Southern Saturday.

I count my blessings every day. I'm married to a remarkably beautiful woman. I have a warm, wonderful family. I have friends I've known all my life. I have a curiosity to know the places I visit, not just see them.

So when I'm in East Tennessee on an autumn Saturday, my wife is 16,000 kilometres away, the Vols are playing for the SEC title and my mom is asleep in front of the television ... I unabashedly go to Hooters.

There's no challenge in poking fun at a place that promotes itself as "delightfully tacky, yet unrefined." Its business model is sexist. Its interiors have the charm of dorm basements. Its customers range from beer-bellied soccer dads to toothless yokels. For a guy looking for a place to catch a college football game, however, it's got Dos Equis on tap, tasty chicken wings, a dozen plasma TV screens and -- yes -- pretty girls in criminally revealing outfits.

The woman above is Brittany. She's a bartender at Alcoa Hooters and a student at Carson-Newman College. She has a sweet smile and relaxed demeanor. Today, as the Vols took on the Kentucky Wildcats, her workplace looked like this ...
... so it goes without saying she was a sight for sore eyes.