sunday may 8, 2005 – kiss meets the phantom of the park & oman’s farm of spooks

we had theoretically planned to get up around 730a and get on the road for our 13 hour trek to nashville. actual departure time around 1030a after a nice breakfast a la agelia mcgowan. carson spent most of the drive reading the squeeze biography they’re selling at the shows, i mostly caught up on email replies, and at some point we watched some of the tenacious d dvd while allen drove. louisiana featured the most picturesque driving over low bridges through bayous. nasty lunch at an arctic arby’s, they can’t all be home-cooked bbq unfortunately. belabored discussion about the questionable “horsey” sauce and its ingredients.
CONVERSATION TOPICS ON THE ROAD TO NASHVILLE
- the KISS movie bet – carson wins two arby’s roast beeef sandwiches in a thrilling victory over allen about the title of the movie. allen claimed it was “kiss meets the phantom of the theme park,” whereas carson was confident in the actual title, “kiss meets the phantom of the park” (no theme). (areas not to bet against carson – kiss, pastaroni, michael jackson, lionel richie & atari 2600)
- kentucky fried chicken in kentucky (carson was on a quest to discover whether there was something unique about eating the fast food chain’s fare in its home state); still haven’t been there, but there could be a chance on the way to nyc from nashville
- ABC, the band, not the network. allen has a cd of their greatest hits, which are more numerous than you might recall. poison arrow, the look of love, how to be a millionaire, be near me, when smokey sings
- sweet emotion & “the rabbit done died.” allen explained that this a reference to a woman getting pregnant. an old way of testing for pregnancy utilized rabbits in some way, but we couldn’t figure out exactly what they would do the rabbit for the testing, and what might lead to rabbit death. quoth allen from some snopes.com. “claim: in the days when the ‘rabbit test’ was used to determine if a woman was pregnant, the rabbit’s death was an indicator of positive result. status: FALSE. true story: in the olden days, they used to inject the urine of a woman into a rabbit. if the rabbit died, the woman was definitely pregnant. if the rabbit lived, she was not.” in case you’re confused, it is true that this used to happen, but it is not true that inserting urine into a rabbit is a determinant of pregnancy.

arrived outside nashville around 1130p, where we stayed with college friends of allen’s on a 70 acre farm in a small town called franklin, site of a civil war battleground that’s under some controversy. developers want to build a golf course or something. the property we were staying on has several homes on it, a pool, and a large paddock for the horses. totally dark when we arrived, making the huge house totally spooky. we did some exploring, lots of beautiful old furniture, 4 fireplaces, 69 chairs (according to carson, excluding sofas and hassocks) and tons of nooks and crannies where ghosts hang out. oman’s (al’s friend) mom lives in the house we were staying in, he and his wife and kids live in another home on the property, and his brother in yet another. father of oman is an ex-football player and jazz pianist, bought the property in the early 70s, developed a small portion and kept the rest for the family. why do we live in l.a. again?
watched the crappy remake of the 60s film “the thomas crown affair” with pierce brosnan and rene russo, just awful. went to bed late night.