​Neighbors started to gather. "What is it?" one asked as I ripped off the shrink wrap. "It's an award, a major award," I screamed. The crowd grew bigger; you could hear them whispering, "He won that...it's a major award." There she was in all her glory...A Big Green Egg.

Ok, so maybe the story didn't happen exactly like that, but my story does feel a lot like the Christmas classic, A Christmas Story. My "major award" can be traced back to a football tailgate in October. It was like any other tailgate...football being over-analyzed, world problems being solved, Jack throwing a football up in a tree, when out of nowhere a good friend asked what I thought at the time was a life-changing question. "Do you need a Green Egg?" Need is such a strong word. Immediately a voice (that oddly sounded just like my wife's voice) began screaming...you already have an offset smoker that requires you to spend all day outside cooking, where are you going to put the Egg, how many different tools does one person need to smoke meat, why can't you just go to Henry's BBQ like everyone else? As this voice was still screaming in my head, I calmly responded, "Yes...Yes, I NEED a Green Egg."  

Many of you come here for a brief respite from the daily grind, an old memory freshened up, maybe a laugh out loud or two (depending on who is posting, YMMV), even to see if we are running out of steam yet (hardly; well, maybe). But this post is no laughing matter as NMB sat down for our first celebrity interview with Facebook Celebrity Weatherman Cotton Clarke. Not My Boys have been following Cotton's weather posts on Facebook for quite some time and we were disappointed when he got off The Book due to the election posts.  When we decided we would do an interview series Cotton was on a short list for our first interview along with Witch Annie, the guy who used to answer the phone at the Stone Castle, and the guy who used to walk around with the boombox, but those other three Greenville legends could not be reached for comment.  Not My Boys were also nervous about whether Cotton would consent to our request; Brandt and Reid had approximately 28 phone calls to see who would reach out to Cotton first before finally it was decided that Brandt would contact Cotton's wife Ann to show respect for the big man's time. Ann was cautious as a wife should be when randomly contacted on Facebook messenger on a week night by a man asking to interview her husband for his blog (dang, that looks bad in print), but after Reid put him on the spot at a Santa dinner for children Cotton graciously agreed to meet us at the Grateful Brew on a Saturday afternoon to open us up to his weather world.

Greenville, the cool choice on any up-and-coming city to visit list, is taking another step to up its street cred in the cool city game. City Hall is now referring to the area at Laurens Road and East Washington Street as Midtown.
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A midtown in Atlanta makes sense; a midtown in Greenville, well it's hard for this native to fathom. Let's see what Atlanta's midtown has and how Greenville stacks up... Midtown Atlanta is home to a well-known university, Georgia Tech, a company that is iconic to the city, Coca-Cola, an establishment that was cool before the area was, The Varsity, and hot new restaurants. No way the corner of Washington and Laurens in Greenville can match that, right?

If you like your steak sandwich with a side of soft core pornography, do I have a place for you.

Zorba's a/k/a The Zorba Lounge is a bar first and a restaurant second. I can say that with certainty as I have never been there at any time of day, noon or night, when there was not at least one person sitting at the bar having a beer with no food. And I have been there a fair bit over the years. On this random Tuesday at lunch it was a pony-tailed fellow having a longneck Budweiser and calling the waitress "honey" multiple times before asking what time she could have a cigarette break.  Shortly after he paid his tab another Budweiser appeared in front of him, on the house.  You know, Tuesday.