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Blue Streaking
There were almost as many recognizable faces in the crowd at Side Splitters as there were on stage Sunday night. Nine local media personalities competed in the second annual Host with the Most Fun’raiser. My wife and I bought tickets to support my Smoky Mountain Television co-host Taz Cable. Brittany Bailey and John Martin had a front row seat to support their WBIR colleague Erin Donovan.
As I looked around the showroom, I saw Cynthia Moxley, Alan Carmichael and Scott Bird of Moxley Carmichael Public Relations. Cynthia writes a popular party-hopping blog called the Blue Streak. In it, she posts photos that she takes at many charity events around town. As a result, she’s not in the pictures. Seeing her gave me the idea to turn the tables on her and to snap a few pictures of the audience in the few moments left before showtime.
Michele Silva was there to root for Taz and for her WVLT colleague Whitney Kent. Michele was seated with WVLT’s Lorena Estrada. I especially enjoyed Whitney’s Shirley Nash Pitts impersonation. Tonya Cinnamon posted a photo on Facebook of Whitney imitating Shirley’s “Clean It Up” facial expression.
Mayoral candidate Mark Padgett and local attorney Stephen A. Burroughs were seated on opposite sides of the room. They both got countless mentions from the comedians, especially Burroughs who is known for his billboards, his Facebook memes and his recent Swagfest.
Fire, Cracker
If Peeps brûlée turn up on the menu at the Catholic Charities dinner next March, I will be ecstatic. It’s an extreme long shot but at least I planted the idea in the mind of Christopher Moore, executive chef for the Knoxville Convention Center.
Chef Moore was on stage at the Tennessee Food & Wine Festival, preparing beef brisket soft tacos. As emcee, I was making small talk and asking questions about the recipe. Our conversation turned to the tortillas, which the chef buys uncooked. We talked about ways to cook them, including over an open flame on a gas grill, which is the same way I toasted the Peeps brûlée. The chef said he wanted to try Peeps that way. A snippet of our conversation turned up on SMOMOtv on Saturday.
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The headliner at the festival was Royal Chef Darren McGrady, who told stories about Queen Elizabeth while preparing one of Prince William’s favorite tea cakes. The no-bake recipe calls for crumbled McVitie’s Classic Rich Tea Biscuits and melted chocolate. He used Ghirardelli. The chef said that we Americans could find the McVitie’s biscuits on Amazon.com. I mentioned that some local supermarkets have a British shelf. From my perspective, the broken tea biscuits looked vaguely familiar. I asked if we could substitute animal crackers for McVitie’s. He thought about it for a moment and, to my surprise, said yes. Animal crackers were probably a fairly close match.
Middlebrook Initial
A construction crew is hard at work converting the former Middlebrook Gardens into Click Funeral Home’s new Middlebrook Chapel. My wife and I have attended several funerals at Click’s Farragut Chapel. The new location is much more convenient to our parish, All Saints Church. The signpost mentions cremations because that is such a fast-growing aspect of the funeral industry. Cremations will not be performed on site. Click is a member of the Independent Funeral Group, which uses the East Tennessee Cremation Company in Maryville. The property had to be rezoned to allow a funeral home to operate there.
Larry Click told us that in the past, he had purchased a retort to perform cremations but the Town of Farragut wouldn’t let him install it. Embalming is not done at the Farragut Chapel either due to space limitations. The deceased were sent to Click’s Lenoir City location for embalming. The new Middlebrook Chapel will have an embalming room. The former catering kitchen is large enough to also house a cooler and a separate area for cosmeticians to do their work.
Larry said that he offers green burials. In those cases, the deceased are not embalmed. They are wrapped in a shroud and buried without a casket or vault. He said some cemeteries insist on burial vaults as a way of maintaining their grounds. Vaults hold their shape and keep the soil above from settling.
The former wedding chapel has been enlarged slightly to become a funeral chapel. The workers were hanging a new chandelier when my wife and I stopped by. Overflow crowds will be able to watch the proceedings on flat-screen TVs mounted in sitting rooms outside the chapel. Larry said I should stop by again, after their furniture gets delivered.
‘Cane Enable
Theodore Wiprud and Ittai Shapira took the stage to explain and demonstrate what we were about to hear. The composer and violinist described and then played the musical themes from Wiprud’s violin concerto “Katrina,” which had its world premiere in Knoxville last night at the Tennessee Theatre. The concert program will be repeated tonight.
I asked Wiprud how the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra was chosen to debut his work. He said that Maestro Lucas Richman was the first to offer him a date on the schedule. In fact, the date was chosen about a year ago, before Wiprud had even written the concerto. Shapira had commissioned Wiprud to write something for him to play. They chose to tell the story of Hurricane Katrina while honoring the musicians it displaced. Their explanation helped me appreciate the concerto. I could imagine the storm as I heard sounds that resembled wind chimes and thunder.
The new music was sandwiched between two classics. The concert opened with “Four Dance Episodes” from Aaron Copland’s “Rodeo.” After the first movement someone shouted “bravo” and many in the audience started to applaud, including me. My wife shot me a look which caused me to whisper, “When Lucas looked back, I thought it was okay to clap.” Hearing any of Copland’s music reminds me of the time I saw him at Wolf Trap, riding in Mrs. Shouse’s golf cart as she navigated the plaza of the Filene Center.
The main attraction was Dvořák’s “New World Symphony.” It is one of my wife’s favorite pieces. She said it brought back memories of listening to classical albums with her father on Sunday afternoons while she read the comics. My wife loved last night’s performance. She said the musicians sounded like they had played the piece many times before and were expert at it.
66, Water Not Being Comfortable
Autumn leaves and cooler weather inspire many of my Facebook friends to write about how it is their favorite time of year. I don’t like the shorter days and chilly air. I much prefer the optimism of Spring and the warmth of Summer.
A big factor in my seasonal sadness is the end of swimming season. I went for my last swim of the year on Tuesday afternoon. The air was warm but the water was cold. My wetsuit protected my torso but my head and hands felt the full impact of the 66° water. It wasn’t cold enough to be dangerous, just uncomfortable. Triathletes often swim in water that cold.
In other years, the weather has stayed warm enough for me to swim daily until Halloween. Not this year. I probably could have closed the pool for the winter a couple of weeks ago and saved myself several hours of removing leaves. Yesterday I was skimming leaves while wearing gloves and a raincoat. I still have four more days of this before the pool gets shrouded for the season.
Banana Kick
Bananas on a burger? The combination of banana slices and green pepper was surprisingly fantastic. Last month I sampled three meals in Gatlinburg, two at Pancake Pantry and one at Bear Creek Grill.
My dining excursion was recorded for “Smoky Mountain Magazine” on East Tennessee PBS. Because we have delayed the premiere until January, the footage became dated. It was streamed on the SMOMOtv Livestream channel yesterday.
I’m glad to have an opportunity to critique myself before going on broadcast television. The pancake and burger footage was the very first thing we shot. As I watch it, I see myself looking off-camera to see the time cues. In the future, I’ll ask that that the time cues be placed closer to the camera.
WATE, Your Turn
The playing field is level once again for Knoxville’s local TV news. Like WVLT and WBIR before it, WATE has started broadcasting its local newscasts in high-definition. I watched their evening and late-night news on Monday to see how it looked. The transition seemed smooth. I didn’t notice any glitches. I know they have been taking their time to make things work. I toured their new set almost a month ago as they were still wiring the control room.
Unless I missed it, the anchors didn’t make any special mention on-air about the improvements. They have, however, been very active on Facebook and Twitter to promote the changes. Over the weekend, I saw pictures from Lori Tucker and from Kristin Farley. Perhaps most interesting was the Facebook photo album of the construction progress. Tearsa Smith was hoping her son would be born before her first HD newscast on Tuesday. He was. Jamie Lynn Drohan will fill in for Tearsa.
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