Steve Ladurantaye

It’s Christmas in Graceland. With little more than a month until Elvis Presley’s favourite holiday, those left in charge of his legacy have decked the halls, put blue lights on most of the trees and placed his seasonal ballads on heavy rotation.

They’ve got visitors covered on the commercial side too. The first thing you can do in the visitor centre is apply for an Elvis-themed credit card. You can use it to buy things in any of the 11 gift shops.

Read the story in the Globe and Mail

There are many animal heads peering down on you as you sit down for a genuine Canadian dining experience at the Kooky Canuck in downtown Memphis, Tenn. A buck, a bison and a few moose stare off into the distance, probably missing Alberta.

The wild boar is a bad sign, though. I know a lot about Canada, and I’m almost sure wild boars aren’t one of its things. That’s how it is at the Kooky Canuck – a hint of realism buried under a pile of non sequiters.

We have some problems right from the start. The sign promises “big food, big fun.” But, those aren’t really our things. I’ve yet to be at a Canadian restaurant and not have someone complain that the portion sizes are too large. As for fun, we think a little is great. Just don’t get carried away, eh?

The decor is log cabin, although the five giant TVs showing the Tennessee basketball game ruin the atmosphere a bit. I think the Leafs are playing tonight, but my waitress isn’t sure what a Toronto Maple Leaf is, so she can’t check the TV listings for me.

The music is good, but it’s Aerosmith. Aren’t they from Boston? That’s pretty close. I mean, it’s practically Halifax South. And besides, there aren’t any famous Canadian bands anyway.

Before I ordered, I thought maybe a drink would be good. No Canadian beer on tap, so I had an American one. But then I saw the mixed drink menu and longed for home.

Finally, a Canadian high ball! That’s, obviously, a Canadian whiskey and ginger ale..

Never content to under report, I also had a Canadian Honeysuckle (Canadian whiskey, pure honey, and sweet and sour), and a Canadian whiskey sour (Canadian whiskey, sweet and sour). I finished with a 32-ounce Canadian Long Island Ice Tea.

I don’t even know where to start on the drink menu. First off, Long Island is YOURS, Americans. And honey in a drink? I call bullshit – the only time I’ve ever seen that is when my drunken friends tried to make their own Drambui on Robbie Burns day that one time..

Anyway, excuse the typos.

To the menu. First item? Deep fried pickles. Other notable Canadian delicacies include fried green tomatoes, cheese logs, Asian egg roll salad (I feel like I’m in Vancouver!), and the Kookamonga.

The Kookamonga is a four pound hamburger. For $25. Someone just ordered it, it’s huge. Only seven people have managed to get it down, and their bills were forgiven in an act of restaurateur contrition.

I stuck to a Canadian item – the poutine (the menu says to pronounce it “pooh-tine,” though I’ve always said “pooh-teen”).

No matter – it came and was fine, real curd and all. I never, ever eat it in Canada, so I have no idea how it stacks up.

I planned to eat more, but was grossed out by all the gravy in my disgusting Canadian moustache (I told the waitress we all have moustaches, and avoided getting into prostate-related explanations).

That means I didn’t leave room for the Great Canadian Maple Flank Steak, which is “six ounces of flank steak marinated in a maple syrup marinade then charbroiled to order, served with blue cheese potatoes and green beans…. $6.99”

Also passed on the Nanaimo Bar (na-nye-mo).

“A true Canadian dessert with three layers of chocolate, coconut, walnut, graham crackers and vanilla. In one word – rich.”

Good thing I laid off – it would have ruined my Wobbly Mountie. That’s a “creamy mix of banana, vodka, rum, triple sec, topped with sour and a splash of cola.”

So yeah, I gotta go. I suddenly have an urge to wear my pants on my head and sing Oh Canada to my compatriots lining the walls.

As for you, wild boar, you can just hum along. Your secret is safe with me.

David Pentimone bit his lip thoughtfully as the moderator told him which bit of Biblical verse to recite in order to keep alive his dream of winning the National Bible Bee.

He looked concerned, but it wasn’t the pressure. A recent victim of the orthodontist, the 10-year-old spent the weeks leading up to the finals worrying that his braces would cause him to stumble and force him out of the competition.

Read the story in the Globe and Mail

One wrong word, and he’d be eliminated. A 10-second pause? Eliminated. And there’s always the fear of a black-out, with more than 2,000 memorized verses blurring together when they are needed most.

So, with a deep breath, he took a run at Timothy 2:9-11.

“In like manner also – that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls or costly array, but which becometh women professing Godliness with good works,” he recited. “Let the woman learn in silence with subjection.”

The Kansas City, Mo., competitor waited for the judges to nod, and took his place back among the other four finalists in the national championship’s youngest category, which pits children aged 7-10 against one another in  a spelling-bee-style competition that pulls from the Bible rather than a dictionary.

During the past seven months, more than 5,600 students across the United States have spent tens of thousands of hours memorizing verse. Through a series of online competitions, written tests and oral exams, the field was cut to 300, and they descended on Nashville over the weekend for the finals.

The stakes are high – top place in the senior category comes with a $100,000 purse. There’s $260,000 to spread among all the divisions, along with other prizes such as waterproof Bibles and five-year memberships to the Creation Museum in Kentucky.

While it doesn’t get the same attention or numbers as the hugely popular Scripps National Spelling Bee, the prize money is far superior. The national spelling champion walks away with only $35,000 cash.

David wouldn’t win the top prize in his primary category despite answering with precision through 12 rounds. That honour went to the now-two-time champion Olivia Davis, 9, of Salem, Org.

But his performance still placed him among the country’s elite Bible Bee participants, in a competition that is gaining in size and popularity as it wraps up its third year.

“It’s pretty much how I spend my time,” the boy said, after opening his mouth and tilting his head back to show off  his not-quite-complete braces. “We asked the dentist not to put any more on until this was over.”

Winning doesn’t come easy. Olivia spends four hours a day through the summer memorizing and contextualizing Biblical passages, says her mother Linda Davis. When school starts, study time is cut in half.

“You need to have that level of commitment,” said Ms. Davis, who, like many others at the event, home schools her children. “But it’s not just memorizing – you need to know what it means and how it all ties together. We spend hours together walking and reciting. It’s nice time together.”

The event was organized by the Shelby Kennedy Foundation – named after a  Texas woman who  spent her life memorizing verse and doing ministry work in Haiti before dying of cancer at 23. The foundation suggests the winners put their money into a scholarship, but doesn’t insist. Last year’s winners bought puppies and Macbooks.

Organizers and parents say they’re engaged in a stealth education campaign that ensures the next generation of Christians are better armed for the challenges of the world than the current generation.

Prize money is nice, but they hope the memorized verse will serve them throughout their lives and make them better ambassadors of their faith.

“People may ask why on Earth we’re doing this, and many in our culture say Christianity is irrelevant and we should move on,” said Phil Vischer, a presenter at the Bible Bee and co-creator of the VeggiTales faith-based cartoon series.

“That’s Christianity performed poorly. These kids are learning the Bible so they can live Christianity well.”

For Olivia, the competition is a reminder of “how important the Bible is compared to worldly entertainment.”

But it’s more than that. Her first call after winning was to a rival from last year’s competition, who is now a pen pal. Minutes after hanging up, she was writing her address down for friends made this year.

“If young people all did Bible Bee, we could change the country forever,” said Olivia, who hadn’t started thinking about how to spend her prize money yet. “Also, it’s fun.”

Funny thing happened in Georgia the other day. I held an assault rifle like it was no big deal, as the sales clerk explained its only real practical use would be to fell a dinosaur (should they come back to life). And, I’d be able to do it from a few miles away, which is probably handy.

We don’t have a lot of gun shops in Toronto, at least not that I’ve noticed. And I don’t really get why people would want to own a gun, but I get that it’s important to people here. So I entered the gun shop/shooting range with a pretty open mind. It was in a strip mall, kind of hidden in the middle of empty shops. But there was no hiding it – the pop of pistols was deafening as customers tried out guns in the store’s shooting range.

The walls were covered with rifles, display cases held handguns. A pretty kickass one costs about $600. I asked about the most popular model, and the sales guy said a bunch of stuff about different types of guns for different customers and I kind of lost the thread. One woman was buying what I think was an automatic pistol of some sort – the point was she wouldn’t have to reload until she got off enough shots to kill the bad guy coming through the bedroom window.

I asked her why she needed a gun, and she said she had to “protect her babies.” Fair enough, I guess. And she was good in the range, I watched her shoot holes in the target. Right through the forehead. Killed it over and over, stopping briefly to reload before shooting it in a different vital organ.

They knew I wasn’t from around them parts, and were kind of interested in the fact that I’d never shot a gun (which was a bit of a lie – I shot a rifle in the air on New Year’s in Witless Bay, Newfoundland when I visited the island with a friend. It knocked me over, and I never talked about it again. It wasn’t a very macho moment.).

So they offered me a choice of any gun in the store to kill some targets with. I scanned the models – pink-handled Smith and Wesson pistols, all-black shotguns – and wimped out. I just couldn’t muster up enough hate for the targets. “Just as well,” the clerk said. “I’m not clear on if you’re even allowed to be shooting around here. But you should learn – what if you run into some zombies?”

He’s got a point. Do we still have a gun registry? Cause if not, I’m loading up before I get on the plane.

PS: I’m down here working on real stories, not just sill y nonsense. But I can’t resist the allure of random roadside stops, hence the blog posts.

Where to begin. Let’s start with the disappointing news – although there are KFC restaurants in the southern United States that offer buffets, the buffets don’t include double downs. At least, not the kind that come pre-made.

But we’ll get to that.  First, some background.

I first heard of the restaurants while driving on the Florida interstate. By the time I passed the advertisement I wasn’t sure I had read it correctly. I mentioned it to a few people afterward, nobody was sure whether to believe me. A day later, I decided it was necessary for me to visit a buffet. And that wasn’t easy, the closest one was more than a hundred kilometres away.

But as luck would have it, the artery clogger wasn’t all that far from my next stop. So while some people go to Augusta, Georgia for the golf I went there for two chicken breasts, one piece of chicken liver, rice, beans and even some macaroni and cheese.

And I wanted to keep the whole experience authentic, so I ordered a Dr. Pepper. That’s because I’ve seen 8,323 billboards since landing a few days ago advertising the drink. I’ve never had it, unless you count those drinks I vaguely remember drinking at Zaphod Beeblebrox’s in Ottawa (order half a beer, a shot of amaretto and maybe something else… then drop the shooter into the beer and chug contents. Repeat.).

The Dr. Pepper was awful. The food wasn’t bad. I mean, it was terrible. But, terrible in that weird KFC way. The Colonel’s chicken is the worst stuff in the world nine times out of 10. But that one time – that one time – it’s the best thing you’ve ever tasted. And the chicken in this deserted KFC was good in that oh-my-god-it-isn’t-the-awful-kind-of-KFC way. It was kind of dry, which is good.

Not greasy, not slimy. I’ve never had chicken livers. I had to ask what they were. The lady looked at me like I was demented – possibly because I have a moustache – and said “you ain’t obviously from the south.” It tasted like deep fried whatever, but the texture was off.

As for the rest of it? I didn’t eat much. I had the potatoes, which were cold. The gravy was curdled. The macaroni tasted like someone heated up the macaroni salad I’m used to from Ontario. There were other options – carrots, collards, cottage cheese (I know?), some sort of noodles, apple pie that had sort of melted into itself.

Which brings us to the double down. I was considering building my own – there were enough chicken breasts to make it happen. But the only way I could do it was if I substituted macaroni and cheese for cheese, and chicken livers for bacon. Which I did. And then, like a mad scientist who realizes his little monster is to hideous to let live, I gave it a quick and merciful death. Didn’t even take a picture – it was that terrible looking.

I checked in with KFC. They don’t plan on bringing the buffet restaurants to Canada. Indeed, Canadians don’t even like KFC that much, according to the company that owns a bazillion of them. It’s a problem for them. And it’s not a problem they are going to solve with a buffet table. Our healthcare system is grateful, KFC, even if my friend Sarah Boesveld is not.

Thank you.

PS: The buffet cost $7.99, which included the refillable cup.