10/06/99
Summer Avenue

You know, Summer Avenue really is Memphis.

Stay with me on this for a minute.

I was driving down Summer about a year and a half ago. Through an odd set of circumstances I had a full keg of Bud Light in the back of my truck. I had the windows down and Todd Snider's Viva Satellite blasting out of the stereo.

In a truck, on Summer, keg in the back, Todd on the radio...I tell you, it was a quintessential Memphis moment.

You can go from Midtown to the farthest suburbs out east by driving down Summer, and you'll see such a wide variety of things - from adult bookstores and Mexican taquerias to one of the city's best Mac dealers and an anime shop.

I stopped at the anime shop on my way home yesterday, actually. I'm not a hardcore fan or anything; I like Akira (an excellent science-fiction movie), and Vampire Hunter D (stylish fantasy/horror), Sailor Moon, and I think Dirty Pair is a hoot. As far as that particular genre goes my tastes are rather pedestrian. Still, sometimes the artwork is amazing and the toys are cool and I feel like very much the bemused westerner when I shop there.

Japan must be an odd place, and the Japanese are obviously very different than us. I mean, this is a country obsessed with hyper-super-mega cute stuff (short fat little cartoon characters, Sailor Moon, preteen schoolgirls) and nasty, kinky, graphic sex (tentacles, porn, the schoolgirls again). What happened to that country as a child, I wonder?




A few interesting things from my run yesterday. They're probably of no interest to anyone but me.

Then again, this whole thing is probably of no interest to anyone but me.






The Wife and I had dinner with our friend Lauren tonight. She went to London a while back and we wanted to pick her brain on how to be better tourists. It was nice, catching up on gossip, getting hints on what to see and where to go and having a couple of black-and-tans.

Lauren is an avid reader, too, so hey, Lauren! How you doin'?





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