….more on that riveting title later. Anyhow, welcome to the first liketoeat post in a while, and I greatly apologize for being somewhat absent on here lately. I’ve been super busy finishing S3 issues, doing freelance work, and a bunch of other stuff, however I’ll try to post a bit more regularly in the future. Also have a few items that happened ages ago that still need to be posted about, so keep a look out for those before too long.
So on to the fun that made up this past Saturday….
A month or so ago, Jerry called me asking if I’d be interested in playing guitar with a friend of his from work, a guy named Richard Harris. Richard is a 21 year old Jamacian that happens to be a huge fan of country music and is a great singer, however he didn’t play any instruments or know anyone that did, hence me getting volunteered. Richard had plans to enter the Colgate Country Showdown and had already written lyircs to a song, so my job was just to come up with a few chords to go along with it and help him make a demo to submit to a radio station in Rome to enter the contest. Jerry and Richard came up to the S3 office a little while back and we were able to accomplish this (if you’re curious, the recording of the song can be heard here).
Around the first week in August, we were notified that we had made the first round cut, and would be able to play with 19 other artists at the local level showdown at the Grand Theater in Cartersville. That contest took place this past Saturday, and ended up being quite the interesting event.
Laura decided to ride up early with me and hang out throughout the day which was nice. QC also had plans to do this, but misunderstood the time I was leaving by a full hour, and ended up driving up on his own a bit later. Along the way, we stopped at Horse Town, one of the most bizarre yet entertaining stores in the world. I wanted to keep an eye out for a new western shirt (I’ve bought 3 in the last couple of weeks and I’m fairly hooked on these things), but had no luck at this particular location. We did however get a bunch of awkward greetings from the employees, and felt generally out of place the entire time. A few minutes in there was good enough, and we departed for the Grand Theater.
We finally arrived a little after 3:00 and quickly saw Richard in his extremely country outfit. We then noticed many more people also sporting some sweet country gear and huge amounts of chewing tobacco, and again started feeling a bit out of place. We entertained ourselves by making fun of some of the other contestants, and awesome things such as home-made shirts with all of the band members’ names listed on the back. Eventually, a short meeting was held giving us the details of the evening and then we conducted our quick sound check.
After this, Laura, QC, Richard, and I rode over to Publix to grab sandwiches for lunch. I didn’t get any shots of us eating those, but here’s everyone after our delicious meal.
After another few hours of waiting and hanging out, it was around the 6:00 mark and Richard and I were able to perform. We were the first group out, and played our song to the overly filled (and by overly filled, I mean about 50 people) theater, and it seemed to be well received. Lots of my friends (Laura, QC, Jerry, Panda, Andy, and BM) and family (my dad, stepmom, sister, and step-aunt) made the trip out to support us which was really cool, and huge thanks to all you peeps for showing up. Other friends did cool things like ignore multiple phone calls and not show up to take photos, but oh well, we’re used to it at this point.
Here’s one of the shots of us during the performance. I kinda look confused as to why I’m on a stage playing country music, which was partially true. We had fun though.
After we played, we were informed that we had to stay in the back stage area for the remainder of the concert which was kinda lame. It was super cold and boring back there, and we could barely hear the other artists playing. I kept myself amused by getting text message updates from Laura and QC the entire time.
After all 20 artists played, we were all brought back on to the stage to be informed who made it to the top 5. Here’s a shot of all the people that performed.
Unfortunately, we weren’t announced as one of the finalists, but oh well. Most judged things are rigged and have poor decision making, although this time I really couldn’t be too upset as we weren’t able to even hear the people that did get picked. Some of them seemed to be pretty good though, so good job to those people.
After finishing up inside, a bunch of us were hanging out by my car in the parking lot while we waited for the show to finally finish up. It finally ended, and my family made it outside to chat with everyone for a sec and say our goodbyes. An elderly woman in a Chevy Impala had different plans for us however, and this is when the real party started for the night.
This woman starts backing up and no one seemed to think anything at first, but then Andy and Jerry started shouting as she was headed right towards our group of people and my car. They increasingly got louder thinking she’s surely stop, but quite the opposite happened. She apparently had the gas and brake pedals mixed up, and continued backing up with a good bit of added speed. The entire process was a big blur, but I remember seeing a number of people go down and being insanely shocked and scared but thinking it was over, but then the car kept coming and slammed into the back of my Fit. Laura was the first person I saw on the ground, but luckily she didn’t seem to be too bad and quickly got up. Andy had us worried as his arms were shaking a good bit, but he was ok for the most part as well. My step-aunt was still on the ground after everyone got up which also looked bad at first, but she also ended up fine. My little sister suffered the worst noticeable injuries and scratched up her chin, arm, and leg pretty bad, but she seemed totally un-phased by the entire ordeal. After cleaning up her cuts, she said “good thing I didn’t die” in a somewhat comical tone, hence the title of this thing. Byron also went down but said he was fine.
The fit had the entire left side of the rear bumper knocked off as well as a bit of a dent in the rear quarter panel, but it quickly occurred to us that it’s placement potentially saved everyone’s lives by actually stopping the Impala, and I’ll take a dented car any day over seriously hurt friends. The next hour or so saw ambulances, fire trucks, and police making their way to the scene (very slowly however), and everyone had to give their reports and what not. My dad snapped a few shots during this process, here are a couple of those:
After everyone was questioned and a ticket was given to the old woman, we decided a bit of late night Waffle House would be a welcome end to the crazy evening. The whole group headed over there where we all enjoyed some tasty 11pm breakfast.
My dad rewarded my little sister with chocolate pie for surviving the hit, and she couldn’t have been happier:
My stepmom also snapped a shot of our group.
Overall, a crazy yet somehow entertaining day, although we all could’ve done without the getting run over by a car part. Super glad everyone made it out ok though.
