Metro Pulse/Gamut/Guilty Pleasures

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Things we just can't help loving

A little confession is good for the soul, they say, so confess we shall. Even though we know it's wrong to love them, there are things about this place that we absolutely adore, like the convenience of a superstore on a wetland, the lure of fish under glass, the giddy stench of unfiltered conversation, or an upscale display of wanton consumerism. Join us now in a startling tour of some of our guilty pleasures. Oh, the shame...

Mr. Sam's Place

I remember the first time I ever heard of Wal-Mart. My Aunt and Uncle from Arkansas came for a visit sometime in the early '80s bearing tales of a huge general store where one could find just about anything from toilet paper to bras to automotive parts. The prices, they reported, were low, very low. Returns and exchanges were a breeze. The bathrooms were clean. And best of all, they explained to their rapt Thanksgiving dinner audience, everyone who worked at one of "Mr. Sam's" stores was extra friendly and helpful.

It was several years before the small Middle Tennessee county from which I hail got its very own Wal-Mart, which has since grown into a Wal-Mart Supercenter. And on the day it opened, we were there checking it out along with what appeared to be every other family we knew within 30 miles. My parents skeptically wondered aloud whether Wal-Mart would run our smaller, homegrown shops out of business. Instead, however, hundreds of local residents suddenly had access for the first time to steady employment with benefits and stock options from Wal-Mart. The local Wal-Mart soon began donating tens of thousands of dollars each year to community groups, and I personally knew of two local families in which high school-age kids parlayed their part-time jobs at Wal-Mart into company-provided scholarships that allowed them to attend college. Before I left for college and moved away for good, I saw Wal-Mart become a friendly local gathering place where neighbors ran into one another as they ambled up and down the aisles on Saturday afternoons.

My secret, guilty devotion to Wal-Mart was sorely tested a few years back when it was announced that Knoxville's newest Wal-Mart was to be built smack dab in the middle of West Knoxville's last, best wetland, known as Turkey Creek. As the debate raged among Knoxvillians as to whether or not the sensitive habitat of various forms of wildlife should be sacrificed before the altar of Sam Walton, I vowed that if this particular Supercenter did go up on the banks of Turkey Creek, it would be the one Wal-Mart location that I would never, ever visit.

Well, guess what? I have broken that vow many times over. I made my first furtive visit to the Turkey Creek Wal-Mart late at night, hoping that I wouldn't run into anyone I knew (have I mentioned that I also love the fact that Wal-Mart is open at 2 in the morning if one of my children should suddenly need cold medicine or glitter for a school diorama due the next day?). I have become bolder in my subsequent visits, rationalizing to myself when I drive into the parking lot as I notice that a few lonely stands of cattails were left standing on the property by the developers. But I'm not able to completely alleviate my guilt. I know that a huge monolithic chain store shouldn't have been plopped down in the middle of a natural marsh.

So you see, when I hear people bash Wal-Mart, I am torn. My politics continually clash with my deep love for low prices and convenience. I know the company is a union-buster, something that runs contrary to my own pro-labor view. And I also know about the sweatshop-made store brands, heavy-handed site-acquisitions around the country, and Wal-Mart's role in the cultural homogenization of our nation's regional differences. But damn! It sure is convenient for this busy mama-of-three to be able to buy cheap food, electronics, and shoes all in the same store.

—Katie Allison Granju

Go (stealthily) to G'burg

Been up to Gatlinburg lately? Thought not. Too much trouble. Too much traffic. Too little value-added to a trip out Kingston Pike on a non-football Saturday in Christmas season. If you're like me, you might get the perverse urge now and then to head back up there to see if it's as bad as you remember. But once you get your car pointed that way, you get the yips, can't press the accelerator and steer toward G'burg at the same time. It's a common affliction of Knoxvillians. A certain embarrassment attaches to any admission that you've been there lately.

Now, though, there is a real, incontestable, incontrovertible reason for Knoxville area folks to go bravely right into the gut of Gatlinburg at least one more time, no matter how repulsive the idea might sound.

It is the aquarium. I know this may seem fishy, but believe it or not, Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies is too neat for you to pass up just because of what you have to go through to get there.

Part of the appeal of this particular aquarium may be the element of surprise. Expectations for an attraction erected by Ripley's, the "Believe It or Not" people, weren't all that high, even though they proclaimed that its size and educational aspects would make it worthwhile. I anticipated a big fishtank overwhelmed by its own hype, with a series of melodramatic effects and pop-culture pimping.

Not so. The highlight—a 340-foot acrylic "tunnel' with a moving walkway to keep visitors going as they pass by and under sharks and other sea creatures—is dramatic, OK, but not at all silly. It's fascinating to the casual or serious observer and ought to be stimulating to any student of marine life. The aquarium's descriptive material is likewise pretty professionally conceived, and the entire building and its many displays are well designed and executed; even the slightly hokey shipwreckage and other scattered props aren't too distracting. Accoutrements include the obligatory gift shop, which you cannot avoid in reaching the exit, and a restaurant, a cafe and a snackbar, each of which appears to offer up a reasonable facsimile of a food-court establishment.

All folderol aside, the total experience once you are inside makes you forget for a while that you're in the middle of an overblown and overcrowded tourist mecca that traffics mainly in fatty foods and fatuous souvenirs. For the genre, this aquarium is a bargain at roughly $4, $8 and $16 for admission, depending on your age.

Sure, the Ripley's marketing ploys are over the top to some extent. Calling the aquarium in subtitle: "Where the Ocean Meets the Mountains," only calls attention to the incongruity inherent in placing lots of saltwater species on display on a landlocked slope in a virtual sea of automobiles. You could—if you felt you must—see a somewhat similar Ripley's aquarium at a real seaside location, but it's lots farther to drive, and you'd be in (gasp) Myrtle Beach when you got there.

Closer to home, this single attraction makes up for many of Gatlinburg's shortcomings on a daytrip basis So much so that one visit is likely to become two, taking friends or family along. Three tips: Don't even think about it on a weekend. Go the back way through Townsend and up Little River through the park while you can still drive through Townsend easier than you can through Pigeon Forge. And once you get your aquarium thrill, get out of town before sundown. Then drive home in the dark so your friends and neighbors can't guess where you've been and rag on you for it. You can explain, but you don't want to have to.

—Barry Henderson

Addicted to Loathing

Guilty, oh yes, I am guilty. Lord, am I guilty. Oh, I am a shameful, wretched creature! I read MetroBlab (and you can, too, at www.metropulse.com/metroblab/mb_main.html.)

When I began writing for Metro Pulse, in my naïveté, I believed MetroBlab to be a beneficial thing, a means to keep up with my new MetroPals. But I was beguiled, benighted. What I thought a simple tool for information exchange is, in truth, a snare to capture the unwary, set by a malevolent, malignant web monkey named Ian Blackburn. I have soiled my soul wallowing in the filth of this vile pit that masquerades as a discussion board. And sometimes, I have done it on company time.

And yet, I cannot look away! Even now, I find myself drawn to read the deluded but self-conscious ravings of onanistic, web-surfing ill-literati. Exchanges such as THESE are what I subject myself to:

"Re: Another press release from the morning mail—martini. Posted by Gene Harrogate, Oct 10, 2001, 12:16.

Some folks call it a kizer baby./Some folks call it a sling baby./I call it a sling baby."

"Re: Another press release from the morning mail—Gene Harrogate. Posted by WTG , Oct 11, 2001, 00:01.

Gene is king of the board for the rest of this week. Someone send him Ms. Jolie as a prize."

"Re: Fester Bangs—jessefox. Posted by Scaramanga, Oct 11, 2001, 13:09.

Whatever Jesse. The clear fact remains that this figment of your imagination directly quotes from the very words posted on this forum. Say what you want, it's bullshit and you, I, they and everyone here knows it."

"Re: Fester Bangs—Scaramanga. Posted by jessefox, Oct 11, 2001, 13:19.

Just one more weird little delusion of yours. Add it to the pile."

Can it be believed that I waste time on this nonsense, this trivial drivel? Why am I drawn like a moth to the warmth of such hellfire? Because MetroBlab elicits from humankind our worst impulses toward voyeurism. And with these base urges it has mated technology. And the offspring of this coupling is called Addiction. And I, I am addicted to MetroBlab. Like staring into a flame, like slowing down to look at a car wreck, I have become mesmerized by the carnage of the human spirit perpetrated through MetroBlab.

Pray for me.

—Scott McNutt

Westward, ho.

I love you, West Town Mall, even though it feels so wrong.

I know you can never reciprocate my feelings. My demographics are so very, very incompatible with yours. I don't drive an SUV, which seems to be your parking lot's vehicle of choice. I don't have any kids and, therefore, nothing to add to the hordes of teens who flock to the Fitch. I live across town, on the wrong side of the tracks, where retail is more of the K-Mart and pawn shop variety. Our worlds aren't at all compatible.

Yet, it didn't always used to be this way. In my heady teen years, I flirted with a Northern cousin of yours, the equally—if not, dare I say it, slightly more—upscale Ross Park Mall. I spent many a happy hour working within its hallowed walls, selling books to the masses. In my early 20s, I dated your Texas kin, hawking housewares in a mall-based Crate and Barrel knock-off. I always felt so safe in such a retail environment, with my finger on the very pulse of the petit bourgeoisie. It was bliss.

But our lives take unexpected turns. I grew up, moved on, and wedged myself into the world of journalism, a sphere that does not allow for much in the way of disposable income. And still, there you are, like a clean, beautiful, pleasure-filled oasis that I can visit when I need a little pick-me-up, a reminder that there is nothing wrong with visiting, say, Wiliams-Sonoma, even if you don't dare commit to anything within its tastefully decorated walls.

You still thrill me West Town Mall, with your soccer moms (while I'm confessing my sins, let me add that I secretly harbor great envy for them), your Godiva storefront, your punk teens trying to rebel in the food court, your rules and regularity, your holiday decorations, your devotion to making consuming goods such a damn pleasant way to spend time.

It's wrong on so many levels and we both know it. Yet I'm drawn to you.

—Adrienne Martini