I’m leaving Memphis tomorrow for a vacation before Easter, but I won’t really be leaving all things Memphis and Tennessee.
For starters, how about this exchange:
“I’d go to Memphis for the ribs.”
“Now you talkin’. Best bar-b-cue in the world’s at the Germantown rib joint.”
“The Germantown Commissary. Corky’s is good.”
“I love Corky’s. They serve that pulled pork shoulder. Best anyplace.”
A feature in Bon Appetit? Two visitors at the Tennessee Welcome Center? Actually, it’s a slice of dialogue from my road read, Elmore Leonard’s new novel “Raylan,” set in Harlan County, Kentucky.
On Saturday I should get to the beach just in time to catch the sunset and the second game of the Final Four between Kentucky and Louisville, aka Coach Cal vs. Rick Pitino.
How many times will they mention Memphis-Kansas 2008? I put the over and under at four counting the pregame.
On Thursday night I can catch HBO’s offering, “God is the Bigger Elvis,” about Dolores Hart, a former actress in Elvis flicks who became a nun. God must be proud, but what does it say about a guy who drove a pretty young actress to join a convent for the next 50 years?
Finally, the Republican Party 2012 Presidential Campaign Quote of the Day, if not the Quote of the Season, comes from former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen. An op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal Friday coauthored by former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander, highlights Bredesen’s comment that President Obama’s health care plan, now universally described as ObamaCare, is “the mother of all unfunded mandates.”
As the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported, it was 2009 and Bredesen was speaking of Medicaid and he supported universal health care. But “the mother of all (fill in the blank)” is the mother of all cliches, and who better to pry undecided Democrats away from Obama than a Democrat, so this one will be recycled by every politician, columnist and commentator in America who worships at the altar of the Wall Street Journal.
