Tuesday, Orange County Register columnist Jeff Miller penned
a wrong-headed, stereotypical introduction to Nashville(he called us "Trashville" - tres clever) for Anaheimites ahead of the Ducks-Predators playoff series.
It's the type of thing that gets published during playoffs, a little poke at the hometown of the opponent.
Nothing wrong with that.
The problem was that Miller wasn't particularly clever. He talked about Hee Haw - a show that's been off the air since 1993 (coincidentally, the year the Ducks were founded and thus the first time anyone ever heard of Anaheim).
He made fun of Cracker Barrel and said the "hillbilly heaven" was one of Nashville's top employers. That would be true if there was a Cracker Barrel on every corner. There isn't, unfortunately. Or if Cracker Barrel was headquartered in Nashville. It's not. Their offices are in Lebanon. Saying it's headquartered in Nashville is sort of like saying a company that's headquartered in - I dunno - let's say Anaheim, for the sake of example, is headquartered in Los Angeles.
And he makes fun of Cyruses Miley and Billy Ray - the former of whom made all her money as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Disney, so I think there's plenty of blame to go around.
It's pretty rich for someone from Anaheim to mock another city's cultural contributions when it's the place that's offered up a slew of vapid reality shows, No Doubt and Rebecca Black.
We're not exactly talking about Florence during the Renaissance here.
But we'll take Miller's piece in the spirit it was intended - as a vehicle for a slideshow, a little new media ploy at crassly driving up page clicks.
In Thursday's Scene, I write a quick and, dare I say, sophisticated primer on why Nashvillians should hate Anaheim and hit all the high points - Dan Ellis, George Parros' mustache, the movie which spawned the franchise and what have you. Similarly, the fine gentlemen at Section303.com did a wonderfully humorous skewering of our friends from the OC earlier in the season and again ahead of the playoff series. Even our buddies down at 1100 got in on the act with David Climer penning a take down. Joe Biddle's will run two Sundays from now and he'll ask "Whatever happened to Walt Disney?" and tell the story of the time he and Bill Wade got kicked out of Disneyland.
Before the puck drops tonight, there's more to know about the bad guys and the place they call home.
