If I saw that, giving up TV would be much easier.

I vaguely remember hearing about him.

Bolded points:

1. Unimaginative, IMO.
2. Weak and not nearly embarrassing or painful enough.
3. Smart and ahead of the curve. ^
4. Not harsh enough. The only prison inmates that should have access to TV are those who killed little kids...that way, the prison can make copies of any video the family has of the dead child, and it can be played on a loop in the cell. One still picture doesn't cut it in my book.

I could live without all the CRJs

What happens in Gatlinburg, stays in Gatlinburg.;)

Bill wraps it up and says it better than I ever could!

•At the foot of the mountain, the park ended and suddenly all was squalor again. I was once more struck by this strange compartmentalization that goes on in America -- a belief that no commercial activities must be allowed inside the park, but permitting unrestrained development outside, even though the landscape there may be just as outstanding. America has never quite grasped that you can live in a place without making it ugly, that beauty doesn't have to be confined behind fences, as if a national park were a sort of zoo for nature. The ugliness intensified to fever pitch as I rolled into Gatlinburg, a community that had evidently dedicated itself to the endless quest of trying to redefine the lower limits of bad taste. It is the world capital of tat. It made Cherokee look decorous. There is not much more to it than a single milelong main street, but it was packed from end to end with the most dazzling profusion of tourist clutter - the Elvis Presley Hall of Fame, [...] the National Bible Museum, Hillbilly Village, Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum, the American Historical Wax Museum, Gatlinburg Space Needle, something called Paradise Island, something else called World of Illusions, [...] Guinness Book of Records Exhibition Center and, not least, the Irlene Mandrell Hall of Stars Museum and Shopping Mall. In between this galaxy of entertainments were scores of parking lots and noisy, crowded restaurants, junk-food stalls, ice cream parlors and gift shops of the sort that sell "wanted" posters with YOUR NAME HERE and baseball caps with droll embellishments, like a coil of realistic-looking plastic turd on the brim. [...]
I loved it. When I was growing up, we never got to go to places like Gatlinburg. My father would rather have given himself brain surgery with a Black and Decker drill than spend an hour in such a place. He had just two criteria for gauging the worth of a holiday attraction: Was it educational and was it free? Gatlinburg was patently neither of these. His idea of holiday heaven was a museum without an admission charge. [...] So Gatlinburg to me was a heady experience. I felt like a priest let loose in Las Vegas with a sockful of quarters. All the noise and glitter, and above all the possibilities for running through irresponsible sums of money in a short period, made me giddy.

[...] I went through the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum and I savored every artifact and tasteless oddity. It was outstanding. I mean honestly, where else are you going to see a replica of Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria, made entirely of chicken bones? And how can you possibly put a price on seeing an eightfoot-long model of the Circus Maximus constructed of sugar cubes, or the death mask of John Dillinger, or a room made entirely of matchsticks by one Reg Polland of Manchester, England (well done, Reg; Britain is proud of you)? We are talking lasting memories here. [...]

From Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent - one of the laugh out loud books he's written

I was appropriately appalled by 12 miles of commercial kitsch and "official tourist information centers".

Ratings my friend. And she has made her self media savvy while he has made him self more of a douche than I thought possible.

"As a Muslim dictator, I'm sure you're very involved in matters of facial hair care. Are you a Gillette man, seeing as how it's a French company?"

Now THAT is something I find riveting. But again, a little too weak. Why stop at youth soccer when you could have the entire town walk by and throw sharp objects?

Plus1.

I was about to relate a tale of how much I liked a certain Bill Bryson story, only to suddenly remember that he did not write what I'm thinking of. :o

ALCO, have you ever read Notes on a Beermat, by Nicholas Pashley?

We were posting at the same time. I will say that I can see a few other resorts (through the trees) but I cannot see any of the "commerce" of Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge.

I will probably only leave to get more food, as I did "grocery shopping" at Walgreens inbounds (four liters of caffeine free diet coke, six boxes of frozen chicken bites, four Budget Gourmets, sausage, and a dozen eggs for $11.80 total - and I spent Walgreens Register Rewards ...).

Has anyones 2x stays for SPG posted yet?

Sadly true on all counts.

The good die young and pricks live forever, which explains why Bill Hicks got cancer in his 30's and why Kate Gosselin will live to be no younger than 97.

I am watching DEA on spike. ^

No, but my first was today :) My second is Sat close to Gravitas. Plus1 doesn't know yet. Plus1 this is your notice. I want to at least go to the room and take the bottled water ;)

Correct on 757. 757-100 existed on paper but was never built.

If you want a 736, come down to ACY and join me on an ACY-YYZ Westjet flight. Rumor has it the -600 will be the equipment on the route when it starts.

And on the last part, no. You're missing -87 and -90, and the B717 is technically in the same family.

How long is the AUS -> Houston drive? I'm considering dropping in late on the Houston Mini-Do on Saturday night. The B6 schedule into HOU sucks but there is a flight that gets in to AUS at 5:40pm.