Saturday night, I drove over to Winston-Salem and the outstanding Foothills Brewing to meet friends Greg and Louise for dinner. Hunter's Pie, with beef, ostrich, buffalo, and I forget whatever else gamey meats thrown in. Pretty good, been wanting to try it for some time now, but in the grand scheme of things the meat was rather bland. Garlic mashed potatoes and broiled mozzarrella cheese on top gave all the flavor. Oh well. Next time it'll be the beer brats with saurkraut.
After dinner and schmoozing with Scott the Foothills sales guy, we made our way a little further into downtown to view "light painting". What's this you ask? Arts students from University of North Carolina School of the Arts have "painted" the Millennium Building with color. Pretty damn cool. Read the story here.
Greg got some new nifty camera lenses and whatnots so he went to town while Louise and I watched the master at work plying his craft in the cold. He took some really outstanding shots. Incredible.
Shamelessly stolen (I guess it's not "stolen" if he knows about it) from his online Flickr account:
One of the artists saw (how could you NOT?) Greg's mammoth photographical equipment display and came over to chat. Cameras can be used as a great pickup line: "Hey what kind of lens is that?" Anyway, Alex Fogel came over to talk with us about the displays. Pretty interesting guy. Graduating this year. And of course, Greg had me pose in the street with him while his display was lighting up. Notice the contemplative pose peering away from the camera that Alex gives. I mean, he KNEW where Greg's camera was at. You couldn't miss it. What's he looking at? He's so artsy, pondering life and the goings on. Not content to look directly at the camera and into your very soul, but rather, looking (literally) down the road wistfully into the future, wondering what promise is held for tomorrow.
Whereas I am just a big oaf and smile grandly directly into Greg's lens like a frickin' groupie.
Once the final display was over at 11:00pm, we made our way BACK to Foothills for a nightcap and a great North Carolina blues band, WSNB, "we sing nasty blues". So true. I first saw them a year or so ago at the Hickory Hops beer festival over in (appropriately enough) Hickory. Loved 'em. Every time they played Foothills on their usual bar circuit, I always had to work or was out of town. Last night however, I was off and they were there. Couldn't miss them.We hung around and listened to some really heavy bluesy bass lines, some wicked harmonica, and just generally had ourselves a good time. Foothills Mug Club mug #17 certainly got a workout. Chatted with Jamie the brewer for a little while, learning that he's really good friends with one of the band members, which lends itself well to having WSNB play Foothills so often. Louise liked them so much, she asked me to burn a copy of their CD for her.
My musical tastes are all over the board as you may well know. And blues may be a revelation to you. But this band just "clicks" with my head. I love listening to them.
All in all, another wonderful late, late evening.
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