It's sort of like a little bastion of Texas. A Texas away from Texas, if you will. Or perhaps, Texas East.
Not much to tell yet; I sat in a plane for 3.5 hours in Atlanta today because the world's weakest rainstorm blew through for a period of approximately 10 minutes. But apparently Atlanta is a little jittery about weather and shut down the whole airport, including preventing the landing of the airplane that contained the pilots for my flight. So, for fuel reasons, they diverted to Knoxville. Once there, they had a mechanical issue. In the time I sat on that plane at the gate, I could have driven to Nashville (no exaggeration).
What's missing from this cockpit? Pilots.
I should mention, however, that my Uberstatus kicked in and they upgraded me to the front row of the plane for this leg, so I did spend my 3.5 hours in relative comfort and with a lot of free drinks. All I had was water and apple juice. The guy behind me went through about four Bailey's on the rocks before the kid next to him said, "If you have one more I'm telling Mom."
Anyway I didn't get in until much later than anticipated and it was already dark. So I really didn't see much of the city other than wandering around downtown to find a sushi place that was recommended by a friend. Yum.
So the conference hotel is the Marriott Renaissance, located in downtown Nashville. It was full when I registered, so they put me in the Marriott Courtyard Downtown, which is... one block away. The Marriott density here is disturbingly high, but the good news is I won't have to drive my car at all. And that's good because (for some reason) Lab Travel decided it would be funny to sign me up for a rental car that doesn't have unlimited mileage. I didn't know anyone still did this, but Avis wants $0.30/mile in addition to their rate. Great.
Watched "Everything is Illuminated" this evening. I loved Liev Schreiber as an actor, and now I love him as a director. Eugene Hutz's broken english is hilarious. "Many girls want to be carnal with me... perhaps because I'm such a premium dancer." If you get this on DVD, definitely watch the deleted scenes. They don't even seem to fit in the movie at all, but they are a h00t. What's with Elijah Wood and the 70's muscle car!? And the midget?
My wife and I watched "Everything Is Illuminated" about a week ago and really enjoyed it as well. I hadn't heard much about it and didn't go into it with very high hopes, but I thought it was a very well made film that sorta touched on all different emotions and had great acting all around (and looked quite nice as well).
You're correct about the deleted scenes. You can see why they didn't make the final cut of the movie, as most of them are totally insane and really didn't have the same understated vibe as the main cut of the film, but they were definitely good for some laughs (especially the muscle car and extended dance scene).
Oh, and I loved you overheard statement about the drinking on the plane. I chortled when I read that. :)