The Poster Collection: Day Eight

I worked at a little hole in the wall/roach farm/ISS nightmare/underage-beer-provider/ chicken wing and beer joint located on the Strip in the early 90’s named Spicy’s. I worked both in the front and the back of the house at various times and witnessed some kitchen nightmares that would make Gordon Ramsey pee the bed.

As a caveat let me say this: the chicken wings , steak and cheese sammiches, and oriental bbq steak sammiches were ab=so=fucking=lutely deeeeelicious. Most of the recipes came from the original(?) owner, who was Asian. Not sure what part of Asia, but I really only met him once or twice as he rode off to California in his red Corvette( for realsies). The chicken wing sauce was very simple . yet unmatched in all my wing eating travels. The steak and cheeses were simple but fresh cut beef only because it was cheaper to pay someone almost nothing to cut it up than to buy it pre-made. The sauce for the oriental BBQ sammich was a sticky sweet concoction full of ginger and absurd amounts of garlic.  However…..

BULLET POINTS OF INSANITY FROM SPICY’S

• We used to buy whole chicken wings and cut them by hand into the little drummies and 2nd joints. We did this by removing the safety guard from the meat slicer and cutting the severing the wings joints upon the spinning blade of doom. It was hugely effective but terrifying.
• I saw the owner “allegedly” thaw a case of frozen chicken wings by running them thru the Hobart with the sopa hoses disconnected.
• Once, to save a buck or two, the owner tried using solid shortening in the fryers. While cleaning it, the shortening overflowed and covered the floor in a congealed mass of discount , off brand crisco.
• Roaches. Napkin Holders. Use your imagination. Then double that.
• Gaggles of 17 year olds drunk on 24 ounce can’s of Foster’s, some of Murvill’s best and brightest at the time
• We once sold 1600 pounds of chicken wings in a single day. This is part of why I really don’t like UT football games. Every Saturday home game is an exercise in torture if you work on the Strip
• Tables of Vol’s linemen on all-you-can-eat wing nights could consume upwards of 50 poounds of wings per table. The most I saw ever was a skinny dude who ate almost 130 wings.
• The owner of the building would sell parking spaces on gamedays, pack the cars in like sardines, and then leave. Noone could get out until the “key” cars were moved. Once mine was a “key” car and it was moved by a gang of about 8 guys into the middle of the street.
• Whiskey. Knives. Hot grease. What could go wrong?

Anywho, here are some posters of sheer awesomeness

 

Poster Collection: Day Seven….Some Goooood Stuff

I remember when I was in 5th grade we moved from Alcoa out to the county area known as Binfield.  I was put into Binfield Elementary and immediately started getting into trouble, mostly for being too smart. The most memorable was when we were starting simple division, FOR THE FIRST TIME<that’s right, “we” were just starting to learn division at the end of the 5th grade year.  At Alcoa we had been learning this, oh I don’t know, the WHOLE DAMN TIME we were in school, so I had a wee bit of a head start/ Let me say this, I am not making fun of anyone who went to county schools, but more so the schools themselves.

Anywho, the question posed to the class was “what is 9 divided by 3?” Well I answered it immediately and was quickly admonished and ushered out of the classroom, aka a trailer, at which point I was whooped with a paddle. Ahhhh, the good old days when you could hit kids with a large stick! The same teacher also paddled everyone in the class for being too loud at lunch one day. Every single kid, even the quiet ones. You know, spare the rod, spoil the child kind of thing. The same teacher also sent home a pamphlet warning us of the impending Rapture. My rather liberal parents didn’t care too much for that, and I thought it was laughable at best.

The only thing they could do after that was to make me sit in with the 8th graders during class so I didn’t get too bored.

Hey look posters!

Poster Collection: Day Six…

I lived in Fort Sanders while pretending to attend college at the University of Tennessee in my early twenties. One house I lived in was on the corner of 11th and Laurel. It is no longer there, but at the time it was a 3 story house converted into apartments, mine being the attic. It had sloped ceilings and a claw foot tub and you could climb out on the roof and yell obscenities at passer-bys with relative anonymity. My downstairs neighbor was none other than Rus Harper of Teenage Love and Neowizard fame, so needless to stay there were occasionally very interesting gatherings. On Saturdays the Big Orange wave of Humanity came crushing down on the Fort and our land/slumlord had a very bad habit of selling off our yard as a large parking lot. We were left to find parking the night before and hope our cars were not towed or carried away by gangs of hooligans.

Anywho, we had us a fine party this particular home game Saturday and were whooping it up on the front porch, hollering rather inappropriate things to pedestrians and their wives and their (sorry)children. After a threat of violence or two the party logically migrated upstairs to the attic and out onto the roof. I was always a little scared to go out there but braved it anyway. We looked down upon the sea of cars littering our normal hang out area and decided they were not nearly orange enough. So. After a short lived and half-hearted look around, we happened upon the orangest thing we could find: American Cheese. Really cheap American cheese-like food product to be precise, which flies remarkably well and makes a lovely splat when meeting a windshield with all the force the three story cheese free fall could muster. After the supply of cheese bombs was used up, we decided the best thing to do would be to leave for the day and seek comfort in the arms of friends outside of the upcoming impact zone of the horrors of baked on “cheese”.

Here are some posters by the way

Poster Collection, Day Five Continues and Gets Glossy

Whenever I was a small boy, probably around 9 or 10, I had a black BMX bike with a motorcycle style seat on it. I think we got it from the Baldwin’s pawn shop where the par-T-Pub is now bu ti could be wrong. I rode it down a hill and launched myself perfectly off of a drainage pipe, flying through the air, completely out of control, until thudding into a tree. The trunk caught me across the chest and shoulders and gut and hips and knees and face and kidneys. I was maybe knocked out? No real way of knowing, but I was dizzy and half of my body was numb as I limped the mangled bike back home.

On a side note, here are some more posters, a lot of them glossy and soul-less but still kind of cool

Poster Collection: Day Five(ish)

So the other day i was thinking about when I was traveling with a children’s theater/magic show/juggling act kind of thing when I was 20 years old. I went all around a chunk of this country, a little bit of Canada and Mexico for a day. It was overwhelming really, as I had not been outside of good ol Tennessee that much. So many different cultures in such a short time, as we were often in a town for only a few hours before moving to the next show. I spent a week of vacation in Glenn Dive , Montana, mostly drinking beer and watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. I really want to revisit that little town.

Anywho, here are some more posters. We have entered the rolled up ones, so you may see a bit of the plexiglass i am using to hold them down while photographing them…Enjoy and , as always, feel free to offer huge sums of money for anything posted!

Poster Collection Days One Through Three: The Thumbnail Edition

I remembered the less annoying way to share bunches of photos, much like how I remembered that Vick’s Vapor Rub does not work for pork butts. That barely makes sense, I’m sorry. Here’s some purty pictures

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Poster Collection Day Four: last of the Flat Poster

The rest are rolled up and will require a little work for photos, but enjoy the easy ones!