Nashvillest

• Crime is down in Nashville for the fifth year straight! Go us. [City Paper]
• Titans fans are kind of pissed that the fans of opposing teams seem to be the only ones getting tickets for the games. But have no fear for the playoffs- Kroger’s giving them away all over town! [WKRN]
• If going downtown and buying a 40 is your idea of a good time, you may be out of luck. [Tennessean]
• Was your copy of the Tennessean late this morning? You can blame it on the suspicious package delivered to their office last night. Oh wait, does anyone still read the paper on paper? [Tennessean]
• News flash: Someone thinks the TVA did a shoddy job of monitoring the Kingston ash pond. [WTVF]

Photo by macwagen.

Paramount’s Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular hits Nashville this Friday night, and it’s bound to be the most hallucinatory experience of your New Year. Or at least your week. Or maybe not hallucinatory at all, but at least pretty trippy and slightly cool. The 23-year-old laser show claims to present the music of Pink Floyd in a completely different light (no pun intended). Tickets are available for $27 and $29, and the show is at TPAC at 8pm on Friday. 

Photo from laserspectacular.com.

Those smirking hybrid owners zipping around during the Great Gas Crisis Of Aught Eight, or when the Great Gas Prices Topped $5 In Aught Eight, may be a little less smirky now that gas prices have settled in under $2 for a little while. But fear not, oh smirking Prius driver - now you can drive in the HOV lane, even if you’re commuting solo. You are superior once again! But before you fly past traffic on I-65 during rush hour today, take some time to apply for your HOV Smart Pass, a bright green sticker that you must affix to your shiny hybrid before you have the right to ride in the HOV lane. And not all hybrids qualify, nay, most hybrids do not qualify. Click here to see if your hybrid is on the list of qualifying low-emission vehicles. [via the Tennessean]

What puzzles us is that the state is only printing 650 SmartPass decals to start, and we feel like we see about 650 hybrids in the Hill Center every day. (We kid, we kid - We’re just picking on hybrid owners because we’re jealous that we can’t afford them.)

• A hospital in Johnson City successfully delivered a set of twins who are joined at the belly button. The girls are currently at the Vandy Children’s Hospital in stable condition awaiting surgery to separate them. [WTVF]
• Illinois governor RoD Blagojevich’s Nashvillian brother RoB Blagojevich (*whew*) says he’s totally not planning on cooperating with federal investigators if they ask him to. [Tennessean]
• Heckethorn Manufacturing in Dyersburg is scaling back considerably by laying off nearly half of its workforce. [WTVF]
• Monsoon? Ice storm? Which will it be!? Unfortunately, probably just rain for us in Nashville. You better believe we’ll be doing our best snow dance at the Nashvillest HQ tonight, though. [WTVF]
• Be careful out there on the roads since apparently 1 in every 5 Tennessean drivers is cruising around without car insurance. [WKRN]
• Repair crews are working around the clock to spruce up LP Field, which sounds like it’s kind of falling apart. Here’s hoping for a playoff game without any major power outages! The Titans will be playing the Baltimore Ravens this Saturday. [WSMV]
• News Channel 5 tries to explain what exactly the English Only charter initiative means for Nashville if it passes. [WTVF]

Photo by edyson.

To the guy picking his nose in the black Ford behind me: Stop it. - 99 (Nashville)

Yesterday, while at a red light on Bell Road, I caught you in my rearview mirror. You were trying to remove an obstruction, possibly grape or grapefruit-sized from your left nostril. I don’t know if you could see my reaction in my mirror but I had quite a repulsed look on my face.

You realize your windows are clear, correct? Stop it. There are others in Bell Road traffic who can see you and some of us may be on our way to lunch. Good luck eating after watching you push your entire hand up your nose. “I’ll just have water,” they’ll say upon sitting down at the restaurant. “But, you said you were so hungry you could eat a horse, earlier,” their dining companion will say. “True. I was super hungry about 20 minutes ago. Then, I was stuck next to this guy in a black Ford on Bell Road who absolutely could not take his fist out of his nose. I’m just really queasy right now. I might be able to choke down a Saltine.”

If you simply MUST pick your nose (sans Kleenex), please wait until you get home. No, that does not mean start digging on your front porch, in plain sight. It means, open the door, close it behind you, proceed down the hall and into the bathroom. Upon entering your bathroom, you might consider closing that door behind you, too. Then, dig as long and as hard as you want. If your cat has followed you into the bathroom, please gently set her in the hall before digging. No creature should have to witness what I caught you doing.

Photo by Mike “Dakinewavamon” Kline.

In the current issue of Garden & Gun Magazine, they list 100 Southern Foods You Absolutely, Positively Must Try Before You Die, and Nashville is, interestingly enough, home to a whopping four, plus a couple sorta-Nashville spots too (edited at 12:40pm, thanks to Paul Nicholson for the correction). What Nashville delicacies does Garden & Gun deem worthy of their list? It may come as no surprise that the Hot Fried Chicken at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack made the cut, but Nashville’s other claims to fame on the list are as follows:

• Pork Neck Bones ‘n Rice from Silver Sands 
• Hot Fish Sandwich at Bolton’s Spicy Chicken Shack
• Fried Green Tomatoes at Arnold’s Country Kitchen
• The Redneck Taco at Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint in Nolensville
• Praise The Lard Biscuits at Beacon Light Tearoom in Bon Aqua

And what do they have to say about these Southern delights?  Good question.

Hot Fried Chicken
Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack
Nashville, Tennessee
I fear the apocalyptic burn of the skillet-cooked and cayenne-swabbed chicken dished by Andre Prince Jeffries the way I fear the wrath of the Lord. So should you. One taste of a Prince’s drumstick rouses me from a twelve-pack stupor. (615-226-9442)

Pork Neck Bones and Rice
The Sands
Nashville, Tennessee
A steam-table warhorse, dishing gut-punch eats for twenty-first-century field hands, the Sands excels at pot food, like cartilaginous neck bones with a stout and soulful gravy, served over white rice or sauerkraut, sopped by buttermilk flatbread or hot-water cornbread. (615-742-1652)

Redneck Taco
Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint
Nolensville, Tennessee
I don’t like the slur, but I love the sandwich. How to do it the way Pat Martin does it: Take an oversize hoecake. Pile it high with threads of hickory-smoked whole hog. Gild the whole of it with slaw and sauce. Rake in the acclaim. (martinsbbqjoint.com; 615-776-1856)

Hot Fish Sandwich
Bolton’s Spicy Chicken and Fish
Nashville, Tennessee
Most hot-fish vendors fry whiting fillets, stack them on mustard-swabbed white bread, pile on pickle and onion slices, and dribble hot sauce. But Bolton Matthews and Dollye Ingram drag their fish through a hail of “secret” spices that taste suspiciously like straight-up cayenne. Sniff before you bite, and a six-sneeze fit follows.

Fried Green Tomatoes
Arnold’s Country Kitchen
Nashville, Tennessee
That’s craggy Jack Arnold, wearing a foulard bow tie and overalls, shuttling pans of collard greens from the kitchen. His wife, Rose, works the register, dealing butter pats from her cornbread deck, pouring sweet tea by the gallon. Kahlil, their son, a hipster with a megawatt smile, runs his knife through a haunch of garlic-studded roast beef, draping slices onto plates heaped with creamed potatoes and braised collards, spooning oily jus over all. Set in a cinderblock building on the industrial fringe of downtown Nashville, the Arnold family restaurant sets the standard for Southern meat-n-threes. Button-down bureaucrats on a break from paper pushing. Tar-splattered roofers. Bed-headed Vanderbilt coeds craving a taste of home. All slide their trays along the steam-table track, angling for an order of herb-battered fried green tomatoes. Fresh from the oil, sour-sweet, and brittle as can be, they taste like indictments of the lowest-common-denominator norm. (615-256-4455)

Praise the Lard Biscuits
Beacon Light Tea Room
Bon Aqua, Tennessee
They stew down preserves every week, apple in the fall, blueberry in the summer. Preserves, however, are mere gilding for the biscuits. Silver dollar size and lard cut, they arrive, six to the order, in wicker baskets, begging to be ravished with butter. (931-670-3880)

Good morning, Nashville. So Tim McGraw, Michael W. Smith, and the Jonas Brothers walked into a bar… Sounds like the start of a bad joke, doesn’t it? It’s actually not too far from what happened last night–except instead of a bar, it was the Ryman Auditorium. The Jonas Brothers performed to a sold-out crowd alongside a hodgepodge of “special guests” including Smith, McGraw, Faith Hill, Jordin Sparks, Steven Curtis Chapman, Amy Grant, Vince Gill, Martina McBride, Brad Paisley, and Phil Vassar. We hate to admit this, but we kind of wish we were there.

• TVA could be at fault. New reports have shown that the Tennessee Valley Authority may have refused some pretty major repairs that would have likely prevented the coal ash spill that damaged and destroyed over a dozen homes, spewed mercury and arsenic all over the land, and probably leached into the river.
• TIMMY 4 PREZ!!1 Much to the surprise of pretty much everyone, former US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist won’t actually be running for governor. With the major competition out of the way, we’re already calling Tim McGraw’s victory in 2010.
• Bits & pieces. The Metro Action Commission is now adopting the first-come-first-serve approach when it comes to doling out energy assistance … Congrats to our friends at NoiseTrade who gave away their 1 millionth download over the weekend … Volkswagen bumps back its groundbreaking date until March … Rain, rain, go away!

Photo by Roger Gordon.

• Jack Black has been practicing his square dancing, should the occasion arise for him to perform at the Grand Ole Opry. And we quote, “I think I’ve got some hillbilly in my roots.” Yeehaw? [WSMV]
• 900 people were not hungover energetic enough on Thursday morning to participate in the annual New Years Resolution Run. That’s 900 people. 900! [WKRN]
• The cost of specialty license plates has gone up $1 this year, bringing the grand total for a specialty license plate registration to $117.50. [WSMV]
• Arsenic levels elevated to 149 times the maximum acceptable level have been found near the TVA ash spill. Also found were other yummy things like elevated lead, beryllium, cadmium and chromium levels. [WSMV]

Here’s a good story. The Village Cleaners sign in Hillsboro Village is our favorite sign in Nashville. We drive by it several times a week, and have always wished that someone would snap a shot for Nashvillest. Congrats to Grey Street Girl for reading our minds! 

Good morning, Nashville. Welcome to our first (real) post of ‘09! Speaking of firsts in ‘09, we welcomed the year’s first newborn Nashvillian at 12:05am yesterday at Baptist Hospital. Welcome to town, Marquaz Deon Thomas, Jr. 

• A year of firsts. A bill banning texting while driving has been reintroduced this year, after a similar draft of the bill dying last year.  
• Count ‘em. Metro Law Department has backed the initiative to introduce mandatory calorie counts on restaurant menus, giving the green light to the Board of Health to go ahead with their vote in February. 
• Bits & pieces. A 17 year old girl kidnapped from her Alabama home earlier this week has been found safe in Murfreesboro … An unfortunate fire on New Years Day left a Westmoreland family with nothing to start the new year … A horse-mounted Metro police officer was hit with a car shortly after midnight on New Years (well, sort of).