That Leslie and Leigh Keno make it look so damn easy to spot a bargain, don’t they? Best known for their work as appraisers on the PBS series Antiques Roadshow, the two identical twins are heartthrobs to antique hounds the world over.
Saturday, they motivated me to head out to the Metrolina Fairgrounds for the big, what else?, antique show. I was in search of a coffee table, and armed with knowledge gleaned from hundreds of Roadshow viewings, figured I was good to go. (I was also in search of about 100 other things I’ve come to know in my research as “valuable,” but so is every other shmuck with a television.)
Frankly, I can enjoy one of these expos whether or not I buy anything. It’s interesting to check out items that may well be one of a kind, never to be seen again. Then again, lots of the crap people are trying to pawn off for 20 bucks probably ought not to exist at all.
The people cinch it, however. If Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy and the rest of the crew responsible for Waiting For Guffman and Best in Show want a new panorama for their vaunted “mockumentaries,” I suggest the antique/flea market crowd. Like Deadheads in their transience (minus the psychedelics), these people have an entire subculture going, and we “customers” are only a secondary component.
I settled on an old army trunk, which I purchased for a cool $20. As I loaded it into my car, I noticed a 300-pound muscular man who I know to play professional football. How do I know this? As much as the Cadillac Escalade with spinning rims is de rigueur for a professional athlete, so is the “professional wife” — blonde, super-athletic (thanks to being able to stay at home and work out all day), and sporting teeth that sparkle like a model in a Certs commercial.
She was a fox, no two ways about it. However, the way this guy’s wife was leading Mr. NFL around, you’d think her name was John Fox.
Random observation made while taking in the Duke/Carolina game at various (belch) locations uptown last Saturday: At any given time, 80 percent of “Carolina fans” in attendance at a given sports bar haven’t attended the university, and 95 percent of Duke fans have never set foot inside Cameron Indoor Stadium. Yet, knuckleheads “representing” each school will gladly shed blood to defend their school’s “honor.” Interesting, isn’t it? This must be why Robert Johnson is attaching himself to ACC basketball and Tobacco Road every chance he gets (the Bobcats even hosted a Duke/Carolina themed “buddy party” Saturday night, for folks who wanted to share one of the Cats’ outrageously priced season tickets with another person).
If Johnson really wants people to come to his games, perhaps he can take another cue from the college world instead — low interest loans.
It almost seemed too good to be true. Lucinda Williams — the queen of the nebulous genre known as “alt.country” and something of the yang to Emmylou Harris’ yin — was to play the Visulite Theatre Sunday evening. The show had sold out a week or more in advance, and folks had even assembled early to do a bit of alt.tailgating out in front of the theater. Yep, Sunday night had everything. Except, of course, Lucinda Williams. Oh, and electrical power. More on that later.The official story goes that Ms. Williams had a sudden illness in the family, and had to “jet,” literally. Seeing as the Grammy-winning Williams is one of the few stalwarts of contemporary music that I have yet to see, I was disappointed. But, I thought, all is not lost — if I hurried, I could catch the season premiere of The Sopranos. Unfortunately, at almost the exact minute I arrived home, a fierce 10-minute windstorm shook my neighborhood. It sounded like a jet plane taking off — Lucinda? — and left trash strewn throughout my yard (but at least it cleaned up my neighbor’s messy digs). The lights flickered twice, and then the power went out completely.
Big deal, right? But this was the second outage in four days. I called Duke Power’s number, 1-800-POWERON (shouldn’t it be power off?), but the crew they said they were dispatching must have stopped to watch the Sopranos first, and I ended up just going to bed. At least one Duke’s on a hot streak.
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2004.
