• LOOK: I'm in the racist BBQ shack!

Columbia, South Carolina is quaint, slow, and totally racially tense. Buildings are old and charming; people are rather polite, and if you look hard enough you can spot a Confederate Flag almost anywhere you go. I've been here for a week filled with food n' naps, and have been delightfully appalled on a regular basis. Just last night in a Food Lion parking lot, I was called a "cracker in a stupid hat," after I told an aggressive panhandler that I only carry money orders. I haven't encountered much of the music scene, except for a flyer in a Starbucks for a band called The Private Life of David Reed. Man, that band name is certainly as bad as Columbia's favorite soft alt-rock kings, Hootie & The Blowfish. OH! There's a Hootie & The Blowfish statue here, on the corner of Hootie & The Blowfish Ave! I've heard that Darius Rucker lurks the college bars in Five Points looking for co-ed trim, but I didn't encounter this firsthand. My only accidental encounter with Gamecock college nightlife left me with a Rohypnol contact high that forced me to stay inside watching Pete & Pete DVDs when the sun went down.

I'm so wild about BBQ that it's usually the first thing I look for on a visit to a new town. Here there are a lot of signs for a local chain called Maurice's Piggie Park, and when I come upon one it looks dingy enough to be pretty good. They don't have rib tips on the menu, so I order pulled pork with mustard-based sauce. While waiting, I notice a heap of patriotic propaganda on the walls and decide to internet search the restaurant to see what other people thought about the food I was about to eat. The third listing claimed that the owner, Maurice Bessinger, was #3 on the list of "100 People Who Are Really Screwing Up America". It seems that Maurice is a good ol' boy who believes that slaves preferred to be slaves, and that for a time he paid $300 a day in state fines to fly a Confederate Battle Flag over one of his restaurants. So, here I was in a predicament: I'd given money to a total jerk before I'd known that he was a total jerk. I have to admit that the food was really tasty, but I felt so awful about the situation that I stole the display copy of Bessinger's book Defending My Heritage and a bottle of mustard sauce. I also took the picture at the top of this column after I wrote the title on the wall. I REALLY SHOWED HIM! My advice is that you should enjoy this food, but try not to pay for it.

There's a man with a van near the corner of Gervais & Harden in Columbia. His name is Ernest Lee and he's known as The Chicken Man. He's been making paintings on wood for about 10 years now and is most known for his paintings of chickens. When I stopped by to visit him, he was eating Kentucky Fried Chicken. I asked him a few questions about life in Columbia and painting, but he could only repeat that he had to go to the dentist. He then offered that I could have an armload of paintings for $100, and I picked out which I thought were the best. Soon a man with a hot tub in the back of a pickup truck arrived drinking from a 3 liter bottle of grape soda. The Chicken Man and Grape Soda got into a heated argument because The Chicken Man was supposed to buy the hot tub but had now changed his mind because of dental fees. Grape Soda, who was white, looked at me and said, "It looks like that cracker Yankee is going to give you some money!" and then they both laughed. Here's a picture of a cat and one of the paintings I purchased, which I will happily mail for free to the first Caperin' reader who comments verbatim, "I want that free painting, cracker Yankee." It's 8"x6", it's nice, you'll like it!

• Painting for free, not cat.

There's a Pho restaurant in Columbia called Viet Pho at 211 Devine St. Their Pho Ga is essentially Campbell's chicken broth with ramen noodles for $9. Greens weren't included with my bowl and my MSG detector was going berserk. BEWARE! There's a sushi restaurant called Inakaya on Saint Andrews Road. I am visiting a girl in Columbia called The Belle and she described Inakaya as an Enter The Dragon-themed Cracker Barrel. BEWARE! There's a Thai restaurant on Devine called Baan Sawan that offers a pulled-pork curry special that is TDF*. It's not on the menu, so ask the server if you decide to visit. On the way to the Thai restaurant, The Belle and I found a plastic bag containing a woman's Nine West wallet. As we ate, we pieced together this person's life. Her name is either Erica Sauer or Erica Watkins, we found receipts and ID cards using both names. She might be married to Stephen Sauer. She spends time in Scottsdale AZ, Las Vegas NV & Columbia SC. She loves shopping and gift cards. A quick net stalk revealed that Stephen Sauer could be a minor league baseball player and Erica was perhaps at one time a notable tennis player. I found them on Facebook, but instead of writing them a message in an attempt to return the wallet, I simply added them as a friend. If either of them somehow ends up reading this, I'll be happy to send the wallet, but I suspect that I will have used the remaining $25 on the Safeway gift card. Sorry 'bout that.

Pee Wee Gaskins was a runty serial killer who lived & raised a ruckus near Columbia, South Carolina in the 1960s and 70s. He's known by some as The Redneck Charles Manson and his death tally was anywhere from nine to 100. The Belle had vague directions to find his rumored DEATH HOUSE (that's just what we called it) in the woods. The story that we pieced together is that he lived at this location in the late 60s. One afternoon we made the trek, and as the sun set we found the house, which is the absolutely scariest trip into the woods I've ever made. It seems that the house hasn't been lived in for 40 years, but is still structurally sound, though it has giant holes in the floor. Here's a satellite map of the location and the text directions that we used to find it:

• Don't eat boiled peanuts, they're gross.

FIND EAGLE ROAD ACROSS FROM SHAW AIRFORCE BASE ON I-76
DRIVE ON EAGLE ROAD UNTIL YOU COME TO TRAIN TRACKS AT (JOHN FRANKLIN ROAD) TURN RIGHT
GO "A LITTLE WAYS" AND PARK NEAR A POWER LINE & ABANDONED COUCHES, 10 FEET FURTHER IS A TRAIL INTO THE WOODS
GO THROUGH DENSE WOODS UNTIL YOU COME TO A WHITE HOUSE

Also interesting in Columbia, SC is the Confederate Relic Room, which is a treasury of Confederate history not often seen outside of The Atlantic Southeast. It's brimming with typical things like weapons and flags, but it was the slave relics that reminded me that South Carolina was the birthplace of a lot of that stuff, and that in many ways it's still really close to the surface. But man, that BBQ is GOOD!

Back in Seattle, Sara Beabout of Witch Gardens wrote last night to say that the band was in a "brutal car accident" on the way to the show with Marnie Stern but all members are A-OK. Last week I saw a wonderful band called Seapony at the Sunset Tavern. They had a pleasant quiet quality, and at times it seemed that the music that they were playing was actually a recording. Not that they were playing along with a recording, it just sounded a whole lot like a recording. Perhaps it was the drum machine; perhaps it was the vodka. If you have the chance, have a look. I've never heard Throwing Muses, but Seapony is exactly what I'd think they'd sound like.

I apologize for the lack of drawings in this entry. I am using the Internet in a grocery store without a scanner or camera cord, and I have a terrible cold.

*To die for, natch.