About a month ago, the Atlanta White House's owners, real estate developer Fred Milani and his wife, Yvonne, opened the house to the public for holiday tours. The admission charge for adults was $15. A portion of the proceeds benefits the International Church of God, which -- talk about nutty coincidences -- has a chapel in the basement of the other big building on the White House's property. With Farsi-language services, the church ministers to Muslims (mainly Iranians, I'm guessing, since they're the people who speak Farsi) who have converted or wish to convert to Christianity.
Fred Milani is an Iran-born American citizen who converted to Christianity several years ago. His company built many of the homes in the Oak Grove neighborhood that surrounds his White House. As his wife explained when I walked into the house, the mingled religious and American historical architecture (such as the replica of the original White House's Green Room decorated with a Last Supper tapestry, or the giant floral arrangement on the front lawn that spells "God Loves You") makes the White House a monument to her husband's faith and love of country.
With gold, mahogany, marble and, let's just come out and say it, tackiness everywhere, it's also a monument to how fabulous wealth does not always bring fabulous taste with it. The Atlanta White House straddles the line that separates God-y from gaudy. It aspires to evoking the White House, but walking through the place, the grandiose residence that it kept bringing to mind was Elvis Presley's Graceland. Like Graceland, the Atlanta White House even has a "jungle room." Known as the Monkey Room, it's decorated with monkeys, leopard print, and a trompe l'oeil jungle scene. The room is lit by a chandelier with three wooden monkeys holding up two lamps each. I'd love one. Like every other bedroom in the house, it also features white towels with the words "White House" embroidered on them. Just in case they forget where they are, I suppose.
Other architectural touches of note include a Winnie the Pooh sitting on a small throne in the master bedroom, a gold-fixture bidet, an Oval Office that isn't actually oval-shaped, the China Room (filled with vaguely Chinese furniture), the pink and pillowy Queen Room (which, unfortunately, has nothing at all to do with the band), a nice big pool with the letter "M" in blue tile at the bottom (I forget if it stands for money or just Milani) and the Banquet Room. The Banquet Room is decorated with an enormous stone Last Supper carving featuring Abe Lincoln, George Washington, Billy Graham, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a bearded guy who looks strikingly like Jim Caviezel.
Saturday night dead: Driving around town Saturday, the whole city had a lazy Sunday-hangover day feel to it. I didn't actually have a hangover, despite my best effort at Underground Atlanta's Peach Drop the night before. My first stop of the evening was the YoYo Boutique in Cabbagetown for the Saturday Night Funk Box art opening. When I pulled up around 10, the place was packed. I squeezed inside where I found 50-some people forming a small circle in which about a dozen people took turns breakdancing to the '70s and '80s pop, funk and hip-hop that the DJ in the corner was blasting.
The dancers were a multiethnic stew of mostly young men. There were two super cute little boys and at least three women dancing as well. The circle was very small. Every now and then an onlooker, including me, would get hit by a spinning dancer. One guy's video camera got busted by a flying foot. Despite, or perhaps because of the fact we are all one errant banana peel away from tragedy, the room was buzzed with energy. Even this slug of a columnist was amped up watching it all. It was one of those happy, spontaneous, celebration-of-life sort of events that only a heartless grump could resist smiling at.
The art, which honestly barely even registered with me next to the dancing, was boom boxes painted with graffiti. Did you know that those big old Lasonic boom boxes pick up shortwave radio? I didn't until Saturday. How come you never see B-boys kickin' it all BBC World Service-style? Shortwave is the shit, people.
After YoYo, I stopped by the Drunken Unicorn for its New Year's hangover party. The ad for it in this here paper said that the bar would be dispensing aspirin and eye-masks. I looked and even asked, but I couldn't find any aspirin or eye-masks. I did find a couple of bands, though. I found local punks the Heart Attacks leaning against the wall looking like stars. I mean that in the best way. They ooze charisma and a slightly undernourished edginess like no local band I've seen, and they don't even look old enough to legally drink.
The other band I saw was a bizarre outfit called Gates of Berlin. I call them bizarre because they sounded like two bands grafted together. Sort of like the Strokes rhythm section glued to mainstream Matchbox Twenty rock. The bassist and drummer gelled like Magellan, and that's always fun to hear. But otherwise it wasn't my cup of tea.
Waterskiiing: On Sunday afternoon, I ventured to Centennial Olympic Park to participate in that time-honored Atlanta winter tradition: ice skating in 70-degree weather.
It was so warm that the rink was dotted with puddles and the clumsier skaters had soaking wet pants. As usual, it was as much fun to watch the squealing happy kids as it was to actually skate. More fun than either of those, though, was the rink attendant's impromptu Michael Jackson performance. To an M.J. tune whose name slips my mind, the attendant did a jerking dance routine, using the icy surface to aid in replicating Jacko's Moonwalk glide. At one point, he lifted his jacket to reveal a pair of handcuffs attached to his belt loops. Goodness knows what those were for.
For a mind-numbingly large photo collage of breakdancers, check out www.andy2000.org.
