“It’s Billy Kirk vs. Preston the Psycho,” says the tableside announcer, with the sort of melodramatic aplomb you’d expect from a veteran pro wrestling commentator. “Get ready, folks, ’cause these guys on the table now are monsters; Billy’s been arm ...

Between the building tops, the gray sky looks too near to be real, like a backdrop for a 1930s movie about a tornado. It’s the inland remnant of some hurricane or other, sneezing a drizzle now and then. About 100 ...

The girls perched on folding chairs in the cavernous gym at the National Guard Armory have spent the morning on drills—hair, makeup, nutrition, picking the right dress, all part of the Tennessee Valley Fairest of the Fair Pageant Boot Camp, ...

Scene & Heard by Rose Kennedy: When just such an event came to Knoxville last weekend, though, I resisted the obvious cliche. I decided that instead of testing the Expo representatives’ psychic ability (“I expected you to know I’d be ...

Scene and Heard by Charles Erickson: Only five passengers are visible in silhouette as a westbound KAT bus moves along the 3900 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. The bus rumbles past Burlington Printing, Barnes Barber Shop, and Unchained ...

Scene & Heard by Rose Kennedy: A massive oak tree shades two grave markers, high on a hill along a narrow gravel road that rises up to a grassy knoll. The oak’s branches dip, down low, catching the last strains ...

Scene & Heard by Rose Kennedy:They’ve braved a thunderstorm that started stirring about half an hour ago to be here at a candlelight vigil for the next-door neighbors—the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church—where a gunman opened fire during a children’s ...

Scene & Heard by Rose Kennedy: It’s about 1:30 p.m. and the sun is still high this Friday afternoon, but the fun is winding down. A few hours earlier, the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, our city’s repository for and promoter ...

Scene and Heard by Mike Gibson: It’s easy to miss Martha’s Place, an unassuming little crimson-painted hovel with a red tin roof—about the size of a double-wide trailer—settled only a few feet off Rutledge Pike on a grim stretch reserved ...

Scene & Heard by Rose Kennedy: No senior citizens’ center, this, nor a kiddie birthday party. This is summertime Sunday night bingo on the Cumberland Strip at the Mellow Mushroom. Each player gets one 4-inch-by-4-inch disposable punch-out card. Most perch ...

Scene & Heard by Mike Gibson:

Scene & Heard by Jack Neely: Talahi Park is a rarity, a long, rectangular park lined with gingko trees and framed in a fence of concrete and ironwork that is, in style, a combination of Cherokee and Egyptian, fused in ...

Scene & Heard by Mike Gibson: The nearly wall-sized baby-blue screen standing in the center of the room is shaking and bumping as if it were being manhandled by some club-footed poltergeist; likewise the fold-out chair I had stationed in ...

Scene & Heard by Rose Kennedy A woman in sensible slacks and T-shirt crows triumphantly to her little daughter at the marbled washstand in the cavernous restroom at the Knoxville Convention Center.

Scene & Heard:The ninth or 10th annual Agee Crash Bash—no one can remember if it started in 1999 or 2000—was held at the Checker Flag Sports Bar on Clinton Highway, near Emory Road, just past the Spritz & Glitz beauty ...