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3 Things I Like This Week – May 22

Photo by Tony Hand on Unsplash

Each week (give or take one or two here and there) I share three things I like – It could be a book, a movie, a podcast, an album, a photo, an article, a restaurant, a food item, a beverage, or anything else I simply enjoy and think you might too. You can find a whole pile of things, especially books, I like and recommend HERE.

1) Wendell Smith’s Restaurant

Pretty much every week news breaks about some chef opening some new restaurant in Nashville. The write-ups always talk about the “experience” or the “fresh direction” said restaurant will go. And then most of them quietly go out of business in a couple years or less. You know what doesn’t have a chef, isn’t a fresh direction, but also hasn’t gone out of business in nearly 75 years? Wendell Smith’s Restaurant in West Nashville. It is a “greasy spoon” diner in the best, most complimentary sense. The menu is simple. It is carb and grease heavy (and delicious–especially the biscuits). The wait staff are pleasant, efficient, and unglamorous. The prices are decent. The lighting is bad. The furniture is shabby. And there’s nearly always a table full of old men in there shooting the breeze. It is Americana, yesteryear nostalgia at it’s best. Next time you’re in Nashville, skip the fresh takes on brunch and uphold this precious American institution instead.

 

2) Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst

I have loved this book since I was in elementary school. It is best described as “misery loved company, but also has a wry sense of humor”. That may also be a apt description of my personality.It recounts the difficulties a young boy faces throughout the day with food, friends, school, siblings, parents, and so forth. He is the youngest in a household of boys, an upbringing I relate to (and likely why my mom introduced me to this book originally). He is downtrodden, picked on, and over it. It’s the best sort of kids book in that it is for kids, but really for adults. It is fun and petulant and honest and normal. Some days everything goes wrong and you want to move to Australia, whether you are six or 43.

 

3) “Willow Weep For Me” by Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie was a jazz trumpeter and band leader who was formative in the bebop jazz style. He won a bunch of Grammys and laid down some iconic tracks. This is one of my favorites, recorded with Junior Mance on Piano, Lex Humphries on drums, and Sam Jones on bass.