Don't Go Cee-Lo

Apologies if I seem a bit edgier this week, I am without the moderating influence of the family who are either visiting grandparents (in God’s own Alabama) or traveling for work.

Yes, I’ve been negligent in my duties and have left you hanging. The dog ate my blog post…my alarm clock broke…something came up…I was abducted by aliens…Cee-Lo and I stayed out too late last week…yada yada yada. I feel bad for abdicating my writing duty, yet I haven’t come up with anything “important” to write about. In absence of a weighty topic, here are a few random thoughts…

First, as far as Cee-Lo goes, I’m not surprised at all. Being the hip-hop connoisseur that I am (was), I will always associate Cee-Lo with Goodie Mob (explicit) and various cameo's on (explicit) songs more than prime time TV. It is incomprehensible to me that he would be hired without fully understanding his full body of work. As for violating the family-friendly nature of the Riverbend, I submit that any patron walking around the venue at 10pm on that Saturday night would be subjected to more profanity and partial nudity from the assembled crowd than from Mr. Green. This, of course, is no excuse for his behavior. Had I known, however, that the old Cee-Lo was going to be here, I might have saddled up.

If you think Chattanooga has it bad with the expansion of US-27 (and we do), wait till you see what’s about to happen to the poor bastards in Detroit. What the hell is going on with these transportation engineers? I suppose they are going into their death throes and lashing out in an attempt to preserve their position as the ultimate arbiter of American urban form. In the spirit of this post, I would like to dedicate a certain Cee-Lo song (explicit) to all of the myopic transportation folk who would wield their craft in isolation to the ultimate ruin of our built environment.

As for Chattanoogans not eating food on a stick this week, there is this. I understand that it’s just an internet poll, and for the most part I agree with the results. I appreciate the fact that there are six restaurants in the top five and sixteen in the top ten. I will stick with my longstanding tradition of not bashing locals (whether they be designers or restaurateurs), but I will say that Meeting Place deserves a top five spot (at the expense of three in particular). The great news is that the community appears to be able to continually spawn and support excellent new restaurants- long may the trend continue.

Well, that's enough fun for one night, I will try to try to get back to business next week. Cheers.