Despite the bipolar weather making us sniffly and scratchy-throated, we’re planning to enjoy the last weekend before Christmas by staying as far away from malls as we can. Our condolences go out to those who have waited too long and will be spending most of their weekend stuck in traffic in Cool Springs, Green Hills or Opry Mills (but we’ll be gloating a little, too). If you’re headed out of town this weekend, travel safely and enjoy your vacation!
FRIDAY
Autovaughn with Elevation & Ricky Young (Exit/In, 9pm): Autovaughn is back in town tonight and they’re playing the Exit/In for $7 or something. It’s a cheap show and it’ll be pretty sweet, and it’s something to do with your Friday night!
Wassail on tap at Yazoo! (All weekend): Yazoo has brewed up a dark, spicy wassail that will be on tap this weekend. Fill up those growlers!
Tennessee Rep presents The Santaland Diaries (2:30pm, 7:30pm): Last chance to catch The Santaland Diaries this year is also on Saturday. Good thing they have an early show and a late show, so those procrastinators among us can catch the play and the symphony too.
SUNDAY
Trans-Siberian Orchestra (Sommet Center, 3pm & 7:30pm): Tickets to this one are surprisingly affordable (if you get the crappy seats) at $20 each. We’ve seen them before and paid a pretty penny, but it’s totally worth it.
MONDAY
Okay, okay… it’s not the weekend. But for the remaining two Mondays of the year, the Frist Center is offering free admission with any canned good donation to Second Harvest Food Bank.
East Academy, one of Nashville’s most beloved private schools, is having some financial difficulties and may be going belly-up at the end of the semester. So if you can throw a few bucks their way, they need all the help they can get! And they’ll probably love you forever. Thanks to Megan C. for the tip!
Hey, did you know that Billy Ray Cyrus is the reason the Titans keep winning? He’s saying that every time he plays that new song of his, “Back To Tennessee,” before a game, they win. The one time he didn’t, they lost. Dream on, Billy Ray. [Tennessean]
The teen whose drunk driving resulted in the death of a Nashville man on his way home from Shelbyville last week will face charges. [WSMV]
The judge presiding over the case of the Raconteur who screwed his girlfriend out of a house she supposedly helped pay for refused the rocker’s request to dismiss it. [Tennessean]
From the genius minds that brought you this year’s CMApocalypse “Redneck” Hotel Package (that’s a bag of pork rinds and a pack of PBR) so tourists far and wide could “live like a local,” we bring you Hotel Preston’s most recent value hotel package: The “Let’s Get It On - And Make A Baby” package. It comes complete with some clean sheets, some fruit and wine, a rental movie, bubble bath, tranquility candles & music, and the book What To Expect When You’re Expecting. But hurry! This package is only available through the 30th, so there will be no babymaking at the Hotel Preston on New Years Eve.
Good morning, Nashville. As you may have noticed, we’re running a little behind today! We’re sorry about that and we promise we’ll be back in business tomorrow. Meanwhile, a super-short edition of Bright & Early:
Alright, which one of you clowns swiped the two mounted caribou heads from the folks at Tennessee Tech? They want ‘em back. [WSMV]
After Mindy McCready’s umpteenth suicide attempt, the Tennessean has decided they’re done writing stories about Mindy McCready for a while. [Tennessean]
Statistics are showing that a good portion of unemployed Tennesseans are just giving up. That’s not who we are, Tennessee! We will beat this! [Tennessean]
In fact, our unemployment rate actually went DOWN last month. [WSMV]
We’re noticing a pattern this year… Food banks are running out of food. [WTVF]
Some criminals drove a van through the front door of the Food Lion on Murfreesboro Road last night. Points for creativity, though probably not for stealthiness. [WSMV]
Former Senator Rosalind Kurita, whose state senate seat fell victim to a nasty heist by her own party a few months back, is now being slapped with $6,000 in fines for various campaign finance violations. Not exactly a banner year. [WTVF]
The Tennessean almost gives us its top photos of the year, which would have been a really cool thing to look at. And by “almost,” we mean there’s a headline but no content. D’oh! [Tennessean]
City officials in the ‘Noog are reeling after finding out that an employee faked breast cancer to collect donations of money and vacation time from coworkers. The 37-year old woman, Keele Maynor, finally came clean but says she has no idea why she did it. [WTVF]
The governor wants to hold off on his budget address for a few months while Congress figures out a possible economic stimulus package for states. If it passes, state departments may only have to cut 8% instead of the anticipated 15% from their budgets. [WSMV]
We want to preface this video with a short trip down memory lane. Once upon a time, the Nashville Convention & Visitors Bureau held a contest you may remember called the Flip Side of Nashville which was intended to showcase the many different kinds of music that come out of Nashville besides country. The instructions were simple: Make a video “expressing the alternative side of Nashville’s music scene” and submit to Youtube. Unfortunately, the number and quality of entries didn’t quite meet the expectations of the bureau, as they were offering over 1,000 prizes and only 8 videos were in the Youtube group by the original deadline. Extending the deadline helped a little, but not enough to salvage it from being a pretty massive flop (which still gave us some wonderful gems). Oh, and did we mention the part where the Grand Prize was a round-trip to Nashville? For a contest in Nashville? So there was that.
Well, they pulled a winner from the final pool of 15 videos, may or may not have actually doled out the prize, and we didn’t hear much more about it. Until now. We’ve gotten wind that the bureau has produced a video of its own to use, which we’re guessing is what they were trying to avoid by delegating it to the rest of us with the contest. It’s really long, chock full of some beautiful aerial shots of the city, features a pretty special song by the Gabe Dixon Band, and already debuted on GAC over the weekend. So without further ado, we bring you “Music City Calls Us Home.”
Happy holidays from Nashvillest and Nashville Citipass! We have five 2009 Nashville Citipass books to give out to random readers, so now’s your time to shine. Leave us a comment to enter (any comment will do) and we will pick five random winners to receive a 2009 Citipass book.
The Nashville Citipass books are full of coupons and discounts at over 300 Nashville restaurants, museums and shops - over $14,000 in savings! Most of the coupons are Buy 1, Get 1 Free type deals. And if you don’t win, they’re running a Christmas special to get two books for the price of one. They’re perfect gifts for those hard-to-shop-for folks.
We will choose our winners at 6pm tomorrow (Friday), so leave your comment any time before then!
Good morning, Nashville. Just when we think things are starting to get dull around here, we find out that in between slicing and dicing the state budget, Governor Phil has been doodling around. Literally. We’d heard about his recent interview with Esquire magazine about what he’d learned in his life (you know, don’t schedule things before noon, Memphis dry ribs are the best food ever, etc.) but we didn’t realize that he’d actually drawn a picture of himself for the article. He says he’s artsy and we sort of believe him, but our minds are running wild with the possibilities of what this could look like. So if anyone has the magazine scan, please please PLEASE share. We promise we’ll post it.
Shake shake shake. The ground shook again beneath Tennessee yesterday evening. Just a few minutes after 7pm EST, a 2.9-magnitude earthquake happened about 16 miles northeast of Knoxville. Though it was small, people did apparently feel it. It’s also one of several small quakes to rock the state in the past few months.
Uh, did you get that memo? The State Finance Commissioner sent out a memo yesterday telling each state department to find a way to cut almost 15% out of its budget. The cuts hope to offset the state’s projected $1 billion shortfall over the next two years. The only exception seems to be the Department of Corrections, which was only asked to eliminate 6%.
Bits & pieces. A female student at Stratford High School tells the police she was raped during school hours … Burglaries are up in East Nashville, so be sure you lock up … The Nashville Scenequestions the tactics of the English Only opposition … Austin Peay is putting together a whole new degree program in preparation for training folks to work at the new Hemlock Semiconductor plant in Clarksville.
Heartwarmer for the day: The Snowball Express, a program that sends families to Disneyland that have lost a loved one in the war, pulled through Nashville this week–not by train, but by plane. American Airlines donated 1,400 tickets to families, many of whom shipped out from BNA. [WKRN]
Vince Young has his panties all in a twist because someone in Texas tried to copyright the phrases “VY” and “INVINCEABLE” back in 2006, so he’s filing a lawsuit. [Tennessean]
Congrats to Taylor Swift, who sold the most records of any other country artist in 2008! We only wish we were that ambitious at 19. [Tennessean]
A few dozen suspicious packages have appeared in the mailboxes of the National Guard bureau in Washington DC and the reserve offices in 36 different states. What does this have to do with us, you ask? They were all postmarked from Tennessee. [WTVF]
The saga of Mindy McCready continues. Mindy was hospitalized yesterday when she allegedly slit her wrists and ate some pills. She’s currently at Centennial in stable condition. [WSMV]
Christmastime can get busy with all the holiday concerts, plays, musicals, ballets and tuba performances. We usually end up wimping out and not going to any Christmas shows, but we know we’re missing out. Over the next couple days, we’ll be highlighting some of the more interesting Christmas shows that just might be worth dragging ourselves out of the house and into the drizzle for some holiday cheer.
Our pick today is Tennessee Rep’s Santaland Diaries. We’re big fans of David Sedaris (who isn’t?) and anything he writes has got to be brilliant on stage. Santaland Diaries is a one-man show about an unemployed bum who gets a seasonal job as an elf at Macy’s. Enough said. Unfortunately, time is running out to catch this show before it takes off (until next year, we hope). It’s running through this weekend, and tickets are available here.
