Honeymoon Redux Or Phase Two In Which Jas Gets His Rest

I’m back, Baby!  Just got back, in fact from “Honeymoon Part Two:  The Chilling”  starring Ralph Macchio as Jas Patrick and Lil’ Kim as Gangsta Vicki.  Yeah, I know… Technically speaking, it wasn’t a honeymoon; but we called it that for lack of giving a fuck.  But back to it, eh?

Yes, a second honeymoon.  Decadent.  Oh, it was glorious, Dear internet dweller.  Sit down.  Relax.  I’ve got stories.

Many of you may remember that Vicki and I had our honeymoon in Gatlinburg, TN. last year.  We had a great time and even saw a bear.  Seeing as the bear didn’t kill us, Vicki decided that we should tempt fate a second time because fuck bears; so she booked us on another vacation in the beautiful smoky mountains just outside of Gatlinburg.

This year, Vicki went with a great company by the name of Pioneer Cabin Rentals–seriously awesome people and they really over deliver on their cabin offerings.  I highly suggest you work with them should you decide to go vacationing in Gatlinburg.  The cabin we went with was called “Blessings” and it pretty much lived up to its name.  Jacuzzi, pool table, hot tub, awesome view, two full bed and baths and they even decorated the whole place Christmas style–this may or may not work for you depending on whether or not you’ve accepted Santa as your savior.  We, of course, are a bit lax in our Santa-ism; but we always say our prayers for presents and promise to always be thankful for cookies.

We walked in and the place was spotless.  There was a ten to twelve foot tree all decked out in jolly club clothes–frigging trees these days, always dressing naughty–and they even stocked up the wood basket with wood for the fireplace.  Groovy times, kids.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though; because there was a rather interesting hiccup on the way there.  We decided to take a more scenic route than staying on I-40 and detoured somewhere before Knoxville.  Now it wasn’t Sevierville, but it was close to it and for the life of me, I can’t remember the name of the little town where it happened; but we stumbled upon a parade.

We’re driving along some country highway and all of a sudden, we’re stopped by a cop and a line of cars in front of us.  It wasn’t a long line; but we thought it may have been a wreck or something.  I looked around and noticed a small sign (copy paper letter sized) that said “Christmas parade 4:00.”  “No problem,” says I, ‘it’s only 3:00.’

Eastern time zone, dumbass.

FUCK!!!!

Yep.  The cop stopped us seven cars deep and I watched helplessly as the parade slowly started up a parallel road which merged into our lane and meandered off into the distance.  No shit, guys, the time was 4:00 exactly.  Vicki cursed me for my small bladder and swore if I ever drank during a road trip again she’d geld me.  I had no choice, I turned off the car and watched for over an hour as every resident in the small town paraded agonizingly slowly down the two lane road.

As we neared the hour and a half mark (and the blood had begun to clot from the numerous stab wounds Gangsta Vicki had inflicted rather mercifully shallow) we finally saw the end of the parade.  Unfortunately, they had merged onto our road and were traveling the same direction we intended to go; so we inched our way forward behind Santa.  Everyone was on floats and throwing candy at the three residents who were either too old or too uncreative to have made a float and participate in the parade; so Vicki made me get on the hood recite useful information for creating a long term stock portfolio.  At the end of the parade, quite a few residents thanked me and told me they had already seen a few point increase.

Originally, we had hoped to actually drive up the steep mountain drive to our cabin in the daylight; but Santa is a vengeful god and it seems my little girl’s bladder was the means in which his will was done–he’s quite the exhibitionist, it seems, and well, I guess he just wanted an audience for his parade.  We didn’t stay for the sacrifice, though.

Even so, there’s something to be said for driving through Pigeon Forge at night.  If you’ve never been, you simply must at least look it up on the internet.  I wouldn’t recommend necessarily going; I mean, if you’ve ever been to Mr. Gatti’s, you probably already know the thrill of a redneck Las Vegas; but oh dear Cthulhu, is it something to see!  Pigeon Forge is nuts.  It’s like if Willie Wonka sold out, bought a town and had a love child with Ronald McDonald and someone who almost made it as a cast member for Jersey Shore and they all got magnificently fucked up on cough syrup and planned a town based on the concept of “you know what’d be cool?”

Yeah… Plan your vacation now, bitches.

I kid, I kid.  I love Pigeon Forge.  Especially when I don’t need to stop for gas and I somehow manage to not stop at every one of the few thousand stop lights.  Seriously, folks, I’ll be here all week.

No really, it is kind of cool to see.  They have a reenactment museum/dinner theater of the Titanic–for those of you who enjoy icy drownings with your song and dance and Cobb salad.  They have an upside down dinner theater for those who prefer to spend fifteen bucks on chicken fingers in the most ridiculous way possible; and who doesn’t like miniature golf?  Pigeon Forge has more mini-golf per square mile than Nashville has churches–okay, that’s a huge exaggeration; but you get the point.

If you do ever find yourself in the Forge de Pigeon, then make sure to drive through it at night–it’s all lit up like a hillbilly on the fourth of July and half as subtle.  You simply cannot help but wonder what the city leaders were smoking.  Entertaining, to say the least.

But this isn’t about lights and goofball “world’s largest” anything; it’s about natural beauty and getting drunk the way Santa intended–in nature.

We finally got to our cabin and it was more beautiful than the pictures suggested.  We unpacked and quickly made our way to our favorite grocery store in Gatlinburg (the only one of which we are aware) the glorious Food City.  I know it may seem quite odd to be fond of a grocery store; but I’m nostalgic and the Food City was our honeymoon grocery.  It’s walled off by a huge natural rocky mountain wall with a sign that reads, “do not climb or police will be notified.”  With my grocery mountain climbing excursion dashed, I decided to instead purchase food.

After buying half the store’s stock of booze and all their steak selections, we made our way back home to our lovely cabin.  Upon arriving back at our cabin, we noticed our cat Phoebe had built a fire and was already half drunk.  I scolded her for making me have to catch up and sat down on the tiny area on which Phoebe had not called “dibs.”

Contented sigh.

This is the life.

Most of the vacation went that way, actually.  We spent copious amounts of time on the porch and in the jacuzzi and we were amazingly lucky that while it was December, most of the week’s temperatures were in the sixties or seventies.  “Unseasonably warm and sunny,” said the weather man and ‘let’s have another’ said Jas.  It was incredible.

Since sitting around drinking makes for bad blogging, I’ll tell you that something else cool happened.  I shot the first video for my upcoming album during our stay.  The name of the song is “King For a Day” and corny title aside, it’s actually been getting a lot of love from the very few people who have heard it.  I wrote it right after our first honeymoon last year and we loved it so much (the song and the honeymoon) that we decided to put it on my soon to be released album–COMING SOON FEBRUARY 28TH 2012!

Man oh man, is the footage great!  Vicki and I invested in a great camera that doubles as a video camera–I don’t know the make or the model except that I call it “Mr. Badass Camera.”  Something about having a great lens and the sensor is awesome or some shit; it couldn’t be any less important…  Regardless, I have been taking online classes and tutorials to learn how to become a better video editor and after finally learning how to start the program, I have found that I have somewhat of an affinity for Premiere Pro, which is the editing software we’re using.  The cool thing is that after countless hours of tutorials, I kind of learned blocking, lighting and perspective and such as a byproduct of my original intent to become more proficient at video editing.  Who knew?

Between the awesome video quality, the beautiful scenery, depth of field, my own humble skill and Vicki’s far superior camera work we came out with truly professional looking footage.  I couldn’t be happier and if I can ever figure out how the hell you get large files from a Mac to a PC (our new flash drive bought for just that purpose told me to go fuck myself) I will begin making the video.  Look for it probably around late January or early February.

Let’s see… What else happened?

We went to downtown Gatlinburg once (it was a very chill week, what can I say?  We’re not touristy) and if Pigeon Forge is garish, then Gatlinburg is quaint.  It’s actually pretty nice and it’s pretty fun to walk down the main street.  Lots of stuff to see and eat and nonsensical stuff to buy–if you want unusable weapons to hang on your wall then Gatlinburg is your knockoff weapon central!  Preserve stores, candy stores, beef jerky outlets, air rifle extravaganzas… It’s all there.

We ate at the Little House Of Pancakes–our favorite breakfast joint in Gatlinburg; seriously, seriously good pancakes, for realz.  Their pancakes are just incredible.  They make you want to lie down in a bed of pancakes and then proceed to eat your bed of pancakes and order more pancakes cause you ate your bed and you may want to actually get some frigging sleep after eating all those pancakes.

We also discovered a brand new barbecue place which had just opened earlier this year and my friends, it fucking rocks!  The place is called Hungry Bear BBQ and if you find yourself in Gatlinburg, just go.  Trust me.  Delicious pork and pretty damn fine beef brisket–though, it ain’t Texas brisket (despite the claims of the wonderfully sweet lady running the joint) it’s still about as good as you can get without traveling all over the damn place.  The pork, though, was phenomenal.

And what honeymoon or blog by me would be complete without slavish praise of glorious beer?  Well, we discovered a new one, kids and its name is Schlafly Coffee Stout!  Oh man oh man… If you’re a coffee drinker and you also happen to drink beer, this one is for you.  I, personally, cannot drink coffee as I am already far too high strung and drinking too much caffeine forces my speech to increase in speed to the point of infinite mass and results in the spaghettification of the listener (physics trolls may discuss below in the comments).

Regardless of my inability to prevent light speed speech after caffeine intake or my inability to pronounce “Schlafly” it is damn fine beer.  Roasted flavor, hint of coffee, a bit of kick and bitterness while remaining smooth and nutty, Schlafly is wonderful (note:  Schlafly, please make the check payable to Tiny Lion Records and we look forward to the 2012 Schlafly/Jas Patrick tour–though, I may be too drunk to perform).  Seriously though, check that beer out if you like browns/darks/flavored beers.

I also enjoyed my old standby favorites:  Shipyard pumpkin ale, Saranac pumpkin ale, Lakefront pumpkin ale, Saranac Black and Tan, Yuengling Black and Tan (oh hell yeah), Einbecker Schwarzbier and Köstritzer Schwarzbier.  Ahhhh… Beer.

I cooked some incredible steaks and we had stuffed portabellas and I doctored up some spaghetti sauce into a fine meaty/mushroomy goodness which we proceeded to enjoy with tortellini.  Food, glorious food and then more glorious beer.  One might even say it was glorious.  It was.

In summation, if you’ve not been to Gatlinburg, make sure you go.  Tell em Jas sent you and then moon them when they say “who?”

Stay tuned for a “making of” video of, well, the making of my new album and a truly beautiful video for a song which is on said new album.  The album drops February 28th 2012 and presales are starting soon!  Check www.jaspatrick.com frequently over the next month to reserve your copy and tell your friends, family, enemies and random people on the street.

Jas Patrick and Tiny Lion Records are not responsible for any knife induced injuries resulting from talking to random people on the street.

Oh, so a few things I forgot to mention in the post…

I bought Vicki the Adele Live at the Royal Albert Hall DVD/CD package for an early Xmas present and I have to say, it was pretty damn great.  The band is excellent, the videography is top notch and Adele sounds pretty damn fine (you can hear just a touch of the upcoming throat problems she would soon have; but you either have to be a vocal coach or a singer to pick up on it so no worries for the casual listener–besides, Adele on an off day is better than many on their best so no worries, Adele, you sounded great, BooBoo).  If you’re an Adele fan, this DVD is a must.  Vicki turned me on to Adele a ways back and I’m glad she did–excellent singer and a wonderful stage presence.  Check it out.

For you Phoebe fans (believe it or not, my cat Phoebe has her some internet buds who always ask about her), Little Miss made it into the new video that I mentioned in this blog and you’ll get to see her little Communist ass as she makes her music video debut in all her glory.

Finally, I hope you all have a great holiday season.  Eat well, drink even better and enjoy every minute of it and I look forward to hearing what you all think of the new album in the new year.  Thank you for reading and be well, my friends!

Cheers!  Prost!   Salud!  Viva!  Kampai!  Skal!  A sia saide!  A vortre sante!  Nien Nien nu!