Metro Pulse

The great games of the ancient Romans were pageants of grandeur nonpareil. At least as re-imagined by modern-day sword-and-sandals movies, at any rate. These were glorious spectacles staged in cartographically huge, open-air coliseums, towering sandstone walls bathed in sunlight and staring venerably down at a handful of glistening, naked warriors, the mighty champions whose death throes and derring-do would sate the roiling bloodlust of madding Roman throngs. Full story »

When your name is etched on the front of a university building, as Atlanta attorney Joel A. Katz’s is at the University of Tennessee’s Joel A. Katz Law Library, you probably have some latitude about who you can invite to a lecture series at the school. When your name’s also part of the official title of that lecture series, as Katz’s is for the UT College of Law Joel A. Katz SunTrust Lecture Series, you can invite just about whoever you want. Full story »

At least it was nice and sunny outside, 65 degrees, with just a touch of a cool fall breeze in the air. It was lunchtime, and Market Square was teeming by Knoxville standards—packs of people out for a midday break from work, eating complicated foodstuffs from sort-of-fancy restaurants on the patios, sitting on the park benches, or just taking a walk through the city’s renovated historic meeting place. Everyone was looking and feeling very young, urbane, and sophisticated. Full story »

“They’ve all got knives,” the kid working front desk at the Four Points Sheraton warns of the group convening upstairs on the mezzanine. And with that my mind is off, racing, conjuring all manner of bladed horrors: gleaming machetes, club-like butcher knives, twisted turn-of-the-20th-century surgical implements, seemingly less suited to saving lives than to snuffing them out, ensuring that the last terrible moments are spent in paroxysms of blinding white agony. And all of them—all of the blades, that is—are black from their work’s awful harvest, with the dark, crusted residuals of gutted human remains. Full story »

Many a school child knows the First Battle of Bull Run was the initial major land conflict of the Civil War, fought July 21, 1861—but many, many more remember it for another reason: picnickers. Washington, D.C. socialites trailed the Union army to Manassas, Va. bearing replete picnic baskets, planning to dine and watch the Union rout the hapless Confederates. Full story »

In a weekend filled with sundry other scheduled events, and with football in full swing, it seems counter-intuitive that several hundred people have chosen to spend the better part of a pleasant early fall Sunday afternoon at a graveyard off Broadway. Wandering through the stones eating grilled hot dogs, no less. Riding in horsedrawn carriages. Watching local actors and musicians conjure spirits of the residing dead. Full story »

“It’s Billy Kirk vs. Preston the Psycho,” says the tableside announcer, with the sort of melodramatic aplomb you’d expect from a veteran pro wrestling commentator. “Get ready, folks, ’cause these guys on the table now are monsters; Billy’s been arm wrestling for 17 years.” Full story »

Between the building tops, the gray sky looks too near to be real, like a backdrop for a 1930s movie about a tornado. It’s the inland remnant of some hurricane or other, sneezing a drizzle now and then. About 100 people browse the Market Square Farmers’ Market, maybe half as many as do when the sky’s open and bright. Artisans keep a wary eye on the sky. Preschoolers frolic in the fountains, oblivious. Full story »

The girls perched on folding chairs in the cavernous gym at the National Guard Armory have spent the morning on drills—hair, makeup, nutrition, picking the right dress, all part of the Tennessee Valley Fairest of the Fair Pageant Boot Camp, the first such offering in half a century of pageant history. Full story »

Scene & Heard by Rose Kennedy: When just such an event came to Knoxville last weekend, though, I resisted the obvious cliche. I decided that instead of testing the Expo representatives’ psychic ability (“I expected you to know I’d be redeeming my admission coupon”), I would try out my powers of prognostication on them. So before arriving at the Holiday Inn Select in Cedar Bluff, I took five minutes to focus on what I thought might happen at this gathering of psychics, mediums, astrologers, numerologists, and holistic and natural healers, assembled to speak, sell, and—if you bought separate tickets—give individual readings. Predictably—well, this is what happened, and it was anything but predictable: Full story »

Scene and Heard by Charles Erickson: Only five passengers are visible in silhouette as a westbound KAT bus moves along the 3900 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. The bus rumbles past Burlington Printing, Barnes Barber Shop, and Unchained Bail Bond, three going concerns whose front doors remained locked because it’s too early for handbills, haircuts, and jailhouse sureties. Full story »

Scene & Heard by Rose Kennedy: A massive oak tree shades two grave markers, high on a hill along a narrow gravel road that rises up to a grassy knoll. The oak’s branches dip, down low, catching the last strains of R.B. Morris strumming his guitar and the low voices of those gathered together today Full story »

Scene & Heard by Rose Kennedy:They’ve braved a thunderstorm that started stirring about half an hour ago to be here at a candlelight vigil for the next-door neighbors—the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church—where a gunman opened fire during a children’s performance of Annie at 10:18 Sunday morning. He killed two, Greg McKendry of TVUUC and Linda Kraeger, visiting from Westside Unitarian Universalist Church in Farragut that morning, and severely wounded six others.. Full story »

Scene & Heard by Rose Kennedy: It’s about 1:30 p.m. and the sun is still high this Friday afternoon, but the fun is winding down. A few hours earlier, the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, our city’s repository for and promoter of African American achievements and culture, was thronged for its first-ever family-friendly Friday Fun in the Sun event. Full story »

Scene and Heard by Mike Gibson: It’s easy to miss Martha’s Place, an unassuming little crimson-painted hovel with a red tin roof—about the size of a double-wide trailer—settled only a few feet off Rutledge Pike on a grim stretch reserved mostly for industrial buildings and trucking outfits. It’s not all that inviting, from the outside, having few windows and naught but the obligatory “Must be 21” sign to greet new patrons. Full story »