After spending the night in Ringgold, GA, outside of Dalton, the carpet capital of the world, we had lunch at a little cafe in a little town called Calhoun. We had the best hamburgers there, and they served tater tots instead of french fries. We'd never seen such a thing, but were very happy.
Amy: They must have come straight from the Ore-Ida bag, and they gave us about a half bag each, but they were perfect!
From there, it was off to find CNN in Atlanta, at the urging of Andy's mom. We managed to drive around some of the rottener parts of Atlanta while trying to find it, a strange skill that Andy seems to have.
We finally found CNN, and made our way to a parking garage across the street. The "visitors" ramp to the top of the garage said it was full, so...
Andy: I went to the employee ramp, but that was full, too. There was no way to turn around, and the gate required some magnetic card to get in. I was about to back out, but somebody else pulled in behind us, so I had to plead doofusness to the woman in the car. She swiped her card to open the gate for us, and we went to find the exit. Then we thought "hey, we might as well park here since we're in, right?" We crossed our fingers that someone wouldn't bust us for not being real CNN employees.
Amy: With our big ol' minivan with pillow and suitcases and Illinois plates...
So off we went to the big ol' CNN building. The front of it is the Omni Hotel, and the part where CNN is used to be an indoor
amusement park, complete with a rollercoaster. Without all that in there, it's basically a huge atrium.
It's pretty scary how self-promoting everything Ted Turner touches is. The first thing you see when you walk in
is a bank of TVs showing the Cartoon Network, and beyond that in the atrium is the Turner Store.
In the middle of the atrium is where Talkback Live is taped. When we arrived, it was about 45 minutes before show time, and the audience was already getting warmed up. The guy with the mike was going around yapping about "Who's glad to be here today?" and getting the crowd to yell and cheer. The day we want was Academy Award day, so the show was about the Oscars.
Right at 3:00, the show started, and they announced the guests, one of whom was the ever-annoying and always swishy Rex Reed
blathering about quality of performances and blah blah blah. Worst of all, he was there remotely! He wasn't even there in Atlanta
so that we could go to the Taco Bell in the
food court and fling bean burritos at him, or drop a Nachos Bell Grande on him from the mezzanine.
Even if he was, we wouldn't have, since there were security guys everywhere, and you could tell the CNN folks from the little
badges they wore.
Next stop: The CNN Tour