hometown glory

If you've been anywhere near a weather channel or a newspaper in the past two days, you probably know that New York has had the biggest heap of snow dropped on it basically since the beginning of recorded history. Coincidentally, in semi-related news, it is colder than a well-digger's ass up in this piece. Today with the wind chill, it felt like 2 degrees. In the middle of the afternoon. In direct sunlight.

So for the past two nights, during my usual on-the-way-home-from-the-train-station phone call, it was too cold to have my hands outside my pockets, or my face too far from my scarf. So I made use of a technique I like to call Ghetto Bluetooth. For those of you who would like to try Ghetto Bluetooth at home, it's simple -- just tuck your phone far enough under your ear muff that it's held to the side of your face, stick your hands in your pockets and catch it with your chin if it slips out.

But then, this evening, from the (relative) warmth of my living room, getting ready to pull for Memphian Lil Rounds on American Idol, I realized that perhaps the title Ghetto Bluetooth is a bit of a misnomer -- at least in my illustrious hometown. Because in your basic ghetto in Memphis, you will see the actual bluetooth. You will see it in the ear of a woman, say, driving her Escalade into her driveway, maybe getting ready to settle in and pull for Lil Rounds on American Idol. (On her flat screen TV.) And it'll still be in her ear when she leaves her house the next day to go downtown for food stamps, and when she comes home to find part of her roof caved in and her storm door being used as a sled by neighborhood kids in a vacant lot.

I know you're smart. You've got at least a sixth grade reading level to have made it this far in the post. I don't have to explain to you why that whole preceeding paragraph is such an unfortunate daily occurance in Memphis. We don't need to talk about priorities, right? Not again, at least? Okay. Good.

But for every person like her, I think there's probably also one like Lil Rounds. She's got everything: personal tragedy, the struggle to overcome and a big gospel voice that just kills some Aretha Franklin. If you don't watch American Idol -- or alternately, don't care -- she's singing for her supper on tonight's episode, and she is a Memphian, born and bred. I pretty much don't need a whole lot more of a reason to pull for just about anybody at just about anything.

So I'm pulling for Lil. Because she's from Memphis, but also because in so many ways she is above it. Case in point? Simon Cowell called her classy on national television. Classy? Memphis? Same sentence? Pardon?

I'm off to pull for her, and for Memphis.

cheers,
elizabeth