Bring Out Your Dead!

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Happy Halloween!

Ghost Hunters-- the popular Sci-Fi network-- broadcasts LIVE for 6 hours tonight from Waverly Hills Sanitarium, just outside of Louisville in southwestern Jefferson County.

Waverly Hills, one of the leading tuberculosis centers in America in the 20th century, was the site of some 63,000 deaths.

This is the Ghost Hunters' second visit to Waverly Hills; I happened to catch the first episode before we moved to Loueyville. Spooky stuff, indeed. Ghosts aside, the Sanitarium is moderately dilapidated and cuts a huge and imposing figure in the middle of the woods. Inside, the building is mapped with "death corridors"-- slides through which bodies were transported to the morgue to avoid spreading the disease through the main halls.

According to the Courier-Journal, the Ghost Hunters, it was one of the top places that they've investigated.

Check out the Ghost Hunters Sci-Fi page here, and the actual Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) webpage here.

Personally, I'm hoping for a confirmed sighting... it would really put Louisville on the map with all the Coast-to-Coast with George Noory types. And that's exactly what we need to keep on keeping Louisville weird.

PS. Coast-to-Coast fans-- tonight is the annual "Ghost-to-Ghost" show withe former host Art Bell. Stay safe Art!

Paradise City?

The newest WHY Louisville t-shirt design features a retro-80's-tropics rendering that designates Loueyville as "Paradise City." According to the website:

Legend has it that Axl Rose wrote the song Paradise City about Louisville. Whether that's true or not, you'd have to ask Axl.

In what can only be called a triumphant example of uber-procrastination, Lou just spent W-A-Y too long on the internet trying to get to the bottom of this rumor.

"Paradise City" was ranked #453 on Rolling Stones' list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and #21 on VH-1's Greatest Metal Songs of All Time.

Best that I can tell from the internets, Axl Rose, a Midwest boy from Lafayette, Indiana, has refrained from ever pegging down a true Paradise City. He's said that "the verses are more about being in the jungle; the chorus is like being back in the Midwest or somewhere." In my investigations, it's only been in the comments of websites like songfacts.com and answers.com that well meaning boosters of the city have set forth the idea that Paradise City is Loueyville.

On songfacts.com, Kelly from Louisville writes:

this great song is about louisville, kentucky... only tha greatest city on this
damn planet. Axl was a sensible guy, apparently. I named my dog after him.

Yes, our grass is green and, as far as I can tell, our girls are pretty and Loueyville is only four hours away from Lafayette, Indiana. But that's ALL the evidence that I can dig up on this urban legend.

Still think the shirt is cute though! $17.

Nothing to do with Looueyville #1: GO SOX!!

Welcome to a new series here at Loueyville.com-- the Nothing to Do With Loueyville (NTDWL) post, featuring stuff Lou just can't keep under her Derby Bonnet.

When the Red Sox won the Series in 2004, my four uncles went to my grandfather's grave the next day and adorned it with a commemorative T-shirt, cap, issue of the Boston Globe, and most memorably a note that just said: "They finally did it, Dad!"

Go Sox!

By the way, Lou has been on vacation... sorry for the radio silence.

Gene Expression Changes Related to Endocrine Function and Decline in Reproduction in Fathead Minnow (Pimephales promelas) after Dietary Methylmercury Exposure

... is the name of the first article on the list when I searched for "Hunter S. Thompson" using the Louisville Public Library's remote access to the JSTOR database.

Just thought I'd share.

By the way, I was searching for the cover article of the current issue of Rolling Stone, called "Growing up Gonzo: Portrait of Hunter S. Thompson as a Young Man."

More on that to come...