This summer, “Starcraft II” has become the newest barroom spectator sport. Fans organize so-called Barcraft events, taking over pubs and bistros from Honolulu to Florida and switching big-screen TV sets to Internet broadcasts of professional game matches happening often thousands of miles away.

—Don’t get any bright ideas, nerds. We were fine with the World Cup mania getting its claws into 3 Crow, but we cannot abide by televised Starcraft matches.

Can someone tell us what the deal is with the whole “adultize kid stuff” trend that’s been going on for a year or so? Yazoo’s decision to get a bunch of people together to race Big Wheels way too rich for our cheap, cheap blood ($40? Are you kidding us? For $10, you can race each other in Kroger shopping carts abandoned near our house), but we guess we approve of the idea. If we’re willing to accept grown-ass adults playing foursquare on the boat in Centennial Park, we kinda have to accept this sort of thing too, right? Right. Have some deets:

This will be held downtown Nashville on Church St. between 1st and 2nd ave. on Sunday October 16th first heat is at 2:00pm sharp so get there at least 45 minutes before hand to check in for your spot. The races will consist of teams of 4 racing in relays down Church Street and back up in heats of 3 teams . The winner of each heat will move on until we have a final heat of 3 teams, which will race for 1st,2nd, and 3rd place Big Wheel Championship Belts. Teams can be all male, all female or coed but all team members must be 21 years of age or older. Teams can have up to 4 members but those members must be the only ones to compete on that team after the competition has begun no alternates or changing team lineups.

If you do dare to face off against teams with names like “My Little Pony Keg,” you and a team of up to three others can win prizes (!) for winning races and whatever. Yazoo says that every participant gets a swag bag and teams will win prizes through out the day. They’ll almost assuredly be Yazoo themed, but, as you may remember, that’s alright with us.

Sign up on Yazoo’s website early, as spots are limited. Oh, and be sure to enlist a short person on your team. They will be crucial to your success.

It’s been nearly a year since we threw an 8 Off 8th launching our blog. Remember? Neither do we! We partied a little to heartily that night due to a combination of exhaustion and despair over not packing the place out. But we do remember that all of the bands were fantastic and incredibly generous for playing a show immediately after Next Big Nashville (boy, was that ill-advised).

There’s a couple reasons for that stroll down memory lane. First and foremost, several of our pals from that show are playing for free today at BLVD on Belmont Boulevard! Reid Magette, Diarrhea Planet, Big Surr and Evan P. Donohue are all contributing their considerable talents to the music shop’s grand opening, which kicks off at 6 p.m. this evening (probably with Reid, if we had to make a guess). If you were at the Nashville Cream show on Saturday, you’d know that Evan closed with a cover of “Waitress in the Sky,” and that rules schools. We highly suggest dropping in. The milkshake truck might be there, the pizza truck will also probably be there.

As for the second thing? Go ahead and put a big X over Halloween on your calendars. More on that soon…

Somehow the bi-weekly outdoor movie series next to Bongo Java East has evaded us since they started up a month or so ago — especially when they screened Harold and Maude as one of their first films — but better late than never? This weekend, weather permitting, the curators of the movie night will be showing the classic Hitchcock thriller Rear Window, staring Jimmy Stewart as a nosy guy with a broken leg.

Also, there may or may not have been a murder.

If you haven’t seen Rear Window, chances are pretty good that you’ve seen a cartoon parodying Rear Window. Or Disturbia, a blatant rip-off staring Shia LeBeouf that some dummies on YouTube think is better than the original. Our point is that you should probably watch this movie. Backfire, a short by local filmmakers Caleb Dirks and Drew Maynard that managed to get made despite this failed Kickstarter campaign, will screen before the feature. Take that, unwilling contributors!

Tickets cost $5 (or $4 with a canned good). Pizza Buds, Wild Cow, Bang Candy, and Jackalope Brewing Co. will be on hand to cram you full of pizza, vegetables, candy and beer respectively.

Craigslist people! We love ‘em. Unfortunately for us all, this lame-ass Craigslist summer has brought us nothing but the selling lawnmowers and lost love connections from that sassy Smryna YMCA. C’mon, Nashville! We know you’re more horrible than this. We just want to snicker over free rabbit pellets ads and aspiring pre-teen grindcore vocalists. Is that too much to ask? Yeah? Okay, whatevs.

Here’s brief glimpse into the heart of an exterminator who hates your damn cat and wants to make it happen in your hot tub. Sorry.

Person of Craigslist: Flea-Sprayer

Category: M4W Missed Connector

Who Is He:

I sprayed your house and you stole my heart – m4w – 47 (Lebanon) 

---

I remember it like it was yesterday. You called about the fleas from that stupid cat and the rest was history. I have always cared for you and loved you. So if you are out there email me about the hot tub fun  we use to have at your house.

Conclusion:

So. We’re unclear as to the nature of this bug-guy/damsel-in-bug-distress relationship. On a cursory glance it looks as if this Terminex fellow was called in to spray for fleas and was promptly seduced into a tryst of hot tub sexiness by this lady. After the affair, they parted ways and now here we are. But, when you reread it, that story doesn’t make any sense (possibly because that story sounds like the set up to porn). Is this fellow a licensed exterminator? Have they had multiple hot tub times, as suggested in the post? Why does he hate her cat so much? There are so many questions! None of them worth answering!

// Photo by Kris Krug. We don’t want to live in a world where rebel exterminators exist.

On our winding way through the citywide construction zone between our homes and The Gulch, we couldn’t help that there are giant black books spraypainted everywhere. We counted at least five tags by a mysterious bomber known, apparently, as Reader — beyond the chainlink fence across from the Scene’s Gulch headquarters, on a “For Lease” billboard on Division, on the back of a Jack FM billboard near the Shelby St. interstate exit, along the wall on Peabody St., and finally on the abandoned house/shack on Woodland near French Quarter Cafe.

Who is this guy? Usually we see one big tag by an artist every so often, but it seems like all of these went up over night, which is brazen as all hell, especially the one of the Jack FM billboard — which isn’t pictured because we couldn’t figure out how to get over there to take a picture of it without parking on the interstate. What’s the deal with the book? And the XXXs? Inquiring minds demand answers!

// Photos by Lance Conzett

You still have a couple hours to contribute your name suggestions to Nashville’s upcoming mid-sized music venue in Marathon Village and, potentially, win tickets to every show that comes through the presently untitled venue’s doors for a year. Just contributing one nets you two tickets to the venue’s grand opening, so you may as well throw something at them. Here are several names that you shouldn’t offer:

• Music City Marathon (that one’s already taken)
• Marathon Mansion
• The Jack Johnson Chillatorium Presented by Lightning 100 and White Dudes with Dreadlocks
• Shitty Hall
• 311 Performance Hall
• 12th & Clinton
• The Village (be seeing you)
• Thunderdome (two men enter, one man leaves)
• Buddytown
• City Hall & Oates

Well, we know what we’re doing as soon as we get off work today. Frighteningly talented guitar virtuoso William Tyler is playing a free show at The Groove in East Nashville today at 5:30 p.m., along with locals Ancient Ocean and Lylas. Look, if you haven’t listened to Willie T’s debut yet, there’s something critically wrong with your soul. Meaning that you ain’t got one. Sorry to break it to you like this but it’s true. “But Dixie,” you might say, “William’s tremendous Behold the Spirit record is total wintertime tune-age! We can’t listen to it in Summer, it’d be all wrong!” If listening to songs like the one above in early August is wrong, we don’t want to be right.

As for the others, we aren’t familiar with Ancient Ocean but we’ve been big Lylas fans for a long time. Do You Believe in Blood is an excellent Halloween record and “No Seance for Sweetheart” is the best anti-love song about not wanting to raise your deceased sweetie from the grave we’ve ever heard. Also, could this be a preview for something that we’re cooking up a few months from now? We’ll never tell.

5:30. Be there.

Good news, Easties without kids! Holland House doesn’t let children into their establishment anymore! Wait, hold on. You’re telling us that Holland House, a joint that is way more famous for getting you good and drunk speakeasy style than for its food, let kids inside before like a week and a half ago? That sounds like trouble.

Though some of the baby-having babies on the East Nashville Google Group (a hive of scum and villainy, if we’ve ever seen one) are complaining about now being unable to score a Tom Collins with junior in tow, we’re thrilled. So thrilled that we’d like to remind all of the childless spinster twenty-somethings of the city that Holland House has an excellent happy hour with $5 cocktails. And no kids. Hallelujah, we guess.

It’s in the upper 80s today, which feels like absolute paradise compared to the past couple of weeks. But don’t start celebrating now, Nashville. By Tuesday the high is going to creep back in the the upper 90s and we’re all going to hate our sucky underpowered air-conditioners again. Since we’ve resigned ourselves to an eternity of non-stop mugginess, we may as well make the best of it. And by the make the best of it, we mean drink.

Science proves that sangria is objectively the best summer drink. Don’t try to argue with us on this, there are facts that back us up. Okay, so we may have made up the facts. Listen, stop questioning us. We know what we’re talking about here. One of us spent a negligible amount of time getting drunk in a foreign country two years ago and both of us have a subscription to America’s Test Kitchen. NBD.

So, you’ve got two options to sate your sangria lust with: you could order an $8 glass of overpriced, underboozed sangria from Jackson’s or you just just make a jug (or most likely a pitcher, but we totally bought a jug) of the stuff yourself. We won’t even discuss the pre-made stuff you can buy in most liquor stores, which tastes like Kool-Aid gone horribly, horribly wrong. Since you’re still reading (you are still reading, right?), we’re going to assume you’re on board with the jug idea:

Sangria (Not Santeria) Ingredients

• 2 oranges, washed but not peeled
• 1 lemon, washed but not peeled
• 1/4 cup triple sec
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 bottle of Spanish red (rioja) wine, medium body. The cheaper, the better.

Step 1: Go to the Liquor Store