ...



















At Marshall, the football stadium is a reminder that Division I football is actually played amidst this cavalcade of generic urban squalor they call a college campus ....



















Clearly, one person who hasn't forgotten about Marshall football is Kaye from the Marshall bookstore, who had this to say when I brought up the rivalry with West Virginia ....
















When I told her that I would be going through Morgantown later that evening, she warned me not to "look at any of them cross eyed" or else I'd catch a beating, to which I replied "Why not? Won't most of them be looking at me cross eyed?" (Inbred jokes in West Virginia are like the 1st grade questions in "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" They're so easy that you aren't even really proud you nailed it, just relieved.) That said, Kaye got such a big belly laugh out of that burn on WVU, that I probably could have easily made out with her right then and there ... and if she were 30 years younger, I might have done that. Instead, I did the only logical thing ... squelched out her laughter by saying "What the hell are you laughing at lady?? You live in HUNTINGTON!! It's not like NASA is camped out here looking for future scientists ... " That crack on Kaye was not meant to disrespect the entire state of West Virginia, just the uneducated parts of it (or as I like to call it, "the other 99%").

And by the way, if you're wondering what I purchased at the Marshall bookstore, I purchased a Marshall Soccer t-shirt, in protest of former Marshall QB Chad Pennington getting $9M this season from the Jets (assuming they don't cut him) despite being able to barely outthrow my 10 year old daughter.

Just before getting back on the interstate to leave Huntington, I saw this final little piece of constructive brilliance. A Super 8 Motel built high atop some random hill just off the highway, with parking in front of the facility and no guardrail at the edge of the parking spaces. I have no empirical research to back this up, but I am going to put the over/under at 75% (and take the over) on the percentage of people pulling into a Super 8 Motel parking lot in Huntington, WV who have either (a) been drinking, (b) been using drugs, (c) haven't slept in 24 hours, (d) are shitty drivers, or (e) all of the above. I mean, isn't this a Faces of Death scene waiting to happen? That said, it is a pretty kick ass sledding hill in the wintertime if you get a nice snow cushion built up below the cement wall barricade at the bottom. So to review, in the world according to Sean Pendergast -- driving down this hill in an automobile because you were too impaired to properly park your rig, BAD .... sledding down this hill on a small piece of plastic shaped like a saucer with the only thing protecting your head being an old school Pittsburgh Steelers ski cap with a pom pom on top, GOOD. (And yes, I just made fun of West Virginians for being uneducated two paragraphs ago ... so what? You got a problem?)

I continued my journey through the Mountaineer State headed for Morgantown by dinnertime, all the while with the lyrics to "Country Roads" by John Denver ringing in my head. I could hear him singing "Almost heaven ... West Virginia", and I began to think that if this is really almost heaven maybe it's not so bad that I've committed all of these sins. In fact, maybe I should commit more sins, so I pulled over in Charleston, purchased a Playboy magazine (lust), read it at an all you can eat buffet (gluttony), went to a casino (greed), took a nap (sloth), killed a spider (wrath), became jealous of people with hair (envy), put on some cologne (pride) and jumped in the car to head to Morgantown, safe in my assumptions that my activities of the previous two hours (not to mention the previous 39 years) would be enough to keep me out of "almost heaven", let alone heaven itself.

I had spoken with my father just thirty minutes before arriving in Morgantown with his words still ringing in my head -- "Why in the hell are you stopping to spend the night in Morgantown?!?" I originally had not planned to; my rough draft on this leg of the trip had me arriving in Pittsburgh in time to see the Astros and the Pirates play on Tuesday night and Wednesday night. However, as the day wore on it became apparent that my late start combined with my "nooner" with the Mega-Ho in Lexington combined with torrential downpours the whole day were going to keep me from seeing my beloved 'Stros try and stay out of last place in the NL Central, at least on Tuesday. So Morgantown seemed like a proper stop on the tour, especially given the collegiate nature of my previous four stops (Baton Rouge, Tuscaloosa, Nashville, Lexington). I mean, maybe they had a Pac Man Jones/Chris Henry Reality Tour where you could ride around town and see the places they committed all of their felonious acts, narrated by the Morgantown Chief of Police.

So I pulled into Morgantown, and the closer I got to the WVU campus, the more I could see what my dad was talking about. Now keep in mind, my dad spent ten years in athletic administration at the University of Connecticut from 1998 through 2007, so his impressions of Morgantown are largely formulated from experiences where he had whiskey bottles jettisoned his way at WVU v UCONN football and basketball games. All of that said, I was thoroughly unimpressed with Morgantown. The roads around campus are all about ten feet wide and wind agonizingly through some of the most depressing "rurban" decay you will ever see. (NOTE: "Rurban" is my made up word combining "rural" and "urban". It's for areas that are in towns, but just hillbilly enough to where they have a rural feel to them. With demographic awareness like this, I'm sure Obama and McCain are on the edge of their seats to see which of them I will publicly endorse come November.)

Aesthetically, the campus itself was a blah 3.5 on a 1-10 scale, especially on the heels of seeing the great campuses of the SEC. Also, the campus was ultra-hilly, which I know sounds like nitpicking but there is something supremely depressing to me about a campus that has so many hills that walking or biking to class becomes a dreaded chore. I mean let's face it, I'll be the first to admit that walking or biking to class is a dreaded chore on the flattest of campuses (see Dame, Notre), so injecting 45 degree hills into the mix seems almost unfair.

So with nighttime rapidly approaching, I had a decision to make -- do I stay in Morgantown tonight, or do I keep on trucking to Pittsburgh, despite John Denver's contentions that West Virginia has "almost heaven" status? The decision was an easy one. I bolted. It came down to three things:

(1) Realizing that if this place was not good enough for Rich Rodriguez, who went to WVU, to stay then it certainly wasn't good enough for me to stay.

(2) Seeing this guy leaving a meeting for the gifted and talented students at Morgantown High School ...









(3)


The choice was easy. I pressed on, headed for that Pennsylvania state line. Made it to Pittsburgh around 10:00PM. Ironically, the Astros-Pirates game had multiple rain delays and didn't end until nearly 1:30 in the morning. So I got to stay up and watch the Astros blow a lead that they had held for nearly 6 hours. For this, I was bitter. However, the good news is I was not on a canoe in the outback of Appalachia. For this, I was grateful.

And I was going to PNC Park on Wednesday. For this I was grateful, too.

TUESDAY, JULY 8th (Part I) - The Good Kind of HO

Shortly after forfeiting an hour back to the time zone gods heading east, I arrived in Lexington, KY around 8:00PM Monday night 7/7. I could tell you that the reason I didn't do much in the way of partying in Lexington on Monday night was because school was not in session and without the college scene in full force, Lexington is just another sleepy little city in the middle of God's country. However, truth be told, after a weekend of eating, drinking, ogling, and laughing my way through the SEC, I needed a night of Chick-fil-A and WWE Monday Night Raw in my hotel room. This was not necessarily a bad thing, as I got to see the new WWE Champion C.M. Punk (pictured here at the Wrestlemania press conference in Houston on June 25th; he looks a little like the drunk trail cook in "City Slickers") in his first title defense, I got to eat the grilled chicken salad with extra Honey Dijon dressing which is one of my favorites, and I got to fully experience the Fairfield Inn-Lexington, which has two -- count 'em, TWO -- treadmills and a continental breakfast to die for. All in all, life was pretty good in Lexington.

It only got better on Tuesday as I was able to make my way over to campus and chalk up my digestive experience for this leg of the trip -- a swing by Tolly Ho's, a 24 hour eatery right across the street from one of the bookstores on campus. This little dive (and I mean that in the most flattering way) came highly recommended from one of my listeners, Kerry Guidry. Kerry is a lawyer, so I knew that not only was I about to get a good burger, but there was probably a decent chance that I would slip and fall somewhere in this joint and have a shot at a six figure "pain and suffering" settlement. Bonus! So I parked my car on the street, and walked over to Tolly Ho's, keeping a watchful eye for any potholes on Tolly Ho property into which I might be able to trip and fall.

You can see the awning over the front door in the picture above, and you may even be able to make out the slogan on the front flap. It says "A UK Tradition Since 1971". Do the math, they've been around for about 37 years. How do you stay in business that long in the "greasy spoon" business? Well, the immediate knee jerk answer is "you cook great food", and I suppose that's partially true. But in Kentucky, you also can't get too caught up in modern technology. In other words, when new video games come out, if the ones you already have ain't broke, then don't swap 'em out. I can only assume this is the philosophy of the King Ho at Tolly Ho's because the first thing you notice about this place is it's decided 1984 feel, complete with all of your arcade favorites (multiple pinball machines, Galaga, Centipede, Ms. Pac Man, and yes the original Donkey Kong). I was half expecting Stacy from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" to come out and take my order, and for Damone to be selling Blue Oyster Cult tickets over by Space Invaders. Hell, even the TV in the upper corner of the room was playing "Days of Our Lives" and the character getting major screen time was "Bo" (portrayed in all of his worse-than-porn-acting glory by Peter Reckell), who was one of the main characters back during the Reagan Administration. To bring the 1980's references full circle, it was like I stepped out of a Delorean into the year 1985.

After resisting the temptation to drop about five dollars in Dig Dug, I strolled up to the counter to place my order. Knowing that the specialty of Tolly Ho's is their burger, I asked if there was any burger in particular that I should sample. The shapely tomcat behind the counter told me that I should choose between (from smallest to largest) the Tolly-Ho, the Super-Ho, and the Mega-Ho. (Basically, the difference between each was that with each level of Ho you went up, another 1/4 lb beef patty got added. There's a metaphor for something in there.) So in honor of most of my formal dates in college (if one of you is reading this, I don't mean you, I mean the other skanks), I went with the Mega-Ho. Three all beef patties of artery clogging goodness, topped with three slices of cheese, ketchup, mayo, mustard, lettuce, onions, tomato. Total fat grams, who cares? I'm on vacation.

I texted Kerry to let him know of my whereabouts and that I went with the Mega-Ho as my choice. He replied in about 30 seconds with a long soliloquy on how he and his buddies always ate there when they were drunk at three in the morning, and finished off the text message with "God, I miss the Ho." Indeed, Kerry. Don't we all ....

Kerry also told me to be sure to convey to the cashier that I am a "virgin ho", which I happily did even if that's the biggest lie this side of Roger telling us Andy misremembered. Well, apparently the phrase "virgin ho" has nothing to do with my sketchy intimacy track record, instead it is a moniker for those who are experiencing Tolly Ho's culinary delights for the first time. What did my status as "virgin ho" net me? Well, when it came time for me to pick up my order from the counter, the announcement that my burger was ready was adjoined with a spirited proclamation from the cashier as to my maiden voyage status into the world of ho-ism. The only thing missing was Jim Ross proclaiming that "GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY BUSINESS IS BY GOD ABOUT TO PICK UP!!"

After sheepishly waving at the other five patrons in the Ho (whose reactions ranged from indifferent to nonplussed) as if I were receiving an Academy Award, I took my tray back to my seat and dove into the Mega-Ho ... not unlike the Christmas Formal at Notre Dame back in 1989. Of course, my dates then never looked this beautiful ....

The key with any Mega-Ho (the burger or otherwise) is toasting the buns. The difference in taste when you have a Mega-Ho whose buns are toasted is palatable, noticeable, and quite frankly, a gift from the heavens. I will never, ever have a Mega-Ho with soft, squishy, uncooked buns. Ever.

You might think that it took me a while to down that tower of cholesterol you see to the left of this text. As Red in "The Shawshank Redemption" might say, I wish I could tell you that Sean fought the good fight, and that the Mega-Ho let him be. I wish I could tell you he didn't drop ten bucks into Donkey Kong and Q-bert. I wish I could tell you that - but Tolly Ho's ain't no fairy tale world.

TOLLY HO'S - LEXINGTON, KY
FOOD: THE MEGA-HO BURGER
GRADE: A+++

MONDAY, JULY 7th - Meeting Youtube's Chosen One

(EDITOR'S NOTE: I know I am a few days behind on the vacation updates. That was bound to happen when (a) my kids arrived on the scene in Pittsburgh and (b) I became stuck at the Connecticut shore with an internet connection whose speed falls somewhere between "GLACIAL" and "CARLOS LEE". Consider these last few days the equivalent of when Mission Control wouldn't hear from Apollo 13 for a few days while they were orbiting the back side of the moon. I disappeared while orbiting Old Lyme, CT, but now I'm back. My goal is to be all caught up in the next couple days. Enjoy the ride.)

It was with a hangover-induced haze that I left Nashville on Monday morning, wondering how I could possibly top a weekend which included a tour of a distillery, a cheeseburger called "The Gamble", and thought-provoking conversation with the drummer for an 80's hair band. Normally the task of topping that weekend would be impossible. But I was heading to Russellville, KY to meet the Youtube Legend (yes, I capitalized the word "Legend"), Kige Ramsey.

Kige Ramsey. If you don't know anything about Kige, click here for a pretty good Cliffs Notes synopsis of his work on Youtube. He is a third year student at Western Kentucky (although he says he may be taking this semester off), a video generating machine, and an internet sensation (see Hall of Fame nomination, Deadspin).



He doesn't shy away from any topics, whether it's Nicole Richie's "anorexic" ....



or a public service announcement on how to safely deploy bottle rockets.



He doesn't shy away from the spotlight, he embraces it.



THE MEETING

"Every once in a while, a person comes along who defies the odds, who defies logic and fulfills an incredible dream."

These were words actually uttered by the mayor of Philadelphia in Rocky III before presenting the now famous statue of Rocky Balboa with his hands raised over his head at the top of the steps of the Art Museum in Philadelphia.

I would argue that a similar ceremony could easily be held in Russellville in front of Roy's Bar-b-que emceed by the mayor of Russellville speaking about Kige with a statue of Kige wrapped in a Kentucky Wildcats banner. (I am assuming that there is no Russellville Art Museum, otherwise they could hold the ceremony there. I am assuming there is a mayor of Russellville.)

It was at Roy's Bar-B-Que that I finally met the near Deadspin Hall of Famer for lunch before making our way over to Youtube Sports World Headquarters for an afternoon of spirited discussion regarding the future of the broadcasting industry. I am firmly of the opinion that you know you're at an establishment that's serious about its craft when they decide to abbreviate syllables (or sometimes entire words) by using one letter as a replacement. Toys-R-Us .... Stop N Go ... In N Out Burger ... Roy's Bar-B-Que. It's almost as if they've built up so much street cred they're saying "Yeah, we know the whole syllable is actually "be". But we're gonna stick it to THE MAN! Just the letter B and that's all you get!! F-YOU!!!" Who am I to argue? As long as the food is good, they can spell it in Japanese for all I care.

And oh yes, the food was good. I got a pulled pork sandwich where they actually used cornbread as the bread for the sandwich, making it the second most fattening bread for a sandwich behind the Double Bypass Burger at the Vortex Diner in Atlanta! (Yes, those are grilled cheese sandwiches...) It was awesome. The place takes its Kentucky hoops seriously, too, as the wall pictured here is just one of about ten walls covered in UK memorabilia.

I met Kige and his dad, Butch, there for lunch around 1:00PM on Monday. Perhaps thinking that being the "dude who does those Youtube videos at Walmart" would establish some modicum of local celebrity for Kige, I expected many of the Russellvillians to come by our table and pay respects to him as if he were Vito Corleone on his daughter's wedding day. ("Don Ramsey, I am honored and grateful that you are eating barbecue in our home on the day you are recording videos about boating safety and the NBA Draft. And may your first child be a masculine child...") But alas and ironically, Kige's fame appears to have far greater traction around the country than it does in his very own home town as we ate and conversed uninterrupted for over an hour. I will chalk this up to the strong possibility that Kige is the only resident in Russellville with access to the internet, and therefore the rest of the town has not yet seen his videos. It's the only plausible explanation.

THE TOUR

After getting a stroll around the restaurant to gaze at the walls and get my education on all things Kentucky hoops, we zipped up the bypass road to the Youtube Sports World Headquarters, or as Kige's parents like to call it "our house". I was pretty honored to be the second sports media personality to get the tour of these world class facilities. (Deadspin Associate Editor Clay Travis has the good fortune of being the answer to the trivia question "Who was the first?" See Kige's interview with Clay here and here.) It was at HQ that I completed the Ramsey parental exacta and met Kige's mother, Rhonda. Kige's mom is a college basketball freak, and when I found out that she hates Duke, we became total BFF. (That's Best Friends Forever, for those of you who don't text message.)

The studio where Kige films a majority of his videos is called the "Raymond Ramsey Studio", named after his dad (who goes by "Butch" but is named "Raymond"). The RR Studio may or may not be a converted broom closet. The room is a whole lot smaller in actuality than it appears in the Kige videos, which is ironic because at 6'5" Kige is a lot bigger in actuality than he appears in the videos. Big is small, small is big ... it's like Casa de Ramsey is some sort of funhouse at the Jersey shore.

With its trademarked wood paneling, the RR Studio has a definitive 1973 feel -- warm, yet trippy. Truth be told, Kige's parents both indicated they would like to do away with the paneling and bring that room into the 21st century, but Kige fears a backlash among his viewers, many of whom have commented on how much they enjoy the wood paneling. At one point, legend has it that Kige threw himself in front of a wrecking ball to keep the wood paneling intact. That's how much he loves all of you.

Kige has basically imposed the will of Youtube Sports on his parents and their home, as his bedroom is no longer a "bedroom". It's the "production room". The living room is now the "viewing room". The kitchen is the "green room" (Indeed, the kitchen is where Rhonda gave me a bottled water and applied my makeup before doing my interview in the Raymond Ramsey Studio.). You get the idea. Kige is a force of nature that can only be stopped by his parents decorative choices and Youtube limiting the number of uploads a user can have.

While Kige formulated his interview questions for me, I chatted with his parents and his uncle Steve about sports, the South, my brief radio career and life in general. I will say that you will not meet nicer people than the Ramseys -- genuinely warm people who were very interested in my trip and my story. Kige's dad is battling cancer right now and the day we got together he was doing well; he was in between treatment weeks. Certainly, keep him and Kige's whole family in your thoughts and prayers.

THE INTERVIEW

Before departing for Lexington, I was finally able to cross off "interview with Kige Ramsey at Youtube Sports HQ" from my bucket list. Hell yeah ....

GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY!!! THAT'S .....

.... THE PENDERKIDS THEME MUSIC!!!!





More blog posts coming later tonight...

SUNDAY, JULY 6th (Part VI) - Music City Miracle

When you hit the road on a vacation like this by yourself, it's good to have a few stops along the way where you know a friendly face. I say it's even better when the friendly face is a good looking woman. And when that good looking woman has good looking friends, well it's damn near perfection. Oh wait, AND they all like to party? Well, looks like Nirvana has been achieved. It is with this preface that we arrive at the Nashville leg of my trip.

Fresh off my unplanned afternoon with sobriety in Lynchburg, "NashVegas" was the perfect stop to remind myself of what it was like to bat my liver around like an old tennis ball. Fortunately, Heather Venesile, a good friend and a former co-worker of mine in my previous non-radio life (far left in the picture here), lives in the Nashville area and was kind enough to provide me with a chaperone and shelter for the evening. Like me, Heather is someone who decided that life is too short to sell maintenance contracts on telephone systems and decided to chase her dream of becoming a famous jazz singer. Akron, OH was not big enough for both her and LeBron, so she loaded up the truck and headed to Nashville. For a sampling of some of her work, you can click here. Or check out the video below from the BlueBird in Nashville. She can get after it.




So I arrived in Nashville around dinnertime on Sunday. I came into the city on 2nd Avenue just a few blocks away from LP Field, home of the Tennessee Titans. For the first noticeable time on my trip, I really missed having my kids with me; I mean it would've been one of those beautiful father-son moments to be able to tell them "Kids, there's LP Field ... that's where Vince Young barely cracks a 70.0 QB rating every week!" And then they could gaze out the window and act impressed .... "Whooooaaaa ..... coooooool ..... "

I pulled into one of those parking lots where you walk over to the computerized parking attendant machine, put in some money and it spits out a receipt that you leave on the dashboard. That's the new wave of parking lot commerce. All I could think about was all of the poor parking lot attendants that this machine has rendered jobless. I mean sure it's probably less costly for the owner of the lot to run his business by using a receipt-spewing computer to handle the cash, but I miss that personal touch of pulling into the lot and having Ahmed or Gus indifferently grunt at me while I hand them a twenty spot to leave my car in their midst for a few hours. The times they are a-changin'...

With my car parked safely under the watchful eye of Wall-E the parking droid, I walked around the corner to Broadway Street to head over to Rippy's, which is a bar that has some good BBQ and live music. Actually, every bar on Broadway Street has music, and most of it is live. It's like Broadway is one big iPod, with every genre of music represented somewhere on that street. Even those of you who like shitty ten minute dance club beats with the same lyric repeated over and over 150 times can find a home in NashVegas! All inclusive, baby!

I went up to the balcony at Rippy's and was greeted by Heather's friendly face and was pleased to make the acquaintance of her boyfriend/producer, Mike. I wondered what that must be like to date your producer, and decided that I probably would not go ahead and find out for myself any time soon. I mean, my producer Kyle is a good dude and all, but all things being equal, I'll wait until they promote one of our hot female interns to producer before I decide to go down that road.

As Mike, Heather and I split a combo rib/onion ring/wing platter, we gazed across the street at the Sommet Center, which is Nashville's big indoor arena (home of their NHL team and where a lot of big concerts come in). The billboard was flashing with a chronological list of all of the upcoming events, including a Poison/Dokken/Sebastian Bach show coming on Tuesday, July 8. One of us (um, I'm not sure who) made a comment about how that would be a cool show to go to; it may or may not have been me who said it ... I'm just saying. No sooner had that sentiment been expressed when the middle aged fellow next to us at the bar said "I'm playing in that show". I would've called bullshit on him except this dude looked like he played in an 80's hair metal band -- long, scraggly, blonde hair ... laid back, glazed look in his eyes ... I mean, he seemed legit.

He introduced himself as "Jeff Martin, the drummer for Dokken". Now if this were 1986, I'd have happily believed him, bought him a drink, and begin to scramble to remember one Dokken song so I could converse with him for more than 30 seconds. However, in 2008, I'm older, wiser, and more jaded. I did what any self-respecting 30-something male would do -- I pulled out my blackberry and said "Hold on, dude. I need to look you up on Wikipedia." So I did just that, and I have to admit I was hoping against hope that he was legit. Because let's face it, sitting and drinking whiskey with the drummer from Dokken makes for a much better story than sitting next to some dude pretending he was from Dokken. Well, much to my glee, Jeff Martin was legit ... unless it was a lookalike posing as Jeff Martin, but I don't think that's the case. That would be like someone posing as Wesley Wright. "Who?", you're asking (if you're not an Astros fan). "Exactly", I reply.

I was giddy. I mean, when my brother Kevin and I would crack on hair metal bands back in the day and we had to come up with a random one to punctuate our jokes, we always used Dokken as our go-to random metal band. I can't name one of their songs, but I can now name one of their band members! JEFF FREAKING MARTIN!! HELL YEAH!!

So for the next two hours, we proceeded to get ripped with Jeff. The drinks and the Bret Michaels stories were flowing freely, to the point where Jeff had almost convinced our bartender, the lovely Merritt (pictured to the left giving double rods) to cancel her vacation plans which were slated to start on Monday so that she could come to the show on Tuesday and meet Bret Michaels. I don't know if she ever did end up canceling her vacation, but the big board had "YES" as a solid -150 when we left later that night. Jeff was quick to want to take pictures of Merritt because apparently Bret Michaels has some sort of finder's fee that he passes along to other band/tour members who are able to bring in the most, uh, talented "fans". And we're not talking some Michael Scott finder's fee like Chili's coupons either. We're talking legit four figure payouts. I started thinking that if those drones in the Lottery Oasis at the state line were smart, they'd stop buying 50 scratch-n-wins and head to Nashville to try and find Bret Michaels a few pieces of ass. I think the odds and the payouts might be better.

It was time to wrap things up at Rippy's so we said our good byes to Jeff. He asked me if I needed tickets to the show on Tuesday, and I responded casually with "Nah, I gotta head out of here tomorrow to go do some videos in Russellville, Kentucky with Kige Ramsey." Probably not completely familiar with Kige's work, Jeff nodded his head and in a tone of voice that would indicate he was somewhat impressed said, "Sweeeet". I nodded my head and said "Yeah, it's cool man", acting like I was getting ready to film the lead role in the next Ironman movie ... when in fact, I was getting ready to film two three minute videos in my man Kige's wood panel studio at his parent's house. That's how I roll.

The rest of the night was gravy. Heather, myself, and her lovely friends Anne and Whitney (pictured at the top of this post with Heather flashing double rods) consumed many drinks and endured many crappy ten minute dance mixes at another bar down the street whose name escapes me. The music there was mind numbingly brutal, loud, and repetitive. Now if they had played some Dokken .... now that would've been totally sweet.

TENNESSEE LOTTERY UPDATE

Well, looks like I'll have to come home from vacation next week as planned. My lottery dreams were dashed tonight. That sucks, I really wanted to cash that $20M check and then tell John Granato what I really think of him. Dammit.

For those scoring at home, the winning numbers were 5-7-31-49-53 and Powerball was 14.

Now if you remember, I played the Houston special which was 5 (Bagwell), 7 (Biggio), 17 (Puma), 22 (Clyde), 45 (Rudy T) and Powerball was 34 (Hakeen-Earl-Ryan trifecta).

So if you're keeping track, the only Houston icons that came through in the clutch for me were Bagwell and Biggio, which is ironic on so many levels (Signed, the 1998 MLB Playoffs). Well, you know, when the Tennessee lottery beats you, you just have to tip your cap and come back and spend a dollar on this Saturday's drawing.

Hard to get too pissed about losing the Tennessee lottery. I'm pretty sure the owner of this lovely Tennessee spread didn't win either. I feel a little better about myself.