Athens, I love you.

Athens, Ga., has been called the birthplace of alternative rock and America’s best college town. That was yesterday. Sure, the town that spawned R.E.M. and the B-52s is still an indie-songsmith hub. And University of Georgia Bulldogs fans are as passionate as ever. But Athens’s historic downtown has rerouted some of that hipster-meets-rah-rah history into a hyperlocal entrepreneurial spirit that caters to the mature tastes of those who have moved in, come back or never left. The result is a renaissance for the area, which feels like your favorite, secret neighborhood, where iconic locales dovetail with new and resurrected music spaces, boutiques, lounges and restaurants, as well as a brewery set to open this fall.

Check out this slideshow from the New York Times! Athens, GA. A Downton Renaissance.

I burnt the shortcake.

I had one job. And I burnt it. One of the few things I could confidently tell you I'm good at is baking. Mostly because I like to eat the dough or batter all the while. And also mostly because baking instructions are clean and simple--they give you measurements, ingredients, temperatures, timing--all that good stuff. They make it so easy and fulproof. They meaning the Betty Crockers of the world.

So yesterday, my job was to make a dessert for our Fourth of July meal. My strawberry shortcake biscuits were going to be my one contributing factor to the meal of American champions. And somehow, sometime, somewhere along the line, they got burnt. Not inedible burnt, but just the time of overdone toastiness that makes things dry and brown looking.

We ate them anyways.



But I got to thinking about other disclaimers that I am no good at...

throwing and/or catching frisbees

making guacamole

not talking during movies or TV shows I don't understand

why i miss college football

What's more American on the Fourth of July than college football?

No, these are not my words. But they are my sentiments exactly.

"I go to Athens because it reminds me of why we are alive"

Traditions Monday: Why I Go Back To Athens

I’ll admit it: I am a lifelong Georgia Bulldog fan. I graduated from our state’s flagship university in 1984.

My wife and oldest son are also UGA graduates, and my youngest son is a student there. Attending Georgia football games in the fall has been a Murphy family tradition since the Herschel Walker years. The team has seen its ups and downs and has hit a bit of a dry spell the past couple of seasons.

I was in Athens earlier this fall and had to endure yet another disappointing loss - this time to Arkansas. So why do I do this to myself?

Why do I make the four-hour trek down I-16 and Ga. 15 five or six weekends a year to immerse myself in frustration and regret?

It came to me when I was running at 7 a.m. on the day after the game. I ran past North Campus, down through the J-school and Reed Quad, past the Tate Center and on to Myers Quad, where I lived as a freshman. I then circled up past the Science Library, my left knee aching a bit as I hit the incline up Ag Hill, before heading back down past BioSciences and Chemistry and Physics/Astronomy.

"I love this place," I thought.

And that was it - my little epiphany. It’s not about the game. Never has been.

I ran past a row of maple trees outside of the Chemistry building. I carved my wife’s initials in one of them when we were dating back in the day. They were mere saplings then; they are 50 feet tall now. I paused a moment to run my fingers over those rough letters.

I gazed upon the giant ground sloth skeleton in the Science Library - first found on Skidaway Island, it became a curious touchstone for me when I was homesick as a freshman. I jogged through Myers Quad, where I saw R.E.M. perform when we were all still students, and first thought, “Hey, they’re actually pretty good!"

I peered up at the silver dome gleaming above Park Hall, where I took graduate-level English classes with the one-of-a-kind Dr. Bufkin. The J-School plaza was where I called my mom from a pay phone one bright and sunny afternoon to get my MCAT scores and exclaimed after hearing them, “I just got into med school!"

It was at the University of Georgia that I saw “Monty Python and the Holy Grail" one Saturday night after midnight and debated health care reform (even then!) at the Demosthenian Literary Society.

We drank sangria and played video games on Fridays at the Dawg House, engaged in campus-wide snowball fights when classes were cancelled due to blizzards, club-hopped, road-tripped and watched a few years of great Georgia football featuring guys named Herschel, Buck and Lindsay and Freddie.

As I completed my run - a full 30 years after my freshman year on the beautiful UGA campus - the sun came up over the horizon, the birds sang and I thought, “This could be 1980 all over again."

Except that it wasn’t. A generation and a half of UGA students have come and gone since then.

I saw a young coed in skinny jeans, her long hair pulled back into a ponytail, struggling up the steps to the Science Library with an over-stuffed backpack, and I wanted to stop her. I wanted to tell her that life was too short, that she should revel in this moment, that she should enjoy every second of college because she’s going to spend the rest of her life trying to get back to this point, right here. And she’ll fail, because once it’s over, it’s over. Everything else is an imitation, a sham, a mirage.

I didn’t speak to her. She probably would have sprayed me with mace, or, at bare minimum, called campus security about the creepy old 40-something dude in running shorts who accosted her.

But she made me realize why I come to Athens.

It’s not the football.

It’s the memories - of a time when the whole world lay before us, when the possibilities were endless, when we pushed the envelope of what we thought we were capable of and ruptured it egregiously. It’s a reminder of the carefree nature of youth, of the ability to lose oneself in the collective delirium of a brilliant football play in Sanford Stadium, of the hedonistic pleasures of a simple glass of wine with a good meal and good friends while the young and the beautiful cavort mindlessly about, unconcerned about tomorrow because of the limitless possibilities of tonight.

A pilgrimage to Athens unearths recollections of the intellectual and personal discoveries that made me the man I am today.

I go to Athens because it reminds me of why we are alive.

And it makes me grateful for the blessings I have been granted in this great country, and through my wonderful alma mater.

God bless you, Athens. Because of you, for a few weekends a year, I am young again.

Mark E. Murphy, M.D., is a Savannah physician and writer.

it was a summer of yes

Okay, I know I probably read way too much but every single girl in their twenties needs to read Jennifer Close's Girls in White Dresses. Every. Single. Girl. And no, that was not supposed to be a pun on being single because she jokes about dating quite a bit. It is hilariously on point and somehow dictates the delightfully hard and awkward experience of growing older and still feeling so young. It is a national bestseller, so I cannot be the only one who loves it so much.

But anyways, two of the girls in the book decide to have a "summer of yes"--similar to Jim Carrey in Yes Man but in a less creepy way. "'We're going to say yes to every invitation that comes our way,' they told each other. 'We're going to be positive, and put positive energy out there." As expected, their summer of yes has its fair share of ups, downs, and awful blind dates. But it got me thinking about having my own similar summer of yes.

Last summer while I was away at camp, I [very] often yearned to be home, laying out by the pool in the non-humid California sunshine. Now that I am/have been home this whole summer, I yearn for some place more exciting and sexy. I am a twenty-year old living in suburbia for three months, and even though I don't have a ton of free time between my two internships, I decided I want to make the most of what time I do have. It strikes me more and more often, the older I get, that I will likely not be home for extended periods of time in the future.

So with all of that in mind, I challenged myself to defy the boredom and routine of suburbia by trying to  do something new every day (well, I actually settled for a couple of things a week). So here it goes--in the past week I watched Dirty Dancing for the first time (Yes, the first time. no, I do not live under a rock)--a movie that I have been dying to see for a very long time now, I took my family to visit the Getty Villa on the coast of Malibu (so, so beautiful!), I took a cardio kickboxing class at the gym (which my body is painfully reminding me of today), I made nutella sandwich french toast (hence, the cardio kickboxing class) and I went to Philippe with some friends for dinner--a cute hole in the wall restaurant in Chinatown of L.A. that has been home of the french dip sandwich for 105 years, and tonight I sent my resume to a PR firm I'd love to intern for in Athens.

I've got a little over a month left at home this summer--so I will see what I come up with next! Happy summer of yes!

now in love with Patrick Swaze...

Getty Villa

J'adore a good french dip sandwich.