Huntsville treats us well

I can nearly guarantee my evening last night was better than yours - because mine was awesome.

Dawn and I had tickets to The American Life live….if you didn’t go to that last night….you’re a sucker. But I’ll get to that in a moment. Firstly, we started our evening, in earnest, at a little pub called Finnegan’s Pub which happened to be right in front of the movie theater showing This American Life (TAL) live. I had never been in Finnegan’s before, and I must say they’ve done a remarkable job recreating a real Irish pub. It’s dark but friendly and looks like it’s been extremely well lived in.

When we inquired about dinner the barkeeper told us their cook was gone so they could only do fish and chips or reuben’s. These are two of my favorite pub foods. I had actually ordered a reuben earlier in the day for lunch and was disappointed about how not reuben-ish it was (the Huntsville Botanical Gardens should legally only be allowed to refer to their sandwich as a corn-beef sandwich – a reuben it is not). Dawn and I opted to split fish and chips. It wasn’t Lafayette Brew Company good (the current holder of the title “Best Fish and Chips”) but it was a very satisfactory rendition of fish and chips. Better than any I had actually had in Ireland (still can’t figure out where all the fish and chips places were in Ireland).

I was very impressed with the attention they paid to pouring a pint of Guinness. When you order one they inform you it will take a few minutes to prepare. I also thought it was kind of funny that their beer selection was either Guinness or Bud Light – that’s it. While we were there I only heard orders for Guinness so I guess Finnegan’s has decided to basically pour one beer and pour one beer well. Dawn, not being a beer drinker, decided that after work Jameson was the way to go.

After the pub we walked over to the movie theater to watch TAL live….not having a clue what to expect. The theater was pretty empty. I wasn’t expecting it to be sold out…but I was a little concerned that if more people didn’t show up then Huntsville might not do something like this again. I expect part of the problem was tickets where $20 a piece and people have a hard time wrapping their heads around going to a movie theater and spending $20 a ticket…. That’s usually the kind of change you drop at the concession stand.

In the theater, instead of the normal ads and previews (which are really just ads) they had a TAL preshow feed running which involved an animation of a man playing hangman. This presented the audience with a variety of word puzzles which were generally very amusing. The show itself was super entertaining and engaging. Being a onetime event you’d expect TAL to bring it’s A game, but in fact they brought their B game. The show consisted of mostly orphan pieces that had been edited out of the radio and TV shows because they didn’t exactly fit well into the theme, but where by themselves very interesting. I could go on and on gushing about the show, but I think the highest compliment I can pay it was towards the end of the show I was asking myself, “why isn’t all the media I spend time viewing this rewarding?” I feel confident in saying that whatever you watched last night wasn’t as good.

On the way home we stopped at the local wine bar to pick up a case. They’re running some sort of special for the beginning of May where all cases are discounted by 20% (that are in stock). Dawn wanted to get there before their stock got picked over. We managed to get there right as they were closing. Dawn put together a case while I sat at the bar and chatted with Jimmy (the owner) and David (the bartender). Jimmy and David had decided to cap off their work day by opening up the three cheapest bottles they could find in the store and sampling them. We joined them for an impromptu sampling and wine critique-fest.

Huntsville, you did alright by us.